I quite understand that Frontier wants examples of where it goes wrong, so I would still encourage everyone to submit bug reports as requested, however...
People would be a lot more willing to do it (again and again):
- If previous ones weren't simply closed with "if you're still seeing this, log a new report" well after the actual conflict has ended, and
- If reports were private. For operational security and not warning people all over the forums what systems you're fighting in, how much effort you're putting in and by which CMDRs, I am reluctant to provide full details. I'd be happy to provide such details if we could report bugs on https://support.frontier.co.uk/topic.php, privately, rather than in a public subforum anyone can read. You can report possible exploits there, but bugs direct you to this forum.
What I have a bit more problems with, and unfortunately I've run into this with Frontier multiple times, is that they are entirely reactive in these things, and can't seem to figure out ways to find such instances themselves, yet are asking people for info they already have and in much greater detail.
Because here's what I would do, if I knew there were issues with conflicts, or trade, explo and mining to give inconsistent results. It's not hard. But we saw the same lack of pro-active action in issues around automated accounts, for instance.
Issues reported around conflicts giving effort to the wrong faction
- Run a query post-tick over the populated galaxy for systems where:
- factions are in conflict
- contributions were made by CMDRs
- the balance of the contributions for and against the conflict parties does not match/is reversed from the calculated result
- Analyze those systems why things went wrong
Explo gives inconsistent results
- Run a query post-tick over the populated galaxy for systems where:
- exploration data was sold
- faction owning the station is not in conflict
- no to next to no other activity
- the faction to whom exploration data was sold dropping in influence
- Analyze those systems why things went wrong
Since we don't know the intended behavior of the new BGS mechanics (necessarily) these may just be examples they can adjust. But this is not hard. It just requires the will to do so. Waiting for bug reports causes unnecessary delays (a CMDR needs to make the bug report, QA needs to see it, and pass it on. Dev needs to be assigned and pick it up from the queue. Which may well be after the conflict has already ended) and asks for things Frontier already has the data for.
And don't get me wrong. Every interaction with Frontier developers, support and QA tells me these are passionate people who care about what they do. But organizational structures and management decisions dictate these people's priorities, even if they are concerned about issues and would love to help, if the issue was prioritized internally. You can't expect devs and QA folks to work on these things in their spare time... So my criticism is not to them. It's with a failure of management to demand pro-active investigation and genuine engagement with the community beyond Triple E.
I myself have been able to get a lot of information out of public data sources like EDDB and EDDN. I could only imagine what I or Frontier could get from
their data. It's not even hard technically. It just requires the will to invest the time into. That's a management decision.