BGS Trade with a negative profit

[Nirgam]

Dear colleagues!

You may be aware of this BGS feature. With it, you can single-handedly reduce the impact of any faction that owns the asset with the market.
To do this, you need to arrive at the station with the market and buy and immediately sell the goods. The more money you lose on these transactions, the stronger fall the influence of faction that owns the station.

After some correspondence with the support of the frontier, they told me that at present it is not against the rules and it can be used freely.
So absolutely any player can beat any group of the BGS players into a terrible position, within a short period of time, ruin their plans and devaluing many months of efforts. In my opinion it makes cooperation of players in the BGS completely meaningless. I do not know what the developers were thinking when they've linked rise or fall of faction's influence to player's profit, but I'm absolutely sure that such a huge hole should not exist.

Please speak out what you think about this and your options for solving it.
Perhaps the developers will pay attention to it and will close this hole.

Thanks.

---

There is one possible solution I can think of, which may not be technically possible, but it seems to me as the most logical.

Spoiler

It seems to me that the faction shouldn't care about the player's earnings. It is important that players satisfy the needs of the station. If a player brings a commodity which is very necessary to the station, the station will gladly buy this product. But it should not matter that the player has lost money because of this. Also station should not buy a product for which there is no demand. I think if demand equales zero, the station should not have to pay for such goods. The player can give away his goods on the market, but the station didn't pay for that and and it will not affect it.

Factions important that its products were sold elsewhere. The purchased goods always must be traded, and then and only then it affects the faction that it has produced. Otherwise, the player will buy a product and then throw it. Maybe here the developers can bind the influence to profit. The faction that produces goods derives its influence only if the product was sold with a profit to the player. Then it will make the BGS players to be looking for a profitable route for pumping his faction. And not throw out everything around the station.
However, one must be careful in order not to get the same exploit, but with a positive effect.

 

[Misaniovent]

Not a BGS expert by any means, but this mechanic doesn't make sense and the imbalance it creates is bad for the game. I think the solution offered seems logical — the station simply should not care about player profit. Demand should control the impact of a trade. If a supply glut is created by sales to a station, then it would make sense for the controlling faction to suffer some harm, but this kind of impact should not be easily possible from one player, and one-ton trading shouldn't have any impact.

The one-ton trading mechanic is part of a bigger issue. It's designed to create a balance between the influencing power of different players with different assets, but it begs to be misused.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

There are lots of things that don't make any sense with how the BGS is affected by player actions.

Anarchy factions get it pretty bad. They always have a blackmarket, yet anything that is sold in their blackmarket hurts the influence of the faction that owns it. Anarchy shouldn't care about whether something was stolen. If you get your goods stolen, it's your problem not theirs.
Also, murder in an anarchy system pushes them into lockdown. If they were concerned about murder, they would make it illegal.

FD need to put some serious effort into improving the bugs and exploits in the BGS. They currently claim that it was never intended to be played. But the reality is that more people play the BGS than play powerplay. Also everything we do in the game affects the BGS, so we are all playing the BGS even those players who don't know they are doing it.

 

[Jane Turner]

The logic makes no sense either, if I buy, then sell at a loss, the owners of the market are converting my credits into their own, whilst maintaining stock levels and should actually gain from the experience

 

[lokvette]

I play the BSG pretty much day in and day at the moment, and am by no means that good at it, I'm a lone wolf on the edge of the bubble trying to make the game a wee bit more interesting for myself.

Every time I read a thread on just how fudged it really is a bit of me wonders why the hell am I still bothering if it wasn't for the arrival of my brother who is looking at getting the game soon I think I would pack my backs and head off to beagle point for all the good I seem to be doing.

Why FD why is the BGS so borked when its a main stay of the game and everyone who plays it touch's it somehow the mind boggles...not that we will ever get an answer, maybe I should get around to watching the last live stream maybe I wont feel so bad about doing what I'm doing.

Oh hum onwards and upwards I'll keep on chugging as I still like flying my ship etc but you know another nail im my ED coffin..its not closed yet but its getting closer.

 

[Adept Geraden]

I suspect this exploit is what was referred to in the recent Dav Stott Q&A when they said people using long running macros could expect to be contacted.
So, doing it manually is fine. Automating it with a macro is not fine.

 

[askavir]

This is indeed quite odd.

If you're buying stuff and immediately selling at a loss, you're basically donating money to the station market. How can they lose?

 

[Quineloe]

I suspect this exploit is what was referred to in the recent Dav Stott Q&A when they said people using long running macros could expect to be contacted.
So, doing it manually is fine. Automating it with a macro is not fine.

It's not "fine". It's just not against the rules.

The BGS is one of the core features of the game, I'm disappointed it is still in such a beta stage.

 

[Ziljan]

I suspect this exploit is what was referred to in the recent Dav Stott Q&A when they said people using long running macros could expect to be contacted.
So, doing it manually is fine. Automating it with a macro is not fine.

