Faction Retreat State

[cmdr milesred]

Is there another or more threads on this topic?
I have not seen any new reference from frontier on retreat yet, just lots of people saying its not working.

The old BGS retreat was 5 days below 2.5% and then retreat happened

Less than a year ago, I had this happen on purpose in a system, so it still seemed fine.

Now, in recent weeks, I had 1 day pending retreat, then 6 days retreat and on the 7th day the faction was still there and now also slightly above 2.5%

So I asked support about it.
And ofc they treat me like I don't know the difference between a day and a tick...

Then they also tell me that it has to be 5 full ticks.

Which this was actually and a bit more
So by their definition, the start of the tick, say 1%, to the end of that tick which is actually the next tick is also 1%. that's great, but this is 2 ticks that they count as tick to tick.
interesting English to say the least
the jist here is after 5 full days or 5 full ticks below 2.5%
the 6th tick comes and hey..still below 2.5%
problem now arises because even though that is the start and the end of 5 ticks it is also the start of the 6th tick= end of 5th tick
so now on the start of the 6th tick, still below 2.5%, this has to go from tick to tick, so next is end of 6th tick or start of 7th tick, they are now above 2.5%, retreat fails.


Here is the record as I explained to frontier
14th = pending = below 2.5%

15th = retreat = below 2.5%

16th = retreat = below 2.5%

17th = retreat = below 2.5%

18th = retreat = below 2.5%

19th = retreat = below 2.5%

20th = retreat = below 2.5%

21st= now above 2.5% = failed retreat


I am still waiting to hear from them again but as I said to them and maybe someone can show me why I can't see this correctly, because I see here 6 days=6ticks or retreat, but they don't.
And what this really means is that according to this tick to tick, its going to take 7 days instead of 5 days for a retreat to work.

Before anyone gets too exited, I have been playing the BGS since 2014 and have never yet had any problems till this.
I know what the tick is, and I use Excel to track everything I do in my systems and I also wrote a program that reads from the logs and inserts system info into this excel.
And because fdev seems to think I am not smart enough to add info correctly per tick, I can only say that my excel is updated by me running a macro at the end of each day that I play roughly an hour before the daily tick, this macro then adds a new day to each sheet in excel. Now even if I didn't do this, I am no dummy and there are markers in each excel sheet for various things, one of these things is a comment that says Yes or No, this is for my program so it can easily tell if a sheet has been updated today or No, it has not been updated today.
Once the sheet gets updated by my program it changes it from No to Yes, so that there is never any accidental updating of a sheet that has already been updated.

All that fun aside, I mostly would like to hear from others that are or have also experienced some bothersome things with the retreat state.
Other problems states are fine too as I read many peoples complaints about various states.

Mostly though, if someone has some insight to retreat and if something was published or in a video that I missed, I would like pointers to that.
I have every document I was ever able to find regarding BGS and have made many of my own, including most recent screenshots from the most recent video fdev made talking about the BGS.

Thanks.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The tick on the September release day (18th) didn't seem to correctly update states, and I think the tick on the 19th was also a bit shaky on that, so your retreat was probably a day or two behind where it "should" have been, and the "7th" day which failed it was therefore actually only the 5th.

Bad luck there with the bugs - but hopefully shouldn't happen again if you retry.

 

[cmdr milesred]

well aware of the tick on that date, I went so far as to post in 3 different threads that the tick that day was a partial tick and that inf changed but states that should have changed or could have changed did not.
Then when the powerplay maintenance shutdown was over the rest of the tick appeared to be completed and states were then changed where they were expected
and I did manually update the stated change to various systems of mine in excel.
That said, I monitor all system I fly into, my program displays Allegiance, INF, Rep, States, pending and active, populations, security.

Either way, that was prior to the end retreat day of the 20th. and no day was subtracted nor was a day magically added.
What I can add to that and to this thread is that we all know there are bugs in the BGS, I am well aware of many of them.
In the case of this update, even though it took place during this retreat, it did also add an incredible amount of bugs, I don't think that the retreat was affected in any way.
I simply reported this as a ticket, because the actual retreat going from day 1 to day 6 was 1 day more than fdev says its supposed to be, so I asked them.
Now they tell me that I can't count and that its 5 days from start tick to end tick.
Well this retreat was 6 days from tick start to end, sadly they seem to be defining a start tick as an end tick which makes no sense unless you want to say that a tick for any given day is defined by what the inf is the moment the tick happens, till the moment the next tick has also completed.
I don't know about you, but most of us consider that as 2 ticks, but just have yet to do anything yet after the second tick which they are defining as the end of the first tick.
so no matter how they are defining this, this retreat lasted for 6 24 hour periods after the pending day
not 5 x24 or 7x24 but actual 6x24, so at the end of the 6th tick where they went over 2.5%, somehow magically in fdev's eyes, that's the end of the 6th tick, yet they are still only counting it as 5 days and sadly 5 days is all that's required till now.

