A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[Belthize]

Edit: Given the recent discussion about 1t transactions, a transaction pot may just be the correct line of thinking.

I think this is exactly correct. When I was testing the 1t transactions not only was I able to generate 14% influence swings with little effort I ended the boom for that faction in about 4 days doing about 400 transactions one ton at time. It took 4 days because that was my test/tick cycle. If I wanted to I could have done it in an hour or so. I'm not 100% sure on the number of days and number of transactions since I was focusing on influence but those are close.

Whether it was fixed/changed with the 1t faction change is unknown but I think I had pretty good evidence that it was transaction based, it might be small number statistics though.

edit: by transaction based I mean the boom takes N transactions, selling 128 tons of X at 50cr profit is one transaction, selling 64 tons of X at 16K profit (e.g. mined painite) is one transaction. Selling 128tons of X at 100 cr profit one ton at a time is 128 transactions.

I absolutely hate the image of walking into a store, grabbing 50 potatoes and forcing the cashier to ring them up one at a time because it helps the store become more popular. It's counter intuitive and annoying.

EDIT2: I love the BGS, to me it's one of the cooler things in the game (though there are many other non-BGS things that I like nearly as much). By hate I mean that I strongly dislike that image and, at least until recently, that implementation but it doesn't change my view of the BGS. One the whole I think it's great.

 

[jimbeau1571]

I absolutely hate the image of walking into a store, grabbing 50 potatoes and forcing the cashier to ring them up one at a time because it helps the store become more popular. It's counter intuitive and annoying.

I hate the idea that this is working on a counter and nothing more complex than that. It gives the perception that although the front end looks fantastic and in-depth, the back end is simplistic and one-dimensional and nothing like what so many of us have imagined it was.
We have all spent so much time looking for the deeper mechanics, when it would appear to be revealing itself as something very very simple.

 

[Abil Midena]

I think this is exactly correct. When I was testing the 1t transactions not only was I able to generate 14% influence swings with little effort I ended the boom for that faction in about 4 days doing about 400 transactions one ton at time. It took 4 days because that was my test/tick cycle. If I wanted to I could have done it in an hour or so. I'm not 100% sure on the number of days and number of transactions since I was focusing on influence but those are close.

Whether it was fixed/changed with the 1t faction change is unknown but I think I had pretty good evidence that it was transaction based, it might be small number statistics though.

edit: by transaction based I mean the boom takes N transactions, selling 128 tons of X at 50cr profit is one transaction, selling 64 tons of X at 16K profit (e.g. mined painite) is one transaction. Selling 128tons of X at 100 cr profit one ton at a time is 128 transactions.

I absolutely hate the image of walking into a store, grabbing 50 potatoes and forcing the cashier to ring them up one at a time because it helps the store become more popular. It's counter intuitive and annoying.

Well, FWIW, in a 500K pop system, I traded 1450t in two trades, for a loss. No effect on the faction's inf. While I find it silly that trade is so useless as an inf changer given how trade is used as a tool between nations IRL, I'm not a game designer and don't know the best way to implement it in ED.

What I find annoying is when so few missions are given out for your faction, you start looking of additional ways to impact inf. IMO, they need to come up with a balanced way to do 'other stuff' to impact inf. Right now, it seems it's missions or nothing.

 

[goemon]

whiff of nr of transactions/value

when i was looking at a bountie hunters report today, it strucked me that there is both listed: number of bounties claimed/total value of bounties claimed.

do number of (trans-)actions counts for state of a minor factions (and therefore bgs). value of (trans-)actions couts for reputation (of a single cmdr; this is well tested)?

for exampel: 5 bounties claims, value 1,2 mio. for states like counter-lockdown, and in terms of influence (with sideeffects like giving fines, ship kills, profit at station...) only the number of bounties (5) counts, while you might get friendly because of that high "profit" from bounties.

this would be very simplistic, but after the 1T-trade-story i think it might work like that. this would mean, if you go bounty hunting to raise your factions influence, it would be more about shooting a lot of small ships than going for the big fishes.

needs testing, but there are some hints (the 1T-trade, exploration data, ...).

___

I think you may misunderstand what I was meaning by 'transaction pot'.
The pot size is 50,000,000 for example.
You buy 200t at 2,000,000. Pot now 48,000,000
You go and sell that elsewhere, then return with another 200t of stuff, 1 good or 20t different goods, makes no odds. You sell that stuff at 4,000,000.
If a profit pot, the pot now stands at 52,000,000. If a transaction pot, it now stands at 44,000,000.

Now that is 2 different ball parks entirely!

i looked to it from a different angle (which is probably wrong) - market value of a good. stash is 5 000 000. you buy goods for 1 mio. stash is 4 000 000. you bring goods which you sell for 2 000 000. stash is 2 000 000.

probably wrong, but this is how i thought about stash/pot/....

