Ahuh. How's that contest anything? You realise you've described a group of which I'm a subset of, right?
The source is a player, not anything from FD, so it's instantly contestable... and the sources that player has included actually support my position.
I don't see anything from Ian's post contesting my position here.
The point of contention here is the definition of a bucket, not how they work. I maintain, I've never heard of an "exploration bucket" and nor is that post contesting that notion.
That's not "exploration" or "mission" buckets... that's state-based buckets. It's absolutely no basis to claim that activity buckets like "mission" or "exploration" exist.
I get what you're saying... but you're incorrectly conflating two very, very different concepts here.
My question to all of this is: why has FDev never communicated the mechanisms, numbers, formulas, etc...?
Could it be that nothing really work as well as it should / as expected?
Could this explain the outcome of this CG extension, for which even FDev could not predict if an extra week would be enough, or possible at all, for players to lift a lockdown?
I'm paraprhasing, but it's very specifically worded that activities such as missions, exploration etc. then fill buckets such as boom, bust, lockdown etc.... not an "exploration" buckets.
I have never heard FD deviate from this method of describing the buckets, and there's no sourcing supporting that guide's interpretation of buckets.
My question to all of this is: why has FDev never communicated the mechanisms, numbers, formulas, etc...?
Could it be that nothing really work as well as it should / as expected?
Could this explain the outcome of this CG extension, for which even FDev could not predict if an extra week would be enough, or possible at all, for players to lift a lockdown?
Because it's not meant to be front of mind. It's meant to be in the background to shape how the game is played.... again, like the weather. FD on countless occasions have said words to the effect of "If players play the game with the BGS effects front of mind, they've done it wrong, and have created a foreground sim".
We don't go out expecting to change the weather, even though our industrial activities gradually do so.
I'm paraprhasing, but it's very specifically worded that activities such as missions, exploration etc. then fill buckets such as boom, bust, lockdown etc.... not an "exploration" buckets.
I have never heard FD deviate from this method of describing the buckets, and there's no sourcing supporting that guide's interpretation of buckets.
Because it's not meant to be front of mind. It's meant to be in the background to shape how the game is played.... again, like the weather. FD on countless occasions have said words to the effect of "If players play the game with the BGS effects front of mind, they've done it wrong, and have created a foreground sim".
We don't go out expecting to change the weather, even though our industrial activities gradually do so.
Be a bit careful of using ancient videos like that as precise references. Things have changed multiple times since that point, including changes since Odyssey has released.
Honestly, you've never really said what you think is how it works. All I know is, I have PERSONALLY seen a BGS faction have its security state go up, but its influence go down, simultaneously. I actually did it myself like 3 days ago when I was doing bounty hunting and a random assortment of donation missions to generate merits and push a faction into Civil Liberty.
What actually moves the security slider to the right, amount of bounties or total value of bounties?
And why is it different from moving the slider to the left (amount of bounties incurred instead of total value)?
Edit: I realised my second question assumed that the answer to the 1st question is total value. If both effects require amount instead of value, then alright.
Correct! I've been stuck in TrailBlazer Echo's Hanger 5 - since last Wednesday evening. A stripped down Cobra, with a lot of Expo Data I can't hand in - it's not tricked out for combat - so staying put. Plus the Bar Tender has run out of Lavian Brandy.. & i'm developing 'cold turkey' symptoms..
I've got a couple hundred million in exploration data, not even counting a lot of first discovery bonuses. If I could transfer ships and keep that safe, I'd be happy to fight some pirates.
They are not going to be disappointed, anyone who put a single exploration credit in before the lock down are going to get the global reward plus the minimum payout, people who signed up for the CG and never put anything in, well that was silly right, a single exploration dump, a single system basically, would have got them the reward. My very first contribution, the day after the CG started, put me in the top 25% with 30 systems scanned, even if I did nothing for the rest of the time I would still now be in the top 25%.
