Theoretically I guess they could, but it starts to give weird oddities once multiple players get considered or people do the same action in Solo then Open.
If player A mines some goods in Solo and sells them to a carrier, then player B buys the goods from the carrier in Open and - staying in Open - sells them to a station, should those goods get the Open bonus or not? What if after mining the goods, player A switches to Open to sell and is pirated by player B? What if they mined some in Solo, and switched to Open to mine the rest - can they choose to sell/dump the Open or Solo goods in preference? (I think if the goods stay solo-flagged, that's really weird for player B, but if they don't, it's a trivial way to "launder" them)
It's also a bit odd for exploration - lots of people explore in Solo/PG because that's the mode that high-res screenshots work in. The extra risk from Open in "random system 10kLY from anywhere" is so close to zero as to be irrelevant anyway. So long as they come back to sell in Open they'd have "earned" the bonus, as that's the actually risky bit [1].
"Source and return" missions can have similar issues - it's pretty easy to predict roughly what a station might offer, so what if you show up to a station in Solo with the goods aboard, then switch to Open. The mission was taken and completed entirely in Open, so shouldn't it get the bonus?
(If you say "no, the goods still have the Solo flag", then what about Credit Donation missions? Do they get the Open bonus or not? Does the game need to internally track two separate credit balances - Open and Solo/PG - and preferentially use the Open ones for missions and buying cargo and the Solo/PG ones for outfitting?)
It feels like the sort of mess where there'd be bug reports all over the place from it just not working how people expected it to.
The Powerplay version that Sandro proposed was simpler because the things used for Powerplay are only useful for Powerplay, so could just completely disappear if you switched mode - and regardless of the merits of the idea I think it would have technically worked. Doesn't work for the rest of the game because it's not self-contained like that.
[1] About the only time I go to PG is if there's someone AFK on the medium landing pad at an Outpost. That's fine for me now, and I have more than enough money not to be caring about bonuses anyway, but it'd be really annoying for someone who actually wanted the bonus - hang around for half an hour and hope they leave, or switch mode and lose the bonus on your current cargo plus all the bounties+exploration data you've got stored...
Thank you for taking the time to bring my attention to pitfalls.
BGS concerning factions via CZ:
If my understanding is correct (please correct me if it is wrong or if it is incomplete), the most important aspect of BGS that players in open care about is how the CZ is handled, because the outcome of CZ battle is highly influential on the future of the ruling / competing faction. They cannot defend their faction against an enemy that plays in solo / PG.
To this effect, the following seems fair, easy to understand and implement (I may be missing something here):
- go to the CZ in open, win the battle, turn in the combat bonds
- if at any time for any reason you log out and back into solo/PG, the influence of the outcome of the CZ battle becomes that of the equivalent of solo/PG.
BGS concerning exploration along the lines of 'if a tree fell in the forest and there is no there to see it ...'
I am thinking along the lines of your thoughts above:
Clearly if you are out in the black, it should not matter whether you are in solo or open. In fact, if there is no commander in open present near your geo-coordinates, there is no way your actions in solo are distinguishable from those of someone in open. Therefore information you collect in the 'void' when there is no other commander nearby should be equivalent as if you had collected it in open.
Now as you travel back in solo to turn in exploration data, the game sets a radius of say 500 Ly (whatever the maximum jump range) around any inhabited solar system
so that once you pass that point of no return, your results are flagged as solo.
BGS concerning trading:
Any proposal here may seem too technical but perhaps not impossible.
"Source and return" missions: if you purchased items in solo, they are solo-flagged. if you show up with the cargo purchased in solo, then relog to open, take the mission and turn in solo-flagged cargo, your contribution is equivalent to that of solo.
"Credit Donation" missions: there is no difference between open and solo, it is not a perfect galaxy
"THE HARD PART": you bring up an excellent point here:
If player A mines some goods in Solo and sells them to a carrier, then player B buys the goods from the carrier in Open and - staying in Open - sells them to a station, should those goods get the Open bonus or not? What if after mining the goods, player A switches to Open to sell and is pirated by player B? What if they mined some in Solo, and switched to Open to mine the rest - can they choose to sell/dump the Open or Solo goods in preference? (I think if the goods stay solo-flagged, that's really weird for player B, but if they don't, it's a trivial way to "launder" them)
The key is here is that solo-flagged is tied to player A who originated the action, but status of solo-flag can be 'mutated' by the actions of player B who is in open:
If player A mines in Solo and switches to open to sell it, the cargo is solo-flagged (cargo has no history other than player A who had a nick of time in solo).
If player A mines in Solo and switches to open and pirated by player B, then only those cargo that player B pirates from player A are open-flagged. If player B relogs to solo, his pirated items are now solo-flagged, until he relogs to open and pirated by player C, ...
Laundering:
(i) Player A mines some goods in Solo and sells them to a carrier, then player B buys the goods from the carrier in Open and - staying in Open - sells them to a station
(ii) Player A and player B both mine in solo, meet up at the station in open, pirate each other, sell in open
Yes laundering is a problem, and a difficult one.
Let's agree on arbitrary but fixed weight, for example's sake, that a solo mined and sold cargo has '1' unit of influence and open mined and sold cargo has '10' unit of influence on the BGS. These 'weights', 1 and 10 can be adjusted later.
Between two BGS ticks, a cargo's lifetime is a sequence of the following:
(1) originated (mining, purchased from market, found on a planet, ...)
(2) transferred (carried by player A, and/or by player B,...)
(3) deposited (sold at station, now available to both open and solo players)
(4) back to (1)
So the example (i) above where player A mines 1t of LTD in solo, sells them to carrier in solo, player B buys 1t of said LTD in open and sells it to station in open, the lifetime of cargo between two BGS ticks is this:
T0: tick, BGS interval starts
t1 : LTD solo flagged (mined by player A in solo)
t2: LTD solo flagged (sold to FC by player A in solo or open, does not matter, status of LTD cannot be mutated from solo to open by player A)
t3: LTD open flagged (bought from FC by player B in open, status of LTD is mutated from solo to open by action of player B in open)
t4: LTD open flagged (sold to station by player B)
T1: tick BGS interval ends
We agree that if LTD spend its entire lifetime (t4 - t1) in solo, it would have influenced BGS with weight factor 1, and if had spend all of its life in open, with weight factor 10.
Now since a portion of its lifetime, t2 - t1 is spent in solo, and t4 - t3 is spent in open, it will have weight that affects BGS somewhere between 1 and 10.
