Frontier:Are fights during civil wars supposed to effect influence or change the outcome of the war?

[GlyphGryph]

I and several others have been participating in a civil war for a while now. The two factions were at 1.0% and 0.8% percent when the war began, and we've been assisting the weaker one.

By estimates, we've killed over 200 warzone ships between us by this point over the course of the day, but the faction influence percentages remain unchanged.

I'm getting a little bit worried that what we're doing is going to have no effect on the outcome and we're going to lose the war despite a coordinated and unopposed effort on our part.

Update:
Another days worth of efforts. Thousands of enemy warzone ships killed. The enemy's influence has tripled, while our side's has fallen. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what's going on.

 

[Pakal]

There should be some mercy rule provision in the simulation and/or some resource limit simulation.

I've seen dozens of Pythons, quite a few Anacondas, and innumerable Cobras and Vipers destroyed. It's hard to believe some of these sub-factions have the resources to keep sacrificing billions of credits to a lost cause.

 

[Wurz]

Goes to show that the "living, breathing universe" is no such thing

 

[Pakal]

Goes to show that the "living, breathing universe" is no such thing

I think the problem is it's still living and breathing after the players have done their best to kill most of it It's a tough thing to balance - not letting players immediately consume the universe like a plague of locusts. But I'd rather it err on the side of obvious player influence before we burn out banging our heads against the wall of some intended narrative.

Player feedback = fun. The devs get to enjoy the ant farm, but us players don't get to see any of what's going on.

 

[GlyphGryph]

Further testing indicates that fighting in a warzone has absolutely no positive impact on influence, but it may actually hurt it!

Despite our efforts still being unopposed, and over 60 players dedicating over a days worth of effort to fighting for the smaller faction, they have only fallen further behind.

Warzone's seem completely broken and useless if they are supposed to effect influence.

Is there some other hidden factor, or are we wasting our time yet again?

 

[Ydiss]

Further testing indicates that fighting in a warzone has absolutely no positive impact on influence, but it may actually hurt it!

Despite our efforts still being unopposed, and over 60 players dedicating over a days worth of effort to fighting for the smaller faction, they have only fallen further behind.

Warzone's seem completely broken and useless if they are supposed to effect influence.

Is there some other hidden factor, or are we wasting our time yet again?

It's difficult to test empirically because there's no record of who else may be doing what you're doing.

Theoretically, 100 players you never see might be fighting for the winning faction. You just can't measure this because you'll have no way of seeing all players taking part. Just assuming you're the only players because you're coordinating it and don't see anyone else isn't necessarily correct. There might be any number of players you'll never see due to geographical differences.

But confirmation from FD would be good; your evidence is anecdotal but still compelling enough.

 

[GlyphGryph]

It's difficult to test empirically because there's no record of who else may be doing what you're doing.

Theoretically, 100 players you never see might be fighting for the winning faction. You just can't measure this because you'll have no way of seeing all players taking part. Just assuming you're the only players because you're coordinating it and don't see anyone else isn't necessarily correct. There might be any number of players you'll never see due to geographical differences.

But confirmation from FD would be good; your evidence is anecdotal but still compelling enough.

It's a civil war between minor factions that has never been published, with one side being backed by one of the largest groups in the game that noticed only a single ship fighting for the other side in two days worth of effort fighting round-the-clock. (There are definitely no geographical differences in play here, since our playerbase comes from around the world)

It's probably as close to empirical as we can get, considering the circumstances. There's always potential hidden factors in any experiment.

Obviously it would be nice if we could somehow make the evidence stronger, but we work with what we have.

I will say this is possible - the one player opposing us may have switched to a trade ship and solo and starting making trades to support the faction we were fighting. That might explain the influence rise late in the experiment. But it would still require our efforts in the warzone to have no impact at all, and it would mean that a bit of trading could strangle a civil war in the cradle no matter how numerous or dedicated it's supporters, which still seems broken.

 

[Trigg]

Fighting in the conflict zone is only part of the influence on results.

If the other faction happens to have a particularly lucrative trade route running through it then all the player and simulated NPC trades taking place there would serve to boost the other faction's influence. May not be the case here, but something to look at maybe?

Ninjad

 

[GlyphGryph]

Fighting in the conflict zone is only part of the influence on results.

If the other faction happens to have a particularly lucrative trade route running through it then all the player and simulated NPC trades taking place there would serve to boost the other faction's influence. May not be the case here, but something to look at maybe?

Ninjad

They don't, we made sure to check for things like that. Even if someone were trading through there (in a way thats less than lucrative), even several people, it would still seem broken for the war itself to have absolutely no effect at countering their efforts. Especially since it's impossible to trade with the faction we're backing, so there's no possible counter.

 

[AgentGB]

Further testing indicates that fighting in a warzone has absolutely no positive impact on influence, but it may actually hurt it!

Despite our efforts still being unopposed, and over 60 players dedicating over a days worth of effort to fighting for the smaller faction, they have only fallen further behind.

Warzone's seem completely broken and useless if they are supposed to effect influence.

