Say goodbye to Anarchies

[scamtank]

Add to that the game seems to draw "random cannon fodder pirate encounter!" from the anarchy pool, regardless of mission or BGS context.

To add: I have had one (1) witnessed instance of rando criminals interfering a power-up operation being unlabeled "pirate" soldiers.

All retrieval/salvage operations to a downed satellites have been local Anarchy fools, every last one. Each 5-minute round trip down to a surface and back, 6-14 dead ships' worth of political damage done with two missiles. Multiply this by how many hundreds of players doing how many dozens of easy milk runs? Just look at the Inara graphs for Xihe and see.

 

[Fake Newts]

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/35479 posted another issue and linked this thread. I cannot overstate how demoralising this is for people who've loyally supported the BGS since launch, and how bad this will be long-term for variety in-game. If they don't do something very soon it will already be too late.

As people have mentioned previously Anarchies have always been one of the hardest factions to push, and we were honestly OK with this - we had our "shield" against bounties once in control and enjoyed the challenge of creating lawless space, but what's happening currently is not a challenge, it's impossible to defend against, terrible balancing and will result in a bubble-wide extinction of anarchies in extremely short order.

 

[Obi Wan Naboo]

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/35479 posted another issue and linked this thread. I cannot overstate how demoralising this is for people who've loyally supported the BGS since launch, and how bad this will be long-term for variety in-game. If they don't do something very soon it will already be too late.

As people have mentioned previously Anarchies have always been one of the hardest factions to push, and we were honestly OK with this - we had our "shield" against bounties once in control and enjoyed the challenge of creating lawless space, but what's happening currently is not a challenge, it's impossible to defend against, terrible balancing and will result in a bubble-wide extinction of anarchies in extremely short order.

Thanks for that. I've edited the original post to include a link to the issue.

 

[scamtank]

What I think has partially driven the collapse has been the controller-favoring divvy of all the new settlements getting plonked down.

Considering how harmful it is to influence to control an OD surface settlement, can you imagine what happens when the mission generator suddenly finds the faction suddenly has 20 new backs to stab?

 

[Fake Newts]

Owning settlements, particularly as an anarchy, seems extremely bad yes. We've dropped hardest in systems where we'd previously been highest, possibly due to how settlments were doled out per INF.

Could also just be transaction spam rearing its ugly head again now that every system is providing bounties by the thousands regardless of security.

Whatever it is, as I said before, I genuinely think this warrants freezing the BGS until Frontier are able to address it. Clearly most casual players are going to be more bothered by textures not loading properly, or the mission board bugging out and I understand they'd want to work on that first, but we're looking at extremely unfair and irrevocable damage in the meantime.

 

[Kissamies]

What can be done if we can done anything?

I think in general, not just with anarchies, the settlement actions shouldn't affect inf, just cause states or terminate them. You know, infrastructure failure, terrorist attack and so on.

For anarchies, I think they need some unique mechanics to raise their inf. One thing from the top of my head would be the black market. Not only the owner of the station (if not anarchy of course) should lose inf when it's used, the lost inf should be directly transferred to the anarchy faction(s) in the system, if any.

 

[Q GT70]

dunno what to say there other than I do not touch OD for many reasons, what you are saying is only a part of it.
I only talk about horizons and how it works now, even today. not just last week and before.
I do find it odd that my systems which are actually under heavy attack are not showing those same signs.
and even though it is destroying horizons every second they are together, the fixes for damage being done using Horizons, do work
For those that did get and use advice from me, they will see changes tomorrow.
So for that, I at least did help 2 groups by sharing information they were not aware of.

its no surprise the interesting stuff in that bug report. its actually the way fdev made it a few years back when they were trying to tell us the massacre missions were working as intended, in a thread started by me and filled with proof by hundreds of us that it was not
and the first fix brought in criminals for bounties from 2-3-400 LY away.
that in my opinion is what we get for fdev using templates instead of actual data for some of their 'fixes'
and that means that almost every release of something always has previously fixed bugs in them fully alive and causing trouble again.. always.
history repeats itself again.

