BGS changes in Update 10 - some bonuses for criminals

[Ian Doncaster]

Copying here for reference.

Factions
The Pirate Attack faction state will now:

• No longer trigger when only criminal factions are present in a starsystem
• Temporarily make weapon commodities legal in most jurisdictions
• Cause factions to lose influence to criminal factions present in that starsystem

I don't think there's many systems where the first point will actually apply but nice to see they've thought of that edge case.

There are a bunch with no criminal factions so that might be interesting to watch too.

Will be interesting to see how effective the influence transfer to criminal factions is and whether it can lift them off the floor.
(As only a 3-day effect, unless that's changed too, it'd have to be pretty powerful to raise an Anarchy faction above the conflict threshold, for example)

• Criminal factions will no longer experience active security states and their Security Points will lock at 0
• Odyssey settlements controlled by criminal factions will now prefer to export commodities (at the usual favourable pricing) that are illegal in other jurisdictions. Their exports will return to normal if control changes to other faction types
• Odyssey settlements that were incorrectly exporting Meta Alloys will no longer do so
• Incorrectly negative faction consequences when selling salvaged commodities for a relatively low value were fixed
• The Black Market station service will now activate when the controlling faction has an active Civil Unrest state

A way to give corporate/authoritarian factions a Black Market? That might liven things up a bit.

Criminal factions - will need to quickly confirm if this applies to Criminal non-Anarchy factions, though it sounds like it should - not experiencing security states will be interesting. It makes sense thematically, takes away some attacks and defenses, means they can't be locked-down to shut down their markets.

• Faction consequences from selling commodities are now based on satisfying available demand at the Commodity Market
• You can now support a faction by buying commodities from it, based upon satisfying available supply at its Commodity Market
• When buying and selling, it's generally more positive to a faction to satisfy a higher supply and demand (green 3-bar icon) than a lower (red 1-bar icon), and it's generally more positive to trade more expensive commodities than cheaper ones

Interesting - since Boom tends to increase supply/demand quantities, and Investment tends to decrease them, that probably makes it harder in general to sustain Investment states.

 

[goemon]

finally export having an effect, along with supply and demand!

 

[Factabulous]

This section does seem to be the most interesting part of p10, looking forward to people finding the edge-cases

 

[CaptainPugwash]

finally export having an effect, along with supply and demand!

First time ever, right?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

finally export having an effect, along with supply and demand!

Yes. That one feels like it's going to be very uneven, potentially - lots of economies have no meaningful exports. It'll be interesting to see how this affects equilibrium influence levels.

Price is still mentioned as a factor, which will also be interesting - in most cases, higher-priced goods have lower supply/demand tonnages so would get saturated faster, so that may balance out a bit. But Extraction->Refinery involves a lot of high-quantity high-price commodities and if supply counts for influence too that could add up.

(I wonder if and how they've dealt with the obvious buy-discard exploit for supply granting influence?)

 

[goemon]

(I wonder if and how they've dealt with the obvious buy-discard exploit for supply granting influence?)

gut feeling: same as with one of the fixes of the 1t exploit (summation of actions during 1 docking)

 

[Jmanis]

• The Black Market station service will now activate when the controlling faction has an active Civil Unrest state

Great, but my concern is still the ability to cause the Civil Unrest state to a lawful faction. Without any real mechanisms to direct that state, we're not really going to see that happen too often I suspect.

That aside, some juicy things in there.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Criminal factions - will need to quickly confirm if this applies to Criminal non-Anarchy factions, though it sounds like it should

Confirmed: Criminal Feudal "Macrath Science and Research" went from Lockdown to None on today's tick, other typical Criminal Anarchy factions also lost their negative security states.

Currently our only Pirate Attacks are in systems which don't have any Criminal faction present, so it might be easier to look at the bubble for those.

 

[Factabulous]

Great, but my concern is still the ability to cause the Civil Unrest state to a lawful faction. Without any real mechanisms to direct that state, we're not really going to see that happen too often I suspect.

Reducing Sec is pretty well understood I thought?

Confirmed: Criminal Feudal "Macrath Science and Research" went from Lockdown to None on today's tick, other typical Criminal Anarchy factions also lost their negative security states.

I feel I should know this, but ... how can I tell if a faction is Criminal?

Riedquat has a Pirate Attack - having a look around and the market in La Soeur du Dan Ham went from:

to

So the demand is there

 

[Factabulous]

I feel I should know this, but ... how can I tell if a faction is Criminal?

Which I wondered when I saw this faction in Riedquat that doesn't look criminal to me, except for the Sec setting ...

Also - they own Marshal Dock in Riedquat, which does not have extra demand for Weapons like the more legal faction that owns the previous station. Possibly the demand for weapons is only for locations owned by factions with Pirate Attack?

 

[Obi Wan Naboo]

They finally threw us a bone ! I'll be closely monitoring all our systems states now. Especially with us controlling all the stations everywhere due to all the defensive wars we had to fight since Odyssey hit. No more endless cycles of civil unrest is another big one.

Yes. That one feels like it's going to be very uneven, potentially - lots of economies have no meaningful exports. It'll be interesting to see how this affects equilibrium influence levels.

Only Tourism comes to mind. There are also a bunch of Colony surface stations, but no one visits those anyway.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I feel I should know this, but ... how can I tell if a faction is Criminal?

Easiest way is to check the ship mission boards - Criminal factions are the only ones which offer many of the illegal mission types.

I expect that Corporate just happens to have centred security because no-one is particularly doing anything to it.

Only Tourism comes to mind. There are also a bunch of Colony surface stations, but no one visits those anyway.

