Expansion & Retreat in 3.3 ??

[Qglfang]

Greetings everyone!

Me and my playergroup were/are wondering, how expansions/retreats are triggered now as 3.3 is active. It also surprised us, that no-one else had these questions here... ;-)


From what we saw on the the live-stream a couple of weeks ago, we understood it to be a combination of a certain INF-lvl and that the faction will expand from the system they are happiest in.

Especially the aspect of INF-lvl is what we are having the most problems with.

- Does the INF-lvl still have any meaning at all when it comes to expansion? (like before: "get over 75%")

- If yes, does it have to be at a certain minimum lvl in the system you want to expand from (combo: Inf-lvl + being happy)? And if so, does anybody know already what it is?

- Or is it maybe something like an overall average INF-Lvl throughout all the systems the faction is present in, serving as a condition that has to be met besides happiness?

In general, the same questions certainly come up thinking of how to trigger retreats these days. Bring them down and keep below 2.5% and make them unhappy?


So in short: Does anybody know for sure already how these states are triggered now?


Looking forward to the discussion i´m about to break loose ;-)

Qglfang

 

[Dommarraa]

Expansions still haven't had time to process since the update, so there is no data.
Fd say you need some general faction wide level to expand, then you will expand from your happiest system. Unfortunatly, there is no way to tell happiest (squad page says something, but that is wrong), and during the beta, things seemed to work exactly like they used to, so all fd information may be total horse dung.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Retreat is one tick of <2.5% INF to trigger a pending state.

 

[glojo]

Retreat is one tick of <2.5% INF to trigger a pending state.

It would be fair comment if I say 'retreat' is bugged!

Note, I did not say broken, it is simply bugged.

i HATE it when I read thread after thread of folks whinging, claiming something is 'bugged' or 'broken' and then fail to back-up this criticism. Are they really saying I can't figure out how to play this game so it is bugged or broken?

'Retreat' is bugged for the very simple and obvious reason that as far as Frontier are concerned, we CANNOT get booted out of our home system. Just think for one milli-second the ramifications of what I am saying.

if we get booted out of our home system then what about all the parts we might have stored, what about ships we are not using?

When the game first offered private groups, we were given a system and was it 70% influence or 80%? Old age has blurred my memory but we were given that system and simply told to 'get on with it' but a few ground rules were implemented, one of which stated we could not get booted out of our home, or first system.

Right, so to corroborate my claim for this issue being bugged... we are coming across several factions showing 'In retreat' when in their Home system. This should Not happen.

It will be interesting to read the comments of folks that have got a faction to retreat and hopefully they will show us their progress bar.

My own personal experience prior to this update is that it was quite a challenge booting out a faction from a system we wanted to move into. Dropping below a certain percentage was the trigger but my experience was the very instant the progress arrow turned from RED to bLUE, that killed expansion even if the retreating faction was still under 2%

I do hope this has changed

 

[Dommarraa]

Our 1st expansion (triggered in 3.2) is now over. We didnt expand anywhere, which matches the system mentioned in station news. Not happiest at the moment.
Its not a 3.3 expansion, so not definitive.

 

[Rubbernuke]

It would be fair comment if I say 'retreat' is bugged!

Note, I did not say broken, it is simply bugged.

i HATE it when I read thread after thread of folks whinging, claiming something is 'bugged' or 'broken' and then fail to back-up this criticism. Are they really saying I can't figure out how to play this game so it is bugged or broken?

'Retreat' is bugged for the very simple and obvious reason that as far as Frontier are concerned, we CANNOT get booted out of our home system. Just think for one milli-second the ramifications of what I am saying.

if we get booted out of our home system then what about all the parts we might have stored, what about ships we are not using?

When the game first offered private groups, we were given a system and was it 70% influence or 80%? Old age has blurred my memory but we were given that system and simply told to 'get on with it' but a few ground rules were implemented, one of which stated we could not get booted out of our home, or first system.

Right, so to corroborate my claim for this issue being bugged... we are coming across several factions showing 'In retreat' when in their Home system. This should Not happen.

It will be interesting to read the comments of folks that have got a faction to retreat and hopefully they will show us their progress bar.

My own personal experience prior to this update is that it was quite a challenge booting out a faction from a system we wanted to move into. Dropping below a certain percentage was the trigger but my experience was the very instant the progress arrow turned from RED to bLUE, that killed expansion even if the retreating faction was still under 2%

I do hope this has changed

Unless FD have reverted the BGS behaviour, home systems for PMF backed factions can't retreat and should be considered a bug. Back long ago it was possible for factions to be booted out of their home system if there was one other system with them in- maybe FD have elected for this again?

