[BGS] Trading for Influence

I have been looking to do testing for this very thing. It's been hard to find the time with all the other things going on in game, but I am confident you did a much better job than I could have done. This is impressive.

I have questions that might make for an interesting followup study. What effect (if any) does buying *from* a station have on it's controller? Now that we know what effect selling *to* a station has on it's controller, the next question is how influence is affected (if at all) by buying from a station, and the obvious variables like for profit or loss.

A group I am working with is working on a way to craft trade routes with a BGS slant, so knowing all of this will help us refine our process (i.e. focus on profit as opposed to tonneage, variety as opposed to merely the most profitable commodity, etc.).

All in all, I am very impressed, and thank you for sharing your results.
 
I have questions that might make for an interesting followup study. What effect (if any) does buying *from* a station have on it's controller? Now that we know what effect selling *to* a station has on it's controller, the next question is how influence is affected (if at all) by buying from a station, and the obvious variables like for profit or loss.

A group I am working with is working on a way to craft trade routes with a BGS slant, so knowing all of this will help us refine our process (i.e. focus on profit as opposed to tonneage, variety as opposed to merely the most profitable commodity, etc.).

All in all, I am very impressed, and thank you for sharing your results.

sentenza has answered this on page 3:

1t trading showed that buying HAS effect. It's just very small compared to selling - with normal trading volumes it can probably move some 0.01%, way below observable.

i can confirm "way below observable" :)

concerning "bgs effective routes" - if you want to buff your influence in all your systems, you are basically looking at loops having most profitable commodity types, not most profits (but still).

i could even imagine a trade python or t9/cutter selling smaller tonnage at several ports, before returning to a high tech/industrial/agricultural port being quite effective ... i'm currently collecting more data on the effect of different commodity types.
 
@Goemon

At the end of all this would this still be the relevant points for how trade works with the bgs for influence gains for a faction.

TRADE FOR INFLUENCE
1. Influence for a minor faction is gained by selling commodities on a market with profit (Buying has no observable effect).
2. Influence gain by profit is capped around 700 cr/t profit.(item profit cap)
3. Selling smaller batches of different profitable commodities per load gains more influence in total, than selling 1 highly profitable commodity - even if the total profit is (much) lower.
4. There is a cap on how much influence can be gained by trade.(the trade influence cap)
5. Demand has no effect on influence gains.
6. Boom doubles the influence effect of trade, but does not raise the maximum of influence (the trade influence cap), which can be gained by trade.
7. Boom has no effect on the influence loss by smuggling.

 
If a system has four stations and I turn up with a Type 9 full of several different types of cargo. If I sold 1/4 of each commodity at each separate station, would it have more effect on the BGS than just selling at the one station?

And the same question with blackmarkets.
 
If a system has four stations and I turn up with a Type 9 full of several different types of cargo. If I sold 1/4 of each commodity at each separate station, would it have more effect on the BGS than just selling at the one station?

And the same question with blackmarkets.

Just for my clarification in your example: If all four stations are controlled by the same faction?

And, if so, does each station controlled by the same faction have its own Trade Influence Cap or is it system wide for the whole faction?
 
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If a system has four stations and I turn up with a Type 9 full of several different types of cargo. If I sold 1/4 of each commodity at each separate station, would it have more effect on the BGS than just selling at the one station?

complicated question, and not tested yet (but i will put it on the list). generally, as we know from pareco, stations aren't necessarily a new instance. so, it might be, that your transactions are collected cross-station. it might be, that depends on a new instance. it might be, that it ups the transactions and is therefore more effective (basically acting as more different commodity types). I'll put the last one on the list of tests.

And the same question with blackmarkets.

same answer :)
 
Just for my clarification in your example: If all four stations are controlled by the same faction?

And, if so, does each station controlled by the same faction have its own Trade Influence Cap or is it system wide for the whole faction?

i assume (and i am pretty sure), the trade influence cap is faction specific and system wide. influence isn't calculated per station.
 
