Pacifism and Minor Factions

If a hypothetical squadron of naïve do-gooders wanted to non-violently put another faction in charge of a system (for instance, to illegalise the trading of Imperial slaves) would it be possible? Or are all property disputes automatically put up to a war?
 
Questions about minor factions are generally better in the BGS forum

It depends which other faction you want to put in charge, and who is currently in charge.

Factions will have a peaceful Election rather than a War if
- neither of them is "Anarchy"
- they have the same "Ethos"
You can find out a faction's Ethos by looking at the little "congratulates its members" text at the end of their local news article. If those texts are the same for two factions, they have the same ethos.
(For over 99% of factions the Ethos is also predictable from its government type)
 
If your faction illegalizes Imperial slaves, then you are probably are not the same ethos as the controller and will need to fight a war.
 
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If your faction illegalizes Imperial slaves, then you are probably are not the same ethos as the controller and will need to fight a war..

There is one major exception to this rule: Corporations. Imperial Corps allow Imp Slavery, every other Corp type (Fed, Indie, Alliance) does not. So if it's an Imperial Corporation in charge, then they can be overthrown peacefully via Election if another, non-Imperial Corporation is in second place, and Imp Slavery will have become illegal through non-violent means.

If there isn't then sorry, but you will likely have to fight to bring that non-Imperial Corporation into a high enough positon of authority for them to challenge for system/station ownership. Because only Corporations have the Corporate ethos, so Corporations will go to war with everybody else.

Or, as Oliver Cromwell's motto stated: Pax Quaeritur Bello. "Peace is sought through war".
 
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Is it possible to gain enough influence via other means during a war to win the war, or is the war purely decided by combat?
 
Is it possible to gain enough influence via other means during a war to win the war, or is the war purely decided by combat?
Non-combat actions have no effect on the result of a war.

You might be able to win the war without personally firing a shot, if there's no opposition, by taking a really tough ship to a combat zone, signing up for your side, and hoping that the time the enemy spends failing to kill you is sufficient to swing the overall result to your side. But that's the closest you can get to a non-combat solution.
 
You might be able to win the war without personally firing a shot, if there's no opposition, by taking a really tough ship to a combat zone, signing up for your side, and hoping that the time the enemy spends failing to kill you is sufficient to swing the overall result to your side. But that's the closest you can get to a non-combat solution.

The Battle-Sponge hypothesis! I like it. :LOL:
 
Non-combat actions have no effect on the result of a war.

You might be able to win the war without personally firing a shot, if there's no opposition, by taking a really tough ship to a combat zone, signing up for your side, and hoping that the time the enemy spends failing to kill you is sufficient to swing the overall result to your side. But that's the closest you can get to a non-combat solution.
I have seen non combat missions that are marked as helping out the current war/civil war. It would seem that they would help otherwise why are they marked as such ?
 
I have seen non combat missions that are marked as helping out the current war/civil war. It would seem that they would help otherwise why are they marked as such ?

The jury is out on that.

Historically, missions, even those claiming to help a war, do not. There's been no definitive proof either way as to whether or not missions help, since the new war-tracker obfuscates the magnitude of impact of various activities.

e.g in the old system, you could hand in 1m in bonds and achieve one influence effect, then hand in 10 x 100k the next day, compare the magnitudes of change and determine what each one did. Now... doesn't matter which you do, you'd just "win" that day; there's no granularity in the result.

Even if both sides did an "even" amount of work under the old system and drew a day, they'd both go up by some value and bleed from other factions, so an effect would still be noticable. If you ran a mission, and there was no change, you wouldn't be able to tell if the mission had no effect, or there was an opposed counter-effect.

Most accounts suggest they still don't affect.. despite their wording.
 
So polish your rifle, soldier.
Actually... i have a theory that missions in war might have an impact now.... but i need more evidence.

tl;dr its based on the fact the influence effects when handing in a mission "disappear" both in election and conflict.
 
Actually... i have a theory that missions in war might have an impact now.... but i need more evidence.

tl;dr its based on the fact the influence effects when handing in a mission "disappear" both in election and conflict.
You'd need to do something empirical like try to win a day just on missions.
But not massacre missions.
Or massacre missions, but be careful to never win a CZ.
Could you complete Massacre Missions in a CZ by killing the target faction but not selecting either side? Sort of like bounty hunting?
Man that sounds just so edge-casey that I don't think it represents a very good 'control' for the experiment.

Maybe it would have to be Day 1 win 5 battles. Day 2 Win 5 battles but also take massacre missions. Uh no, wait. A win day is a win day, whether you tap it or smash it.
Can you even draw a day? or is it always "Close defeat / close victory"?
So, uh - I guess you kinda want 5 Battles won for faction A and then 4 battles including two massacre missions for Faction B. Then if missions do count Faction B should win.

Yeah that sounds straight forward - your answers on the back on an envelope to Dav at Dav's Hope.
 
You'd need to do something empirical like try to win a day just on missions.
But not massacre missions.
Or massacre missions, but be careful to never win a CZ.
Could you complete Massacre Missions in a CZ by killing the target faction but not selecting either side? Sort of like bounty hunting?
Man that sounds just so edge-casey that I don't think it represents a very good 'control' for the experiment.

Maybe it would have to be Day 1 win 5 battles. Day 2 Win 5 battles but also take massacre missions. Uh no, wait. A win day is a win day, whether you tap it or smash it.
Can you even draw a day? or is it always "Close defeat / close victory"?
So, uh - I guess you kinda want 5 Battles won for faction A and then 4 battles including two massacre missions for Faction B. Then if missions do count Faction B should win.

Yeah that sounds straight forward - your answers on the back on an envelope to Dav at Dav's Hope.
Days can certainly be drawn if no-one does anything on either side.

So presumably it's also possible - if highly unlikely - if there were exactly equal inputs as well.
One of my problems is, gone are the days of being able to guarantee no traffic in my systems. Even after Powerplay became a thing, our faction sat in a bit of a "No-mans-land" zone between Powerplay entities. These days, it's now an intersection of 4-5 powers and goes from periods of "maintenance" to lively hostilities, with my faction in the middle doing it's best to say "We'll support whoever comes out on top (as long as they're Imperial), but don't screw with our holdings."... so surrounding systems vacillate between "low-tempo maintenance" and heated protectionism. I saw another PMF enter a system we ceded to a power, and try to take control. They rapidly equalized with the controlling faction, at which point traffic peaked massively and the other PMF was smacked out of the park, and a good 30% put between them again afterwards. It was quite funny.

So yeah... inactive systems are hard for me these days.

Interestingly, I one mission for either side of a conflict last night.... no change today. I might one-side one of the factions now and see what happens.
 
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