What about people who were already out exploring 10Kly out when the CG dropped? I didn't have a chance to pick up the mission first. I didn't even get back to the bubble until Wednesday evening and it was already locked down.
I guess congratulations are in order for the Dog in the Manger faction. For purely selfish motives, with no in-game rewards or even effect to the sacred BGS, they managed to spoil the fun of thousands of other players who just wanted a cool thing to do.
What actually moves the security slider to the right, amount of bounties or total value of bounties?
And why is it different from moving the slider to the left (amount of bounties incurred instead of total value)?
Edit: I realised my second question assumed that the answer to the 1st question is total value. If both effects require amount instead of value, then alright.
Simply put, "actions which increase or decrease security"... but to your question, neither and both.
tl;dr Bounty claims create an effect when you claim the bounty, in a single transaction, while crimes create an effect at the time the crime is committed, which means crime naturally creates multiple transactions which tend to be weighted more than a single transaction of equal magnitude.
Specifically around bounties, Moving to the right (towards Civil Liberty) is caused by claiming bounties through contacts. It is both the number of transactions and the value that matters... but it's done in such a way that newer/smaller/lower contribution players aren't drastically drowned out by larger/more skilled players. Towards that end, a player claiming bounty vouchers totalling 10m in one hit will have more impact than another player claiming 1m worth... but a player claiming 10m in bounties will (probably) have less impact than, say, 5 players each doing a 1m hand-in (and while a similar effect would be achieved, it would be less effective for a single player to hand in 1m of vouchers five times, due to the time lost travelling back and forth[1])
Key points:
Bounty earnings take effect when you claim them at the station[2], not when you earn them. That can easily be proven by earning them in one system and claiming them in another; the effect occurs where you claim them, and can be carried over without claiming them to have the effect on a different tick.
Their value and effect is structured in a way to be representative and fair to players of different ability, without necessarily being misrepresentative.
For violent crime, however, the BGS effect occurs immediately[2] when the crime is commissioned... so when you shoot a clean target and get a 300cr bounty, that's functionally equivalent[3] to going and claiming a 300cr bounty. Murder will then attract a 3m credit bounty and be it's own incident.
To tie this back to the transactional nature of the BGS... what this means is that, contrasting bounty hunting vs committing crimes:
A bounty hunter may accrue 20m worth of bounties across 20 kills, and claim them all in a single transaction (1 transaction for 20m credits worth of effect, whatever that works out to be)
A criminal may accrue 20m in bounty on their head across 20 kills at 1m credits each. That represents 20 transactions each of 1m credits.
Tying that all back to what I said when describing bounty claims... theoretically, twenty murders (which is 20 transactions) accruing a 20m credit bounty on your head as a negative effect is much more effective in that direction, than a single 20m credit bounty claim, due to the number of transactions involved, assuming the underlying numbers are the same.... and also ignoring if there's any influence-like effect where a positive action for a faction on 70% influence is less powerful than a negative action of the same magnitude against that faction, because of how diminishing returns work.
[1] That's the principle of 1t trading when it was a thing.
[2] Explicitly, these effects are resolved at the tick, but the transaction to resolve is recorded as described
[3] Notwithstanding that their raw impact may be different, but it's just mechanically the same.
Be a bit careful of using ancient videos like that as precise references. Things have changed multiple times since that point, including changes since Odyssey has released.
This is why I was careful in my wording to say "Here's the best reference I can find for now". I know more contemporary references directly from FD exist, but mea culpa, I don't document this stuff anywhere. I read it, assess it, discuss it (like now), apply it, and that commits it to memory. So I'm aware of the existence of contemporary stuff... but a combination of my lack of records plus the inconsistent publishing and recording of info from FD makes it difficult to find the references when I see them.
That said, if this is a concern for you, I encourage you still to put doubt in that guide, as the picture I linked which it uses itself as an example of buckets predates the video linked (i.e it's even older).... as far as I know that's from a presentation about AWS tech use when the game was still early access. Hardly relevant to a contemporary guide.