This makes me wonder how big the effect is? If it's a tiny effect, eg doing it for an hour has the same impact as running a single mission, then yeah, maybe it's not a game breaking exploit. But it certainly makes no sense.

Why would a station lose influence from a market based "donation" whereas a an actual donation mission increases their influence?

 

[CMDR Endincite]

I don't know why they keep this in and I don't think it should exist, but it should be noted that this action is far from impossible to compete with.

Positive trade has precisely the opposite effect, and regular activity by several people will counter negative trade nicely. If they're supporting a given faction rather than just hurting yours simply murdering that faction's ships is still crushingly effective, up to the influence caps in a given system like everything else.

It's a weapon, but hardly a nuke of the sort we've seen before with factions held at 1% for weeks or months.

 

[Strangepork]

I play the BSG pretty much day in and day at the moment, and am by no means that good at it, I'm a lone wolf on the edge of the bubble trying to make the game a wee bit more interesting for myself.

Every time I read a thread on just how fudged it really is a bit of me wonders why the hell am I still bothering if it wasn't for the arrival of my brother who is looking at getting the game soon I think I would pack my backs and head off to beagle point for all the good I seem to be doing.

Why FD why is the BGS so borked when its a main stay of the game and everyone who plays it touch's it somehow the mind boggles...not that we will ever get an answer, maybe I should get around to watching the last live stream maybe I wont feel so bad about doing what I'm doing.

Oh hum onwards and upwards I'll keep on chugging as I still like flying my ship etc but you know another nail im my ED coffin..its not closed yet but its getting closer.

Back simulation ground?

 

[cmdr Sover]

This makes me wonder how big the effect is? If it's a tiny effect, eg doing it for an hour has the same impact as running a single mission, then yeah, maybe it's not a game breaking exploit. But it certainly makes no sense.

Why would a station lose influence from a market based "donation" whereas a an actual donation mission increases their influence?

Ziljan, unfortunatly 2-3 hours of single-using this exploit will be enough to make 0% influence of any faction.

 

[goemon]

are you sure it works with commodities bought and sold at the same station? afaik it only works with selling for a loss what was bought somewhere else?

 

[goemon]

Ziljan, unfortunatly 2-3 hours of single-using this exploit will be enough to make 0% influence of any faction.

in one tick? whith which size of population and which staring influence levels?

do you have new numbers or a test to share on it?

we had a very long thread about it in december: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ation-Large-Faction-Influence-Swing-Mechanics

quoting the OP there: "Selling commodities one unit at a time, that sell at a loss to you. The bigger the loss to you, the bigger the loss in influence...some losses can be very high if you want them to be.

It is important to know that goods must be both bought and sold in the same way, and in different systems, creating multiple transactions on either end of the market trade."

generally speaking, having the 1t-trading bug/exploit back, which was patched out before, IS bad. but it isn't as dramatic as people think. the numbers people have pulled and tested in the thread above speak of 3% influence losses for 1000 tons traded etc. etc. - depending on population size. still bad, but not the end of the world. also it can be countered.

 

[cmdr Sover]

are you sure it works with commodities bought and sold at the same station? afaik it only works with selling for a loss what was bought somewhere else?.

Yes, I'm sure

in one tick? i don't think so.

You can test it, just find a system on the edge of "bubble" and try )

 

[cmdr Sover]

in one tick? whith which size of population and which staring influence levels?

You are right, with great population and high starting level of influence maybe you will need two tick ))

 

[goemon]

Yes, I'm sure

You can test it, just find a system on the edge of "bubble" and try )

you state that as a fact. the tests i have done as well as others (see thread linked above) showed otherwise.

if you have no news to share (a test with population size and traffic report=0 as usual...) I assume another hyperbole.

I'm not saying that it isn't possible, that the last patch changed things to the worst - but it is the fourth time in 3 month somebody is claiming something about these negative influence mechanics which isn't tested and proves wrong. so excuse me, if i don't jump again on the "sky is falling on the BGS"-wagon.

 

[Faybs]

Influence change is proportional to population size, so testing this out on a backwater system is going to give exaggerated results. You also need to test on a huge system to find out how much of an exploit it is.

 

[goemon]

You are right, with great population and high starting level of influence it maybe you will need two tick ))

you see.

hyperbolism doesn't help the case.

negative influence 1-T trading is bad, and it needs to go. but stating " 2-3 hours of single-using this exploit will be enough to make 0% influence of any faction", which is a hyperbole, doesn't help the good cause.

 

[Caliber_az]

Negative Profit?
Is that double speak for a loss? Do we downsize when this happens? Maybe we should replace them with Undocumented Aliens?

Hey not to make light of this topic, as a business owner it kind of smacked me in the face the way we twist language.

Carry on
Caliber

Cautiously Optimistic during Negative Gains