A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

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even if it needs further analysis, it is clear that while the 2.3.02 patch slowed down the effect a bit, generally the superpower bounty mechanic is destroying average influence of controlling factions of all allegiance - federal, imperial, alliance and indi.

which is bad news for almost all player factions, as they like to control their systems and expand.

Thx GOEMON and EIC for the nice research results as you have shown to us.

Well as member of PMF in game, i can ofcourse confirm this what GOEMON discribed.

Am i wrong when i say, that ALL PMF want a change in this? Coz as it as now, wont be suitable for a long term. To counter the impact of the new superpower bounty mechanics, you have to trade as crazy and combine that with LOTS of explorer data. Whats very time consuming. The time that BH takes in infuences is so much faster than Trading or Selling data, that in my oppionen is totaly unbalanced.

I rather would prefer that new superpower bounty mechanics, wouldnt have a negative impact on Controlling Factions. The controlling Factions are still setting up the Security forces and therefor are still more vulnerable, then the other factions, for murder for example (even when now its has been reduced, the influence of murder).

As controlling faction you are the main target and should not be punished for that extra.

An idea could be that the from the 2 bounties that you gain from it ( Superpowerbounty and Controlling Faction Bounty), that the Controlling Faction Bounties, are more worth. Now im not a Number-wizard as some of you guys. But lets say this. As example: System has 8 minor factions. 4 are Empire and 4 are Indi. That the worth of the Controlling Faction Bountie would be multiplayed by a number of 2? or 4? For that excact number.... Well sry but im not a wizzkid.

Wouldt that be an option? Coz as for now, this cant go on. It demoralises players totaly.
 
Hello, Quick question about Retreat.

Info is that it has a 1 day pend then lasts for 5 days. Question is does the % have to stay below 2.5% for the whole of the 6 days? or once the pending is over and retreat starts it doesn't matter.
 

_trent_

Volunteer Moderator
Hello, Quick question about Retreat.

Info is that it has a 1 day pend then lasts for 5 days. Question is does the % have to stay below 2.5% for the whole of the 6 days? or once the pending is over and retreat starts it doesn't matter.

In our experience (and we've pushed out a fair few) the influence needs to be below 2.5% at the tick on the final day of the retreat.

This is usually day 5, however a conflict going active for that faction will immediately end the retreat so if the faction is below 2.5% in the target system at that tick they will be kicked out.

We've seen factions retreat who have gone above 2.5% during the retreat period and been pushed back down, and we've seen factions nailed down at 1.0% for the first 4 days of the retreat only to avoid it on the final tick by sneaking above the 2.5% mark.
 
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ever since 2.3, influence has become a much more difficult task and our groups once and former expansion plans are crumbling into ashes.
so a couple of questions for all you influence gurus out there:

I have heard tell that cartography data influence is capped at 10 million credits.. do you think that has changed post 2.3?

I was wondering if any of the other activities seemed to have an apparent cap, or is it just exploration? (especially trade)
or is it more of a case of a diminishing effect rather than a hard cap

our system is very large (18.8 billion peeps) with a multitude of stations (6 space stations and 4 surface stations) so we understand its hard work to get anything done influence wise but
got any tips?... should we be working EVERY station in the system or can we focus our efforts on one station.

for example: we own two space stations and 1 surface station, we are the controlling faction. other activities aside, in a typical day we will bring in 2000-5000 tons of advanced meds and deliver them to a single station
the other two are left mainly alone.
we also anti-trade (for a loss) at another station owned by a rival faction, around 1000 tons of marine equipment.
always the same stations.. always the same commodities...

is this a good strategy or should we be visiting other stations more, swapping commodities.. is 1000+ tons too much, or the more the merrier?

we have a guide to influence farming in our system HERE.. have a look please and pick me up on anything I have got completely wrong.

.... ok that wasn't exactly 'a couple of quick questions' but i got carried away as i am often want to do
:D
 
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ever since 2.3, influence has become a much more difficult task and our groups once and former expansion plans are crumbling into ashes.
so a couple of questions for all you influence gurus out there:

I have heard tell that cartography data influence is capped at 10 million credits.. do you think that has changed post 2.3?