That said, the BGS has not fundamentally changed since inception. There's been some mitigations and tapering added (e.g to minimise things like 1t trading, because why would anyone assume you'd sell 400t of goods 1t at a time) for sure, and the way things like Boom/bust/lockdown/civil liberty work has changed because these are now opposed states rather than isolated (like outbreak, pirate attack), but the core principles continue to remain the same.
Honestly, you've never really said what you think is how it works. All I know is, I have PERSONALLY seen a BGS faction have its security state go up, but its influence go down, simultaneously. I actually did it myself like 3 days ago when I was doing bounty hunting and a random assortment of donation missions to generate merits and push a faction into Civil Liberty.
I don't know what that example is trying to demonstrate that contradicts anything I'm saying? What you describe there sounds all entirely reasonable.
Donation missions, depending on the flavour of goods being asked for, only increase economy and influence (weapons donations will also increase security). So if you did a donation, and someone did an action that hurt the security of that faction but not as much influence effect as the donation, you'd see an increase in influence and economy, and a decrease in security.
That's because the buckets are state based, not activity based, as described in that video.
So what happens?
Internally, there's likely "some number" that represents the current state of the various attributes of a faction.Nobody can know for sure, but a faction's influence, for example, might be recorded as a decimal between 0 and 1, being a direct representation of that % (e.g 0.67 = 67% influence). Likewise... security/economy sliders are likely represented the same way (0 = hard-left lockdown, 1 = hard-right civil liberty, or 0 =hard-left famine, 1=hard-right Investment).
For my own sanity, I'll stick with 0 through to 1, to three decimal places. I'll also ignore the isolated states entirely, and refer only to Influence, and the Security and Economy sliders.
First and foremost, a faction will go into the day with a bunch of values... e.g :
Faction A: Security = 0.30, Economy = 0.70, Influence 0.55.
If you do a mission, say, "Massacre Pirates", which you run for Faction A in System A, against Faction B in System B, that creates two transactions, which will look something like this[1]:
{"system":"A", "faction":"A", "influence_up":"0.001", "security_up":"0.037"} - The positive effect for the faction you did this for, in the system you took the mission; and
{"system":"B","faction":"B", "influence_down":"0.002","security_down":"0.044"} - The negative effects for the faction you did this against, in the system it was conducted.
These effects (but not any numbers) were visible right up until Odyssey came along, which subequently hid those effects, even though they still occur.... and these are the "buckets" that people talk about.
Meanwhile, smuggling narcotics to Faction A's station might do something like this:
{"system":"A", "faction":"A", "influence_down":"0.001", "security_down":"0.037"}
So, if someone does some light smuggling of narcotics to your faction, while you do massacre missions and bounty hunting, that faction will end up with points in these buckets:
influence_down, influence up, security up, economy down.
Then at the tick, you'll see the following effects:
Economy will go down
Security will go up
Influence will go up or down, depending on how the influence buckets resolve.
To speak quickly to diminishing returns.... there's a couple different ways the influence buckets can get resolved and nobody knows for sure...
Apply influence_up buckets, then apply influence_down buckets; or
amalgamate influence_up and influence_down buckets (if they were even distinct; i suspect they are, which i can demonstrate if wanted) and then apply the effect.
These will result in comparable but slightly different results, but I'll go with amalgamated buckets for simplicity.
Let's say that after all this, Faction A's influence buckets are influence_up: 0.15, influence down:0.05. Note:This step is speculation and is likely not correct, but a function like this needs to happen
Resolve the buckets into a net effect by taking influence down from influence up... so we get a net effect of +0.1 Note: This step is pretty much confirmed in terms of mechanics, but not numbers
Faction A's influence was 0.55 initially, on a scale of 0 to 1.