Some new results from testing smuggling

first of all, i have to make a big shoutout to the Ceremonial Teabaggers, a player group devoted to load other players ships at community goals mainly.

they loaded my cutter with 500T of Borasetani Pathogenics, a rare illegal in my testing system. without them, some of the following test results would have been impossible for me to get!

so, thank you! :D

also thanks to @Dommaarraa, who loaded me up with palladium and gold, so it was marked as stolen - in a painfull process of failing instancing, ghost canisters, and limpets not working.


the results aren't as expected, mainly because it looks as if illegal and stolen goods follow a different profit curve or aren't treated the same by the BGS, but they still allow two conclusions:

1. The loss by profit of smuggling does not cap out at ~700 cr/t like the gain of trade.

iJg2B44.png


Comment: Not enough data points for a curve (i assume a sigmoid), as my plan to plot the curve with stolen goods didn't work out. But, while gains from profits cap out at ~2,6 raw influence gain per 250T, the raw influence loss of selling borasetani pathogenics at ~24K cr/t profit is at ~3,9 repeated twice.
generally the numbers i have gotten explain why i originally assumed in previous test that profit has no effect in smuggling, only tonnage has - if the curve is far more stretched than with legal commodities, there is no real difference to observe between 700 cr/t profit and 1500 cr/t profit.
of course this raises concerns on balance of trading vs. smuggling.



2. The loss of selling STOLEN commodities is less than the effect of ILLEGAL commodities


last bar shows 250T of stolen palladium (~10K sell price), while the first three repeat the values of the graph above - somehow cutted off during export.

Comment: I was very surprised about that. I'll do further testing, as the results don't give a straight answer, whether selling STOLEN goods is simply half as effective as selling ILLEGAL goods, or whether they follow a different curve by profit (which would make sense, as stolen goods have a zero purchase price).

anyway, as it is easy to get a lot of stolen commodities if you team up, and also as many salvaged commodities are marked as stolen, that's good news for me.

__

I'll do further testing on how ILLEGAL + STOLEN commodities fit into this, but for now i'm looking more into the effects of multiple commodities by trade, as have to ensure my testing system not getting into a civil war after all this smuggling.
 
Excellent work Goeman!

Some interesting results there. The stolen vs illegal differences make sense from a design point of view because of the ease of collusion piracy - if intentional!
 
If you need high value stolen goods dumping into a market I am always available for hire. This would likely be cheaper than stealing your own goods.

well, you know, it is easy to get stolen goods by simply teaming up, and dropping without abandoning...
 
well, you know, it is easy to get stolen goods by simply teaming up, and dropping without abandoning...

Doesn't that get a touch expensive though when dealing with a full load of Palladium? Surely it's much more affordable to hire a reliable Pirate at a fraction of the cost?
 
Doesn't that get a touch expensive though when dealing with a full load of Palladium? Surely it's much more affordable to hire a reliable Pirate at a fraction of the cost?

ah, well - CR are no problem here.

also, one of the main problems is, to get the exact tonnage of a specific commodity for testing.

but i actually would be interested in 250T stolen low temperature diamonds, as those should add a good data point to the curve of influence loss by profit of stolen goods. if you are interested, PM me and name your price :)
 
ah, well - CR are no problem here.

also, one of the main problems is, to get the exact tonnage of a specific commodity for testing.

but i actually would be interested in 250T stolen low temperature diamonds, as those should add a good data point to the curve of influence loss by profit of stolen goods. if you are interested, PM me and name your price :)

Would be an interesting test but practically useless for actual BGS work considering the time spent gathering - even with a group. There are far more efficient means of influence manipulation.
 
Would be an interesting test but practically useless for actual BGS work considering the time spent gathering - even with a group. There are far more efficient means of influence manipulation.

sure, this just for testing. it's as ineffective as selling 2 times 250 rares of one commodity types... but it allows some better informed guesses on the mechanic behind it.

my current practical conclusion on smuggling is, that profit doesn't matter a lot on a daily basis beyond a very low profit threshold (backed by patch notes), as you won't gain much differences between 700 cr/t profit and 1500 cr/t profit ... i'll add ~2000 cr/t to the test, but basically the numbers are so similar between 795 cr/t and 1600 cr/t, that it literally makes no difference, whether you smuggle personal weapons or narcotics - for exampel.

beside my ticket being still open on some weird bugs/exploits around smuggling, which i hope will get patched soon.
 
If a system has four stations and I turn up with a Type 9 full of several different types of cargo. If I sold 1/4 of each commodity at each separate station, would it have more effect on the BGS than just selling at the one station?

And the same question with blackmarkets.
All I can add is, About 9 months ago I did a test on cart data and discovered that selling 50 each at 2 stations owned by the same faction did, in fact, yield a better result than selling 50 at 1 station the day before. That was it, I never followed it up with dedicated testing.
 
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_trent_

Volunteer Moderator
Very interesting Goemon. It seems that the amount of profit at the black market does have an effect on the influence drop and isn't capped at a fairly low cr/t level like trading for profit at the regular commodities market is.

I think everyone involved in loading up your cutter had a pretty fun time doing it. If you ever want loaded up with stolen goods we can do that just as easily, it's literally as easy as selecting jettison instead of abandon (also need to make sure we're a little further out if there are security ships about :p)
 
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