It’s less “you’re doing it wrong,” and more Frontier should improve their background simulator to give anarchies some personality and teeth, as they were in previous games, rather having them be the one faction type that is perennially victimized by the player base, unable to fight back “because reasons.”
Doomed anarchies
- Thread starter Obi Wan Naboo
- Start date
It’s less “you’re doing it wrong,” and more Frontier should improve their background simulator to give anarchies some personality and teeth, as they were in previous games, rather having them be the one faction type that is perennially victimized by the player base, unable to fight back “because reasons.”
Notoriety used to bother me, then i started playing with you...now its just another day...
I 100% agree there. I don't farm Anarchy at all really except for the ones others send me to on missions.
And a sidecar to that issue is the complete lack of options for players to pursue hostile actions against lawful factions of differing superpowers... this is where a military career path would be super-effective.
Coz from my perspective, the issue isn't so much a lack of teeth for anarchies (although that's definitely part of the problem) and more that as a default position, lawful factions regardless of superpower alignment support each other and all but exclusively[1] target anarchies with negative effects.
Instead:
- actions supporting a faction of one superpower should only ever have positive effects for similarly aligned factions.
- "neutral" actions by a faction should hurt anyone not aligned, not just anarchies [2]
- covert action by one faction against another should be done in a way that hurts the target, and benefits an anarchy (enemy of my enemy stuff)
As examples:
- doing a delivery for an Imperial faction should only have other Imperial factions as the recipient.
- salvage operations, which typically only hurt anarchies in the target system, should hurt any faction in the target system, and can be forecast in the mission description.
- covert spec ops massacre normally hurts a target and benefits the issuing faction. It should benefit anarchy in terms of inf/sec/eco, but rep rewards for the issuing faction.
tl;dr factions need to wake up to the fact that in most situations, anarchies are the lowest threat, and there should be a wealth of antagonistic options available to players... options which benefit from having negative rep with the target faction.
[1] the only exception between war. Outside war, opposed superpower factions should be far less amicable and in a constant state of tension and political manouvering at the expense of opponents. Perhaps that opens the door to an "alliance" bgs state where there are mutually beneficial actions preferred on the table, but the outcome of the alliance when it resolves puts one faction at an advantage over the other (even though the general outcome is mutually beneficial growth)
[2] why almost all salvage operations carry negative effects for anarchy factions is crazy, or how any hostage rescue missions are only ever anarchies... lawful factions are just as likely to do that sort of thing with the right catalyst.
Edit: you can actually see this at play when massacre stacking.
Massacre stacking is, in short, supporting any and all lawful factions to punch in with a bunch of pirates. This eventually leads to a pirate faction at 1% inf and civil unrest/ lockdown and bust, and a bunch of lawful factions at war... which is the problem... the pathway to hurting lawful factions is lined with anarchy corpses. That's plain wrong.
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That’s definitely another problem. Back in the day, before Frontier listened to player complaints and had all missions, even criminal ones, yield positive effects on the mission giving faction, was a great way to undermine a faction… in the long term. Sure, they gained influence in the short term, but once they went into lockdown or bust, the low-effort casuals would either seek greener pastures, or preferably take lucrative missions for the faction you’ve been supporting just as much, who are probably in boom.
The end result, though, was the totally nonsensical result of you being on very good terms with a faction you just helped overthrow. These days? Supporting a faction is a straight influence grind, whether you’re grinding against the intentional efforts of another BGS player, or just the net random noise of low-effort casuals.
Not sure why we would want more anarchies, honestly, or to keep them around beyond the bottom of the INF ladder. If the game is meant to be believable, and the powers in the galaxy have the kind of resources the game indicates that they have, most of these places would be sorted out in short order to improve commerce and production. The decline of anarchies seems completely normal and even beneficial to me. Now, if only Frontier would put some teeth on C&P...
LOL
Anarchies - gangs, mobs, posses, “boys” - are all criminal factions, and as we all know:
We shall eradicate them as we shall eradicate the Thargoids.
Forward the Federation
We shall eradicate them as we shall eradicate the Thargoids.
Forward the Federation
The Federation can't even keep control of it's own back yard. How did you manage to lose Hors of all places?
They paid too much attention to the neighsayers.
Then say what you mean in less words...
"How about we remove crime from the game?"
Simple.
Players can't hurt other players or "friendly" ships. Only "bad guys" can be hurt... and all criminal activities like smuggling and black markets removed.
Having a mechanic in the game that has no practical benefits for undertaking, and only punishes someone for doing it is a pointless mechanic.
So just remove it. Easy. Dumb, but easy.
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And we were saddled with too much internal opposition that we just couldn’t rein in.
Alternative proposal: "The only crime is not doing crime"
THE CRIME IS LIFE
THE SENTENCE IS DEATH
Judge Death??? is that you?
Might as well. Smuggling is dead. And it disgusts me. It used to be so much fun. And it made money. Now it's something you would only do because you miss the loop, and whenever you do it, it just makes you sad because you remember how good it used to be when it actually did line your pockets.
I gave up on criminality in Elite. It has no appeal. It pays peanuts, the downsides are numerous, and my ganking days are long gone. Better to be a privateer, because at least the powers shell out.
If billions are peanuts...
Of course, if you are going to lead a life of crime, learning to steal helps.
Don't include your little exploit
(It's entirely unfair to judge the state of crime writ-large against that)
As has FD, ostensibly.
Yeah, exploits aside, if I want to be turbospacerich I can just mine opals for a few hours or do exploration-related things, which come with far greater rewards. Let's be real. There are a lot of things in Elite that pay far better than smuggling. Almost everything in fact. Even the most basic privateering. In terms of credits per hour, smuggling and pretty much all dirty deeds are a joke compared to what they were in ye olde dayes.
And since odyssey launched, I have not seen a single smuggling mission that didn't want to send me 200ly away.
Assuming the game will even allow me to see the destination, because... hey, smuggling missions never got the mission depot mechanic so they flat-out don't allow you to check the mission and take it if you're not currently in a ship that has the cargo space for it.
Same as how, for the longest time, they never had the ability to pick rewards, so if you were full of the material they were offering it was literally impossible to complete them. And nobody at fdev apparently bothered to check this because... who does smuggling, right? It's broken lmao.