A glimpse into what is going on in the Background Simulator?

[RegisterMe]

This thread on the Lugh event, and this second thread concerning background trading might have provided us with a couple of interesting glimpses into what the Background Simulator does, how it does it, and what it might mean for us players.


Warning, lots of conjecture ahead .


The Lugh Event, even though it didn't work, demonstrated the model for how the universe will change. Against a background of multiple competing factions:


1) run missions for a faction increasing its influence in a system
2) hit some threshold and get to a state change potential
3) state of system changes
4) set of missions change as a result


Now, bugs will be bugs will be squashed, so I am not to bothered at the moment about the fact that the state didn't change, or that in at least some cases rep is a bit of a mess. Leaving those two aside I think it's an elegant model for how we, as players, can impact the game universe, and how changes in the game universe can impress themselves on our experience of the game.


The second thread, about trading, might be cause for more concern. Put to one side the fact that trading is borked at the moment. If you read between the lines you will probably conclude, like I have, that all npc trading is carried out by the Background Simulator. Essentially a posh cron job runs and shifts goods from supply systems to demand systems (or at least it should).


That's fine as far as it goes, but the implication is that no npc trading is actually carried out by the npc ships we see. Follow that thought and you might conclude that those npcs in belts that are mining aren't actually mining, in as much as they will never deliver goods to a station.


The implications of this are that your interaction with npc ships will have zero direct impact on the game state. You might get a rep change, you might get some cargo drop that you then deliver, but these are secondary effects. If you blow up that Type 7 and have it drop Coffee, well, it will have no impact on any station. It was never delivering coffee to a station, it never bought coffee in a station.


The Lakon Type 9 that nearly smeared you as you tried to exit a station? It's fluff. It wasn't doing anything other than being there to give you a different undocking experience. Kill a bunch of miners in a belt? The faction that they are from won't have less ships as a result.


This becomes more of a issue when you see one FD comment about the Lugh Event - trading can significantly effect the influence of a faction in a system. Only we can't ever directly impact the npc traders. You can't directly blockade a system or station by blowing up npcs. And you can't blockade a system against players because they can go solo, or if they're in open then you hit instance number of player limitations.


The only place the "black glove" of the Background Simulation and the "white glove" of our in-ship experience of the game meet is in our imaginations.


Now don't get me wrong, I love the game. But if I'm right (and the proviso is that I did say that at the outset there was a lot of conjecture ahead ) the "white glove" in-ship experience having no direct impact on the state of the game bothers me. It really lessens immersion.


Anything wrong with my analysis? Any experiments suggest themselves? Any other thoughts or comments?


Cheers,




RM

 

[X2Eliah]

It could be possible that a system also runs a monitor task for, say, "number of NPC traders killed here", and if that goes beyond trigger values (or fractions, who knows), the background trade simulation thingy adjusts the estimated trade processes for the system.
I mean, that seems like a logical thing to do from a coding perspective. I have no idea if Frontier have done it like that (or at all).

As for the NPC traders being a smokescreen.. eh, that is a little bit inevitable, because of the game doing the whole instancing thing. At least I think so.

An easy (well... "easy") way to test would be to try and blockade a system entirely (blockading = killing all NPC and player traders within the system) and seeing if stations start running out of wares, and if statuses like 'famine', 'civil unrest' etc. break out. Though, might be easier to test in low-traffic-volume systems with not too many players normally visiting, just to avoid annoying new folks.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[Sounder Deeps]

Eliteangerous. Grind $ for better ships. Anything else? Nope. That's it. That's the awesome game we were promised and we get. Elite: Space Grind With No Point.

 

[1500]

It would be easy for the system to assign a destination to each NPC that you encounter. Then subtract the cargo that you take or destroy from that destinations NPC incoming supply. I am not saying this is done, but it could be implemented this way, so your actions could have an effect on trading.

 

[Moldfield]

bump. make it stickied. That is sad and discouraging. Makes me wonder how "dynamic" the storyline will be (- probably "hardcoded" / "waiting to turn the switches").

