DEVs PLEASE Clarify your definitions and fix Expansion.

A-Train Amick

A-Train Amick
This message is out of complete and utter frustration as the Operations/Expansion Officer for my player group.

Our minor faction won a war recently and took control of our second system. In doing so we reached over 75% influence. BUT this not only triggered the desired Expansion, but a Boom economic state as well. And the Boom fired off first, SCREWING us out of the Expansion opportunity.

Ok, so Dev Update #106 provided a chart on affects player actions have on the Back Ground Sim. This was great. But now we are sitting in Boom (ostensibly for 28 days) and can't get out of it for multiple reasons.

First off, why is Boom bad if you have Expansion pending? If your faction is flush with cash and has the influence should not that be a no-brainer? LET US EXPAND! That would spread out some of the wealth.

But as it stands, our players would have to act AGAINST our own faction to try ("Try" being the operative word) to get us out of Boom to initiate the Expansion state.

WHY? This flies in the face of all logic!

Secondly, according to the chart, Piracy lowers Boom (-1) and raises Bust (+1). That's terrific to know, but what EXACTLY counts as an act of "Piracy" in the game? Interdicting a "Clean" ship? What about firing on that ship? Taking down their shields? Breaking their cargo hatch? Stealing their cargo? Selling stolen cargo at a Black Market in the system? What exactly?

Furthermore, if Boom state means the faction is flush with cash (Wealth), why wasn't that drained effectively by payout of Combat Bonds from the war we just fought?

Additionally, if we try an economic solution, we import MASS quantities of goods and sell them, inventories would rise, and wealth would be drained. As well, if we clear the markets of necessary items such as Food, Medicine, Legal Drugs, and Consumer Items, would that not lower the Quality of Living for residents of the system?

Could we PLEASE get some clarification as to what to do?

Mind you, I understand you don't want factions expanding every other day, so a 20-30 day cool off from Expansion seems reasonable. (Or the idea that your faction (depending on Wealth) may drop into Bust because of the spreading of assets, and you would need to get out of Bust to prepare for another Expansion makes sense).

Further, if a faction expands into a new system, their intentions come into question. If a faction just wants to expand, then their assets would be drained and would have to be rebuilt before being able to do anything else. However, should they desire to take over a station and/or the system, then that will take even more assets, and a Election, Civil War, or War state precludes an economic state, and is a further drain on resources. This would delay further Expansion efforts.

In summary:
1) Why is Boom bad for Expansion?
2) How do we get out of Boom so we can Expand?
3) What exactly counts as Piracy?
4) Why do we have to act against our own faction to get out of Boom and trigger Expansion?
5) Why not tie in Expansion to the Economic State so you need to be in Boom to have the assets to Expand?

Thanks a TON for all the great work and a response to these questions I know are out there.

Best from Texas, USA, Earth, Sol,
Adam A-Train Amick
Operations/Expansion Officer
Wolves of Jonai
 
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Lhynn

Lhynn
Completely agree with A-train. A cooldown is certainly necessary in order to create a balance in expansion between the different factions. But being wealthy and BECAUSE OF THAT unable to expand goes against all logic, even with regard to gameplay mechanics. War requires money, be it ingame or in real life. In history, apart from very rare occasions, conquerors have never expanded with empty pockets...

Now, if indeed the whole process worked the OTHER way round - you expand > it drains your resources > you need time to rebuild them (trading, bounty-hunting...) > get wealthy again > expand again > rinse & repeat -, it would be (a) much more logical, (b) much less frustrating, and (c) much more foreseeable. Factions (and notably their ops officers) would be able to know "exactly" (with quotation marks) what's their faction's status, and when they would be able to expand again, so that they could foster their members/fellow Cmdrs to concentrate their efforts in a definite direction. It would greatly enhance the faction's cohesion and teamplay, something that should be at the very heart of Elite but to date - and unfortunately - is not.

Also, as someone rightfully pointed out above, factions need to know beforehand WHAT system they are going to expand to. And this, at the very least; as a matter of fact, they should be able to CHOOSE which system they want to expand to. Expanding to a system which has no value to you for whatever reason (lack of resources, lack of stations or bad size of stations (if, say, there are only outposts and your only ship is a Large one), no interest points, system too widely spread, no mining areas etc.) is extremely frustrating - especially if it drains the faction's resources - and gives the feeling your efforts have been wasted with little purpose, which can easily demotivate people from participating further in the faction's ops. Once again, this is mere logic: when you attack a country or a region, it's always with a purpose (not talking here about moral right ofc), so why should it be different in the game and why should expansion decisions be left to the trolly RNG?

Background sim issues such as this can be considered as gamebreakers to some extent and therefore need to be addressed. Thank you for considering!
 
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Imarhil

I
A-Train Amick said:
In summary:
1) Why is Boom bad for Expansion?
2) How do we get out of Boom so we can Expand?
3) What exactly counts as Piracy?
4) Why do we have to act against our own faction to get out of Boom and trigger Expansion?
5) Why not tie in Expansion to the Economic State so you need to be in Boom to have the assets to Expand?

