War has higher priority so it should suspend retreat.
A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim
- Thread starter Walt Kerman
- Start date
War has higher priority so it should suspend retreat.
_trent_
Volunteer Moderator
I probably wasn't clear enough about the situation. The faction in question is already in retreat in the system. Because we would prefer to keep them there we gave them a bit of a nudge up and this has put them equal with another faction in the system, so war is now pending between them.
The retreat is due to end at the same tick as the war is due to start, so if they're below 2.5% they'd be kicked out of the system at the same tick that they were due to go into a war. I'm just wondering if that situation has occurred for anyone else.
I am trying to understand the BGS and I am beginning to think that the larger the human player group the less likely they will ever lose. How does a small group of players stop a larger group from taking over their system? The mechanics of the BGS seem to show that regardless of how active the small group is the large group will be able to just over power them with sheer numbers. I just saw a controlling faction in a system with 2.5M people lose 13 point in tic despite the controlling faction being actively supported.
Is the BGS set up that it rewards factions that murder the populace and earn bounties but don't lose influence while the faction being murdered is penalized for its people and security murdered? That seems counter intuitive.
Is the BGS set up that it rewards factions that murder the populace and earn bounties but don't lose influence while the faction being murdered is penalized for its people and security murdered? That seems counter intuitive.
It's quite as you say, though some would simply call that realistic. More CMDRs doing the same amount per-CMDR will always outpace the competition. Less realistic: There's limits placed on e.g. one person simply doing more than 2 combined (diminishing returns). If you can't outmaneuver them (e.g. hitting in a place or manner they don't expect/aren't prepared to contend with) and simply try to match them at the same activities (given the same time & effort per CMDR), you'll lose. You can maximize the influence-effect of the time you spend, but if they're doing the same then it's really just a numbers game.
CMDRs do not belong to factions in any BGS-relevant sense. There's no concept of one faction murdering another, only players murdering X faction. Most activities function in this one-way sense (trade, smuggling, etc). Missions are the main exception, commonly having both origin and destination effects.
Edit: And indeed I tend to agree. Outright murder is not normally IRL hugely (or at all) harmful to a political entity's influence. They'll get sympathy from outside, and outrage + hardened resolve + "martyr" figures inside. Maybe if the faction only consists of 100 people would killing 5 at random have any real negative impact in a political sense. Factions ingame can be that small but are more typically thousands, millions, or billions strong. There are - especially now - exceedingly few ways to directly lower a faction's influence at peace though, so they'd have to dream up new alternatives.
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I have not observed that yet, but I would assume Sentenza is right; the War should cancel the Retreat.
But I am curious - when did the War go pending? If the Retreat perhaps finishes before the War goes active...
generally yes, even if i have helped a small group of players to succesfully defend their system against a much larger group succesfully, and that more than once. granted, the larger group didn't understand how to work the BGS.
on the other hand, as a faction can't retreat from their homesystem, there is in fact nothing "to loose" - sometimes you have to go into hiding, wait for some months or work in a more indirect way ... for exampel binding the larger group of player into endless conflicts in their small population systems, which you can manipulate more easily with a small group of people.
generally the BGS rewards "efforts" - and if 250 people are putting a bit of effort into getting a faction into control, and 2 putting all of their effort into getting another faction into control, the 250 will be succesfull.
i have lost my first system, where i was learning the ropes on the BGS to a group of federal bounty hunters of around ten people (pre 1.4.). while i pity the independent folks of ruchbah, which where just expanding their liberty to 3 systems (which i "was helping with"), i personally think that's totally fine - why should i as a lone woolf back then win against a group of commanders - even if they probably did not know anybody else had been in that system for several months.
and it added to my own story as a commander. you can't win every fight, and the BGS makes a lot of good stories of trying hard and "you can't take the sky for me" in between.
[video=youtube;JPwkDF5AxQM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPwkDF5AxQM[/video]
It needn't be that a larger group should always defeat a smaller group within a few days though. Castles when properly provisioned were designed to keep a larger group out for long enough that they had to yield. If there were options like that in the BGS it might help.
However the BGS simply has poor mechanics, the concepts it uses are peculiar and unconvincing. How can a political faction suffer a disease or a famine? Why should it be easier for a small mining community to invade a system of billions than for the far bigger system to invade the smaller one? The BGS would make far more sense if a 'governing' faction was actually in control of a system, so that the domestic factions rivalled each other to be the opposition if there was a civil war, and if foreign factions had to invade with an invasion fleet rather than set up a bulletin board stall like any other faction. Almost every space empires game uses these mechanics.