 

[Patau82]

i'm at the very moment setting up a BGS tracking google form (which i will share here as a template, if some player/groups want to use it).

am i right in the assumption, that you can have only 1 revovering state, and only 2 pending states per minor faction per system (at least shown?)?

Had a quick look back at our data yesterday and it seems we've had multiple recovering states, it happen a few times when bust or civil unrest only lasted 1 day

 

[jimbeau1571]

for exampel: 5 bounties claims, value 1,2 mio. for states like counter-lockdown, and in terms of influence (with sideeffects like giving fines, ship kills, profit at station...) only the number of bounties (5) counts, while you might get friendly because of that high "profit" from bounties.

this would be very simplistic, but after the 1T-trade-story i think it might work like that. this would mean, if you go bounty hunting to raise your factions influence, it would be more about shooting a lot of small ships than going for the big fishes.

needs testing, but there are some hints (the 1T-trade, exploration data, ...(my Addition: Boom pot is transaction based and not value based).

I'm thinking that more we question, the more we are finding answers in simple counters to run the BGS, and nothing more complex, and the above is a further example of a possible.

 

[TinyBigJacko]

I hate the idea that this is working on a counter and nothing more complex than that. It gives the perception that although the front end looks fantastic and in-depth, the back end is simplistic and one-dimensional and nothing like what so many of us have imagined it was.
We have all spent so much time looking for the deeper mechanics, when it would appear to be revealing itself as something very very simple.

I think we all hate it - and I believe FDev knew we would hate it, which is why they've pretty much ignored discussions about it until it reached the point (finally) where everyone knows, and is talking about it. I did try and make this point in a roundabout way back in January (see https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=221826&page=27&p=3491686&viewfull=1#post3491686 ) and in a private message to Michael Brookes (that was never answered).

I believe that the BGS has attracted far more interest than ever FDev expected (which is a good thing, a worthy thing, imho, but is now the thing that's biting). I believe that the BGS's original intention was really just to 'tickle the numbers' based at least partially on some dipstick/litmus test measurement of player activity, and had to be simple enough to be certain that it could run on the ginormous banks of database servers without stalling, running for more than 24 hours and becoming bogged down, catching up with themselves and multi-instancing, etc, etc. They kept it simple, and we thought it was smarter. It's a great credit to the rest of the smoke-and-mirrors that we did so, and I'm not blaming FDev or angry one iota... but I do think it is maybe time for them to come clean, at least a little bit. And they could do that with as much couching of terms in 'Lore' or 'Elite Storyline' as they liked... but so long as people are made aware of the key points (or at least the things to do to find out for oneself what the key points are).

It's one thing to expect someone to master the art of chess - it's another thing entirely to expect them to work out the rules without even the slightest hint of what they are. And at least with chess, you know there is only one other player playing against you and messing with the board... no invisible transatlantic/european/australian server instances, no solo/private/open parallel universes all happening simultaneously.

Time for us to at least be told 'the rules of the game' to a slightly better degree. I'm not asking for everything on a plate, for sure. Definitely don't even want that! But I think it would be prudent for us to at least get some better pointers on the bits where we are evidently barking up totally the wrong trees, or chasing shadows and looking for rainbows to go gold-pot hunting with. That's not really gameplay... that just busy-work. A waste of time and effort, and a total, ball-crushing disappointment when one finds out that actually, one has been 'had'.

Again, I make the point that FDev very likely did not set out deliberately to pull the wool over our eyes. They gave us smoke and mirrors, which in games design terms is sometimes all that is necessary, and the best approach where performance is concerned. We simply saw smoke, and deduced there was fire... and if there was fire, there was probably a fireplace, and where there were fireplaces, there was probably a village... and so on. We're equally to blame.

But it is time for a little less mirror, a little less illusion and shadow-chasing, and a bit more predictability. Not a total giveaway, but just enough to give us a chance of making the RIGHT deductions from our observations, and not wasting our darned lives away chasing pointless rainbows.

 

[jimbeau1571]

Absolutely TinyBigJacko.

And the most recent revealing, smoke clearing subject lately for me was the 1t issue. I'm almost thinking it was like a BGS 'Eureka' moment. Suddenly lots of other stuff has started to add up for me.
As FDev didn't exactly want to acknowledge what was discovered, they didn't exactly deny it either and a few days later 'tweaked' it.

I sincerely hope that as they have read this whole thread as it has unfolded, and the many 'theories', advanced science and mathematical equations banded about; rants of frustration and spleens vented that they have not been sat giving it 'come and read this latest theory on Expansion, apparently it's something to do with the 3rd law of Whojamawhatsitcalled'. I wouldn't blame them, but its one thing I would hate to know.

