Sell price. The BM seems to not take the actual buy price for the inf calculation into consideration. Then using stolen goods there was no way to get a neg sale on the BM either. Tried to change the price with the carrier and in both cases (buying at inflated prices by myself and by another party) the BM sale was a "profitable" one (profit was sell price). Then using illegal goods I could change the price and got a neg BM sale. The result was still neg inf similar to a pos BM sale of the same amount for the associated faction. From that it seems logical that the BM looks at the sell price and not at the profit.
I was testing BM mechanics and interactions more than actual values or looking for diminishing returns. There were some conflicting opinions on Anarchy BM trade at the time and we needed to make sure we don't hurt the factions we support.
Timing out is a subset of and Failing. Any event where the mission remains in your transactions tab with the red "Failed" note is a failure. All missions can be failed by timing them out, but a much smaller subset can be deliberately failed.
Risk-averse passenger missions; scrape your ship against the wall so they become miserable, then when you dock anywhere the mission fails.
Assassinations fail if the target is destroyed, but not registered against you, e.g if authority ships destroy the target
Hijack (need to double-check); destroying the target without jacking the cargo first (might?) result in mission failure. It definitely results in a notification saying, paraphrasing "We hope you got the cargo you needed!"
Megaship turret missions - Oddly, fail when you abandon them.
Everything else can only be timed out.
EDIT: On a side note, wish you could do more practical things to deliberately fail missions, if this is the mechanic. For example, selling all the delivery goods on the black market... onselling passengers as slaves, destroying the civilians at an assassination mission USS, destroying the black boxes etc.
Nice. Thanks for the list.
I wasn't aware of the Magaship turret missions or the twist on the assassinations' that can lead to failure.
Other activities that give failed missions if your ship is destroyed before completion:
Any passenger missions
Planetary scan jobs
Counter-Insurgency Surface Scan Missions
Hey all, I'm trying to simplify BGS activites for my squadron as much as I can so the less seasoned members don't get overwhelmed by all the intricacies of BGS.
In layman's terms, if I'm going to smuggle, neg trade or do any other activities to reduce my target's inf, I have to also do positive activities for my faction to funnel the target's dropped inf towards my faction instead of letting them get distributed equally among the other factions. Did I get that part right?
In layman's terms, if I'm going to smuggle, neg trade or do any other activities to reduce my target's inf, I have to also do positive activities for my faction to funnel the target's dropped inf towards my faction instead of letting them get distributed equally among the other factions. Did I get that part right?
no, influence losses/negative influence are not evenly distributed - as far as a i can see. as gains are distrubeted as losses to other factions relative to their influence in system, same goes for negative influence actions. which means negative influence actions against the controlling faction will benefit the second strongest faction most.
i'm not sure how i would describe the mechanic of "funneling", but i think it has to do with negative influence actions raising the total number of actions per tick, which leads to an influence loss for all factions without many actions mathematically.
Just FYI, it's not funnelling, rather, it's just an artefact of how the maths works. But yes, you're correct that if you do -5 points of influence for one faction and +5 for another that, on tick, it will look like a straight transfer. But mechanically, that's not expressly how it works. Can do the maths later if you want.
Fyi, is arguably more work though, and your goal is for less work, so i wouldn't advise this.
Just FYI, it's not funnelling, rather, it's just an artefact of how the maths works. But yes, you're correct that if you do -5 points of influence for one faction and +5 for another that, on tick, it will look like a straight transfer. But mechanically, that's not expressly how it works. Can do the maths later if you want.
Fyi, is arguably more work though, and your goal is for less work, so i wouldn't advise this.
I don't want to impose, but I would appreciate some math, if it's not too much trouble on your part. The better I understand how it works, the easier I can explain to my squad.
And yea I agree it is more work, but if the results are better than just simply undermining, I wouldn't mind doing it more often. Or I can just split the tasks between our squad members.
I don't want to impose, but I would appreciate some math, if it's not too much trouble on your part. The better I understand how it works, the easier I can explain to my squad.
And yea I agree it is more work, but if the results are better than just simply undermining, I wouldn't mind doing it more often. Or I can just split the tasks between our squad members.
