If things are working as intended, and the effects of player actions meant to be sensible, then call me a monkey's uncle.
Frontier:Are fights during civil wars supposed to effect influence or change the outcome of the war?
- Thread starter GlyphGryph
- Start date
This one is new to me, sounds incredibly hilarious though. About the BG, NO ONE has "flipped" a system yet (no system has changed alliegance) afaik. We don't know if this is yet possible (should be, in theory), it could be an other myth for all we know (I hope it isn't though).
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The constant comms of the traders hawking their wares and offering to buy over the sounds of dozens of ships duking it out is absolutely amazing.
Killing them even provides combat bonds!
So basically the Devs have told us that the workings of the Background Sim should be hidden and we won't get any info regarding the logic of it.
Yet they will tell us that, aside from missions that have the obvious debrief that shows the results of our actions (although sometimes bugged, but they are working to fix that), that trading has a impact on influence.
I may be being paranoid here, but if you read between the lines , what they are really saying is:
"We'll tell you trading effects influence because we've got that part of the background sim working, but nothing else works so we'll try to deflect any discussion by simply saying 'Black-Box'."
To Kyudos: I understand that if the Devs gave us the full workings of the Background sim then players might find a way to exploit it, but what they have done by acknowledging trading and nothing else is, is to give players an exploit. Want to win a war, start trading with the faction you want to win. If your faction doesn't have a station to trade with, then prepare to lose.
To GlyphGryph: I fully understand your frustration over this, I'm very much in the same boat. The chance to effect and change the galaxy is the only thing giving me reason to play but when you have no idea whether your actions have any effect it's really disappointing.
Could the Dev's please give us some indication of the state of the Background sim? No specifics, just is it working as intended (not including known bugs)?
A big question is whether it will ever get fixed if we're not reporting bugs regarding it, but how do we know what are bugs if we have no idea what is working as intended and what isn't? Or should we just ticket anything that doesn't seem right?
Yet they will tell us that, aside from missions that have the obvious debrief that shows the results of our actions (although sometimes bugged, but they are working to fix that), that trading has a impact on influence.
I may be being paranoid here, but if you read between the lines , what they are really saying is:
"We'll tell you trading effects influence because we've got that part of the background sim working, but nothing else works so we'll try to deflect any discussion by simply saying 'Black-Box'."
To Kyudos: I understand that if the Devs gave us the full workings of the Background sim then players might find a way to exploit it, but what they have done by acknowledging trading and nothing else is, is to give players an exploit. Want to win a war, start trading with the faction you want to win. If your faction doesn't have a station to trade with, then prepare to lose.
To GlyphGryph: I fully understand your frustration over this, I'm very much in the same boat. The chance to effect and change the galaxy is the only thing giving me reason to play but when you have no idea whether your actions have any effect it's really disappointing.
Could the Dev's please give us some indication of the state of the Background sim? No specifics, just is it working as intended (not including known bugs)?
A big question is whether it will ever get fixed if we're not reporting bugs regarding it, but how do we know what are bugs if we have no idea what is working as intended and what isn't? Or should we just ticket anything that doesn't seem right?
before i go asleep, have been following the thread, i think what the OP is sying is correct, and agree with all other posters, mechanics need to be better explain, and more clear cut, so players aren't chasing there tails thinking they are contributing to civil wars, i've seen cases of factions fighting, whom own no stations, and no combat missions are present in any of the stations, any normal logical thinking person would think by shooting down a few bogeys, your contributing to the war effort, despite if not handing in combat missions and just collecting bonds, but the worst offender is that even for those in the know, your lucky to find conflicts that will also do combat missions so one can support a side.
It also quite annoying there are no results, news or so much has a chinese whisper from local news within systems about other systems, it quite disturbing that you can be located at one system, only to realize there been a war raging 6ly away in another system for a week, and is to far gone to have an impact on it.
I think the whole faction rank business should also play some kind off role in how much your influence contributes to a conflict, to make it worthwhile actually ranking up, although independants would be at loose end here, but that a personnal preference.
I think all these little noted flaws, gripes and proposal for how it should work, should be pinned in the OP, i would like to see a clearer response on how best to have an influence in a civil war, the different kinds of civil war explained, because ive seen factions fighting for control of each other stations, ive seen civil wars of what looks like to nobody parties who control nothing fighting for no reason at 0% influence, and ive seen wars finish and a bunch of luxurie traders show up replacing conflict zones in some cases.
Also would be interesting to know if wiping out checkpoints has an influence, destroying hardpoints on a capital ship? do these affect the conflict more dramatically?