I imagine you know me from many of my posts regarding BGS and if so I would like to think you do know that I know what I am talking about.
I will add that I have put many factions into retreat and I also not only know the tick, but I know how to count and count well enough to also apply enough logic and programming skills to a complex Excel spreadsheet and to create a program that manages that excel workbook using the info that it used to take from screenshots but now just uses the logs.
It is a very detailed program and covers absolutely everything I do in the game, exploration, trade, engineering, missions, bounties, bonds, numerous alarms and reminders for time of day, time of tick, time of powerplay and my merits, criminal activity and so much more.
And any of these things that are related to BGS are formatted in specific ways to make them nicer to view and inserted in various ways into the excels various systems sheets for the various factions they are regarding.
FWIW I have been well above expert level in excel for more than 30 years and have been writing/creating databases/programs since 1976 using multiple programming languages. That said, I am not weak in math in any way.

The jist here is I am no slouch at any of this and I believe fdev to be wrong. The way they are trying to tell me to count the ticks for this means that a retreat would take 7 full days equaling 8 ticks, this is a crock it should be 5 full days equaling(as per their method) 6 ticks, And this system met that criteria plus 1 day, plus 1 tick

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Oh, yes, FDev are certainly wrong on that - 6 days of active, with the end of the 5th day being the one that counts, is certainly how Retreat works every other time.

 

[cmdr milesred]

except this time....

Rather than my rant, I should just have said as was indicated earlier, their inf did not go above 2.5 until day 7..

Also, created this post in hopes that someone at fdev will see it and investigate it properly
Because I am quite tired of the poor responses I have gotten in the last year from support by creating tickets.

They popped another pmf in the middle of my bubble into my largest system and this was November 2018, I have been fighting them ever since because of this idiotic planning and because my systems surround them.
This particular system has been ongoing conflicts for 10 months and it should have ended from this retreat.

 

[FrogsFriend]

If I'm reading this right, the missing state update on the 18th would give you something like this (Tick times are approximate for illustration). The crucial point is that at the end of the 5th day of retreat the Influence has gone above 2.5%

Date	Influence at start of Day	State	Start of Day	End of Day
14th	<2.5%	Pending	14 - 19:00	15 - 19:00
15th	<2.5%	Retreat 1	15 - 19:00	16 - 19:00
16th	<2.5%	Retreat 2	16 - 19:00	17 - 19:00
17th	<2.5%	Retreat 3	17 - 19:00	???
18th Update Day	<2.5%	Retreat 3 still - states don't update	???	19 - 12:00
19th	<2.5%	Retreat 4	19 - 12:00	20 - 12:00
20th	<2.5%	Retreat 5	20 - 12:00	21 - 12:00
21st	>2.5%	Failed	21 - 12:00

 

[cmdr milesred]

you could look at it that way
But neither fdev nor I see it as such, as far as they are concerned as well as me, there was not a day of no updating INF and in this case there is very clear INF and states change. For this specific system the other factions had very clear inf changes for each day and of the 37 systems I operate in it is also very clear that everything was working properly as always.
As previously mentioned, it was simply partially delayed on that day. the tick did occur so there was no hiccup where a day appears to have been put off or not counted.
Their records show it the same as mine, for some reason they are just counting it differently.

 

[cmdr milesred]

fwiw, what you indicate is a failed tick aka a day missed, a 6 day week.
I imagine many may actually have experienced it as such.
And for it to be true fdev would need to acknowledge that this is in fact what happened and then either fix or forget it and move on.

A poor analogy would be Some people say Wednesday did not happen, I say it did and on that day I was robbed, fdev says it did happen and no-one got robbed.
Not even an analogy, but a reality.

So lets put on our peril sensitive shades and look ahead

 

[FrogsFriend]

So lets put on our peril sensitive shades and look ahead

No way to roll back the galaxy now... so write off the dodgy mystery update day and onwards we go

 

[cmdr milesred]

Likely
And for the second time a god hand works in favor of this particular Invading faction against me. Allowing a 10 month long pointless battle to continue.