Unless the mechanics have changed, the basic principle is that %influence correlates to points in a bucket , with the total points (i.e 100% influence) being dependent on population of the system[1]. Actions add or subtract points from that bucket, and then the tick normalises the new influence %s based on the total points, giving new influence levels.
For all the following examples, pretend you've got 200 "points" in the bucket for a given system, and the breakdown of influence is as follows:
Faction A: 60% (120 'points')
Faction B: 20% (40 'points')
Faction C: 15% (30 'points')
Faction D: 5% (10 'points')
= 100% (200 points)
Now consider the following basic scenarios:
Suppose you work for Faction B and earn 10 "points"... this gives you:
A:120, B:50, C:30, D:10, Total: 210 (105%)
At the tick, influence totals must equal 100%, so it normalises back to 200 points based on those ratios of points against the new total of 210. This means the new influence totals after the tick are:
A: 57.14% (was 60%)
B: 23.81% (was 20%)
C: 14.29% (was 15%)
D: 4.76% (was 5%)
This correlates as expected, with the bigger factions losing more influence than smaller ones, and the overall gain of one faction translating as a loss to all factions.
Now suppose you work against Faction B, and cause them to lose 10 "points". This gives you:
A: 120, B:30, C:30, D:10, Total: 190 (95%)
At the tick, we need to make this equal 100% again, so normalising (up, this time) gives:
A: 63.16% (was 60%)
B: 15.78% (was 20%)
C: 15.78% (was 15%)
D: 5.26% (was 5%)
Again... a loss for one faction translates to a gain for the others, with the larger faction getting the lion's share of the influence.
Now look what happens if you match a gain with a loss in another faction
Suppose you work for Faction B, and against Faction A, and cause them to gain and lose 10 points respectively. This gives:
A: 110, B:50, C:30, D:10, Total: 200 (100%)
This is already normalised. Run the math just to turn them into %influences by dividing everything by 2 (because 200 points in the system bucket) and you get:
A: 55% (Was 60%)
B: 25% (Was 30%)
C: 15% (No Change)
D: 5% (No Change)
This isn't a direct transfer even though it looks like one; what's happening is B's gain is distributed across, and A's loss is also distributed across the factions. Although there's no specific figures to cite here, what's actually happening is, if you read this in terms of Effects of B's gain/Effects of A's loss, you get:
A: Loss/Loss
B: Gain/Gain
C: Equal Loss/Gain
D: Equal Loss/Gain
As a final comparison, here's what happens if you just do 20 points of work for Faction B
Just diving straight in, this becomes
A: 120, B:60, C:30, D:10, Total:220 (110%)
So assuming it's just as easy to earn 10 points for a faction as it is to lose 10 points (and realistically, it's easier to earn points than cause a faction to lose them), you end up in a better position just working for your faction of choice... however doing negative effects against a faction will direct which faction bears the brunt of your increase, at the overall expense of your own faction's increases. That in itself does have tactical advantage depending on what you're doing, but if your goal is increasing the gains of your faction specifically, it's better to just work for them.
Note: This doesn't take into account any work-curves and such, for example the fact trading effects peter out after a certain amount of profit earned... see various awesome threads by @goemon in that case.
[1] This is also why it's harder to change systems with higher population... point buckets are bigger therefore influence changes are smaller, as the magnitude of point adjustments don't scale. An assassination worth, say, 5 "points" is worth the same regardless of system size.
reduce controlling faction to 30% by working for all other factions up to 15% plus some smuggling.
bind factions with assets we don't want to have into conflicts shortly before expansion.
raise influence by positive actions once in system.
once second add smuggling again.
win control, retrigger conflicts by positive action until we control all assets we want.
reasoning:
1. as it is easier to move influence factions at lower influence levels, you want influence spread around and manage influence on low levels - until the system is as you want it.
2. to lock factions into conflicts which assets you don't want to gain they anyway need to be above 7,5%.
3. you need a certain gap to not inadvertly trigger conflict while working up, and that gap needs to apply as well after the first conflict if you want to retrigger conclicts..
4. only if second in system you gain most of the -inf.
generally, bulk-smuggling is a nice thing to fill your hold while stacking missions, but positive influence actions are always stronger.
and of course that strategy relies on not much random traffic to counter.