Thanks a TON for all the great work and a response to these questions I know are out there.
i
Click to expand...

While I wouldn't pretend to know much about the fine details of this game I must admit this does confuse me how a boom state is bad for the system and particularly in terms of expansion.

Having just joined the Wolves of Jonai I was drawn by the prospect of having a player created expansion. I agree that this should be controlled and that perhaps expansion would lead to bust due to recourse allocation or that other measures could be put into place enforced a cool down period.
 

t3ngu

t3ngu
Very valid points CMDR A-Train Amick.
I am also interested to find out. All this time I thought if I push the boom state further it would go to expansion, but apparently i was doing the wrong thing.
 

mmm

mmm
We really need some kind of interface ingame that gives us information about the state of the BGS.

Do we have to code everything on our own?
 

fuub

F
I think you are missing one thing.

If boom indeed helped expansion it would make sense. And we all know FD's game design can't make sense.
 

Jessuit

J
Well if they told us this. And/or let us actually join our Factions. Planning and expand how we see fit. That would give the players some sort of control. And giving players control just scares FD so does giving players support Like a form of guild structure. And players cannot have anything. Other than credits and ships.
 

Muetdhiver

Muetdhiver
First : we experienced a lot of BGS bugs with our group, leading to a lot of BGS play fatigue.

Booming state messing with expansion is a pain. I mean, booming is usefull to raise influence,
but it can last very long and impede expansion. Having to work against your own faction is really crap.

I think FD could really improve the whole player backed minor faction :

  • Allow player to really join the faction (faction tag on the ship when scaned). That would makes thing transparent.
  • Have a minor faction map mode, similar to powerplay but just to display the territory of one faction.
  • As in powerplay, you should have a menu where you can see what system has what level of influence, where there is war and so on.
  • I think players backing a minor should have some say about which system it should expand to. For example vote 1 of 3 choices picked by the BGS.
  • It would be nice if when getting in boom state, you could pick a choice between expansion, war and a mini-CG (to upgrade station, change economy, raise population, colonize and what not)
 
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Haleks

Haleks
All excellent ideas Muetdhiver (another fan of the neuromancer? ^^)!
These would make it so much easier for the player to find something to do and invest time into it.
 

Lhynn

Lhynn
Jex =TE= said:
You probably hit the limits of what the BGS can do or what wasn't thought about.
Click to expand...

Well, the BGS system (boom/bust/war etc.) is coded so you can't say it's not been thought about, the correct statement would be "it's not been properly thought". The BGS could of course be MUCH more comprehensive than it currently is, but simply moving some things to different locations and switching a couple of parameters would already be enough to at least restore (or should I say "instore"?) some balance to what already exists.

Jessuit said:
That would give the players some sort of control. And giving players control just scares FD so does giving players support Like a form of guild structure. And players cannot have anything.
Click to expand...

Well, FD has already found its own solution to limit players' control. Markets are a brilliant example of this: byung goods in one system and selling them to another repeatedly depletes the supply in one place and fills the stock in the other (which is logical), all of which has an influence in purchase & sell prices (logical as well). However, unlike most of the rest of the game's universe, markets are not persistent in the sense that they are reset every week. As a result, no matter what your actions on the market are, you can never break the balance the devs want it to have (or at least, you can't do it for long enough) because ultimately everything will go back to square 1.
Since Elite doesn't allow players to officially regroup in factions (the equivalent of guilds in other MMOs), which have no "legal" status in the game, it's already hard to push a faction towards success, not to mention the aforementionned limits of the BGS. In that respect, I don't think bringing in more transparency and allowing players to focus their efforts in a slightly more efficient way would dramatically break the game.
What's more, Frontier repeatedly seemed to encourage faction play, first with the introduction of Powerplay, then allowing the most popular factions to access an official Power status, so it would be at best illogical and counterproductive to create a system designed to thwart the efforts of a group of people to be part of the PP and at the same time officially encourage it... Not that such an attitude has never been observed in real life ofc, but still I have enough faith left in the devs not to do such a mistake ;)

Muetdhiver said:
First : we experienced a lot of BGS bugs with our group, leading to a lot of BGS play fatigue.

(...)

I think FD could really improve the whole player backed minor faction :

  • Allow player to really join the faction (faction tag on the ship when scaned). That would makes thing transparent.
  • Have a minor faction map mode, similar to powerplay but just to display the territory of one faction.
  • As in powerplay, you should have a menu where you can see what system has what level of influence, where there is war and so on.
  • I think players backing a minor should have some say about which system it should expand to. For example vote 1 of 3 choices picked by the BGS.
  • It would be nice if when getting in boom state, you could pick a choice between expansion, war and a mini-CG (to upgrade station, change economy, raise population, colonize and what not)
Click to expand...

Agreed with the first statement, the lack of transparency can easily kill the will to get involved, which makes the game even less lively.

As to the proposals, all of them are great without exception and you deserve my kudos for them. I'd love to see them in the game, it would be a great improvement and a big step into the right direction.
 
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