A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

It's a shame, really. Another question: As far as I know, an expansion costs 15% influence in the expanding system. Does this drop happen when the expansion triggers (so you'd know early from which system you're going to expand) or does it happen at the end, along with the expansion itself?

it happens (or should happen) daily, with 2,5% per day.

experiences whether it really happens are different. in most cases your activity will outdo that loss, so you won't feel it.
 
Is it possible to direct an expansion by doing only doing courier missions to the system you want to expand to? (If you're lucky and they spawn at all)
No. To the best of my knowledge, you can't influence it directly, but you can predict which system a faction will expand to with near 100% accuracy if you understand the mechanics.

Once you've worked that out, you could, potentially -- given enough time and manpower -- influence expansion targets by forcing other factions to expand into systems you want to avoid, or by forcing factions to retreat from systems you want to expand into, but that's far too much work, frankly, and you'd have a more productive time going along for the ride and working with what the BGS gives you.

Think of the BGS as a long-term game, and it comes into its own.
 
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No. To the best of my knowledge, you can't influence it directly, but you can predict which system a faction will expand to with near 100% accuracy if you understand the mechanics.

Once you've worked that out, you could, potentially -- given enough time and manpower -- influence expansion targets by forcing other factions to expand into systems you want to avoid, or by forcing factions to retreat from systems you want to expand into, but that's far too much work, frankly, and you'd have a more productive time going along for the ride and working with what the BGS gives you.

Think of the BGS as a long-term game, and it comes into its own.

We managed it on a number of occasions in 2.0. It was a lot of work. In 2.1 as Monkey says, its still technically possible but not really feasible.
 
care to expand on that expansionist statement / theory, is it just the highest influence system that is chosen from the minor faction to expand from, if so a faction could expand across a large area fairly quickly

Indeed, with a small qualification; the expansion should go from the system that got the expansion pending, so you have to carefully manage which system you allow to cross the expansion trigger first and generate the pending state.

It will go to the nearest populated system from the expanding system that has less than 7 factions.
 
I'm not totally against this mechanism, but it could probably do with a tweak. It is too punishing in highly visited/active systems.

Election is also a conflict state. Your faction loses the benefits of bounties cashed, whereas other bounties factions count against you. In popular bounty hunting systems this can easily put you into trouble. Ill say it again, conflicts now have to be carefully planned with consideration of the repercussions for your faction in other systems.

My gripe with the war states and they're impact on all systems is that an opposing player faction can pick off small population systems you are in and drive you to war over and over decimating the influences across all your systems, I agree there should be some negative effect on all systems through a war state but it should be something based around the population size where the war exists versus the total population of systems you control (or similar)....so if at war in a 10K population system and you have a 10mil population across all controlled systems there would be a small reduction on influence affect but not a stop to it, whereas if you only have say 2 systems equating to 100K population and you go to war in a 5mil pop system then it's as it is today.
 
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My gripe with the war states and they're impact on all systems is that an opposing player faction can pick off small population systems you are in and drive you to war over and over decimating the influences across all your systems, I agree there should be some negative effect on all systems through a war state but it should be something based around the population size where the war exists versus the total population of systems you control (or similar)....so if at war in a 10K population system and you have a 10mil population across all controlled systems there would be a small reduction on influence affect but not a stop to it, whereas if you only have say 2 systems equating to 100K population and you go to war in a 5mil pop system then it's as it is today.

Yes, I agree. The idea of a 'war tax' is good in principle, it just needs tweaking bit.
 
That's an excellent suggestion kaivalagi.


I wonder is it worth making a bug report to be passed on to Dav and the BGS team along the lines of:

Can you confirm that the factionwide effect is an intended effect?

We understand that there should be some faction wide consequences for conflict and we are not against it in principle. The current iteration is, however, too punishing for multi-system factions in two related respects:

1. There is limited ability to counteract random activity in high traffic/activity systems.
2. The ability to defend against organized attack in other systems is similarly constrained.

Our suggestions for tweaks:

That the faction-wide effect be limited to 50% effectiveness of actions. e.g. BH effect when election is active elsewhere would be 50% of normal rather than 0%

That the faction-wide effect be tied to population size. e.g. War in a small pop system where smaller resources are required to fight should only have a small effect on large pop systems but would have a larger effect on similarly sized systems.




Any other suggestions? I know the BGS team are open to views of the community - even if not communicated that often!
 
That's an excellent suggestion kaivalagi.


I wonder is it worth making a bug report to be passed on to Dav and the BGS team along the lines of:

Can you confirm that the factionwide effect is an intended effect?

We understand that there should be some faction wide consequences for conflict and we are not against it in principle. The current iteration is, however, too punishing for multi-system factions in two related respects:

1. There is limited ability to counteract random activity in high traffic/activity systems.
2. The ability to defend against organized attack in other systems is similarly constrained.

Our suggestions for tweaks:

That the faction-wide effect be limited to 50% effectiveness of actions. e.g. BH effect when election is active elsewhere would be 50% of normal rather than 0%

That the faction-wide effect be tied to population size. e.g. War in a small pop system where smaller resources are required to fight should only have a small effect on large pop systems but would have a larger effect on similarly sized systems.




Any other suggestions? I know the BGS team are open to views of the community - even if not communicated that often!

This definitely gets my vote. Awaiting today's tick to see if my combat bonds cashed in outside of the conflict system had the effect of raising influence or not.
 
