Conflict observations.
From the day/tick when a pair of factions match their INF their INF are then locked.
The next tick is standstill, pending CW/War/Election. Does anyone know if usual INF efforts work in this pending window, or best to wait for the conflict to begin?
Second tick after INF match the conflict starts and will complete the final tick eight days later. Thus, a conflict that matches INF on today's 27-Dec (Thursday) tick, will go live on Saturday 29-Dec's tick, will have its final conflict tick on Saturday 05-Jan, and be showing clear again Sunday 06-Jan.
Of conflicts I've seen completed in systems I watch:
CW/War - 6 completed - five of which ended +4% (winner) and -4% (loser) but one went +2%/-2%
Elections - 6 completed - four of which ended +4%/-4%, one ended +2%/-2%, and one finished +3.6% / -4.3%
On that latter one, two other factions matched INF the day the election cleared, and I wonder if in order to help achieve the matched INF, the outcome of the Election (perhaps expected to be +4%/-4%) got some adjustment.
There are some slight INF adjustments during the eight days of conflict, but typically I've assumed to be roundings (and always downward) by 10 basis points (0.1%) and sometimes two steps down. I've seen tied INF at 12.1% for an election drop to 12.0% on election day two, and then 11.9% on day four.
In other news, it's possible to be both in Boom and Expansion states at the same time (and by that, I mean the system being expanded from, not all other systems that also seemingly get tagged as 'expansion').
Investment seems to simply be the stage beyond Boom; i.e. a 'very good' boom or uptick in that system. Investment doesn't seem to link to or be triggered by Expansion states.
I've got a six faction system where all are paired up in conflicts, so no INF movement at all.
Hypothesis : Where a system has factions locked in INF for conflict, that removes some of the dampening/deadening of INF moves for non-conflicted systems. Take a system with six factions and no conflict. A boost to a faction would ordinarily shave fractions off the other five. If four factions are locked in conflict, then a boost to the same single faction can only come from one source - i.e. an equal reduction in INF of the only other non-conflicted faction.