Adding the +0.1 effect, we now get 0.65, on a scale of 0-1.1
That's because contributions increase the bucket size, and the influence is a normalised proportion of that bucket size. So their new influence would be 0.59 or 59%, a 4% increase. The way this calculation happens is how diminishing returns come into play. If it was 0.2 increase, it would be 0.75/1.2, which is 0.625, or 62.5%. So not double, despite double input. If that shifted to a dramatic increase of 2, then it's 2.55/3 = 0.85... so a 10 times increase in effort on a 7.5% increase, but only for 30% or 4 times more.
These numbers are just indicative... and this also ignores population sizes.
...But the key part here is these are state (or influence) buckets, not activity buckets.
There's a presumption that the security and economy sliders work in a similar way (as well as other states), but as Ian said in the post you linked, there's been insufficient research there because there's no hard "number" like influence to measure... only vague points on a scale-less bar.
When resolving the buckets, there isn't "mission_security_up" and "exploration_security_up" which get resolved separately... it's all one and the same bucket of "security_up". The author of that guide might be conflating this sort of effect documented by Goemon with Trade... https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/trading-for-influence-ii-fc-update.555082/
(Yes, there's an "Outdated" note at the top, but it's purely in reference to the effect of demand noted in the latest patch, mechanically it's still similar.)
... which is unrelated to how the BGS buckets function, and instead an artefact of balancing... much like the consideration of 10m in bounties having less overall effect than 10 x 1m bounties, and reducing the misrepresentative impact of things like 1t trading.
[1] Not exhaustively... and also the use of "system" and "faction" in the transaction may not be how it is under the hood, but is only for representation.
Simply put, "actions which increase or decrease security"... but to your question, neither and both.
tl;dr Bounty claims create an effect when you claim the bounty, in a single transaction, while crimes create an effect at the time the crime is committed, which means crime naturally creates multiple transactions which tend to be weighted more than a single transaction of equal magnitude.
Specifically around bounties, Moving to the right (towards Civil Liberty) is caused by claiming bounties through contacts. It is both the number of transactions and the value that matters... but it's done in such a way that newer/smaller/lower contribution players aren't drastically drowned out by larger/more skilled players. Towards that end, a player claiming bounty vouchers totalling 10m in one hit will have more impact than another player claiming 1m worth... but a player claiming 10m in bounties will (probably) have less impact than, say, 5 players each doing a 1m hand-in (and while a similar effect would be achieved, it would be less effective for a single player to hand in 1m of vouchers five times, due to the time lost travelling back and forth[1])
Key points:
Bounty earnings take effect when you claim them at the station[2], not when you earn them. That can easily be proven by earning them in one system and claiming them in another; the effect occurs where you claim them, and can be carried over without claiming them to have the effect on a different tick.
Their value and effect is structured in a way to be representative and fair to players of different ability, without necessarily being misrepresentative.
For violent crime, however, the BGS effect occurs immediately[2] when the crime is commissioned... so when you shoot a clean target and get a 300cr bounty, that's functionally equivalent[3] to going and claiming a 300cr bounty. Murder will then attract a 3m credit bounty and be it's own incident.
To tie this back to the transactional nature of the BGS... what this means is that, contrasting bounty hunting vs committing crimes:
A bounty hunter may accrue 20m worth of bounties across 20 kills, and claim them all in a single transaction (1 transaction for 20m credits worth of effect, whatever that works out to be)
A criminal may accrue 20m in bounty on their head across 20 kills at 1m credits each. That represents 20 transactions each of 1m credits.
Tying that all back to what I said when describing bounty claims... theoretically, twenty murders (which is 20 transactions) accruing a 20m credit bounty on your head as a negative effect is much more effective in that direction, than a single 20m credit bounty claim, due to the number of transactions involved, assuming the underlying numbers are the same.... and also ignoring if there's any influence-like effect where a positive action for a faction on 70% influence is less powerful than a negative action of the same magnitude against that faction, because of how diminishing returns work.
[1] That's the principle of 1t trading when it was a thing.
