A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[goemon]

Main reason I disagree with this is just today a faction who owns:
- No planetary facilities
- No starports
- Is only present in one system
- Has only =~ 5% influence

... went into outbreak.

You might need to elaborate more on how you think Biowaste missions trigger outbreak. There's literally no way to interact with this faction other than by killing their ships, or running missions for them. If doing biowaste missions causes the faction you run them for to enter an outbreak, that seems a bit... obscure? (i.e shipping biowaste to <a different place> triggers an outbreak in <the system that no longer holds the biowaste>. It's fairly bizarre...)

i think, "trigger" is a bit to strong. i would say it like that: biowaste missions add to the outbreak bucket. mission effects are always apllied to the mission issuing system niw(which doesn't always makes sense).

an outbreak bucket gets filled over time, with multiplier between 0 and 1? for (hidden value) standard of living. war/civil war/civil unrest do lower standard of living. bucket is countered by medicine trading, and emptied half if any other state goes active (backed by dev quote).

how to test that? search for a minor faction in some backwater system without traffic, but a market. sell biowaste till they get into outbreak. hopefully you don't trigger boom. after outbreak has ended (and iutbreak bucket is empty) count the days till outbreak reoccurs without any traffic. after second outbreak has ended, trade biowaste. compare.

... sounds like a half-a-year project...

 

[SaliVader]

So I delivered a total of 1960 tons of biowaste to a 1400 population system. The controlling faction had no current state, no recovering state and no pending states. After the server tick... Nothing has changed. So I guess biowaste doesn't trigger outbreaks, based on this. I have another hypothesis, but it will require a bit more work.

 

[jimbeau1571]

Main reason I disagree with this is just today a faction who owns:
- No planetary facilities
- No starports
- Is only present in one system
- Has only =~ 5% influence

... went into outbreak.

You might need to elaborate more on how you think Biowaste missions trigger outbreak. There's literally no way to interact with this faction other than by killing their ships, or running missions for them. If doing biowaste missions causes the faction you run them for to enter an outbreak, that seems a bit... obscure? (i.e shipping biowaste to <a different place> triggers an outbreak in <the system that no longer holds the biowaste>. It's fairly bizarre...)

This. Too many times I've said about Factions going into famine and outbreak with no system traffic, no markets etc.

 

[Elementical]

Inactivity and a lack of interaction with factions could be one cause of famine and outbreak.

It's just an assumption based on observations of the locations of famines and outbreaks. Most occur on the edge of the bubble.

There's no way to prove this assumption though.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Inactivity and a lack of interaction with factions could be one cause of famine and outbreak.

It's just an assumption based on observations of the locations of famines and outbreaks. Most occur on the edge of the bubble.

There's no way to prove this assumption though.

I would expect systems like Mingfu, which can't have any activity to be prime candidates in this case. States there mostly "None".

 

[goemon]

So I delivered a total of 1960 tons of biowaste to a 1400 population system. The controlling faction had no current state, no recovering state and no pending states. After the server tick... Nothing has changed. So I guess biowaste doesn't trigger outbreaks, based on this. I have another hypothesis, but it will require a bit more work.

i don't think you can trigger it in one tick.

do trigger bust i needed 4 days delivering stolen hoods.

 

[SaliVader]

Inactivity and a lack of interaction with factions could be one cause of famine and outbreak.

It's just an assumption based on observations of the locations of famines and outbreaks. Most occur on the edge of the bubble.

There's no way to prove this assumption though.

It's probably one factor, but it doesn't explain the outbreak that happened at Sothis.

 

[SaliVader]

Oh yes, there's something I would like to add. Remember HIP 17782, a system where one of the clues for the Hunt was placed? Well, that system saw a spike of player activity and has been in outbreak since the 8th. I don't know if it is related, but I figured it was worth noting.

Since outbreaks are caused by diseases, is it possible that players can carry them and fill the bucket by docking to stations in outbreak?

 

[Jmanis]

i don't think you can trigger it in one tick.

do trigger bust i needed 4 days delivering stolen hoods.

While I was "bragging" about it to my groupmates, I never seem to have actually written it anywhere, but while taking the fight to another faction, I sold roughly 20m in stolen goods in one day to a station. I can't remember exactly right, and I will happily try it again, but I'm 99% sure they went bust pending the next day.

 

[Walt Kerman]

Oh yes, there's something I would like to add. Remember HIP 17782, a system where one of the clues for the Hunt was placed? Well, that system saw a spike of player activity and has been in outbreak since the 8th. I don't know if it is related, but I figured it was worth noting.

Since outbreaks are caused by diseases, is it possible that players can carry them and fill the bucket by docking to stations in outbreak?

It could be something must be sold from a station with disease to the second station.

 

[Sentenza]

i don't think you can trigger it in one tick.

do trigger bust i needed 4 days delivering stolen hoods.

Definitely, you should try that for a week at least.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

It could be something must be sold from a station with disease to the second station.

It would be interesting if it was the 7354th canister (or whatever) of animal meat that was contaminated and would cause an instant outbreak wherever it was delivered to.

 

[goemon]

It would be interesting if it was the 7354th canister (or whatever) of animal meat that was contaminated and would cause an instant outbreak wherever it was delivered to.

