Nope. Unless a Player does something the influence remains static once you leave it.
Correct. The BGS has an "original" state - the factions who were in charge when the game launched - but unlike the trade simulation, this original state in the political BGS is not a "default" state that the game automatically moves everything back towards.
All changes to system ownership are caused by the collective behaviour of CMDRs in those systems, wither deliberate or accidental.
A good statistic to throw around at this point is how the galactic overview of the superpowers (though their superpower-aligned minor factions) have changed since the game launched. Although nearly half of the stations are no longer controlled by the original owning factions, these changes have not been random. The Alliance had grown by 150 percent. The Empire has shrunk slightly. The Federation has shrunk considerably. The number of Independent systems is also increasing.
Source data (now a year old). These three facts can be best explained by the following general observations:
- The Alliance tends to attract a higher percentage of "serious" BGS players, who know how to flip systems and who go about doing it in favour of Alliance factions in an organized and professional manner. The Alliance started out small so a large proportionate growth was not too hard to do, but by any measure, the massive increase in territory these player groups have caused is worth congratulating.
- The Empire tends to attract a large number of "Roleplayers" who wanna be in the Empire because it's cool, and their spaceships are cool, bro. So they'll actively support Imperials wherever they find them in power, especially in conflicts with the Federation, but there is less of the organized slog of BGS system-flipping than what we see happening in the Alliance. So growth is minimal. Meanwhile, Indie player groups pick away at systems on the Imperial fringe.
- The Federation has a much smaller group of player supporters, and a large number of newbies since newbie space is in Federation territory. Active, persistent support to flip the BGS in favour of Federation factions is therefore low, and the random actions of newbies has a considerable impact. As the other two superpowers and the Indies do have a more active BGS support base, the Federation will tend to lose ground to the other more organized superpowers.
- A majority of Player Factions are Independent-aligned, in the belief that this is the way to get the most inclusivity and support from prospective members. This is presumably a major contributor to the growth in the Independent factions, largely at the expense of the two main superpowers, since there is no in-game reason for people "just playing the game" to support the Indies, whereas supporting Superpower-aligned minor factions is what you need to do to get the superpower-only ranks and ships; "logically", the Indies should be shrinking, to the gain of all three superpowers, but this is the opposite of what we actually see happening.
- Colonia is entirely Indie space (no Superpowers allowed), so the dozens of new inhabited starsystems added to the game in Colonia and elsewhere in deep space have been wildly skewed in favour of the Indies; only a few Superpower-aligned systems have been added, in the Pleiades and California Nebula sectors.