 

[lollo1572]

Thank you for opening this thread!!!! Sooner or later me and my Mates will have to deal with expa and retreat again in 3.3!!!! [big grin]
Now.... we are "testing" conflicts with all their bugs.....!!!! Not ended yet.

 

[Villeruff]

I do hope this has changed

Your ships and modules have nothing to do with your faction. If your faction retreats from its home system (which should be impossible if things are working correctly, no faction can leave its home system unless Fdev changed the rules in 3.3) then your ships and modules will stay where they are. Are you seeing these retreating-from-home factions on the system map, or EDDB? Could you give a system as an example?

Retreat and expansion are also not related. You do not have to make a faction retreat to expand into a system, with the exception that a system with 7-8 factions is very unlikely to be expanded into. Systems like this tend not to keep their 8 factions, one will usually retreat fairly quickly without intervention. Retreats, as Rubbernuke said, begin at less than 2.5%. If the retreating faction is above 5.0% on the fourth or fifth day, retreat is prevented. If a faction is expanding but can't find a good spot within 20ly, it'll invest and go out to 40ly. Once an expansion goes pending it continues even if it falls below the 75% threshold.

This all comes with the condition that FDev haven't changed the rules in 3.3. Hasn't been long enough to be certain.

 

[Qglfang]

It would be fair comment if I say 'retreat' is bugged!

Note, I did not say broken, it is simply bugged.

i HATE it when I read thread after thread of folks whinging, claiming something is 'bugged' or 'broken' and then fail to back-up this criticism. Are they really saying I can't figure out how to play this game so it is bugged or broken?

'Retreat' is bugged for the very simple and obvious reason that as far as Frontier are concerned, we CANNOT get booted out of our home system. Just think for one milli-second the ramifications of what I am saying.

if we get booted out of our home system then what about all the parts we might have stored, what about ships we are not using?

When the game first offered private groups, we were given a system and was it 70% influence or 80%? Old age has blurred my memory but we were given that system and simply told to 'get on with it' but a few ground rules were implemented, one of which stated we could not get booted out of our home, or first system.

Right, so to corroborate my claim for this issue being bugged... we are coming across several factions showing 'In retreat' when in their Home system. This should Not happen.

It will be interesting to read the comments of folks that have got a faction to retreat and hopefully they will show us their progress bar.

My own personal experience prior to this update is that it was quite a challenge booting out a faction from a system we wanted to move into. Dropping below a certain percentage was the trigger but my experience was the very instant the progress arrow turned from RED to bLUE, that killed expansion even if the retreating faction was still under 2%

I do hope this has changed

I don´t get your point here at all...

I was asking some very specific questions in hope of getting answers in case someone knows something about the new mechanics....instead you are just barbling stuff that somtimes just contains the words "faction" and "retreat"....but has NOTHING to do with what this thread is about in the first place.....

 

[Monoceros]

We just expanded, we were pending before the update so that may have screwed things but our happiest system and the system the faction summay said we were expanding from were different. As it turned out our expansion followed the old rules and went from the system that triggered the expansion not the system listed as happiest.

maybe this was a hang over from pre 3.3, guess will see when the next expansion triggers

 

[glojo]

I don´t get your point here at all...

I was asking some very specific questions in hope of getting answers in case someone knows something about the new mechanics....instead you are just barbling stuff that somtimes just contains the words "faction" and "retreat"....but has NOTHING to do with what this thread is about in the first place.....

Hopefully I was not rude with anyone, nor would I ever get personal and if we are confusing each other, could you please explain what ""barbling"" means as that sadly has got me confused. Have I been insulted or praised???

But getting back on topic.....

We are talking about a 'faction' (or minor faction which takes longer to type) that goes into a state, be that retreat, war, election, starvation or any other state we can think of but we are talking about 'Retreat'.


At the moment it is possibly impossible to explain about these states as the game has not been running long enough to make any informed type of calculation.

To pass on any experiences we have however is in my opinion relevant.

I note that a member states they have made a faction retreat out of its home system.

I am certainly not in a position to disbelief this but I would love to see corroboration?? I tend to educate myself by experiences, be that good, bad, right or wrong and my statement is based on a faction we have that is in its home system and since NOVEMBER 29th until 21st DECEMBER it was on just 1% Yes that is ONE percent and it is still going 'strong' For the last few years we have owned 19 systems and have a presence in 24. This tends to rank up the experiences that I learn from, plus then I also have some very good friends that help me when I pester them with questions.