Terraforming and Service also export basically nothing. Military doesn't export very much, especially under a government which bans weapons. That's half the economy types - if rather less than half the stations.

 

[Factabulous]

Dug around a few more Pirate Attacks - looks like:

• only the locations owned by the attacked faction are affected and add demand for weapons (other faction's assets don't show weapon demands).
• If the location already exports weapons (industries etc) then this carries on - but they also demand things that they aren't selling (I didn't find any with supply & demand, which is good)
• Most EDO settlements owned by attacked factions have no demand - one industrial had demand for non-lethal and reactive armour - needs more checking though
• surface horizons locations also get demand (edited)

(All of this is based on a small sample set - feel free to shoot down )

 

[Obi Wan Naboo]

Terraforming and Service also export basically nothing. Military doesn't export very much, especially under a government which bans weapons. That's half the economy types - if rather less than half the stations.

Those are extremely rare and mostly on planets, same as military. I guess they see minimal traffic and their impact on the BGS will remain negligible.

 

[Mersozz]

Seems like some welcome changes. I'm excited to try them out. I was about 2600 Ly from the inhabited edge of the bubble when Update 10 dropped. I'm heading back now to playtest some of the features noted.

 

[Jmanis]

Reducing Sec is pretty well understood I thought?

It's well understood, it's just not particularly feasible against lawful factions... nor is it incentivised.

Example i gave being being i can be almost guaranteed to find missions targeting a particular anarchy faction for a given mission board generation, while I'd be lucky to find a single mission targeting a lawful faction in maybe three mission board generations... let alone know which faction it was targeting.

Of course, you can smuggle weapons, but that's moot of your goal is to create a black market where there isn't one.

Some scenarios can cause negative security effects, but they aren't voluminous enough to be a reliable source, and rely on holding minor undockable assets.

And lastly... murderhoboing, which sure, works, but there's multiple side effects which may mean at the end of it all, your fresh- made black market is simply inaccessible, thanks to hostile rep (which you know my position on; anonymous protocols should allow access)

So yes, it's well understood, but contrast to achieving positive effects like civil liberty, which is well incentivised and readily targetable, mostly through simply doing +sec missions. Anyone can put a lawful faction in civil liberty... but it takes a dedicated group eschewing most standard game loops to cause negative states in lawful factions. For an element of the game designed to be "background flavour and dynamic variety", that doesn't naturally fall out of such a system... which is my whole concern.

If negative security effects don't fall out of natural[1] gameplay in equal measure to positive, we won't see these sorts of effects that often, let alone taken advantage of.

[1] not saying other methods are "unnatural", rather they require considered application of the games sysems: your average player will murder an npc in the course of another action such as a spec ops mission, not as a dedicated attempt to drop security.

 

[Factabulous]

It's well understood, it's just not particularly feasible against lawful factions... nor is it incentivised.

Example i gave being being i can be almost guaranteed to find missions targeting a particular anarchy faction for a given mission board generation, while I'd be lucky to find a single mission targeting a lawful faction in maybe three mission board generations... let alone know which faction it was targeting.

Of course, you can smuggle weapons, but that's moot of your goal is to create a black market where there isn't one.

Some scenarios can cause negative security effects, but they aren't voluminous enough to be a reliable source, and rely on holding minor undockable assets.

And lastly... murderhoboing, which sure, works, but there's multiple side effects which may mean at the end of it all, your fresh- made black market is simply inaccessible, thanks to hostile rep (which you know my position on; anonymous protocols should allow access)

So yes, it's well understood, but contrast to achieving positive effects like civil liberty, which is well incentivised and readily targetable, mostly through simply doing +sec missions. Anyone can put a lawful faction in civil liberty... but it takes a dedicated group eschewing most standard game loops to cause negative states in lawful factions. For an element of the game designed to be "background flavour and dynamic variety", that doesn't naturally fall out of such a system.

Good points, I knew there was a reason I always give up, even though I know what to look for

 

[Jmanis]

@Factabulous , oh god I'm an idiot... i thought i was in the other thread where in gave a lengthier post... i thought something felt wrong sorry mate!

 

[Factabulous]

@Factabulous , oh god I'm an idiot... i thought i was in the other thread where in gave a lengthier post... i thought something felt wrong sorry mate!

No worries - I did skim that, but immediately forgot

 

[goemon]

discussing the patchnotes in some chat and thinking about it...my gut feeling, which is wrong often, says this might be the case:

pre update:
influence effect of export: none

after update, per single commodity:
(galactic average - purchase price) x ("profit" per ton-sigmaoid-value) x (tonnage-sigmaoid-value) x supply-modiier

or, more readable:
(GA - P) x (T) x (L)

with GA= Galactic Average, P=Purchase Price
(GA - P) giving a non linear value on the "profit sigmaoid"
(T) a value on the tonnage sigmaoid,
(L) being a demand-and-supply modifier (which might be 2,5 at max)

influence effect of import per single commodity:
pre update:
(profit per ton-sigmaoid-value) x (tonnage-sigmaoid-value)

after update:
(P - GA) x (T) x (L)
with GA= Galactic Average, P=SELL Price
(P - GA) giving a non linear value on the "profit sigmaoid"
(T) a value on the tonnage sigmaoid,
(L) being a demand-and-supply modifier (which might be 2,5 at max)


beside the beauty treating import and export similar...
a) this would get rid of gaming the system with setting inflated profits via FC
b) matching all what is said in patch notes. as supply, demand and states effect the base price, high priced commodities will have more effect.

at least that would be what i would test if i were to test it (which i'm not in the next months)