- somebody dumped data of a sale in this thread. while source price was in it, i don't remember source station

- how about if traffic report would play into it? lots of traffic -> multiplier to a constantly filling outbreak bucket/filling the bucket? in this case we should find outbreak more often in systems with high(er) traffic and factions with lowish influence (no state for long time)

 

[Vingtetun]

Main reason I disagree with this is just today a faction who owns:
- No planetary facilities
- No starports
- Is only present in one system
- Has only =~ 5% influence

... went into outbreak.

You might need to elaborate more on how you think Biowaste missions trigger outbreak. There's literally no way to interact with this faction other than by killing their ships, or running missions for them. If doing biowaste missions causes the faction you run them for to enter an outbreak, that seems a bit... obscure? (i.e shipping biowaste to <a different place> triggers an outbreak in <the system that no longer holds the biowaste>. It's fairly bizarre...)

Certainly, biowaste missions showed the line as increasing the chances of outbreak. As per the comment below, there is an outbreak bucket. It is countered by medical supply trade I seem to recall.

 

[Sentenza]

- somebody dumped data of a sale in this thread. while source price was in it, i don't remember source station

- how about if traffic report would play into it? lots of traffic -> multiplier to a constantly filling outbreak bucket/filling the bucket? in this case we should find outbreak more often in systems with high(er) traffic and factions with lowish influence (no state for long time)

Hmm, this is an interesting point. This is the record of a cargo:

{
"commodity": "algae",
"marked": 0,
"masq": null,
"mission": null,
"origin": 3223910912,
"owner": 285153,
"powerplayOrigin": null,
"qty": 248,
"value": 16120,
"xyz": {
"x": 50008.40625,
"y": 40934.09375,
"z": 24134.375
}
}

There is no differentiation of individual canisters, but there is source station and value (no item price, strangely). So triggering an outbreak fron the source could be done. We could also check if buying from a station in outbreak sets some of the flags.

Also the traffic report thing makes some sense. I am in a really high traffic area, and there are a lot of systems in famine and outbreak, far more than one would statistically expect.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

This could mean that quarantining an outbreak system would be a good idea. Or it would be if we cared about the population and not getting pharmaceutical isolators and high paying biowaste missions.

 

[Arkadi]

First, this guide is one of the best around. Thanks for creating and maintaining this. Definitly this thread is worth to be stickied.

I have only a small question to affirm, if I am right.

Let's take Robigo for an example. There are two factions: CDE Corporation witch is the controlling faction there and Robigo Cartel witch is the second faction there. There is only one station in the system and it is controlled by the leading CDE Corporation. Robiog Cartel has no stations and is not present in any other systems. Still Robigo Cartel would offer missions if my Rep was raised to cordial. But I see no way to do this.

How I see it there is absolutly no way to raise reputation with Robigo Cartel as it is. Every interaction in the system of Robigo only affects the leading faction CDE Corporation.

The only way that I see would be to damage CDE Corporations influence so far, that Robigo Cartel would be in the position to start a civil war for the control of the station, right?

This means the only possible way to do anything to be able gain Rep with Robigo Cartel anytime later is to shoot system security fo CDE Corp, to smuggle and to kill civilians belonging to CDE Corporation.

If there would be any other (maybe easyer) way to be able to raise my REP with Robigo Cartel I'd be very happy to learn to know how.

Cheers!

 

[Sentenza]

First, this guide is one of the best around. Thanks for creating and maintaining this. Definitly this thread is worth to be stickied.

I have only a small question to affirm, if I am right.

Let's take Robigo for an example. There are two factions: CDE Corporation witch is the controlling faction there and Robigo Cartel witch is the second faction there. There is only one station in the system and it is controlled by the leading CDE Corporation. Robiog Cartel has no stations and is not present in any other systems.

How I see it there is absolutly no way to raise reputation with Robigo Cartel as it is. Am I right? Every interaction in the system of Robigo only affects the leading faction CDE Corporation.

The only way that I see would be to damage CDE Corporations influence so far, that Robigo Cartel would be in the position to start a civil war for the control of the station, right?

This means the only possible way to do anything to be able gain Rep with Robigo Cartel anytime later is to shoot system security fo CDE Corp, to smuggle and to kill civilians belonging to CDE Corporation.

If there would be any other (maybe easyer) way to be able to raise my REP with Robigo Cartel I'd be very happy to learn to know how.

Cheers!

This is not correct. If you run missions for Cartel it will only affect Cartel and you rep with them, even if the station is controlled by CDE.

 

[Arkadi]

This is not correct. If you run missions for Cartel it will only affect Cartel and you rep with them, even if the station is controlled by CDE.

The problem is, I can't run missions for Robigo Cartel beocuse it seems the only missions they give need a cordial reputation. Since my starting rep with them is "normal" I have no way to raise my rep with them.

 

[Sentenza]

The problem is, I can't run missions for Robigo Cartel beocuse it seems the only missions they give need a cordial reputation. Since my starting rep with them is "normal" I have no way to raise my rep with them.

That happens with a lot of factions. You need patience. Keep looking - switching modes helps - until you get one mission. That one mission is usually enough to boost your rep to cordial (I say usually because sometimes I find factions where I'm in the middle of the neutral bar instead, for unknown reasons)