A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

I remember retreating a Faction against upwards pressure that way, worked like a charm and kept it below Retreat-Cancel levels.
2 full PAX Stacks failed per Day (Python/Beluga/Anaconda) typically create a > -5% BGS Input for most average Systems (low/medium Pop), nicely compressing a Retreat Faction to the floor and this can stem at least mild to moderate pressure working against you.

Did something change in the fail system, or this effect is specific to passenger missions? Some time ago, for "regular" missions, I estimated that fail impact was rather low and practically ineffective on low infuence factions...
 

Deleted member 38366

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Did something change in the fail system, or this effect is specific to passenger missions? Some time ago, for "regular" missions, I estimated that fail impact was rather low and practically ineffective on low infuence factions...

Quite a while ago, failing was as simple as manually abandoning a Mission, in order to get the full negative effect - "cashing in Reputation for -Inf".
That got changed, however, and abandoning a Mission got nerfed significantly in terms of negative Inf effect (just a rough estimate to approx. ~10% of an actual failed Mission due to Mission parameters).
If I remember correcly, that change came along with Smugglers picking up large stacks of Missions, abandoning them and then selling the goods... recouping their Rep loss and making it a widespread Credit-making Exploit... at least the change occurred sometime within that timeframe for all I know.

The "proper Mission Failure" and its effect remained in place unchanged, however.

So properly failing a Mission (Fail-trigger of Mission reached or Timer runs out) remained the only thing to retain 100% of the negative BGS effect that this Mission holds.
Abandoning them even in very large numbers, however, does indeed fairly little on Infuence (full effect only on the hidden Faction buckets).

When Mission timers were increased across the Board, those also began often reaching or exceeding 24hrs - making them useless to timeout for anything that needs to go into effect during the active BGS cycle.

Due to many Mission types "surviving" even a Ship loss and those affected being only +Inf (i.e. Cargo Haulage), the ++Inf VIP Passenger Missions became the natural best choice to use their full negative effect to reduce Influence where desired.
At least I'm not aware of any other Mission type that would offer such Results and be properly failed within this short time.
 
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Quite a while ago, failing was as simple as manually abandoning a Mission, in order to get the full negative effect - "cashing in Reputation for -Inf".
That got changed, however, and abandoning a Mission got nerfed significantly in terms of negative Inf effect (just a rough estimate to approx. ~10% of an actual failed Mission due to Mission parameters).
If I remember correcly, that change came along with Smugglers picking up large stacks of Missions, abandoning them and then selling the goods... recouping their Rep loss and making it a widespread Credit-making Exploit... at least the change occurred sometime within that timeframe for all I know.

The "proper Mission Failure" and its effect remained in place unchanged, however.

So properly failing a Mission (Fail-trigger of Mission reached or Timer runs out) remained the only thing to retain 100% of the negative BGS effect that this Mission holds.
Abandoning them even in very large numbers, however, does indeed fairly little on Infuence (full effect only on the hidden Faction buckets).

When Mission timers were increased across the Board, those also began often reaching or exceeding 24hrs - making them useless to timeout for anything that needs to go into effect during the active BGS cycle.

Due to many Mission types "surviving" even a Ship loss and those affected being only +Inf (i.e. Cargo Haulage), the ++Inf VIP Passenger Missions became the natural best choice to use their full negative effect to reduce Influence where desired.
At least I'm not aware of any other Mission type that would offer such Results and be properly failed within this short time.

This requires further testing. If it is the case, my initial view is that its a bit of an exploity mechanic. Possibly an anomaly that FD didn't expect. Although from a logical point of view deliberately disrupting your targets missions would be a valid "real life" tactic!
 
This requires further testing. If it is the case, my initial view is that its a bit of an exploity mechanic. Possibly an anomaly that FD didn't expect. Although from a logical point of view deliberately disrupting your targets missions would be a valid "real life" tactic!

as missions are locked behind a rep wall, and you can only stack so-so much, there is a "natural" limit for exploiting them.
 

Deleted member 38366

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This requires further testing. If it is the case, my initial view is that its a bit of an exploity mechanic. Possibly an anomaly that FD didn't expect. Although from a logical point of view deliberately disrupting your targets missions would be a valid "real life" tactic!

Hm, dunno...

It's basically still cashing in a considerable amount of Reputation, so it requires a very positive effort to recoup that Rep loss.
You'll see (100% Allied) that failing 7-9 Missions will put you instantly into the mid-friendly level - instantly limiting the amount of follow-up Passenger Missions you could pick up.

