Anyone who has been using these 1t trading methods many times over knows they just work, maybe a show of hands from all those who can confirm it works? And therefore needs addressing?
Last edited:
ED Background Simulation - Large Faction Influence Swing Mechanics
- Thread starter anonymousanarchist123
- Start date
dynamicbob
Banned
+1 here, as far as needing addressing, how do we know given frontiers recent silence that it isnt actually working as Fdev intended it, a transaction rather than tonnage mechanism where trade feeds into influence values and perhaps otehr BGS mechanics = im currently expanding the testing to raising wealth>boom more quickly by doing single trading tonnage transactions
Per transaction = single commander can make a difference = fun
Per transaction abuse = Singe commander is a berk
Quantity / huge credits / volume = I gotta cutter yay. Cant be stopped . Perhaps more realistic.
But that's just my jaded thinking. I like the per transaction thing so a player ins a sidewinder can make a difference from day one. People will find ways to abuse all systems even the bulk ones that seem sensible.
Anyways mechanics aside, I remember finding a small system and changing its gov by chance becuase I wanted to do stuff and that was fun. That experience would have been taken away if Id had to wait until I had mega credits and a big ship. My mate plays infrequently and adpotted a small faction, he does not care about .0dadasdablah% influecne caps. He's really enjoied beig their hero and doing stuff to protect them from pirates and that wouldnt have been possible for him if he needed more than his viper to make a difference, Rambling sorry. I like the BGS and the way it works. No its not perfect but its darn good.
Last edited:
dynamicbob
Banned
Of course there is the tedium of single transaction ( reduces youre profit time) actually its a big time sink so unless youre a glutton for grinding and reptitious gameplay it could get boring quickly. End of the day goes to show Frontier just need to rework and improve the BGS anyway to make it more flexible perhaps a mix of tonnes / transaction and a wider spread of activity - its all relative at the end of the day.
So i've been folowing this thread for a while now and created a forum acount just to voice my opinion on this matter
I have been aware of this issue since 2.0, I Reported this issue severel times to frontier suport, always got a "automated answer" like "We are aware of it .....blabla"
Nothing has been done to solve it so i used it ocasionaly for my advantage as have many others.
Now to all the skeptics and nay sayers, It is NOT a bug as some sugest, it is poor game design, and there is no point in trying to figure out EXACT numbers or use "scientific methods".
FD know how the BGS works better than any of us and they know it IS an issue, it just is not a priority to them.
Fact is that all the methods mentioned by the OP do Work! And that is a BIG problem for anybody who cares about their ingame faction and wants to play the BGS.
So if any of you want frontier to fix this i sugest to keep this thread going, create havok in the galaxy and let the devs know you care about the BGS.
I have been aware of this issue since 2.0, I Reported this issue severel times to frontier suport, always got a "automated answer" like "We are aware of it .....blabla"
Nothing has been done to solve it so i used it ocasionaly for my advantage as have many others.
Now to all the skeptics and nay sayers, It is NOT a bug as some sugest, it is poor game design, and there is no point in trying to figure out EXACT numbers or use "scientific methods".
FD know how the BGS works better than any of us and they know it IS an issue, it just is not a priority to them.
Fact is that all the methods mentioned by the OP do Work! And that is a BIG problem for anybody who cares about their ingame faction and wants to play the BGS.
So if any of you want frontier to fix this i sugest to keep this thread going, create havok in the galaxy and let the devs know you care about the BGS.
That's the spirit!
Last edited:
dynamicbob
Banned
Unfornatley until it starts to affect large parts of the galaxy Fdev wont pay attention to it, now do we do the thing where we only target minor factions on the outer rim and cause region wide shifts, do we target key locations like CGs to tank / boost influence
Do we get creative and come along the border regions to create more superpower friction - i mean as a tool it can be used both ways, it can be used for good and or bad. But something this unbalanced and powerful does need to be looked at.
Couldnt agree more.
When a thread says there's a bug exploit and the says heres this hack / macro you just know its a bit wonky and not really in the spirit of things. Again sorry but if you use x automated method to blah well... you know where its kind of headed. It kinda ends at people testing or hunting for a silver bullet but not really talking about having fun and an enjoyable game. The elves are out and they are tinkering and playing with gremlins. The players are blazing a trail. See you at the end of the day. Keeping it virtual o7
dynamicbob
Banned
To make use of this legally u cant use a macro u litterally have to sit there and single click transaction - at the moment id say its working as programmed, an exploit probably not, poor game design yes that much can be certain. But again such a systemm information and how to play it is out, so perhaps it might be useful to spread the word and cause some galactic choas ( this game has gotten stale recently anyway) it has to be as mentioned by others a quick way to get frontier to actually fix it.
Are there any player factions you dislike?
The more ppl complain and are aware of this the better imo.
dynamicbob
Banned
Are there any player factions you dislike?
The more ppl complain and are aware of this the better imo.
Im going to be very succicint and help a few player factions i like.
Negative trading im more likley to use against strategic npc factions tied in with previous galnet articles from the last 2 years. But im not at that point yet.
Agreed definitely NOT a clean test by any stretch, however I have been monitoring the system in question for awhile now and just to echo the sentiment of Henry and others... the actions of negative influence through 1t trading do appear to be the most likely reason for a drop this precipitous with just 3 Cutter loads of work.
Since there are others working clean tests I put forward the above action and information to simply back that the negative influence does seem to be a huge hole and an exploit that can be quite disastrous to any controlling factions.
Last edited:
I'm afraid the BGS thread is leaking into here. The BGS has a lot of complexity and is tweaked intermittently, often without notification. This has spawned many misconceptions and theories since launch - many of them wildly incorrect, based on a superficial logic and a measure of "this is how it should work" rather than testing. Evidence from testing is needed by the community to figure out whats changed, whats a bug and whats intended.