What is the max number of factions in a single system? I heard it was 6, and a war would trigger if a 7th came in, but I know of a system with 8 (and no faction on retreat or war).
 
That's an excellent suggestion kaivalagi.


I wonder is it worth making a bug report to be passed on to Dav and the BGS team...

My player faction has already raised bug tickets around the war state and we have had it confirmed and re-confirmed (several times just to be sure) that the current mechanic with war states and their effect on faction influence in other systems is working as designed, I guess FD don;t want player factions spreading across the galaxy and this mechanism will undoubtedly limit growth....

I thought I had posted my suggestion about war states in the suggestions topic of this forum but I can't find it, maybe I posted it here before now....feel free to post up a suggestion thread on this point and link it here, I'll add my 2 pence to it, as will lots of others I'm sure

I guess it is still early days with the BGS, I imagine there will be considerable changes as we move forwards, I can only hope something can be changed so we atleast have a fighting chance of stopping influence drop in other non-warring systems when at war rather than seeing it plummet and not being able to do jack about it.

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What is the max number of factions in a single system? I heard it was 6, and a war would trigger if a 7th came in, but I know of a system with 8 (and no faction on retreat or war).

war is only triggered by matching influence with another faction or reaching 60% to trigger a war for control of a system as far as I am concerned
 
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What is the max number of factions in a single system? I heard it was 6, and a war would trigger if a 7th came in, but I know of a system with 8 (and no faction on retreat or war).

7 is theoretical limit, but it can be exceeded if some faction that was displaced pre-2.1 retreats back home.
 
7 is theoretical limit, but it can be exceeded if some faction that was displaced pre-2.1 retreats back home.


Aha, so my hypothesis was correct. I suppose that if I want to expand into one of these systems I have to force some factions in them to retreat first, right?
 
At the tick today I noted we have gone into 'Pending war'

Not a problem as this is part of the game but.......

We are pending war with an NPC faction that is on 7.3% whilst we are at 23.6% Note they are on 7.3% and NOT a 7.3% gap, try a 16.3% gap :( :(

Yesterday the gap would still have been significant with us at 18.9%. The faction we will fight does not own a station, we don't own a station but want to make progress. I am miffed at this stupid waste of time and do not understand how we can go into a pending war with such a large gap.

Prior to this pending war we were coming out of expansion... What are our thoughts please?
 
Would be very interesting to see the results, but it is a difficult one to assess cleanly unless its a zero traffic system.


So i did the test. Won Combat Bonds in one system, sold them in another.

No change in the second system that had no conflict in it. So once you are in conflict, the only sytem you will be able to positively affect the influence is the conflict containing system.

And see what you make of this.

Different system.

Yesterdays Tick (8/9)
Fac A 35.9
Fac B 24.7 Boom
Fac C 22.7
Fac D 13.7
Fac E 3.1

Todays Tick (9/9)
Fac A 33.8
Fab B 25.3 Boom
Fac C 25.3
Fac D 12.1
Fac E 3.5

The objective was to get Fac C to the same lvl as Fac B in order to get pending War between the 2. So I did 3 missions for Fac C. I was the only Cmdr in system.
So as anticipated Fac C goes up enough, and the 2 balance out.
But why would Fac D go down and Fac E go up?
 
So i did the test. Won Combat Bonds in one system, sold them in another.

No change in the second system that had no conflict in it. So once you are in conflict, the only sytem you will be able to positively affect the influence is the conflict containing system.

And see what you make of this.

Different system.

Yesterdays Tick (8/9)
Fac A 35.9
Fac B 24.7 Boom
Fac C 22.7
Fac D 13.7
Fac E 3.1

Todays Tick (9/9)
Fac A 33.8
Fab B 25.3 Boom
Fac C 25.3
Fac D 12.1
Fac E 3.5

The objective was to get Fac C to the same lvl as Fac B in order to get pending War between the 2. So I did 3 missions for Fac C. I was the only Cmdr in system.
So as anticipated Fac C goes up enough, and the 2 balance out.
But why would Fac D go down and Fac E go up?

you did something in the system? shooting npc pirates running those missions?
 
At the tick today I noted we have gone into 'Pending war'

Not a problem as this is part of the game but.......

We are pending war with an NPC faction that is on 7.3% whilst we are at 23.6% Note they are on 7.3% and NOT a 7.3% gap, try a 16.3% gap :( :(

Yesterday the gap would still have been significant with us at 18.9%. The faction we will fight does not own a station, we don't own a station but want to make progress. I am miffed at this stupid waste of time and do not understand how we can go into a pending war with such a large gap.

Prior to this pending war we were coming out of expansion... What are our thoughts please?

That looks like a bug. It should not be possible. Are you sure you are not looking at two different pending wars?
 
That looks like a bug. It should not be possible. Are you sure you are not looking at two different pending wars?
we are singing from the same hymn sheet as that was the first thing I checked before engaging mouth :)

I have submitted a bug report as there are no factions anywhere close to our percentage.
 
So i did the test. Won Combat Bonds in one system, sold them in another.

No change in the second system that had no conflict in it. So once you are in conflict, the only sytem you will be able to positively affect the influence is the conflict containing system.

Just rechecked our records for one of our factions during a recent WAR state. This faction is in 19 systems checked daily, and the influence rose in 3 of them.

Another one of our factions was in ELECTION and we were able to boost influence in another system.

It may be that combat bonds only have influence effect in the system that they are earned in. A bug report might be in order
 
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