Ok! Thanks i'll be keeping an eye on your bible! 
A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim
- Thread starter Walt Kerman
- Start date
Yes. Kiĺling ships negatively affects the influence of factions they belong to. And the ruling system faction. And it increases Lockdown and Civil Unrest.
What are you planning to do? You have been the ambassador of peace to us, Ben ;-)
No actually. With recovering states now showing up in its own box this would be a good thing we all could track and I could add it to the OP.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Ok, that's another thing to test then. I'll see if i can track it when we'll start acting.
Great start Walt, many thanks. I know you've done tests on trading, but I've always worked on the basis that both buying and selling raise the influence of the top dog in the station you buy and sell in. I believe most players also work under this assumption.
We've done a couple of watertight tests in the past couple of days that confirms - in at least two instances - that selling into a market raises the rating of the owning faction. Figures and test conditions available for inspection on request, but the quantities weren't vast.
The next test is to see if just passing through a static system changes any ratings. Although unvisited systems don't change, they still go through regular cycles of civil wars/elections if the numbers are right, simply because they don't change.
Re: Civil Wars. In previous releases your favourite faction's influence could be raised (in theory) to match that of the owning faction to trigger a war. In 1.4 this tight condition has been relaxed and wars can be (spontaneously) triggered with quite a wide difference in the influence levels of the two protagonists. This is probably accounts for the unrealistic number of wars going on at the moment.
And missions really are crazy at times. We've had one faction that's expanded into a neighbouring system only to offer contracts that that could only harm its home system: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=192424&p=2961373#post2961373
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Weve been offered contracts by our faction to harm our home system since December 2014. The test was fairly conclusive for trading and we've seen it intentionally used to win a player war in 1.3. It may very well be different now though, and current data I'm looking at seems to back that up; however it could just be 1.4's buggy influence and mean nothing
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Were you selling goods in demand at the station? In 1.3 we found that selling scrap to an industrial system (which therefore had no demand) reduced influence. This wasn't something we controlled for though, as it was an unintended effect of something else we were testing.
I'd like to know this too - I think values will drift over time. The BGS doesn't update systems that have no traffic, but popping a ship through the system forces a transaction to the galaxy server, so the influence arrows (if there are any) will apply.
If you interpret "more dynamic galaxy" to mean "an absolute galactic bloodbath" it makes perfect sense!
That happens to us in every WMLU system.
Looks like we will be working together more than we thought, lol.
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The station I was using is a Terraforming outpost - orbiting between the planet and its rings, so the trial was not too tedious - and they want practically everything. I discounted a Clipper passing through the system as there are only two outposts.
If selling items that are not in demand has a deleterious effect, where does that leave rares trading?
After suggesting the 'just passing through' test, I realised that there is no way to evaluate the results as the only way to ensure no-one else has been through is to land on a station (twit). So the test has to be: land on a station but have no interaction apart from checking the visitor log. Not as easy as it sounds as it should be done over several days.
The unreliable influence arrows are ambiguous. Has it been established whether they refer to the pilot's relationship with the faction (which is what I assume) or if they are an indicator of the behind-the-scenes influence changes being applied to the faction?
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As the ultimate tool to crash an economy? Again, that's worth checking out (although the way I see it is that rares are in demand everywhere, but in especially high demand the further from the source you go.)
Find a station that's close to the star. Alternatively, park up in the station using a spare account (if you have one).
I started ignoring them months ago.
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I would never harm civilains or traders, however, unwanted smugglers on my patch... that's a different story.
Nah, I was just curious.
Also, I read somewhere that only combat mission influence during times of war? Is this true? Is it all types of combat missions like bounty hunt in another system or is it just conflict zone missions?
The minor-faction running the Master Chef community goal in Noti was brought down to 1% or 0% in the first 24hours of the CG.
And that CG was just for Aganippe Rush, so only a few thousand tons delivered in total, 4t at a time.
Were the other CGs where this behaviour was seen rare goods CGs, eg the one taking Tea to Bast?
EDIT: The minor faction at the current non-rare trading CG in Kaushpoos is sitting at 94%.
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We have been watching Kaushpoos and the station owner is not exhibiting the same drop experienced by the station controlling faction during the 1.2 Kwatee community goal to build the Sefrys station. Its in boom and at max percent rather than being bombed. Either something has changed since then or one of the scenarios (now or then) is experiencing (or experienced) a bug.
We will collect more examples, and change OP accordingly.
We will collect more examples, and change OP accordingly.
So, this event is supplying Metals to a High Tech/Refinery, Corporate government.
Two things worth checking;
1) What were the other CG host minor faction government types, compared to this one? Noting the Kaushpoos station's minor faction is Corporate, and;
2) Is there perhaps another effect based on the types of goods traded, corresponding to either Government Type or Economic Type?
The thing to possibly observe from #1 is that since the hosting minor faction is Corporate, maybe trading (regardless of the profit involved) increases influence for factions with that government type?
The thing to check out from #2 is that the fact the CG trades metals could have a positive influence effect resulting either from:
A) It's a high tech/refinery economy; this means metals are usually in-demand (http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Goods)
B) (less confidence in this) It's a corporate government; maybe trading metals is beneficial for *that* type of government, and there are similar effects for other government types (e.g slaves for Prison Colonies, Weapons for Dictatorships/Feudal, drugs for anarchy etc.
This kinda ties back to what I was asking about before; if there was any sort of list of things that have been tested / not tested. While I followed the Lugh stuff somewhat, there's definitely been the odd thing or two (like the selling for profit = drops in profit) that, while I've got no basis to disagree with them, seem somewhat backward. It may well have happened, but there may have been some other factor that wasn't "controlled" in the observation.
I'd start one up, but again, I'm aware Lugh is a thing, and frankly I'm just one guy with two or three mates who do influence stuff in our systems, so it's highly likely "someone else has done it". But if i'm not going to double up on something else and make recommendations that will "conflict with things others have tested already", I'll jump to it.
Question: Is there any way of judging which faction is likely to win a civil war? I ask, because the Wonneriti Resistance (Federal) had a go at taking control of Yembo (Independent), and it looked a done deal, because several Federation capital ships showed up in the CZs and were slaughtering all comers. I shipped out for a day or two and came back to read in the local newspaper that the Wonneriti guys had been defeated and had destroyed several of the capital ships. Seemed highly unlikely....