Since I was lucky enough to "earn" a fully equipped Asp during the "rare-commodities-days" in Gamma I decided to now concentrate on the storyline.

First I went to Sorbago: sided with the liberals / anti-slavery faction, got allied there. But since the influence didn't move (- maybe the other side had as many contributors? maybe it's hard-set not to change for story reasons yet?).
Now I went to Cemiess: Aisling Duval is anti-slavery - and with the heir Harold declared mad she now is in the game against Zemina Torval (pro-slavery) and Denton Patreus (delivering the weapons to both sides while trying to become emperor himself?)
Seems the "Empire" story is setup and begins moving. Who knows what part the Federation and the Alliance will play... - I think I picked my side for now. Need to do missions for Aisling Duvals "Empire Party" on Cemiess now...

 

[LaznAzn]

First I went to Sorbago: sided with the liberals / anti-slavery faction, got allied there. But since the influence didn't move (- maybe the other side had as many contributors? maybe it's hard-set not to change for story reasons yet?).

A lot of us traders are profitting heavily on the slave trade right now.

I've delivered about 13,000 slaves to Imperial Stations, indirectly supporting the Pro-Slave faction. Not sure it would make a difference in Sorbago though.

 

[Ganjis]

This is how I understand the universe to work. In earlier builds, NPC ships in SC would just bimble around endlessly, never actually going anywhere (if you watched). There is a clue in the way when you enter SC there are no contacts and then over time they randomly start appearing. Drop to real space for a second and return and they will all be gone and a new random bunch appears.

What about nav beacons? Why do NPC ships fly from them in normal space? Where are the cargo ships with escorts? Are the real traders crawling along in real space, hidden from SC sensors? Perhaps they are since they have no time worries, being AI bots.

 

[fergal]

Anything wrong with my analysis? Any experiments suggest themselves? Any other thoughts or comments?

I think you are spot on, unfortunately.
I've scanned the cargo of many, many NPCs. Its random. None of them are leaving stations with items that you would buy from there, and none are docking with cargo that you would sell at that station.

Follow an NPC that leaves a station to their jump point, they just fly to a planet in that system. Interdict them and they jump to another random system.

Having actual NPCs do real trade runs through so many systems would take a crazy amount if processing power, i understand that this isn't happening, but all of the NPCs that spawn should have a sensible route they follow.

 

[Ganjis]

Having actual NPCs do real trade runs through so many systems would take a crazy amount if processing power, i understand that this isn't happening, but all of the NPCs that spawn should have a sensible route they follow.

Exactly, it isn't so much the fact that this is tge case that bothers me. What bothers me is how blatant it is. Not so much the curtain slipping as there being no curtain.

 

[FoxTwo]

I wrote in another thread that I've actually followed an NPC Lakon 6 taking off once... I had just bought an FSD wake scanner and I just happened to pick that NPC as a test subject.

Long story short - I followed that NPC for 4 or 5 systems before giving up. It would jump into a system, supercruise towards a planet or a station, drop out, fly around a bit, and then jump out to another system.

At no time did it try to dock with any of the stations that it was flying towards.

(I have a habit of following random strangers in open world games. I followed a hot-looking girl in a sexy outfit in Watch_Dogs on the street for 40 mins, but all she did was walk around a 3-block area. She would obey traffic rules and cross the street etc but she didn't go ANYWHERE...just walked).

 

[Hexen]

This thread on the Lugh event, and this second thread concerning background trading might have provided us with a couple of interesting glimpses into what the Background Simulator does, how it does it, and what it might mean for us players.


Warning, lots of conjecture ahead .