My personal thoughts are that 'retreat' in this update is bugged but no one and I mean no one has so far claimed they have forced a faction to retreat?? Plus we might well now be able to boot a faction from its Home System

If the 'rules of retreat' are similar to prior to the update and they actually work, then we have to keep the arrow that shows influence in the red?? Keeping the percentage below 2.5% is easy keeping that pesky arrow red was NOT so easy and if that is what is now required, then hoorah from me

EDIT
We now have a faction in one of our systems that has gone into a state of RETREAT and they are on 7.3%. This is NOT their home system but we do have factions on a lower percentage of influence in this same system but they are indeed in their home system. There was me assuming that 2 or 2.5% was simply a new mandatory trigger in this update for flagging this particular type of state

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Expansion wise we went pending on release day and we're still in expansion now. Am wondering when it will end....

 

[Jane Turner]

We've had 5 expansions so far (all behaving as in 3.2). Onr of those has retriggered. Its too soon to have data I think. Retreats were not triggering initially, but I can see no difference between 3.3 and 3.2, save for the inability to manipiulate the timings of them now

 

[glojo]

Your ships and modules have nothing to do with your faction. If your faction retreats from its home system (which should be impossible if things are working correctly, no faction can leave its home system unless Fdev changed the rules in 3.3) then your ships and modules will stay where they are. Are you seeing these retreating-from-home factions on the system map, or EDDB? Could you give a system as an example?

Retreat and expansion are also not related. You do not have to make a faction retreat to expand into a system, with the exception that a system with 7-8 factions is very unlikely to be expanded into. Systems like this tend not to keep their 8 factions, one will usually retreat fairly quickly without intervention. Retreats, as Rubbernuke said, begin at less than 2.5%. If the retreating faction is above 5.0% on the fourth or fifth day, retreat is prevented. If a faction is expanding but can't find a good spot within 20ly, it'll invest and go out to 40ly. Once an expansion goes pending it continues even if it falls below the 75% threshold.

This all comes with the condition that FDev haven't changed the rules in 3.3. Hasn't been long enough to be certain.

When we quote a post, it would be nice if the quote is not taken out of context.

You talk about ships and modules having nothing to do with your faction!!! Isn't that stating the obvious? We all buy the game and get given a ship or for some of us we were given two ships. We can play Elite for ever and a day without ever joining a faction. We can join factions, leave them without this having any effect on the ships or parts we buy and yes, I am now guilty of stating the obvious.

Retreats most definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt do NOT always begin at 2.5% or less. It is wise to state that 'In my experience x or y happens' When we make a blanket, all inclusive statements we must surely be sure of our facts. Likewise before this upgrade and I am speaking from personal experience.

If we are correct in now saying that each system is independent of any other system, we have one faction that has just gone I think into 'Retreat' at 7.3% and whilst that figure is slightly high, I have had personal experience of booting out a faction that was at 5%. Getting the faction to successfully retreat was for me, all about keeping that influence arrow coloured red. If it turned blue, even at 1%, it will most definitely NOT retreat.

Folks were always complaining about retreat being bugged but their complaint had more to do with a basic lack of knowledge regarding manipulating influence or keeping that pesky arrow the right colour.

Well said regarding retreating from home system and I agree with what you are saying. In my experience, we have never, never, ever seen any faction get booted from its home system.

We own 24 systems so we are now frequently seeing factions based in their home system showing 'Retreat', but instead of asking me to do your research might I suggest you do this as it is easy to do? (just use your filters)

For the last couple of years we have been desperately avoiding going into expansion as we do not want anymore systems and yup, I agree, once we go into an expansion, in my experience it always came to a conclusion. BUT.... You can manipulate a failure or should I say we could manipulate a failure because we are now in unknown territory, likewise, we could end a 'Pending' expansion and this is where it is handy owning a largish number of systems. It makes that option slightly easier to manipulate

In my experience, some systems do actually retain 8 or even NINE factions and yes they do stay with that number but in fairness to Villeruff, I have only seen one system with nine factions and I will check to see how long that has been the case.

Just had a very quick check and that system with nine factions had them at the beginning of August and probably way before that time.

EXPANSION
I would love to know the working of this version of expansion.

Where do we expand from?

What is really the criteria?

How is expansion affected by influence?

Can we still 'Fail' expansion?

Can we still fail 'Pending' expansion

Thinking whilst I am typing, I wonder if there is a maximum distance we can expand from one system? I have no idea and the question just popped into my head.

apologies to everyone when I waffle way too much but I am stuck in bed playing this game (All 57 weeks 3 days and 10hrs) and I guess my brain sometimes works overtime.