 

[Q GT70]

I need to say too, that I have been collecting the bounties for my anarchy faction for several years this way.
so even though there may be some sort of leak or whatever in OD causing what was described, that is not what is happening with what I do.
All the factions I am killing criminal from are local, and most of the time it is the faction I am working for, own criminals. They are all local anarchy factions and all usually have multiple bounties on them

 

[soloe]

I do understand, and is why I am trying to tell you the method I have been using does work and it does not hurt the faction
there is a difference between the stolen good from piracy in tiny amounts vs 6,700 tons of silver from a mission
more importantly bm is a market
don't sell them stuff they don't want, no faction wants this.
if you want control of a station and its factions you do better if you know their market
the market shows you what they normally will buy or sell
there is another part of that market you do not see
to see it, go get 1 of every item you know of that is not on the buy or sell list of that market
now when u look into the market you will see not just the usual, but maybe a surprise or 2.
this is the key to finding what items to NOT sell to a station because it will hurt them.
or my fav, the inverse, I now know exactly what to sell to them to tank them.
also know there are several items that are toxic to varying degrees and if used lead toward various bad states like outbreak and famine.
an example many are aware of is biowaste, agriculture stations want/need this. it makes all other station move toward outbreak.
and it can be used as negative trade too, so that is a 2 for 1.
these have the opposite affect if sold wrong. as in don't sell this stuff to a bm unless you can see in their market that they want it

I really didn't mean to offend. I appreciate that you want to help, but I know all about the stuff that you posted. Good info regardless. However, I claim that you're wrong about the black markets. Demand is irrelevant to them.

 

[Fake Newts]

For anarchies, I think they need some unique mechanics to raise their inf. One thing from the top of my head would be the black market. Not only the owner of the station (if not anarchy of course) should lose inf when it's used, the lost inf should be directly transferred to the anarchy faction(s) in the system, if any.

Having black markets work this way would certainly be welcome. Vectors for attack are the big offender here though, pretty much anything anyone does in any system now has a good chance of 'emergently' hurting the local anarchy, regardless of control.

It was always rough being a centrally located anarchy, but definitely workable. Without the 'control shield' and with the current drafting of a thousand cannon fodder troops from our specific pool, though, it's a write-off.

 

[soloe]

dunno what to say there other than I do not touch OD for many reasons, what you are saying is only a part of it.
I only talk about horizons and how it works now, even today. not just last week and before.
I do find it odd that my systems which are actually under heavy attack are not showing those same signs.
and even though it is destroying horizons every second they are together, the fixes for damage being done using Horizons, do work
For those that did get and use advice from me, they will see changes tomorrow.
So for that, I at least did help 2 groups by sharing information they were not aware of.

its no surprise the interesting stuff in that bug report. its actually the way fdev made it a few years back when they were trying to tell us the massacre missions were working as intended, in a thread started by me and filled with proof by hundreds of us that it was not
and the first fix brought in criminals for bounties from 2-3-400 LY away.
that in my opinion is what we get for fdev using templates instead of actual data for some of their 'fixes'
and that means that almost every release of something always has previously fixed bugs in them fully alive and causing trouble again.. always.
history repeats itself again.

I haven't bought OD and likely won't. The problem is, that odyssey does break horizons BGS too. And to make it clear: I wouldn't want another diversion of players here, so it has to be fixed in OD. I'd needs to be more balanced for all factions and across versions. I highly doubt that FDEV is interested in the topic and some of my friends are already quitting the game. Maybe I will too atm I feel a bit like it..

 

[Old Duck]

What's the cause?

Engineering handguns using stolen materials.

 

[DancingShade]

I haven't been involved in BGS stuff but I understand a lot of people quite enjoy it. Having years of work/effort undone in one patch must be utterly heartbreaking.

Not sure why anyone is going to put any effort into BGS stuff moving forwards now the precedent has been set.

 

[Screemonster]

Well looks like the solution is pretty simple.

Create new anarchy systems (just add a few ports in unused systems, with 7 local anarchy factions in them, so they cannot be retreated out, or other factions in. (Why not use those lovely asteroid bases templates which already exist for coolness)

The control will be in an ever changing flux, which fits anarchy...but always be anarchy.

Voila, systems that will forever be anarchy so "lawful" players can abuse them at will without getting the taint of fines...

This is the future..

This is what Riedquat should have been since the launch of the game.

It even fits the lore description from FE2!