[2] Explicitly, these effects are resolved at the tick, but the transaction to resolve is recorded as described
[3] Notwithstanding that their raw impact may be different, but it's just mechanically the same.
This is why I was careful in my wording to say "Here's the best reference I can find for now". I know more contemporary references directly from FD exist, but mea culpa, I don't document this stuff anywhere. I read it, assess it, discuss it (like now), apply it, and that commits it to memory. So I'm aware of the existence of contemporary stuff... but a combination of my lack of records plus the inconsistent publishing and recording of info from FD makes it difficult to find the references when I see them.
That said, if this is a concern for you, I encourage you still to put doubt in that guide, as the picture I linked which it uses itself as an example of buckets predates the video linked (i.e it's even older).... as far as I know that's from a presentation about AWS tech use when the game was still early access. Hardly relevant to a contemporary guide.
That said, the BGS has not fundamentally changed since inception. There's been some mitigations and tapering added (e.g to minimise things like 1t trading, because why would anyone assume you'd sell 400t of goods 1t at a time) for sure, and the way things like Boom/bust/lockdown/civil liberty work has changed because these are now opposed states rather than isolated (like outbreak, pirate attack), but the core principles continue to remain the same.
I don't know what that example is trying to demonstrate that contradicts anything I'm saying? What you describe there sounds all entirely reasonable.
Donation missions, depending on the flavour of goods being asked for, only increase economy and influence (weapons donations will also increase security). So if you did a donation, and someone did an action that hurt the security of that faction but not as much influence effect as the donation, you'd see an increase in influence and economy, and a decrease in security.
That's because the buckets are state based, not activity based, as described in that video.
So what happens?
Internally, there's likely "some number" that represents the current state of the various attributes of a faction.Nobody can know for sure, but a faction's influence, for example, might be recorded as a decimal between 0 and 1, being a direct representation of that % (e.g 0.67 = 67% influence). Likewise... security/economy sliders are likely represented the same way (0 = hard-left lockdown, 1 = hard-right civil liberty, or 0 =hard-left famine, 1=hard-right Investment).
For my own sanity, I'll stick with 0 through to 1, to three decimal places. I'll also ignore the isolated states entirely, and refer only to Influence, and the Security and Economy sliders.
First and foremost, a faction will go into the day with a bunch of values... e.g :
Faction A: Security = 0.30, Economy = 0.70, Influence 0.55.
If you do a mission, say, "Massacre Pirates", which you run for Faction A in System A, against Faction B in System B, that creates two transactions, which will look something like this[1]:
{"system":"A", "faction":"A", "influence_up":"0.001", "security_up":"0.037"} - The positive effect for the faction you did this for, in the system you took the mission; and
{"system":"B","faction":"B", "influence_down":"0.002","security_down":"0.044"} - The negative effects for the faction you did this against, in the system it was conducted.
These effects (but not any numbers) were visible right up until Odyssey came along, which subequently hid those effects, even though they still occur.... and these are the "buckets" that people talk about.
Meanwhile, smuggling narcotics to Faction A's station might do something like this:
{"system":"A", "faction":"A", "influence_down":"0.001", "security_down":"0.037"}
So, if someone does some light smuggling of narcotics to your faction, while you do massacre missions and bounty hunting, that faction will end up with points in these buckets:
influence_down, influence up, security up, economy down.
Then at the tick, you'll see the following effects:
Economy will go down
Security will go up
Influence will go up or down, depending on how the influence buckets resolve.
To speak quickly to diminishing returns.... there's a couple different ways the influence buckets can get resolved and nobody knows for sure...
Apply influence_up buckets, then apply influence_down buckets; or
amalgamate influence_up and influence_down buckets (if they were even distinct; i suspect they are, which i can demonstrate if wanted) and then apply the effect.
These will result in comparable but slightly different results, but I'll go with amalgamated buckets for simplicity.