Before this update it was way, way too easy to stop a retreat and yes stopping it was easy with even keeping the influence at 1% or to be exact, I think the lowest I had was 1.5%.


Thanks Arkim do you have any other systems where you are in a Happier state please?

What about Economic and Security states? Sorry to be a pest but I am curious regarding this as we were told we expand from our 'Happiest' system and do you think this was your case or is this the highest state of Influence you have?


Just checked that system and yup after months of having nine factions, (I went back to the end of July) they are still all there and none are in retreat.

 

[Arikm Taylor]

We have an expansion pending state in one of our systems. It began two days ago and we were with 76% influence and Happy state.

 

[Villeruff]

When we quote a post, it would be nice if the quote is not taken out of context.

You talk about ships and modules having nothing to do with your faction!!! Isn't that stating the obvious? We all buy the game and get given a ship or for some of us we were given two ships. We can play Elite for ever and a day without ever joining a faction. We can join factions, leave them without this having any effect on the ships or parts we buy and yes, I am now guilty of stating the obvious.

Retreats most definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt do NOT always begin at 2.5% or less. It is wise to state that 'In my experience x or y happens' When we make a blanket, all inclusive statements we must surely be sure of our facts. Likewise before this upgrade and I am speaking from personal experience.

If we are correct in now saying that each system is independent of any other system, we have one faction that has just gone I think into 'Retreat' at 7.3% and whilst that figure is slightly high, I have had personal experience of booting out a faction that was at 5%. Getting the faction to successfully retreat was for me, all about keeping that influence arrow coloured red. If it turned blue, even at 1%, it will most definitely NOT retreat.

Folks were always complaining about retreat being bugged but their complaint had more to do with a basic lack of knowledge regarding manipulating influence or keeping that pesky arrow the right colour.

Well said regarding retreating from home system and I agree with what you are saying. In my experience, we have never, never, ever seen any faction get booted from its home system.

We own 24 systems so we are now frequently seeing factions based in their home system showing 'Retreat', but instead of asking me to do your research might I suggest you do this as it is easy to do? (just use your filters)

For the last couple of years we have been desperately avoiding going into expansion as we do not want anymore systems and yup, I agree, once we go into an expansion, in my experience it always came to a conclusion. BUT.... You can manipulate a failure or should I say we could manipulate a failure because we are now in unknown territory, likewise, we could end a 'Pending' expansion and this is where it is handy owning a largish number of systems. It makes that option slightly easier to manipulate

In my experience, some systems do actually retain 8 or even NINE factions and yes they do stay with that number but in fairness to Villeruff, I have only seen one system with nine factions and I will check to see how long that has been the case.

Just had a very quick check and that system with nine factions had them at the beginning of August and probably way before that time.

EXPANSION
I would love to know the working of this version of expansion.

Where do we expand from?

What is really the criteria?

How is expansion affected by influence?

Can we still 'Fail' expansion?

Can we still fail 'Pending' expansion

Thinking whilst I am typing, I wonder if there is a maximum distance we can expand from one system? I have no idea and the question just popped into my head.

apologies to everyone when I waffle way too much but I am stuck in bed playing this game (All 57 weeks 3 days and 10hrs) and I guess my brain sometimes works overtime.

Before this update it was way, way too easy to stop a retreat and yes stopping it was easy with even keeping the influence at 1% or to be exact, I think the lowest I had was 1.5%.


Thanks Arkim do you have any other systems where you are in a Happier state please?

What about Economic and Security states? Sorry to be a pest but I am curious regarding this as we were told we expand from our 'Happiest' system and do you think this was your case or is this the highest state of Influence you have?


Just checked that system and yup after months of having nine factions, (I went back to the end of July) they are still all there and none are in retreat.

Perhaps I misinterpreted you. What did you mean when you said "if we get booted out of our home system then what about all the parts we might have stored, what about ships we are not using?" That is what I was addressing.

I figured you were from the Coffin Dodgers, since you posted a bug report about Calanggubal. There are no factions retreating from home anywhere near there that I can see, so, can you please provide an example?

Regarding the 7.3% retreating faction, it is HIP 15357 Empire League, correct? They were at 1% with no state on the 22nd when the servers ticked, setting off the retreat on the 23rd, exactly as is expected. No bugs, no unexpected behaviour. Edit 2 for wording: They were at 1% for days earlier, giving plenty of time for the faction to pend retreat.

Edit: As for taking things out of context, regarding systems with lots of factions, I said 'tend not to', 'usually', and 'without intervention'.