Nah, I don't have any objections to what you've said really. But then again who cares? Don't take is as offence though. I just side with idea that we should entertain ourselves, we got so huge galaxy to play, so many tools at our disposal! Do we really need to be spoon fed with story? Yes, I do appreciate professional writing and complex storyline. But it will take time, not just a few notes in form of GalNet news. Meanwhile it's up to us and Frontier provided us with so many ways to have fun, I'm just astonished with how much we can do. I hope I can get more free time on holidays and brew some adventure myself

All I can say is this :

After returning for a short stop in Eranin, I noted it was now 99% communist with absolute dominance of one faction. I don't quite remember it that way, not sure if I missed something.
I was under the impression that some folks did some very extensive work there - with successful result.

It's those guys. They have numbers and they helping communist systems

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59675

 

[RegisterMe]

Having actual NPCs do real trade runs through so many systems would take a crazy amount if processing power, i understand that this isn't happening, but all of the NPCs that spawn should have a sensible route they follow.

Yeah, I meant to mention that in the OP (the only reason I was up at that time was because I couldn't sleep). Actually simulating the economy with "real" ships would take a ridiculous amount of processing power, so it comes down to a sensible abstraction at the cost of "realism" or immersion.

However, as you say, there could be some intermediate step. The game already knows that system x is meant to trade commodity y with system z. If a player is travelling from x to z it shouldn't be that hard to put in an npc trader or two travelling the same route. And if that npc is travelling that route, should it not reach system z then "cancel" that volume of npc trading for a pip of the background simulation.

 

[fergal]

Yeah, I meant to mention that in the OP (the only reason I was up at that time was because I couldn't sleep). Actually simulating the economy with "real" ships would take a ridiculous amount of processing power, so it comes down to a sensible abstraction at the cost of "realism" or immersion.

However, as you say, there could be some intermediate step. The game already knows that system x is meant to trade commodity y with system z. If a player is travelling from x to z it shouldn't be that hard to put in an npc trader or two travelling the same route. And if that npc is travelling that route, should it not reach system z then "cancel" that volume of npc trading for a pip of the background simulation.

If you have a wake scanner you can scan the wakes the npcs leave at the stations. If you have a cargo scanner you can scan the npcs cargo hold. These two things need to make sense to give the smoke and mirrors of the economy more chance of believably hiding the inner workings.

Sure not all ships are trading to only the next system, but I would think most of them are. If I'm at a hi tech system with superconductors under the galactic average price the type 6s and type 9s should pick up superconductors. They should then go to a system nearby that needs them.

Once they jump out they can be deleted, never to be heard from again, but when there are ships carting grain from a station that imports grain there is a problem with believably.

 

[AV2012]

Seems like a fair analysis to me. If this is the current state of play and NPC's really are just meaningless fluff, then that does seem to detract from the experience. However, it would be a hugely complex job to realistically model NPC player traders effecting the economy. I think the solution would be to somehow connect player interaction with NPC traders into the fancy cron job the runs the econocomy so that it is possible for players to have an effect on the economy.

However, I'm not sure if exposing the game mechanics to this level helps with immersion in the game either. Certainly, players should not know exactly how many NPC Type 9's they have to kill at the nav point to create a predictable tipping point in the game state.

 

[RegisterMe]

However, I'm not sure if exposing the game mechanics to this level helps with immersion in the game either. Certainly, players should not know exactly how many NPC Type 9's they have to kill at the nav point to create a predictable tipping point in the game state.

That's fair enough. imho though no connection isn't really good enough (for me, others' mileage will vary ).

 

[AV2012]

That's fair enough. imho though no connection isn't really good enough (for me, others' mileage will vary ).

Perhaps (I hope) Frontier are currently using live player data to create more realistic simulations going forward. This would certainly take a lot of the leg work out out of modelling realistic believable NPC behaviour. These certainly no shortage of traders trading (and I can't help thinking that some of these are basically acting like robots). I'd have to agree that you can't make a realistic simulations purely from random variables. I've seen some very odd stuff recently, like finding the wreckage of hauler 500ly from the nearest station with 6 tons of domestic appliances floating in space. I suppose you could try and put some sort of imaginative construct on this. I.E. maybe they got lost in space, but the trouble is, the more you play the more the limitations of the purely random become apparent.