A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

From experience, go for 50, maybe 60 systems per day. More than that is wasted.

I did the 50-60 systems thing, with system data, not paying any attention to scans or anything, and didn't get anywhere close to worthwhile results.

Upon making the thread I was told also that system data worth 10 million should be the appropriate threshold for a 9.5mil pop system.

I'm aware of only doing data drops by system, never by page. It's still unclear how CR value weighs your contribution compared to transaction count, but I suppose I'll test and see...

I've been out in the black a while and had about 500+ systems casually scanned not knowing what I was doing, and have sinceforth as I approach 1k total systems developed a way to economize my time/money gain. I'm doing a classic trip to Colonia and then to Sag A.... on Economy.

I should be back to Sol with about 2k+ systems worth.

I certainly hope there's no soft cap for player contribution to the bucket.
 
I did the 50-60 systems thing, with system data, not paying any attention to scans or anything, and didn't get anywhere close to worthwhile results.

Upon making the thread I was told also that system data worth 10 million should be the appropriate threshold for a 9.5mil pop system.

I'm aware of only doing data drops by system, never by page. It's still unclear how CR value weighs your contribution compared to transaction count, but I suppose I'll test and see...

I've been out in the black a while and had about 500+ systems casually scanned not knowing what I was doing, and have sinceforth as I approach 1k total systems developed a way to economize my time/money gain. I'm doing a classic trip to Colonia and then to Sag A.... on Economy.

I should be back to Sol with about 2k+ systems worth.

I certainly hope there's no soft cap for player contribution to the bucket.

What do you call worthwhile? A 6M system should move at least 5-6%. Just a few weeks ago i tested 40 systems on a 6 billion system, resulting in +3%. Not really worth it for the effort, unless you already have hundred of systems scanned, but significant nonetheless. Sure you can't expect getting +20%...
 
What do you call worthwhile? A 6M system should move at least 5-6%. Just a few weeks ago i tested 40 systems on a 6 billion system, resulting in +3%. Not really worth it for the effort, unless you already have hundred of systems scanned, but significant nonetheless. Sure you can't expect getting +20%...

A worthwhile turn would be 200 systems with a 5%+ influence gain in a 9.5mil pop system. I'm just not sure how to get the biggest bang for the buck.

One person says drop 10 million credits worth for maximum swing, another says a certain amount of systems like 50-60. I guess I'll just have to test it myself, to see what provides a bigger move, either 10 million credits worth or 200 flat systems in a day.

Like most things in elite I thought it was by transaction only, not really influenced much by worth of each system. But apparently that seems to count also. Who knows. I'll figure it out I guess. Thanks for the help.
 
As far as I've seen, the "10 million" value has always persisted as someone's guess at what needs to be supplied, and is, as far as I'm concerned, a myth that rivals "get within 5% influence of another faction to trigger a war" for being wrong, but close enough that people don't realise it's wrong and wonder why they don't always get the results they expect.

Any testing I'm aware of has shown that the value is largely irrelevant and transactions are king, with diminishing returns up to about 35 transactions in high population systems. Low population systems will hit their transaction ceiling earlier, of course.

That's the rule of thumb I've worked on for some time now; happy to be pointed to evidence to the contrary!
 
Depends on how busy the system is. You need to counter any work done for other factions first, so if it's a high traffic system, or factions in Boom or Famine/Outbreak state, it is not a bad idea to sell more. I'd say 35 + <whatever you guess any opposition and randoms will do>
 
Depends on how busy the system is. You need to counter any work done for other factions first, so if it's a high traffic system, or factions in Boom or Famine/Outbreak state, it is not a bad idea to sell more. I'd say 35 + <whatever you guess any opposition and randoms will do>

Yes and no - there's only so much one particular "bucket" of activity can add to the equation (if my understanding is correct), so rather than dumping even more exploration data you'd be better served doing some trade transactions, missions, bounty hunting, etc. EDIT: turns out I am wrong here, there's one single "bucket" for influence gain that fills up (or empties) based on ALL influence actions in the system. I was confusing this with the state buckets, which I believe are separate.

The other confounding issue is that it gets harder to increase influence the higher your influence already is, due to the way the influence is tallied and rounded down after all of the various activities are taken into account.
 
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Yes and no - there's only so much one particular "bucket" of activity can add to the equation (if my understanding is correct), so rather than dumping even more exploration data you'd be better served doing some trade transactions, missions, bounty hunting, etc.

I'm afraid not. There is a daily hard cap of influence for a faction and it is not divided up by different activities. Each activity is worth a certain number of "points" contributing to a total. - Check Michael Brookes post on Jan 2016. FD told us then what each activity was worth - values have been tweaked since.

Test it yourself. The data doesn't lie.
 
I've been working for a faction that has just won a civil war and now controls the system. However somehow there is now a pending outbreak, is there anything I can do to stop this happening?
 
I've been working for a faction that has just won a civil war and now controls the system. However somehow there is now a pending outbreak, is there anything I can do to stop this happening?
In theory if you were able to line up an Expansion, Retreat, or another conflict on the right day, you could have it go live at the same time as the Outbreak and override it.

In practice, that's unlikely to be practical at this point - just bring in Medicines and enjoy the trade profits.
 
I've been working for a faction that has just won a civil war and now controls the system. However somehow there is now a pending outbreak, is there anything I can do to stop this happening?

from a BGS perspective, why would you want to stop it? its a helpful state, generating plenty of missions!
 
I'm afraid not. There is a daily hard cap of influence for a faction and it is not divided up by different activities. Each activity is worth a certain number of "points" contributing to a total. - Check Michael Brookes post on Jan 2016. FD told us then what each activity was worth - values have been tweaked since.

Test it yourself. The data doesn't lie.

Fair enough, I was mistaken. Thanks for clearing that up!
 
Ok BGS gurus ... I have a question for you. Our PMF went over 75% INF for a day and triggered a pending expansion. We got our INF back down below 75% by the next tick and about a week later the expansion went active.

By this point INF was in the low sixties. Figured as long as we kept INF below 75% the expansion would eventually fail (we had no desire to expand). The expansion was active for eight days (I thought max was five) and low and behold today we expanded into another system. INF was in the high fifties to low sixties for the entire process.

Does this sound strange or is it working as intended. Every time I think I’m getting a handle on the BGS it slaps me in the face.

Thanks!
 
As intended. When it goes pending it's locked in unless you can trigger a war to start same time, then the expansion will fail.
 
Sounds about right. Once an expansion starts, it's pretty much going to happen. You can shorten it by starting a conflict, but the only way I know to make it fail is timing the conflict to start the same tick as the expansion.

When you are in expansion, your faction will drop by 2.5-3 points per day, though you can usually push this back up if you try.

... and ninja'd
 
As intended. When it goes pending it's locked in unless you can trigger a war to start same time, then the expansion will fail.

Sounds about right. Once an expansion starts, it's pretty much going to happen. You can shorten it by starting a conflict, but the only way I know to make it fail is timing the conflict to start the same tick as the expansion.

When you are in expansion, your faction will drop by 2.5-3 points per day, though you can usually push this back up if you try.

... and ninja'd

Oh, ok. We were always under the impression if your INF drops below 75% that the expansion would fail.

So as long as the expansion triggers it’s pretty much going to happen regardless of what happens the the INF % from the expanding system, right?
 
Oh, ok. We were always under the impression if your INF drops below 75% that the expansion would fail.

So as long as the expansion triggers it’s pretty much going to happen regardless of what happens the the INF % from the expanding system, right?

It's the same with most states, once they go pending, they're gonna happen.
 
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