Peregrina Aristocrats

[Northpin]

There is no You vs Me, or You vs CEC

CEC seems to think that way since they took a deliberate effort to eradicate PA and block permit acquisition.

this paragraph is quite relevant...
mistaken the general player base for bots, then comparing it to cancer... then asking FD for support and getting refused...
Instead of taking the hint that the Permit has to be attainable, CEC started to work against FD and against the community pretty much making a personal goal out of it.

About three years ago our bgs minor faction's territory was invaded by bots from Peregrina Aristocrats. Soon we understood, that they were not controlled by any player squadron but were rather like elemental force, driven by efforts of many different and unconnected players they were constantly growing, taking one system after another. Having "worked" against them for a few years, I could compare that to the growth of cancerous tumor.

We contacted devs about it and got the answer, in short, that Peregrina Aristocrats were playing according to the bgs rules and we, actually, have all the instruments to do the same.

 

[AntonyVern]

CEC seems to think that way since they took a deliberate effort to eradicate PA and block permit acquisition.

this paragraph is quite relevant...
mistaken the general player base for bots, then comparing it to cancer... then asking FD for support and getting refused...
Instead of taking the hint that the Permit has to be attainable, CEC started to work against FD and against the community pretty much making a personal goal out of it.

This statement is so far removed from reality that it looks like nothing more than an attempt to confuse others and substitute concepts.

Unfortunate and unreasonable.

 

[SwingKing]

What is being said here is that your issue is random traffic, same as the rest of us deal with. You just have more of it because of the area you've expanded into and have decided to stay in.

Just to be clear: our capital system is in 12 ly from 18609
We don't want 18609 be our system at all, but forced to be there to control PA SPONTANOUS expansions.

 

[Shnyrik]

CEC started to work against FD and against the community

Breaking the game rules is completely okay if you proclaim your opponents public enemies. Which is exactly what you are trying to do now.

If your opponent is pure evil, than no matter what you do, you are always on the good side. Right?

 

[Burning_Scull]

CEC seems to think that way since they took a deliberate effort to eradicate PA and block permit acquisition.

this paragraph is quite relevant...
mistaken the general player base for bots, then comparing it to cancer... then asking FD for support and getting refused...
Instead of taking the hint that the Permit has to be attainable, CEC started to work against FD and against the community pretty much making a personal goal out of it.

You have moved from chair to chair so many times that you seem confused in your arguments. Please do not mislead others, we have already written a hundred times what and why we are asking. Funny.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I'm not sure it's possible to separate the two within the BGS, especially when considering the actions of players not deliberately aiming to cause particular BGS outcomes.

Everything Frontier does can change the BGS balance - the combat rebalance caused permanent swings to stable influence levels in hundreds of systems, the Odyssey release caused a rapid collapse in Anarchy controlling factions - not because Frontier were aiming for that outcome, but because the incentives set up caused player aggregate behaviour to change. The distorting effects of permit-offering factions have been around a very long while, but of course the desirability of particular permits can change regularly.

And of course in Elite Dangerous lore there is a conspiracy who manipulates pilots into taking actions on their behalf by manipulating incentives, so they can justify anything that way...


I don't think satisfactory answers are ever going to be practical in general - there's always going to be conflicts of interest between the plot, organised BGS groups, disorganised players just trying to play the game, etc.


In this particular case though, I think the proposed solution of making Peregrina Aristocrats a non-influence faction on their megaship is a good one:
- it allows new players to continue to receive the permit, which is good because that shouldn't be something you can stop purely by BGS operation.
- it therefore allows those players, if they choose to and can overcome CEC efforts, to push PA into expansion from their home system again. I'm all in favour of BGS operation having major consequences, but they should never be irreversible.
- it recognises the substantial efforts made by CEC to crush PA in a way more interesting than "sorry, you can't do that": I do respect that Frontier generally doesn't go for that as an answer in most systems, and therefore allows BGS events to contribute to the overall narrative
- making crushing the permit-giver back to their home system a pre-requisite both explains why it's not been done for Alioth Independents et al, but also gives player groups with a nearby permit system at least a theoretical route to success, potentially leading to interesting BGS campaigns and player-generated content in future.

Surely a better long term solution is to make expansions exponentially harder as it was supposed to be- so rather than applying a spot exemption you have a mechanism that keeps rando activity expansion low enough without focused activity pushing it?