In battlefield 3/4 etc, it works ona ticket system, run the tickets down, win the battle, and i would imagine in ED case, if your trading and running goods into a conflict node port, your increase that ticket count, allowing for a war of attrition, that how i thought it worked, but with this combat missions and being directly connected to influence, im not so sure, so im guessing influence is the ticket system, but you can only affect it in limited ways, that aren't has logical, like sitting in conflict zone and racking up 50 kills without a combat mission, because the station does not issue one.
It also quite annoying there are no results, news or so much has a chinese whisper from local news within systems about other systems, it quite disturbing that you can be located at one system, only to realize there been a war raging 6ly away in another system for a week, and is to far gone to have an impact on it.
I think the whole faction rank business should also play some kind off role in how much your influence contributes to a conflict, to make it worthwhile actually ranking up, although independants would be at loose end here, but that a personnal preference.
I think all these little noted flaws, gripes and proposal for how it should work, should be pinned in the OP, i would like to see a clearer response on how best to have an influence in a civil war, the different kinds of civil war explained, because ive seen factions fighting for control of each other stations, ive seen civil wars of what looks like to nobody parties who control nothing fighting for no reason at 0% influence, and ive seen wars finish and a bunch of luxurie traders show up replacing conflict zones in some cases.
Also would be interesting to know if wiping out checkpoints has an influence, destroying hardpoints on a capital ship? do these affect the conflict more dramatically?
In battlefield 3/4 etc, it works ona ticket system, run the tickets down, win the battle, and i would imagine in ED case, if your trading and running goods into a conflict node port, your increase that ticket count, allowing for a war of attrition, that how i thought it worked, but with this combat missions and being directly connected to influence, im not so sure, so im guessing influence is the ticket system, but you can only affect it in limited ways, that aren't has logical, like sitting in conflict zone and racking up 50 kills without a combat mission, because the station does not issue one.
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^This. It might be the most they are prepared to reveal...
This is how it works in my opinion: (copied my orginal post from Mikunn experiment forum)
Ok I think i got the idea how the influence and missions system works (background sim from player point of view):
First of all i was wrong about connection with Civil Unrest --> Civil War. Nope, Civil Unrest is something wrong for our faction.
What we need to do in our experiments is to keep BOOM going all the time, keep the Lockdown, Femine and Civil Unrest effects at low levels.
All missions responsible for it, are not really gaining much influence for our faction. (think about them more like a cure, then influence boosters).
But...these missions are very important, because they trigger other missions like Hunt for Security etc. (Ive noticed the pattern in missions available in certain point of our faction pending statuses)
These triggered missions ,very much boost our faction influence and what is even more important cause for opposite factions effects like Civil Unrests and Lockdowns.
If we will only do Hunt Security and other missions that hurt opposite factions, but also hurt us a little bit ( by Civil Unrests and Lockdowns as "side effects"), and will not do missions healthy for our boom and our people, the first ones wont be available for some time. Until we will restore good balance by decreasing negative "side effects" in our faction.
If we will keep that positive balance for our faction and increase disorder in opposite faction, we will soon exeprience big influence change and after that Civil War.
As I mentioned in my previous post - the best scenario for us is to enter Civil War with BOOM effect on our side and some negative effect active on opposite faction side.
Durring the war we need to keep the health in our faction, by doing healthy missions for them and just wait for war result.
I think this is how background simulator works atm for us, this is devs black box.
Ok I think i got the idea how the influence and missions system works (background sim from player point of view):
First of all i was wrong about connection with Civil Unrest --> Civil War. Nope, Civil Unrest is something wrong for our faction.
What we need to do in our experiments is to keep BOOM going all the time, keep the Lockdown, Femine and Civil Unrest effects at low levels.
All missions responsible for it, are not really gaining much influence for our faction. (think about them more like a cure, then influence boosters).
But...these missions are very important, because they trigger other missions like Hunt for Security etc. (Ive noticed the pattern in missions available in certain point of our faction pending statuses)
These triggered missions ,very much boost our faction influence and what is even more important cause for opposite factions effects like Civil Unrests and Lockdowns.
If we will only do Hunt Security and other missions that hurt opposite factions, but also hurt us a little bit ( by Civil Unrests and Lockdowns as "side effects"), and will not do missions healthy for our boom and our people, the first ones wont be available for some time. Until we will restore good balance by decreasing negative "side effects" in our faction.
If we will keep that positive balance for our faction and increase disorder in opposite faction, we will soon exeprience big influence change and after that Civil War.