Let's say that after all this, Faction A's influence buckets are influence_up: 0.15, influence down:0.05. Note:This step is speculation and is likely not correct, but a function like this needs to happen
Resolve the buckets into a net effect by taking influence down from influence up... so we get a net effect of +0.1 Note: This step is pretty much confirmed in terms of mechanics, but not numbers
Faction A's influence was 0.55 initially, on a scale of 0 to 1.
Adding the +0.1 effect, we now get 0.65, on a scale of 0-1.1
That's because contributions increase the bucket size, and the influence is a normalised proportion of that bucket size. So their new influence would be 0.59 or 59%, a 4% increase. The way this calculation happens is how diminishing returns come into play. If it was 0.2 increase, it would be 0.75/1.2, which is 0.625, or 62.5%. So not double, despite double input. If that shifted to a dramatic increase of 2, then it's 2.55/3 = 0.85... so a 10 times increase in effort on a 7.5% increase, but only for 30% or 4 times more.
These numbers are just indicative... and this also ignores population sizes.
...But the key part here is these are state (or influence) buckets, not activity buckets.
There's a presumption that the security and economy sliders work in a similar way (as well as other states), but as Ian said in the post you linked, there's been insufficient research there because there's no hard "number" like influence to measure... only vague points on a scale-less bar.
When resolving the buckets, there isn't "mission_security_up" and "exploration_security_up" which get resolved separately... it's all one and the same bucket of "security_up". The author of that guide might be conflating this sort of effect documented by Goemon with Trade... https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/trading-for-influence-ii-fc-update.555082/
(Yes, there's an "Outdated" note at the top, but it's purely in reference to the effect of demand noted in the latest patch, mechanically it's still similar.)
... which is unrelated to how the BGS buckets function, and instead an artefact of balancing... much like the consideration of 10m in bounties having less overall effect than 10 x 1m bounties, and reducing the misrepresentative impact of things like 1t trading.
[1] Not exhaustively... and also the use of "system" and "faction" in the transaction may not be how it is under the hood, but is only for representation.
Sorry, I honestly still can't see what exactly you're disagreeing with.
My points were, basically, this:
There are multiple buckets which can boost INF independently.
Doing just one of them will never be as good as doing them all.
A system in lockdown only has access to one of them(bounty hunting), and therefore its ability to gain influence is much diminished.
I'm not saying that there are different buckets for, like, mission security vs bounty hunting security(as far as I know).
Though that said, I HAVE noticed when I do bounty hunting missions AND bounty hunting, I seem to gain way more security than just doing bounty hunting.
Most players won't bother DSS-scanning every single planetary body even very close to the bubble because it's quite some time and effort for very little benefit. So no wonder there are unscanned planets so close.
Most players won't bother DSS-scanning every single planetary body even very close to the bubble because it's quite some time and effort for very little benefit. So no wonder there are unscanned planets so close.
The BGS is supposed to be the "Background" Simulation. The purpose is to set things up so that when you go to Altair today, things aren't exactly the same as they were a week, a month, ten years ago as they would have been in the previous games in the series.
The input to this is player activity rather than just random numbers, but from the perspective of most players the outcomes are essentially random (because they aren't trying to push for a particular outcome, nor can account for the tens of thousands of other players). Sometimes it might do things that seem to make sense - they fight in a war for a faction, and later they see that faction is in charge. They repeatedly raid the same Odyssey settlement, and later see that it's shut down. Trade routes dry up if overused and new ones open.
So the precise formulae have never been published [1]. The gameplay where player groups adopt factions and try to get them in charge of as many systems as possible (or occasionally more interesting art projects) is entirely unofficial.
Between ... let's say 2015 and the end of 2021 ... Frontier I think was more inclined to make changes to the BGS for the benefit of those groups - removing or tuning-down mechanisms which were interesting when triggered accidentally by passing traffic, but overpowered if done deliberately as part of a wargame; making the management of spread-out factions easier; adjusting the balance to one which encourage self-sustaining status quos. Since 2022 with the Thargoid War and the (delayed, but planned back then!) Powerplay relaunch I think they've been trying to get back to it being a Background: sure, you can deliberately manipulate it if you want, but Frontier won't do things specifically to support that.