On the retreat issue, I'm not sure about 2.3 however what I would expect is that if war interrupted an expansion state there would be an expansion. Retreat functions similarly, except with retreat you need to be under the required influence while with expansion you do not.
However the BGS simply has poor mechanics, the concepts it uses are peculiar and unconvincing. How can a political faction suffer a disease or a famine? Why should it be easier for a small mining community to invade a system of billions than for the far bigger system to invade the smaller one? The BGS would make far more sense if a 'governing' faction was actually in control of a system, so that the domestic factions rivalled each other to be the opposition if there was a civil war, and if foreign factions had to invade with an invasion fleet rather than set up a bulletin board stall like any other faction. Almost every space empires game uses these mechanics.
On the retreat issue, I'm not sure about 2.3 however what I would expect is that if war interrupted an expansion state there would be an expansion. Retreat functions similarly, except with retreat you need to be under the required influence while with expansion you do not.
_trent_
Volunteer Moderator
Retreat went active on Sunday, war went pending today. We've had the situation before where we've used a war to shorten a retreat, however we've not had the situation where the retreat and the pending war were in the same system. and where the war was due to start at the end of the final day of the retreat.
It was more of a theoretical question tbh as we want to keep that faction in the system so if it gets anywhere near 2.5% we'll give it a boost. It's just one of those situations that got me thinking.
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but there are. reason for that you can only gain the system controlling station in a system control war imho. if a (small) group owns several assets, it basically works like the line of defense of a castle.
While true, if a number of players wanted to steamroll a smaller faction they wouldn't have to wait for days or weeks to carefully match influence with the faction (to the point of running missions for the opposition and killing their own faction members, even), check to make sure the faction they're matching with isn't in a war elsewhere, then declare war, either-- and the fact that all of those are the case means that the smaller faction absolutely has opportunities to block a takeover, if they're clever about it.
Like most games, "realism" isn't (and can rarely be) the goal, just a mostly-internally-consistent set of unrealistic lies, analogies, and symbolism that people can follow along with. "This is not a pipe" and all that.
That said, if both groups have an equal knowledge of those in-game rules, the group with more players (or, when you get down to it, the group that spends the most player-hours on their goal) should be the one that wins, shouldn't it? You can get into nuances of how to implement the defender's advantage or distractionary, divide-and-conquer tactics but when push comes to shove, if the group that expends more effort is losing an otherwise-equal a head-to-head battle then something is fundamentally wrong with your game's balance, especially in a game like Elite Dangerous where there's explicitly a limited area to work in. Territorial conflicts are not just inevitable, they're part of the baseline game-- this isn't an MMO where every guild walks into "The X City Guild House" and has their own instanced copy of the interior. For better or for worse, this is what the game is and is likely to continue to be. The saving grace of this is that if (or when) the larger group comes in to steamroll you, it's likely that they'll do it and be done-- most groups aren't going to be long-term interested in "occupying" territory that isn't theirs; they'll just declare victory and go home. And since player factions can never be retreated from their placed systems, you always have the option of coming back in, picking up the pieces, and recruiting in the hopes that you can withstand or even initiate round 2.
Not quite? I mean, if you lose the initial war you'll still have assets in the system, true, but the first asset lost in a war is the "best" one-- and in that case, it'd be the system control asset. I know Frontier was talking about flipping that awhile ago, but I don't know if it got reverted or just never implemented.
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If the system is the defenders home system and if it has several stations then it might be considered fortified in BGS terms. However, once the defending faction are at low influence the attackers can just match them with any of the other factions present to deprive them of their other stations. Also, it isn't really like a castle because the defenders lose the advantage of controlling the system at the first line of defence, the attackers don't have to take anything more.
If the defenders are not in their home system the other stations aren't much defence.
Perhaps most player-hours should win, or if the attacker can achieve a successful ratio of player-hours to overcome a defensive advantage, like the invasions in almost every other game. There are other methods though. Elite is instanced, instead of CZs you could have NPC fleets in supercruise composed entirely of one side. The side that defeated the biggest fleet could win, like high scores in Space Invaders. A defeated NPC fleet would be replaced by a bigger one. Groups could end up attacking several capital ships, like in the trailers.
With Space Invaders skilled players would get the top scores, not players who played the most.