 

[Rainbro]

Making the megaship and the faction not interact with the BGS in that system seems like a fair solution that would suit everyone while also respecting the work CEC put in. But I imagine Frontier have marked the issue as fixed and them acknowledging that the solution may not have been perfect will take a long time...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Surely a better long term solution is to make expansions exponentially harder as it was supposed to be- so rather than applying a spot exemption you have a mechanism that keeps rando activity expansion low enough without focused activity pushing it?

Bearing in mind the position of Alioth Independents, though, anything which suitably constrained them would probably also constrain almost all focused groups even sooner, because it's not random activity - it's uncoordinated activity, but with a very definite trend and focus.

If it were up to me I'd not focus directly on making expansions harder as a faction grows (which can be mitigated almost entirely by adopting a government type rather than a single faction), but on making all factions (i.e. not just Anarchy ones) have to be actively supported to maintain control of systems. At the moment a controlling faction gets the vast majority of positive transactions in a system - to the extent that the logarithmic returns are needed to stop them pinning to 99% influence constantly - so that's probably the point to push at. Not solely - or even mostly! - a BGS problem, of course. And it would be highly unpopular with most BGS groups who'd all be in the position Anarchy ones are now in. So perhaps it's fortunate it's not up to me

 

[Rubbernuke]

Bearing in mind the position of Alioth Independents, though, anything which suitably constrained them would probably also constrain almost all focused groups even sooner, because it's not random activity - it's uncoordinated activity, but with a very definite trend and focus.

If it were up to me I'd not focus directly on making expansions harder as a faction grows (which can be mitigated almost entirely by adopting a government type rather than a single faction), but on making all factions (i.e. not just Anarchy ones) have to be actively supported to maintain control of systems. At the moment a controlling faction gets the vast majority of positive transactions in a system - to the extent that the logarithmic returns are needed to stop them pinning to 99% influence constantly - so that's probably the point to push at. Not solely - or even mostly! - a BGS problem, of course. And it would be highly unpopular with most BGS groups who'd all be in the position Anarchy ones are now in. So perhaps it's fortunate it's not up to me

Thats what I had in mind too, in that you had one metric you have to push / deliver to actively expand that is not common to rando traffic. So unless you willfully wanted to expand you never will. So, if no-one pushes PA by delivering the x cargo it won't ever go beyond a certain size, and if it did but was not supported it would shrink back to this size.

I think really all of this is because the BGS is still to primitive regards expansion and should have / could have borrowed from Powerplay (i.e. with dedicated expansion cargoes / missions rather than using aggregated activity alone).

 

[naukogriz]

Seems I've not been here for twelwe hours, and the duscussion here has slightly turned to mutual accusations, and this is one-way highway to the trap I tried to escape from the very beginning. FDev come to work on Monday, so can offer us not to start WW3 till that day.

So, first I have to state that the game, despite RL, has clear and clean rules for everyone, known from very beginning and never changing for someone's benefit.
So let us absract from "try to block a common land IRL", plz, as there are RL games like "finding parking places in Moscow", that are based on blocking common land.
And seems some of us here agree that a situation where FDev suddenly uses "Hand of God" avoinding common BGS rules, a)happened before b)makes some confusion both that and this time.

Second, as for argument like "someone suffers from Blue Mafia, you suffer too":
a)Blue Mafia gives permit to an engineer, who makes your weapons better. Perigrina Aristocrats give permit to a system where there is nothing but a cursed planet and two outposts, and, btw, the idea of blocking cursed planet has it's reasons.
b)Eurubia is visited by more than five hundred of ships each day, which is not even close to 60+ ships in Peregrina yesterday. Well, sorry for this, but if the Peregrina was so important to the community as someone here tries to say, it would be impossible to lock PA in the Peregrina system itself.
c)and that's why locking it in two systems, Peregrina and 18609, manually by FDev, is really a good desision we try to offer, to make nether permit hunters nor us suffer.

As the idea of holding PA under 75% and failing the expansions, we did this may times, and that led us to some sort of final solution. As we said, 18609 is interesting only because it's 11 ly from our main system, and we had to clean it only because it was too close. (RL that happened too, but let's not cross Finnish line this time). As we stated, we can give all 18609 to PA as soon as we get a confirmation they never get out of there.