 

[Villeruff]

Glojo, I just realised, you mentioned the coloured arrows a few times. They are largely meaningless. The BGS states rely on cumulative actions taken before the daily tick. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/400292-When-and-what-is-the-tick . Coordinate your work around that, and you will find your results much more predictable.

 

[Havocery]

Hello

Our system Coman is on our work to expansion, ok. After while there was new state triggered retreat Purics Imperial Society around influence 7 %. Still we have same time Coman Interstellar around 1.8 inf % with no retreat. So we have expansio and maybe effect the retreat,, with new values I havent seen before

Mystery are there ways of BGS , me say

 

[Villeruff]

According to Inara's data, Purics Imperial Society has been sitting below 2.5% for several days. It went into retreat on the 23rd on 1.1%. It will be easier for it to bounce back as the Light Wheel's influence falls again. Expansion isn't directly tied to retreat, however with the Light Wheel's influence being so high, there is little influence left for other factions, making it easier for Purics Imperial Society to hit the retreat threshold of 2.5%.

Factions cannot retreat from their home system under any circumstances, so you won't have to worry about Coman Interstellar leaving. Hope this helps.

Edit: If you click on the faction names under the graph, you can make some disappear to get a clearer picture.

https://inara.cz/galaxy-starsystem/16619/

 

[glojo]

Glojo, I just realised, you mentioned the coloured arrows a few times. They are largely meaningless. The BGS states rely on cumulative actions taken before the daily tick. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/400292-When-and-what-is-the-tick . Coordinate your work around that, and you will find your results much more predictable.

Rats all my typing just disappeared. Firstly many apologies Villeruff if I appear to be waffling, unfortunately medication is playing havoc with the old grey matter. Your link abouutthe tick is great news IF... it remains at that time. Thank you very much for that information.

Red arrow.
Hopefully I have always made it clear that this indicator was something I always took note of prior to this update.

When checking a faction on our right-hand MFd this little arrow showed if influence had been added in the last 24hrs. If this arrow was red then the influence of that faction was in decline, it might not drop a percent, and I guess this was more likely on larger populated systems but I watched this arrow like a hawk if I was working on booting out a faction from a system I was interested in. If this arrow went blue?? (not 100% certain of that colour) then I KNEW with 100% accuracy that the system I was interested in would NOT retreat. If I could keep it red, then that faction would retreat. I say this based only on my experience. Thinking back I have personally shifted about half a dozen factions out of a system I had an interest in. YES, there were times when it needed two or maybe three attempts to boot a faction, but it always worked in the way I have described. The level of influence was really academic. Once in retreat, no matter what its percentage, I had to keep that influence from improving, and without a shadow of a doubt even if the retreat stayed at 1.5%, if that arrow on just one 24hr period turned blue, then the retreat was never going to be achieved. I have NO IDEA if that arrow is still operational or if the same experience will work.

BAD NEWS for me.... The format regarding systems on the right panel has changed. The arrow or I guess it might be better described as a pointer has now gone. My excellent 'snitch' has gone

Now an annoying experience.
You asked me a question so I just set about getting you an answer.

On EDDB, in ANYAYAR it showed Etznabi Freedom party to be in retreat and on 5.2% influence.

I have just flown to that system and obviously as soon as I entered that location, the information update. Using INARA, it correctly shows Etznabi as being on 5.2% but in a state of 'NONE' furthermore, in its history I cannot see it being in a state of RETREAT

Okay we can all blame me for getting it wrong. I certainly did not but that is by the by.

Note I said EDDB showed that yesterday it was in a state of RETREAT. Now today in EDDB after it had updated, it now shows COFFIN DODGERS on 43.6% in a state of WAR, with who??

I am guessing I am the ship that has caused this update as I have EDmarket thingie active. We are all told that each system is now an independent system so yes, Coffin Dodgers are at war in a number of systems but a war in ANYAYAR?? But here we have what I have seen. I hope EDDB is wrong but it should NOT being giving out false or inaccurate information??

Your last point asking me to show you a faction that is in retreat from its Home System, I cannot as the faction I had seen in this state can no longer be found.

However, bottom line is you are kindly confirming exactly what I keep saying.

In my experience, I have never seen nor heard of this happening, plus when Minor Factions were released I am sure I read it somewhere and zack rings a bell as being the author who confirmed that no faction could be booted from its Home System.

If an example crops up, I will try to remember to let you know.

Reason for edit is to correct my comment about the time of the tick plus with any luck I have corrected a lot of typing errors

Merry Christmas everyone

John