A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[Starwolfe]

With war, it's all about casual traffic in your systems. Our systems with no traffic don't drop at all during a war, but others with traffic can plummet.

This I can confirm without a doubt.

Nearly a year of tracking in a nominally low traffic area and Wars are virtually no problem for my systems because of nearly no traffic in the area.

Outside of the influence drops from Expansion, there is no "automated" influence effect on the BGS - EVERYTHING with influence changes are due to other players, so watch that traffic board to get a handle on how many go through and might affect influence.

 

[Nithingale]

Greetings CMDRs,
Juste a little question : Do you know if a faction can be both in retreat and in war in two different systems at the same time?
Thanks.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

Greetings CMDRs,
Juste a little question : Do you know if a faction can be both in retreat and in war in two different systems at the same time?
Thanks.

A faction - no matter how many systems it exists in - can only be in one state at a time. War will override retreat when it goes active if they are both pending.

 

[_trent_]

I am curious as to the crime report and bounty hunter report in the Station Services area. Are the totals updated daily? Are the figures for just the past 24 hours? Are the totals just for the controlling faction or is it the sum total for all of the factions? I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how these work.

 

[Johnny Cyclops]

I am curious as to the crime report and bounty hunter report in the Station Services area. Are the totals updated daily? Are the figures for just the past 24 hours? Are the totals just for the controlling faction or is it the sum total for all of the factions? I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how these work.

And akin to this, is the "most traded" data for imports or exports?

 

[Harley Quinn]

With war, it's all about casual traffic in your systems. Our systems with no traffic don't drop at all during a war, but others with traffic can plummet.

Can confirm the same with mine. Controlled systems with no traffic have not moved when in war elsewhere but the casual players in other systems do seem to have a greater impact when war is on with less options to counter them. Our home system always takes a hit of about 1% a day though

 

[Vingtetun]

With war, it's all about casual traffic in your systems. Our systems with no traffic don't drop at all during a war, but others with traffic can plummet.

Yup. Whichever idiot decided to start a faction at the nearest system to Sol needs shooting.....

Oh....

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Question for the Retreat specialists :

- what's the current Influence that cancels a Retreat?

I ask because I'm looking at a Faction that's still actively retreating from a System despite having 6.9, 7.5 and now 10.0% Influence. Still retreating (?)
Back home, I was able to keep a bunch of Factions from Retreating after pushing them over ~3%, immediately canceling their Retreat. More Factions = more Mission-givers
So it's kinda puzzling to see a 10% Faction still in active Retreat from that very System.

 

[goemon]

Question for the Retreat specialists :

- what's the current Influence that cancels a Retreat?

I ask because I'm looking at a Faction that's still actively retreating from a System despite having 6.9, 7.5 and now 10.0% Influence. Still retreating (?)
Back home, I was able to keep a bunch of Factions from Retreating after pushing them over ~3%, immediately canceling their Retreat. More Factions = more Mission-givers
So it's kinda puzzling to see a 10% Faction still in active Retreat from that very System.

retreat stays active over its whole duration, even if the faction is pushed above threshold. though it won't/shouldn't retreat at the end.

also note, that the influence on the last day before retreat is what counts (as states are resolved before influence is calculated).

 

[_trent_]

We still think the cut-off is 2.5% on the final day of the retreat. We had a faction stay in one of our systems with 3.7% as recently as a week ago.

 

[goemon]

We still think the cut-off is 2.5% on the final day of the retreat. We had a faction stay in one of our systems with 3.7% as recently as a week ago.

yep. can confirm that. 2,5 % on the tick before retreat ends. we have failed and forced some retreats in the last months.

 

[Starwolfe]

Question for the Retreat specialists :

- what's the current Influence that cancels a Retreat?

I ask because I'm looking at a Faction that's still actively retreating from a System despite having 6.9, 7.5 and now 10.0% Influence. Still retreating (?)
Back home, I was able to keep a bunch of Factions from Retreating after pushing them over ~3%, immediately canceling their Retreat. More Factions = more Mission-givers
So it's kinda puzzling to see a 10% Faction still in active Retreat from that very System.

I can also confirm that it is 2.5% - but it lasts 5 days. If on the tick for day 4 into 5 (maybe sooner?) it is above 2.5% it will fail, if it remains below 2.5% they will leave.

 

[Walter2]

I can also confirm that it is 2.5% - but it lasts 5 days. If on the tick for day 4 into 5 (maybe sooner?) it is above 2.5% it will fail, if it remains below 2.5% they will leave.

But don't forget that the Retreat flag is waved in all systems where the affected faction has a presence. It's possible that the faction can be retreating from another system entirely, but if its inlfuence level in the observed system is very close to the threshold it can give a false impression that the flag is true for that system.

The BGS: designed to create confusion.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Also note that when Retreat is cut short because of a pending conflict, the cut off is still the inf of the day before the war goes active.

 

[Johnny Cyclops]

I can also confirm that it is 2.5% - but it lasts 5 days. If on the tick for day 4 into 5 (maybe sooner?) it is above 2.5% it will fail, if it remains below 2.5% they will leave.

2.5% absolute Inf value, or needs a +2.5% or more rise from the Inf starting point when it entered Retreat? I always assumed it was the latter, rather than pushing the Mf down below 2.5% absolute. I agree it's a fixed five days window, although sometimes seems to end sooner (in secondary systems, not the one being retreated from) so there must be something else going on (perhaps another state change takes priority?).

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Any estimates on how many bounty turn-ins it would take to flip a system from Medium to High Security?

 

[Jane Turner]

Infinite

 

[CMDR Endincite]

2.5% absolute Inf value, or needs a +2.5% or more rise from the Inf starting point when it entered Retreat? I always assumed it was the latter, rather than pushing the Mf down below 2.5% absolute. I agree it's a fixed five days window, although sometimes seems to end sooner (in secondary systems, not the one being retreated from) so there must be something else going on (perhaps another state change takes priority?).

It's 2.5% absolute. Above that and retreat fails, below and the faction actually retreats. Conflict states will override retreat, but what it says in other systems isn't terribly meaningful. Often the faction-wide state will never be listed in other systems.

To use an extreme example, we've had a faction enter retreat, be pushed up past 20%, and then back down below 2.5% and the faction retreated just fine. The course of the state appears to make no difference, just the last day. If that last day is earlier because the state was overridden by conflict, then the influence on that new last day is all that matters.

Any estimates on how many bounty turn-ins it would take to flip a system from Medium to High Security?

Afaik such things are only temporarily changed by state. You can't permanently change the security of a system without introducing a Power effect or possibly by way of gov't change, though I haven't seen the latter myself.

 

[Starwolfe]

But don't forget that the Retreat flag is waved in all systems where the affected faction has a presence. It's possible that the faction can be retreating from another system entirely, but if its inlfuence level in the observed system is very close to the threshold it can give a false impression that the flag is true for that system.

The BGS: designed to create confusion.

That's easy to solve, check the station's system status board.
The details will tell you what the faction is up to and in what system.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Infinite

Has CI actively tried it, Jane?

Are you saying it can't be done, or just that the effort is so large that it isn't worth trying.

I could be imagining it, but I could swear that during the Frog/Poultry thing we had raised the level of security in Xihe through sheer mass of bounty turn-ins.