As I mentioned in my previous post - the best scenario for us is to enter Civil War with BOOM effect on our side and some negative effect active on opposite faction side.
Durring the war we need to keep the health in our faction, by doing healthy missions for them and just wait for war result.
I think this is how background simulator works atm for us, this is devs black box.
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ollobrains
Banned
Ive been trying this in pand, killing certain faction ships in USS sites actually does affect influence. But i havent seen civil war sites yet so cant comment specificaly, but combat with other facction npcs does seem to have a small modifier.
I would really like a response from the devs aswell.
From what ive experienced you can change the influence, but maybe it was just a placebo effect, we were killing a lot of ships from the same faction infront of a small docking station, after some time we checked the "Pending State" on that faction and it went from nothing to "Civil War", after we stopped killing NPC ships for a while that pending state disappeared.
Also the influence of that faction went down by 1%, but still i have no idea if that was caused by us.
It would be nice to know how this reputation/faction thingy works for real.
From what ive experienced you can change the influence, but maybe it was just a placebo effect, we were killing a lot of ships from the same faction infront of a small docking station, after some time we checked the "Pending State" on that faction and it went from nothing to "Civil War", after we stopped killing NPC ships for a while that pending state disappeared.
Also the influence of that faction went down by 1%, but still i have no idea if that was caused by us.
It would be nice to know how this reputation/faction thingy works for real.
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Thank you for this insightful post.
I have noticed similar things myself when completing a lot of trade-type missions in a system. It seems to improve the number and quality of missions avaiable. Of course without proper feedback from the system or a larger pool of results I would be unwilling to say that you hypothesis is correct but I think you are definetly on the correct lines here.
How are you monitoring the change in influence from your actions?
I thought a large group was working in Pand? How can you tell the changes to influence aren't due to other players actions but instead are down to your actions alone?
Another question I have about civil wars:
You can often find missions requesting you destroy Authority ships, and in certain systems a number of players including myself have gone beyond these missions and have been destroying large numbers of authority ships in a hope to lower the influence of the controlling minor faction.
Has anyone got any evidence that his can effect the influence of the controlling faction or effect the security rating of the system?
I have been keeping an eye on the security rating of a couple systems where I know a lot of Authority vessels have been destroyed and have never seen any change.
I also found a system where no one else had visited and destroyed about 20 security vessels. I saw no change in influence, not even a red arrow and I saw no change in security level although I doubt I would with such a small number.
Question:
When you fight, you get "credit" for fighting.
What kinds of messages do you get when you do a turn-in for the combat? Does it say the station situations are getting better?
I mean when I do missions, I see "lockdown" and "hunger" and ... all going up and down as well as my reputation with a faction. What kinds of messages are you getting? Are *ANY* of them pointing out that faction's performance is going up?
I've a hunch all you do by fighting like that is make money and build rep with that faction - not actually improve it's ability to take over that system. Meanwhile even 1-2 traders and/or mission runners working from the other faction's station *WOULD* be improving that station owner's ability to take over the system.
In other words, you're busy beating down the peons while the bosses sit fat and comfortable actually taking over the system. You'd need to focus on missions and such that improve the station's ability to do better vs just blow up the other guy's cannon-fodder.
I fail to understand why you, respected people, even try to work out how the system is supposed to work. The way it is designed now is clue enough that it's not worth the effort to attempt to tilt anything due to the simple fact there is nothing to tilt. For example, it could work like this:
1. Side A and B is pushed into civil war by players or natural events.
2. Side A has 500 war ships, side B has 400 war ships.
3. When one of the sides in the conflict has 50 ships left, the conflict is over and the new station owner is assigned or the old one gets to keep their main asset.
4. Players on either side get updates regularly, through the GalNet or directly on the battlefield about how the conflict unfolds and, hence, everyone is aware what needs to be done and in what timeframe.
5. "Stuff" gets delivered by players and NPC on either side of the conflict, which help supplement respective economies and "produce" Y amount of war ships above the regular daily faction ship-producing threshold. Hence, wars have the potential to be perpetual or finite.
6. Pirates hunt traders, preventing them from supporting their economies of choice, bounty hunters hunt pirates, pirates hunt pirates, bounty hunters hunt bounty hunters, and Isinona hunts them all, in no flight assist mode..
Instead, the way it is now, either side has infinite war ships, which are completely untied to respective economies. Wars do stop by either press of a button on the console in Cambridge or through other laughable mechanic, like, in 72 hours the amount of combat bonds turned in are weighed against each other and the winner is chosen, unless X, Y or Z interferes and civil war gets "re-started", leaving interested parties absolutely clueless about how the war is actually developing.