Failing a 2nd stack of Passenger Missions is very likely to push you back all the way into Cordial. And typically that's the end of the line, simply due to not getting Missions anymore.
Back in those days (method was applied to keep us down low in 2 Systems), it took me quite a bit of effort to fail 2 full Stacks and recoup that Rep loss per BGS Cycle. Never was able to fail a 3rd stack, as this was just unfeasible.

So in terms of "offensive use", the method has very distinct limitations.

PS.
Arguably, if Credits were no factor... One could load up on +++Inf Bulk Passengers and suicide the Ship to maximize the -Inf effect.
However, the downside of that is obviously a fairly big amount of Credits being invested in terms of rebuys - with the -Rep effect coming in on top, which needs to be rebuilt.
Hence, not even this method would be really feasible, and most definitely not for prolonged application.

The way I see it, those downsides are sufficient to self-govern and limit its application.
And looking back, I remember "other interested Parties" were easily able to outdo my Inputs at some point, forcing me to abandon it in the location (goal there was to enforce a 3-6% Influence Target band against permanent upward pressure, just to stay clear of Conflicts).

Either way, it's worthy of consideration and it has proven (within its limitations) to be a very useful Tool.
Arguably... it does hurt the Faction buckets as well of course, so prolonged application would likely result in undesired negative Faction Trends building up quite fast, which is one more downside.
 
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I have to endorse the opinion of zero sum game being in effect for the high influence passenger failures. To be able to do it in the first place necessitates that you put in effort to push the influence up, before you can drag it down along with your access to high rank passenger jobs.
 
Hm, dunno...

It's basically still cashing in a considerable amount of Reputation, so it requires a very positive effort to recoup that Rep loss.
You'll see (100% Allied) that failing 7-9 Missions will put you instantly into the mid-friendly level - instantly limiting the amount of follow-up Passenger Missions you could pick up.

Failing a 2nd stack of Passenger Missions is very likely to push you back all the way into Cordial. And typically that's the end of the line, simply due to not getting Missions anymore.
Back in those days (method was applied to keep us down low in 2 Systems), it took me quite a bit of effort to fail 2 full Stacks and recoup that Rep loss per BGS Cycle. Never was able to fail a 3rd stack, as this was just unfeasible.

So in terms of "offensive use", the method has very distinct limitations.

PS.
Arguably, if Credits were no factor... One could load up on +++Inf Bulk Passengers and suicide the Ship to maximize the -Inf effect.
However, the downside of that is obviously a fairly big amount of Credits being invested in terms of rebuys - with the -Rep effect coming in on top, which needs to be rebuilt.
Hence, not even this method would be really feasible, and most definitely not for prolonged application.

The way I see it, those downsides are sufficient to self-govern and limit its application.
And looking back, I remember "other interested Parties" were easily able to outdo my Inputs at some point, forcing me to abandon it in the location (goal there was to enforce a 3-6% Influence Target band against permanent upward pressure, just to stay clear of Conflicts).

Either way, it's worthy of consideration and it has proven (within its limitations) to be a very useful Tool.
Arguably... it does hurt the Faction buckets as well of course, so prolonged application would likely result in undesired negative Faction Trends building up quite fast, which is one more downside.

Good points there Falcon. It does seem to be self limiting and not of the horrific nukes we've seen in the past. This would seem make it more of a tool with associated downsides rather than an exploit. Still. not a fun evening's gaming.
 
Tell you what, this war attrition malarkey is still a total pain in the arris. Keeping 11 systems from dropping in to war whilst a poxy 50k population little one is already in one is a real bind. 7+ percent drops a day.
 
Tell you what, this war attrition malarkey is still a total pain in the arris. Keeping 11 systems from dropping in to war whilst a poxy 50k population little one is already in one is a real bind. 7+ percent drops a day.

+1 it is far too severe. A small conflict should not cause factionwide catastrophe.
 
Bit of a tangent, but frankly, failing/abandoning missions shouldn't have any effect... meanwhile a second mission board should be "added" to the game.

Where the current mission board (generally) results in a positive effect for the faction you run it for, and sometimes a negative effect for <insert random faction here>... the other mission board should provide missions that, upon successful completion, have a negative effect against the targeted faction, and get capped in a similar way to +ve influence gain through missions.

It could be tied to military rank even*, which would make that somewhat useful.

* Notwithstanding the fact Independent navies have no rank; maybe the "advantage" for independent factions is that there's no rank requirements? I dunno...
 
I have to endorse the opinion of zero sum game being in effect for the high influence passenger failures. To be able to do it in the first place necessitates that you put in effort to push the influence up, before you can drag it down along with your access to high rank passenger jobs.

