A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[Fry]

So my player group has been fighting a large player group and keeping them in a constant state of war. The BGS changes everyone is complaining about do not seem to affect them very much. I believe this is because once they take control of a system they add it into an empire-spanning trade route and have a fleet of T6's doing trade amongst their systems all the time. The BGS changes have had negligible effect on them. The 3 day countdown between wars has been more than adequate for their trade activities to keep their faction in the high 50/60% range even though they have 14 or 15 systems.

yeah jollie [blah] so it seems, you are forced to trade and selling data only now. If you want to keep your % in the system. I dont think FD wanted this, with the BGS changes! Factions are still losing to quick to much %. Will be very funny, now the summer is coming up. When people go on holliday and come back, there "Empire" is ruined, coz of 1 week AFK....

The Impact of BH is still WAY TO MUCH!!!!

 

[goemon]

The Impact of BH is still WAY TO MUCH!!!!

it isn't the impact of BHing, as this was reverted to 2.2. - it is the impact of new superpower bounty mechanics mainly.

 

[Kietrax]

Yes, but always for the opposite faction.

Yeah - we just had 2 wars (for control of newly expanded systems) on the bounce with no massacre missions spawning for us in system. First one had loads for the opposing faction, second had none at all. Mind you, in both instances we found massacre missions spawning later in the conflict in neighbouring systems that we control ... Actually quite handy - turn in the bonds in system to help the war effort, turninthe missions in the neighbouring system to help prop up the plummeting influence levels

 

[FrogsFriend]

I'm wondering if there's some form of mission-queue that needs to be cleared before you get to the current state missions?
Anyone tried taking all the 'wrong' missions off the board to see if appropriate new ones appear?

 

[_trent_]

Quick couple of questions, the BGS has thrown me a curve ball again: A faction in a system near to us that was pending retreat and lockdown yesterday and has gone into lockdown today - stil pending retreat.

We've just got them down to 1% in a war in an attempt to free up a slot in a target system which explains the retreat, and after killing all those CZ ships the lockdown going pending at the end of the war wasn't unexpect either.

What did surprise me was that the lockdown went active first. Anyway... the two quick questions are:

Shouldn't the movement state (retreat) have overriden the economic one (lockdown)?
Do we have to remove the lockdown state by bounty hunting before the retreat will go active?

- - - Updated - - -

I'm wondering if there's some form of mission-queue that needs to be cleared before you get to the current state missions?
Anyone tried taking all the 'wrong' missions off the board to see if appropriate new ones appear?

I quite often just take all the missions on offer at a station for our faction and more don't appear. I've actually found it better just to mess around going through the crew lounge, passenger missions and commodities markets and then back to the mission board to see if that refreshes it (i'm not a huge fan of mode switching although I'll do it if nothing else works)

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Shouldn't the movement state (retreat) have overriden the economic one (lockdown)?
Do we have to remove the lockdown state by bounty hunting before the retreat will go active?

That was our 2.2 understanding, yes. Hooray for undocumented changes if this isn't a bug.

 

[Starwolfe]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qeC7JtO9rG0wqHckktGD169rJjPMSb3qD9nXdFTlOhk/edit?usp=sharing

Cartoq day 7 - the aftermath;

The CG ended yesterday, so today's tic is the last to show the effects of bounty hunting here.

The Controlling faction dropped another 1.6%, settling at 35.8% - a whole 14.8% lower than where it started.

Gaohikel for Equality dropped 1.7% today, settling at 17.7% having rose 4.2% during the event.

Values Party of Cartoq cleared its Outbreak, starting a Boom today rising 4.5% to land at 7.6%, the result of donations from people I assume since the Outbreak was blocking bounties, its end result is 3.3% lower than its start.

Independents of Yuqui rose a mere 0.2% to end at 16.8% a full 5.3% higher from its start.

Esumindii for Equality fell another 0.8% to also land at 16.8% and landing an incredible 9.6% from its start.

The Independents remain at the bottom, with the Freedom Party of Cartoq falling another 0.5% to end at 4.4%, only a bare 0.5% from where it started, proving their inability to gain with superpower factions in the system.

The anarchy Cartoq Gold Drug Empire remained at 1% as expected, having lost 1.8% from where it started.


The Independents of Yuqui and Esumindii for Equality are tied at the moment, so are pending a conflict. I have not visited the system, but since both are democracy governments it should be an Election.

If anything, the end result proved the invisible multiplication of superpower bounties was quite negative for the independent group that had bounties, and continued to outright screw the anarchy's inability to gain bounties at all. It makes me wonder the sense of it all on that front, as Independent Anarchies will have the toughest time of all out there.

While looking back at it I can appreciate how it will curb endless Expansions, however I find the side effects against non-superpower affiliated factions is appalling.

I will stand by my suggestion of just removing superpower bounty influence effects to have a similar result, without such a negative side effect.