Is there some other hidden factor, or are we wasting our time yet again?

hmm i have noticed this too, seem back to front, seems like if you want your faction to win, you need to fight against them? had negative rep also from helping despite handing in combat bonds and completing mission boards for conflict zones. I have noticed somthing is not quite right, unless i'm missing somthing under the hood?

 

[GlyphGryph]

Also, the warzones have a bunch of seeking luxuries traders floating around making their offers.

This isn't really a problem per se, as blowing them up still gives a combat bond, but it's certainly odd!

 

[DarthBlingBling]

I was also in the group that was fighting for the smaller faction. We had saturated the high intensity CZ to the point that if anything red did ever manage to pop up again in the radar, it had a life expectancy of 5 seconds; we obliterated the opposing faction. We also had groups doing the same in the other CZs.

So it's very disappointing to find that it's had no effect (perhaps even the opposite effect) on the influence of the faction that is clearly winning. Either this is some Empire propaganda akin to the Iraqi Information Minister, or the mechanics of the civil war are broken. I'm betting for the latter as it seems that's the way with most mechanics in this game.

 

[TargetLost]

I have send over 500 capital ships home in Durius over the time and I came to the conclusion that this has 0 effect. There is no correlation on what you do in the war zone and the influence.
It very strong looks like that when you don't do missions and just fight in the war zone and turn in bonds you collected than the game thinks that this doens't means anything for the war.

 

[Souris]

I've killed nearly 150 ships so far in a single warzone this weekend. It's been great for my combat ranking, but not only has it had no discernable effect on influence, it hasn't even affected my faction status: neither the side I've been helping nor the side I've been slaughtering seems to care in the slightest about what I've been doing.

 

[Morbad]

I suspect that individual ship kill don't mean anything if they aren't completing missions that you are then turning in.

This is why I prioritize blowing up other CMDRs, because they fail all of their missions.

I have send over 500 capital ships home in Durius over the time and I came to the conclusion that this has 0 effect. There is no correlation on what you do in the war zone and the influence.
It very strong looks like that when you don't do missions and just fight in the war zone and turn in bonds you collected than the game thinks that this doens't means anything for the war.

The Durius conflict was hugely popular and you could simply have been countered by players fighting for the other faction.

 

[Ishmael]

I was also in the group that was fighting for the smaller faction. We had saturated the high intensity CZ to the point that if anything red did ever manage to pop up again in the radar, it had a life expectancy of 5 seconds; we obliterated the opposing faction. We also had groups doing the same in the other CZs.

So it's very disappointing to find that it's had no effect (perhaps even the opposite effect) on the influence of the faction that is clearly winning. Either this is some Empire propaganda akin to the Iraqi Information Minister, or the mechanics of the civil war are broken. I'm betting for the latter as it seems that's the way with most mechanics in this game.

Yeah, as of this morning the group we were murdering repeatedly had gained somewhere around 2% influence.

 

[GlyphGryph]

I suspect that individual ship kill don't mean anything if they aren't completing missions that you are then turning in.

This is why I prioritize blowing up other CMDRs, because they fail all of their missions.

This doesn't make any sense. You get paid either way... and in our civil war, neither side has offered even a single mission, so that means it's literally impossible for one side to win, since the other has a station.

 

[Hadron-Higgs-Boson]

hmm, interesting, the more I see people posting about the lack of results based on their actions the more I'm begining to side with the conspiracy theorists that there is no background simulation. Or rather there is but its just a simple RNG adjustment to some predetermind base line curves, moving varuious game numbers; prices, influence, etc., in per-determined directions to pre-determined points where an event or change, scripted or random, may or may not chnage the direction of the curve. And that any 'impact' anyone playing seems to have or thinks they have is nothing more than coincidental.

Of course for the most part that level of simualtion would appear to be fine, especially if in the few cases where some organised effort was made there was admission of bugs or the simulation needed tweaking, IOW they adjust the curve or reverse the trend manually so that players think its now working and their activity is having the right effect, a curated galaxy rather than a simulation.

I'm not sayig anyone way is right or wrong, I am saying I think it isn;t working as I thought it would work based on what has been said by FD, but I am probably wrong (like many others). It would be good tyo have FD kidn of explain the simulation with some worked example and comment on how the various player led actions to try and change the game have vasically not had any measurable or meaningful impact.

 

[Steve50]

I and several others have been participating in a civil war for a while now. The two factions were at 1.0% and 0.8% percent when the war began, and we've been assisting the weaker one.

By estimates, we've killed over 200 warzone ships between us by this point over the course of the day, but the faction influence percentages remain unchanged.

I'm getting a little bit worried that what we're doing is going to have no effect on the outcome and we're going to lose the war despite a coordinated and unopposed effort on our part.

Update:
Another days worth of efforts. Thousands of enemy warzone ships killed. The enemy's influence has tripled, while our side's has fallen. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what's going on.

Don't you mean Affect.. Not Effect?

 

[Crazyeyes24]

These influence changes make no sense. We've all been killing ships and turning around those kill order missions like mad. And yet, the side we are fighting for is LOSING ground?

But nooooo I am sure the answer we are gonna get is a simple:
"Working as intended"

Because god forbid the workings of faction warfare and influence be revealed to us laymen.