Still, not to be discouraged, there are wars to be fought, elections to be won and expansions to be had. And a certain system I want to get to, its just a matter off making the mechanics work for me to get there. Get there I will, it just a matter of when!

 

[Jmanis]

TinyBigJacko, jimbeau1571, nice posts.

I think it was one of you, or possibly someone else, who basically said it's more seeming like the background sim was designed to generate a universe of "shifting sands"; factions rising and falling from power over the course of time, without strictly being driven by player involvement. So if the intention was always for the minor factions to provide "background" to whatever player activities went on and never for a "territory capture" game, the 1t trading makes sense. Which would also explain why Powerplay was never integrated to the BGS; it's mechanics are for the generation of a dynamic universe, not for competitive inter-player interaction.

That said, if that were the case, I find it hard to believe that could've been the line of thought. Back in Frontier, I played to rank up with the Empire. I loved doing the spying/bombing/assassination missions in Federal territory, but the one thing I longed for (and knew I'd never see in that game) was the ability to conquer systems for the Empire. E now provides that.

PS: While I'm at it, if another system my faction owns goes into an Expansion state, will that block the war state in a system I'm trying to conquer?

 

[jimbeau1571]

PS: While I'm at it, if another system my faction owns goes into an Expansion state, will that block the war state in a system I'm trying to conquer?

If it is the active state then I would say yes. If Expansion is in its Pending state, due to the 5 day countdown, War or Boom can 'jump the queue' as there pending countdown is shorter.
I have had the expansion period finish twice after the minimum period of 3 days (another case of 'counter based' mechanics as I believe it is the ticks that are counted eg the first appearance of a state on the tick is no.1 (Monday), so on 2 further ticks (Wednesday) later the state changed, (Mon-Tues-Wed, 3 days but technically is actually 48hrs and not 72!))by having a War state pending.

The beauty is, you can actually use this to your advantage if you can manage it well. Especially after the first expansion. The second system becomes a 'Boom' ender, by forcing it into War when needed. I'll try to explain.

System A is above 75% and expands. System B enters at 10%.
System A is pushed a bit further to the 80% level, and enters into pend Boom.
Boom becomes active, System B is pushed to enter W/CW/Election. By this time System A has pending Expansion again.
System B enters W/CW/Elec, System A comes out of Boom as a consequence. Win the War/CW/Election ... and System A's expansion countdown starts. Go into the void at this point, and cease all activity in your systems to allow the countdown to go through. Gather some exploration data for later.
System A expands to System C. Now you have a choice. Do you leave System A alone and let the influence lvl fall below the 75%, and work in System B or C. This will most likely depend on what your wanting to achieve, how many factions are in those systems to have wars with etc. (Myself, I have a specific system I want to get to, so my System A is now left alone and below 75%. I don't want further expansion from there.)
So lets say you want to expand from B, you push hard on B, probably enter Boom in the process and eventually get to 75%.
Back to System C push it to War and just keep it rolling.

Obviously that is a rather simplistic model, but the basic premise works.

 

[TheoZ]

Guys another question for the BGS masters....I am not sure if it has been answered before....


what helps most to increase the influence of a minor faction? Delivering goods in high demand and buying goods in high supply?

or getting the most profit? (ie selling goods with > profit, buying goods that will give you highest profit once delivered to the other system)

thanks for your response!

 

[goemon]

Guys another question for the BGS masters....I am not sure if it has been answered before....


what helps most to increase the influence of a minor faction? Delivering goods in high demand and buying goods in high supply?

or getting the most profit? (ie selling goods with > profit, buying goods that will give you highest profit once delivered to the other system)

thanks for your response!

the 1-t-influence-bug-fix again makes any clear answer difficult atm.

while reputation in clearly linked to profit, my idea has been, that it is connected to value (market price, not profit) and demand. other strong hints may be, that it is all about transactions of high demand/high supply goods.

you can run tests

 

[jimbeau1571]

Guys another question for the BGS masters....I am not sure if it has been answered before....


what helps most to increase the influence of a minor faction? Delivering goods in high demand and buying goods in high supply?

or getting the most profit? (ie selling goods with > profit, buying goods that will give you highest profit once delivered to the other system)

thanks for your response!

