We are not trying to get expansion here. That may be your goal but it is not ours. Besides you may not be going about that in the right way. The day this turns into an Empire building exercise will be the day I walk away from it.
It's clear Lugh is one of seemingly few systems where the influence mechanic is showing regular updates with changes in figures. Several other groups of players have tried to alter the influence in systems but with no success as it seems to be locked or bugged, we simply don't know. However, achieving states such as lockdown, civil unrest, civil war, economic boom, and expansion (is "expansion" the correct term? Where they move their influence) are still possible.
The lockdown effect seems to add checkpoints, economic boom adds seeking luxury ships. Civil war adds conflict zones (although they might not be working correctly as far as I know). The civil unrest effects are unclear at the moment. Whether these states have a greater impact on the overall structure of the star system is unknown. This is all assuming that the background simulation is working correctly.
The only response from the dev team on the topic of altering the political landscape of the galaxy that I'm aware of is as follows, 23/12/2014, 9:59 AM:
Just to reiterate that we are looking into the reputation system to make sure it is working as intended. We'll also review to make sure that results are being communicated. An example here is the first question in the OP. The changes aren't 0% but I suspect they're being rounded off. Individual missions will only have a small effect on the state for a minor faction so the number is meaningless in itself. The core information is that an effect to the positive (or the negative) has happened.
We're not going to provide detailed workings of the system as really it should be a black box as far as you guys are concerned. However it should be readable in a meaningful way. It is a core part of the game, so is something that we want to be right.
Michael
Obviously the christmas holidays meant that development and bug fixing was slowed for a week or so (I hope everyone had a great christmas!
) but the 1.04 patch fixed some problems relating to missions and the effects not being implemented as well as some bugged mission effects. My best guess is that the dev team are using the data collected from Lugh to balance the effects of player actions on influence to ensure the background simulation is working as they intend, or they're simply waiting until they implement a war between the federation and empire and the entire galaxy is open to political change and systems changing alliegance. The war is probably wishful thinking but I'm sure alot of players would find it very entertaining to have a long term goal of supporting large or minor factions to increase their power in the galaxy.
It's clear that some people have become very frustrated that they cannot visibly see the effects of their time spent in game (myself included to some degree). Everyone in Lugh have regular updates on their progress. It's a long term goal and that's one of the things that MMOs need to maintain a playerbase. This "political influence" type of gameplay has lead to several groups consisting of hundreds of players working towards a common goal. Whether it was FDEV's intention or not to appeal to the team/goal-based collaborative gamer it has become very popular. The lack of communication risks alienating a large portion of the playerbase.
All we can do is continue to wait for a response
