True, but all of these old empires also overextended themselves eventually and crumbled or broke up when successors couldn't hold them together. Conquering an empire has been done way more often than successfully keeping it.
I hate player minor factions
- Thread starter Para Handy
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The overextension being the key thing. Can't do that here.
Not counting the extra communist/Powerplay maintained systems managed by adopted NPC factions, about 2/3 of the bubble is currently controlled by one PMF or another (and 85% or so has at least one present). Even if they had gone for addition to fringe systems only, inward expansion would long since have filled in the centre.I'm sure the group that took over the systems I called home are a nice bunch, but honestly it now seems like every other system is controlled by a PMF...
Equally, as others have said, if they'd not allowed them at all, the existing issues (swathes of systems with the same monotonous controller [1], large player groups changing system dynamics with little opportunity to resist) would still be going on in exactly the same way with adopted NPC factions. Other than slightly more varied names (is it the HIP 1234 Crimson Corporation or the HIP 1324 Crimson Corporation I'm mad at this week?) it wouldn't have made a lot of difference to the way the BGS actually looks.
Indeed, the 36th largest faction in the game by controlled systems - to the annoyance of many nearby PMFs
- has got that way almost entirely through the significant weight of passing traffic with no coherent intent at all.[1] Odyssey does help a bit by adding a lot of extra assets to systems and making it both difficult and generally tactically undesirable for a single faction to own all of them. But of course you need to have the expansion to benefit from that...
My character name is De Lacy. So I fly De Lacy ships and the announcer adresses me directly by name. Helps a lot. Too bad I still can't be bothered sorting out a dozen dozen of engineer ingredients that don't drop anyway when I look for them.
In hindsight, maybe it would have been a good idea to make expansions exponentially more difficult the more systems a faction already controls and the farther away the target is from the home system.Not counting the extra communist/Powerplay maintained systems managed by adopted NPC factions, about 2/3 of the bubble is currently controlled by one PMF or another (and 85% or so has at least one present). Even if they had gone for addition to fringe systems only, inward expansion would long since have filled in the centre.
Equally, as others have said, if they'd not allowed them at all, the existing issues (swathes of systems with the same monotonous controller [1], large player groups changing system dynamics with little opportunity to resist) would still be going on in exactly the same way with adopted NPC factions. Other than slightly more varied names (is it the HIP 1234 Crimson Corporation or the HIP 1324 Crimson Corporation I'm mad at this week?) it wouldn't have made a lot of difference to the way the BGS actually looks.
Indeed, the 36th largest faction in the game by controlled systems - to the annoyance of many nearby PMFs
[1] Odyssey does help a bit by adding a lot of extra assets to systems and making it both difficult and generally tactically undesirable for a single faction to own all of them. But of course you need to have the expansion to benefit from that...
Reminds me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Absolutely. That's not what I argued against.
Never bothered with PMF's directly but couldn't you start your own PMF and start an epic struggle for control of an affected star system?
I'm assuming it's possible because this is, after all, an MMO, right? I doubt one single player could do it alone (unless your in-game name is Cmdr Batman, in which case all bets are off*).
*First rule to remember when fighting Batman: NEVER fight Batman
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I don't mind the concept. It's the mechanics that are butt.
Wars starting and ending in days. No consequences for it (or so badly modeled I can't see it). No relationships between factions, hell, until I rolled my eyes at the situation you didn't even get ships from external systems in a system. Keystone Cops high-speed changes from state to state. The complete and utter indifference of the superpowers to factions crapping in their backyards. Total lack of in-lore factions represented in the galaxy while we have Space Weebs all over the place. I could go on.
New player-named minor factions just pop into existence in a system, with no way of opposing their “expansion.” Imagine spending three months carefully cultivating a handful of systems to your liking. The Empire was now in charge, and random traffic should keep them in charge. You log out for the evening, and when you log back in a new Alliance faction you’d never heard of, who shouldn’t even be in that region of space, was now in charge of your base of operations. The name was jarringly "gamified" in your opinion, and the faction description nonsensical.
That wasn't my introduction to player-named minor factions, that occurred near my home system with a PMF which fit well into the setting, but what I described most certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. Thank goodness Frontier stopped giving new PMFs control of the system they'd be added to soon afterwards.
Despite all that, I don't hate the idea of PMFs. I just hate how badly executed they've been to date. In my opinion their benefits are far outweighed by their costs. The benefits are that some PMFs enrich the sparse background details generated by the Stellar Forge. The costs, however, are many:
- Many PMFs jarringly conflict with the (admittedly limited) worldbuilding that Frontier has done over nearly 40 years of this franchise. Some feature nonsensical superpower/goverment combinations. Others just have ridiculous names, include descriptions of events that shouldn't be possible in this setting, or are obvious rip-offs of other sci-fi franchises.
- Many more seem to primarily exist solely for meta-gaming reasons, primarily in regards to Powerplay.
- Way too many player groups believe because they named the faction, they have exclusive rights to it, and frequently the system they inserted it into.
Don't get me wrong, I like the lore appropriate PMFs I've stumbled upon, and I'd hate to see them vanish in a puff of smoke just to "clean up the bubble." But I think including them in the first place, especially solely through Frontier Fiat, was a bad to begin with. Sturgeon's Law is clearly in effect when it comes to PMFs, and averting it would be even greater example of favoritism than what we have currently, not to mention would require far too many resources that could be used to improve the game for all players, not just a handful of them.
Technically I could resist, in theory, and do just as you say, but it would force me to engage in a form of gameplay (hard-core BGS manipulation) that I find grindy and unfulfilling. I actually used to belong to a PMF for a little while, so I know how it goes. We're talking about people who work the BGS 24x7 with spreadsheets and equations and hierarchy and lots and lots of 'foot soldiers". There's no real way to combat that without becoming that. No thanks!