 

[Mohrgan]

My home system, with the patch, gained a new Faction. Boom, a 'School of Commerce' has appeared. Seemingly originating from the system. I may have missed the info in the patch notes, I get caught up in the pew pew. I am not completely aware of how to handle this new addition. Is this simply another faction to contend with, or is it there to offer info for newer players and is not a BGS threat?

I can see this Faction's missions being attractive to starting characters, and a possibly tougher influence to counter than the random Factions already in the mix. This happened in other systems as well, so I'm sure it's not happened without cause. Can anyone shed some light on this for an interested Commander?

 

[Sentenza]

My home system, with the patch, gained a new Faction. Boom, a 'School of Commerce' has appeared. Seemingly originating from the system. I may have missed the info in the patch notes, I get caught up in the pew pew. I am not completely aware of how to handle this new addition. Is this simply another faction to contend with, or is it there to offer info for newer players and is not a BGS threat?

I can see this Factions missions being attractive to starting characters, and a possibly tougher influence to counter than the random Factions already in the mix.

Looks you just gained a new PMF in your system!

 

[Mohrgan]

Looks you just gained a new PMF in your system!

Nope. I checked that. Plus, there is already a long standing PG in this system. I believe they only inject a PGF once, into any given system.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

My home system, with the patch, gained a new Faction. Boom, a 'School of Commerce' has appeared. Seemingly originating from the system. I may have missed the info in the patch notes, I get caught up in the pew pew. I am not completely aware of how to handle this new addition. Is this simply another faction to contend with, or is it there to offer info for newer players and is not a BGS threat?

I can see this Faction's missions being attractive to starting characters, and a possibly tougher influence to counter than the random Factions already in the mix. This happened in other systems as well, so I'm sure it's not happened without cause. Can anyone shed some light on this for an interested Commander?

A faction without a system name in its title, with comparatively very few exceptions, is almost certainly a player faction and thus probably has some support behind it. I'd take it as a 'threat', I suppose.

Edit: check neighbouring systems to see if they expanded there, rather than being inserted?

Aha, Eravate School of Commerce (EDDB to the rescue). That's a tough one, if you say they weren't there before. Not a procgen faction name afaik, but I can't say for sure if they're a PMF or not. Never heard of a "training faction" before though.

 

[_trent_]

Shouldn't the movement state (retreat) have overriden the economic one (lockdown)?
Do we have to remove the lockdown state by bounty hunting before the retreat will go active?

That was our 2.2 understanding, yes. Hooray for undocumented changes if this isn't a bug.

As a follow up to my questions of earlier, today the faction in question went into retreat. We've had problems in the past with 2 states due to trigger on the same day, it may just have been that again.

 

[Mohrgan]

A faction without a system name in its title, with comparatively very few exceptions, is almost certainly a player faction and thus probably has some support behind it. I'd take it as a 'threat', I suppose.

Edit: check neighbouring systems to see if they expanded there, rather than being inserted?

Aha, Eravate School of Commerce (EDDB to the rescue). That's a tough one, if you say they weren't there before. Not a procgen faction name afaik, but I can't say for sure if they're a PMF or not. Never heard of a "training faction" before though.

If you look at the missions this faction offers, you can see that many are designed to walk a Commander through the steps of completing that type of mission. Was there no mention of "Intro-to-E|D Factions" being added?

I have found what must be definitive evidence; the School of Commerce is in a Civil War with another faction in my system. So, I chalk it up to just another faction.

 

[Sentenza]

If you look at the missions this faction offers, you can see that many are designed to walk a Commander through the steps of completing that type of mission. Was there no mention of "Intro-to-E|D Factions" being added?

Inara says it's not a PMF, so it must have expanded from somewhere.

 

[Pro Cambarus]

Even if Inara is a useful tool I don't think that it is a reliable source of information in terms of inter alia whether a faction is a PMF.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Inara says it's not a PMF, so it must have expanded from somewhere.

I get the impression he's talking about Eravate, and they being the Eravate School of Commerce I very much doubt they expanded from anywhere.

 

[Boston]

Thank You all for the answers to my previous questions. We are now at Civil War!

The tick for our system is around 10AM Pacific Time. And civil war went into effect at that time today. System was previously in lockdown.

My issue is the conflict zones are turning into checkpoints from the previous state of lockdown.

How long does the new state of civil war take to settle?

 

[Starwolfe]

Several hours typically.

I've seen it take 6-8 hours after the tick before CZs spawn properly.

Keep in mind, Bounties count, so you can still work for the conflit by handing in your faction's bounties.

 

[Drink!]

During a civil war which the faction that controls all 2 stations in the system, if you beat the controlling faction will you get both stations or just one?

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

During a civil war which the faction that controls all 2 stations in the system, if you beat the controlling faction will you get both stations or just one?

Just the main one. You will need to start another conflict to get the other one, so you risk losing the one you already have if you lose the second conflict.