 

[Ruurka]

For anarchies, I think they need some unique mechanics to raise their inf. One thing from the top of my head would be the black market. Not only the owner of the station (if not anarchy of course) should lose inf when it's used, the lost inf should be directly transferred to the anarchy faction(s) in the system, if any

I was have similar idea, although with upgraded version (they would be moderate to high increases economy/security sliders (depending of stolen goods) remembering that stolen goods is harder to obtain than legal ones). About influence with black market, they would raising for anarchy faction(s), remembering that some systems have two anarchies - then influence raised will be divided by number of anarchy factions.

 

[Q GT70]

try using the info I provided here, you will see a difference
if you could tell me things you have sold to specific bm's, I can easily tell you without looking at their history what effect it would have.
the bm will buy any stolen item you sell it
so will regular market buy any thing that is not illegal or stolen
but neither want some things. it is a part of trade, and it is why some items are toxic
after tomorrows tick, one of these systems I am pretty sure is getting the help it needs and you can come look at the graphs here and go see which one it is.
even if his opposition is here reading what I wrote, there is no counter for what is unknown to them.
he has a lot of options, bm is one.
there are already a few large groups that follow my information. for the very simple reason, I test stuff every day, and I find new counters all the time.
learning what works 1 day and not the next is not hard to track
.
zero argument about all that's been said here about OD.
I tried telling them Thursday that it will destroy horizons, in 1 day so much damage was done, then it just cascaded, exactly like last time
even if it different reason this time, it doesn't matter. damage is done.
I don't care about any of that or OD at all.
and if they won't separate the beta from the live...its their money.
and no, its not a beta, in my opinion its not an alpha either.
it is a pre-crippled piece of programming that looks like it was thrown together over a 2 day period by a group of extremely stoned barely programmers.
Not a shot, I refuse to believe that any frontier programmer is responsible for what I call ED's Folley.
I am not fond of many of them and they know that. But this code does not even resemble anything they have ever created or destroyed.
just hearing the word APEX some weeks back worried me.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

It wasn't easy running an anarchy PMF with all the BGS levers stacked against them, like no access to bounties and being the target of every massacre mission, but Odyssee seems to be the last nail in the coffin.

A small snapshot of the influence drop for the top 3 anarchy PMFs by systems controlled since the update:

1. Explorers of the Anarchy - 36 star systems
View attachment 231690
2. Diamond Frogs - 32 star systems
View attachment 231687
3. Brotherhood of Terra Mater - 17 star systems
View attachment 231695

This is getting ridiculous. If FDev's idea of balance is having one government type fight with spears while everybody else gets a tank, well, mission accomplished !

Thanks to CMDR Fake Newts we have a related ticket. Please contribute: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/35479

As much as I feel your pain, I weighed in heavily in the campaigns at 69 Carniae and Riedequat last year, a complaints like this isn't going to bare fruit,... you obviously have some ideas as to what is working against you, but you don't state anything constructive regarding "What would it take to make it work?"

 

[Fake Newts]

As much as I feel your pain, I weighed in heavily in the campaigns at 69 Carniae and Riedequat last year, a complaints like this isn't going to bare fruit,... you obviously have some ideas as to what is working against you, but you don't state anything constructive regarding "What would it take to make it work?"

There have been a lot of suggestions as to the causes in the thread but only Frontier will know for sure what is happening behind the scenes and how INF is being doled out for settlement-based activity and feetperson kills.

I'd argue it's extremely easy to see that something is amiss, at this point anything we say is an educated guess at best.

 

[Fishy]

I haven't been involved in BGS stuff but I understand a lot of people quite enjoy it. Having years of work/effort undone in one patch must be utterly heartbreaking.

Not sure why anyone is going to put any effort into BGS stuff moving forwards now the precedent has been set.

This. And with anarchies in particular, that's going to impact a lot of players who don't know it yet. Like, is there any other place to sell ground location drugs apart from anarchy bartenders? Or buy those lock-crackers?

 

[Q GT70]

to be clear, its not so much actual demand I mean, its more focus on the items they do NOT want
if you have an anarchy agriculture station and you sell them nerve agent, their inf will drop, they do not want all metals, only a few will make them happy
these demand numbers are important when they are 0 or 1, any other number is meaningless in regards to what I am referring to.
any item listed as 0 will hurt them at any price
any item at 1 can hurt or help depending on the value you have it at.
all other numbers are more related to missions and state than what they want badly or what pays the best
and most of the time you will not see a zero unless you bring samples to that station to see what has 0 on it, because till you bring it with you, you will not see it listed at that station.