It is important not to mix influence and reputation. It is possible to raise your reputation using nethods that have influence cap, while the negathive influncers are ften capless.
 

Deleted member 38366

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Good points there Falcon. It does seem to be self limiting and not of the horrific nukes we've seen in the past. This would seem make it more of a tool with associated downsides rather than an exploit. Still. not a fun evening's gaming.

True, working directly against the own Faction was never fun.

I was basically presented with the choice of "ugly vs. evil".
Fail the most effective Missions against my Faction to create raw negative Input (with all downsides) - or make Allies with upto 6 other Factions and face the Grind-a-thon of pushing all these up just to compress the own Faction down (which also has tight limits).

So in end, I was rather being efficient with a calculated amount of effort and the known downsides as mandatory cleanup items to work.
It just ended up being the most viable way of direct Influence Control inside a tight Influence Target band, without costing me all day to work only such a single System.
 
Tell you what, this war attrition malarkey is still a total pain in the arris. Keeping 11 systems from dropping in to war whilst a poxy 50k population little one is already in one is a real bind. 7+ percent drops a day.

yeah, it's pretty harsh. We're protecting a bunch of systems now, and now have one system where the ruler (us) is at war elsewhere, others are in conflict in-system, and a faction in Boom without any assets has been rising 10-15+ per tick, and has bypassed us, despite millions of bounties dropped. The last two days of war (day 3 + victory day) are now "all hands on deck, let's hope we're still in a situation on None day that we can recover"...

Frankly, it seems even worse now (possibly after latest patch) than it was a month ago.
 
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Tick-Delayed?p=5747986&viewfull=1#post5747986

Just thought i'd drop this here.

There is a suggestion on a bug thread that some activities (missions only?) undertaken between 17:00 and 22:00 UK time are not being counted for the tick that day (approx. 22:00) and indeed are lost completely. This would be since the last tick move.

I have tested specifically with combat bonds (waiting for the right opportunity to test with missions) and they appear to be functioning properly. Our other records don't show up anything unusual. Was wondering if anyone had seen evidence of this effect?
 
Hi,

Our faction (HFR Corp) is in a system at war.

0888ab6d59df3d41f752f5984b4cd135be7e2e00.jpg


If I refer to OP : Another useful thing to note about these two states is that they have the ability to interrupt economic states and wiki : Influence changes only apply to the involved parties and are only applied from combat missions or actions

Did that means BOOM state is inefective (but we can still change our influence) or any action will not change our influence ?
 
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Tick-Delayed?p=5747986&viewfull=1#post5747986

Just thought i'd drop this here.

There is a suggestion on a bug thread that some activities (missions only?) undertaken between 17:00 and 22:00 UK time are not being counted for the tick that day (approx. 22:00) and indeed are lost completely. This would be since the last tick move.

I have tested specifically with combat bonds (waiting for the right opportunity to test with missions) and they appear to be functioning properly. Our other records don't show up anything unusual. Was wondering if anyone had seen evidence of this effect?

I don't think so, as my primary flight time is in that exact window, and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it appears to count my actions.

That said, I'd really like the Tick earlier in the evening, as the late click seems to shorten that amount of time my Faction has available for our work, what with all being in full time employment in the UK and EU (and a little bit of Wales!). 20:00 would make more sense and a little easier to plan around.

Has there been any official comment about the Tick change? Was it deliberate for some unknown reason, or is it simply the Hamster is now working to rule through lack of love?
 
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Tick-Delayed?p=5747986&viewfull=1#post5747986

Just thought i'd drop this here.

There is a suggestion on a bug thread that some activities (missions only?) undertaken between 17:00 and 22:00 UK time are not being counted for the tick that day (approx. 22:00) and indeed are lost completely. This would be since the last tick move.

I have tested specifically with combat bonds (waiting for the right opportunity to test with missions) and they appear to be functioning properly. Our other records don't show up anything unusual. Was wondering if anyone had seen evidence of this effect?

ALL my work during workdays is done in that timeframe, and it is definitely counted.
 
Hi,

Our faction (HFR Corp) is in a system at war.

http://reho.st/self/0888ab6d59df3d41f752f5984b4cd135be7e2e00.jpg

If I refer to OP : Another useful thing to note about these two states is that they have the ability to interrupt economic states and wiki : Influence changes only apply to the involved parties and are only applied from combat missions or actions

Did that means BOOM state is inefective (but we can still change our influence) or any action will not change our influence ?

That only applies to the factions in war, not to all the factions. You are not in war so everything is normal for you.
 
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