From the results provided here so far, this effect looks real and can't be intended behaviour from the BGS. I perhaps should have said "other contributory causes" in my post above as I would like to define the scale of the exploit.
That said its not the worst influence nuke that has been in the game. At least 1T trading can be countered by the same action - its horrible but at least has some balance.
- - - Updated - - -
FD are notoriously tight lipped about the BGS, whats intended and what changes they make! And burning the place down, ruining the BGS for people and player groups, would not be my preferred way of getting a fun working BGS. Its more likely to drive people out of the game and make it a more niche aspect and so get less attention from the developers.
From the results provided here so far, this effect looks real and can't be intended behaviour from the BGS. I perhaps should have said "other contributory causes" in my post above as I would like to define the scale of the exploit.
That said its not the worst influence nuke that has been in the game. At least 1T trading can be countered by the same action - its horrible but at least has some balance.
- - - Updated - - -
FD are notoriously tight lipped about the BGS, whats intended and what changes they make! And burning the place down, ruining the BGS for people and player groups, would not be my preferred way of getting a fun working BGS. Its more likely to drive people out of the game and make it a more niche aspect and so get less attention from the developers.
Will confirm that +profit/+influence unit trading works. I haven't seen any result from attempts at -profit/-influence unit trading, but will agree I'd need to test more rigorously.
I haven't used a black market for much of anything in ages so no data there - they're simply not available in places that would be useful to me in my BGS work, by and large.
Edit: Here I'll just fly out to somewhere with no traffic and do a -profit/-influence test there. Will report result tomorrow.
I will note that this isn't much of a "nuke" in the sense of pre-influence-cap nukes. Never - not once - have I seen unit trading of either sort beat the cap (i.e. that might be reached more slowly by other means) and it's the cap that is there to prevent any action from becoming a "nuke". E.g. go murder 25 ships (of your target faction) and you'll see the same result as any amount of -profit/-influence unit-trading.
Last edited:
My efforts last night just started an election pending in a previously stable system that had 200 ships listed in the traffic report. Considering nothing had moved since I was last here three weeks ago, I'm convinced that there is indeed something wrong.
dynamicbob
Banned
How many tonnes individually did u sell ? That said if Fdev dont fix it anytime soon it will be used to trigger more regular states and the like
Fdev talk about an imperial / federation war, both sides could use this to create much more friction on the border systems ..... perhaps triggering something from frontier. If it works as i think it does, 1 trade of 100 tonnes would be 1 point of trade. 100x 1 tonne would be 100 points of influence. Apart from the time to sell each package individually it would render missions and other factors perhaps less effective, we have needed a fix and rebalancing and expansions of the background simulation for a long time
Im actually going to call if we get enough support it is working as predicted and frontier just remain silent that over xmas we stir the universe right up for the benefit of the game it might just be enough to get frontiers attention on things - sure it could be used to max out player factions, or decimate player factions, or to create vast geopolitical upheavals with minor factions, the AEDC alliance spread initative could benefit from this. I dunno ill wait to others poke it a bit more but if the system hasnt moved in a while and an election is pending then thats something new so it could be useful
I only managed to do one 80 ton Asp load of narcotics with the 1-ton method before I decided I couldn't do it any more and stay sane. So I switched to my Type-9 and smuggled 3 more loads of narcotics with just trading the full load to the blackmarket.
dynamicbob
Banned
I have been getting bored in the last hour or so so ive switched to 10% of total load so a 160 tonnne python is 10x16 tonne transactions and the same at the other end. Its still a 10x factor over normal but wont drive me batty, less effective but should still have some effect. I can adjust as boredom factors allow.
It doesn't work quite that way, from all our experience. Like with many other things, there is a significant diminishing return beyond a certain point. E.g. a mere 200 tons unit sold in a super low population can push around 9% - even 2000 tons won't push more than 12% or so. Our guys found diminishing returns in higher pops as you passed ~1200 tons, with essentially zero further impact after about 2100 tons (all the above applying to one CMDR - much is altered by player numbers).
This is true of other aspects as well. Go do 3 missions in your very-low-pop system of choice and observe the average effect per mission. Then do 4 and observe - the diminishing return will be strikingly apparent from my testing. Some aspects are more easily tested or more apparent than others, but I think it's fair to guess all activities have such diminishing returns until you hit the influence cap for one faction in a given population.
Last edited:
The 1t trading is boring as hell. It shouldn't work this way. Plus it puts load on the transaction servers and clutters up the queues.
The negative selling i am not sure about whether it works, but this should go as well.
Imho people should be rewarded to play the game as it is intended. When there are many people doing things that smell fishy, something is wrong.
This includes, bit is not limited to
- FOTM cash grabbing schemes (nerf em an öd balance income)
- mission board logoff switching (cant really play the game without it. And no, passenger missions dont count). Just do a cap of missions per type and let us reload.
- one click trading
- one bounty hunting
- influence effects of selling to black markets. This can be gamed so easily that there is no reason to have it work better
I have no problem with there being FOTM ways to gain influence. But currently the mechanical and exploit-like aspect gets a bit out of hand.
The negative selling i am not sure about whether it works, but this should go as well.
Imho people should be rewarded to play the game as it is intended. When there are many people doing things that smell fishy, something is wrong.
This includes, bit is not limited to
- FOTM cash grabbing schemes (nerf em an öd balance income)
- mission board logoff switching (cant really play the game without it. And no, passenger missions dont count). Just do a cap of missions per type and let us reload.
- one click trading
- one bounty hunting
- influence effects of selling to black markets. This can be gamed so easily that there is no reason to have it work better
I have no problem with there being FOTM ways to gain influence. But currently the mechanical and exploit-like aspect gets a bit out of hand.