It's a GAME and players need updates on their progress one way or another. People need to see the dynamics of economical inflows and war casualties and should be able to make educated predictions on what needs to be done, based on what they clearly see is going on.
Anyway, only once i took part in such conflict and have no intention of doing so again until all of it gets "standardised", not necessarily in the way i am proposing, but in any meaningful way. Until then, i am on the sidelines, playing other games.
1. Side A and B is pushed into civil war by players or natural events.
2. Side A has 500 war ships, side B has 400 war ships.
3. When one of the sides in the conflict has 50 ships left, the conflict is over and the new station owner is assigned or the old one gets to keep their main asset.
4. Players on either side get updates regularly, through the GalNet or directly on the battlefield about how the conflict unfolds and, hence, everyone is aware what needs to be done and in what timeframe.
5. "Stuff" gets delivered by players and NPC on either side of the conflict, which help supplement respective economies and "produce" Y amount of war ships above the regular daily faction ship-producing threshold. Hence, wars have the potential to be perpetual or finite.
6. Pirates hunt traders, preventing them from supporting their economies of choice, bounty hunters hunt pirates, pirates hunt pirates, bounty hunters hunt bounty hunters, and Isinona hunts them all, in no flight assist mode..
Instead, the way it is now, either side has infinite war ships, which are completely untied to respective economies. Wars do stop by either press of a button on the console in Cambridge or through other laughable mechanic, like, in 72 hours the amount of combat bonds turned in are weighed against each other and the winner is chosen, unless X, Y or Z interferes and civil war gets "re-started", leaving interested parties absolutely clueless about how the war is actually developing.
It's a GAME and players need updates on their progress one way or another. People need to see the dynamics of economical inflows and war casualties and should be able to make educated predictions on what needs to be done, based on what they clearly see is going on.
Anyway, only once i took part in such conflict and have no intention of doing so again until all of it gets "standardised", not necessarily in the way i am proposing, but in any meaningful way. Until then, i am on the sidelines, playing other games.
Yep.
You don't get messages for turning in combat bonds. And it seems random whether your rep stays the same, goes up, or goes down as a result.
No messages, except when we take combat missions, and then the message seems to be completely random as to what it helps and hurts, probably because the only side offering combat missions is neutral third partiers.
First off, you don't seem to understand the situation I've laid out - we're not talking about anything related to taking over systems and our side has no station owners. Additionally, you don't actually make money since the pay is pathetic and one slip up means a larger repair bill than your day in the warzone, and you don't get any rep for participating.
Neither side in the war has, to my knowledge, offered a single mission. The war zones seem utterly irrelevant to the result. That is the problem. It is impossible to run missions for the factions, and even if it weren't it is absurd that warzone combat would have absolutely zero influence on the outcome.
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Now this would be great, and actually involve background simulation!
Sad that it definitely doesn't work like that.
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And probably won't, given the current shape of the sandbox.
yes. my thoughts exactly. i would even take the laughable 3k per kill if i know if and how much my action did influence the conflict.
at the moment i get low money and no info about my actions. it's like drowning in a big sea of nothing.
well, one of the dev actually mentioned it should have an effect, i really wish they would just put everything into a single thread, a guide of some sort, just to give a general idea on how players can affect the game within the limitations.
needless to say, a nice bit of information, that helps put one of the pieces of the puzzle together. Would be nice to know how much influence per 3k, to get a average idea of how many kills a player should get to take it up 1%
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Note I have bolded the word should from Michael's Post. Seems like he's not sure if it's working as intended and with no way of us being able to view all the changes to influence, only the agregate score after a day from all players actions in a system, it's impossible for us to tell if it's working or whether there is a bug we should be reporting.
Wonder if the the Devs could add a debrief screen, same as when you complete a mission, to other actions such as turning in bounties and combat bonds, selling/buying goods and selling exploration data.
Maybe there's a bug where the influence is being applied to the wrong side. Either the ships in the Warzone are being attributed to the wrong side or because the station you turn the bonds in at belongs to your enemy it's applying the positive influence change to them.
ollobrains
Banned
we are fast learning from micheal brookes that he is very crytpic in his answers, wont answer most questions with a detailed response. its all very secretive, its driving players nuts as we cant eve nsee if theres bugs in something or not. Im sure its company policy to basically say nothing while saying something but they need to start being a little bit more detailed instead of leaving playes with a case of wheres wally