I was wondering if any of the other activities seemed to have an apparent cap, or is it just exploration? (especially trade)
or is it more of a case of a diminishing effect rather than a hard cap

our system is very large (18.8 billion peeps) with a multitude of stations (6 space stations and 4 surface stations) so we understand its hard work to get anything done influence wise but
got any tips?... should we be working EVERY station in the system or can we focus our efforts on one station.

for example: we own two space stations and 1 surface station, we are the controlling faction. other activities aside, in a typical day we will bring in 2000-5000 tons of advanced meds and deliver them to a single station
the other two are left mainly alone.
we also anti-trade (for a loss) at another station owned by a rival faction, around 1000 tons of marine equipment.
always the same stations.. always the same commodities...

is this a good strategy or should we be visiting other stations more, swapping commodities.. is 1000+ tons too much, or the more the merrier?

we have a guide to influence farming in our system HERE.. have a look please and pick me up on anything I have got completely wrong.

.... ok that wasn't exactly 'a couple of quick questions' but i got carried away as i am often want to do
:D

1. there are no hard caps, only soft caps and massively diminuishing returns
2. in terms of influence it should make no difference how many stations you use, as every station is potentially in the same instance (as you can see for exampel in the pareco system, where you can fly between stations without supercruising)
3. generally it is good to combine as many "actions"/"transactions" as possible per docking, which requires as many different type of actions as possible (cash in exploration data + redeem bounty + sell something with profit is better than only selling with profit)
4. concerning trade with profit, try to combine as many different profitable commodities, as you can get from a source with ~>10 T. it looks as if each commodity counts as a single type of actions, while selling smaller batches of the same commodity is collected as one (per instance? per docking? per tick? ... unknown).

concerning your guide: "buy and sell one at a time. " ... that was luckily patched out some months ago. and buying dommodities has no influence effect. and you are missing on black market trade, if your "enemies" have any.

your systems population is massive, and i have no idea about the random traffic there - but i'm sure it can be a fun challenge for people in the long run!
 
1. there are no hard caps, only soft caps and massively diminuishing returns
2. in terms of influence it should make no difference how many stations you use, as every station is potentially in the same instance (as you can see for exampel in the pareco system, where you can fly between stations without supercruising)
3. generally it is good to combine as many "actions"/"transactions" as possible per docking, which requires as many different type of actions as possible (cash in exploration data + redeem bounty + sell something with profit is better than only selling with profit)
4. concerning trade with profit, try to combine as many different profitable commodities, as you can get from a source with ~>10 T. it looks as if each commodity counts as a single type of actions, while selling smaller batches of the same commodity is collected as one (per instance? per docking? per tick? ... unknown).

concerning your guide: "buy and sell one at a time. " ... that was luckily patched out some months ago. and buying dommodities has no influence effect. and you are missing on black market trade, if your "enemies" have any.

your systems population is massive, and i have no idea about the random traffic there - but i'm sure it can be a fun challenge for people in the long run!

cheers mucker.. I am glad about not selling and buying 1 at a time.. on an xbox, in a cutter, that takes quite some time. i will still sell in smaller batches rather than all at once though... but not one at a time thank the lord.

also good to know we can stick to trading in the core stations rather than having to hike out to the outer system.

alas there is only 1 faction that both allows black markets AND owns a station.. and unfortunately that one station is the last one on the list, some 16 thousand LS out. we have considered it but have gone with anti-trading to closer stations instead.

our system was very carefully picked. yes its massive and it takes a lot of work to keep everything how we want it. the traffic is quite low usually as we have picked somewhere slightly off the beaten path.
it can be very frustrating when trying to grind alone but with a couple of people helping it is usually quite responsive...
well.. that is until the 2.3 cataclysm hit lol.
 
i will still sell in smaller batches rather than all at once though...

do it if you like, but it won't help. selling different commodities of each ~>10 should have an effect, though. as said, the patch for 1t-trading-exploit was along those lines of collecting single transactions per instance/per docking. sellig 50 times 10T of superconductors will have the same effect as selling 500T at once. selling 20t of superconductors + 20T of palladium + 20t of indite + 20t of lanthanum + xxx will provide quite a bit more influence gain.
 
