Is that really the case with the BGS, though? Maybe someone from the BGS thread can comment, but I remember reading that BGS gains are capped, but losses aren't. That means you can have thousands of people turn in bounties to counteract a lockdown, but every day the positive impact has a ceiling and once it reaches a certain point, all the extra effort evaporates.
Meanwhile, on the other side, people trying to wreck a system can make it plunge as far as they like, especially by using some BGS trickery to maximize losses.
Which means when the math is done, the efforts of thousands can be undone by a handful of CMDRs working together. A 5% gain for the security forces totally negated by a 30% loss, for example. That seems to be what's going on here, and if that's the case no amount of "emergent gameplay" can balance it, because it's inherently unbalanced.
Again I welcome any passing BGS gurus to weigh in.
You're confusing influence gain with state buckets. The two are unrelated in that state buckets have nothing to do influence caps and such.
There's no 100% knowledge on exactly how the state buckets work, but they work roughly like this:
- Activities contribute to different "buckets" for that faction. e.g killing security fills the "lockdown" bucket, trading for profit fills the "boom" bucket, black market trading fills the "bust" bucket etc.
- When a bucket is "filled", the state goes "pending" and (empties all buckets, or empties that state bucket? I forget which).
- Each state that goes "active" has a minimum period and maximum period it can go for. Minimum is usually around 3 days, maximum can be weeks, it depends on a lot of things.
- This is where my understanding gets grey... but some activities prolong a state (but not beyond it's maximum duration), others shorten it. Profit trading sustains a Boom state, for example
- Left idle, a state "drains out", or is overwritten by another pending state with higher precedence (iirc precedences are: Highest - War, Civil War, Election; Middle - Expansion, retreat; Low - Everything else).
- Presumably, killing security results in more lockdown, but handing in bounties results in less lockdown. *However* there is no "cap" as far as anyone knows on filling (or draining) state buckets, only on influence changes.
So, no, as far as I know as long as thousands of people continue handing in bounties a handful of commanders won't be able to sustain the lockdown. The reason the lockdown is still in effect is because it hasn't gone past the minimum period for it running so far (which is usually about 3 days for most states). It'll undoubtedly be in a "Boom" state in 4 or 5 hours, since that's what's pending, and if not tomorrow (because I got my dates wrong) then 24h after that.
If lockdowns are triggered due to people being arseholes during the CG, I guess I can live with that.
It's a bit dumb if they can do stuff in Solo or PG mode and nobody can prevent it but, c'est la vie.
I doubt anyone knew this CG was actually coming.