In my experience, and especially since the '1t a time' issue was raised and subsequently 'fixed' as mentioned, I now believe it is all transaction based.
Profits, Supply and Demand I think are purely Cmdr based, it has no relation to the market for the station and the economy of the system. If a station has a high demand for Platinum, and a high supply of Fruit&Veg, then me selling 50t of Platinum is going to take one hell of a lot of Fruit&Veg buying from that market to just break even. But if it is just counting tons bought and sold, it gives the perception of a fluid and active market.
Another thing, that has been mentioned before in this thread, if you leave a market alone for a few days, it returns to a default (supply and demand values). In my system, it supplies Personnal Weapons. A nearby system has a demand for them. Great, buy and sell route. It only supplies 27 though at best, and as soon as that is empty if i leave it alone for 3 days it will have built back up to 27. If i leave it alone another 3 days, it remains at still be at 27.

 

[jimbeau1571]

15% difference to win a War.
Not sure how I win this one.
Fac A (my faction) 11.2%
Fac B 3%

 

[CMDR Poet Starwind]

I had a system flip ownership without an election, or any type of war. I didn't think it was possible. The faction in control simply fell into the single digit percentile and after a week or two, boom, the faction with the highest influence had the control station. What the french, toast? Not that I mind, because the faction now in control is the one I was supporting anyway.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Just a quick Update on the topic : Outfitting vs. Boom State

After entering a Boom, I saw alot of otherwise permanently missing Equipment immediately come back to the Outfitting.
Affects pretty much everything and is a very distinct temporary Upgrade.

Items I'm always missing in my Home Base : Docking Computer, tons of Smaller/Medium Fuel Scoops, Burst Laser variants or a C2 Railgun.
Now as we're in a Boom : almost everything I typically would have to fly to other distant Systems for is readily available in Outfitting.

Pretty much confirms my previous findings.
It also appears that the invisible "absolute state and intensity" of the Boom state is dynamically applied to the boosted Outfitting.
Thus, it's possible to actually and repeatedly see stuff "disappear" and "come back" again, plain depending on how precisely the Boom state is doing.
In the past, I used a "deteriorating again" Boom Outfitting as a very coarse benchmark that the Boom state was bound to expire.

Really appears that the "increased Wealth" of a System caused by a Boom state not only affects Trade profits - but also has a distinct effect on the available Equipment.

Update :
Checking on the 2nd Station we own (that typically has absolutely miserable Outfitting, like only a Shock Mine Launcher as the only Weapon), I noticed that one didn't change one bit.

Conclusion :
If a Faction is present in multiple Systems, it would appear only the System (or possibly only the very specific Station/Outpost, can't verify that) that triggered the Boom state for the entire Faction is affected by the improved Outfitting.

 

[TheoZ]

Just a quick Update on the topic : Outfitting vs. Boom State

After entering a Boom, I saw alot of otherwise permanently missing Equipment immediately come back to the Outfitting.
Affects pretty much everything and is a very distinct temporary Upgrade.

Items I'm always missing in my Home Base : Docking Computer, tons of Smaller/Medium Fuel Scoops, 3A/5A Collector Limpet controllers, Burst Laser variants or a C2 Railgun.
Now as we're in a Boom : almost everything I typically would have to fly to other distant Systems for is readily available in Outfitting.

Pretty much confirms my previous findings.
It also appears that the invisible "absolute state and intensity" of the Boom state is dynamically applied to the boosted Outfitting.
Thus, it's possible to actually and repeatedly see stuff "disappear" and "come back" again, plain depending on how precisely the Boom state is doing.
In the past, I used a "deteriorating again" Boom Outfitting as a very coarse benchmark that the Boom state was bound to expire.

Really appears that the "increased Wealth" of a System caused by a Boom state not only affects Trade profits - but also has a distinct effect on the available Equipment.

Update :
Checking on the 2nd Station we own (that typically has absolutely miserable Outfitting, like only a Shock Mine Launcher as the only Weapon), I noticed that one didn't change one bit.

Conclusion :
If a Faction is present in multiple Systems, it would appear only the System (or possibly only the very specific Station/Outpost, can't verify that) that triggered the Boom state for the entire Faction is affected by the improved Outfitting.

I can also verify for you that the highest the influence a minor faction gets, the better and more variety of outfitting it gets to the controlled stations

 

[Ben Ryder]

Hi someone mentioned on another thread that there is an automatic threshold that starts civil wars.

Even if your favored factions overshoots the controlling factions influence, it is possible to trigger a civil war by pushing your favored faction to 60% or 70%.

Can someone confirm that this is true and which figure is correct 60% or 70%?

Thanks

 

[DaveC]

Can someone confirm that this is true and which figure is correct 60% or 70%?

It was 70% for a long time, more recent reports suggest it is now 60%. I don't think we've had a system we've captured through that route for quite a while though, so I can't confirm from personal experience. But we are now assuming 60% to be the war for control trigger.

 

[Ben Ryder]

Thank you

So basically if you overshoot the equalization band (equal or 5% over) you can just keep pushing until you hit 60%?