Regarding exploration data: experience from the last days shows that the minimum activity needed to get a positive effect is about 60 systems per day from at least three players.
 
Does anyone ever get the feeling that buying trade goods is not beneficial to the selling station/faction? Maybe even is a negative factor?
I am not an economics major but one would think that both buying and selling should be great for a local economy.
 
Does anyone ever get the feeling that buying trade goods is not beneficial to the selling station/faction? Maybe even is a negative factor?
I am not an economics major but one would think that both buying and selling should be great for a local economy.

whie it would make sense, buying has no influence effect.
 

_trent_

Volunteer Moderator
Does anyone ever get the feeling that buying trade goods is not beneficial to the selling station/faction? Maybe even is a negative factor?
I am not an economics major but one would think that both buying and selling should be great for a local economy.

Not sure about 2.3, but back in 2.2 I did quite a bit of testing in zero-traffic systems and buying goods had no affect whatsoever. I tried all sorts of goods, including high/medium/low supply and high/medium/low values. I sold them for profits and I sold them for losses. Influence levels didn't change at all at the supply systems.

From an economic point of view, it makes sense that buying goods should help the faction who own the station, but I expect that it's to stop people exploiting the mechanic by just buying cargo and then dumping it outside the no-fire zone.

Edit: Repeatedly ninja'd. Note to self: Send reply before going to make self coffee. :D
 
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Not sure about 2.3, but back in 2.2 I did quite a bit of testing in zero-traffic systems and buying goods had no affect whatsoever. I tried all sorts of goods, including high/medium/low supply and high/medium/low values. I sold them for profits and I sold them for losses. Influence levels didn't change at all at the supply systems.

From an economic point of view, it makes sense that buying goods should help the faction who own the station, but I expect that it's to stop people exploiting the mechanic by just buying cargo and then dumping it outside the no-fire zone.

Edit: Repeatedly ninja'd. Note to self: Send reply before going to make self coffee. :D

When 1t still worked it was found that there was a positive effect form buying, but very small, and that with exaggerated transaction effect. Now with normal transactions the buying effect is likely too small to be observed.
 
I am getting confused with all this bounty hunting/Major factions.
It would seem that the station owner does get the majority of the influence.
This is in my test area, So I am confident that I am the only one in this system.
Faction A) Station owner & controlling faction Independant
Faction B) Station owner Independant
Faction C) Empire (only one)
Day 1 I cashed in 250K of empire only bounties at station owned by faction A). The empire faction gained 1.1% and faction A gained 6.3%
Day 2 I cashed in 250K of empire only bounties at station owned by faction B). The empire faction gained 1.7% and faction B gained 4.6% and faction A) lost 4.9%
 
I am getting confused with all this bounty hunting/Major factions.
It would seem that the station owner does get the majority of the influence.
This is in my test area, So I am confident that I am the only one in this system.
Faction A) Station owner & controlling faction Independant
Faction B) Station owner Independant
Faction C) Empire (only one)
Day 1 I cashed in 250K of empire only bounties at station owned by faction A). The empire faction gained 1.1% and faction A gained 6.3%
Day 2 I cashed in 250K of empire only bounties at station owned by faction B). The empire faction gained 1.7% and faction B gained 4.6% and faction A) lost 4.9%

what does the traffic report say?

also, states?
 
Not sure about 2.3, but back in 2.2 I did quite a bit of testing in zero-traffic systems and buying goods had no affect whatsoever. I tried all sorts of goods, including high/medium/low supply and high/medium/low values. I sold them for profits and I sold them for losses. Influence levels didn't change at all at the supply systems.

From an economic point of view, it makes sense that buying goods should help the faction who own the station, but I expect that it's to stop people exploiting the mechanic by just buying cargo and then dumping it outside the no-fire zone.

Edit: Repeatedly ninja'd. Note to self: Send reply before going to make self coffee. :D

Thank you for the additional clarification and information.
 
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