[1] And largely don't need to be. By and large, deliberate BGS manipulation is so one-sided that the questions asked are not "how can I win this battle versus another similarly strong player group through good strategy and tactics?" but "how can I take over this system no-one else cares about with a minimum of effort?". The chance of a battle being sufficiently even that knowing the formulae and spreadsheeting things out is more effective than just steamrolling the other side with weight of numbers is pretty low.
Could this explain the outcome of this CG extension, for which even FDev could not predict if an extra week would be enough, or possible at all, for players to lift a lockdown?
I'm slightly surprised given the volume of bounties handed in that it didn't work, but certainly I wouldn't expect Frontier to be able to predict the outcome because it really depends on how many players get attracted by the news to both sides.
Remember that Frontier's original estimate for the CG itself was a factor of ten too low - the original target was passed just 36 hours in. Guessing how many players will show up to something unusual and how much they'll do is virtually impossible.
This especially.
FSS takes less than a minute for an entire moderate sized system, but for DSS it takes at least 1-2 minutes to SCO, approach and probe for EACH body. The bonus DSS points aren't worth the time multiplier.
Sorry, I honestly still can't see what exactly you're disagreeing with.
My points were, basically, this:
There are multiple buckets which can boost INF independently.
Doing just one of them will never be as good as doing them all.
A system in lockdown only has access to one of them(bounty hunting), and therefore its ability to gain influence is much diminished.
I'm not saying that there are different buckets for, like, mission security vs bounty hunting security(as far as I know).
Though that said, I HAVE noticed when I do bounty hunting missions AND bounty hunting, I seem to gain way more security than just doing bounty hunting.
My point is the buckets you and that guide are referring to dont exist.
There is no "bounty hunting" bucket. There is only "security_up" and "security_down" buckets, for each faction.
So doing some bounty hunting to achieve a security effect, and doing some missions that impact security, does not offer any tangible difference or advantage than just doing all of one or another; they both go to the same buckets (in the context of security)
My point is the buckets you and that guide are referring to dont exist.
There is no "bounty hunting" bucket. There is only "security_up" and "security_down" buckets, for each faction.
So doing some bounty hunting to achieve a security effect, and doing some missions that impact security, does not offer any tangible difference or advantage than just doing all of one or another; they both go to the same buckets (in the context of security)
What about Influence, though? Afaik, doing 1x bounty hunting AND 1x exploration increases influence far more than doing 2x the effort on either one. That's basically what I was talking about.
What about Influence, though? Afaik, doing 1x bounty hunting AND 1x exploration increases influence far more than doing 2x the effort on either one. That's basically what I was talking about.
That's nothing to do with buckets, and instead related to either diminishing returns of that activity specifically for balance reasons (e.g goemons trading analysis), or an interpretation that is conflating the "1t trading effect"... that is, number of transactions gets more representation than the scale of the transaction.
Edit: "nothing to do with buckets" is somewhat flippant... but what i mean is, it's nothing to do with the concept of separate activity based buckets.
That all depends on how many people are pushing both ways though. Although it was in the 2.X era of BGS when I was system flipping, in deserted systems with high populations it was easy to push and you'd have high gains (and factions would rapidly go into lockdown). This would drastically slow down when others were against you. What is triggering sus feelings is that for days the status barely moved, and then suddenly it drastically jumps. There are many reasons why this could be, but given the situation its not hard to scratch the chin.
There's some scratching of chins to be had both ways - which is what I hoped to be the upshot from the onset of this... again, blaming the game and not the player: the system is flawed & rife for manipulation, as you & many others have all been highlighting for years, and maybe this will finally be something Fdev pays attention to.