If the defenders are not in their home system the other stations aren't much defence.
Perhaps most player-hours should win, or if the attacker can achieve a successful ratio of player-hours to overcome a defensive advantage, like the invasions in almost every other game. There are other methods though. Elite is instanced, instead of CZs you could have NPC fleets in supercruise composed entirely of one side. The side that defeated the biggest fleet could win, like high scores in Space Invaders. A defeated NPC fleet would be replaced by a bigger one. Groups could end up attacking several capital ships, like in the trailers.
With Space Invaders skilled players would get the top scores, not players who played the most.
what defines the "best" ones? i have a bunch of exampels, where the controlling station isn't the station you want to have... quite simple in a (for exampel) four station system, the "invaders" own one market, and the group has 3 stations with all the possibilities coming from there.
in what meaning is controlling a system an advantage? the only advantage i can see at hand is that you can go bountyhunting without a KWS. while controlling stations is surely an advantage.
To be honest, I've never sat down in a system where Faction A owns enough assets to narrow it down beyond "System Control Station" > "Any other station or planetary base" > "non-landable planetary outpost". But I've never seen a situation where the owner of the system-controlling asset loses a war and doesn't immediately lose the system, regardless of the other assets they have in the system.
of course, that#s the mechanic - with loosing the system controlling station you loose control of the system - system changes allegiance, ownership etc.
the point i'm trying to make is, that when you loose "system control" you have not lost much, as you can use your other 3 stations to gain influence back. or you can smuggle yourself below conflict threshold, so no conflict can be triggered and go into hiding. i think schlack brought the great exampel of a faction which they kept at 1% influence for some months, so no conflict could be triggered, only pushing it above retreat threshold on the very day it was necessary. as long as you have a station with a market and exploration data to cash in, you have a good way to gain influence back any time.
for exampel one of the group i worked with did it like that: "invading" group triggers system control war. group does nothing agains it. "invading" group raises the other groups influence to gain another station, expecting an easy win - at that point the small group took a weekend off to get their influence up in the sky while using the influence wave which the other group had provided ... during the pending conflict. with a headstart of over 20% and the "invaders" not expecting any resistance, the second war brought system control back. etc. pp.
generally i think, control is pretty fluid in elite. if you loose control, you can either move on to another system, or wait some months till the other group doesn't exist anymore, or is busy somewhere else... loosing a system is as much of a good story as winning one, or keeping one ... see firefly.
That's a fair way of looking at it, but most people view "system control" as the be all and end all, whether that's a good thing or not. And if your group of players thinks that way, "losing your system" (especially if it's your home system) can be the difference between having a fighting chance and having people leave the game entirely, which can result in a group-dissolving feedback loop of despair.
It may not be the most "logical" of viewpoints, but for better or worse, a lot of people seem to care a lot more about owning a system vs. owning a non-system-control asset in said system.
It may not be the most "logical" of viewpoints, but for better or worse, a lot of people seem to care a lot more about owning a system vs. owning a non-system-control asset in said system.
Well timely that this question came up.
Was backing a faction in a system that contains 1 station, 1 outpost, and one planetary installation that didn't even have a commodity market. My faction controlled the (controlling) station.
We went into an Election with the faction that controlled the outpost and planetary installation which we won. For the victory we were given the (kinda worthless) planetary installation and not the outpost as I expected.
How does the BGS calculate what is the "most valuable asset" of the losing faction?
In the vast majority of cases we've seen, starports outweigh outposts, which outweigh planetary installations. Beyond that things are less clear. There were some dev comments that market value plays a part, presumably if they're the same sort of place.
Now the caveat: We've witnessed several exceptions. In at least one case an outpost was taken before a starport - and the outpost doesn't even have a market, so as with your example, that isn't it. That's more extreme than other examples, where for instance a starport with a busier and more valuable market in every way imaginable was not chosen over another. We bat theories around about hidden values, like the old tiny/small/large/very large/huge asset markers and what they might represent, but...well they're hidden.
As always there's two reasonable broad assumptions: 1) the rule is complex and we don't know all the factors clearly enough, or 2) the rule is simple but noticeably-often doesn't work as expected/intended.
/shrug.
Edit: I'd report what happened in your case as a bug I guess, and see what they say. Even "this is working as intended" will teach us something, albeit frustratingly unhelpful.
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It is based on population. It is a 'hidden' stat but every asset has a population figure. This determines mva.