Seems it's good desision suitable for everyone, so let's not struggle against each other, but united struggle for equal rules and non-agressive solutions. Миру - мир!

 

[Melanthes]

You'll certainly have more to do now, as crying on the forums has a very clear effect.

 

[Ethaidan]

"now the situation will be back to anarchic order"

As it should be! And, given the unnecessarily aggressive tone from CEC, I think I'll head out there and get me a permit!

 

[Maolagin]

A little off-topic. I am not a native English speaker, and I sincerely hope that you understand everything I say correctly and that the meaning is not distorted by translation.

Not to worry. Having some knowledge of both languages myself, I can see where some phrases are mangled by the translation, but the overall meaning seems undamaged. I would worry more about going in the other direction, if you are reading via translation. You may find the computer is adding vehemence or subtracting respect where the writer did not intend.

 

[SwingKing]

Due to the latest posts I would like to apologize to the players who may have been offended by our statements.
All we wanted was to call for a different perspective on the situation and ask for a help.

 

[Murky Dregs]

Posts like these are a great way to attract BGS tacticians who like to do experiments because- science.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

So those who created this thread, without thinking about the interests of other players, can change the rules of the game, and we have no right to disagree and offer an option that would suit everyone?

It's just a fairy tale of disrespect for the same players, in the same universe.

You're really trying to boil it down to not giving anything about some group's interests, we were given permissions and they can do what they want. That's really not caring about people. It all looks cool from the outside, as long as it's not about you and your particular factions, groups, friends, gameplay, entertainment.

Are you trying to accuse me of trying to get the rules changed?
At no point did I contact FDev or submit a ticket.
There was the precedent of Tiliala which was always a probable outcome if you removed PA from all systems other than Peregrina.
Suggesting locking the megaship from the BGS would be breaking the rules, or at least creating an exception solely for your faction.

 

[naukogriz]

there was the precedent of Tiliala which was always a probable outcome if you removed PA from all systems other than Peregrina

Sure, that's what we did.

At no point did I contact FDev or submit a ticket

Thank you, we really appreciate that. Though that means someone else did that. Sorry if we understood you in this wrong.

Suggesting locking the megaship from the BGS would be breaking the rules, or at least creating an exception solely for your faction

If there is an exeption for PA of being unreatreable from 18609, why not making an exception for being unexpandable from 19609, just for no more exceptions needed?

Speaking of, we tried to expand ourselves to Perigrina to make Tiliaila precedent once more, but expansion was to nowhere. That's strange, and led us to conclusion Peregrina can't let us or any other faction in.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That's strange, and led us to conclusion Peregrina can't let us or any other faction in.

After the Ross 128 incident (itself after Tiliala), Frontier changed the rules for expansion to permit-locked systems.

It may not be completely impossible - the changelog was a little vague - but no-one has ever actually done so since, so far as I know.

 

[SwingKing]

After the Ross 128 incident (itself after Tiliala), Frontier changed the rules for expansion to permit-locked systems.

It may not be completely impossible - the changelog was a little vague - but no-one has ever actually done so since, so far as I know.

So the possible solution that fits all was there, but then was removed to create more incidents..
And while we are chatting here the numbers of "uncontrollable force" rising exponentially..

 

[Toucan76]

The Close Encounters Corps is right next to a permit locked system. Fact.

People are constantly going to arrive to obtain the Peregrina permit. Fact.

That can be a hindrance to the Close Encounters Corps BGS play. Yes.

Next, is my opinion (I know it won't be fully agreed upon)

Should Close Encounters Corps take into account the situation that will arise from these interactions. Yes.

I spoke via one of the CEC representatives via inara and tried to put across the idea of saving PA and incorporating their influence into CEC control of Arietis Sector EQ-Y c17 to expand into an in-range system for permit acquisition only and then force them out of Arietis Sector EQ-Y c17. All I got back was "You and random pilots want to mess up our BGS and leave behind the mess for CEC to clean up."

If CEC had taken into account the various possibilities that would arise from forcing PA out altogether, and planned for them, we wouldn't be having this argument, now.

Now, they're crying foul that FDev stepped in and provided a solution that they didn't agree with.

Granted, the megaship should be BGS locked. That solution would suit everybody.