It would be nice if a system's home factions had a "home court advantage" when facing occupiers and colonizers from far away. But even then, I don't think it would stop these determined megafactions. So for now I'd settle for a way to completely hide other player's fleet carriers from all menus and maps, then at least my little system might still feel like a private getaway rather than a crowded tourist trap.
Oh, it would also be nice if BGS influence (at least the kind that can flip system ownership) was Open-only, because then I could "fight back" (literally) in a way I'd find more enjoyable
I have no problem with the concept of BGS manipulation. I did it for years myself on behalf of ALD, and I still base my decisions in game primarily on how it'll impact the BGS, since I roleplay as an independent Imperial agent. But for every player-named faction that fits the setting of the the world of Elite, such as the Corbago Corsairs, we get multiple factions like:
- The King of the Potato People - from Red Dwarf
- the CdE Corporation - obvious metagaming
- the Diamond Dogs - from My Little Pony
As long as they don't force the RNG "People's MET 20 Liberals" to go extinct, so I can keep having a chuckle at the name, IDC.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
No argument with your main points, I just never realized Bowie took the name of his album from My Little PonyI have no problem with the concept of BGS manipulation. I did it for years myself on behalf of ALD, and I still base my decisions in game primarily on how it'll impact the BGS, since I roleplay as an independent Imperial agent. But for every player-named faction that fits the setting of the the world of Elite, such as the Corbago Corsairs, we get multiple factions like:
Granted, there are quite a bit of homages to classic science fiction in this game, but IMO there's a fine line between the developer doing that, and allowing players to have much more blatant, and permanent, impact on the game the way PMFs do. And meta-gaming makes my teeth itch.
- The King of the Potato People - from Red Dwarf
- the CdE Corporation - obvious metagaming
- the Diamond Dogs - from My Little Pony
Diamond Dogs
The Diamond Dogs were dancers at the Moulin Rouge, used to seduce and give pleasure to the men who went there, to get away from the "real world". Of these Diamond Dogs, Nini. Even though she is part of the dancers, Satine is not a Diamond Dog. She is know as "The Sparkling Diamond". There are at...
;-)
100% this.
A game where several errors of judgement are made.
The errors FD made in this regard were:
- Assuming players would rally to the Superpowers, not the Minor Factions. I can't remember where I heard that quote from FD, but more people than just me remember it, and seem to think it was on a livestream somewhere. In other words, players were meant to support a faction because it was Imperial, Federal or what-not, not because it was a specific minor faction.
- Based on that last assumption, assuming that a minor faction (and it's name) was as meaningless as the name of a star. That's not anything I can quote FD on, but it's the way PMF insertion was treated initially for the first tranches of PMF. FD are a lot more strict nowadays, but the damage was already done.
- Assuming that the background sim (which has direct impact on the player experience) would not be the focus of player attention. To paraphrase FD on that one... if players are playing the game specifically to cause BGS effects, then they've done the BGS wrong... because it would be a "Foreground Sim" rather than a "Background Sim"
In short, people were never meant to "Play the BGS"... people were meant to "Play the game, and the BGS would react". Faction's weren't meant to be the focus of our attention... they were just meant to be a name that was quickly forgotten, and simply the vehicle to take you to an activity of your choosing.... it wasn't meant to matter which Imperial Corporate faction you worked for, only that you worked for the Empire. This much was apparent, because in the early post-launch days, you couldn't distinguish between many factions with similar names in different systems. For example:
In the very early days, many of these factions were just labelled "Empire League". Some had the system name in, some didn't. But then FD normalised that because it started to matter as people rallied behind a particular "Empire League" and it started to clash against other "Empire League"s.
When FD realised people actually wanted to rally behind a faction/flag (which was not the intent of the BGS), they cooked up Powerplay, which was meant to elevate larger-growing factions into "Power" status, and essentially "Lift" them out of the BGS into a game loop which, I assume, would not have the impact on the BGS we're seeing now from larger factions. Conversely, these factions were then, if they failed to survive, be relegated back to "Faction" status and return to just another everyday faction.
Unfortunately, that all got ditched, and we got what now stands as Powerplay, which never delivered anything to do with Factions. It at least still promised, but never delivered, powers rising and falling out... I'm sure everyone's familiar with the attempt to get Torval eliminated... that forced the issue to prove that Powers couldn't be eliminated, and new Powers would never rise (and let's not go near that power...).
But again... nothing of this has anything to do with PMFs specifically, and everything to do with the BGS writ-large. FD are gradually acknowledging more and more how the BGS is played, but nonetheless it was never intended to be played this way.... and FD haven't really ever done anything about that.
I understand that gripe, but what would the alternative be? Who's standard of just the right amount of time spent gaming is the correct one to cap things at?
It's probably a nod to Alastair Reynolds' novel?
Warts and all is good, PMFs not so much precisely because they are allowing players to be a real influence. This is Elite we are supposed to be significant only to ourselves not places with the population of an outpost let alone anything larger.
Nah
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Sorry, I don't see what's wrong with these names.I have no problem with the concept of BGS manipulation. I did it for years myself on behalf of ALD, and I still base my decisions in game primarily on how it'll impact the BGS, since I roleplay as an independent Imperial agent. But for every player-named faction that fits the setting of the the world of Elite, such as the Corbago Corsairs, we get multiple factions like:
Granted, there are quite a bit of homages to classic science fiction in this game, but IMO there's a fine line between the developer doing that, and allowing players to have much more blatant, and permanent, impact on the game the way PMFs do. And meta-gaming makes my teeth itch.
- The King of the Potato People - from Red Dwarf
- the CdE Corporation - obvious metagaming
- the Diamond Dogs - from My Little Pony