Not sure what you mean by danger? If you push past 60% trying to challenge for control of the system, you can just leave it there until the conflict starts. Only reason it wouldn't go pending is if the controlling faction is in another conflict, but even so, you can just leave it above 60% until the other conflict ends.
A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim
- Thread starter Walt Kerman
- Start date
If you find yourself having to push the owners up <pretty sure there would be a reason, sometime!>...you could bypass the 60% into 70% and wind up giving them an expansion. That's about the only danger.
Expansion will only trigger if the faction is in contro of the system, above 75% war will happen first then expansion once they are in control as long as still above 75%. No danger in pushing as high as you want.
The expansion trigger happens once you get above 75%, and expansion shouldn't happen if not in control of the system. Can't say we've tested that recently, as it's not a very common scenario.
Usually if a non-controlling faction gets up that high, a conflict for control would block the expansion anyway.
edit: ninja'ed by dunnykin, but in agreement
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From what you say it seems it's already drifting towards civil war anyway. You should just need to stop pushing your faction till it equalises then start pushing it again once the war goes pending.
After you have the better trading stations things should be easier to maintain.
Thanks all for the reply. I have a bunch of enthusiastic pilots and didn't want to make any more slips.
In the OP: "Trading – During trade CG’s as of 1.3 we noticed that the station owners of the host station would lose influence as massive amounts of goods were bought by the station. Later we were able to demonstrate that buying goods from a station raises influence of the station owner (ever so slightly), and selling goods to a station hurts the owning factions influence (again slightly). We have seen this used successfully by an ally to lower influence in one war where a station only offered elite exploration missions (out of most players reach). This no longer appears to be the case, in fact we have received many differing results with recent experiments from different player groups. This may be due to experiments being completed over different versions of the game with different mechanics. Its also not high on our priority list to be honest, but recent reports suggest that in profit now boosts influence whereas loss drops it."
How can we sort this? It seems everyone agrees buying stuff at a station helps that station owners influence. It also seems that selling unwanted (two bar, low demand) lowers inf.
So would an experiment of 'only selling med/high demand (two or three bar) goods' to a station and watching the inf help? Assuming no other commander action...no buying, no missions, no bh, etc...
I know it could change, and 2.1 may hose everything, but right now, is this the best way to find out?
How can we sort this? It seems everyone agrees buying stuff at a station helps that station owners influence. It also seems that selling unwanted (two bar, low demand) lowers inf.
So would an experiment of 'only selling med/high demand (two or three bar) goods' to a station and watching the inf help? Assuming no other commander action...no buying, no missions, no bh, etc...
I know it could change, and 2.1 may hose everything, but right now, is this the best way to find out?
The method of taking over stations from lesser factions is a little crazy, but here's my own justification for it from another thread...
...but perhaps I'm applying a little too much imagination [wacko]
EDIT - Quoting myself is also probably a sure sign of madness.
By feigning weakness within The Canonn, and simultaneously bolstering support for VIU (getting to roughly equal influence), The Cannon can lure VIU into believing they can begin an armed insurrection (civil war) with the aim of taking control of the system. What the naïve fools of VIU don't realise is that once they have made the mistake of becoming the aggressors, The Canonn security forces (Cmdrs) will have the justification they need to ruthlessly suppress them (in Combat Zones, etc.). Ultimately leading to The Canonn seizing control of VIU's station, purely for security/peace-keeping purposes you understand, and installing their own government.
All very Machiavellian
...but perhaps I'm applying a little too much imagination [wacko]
EDIT - Quoting myself is also probably a sure sign of madness.
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dynamicbob
Banned
not enough imagination
correct. it might be easier to conduct such an experiment with a low population system and no traffic and only a single station.
Hi all !
First, sorry for my english and thanks for all informations in this topic.
I have several questions :
- How to trigger a famine ? Kill trading ship ?
- Do bounty for another faction will result for controlling faction Up ? (and influence where we give bonty vouchers ?)
- Selling goods to a station will raise the influence of station's controller... but if we buy and sell with profit to another station, is it the same ?
- Do you now "caps"/"limits" influence value for a system per day ? Is it per player or per total modifier ? Both of them ?
Thanks for your help !
In our side, we tested trade reduce BOOM duration :
First boom with no trade stop at the maximum duration
Second boom, with 10 players who sell imperial slaves (with max profit) to our station, stopped after 12 days (estimate : 80M - 150M total profit) and our population is 7.5M
First, sorry for my english and thanks for all informations in this topic.
I have several questions :
- How to trigger a famine ? Kill trading ship ?
- Do bounty for another faction will result for controlling faction Up ? (and influence where we give bonty vouchers ?)
- Selling goods to a station will raise the influence of station's controller... but if we buy and sell with profit to another station, is it the same ?
- Do you now "caps"/"limits" influence value for a system per day ? Is it per player or per total modifier ? Both of them ?
Thanks for your help !
In our side, we tested trade reduce BOOM duration :
First boom with no trade stop at the maximum duration
Second boom, with 10 players who sell imperial slaves (with max profit) to our station, stopped after 12 days (estimate : 80M - 150M total profit) and our population is 7.5M
Hi all !
First, sorry for my english
what am i supposed to say then!unknown, maybe through missions only. it might be a secondary effect of ongoing civil unrest/civil wars/...
there are several factors with different outcomes in "bounty hunting":
a) first of all, killing a minor factions ship(s), no matter, whether it is wanted or not, let that faction loose influence.
b) that lost influence is shared between all the other factions in relation to their influence in the system
c) bounty hunting (e.g. cashing in bounties) raises the influence of the faction which gave out the bounty in the system where you cash in those bounties.
d) profit of bounty hunting raises the influence of the station controlling faction
- taking into account a-d, you can achieve very different results via "bounty hunting".
probably yes. not enough tested, but it looks that right know value of bought goods (with supply) and sold goods (with demand) raises station controlling factions influence.
both, no hard data, but some assumptions, which can be found here and in the following pages: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=193064&page=120&p=3625986&viewfull=1#post3625986
that's a great test and strong hint, thanks for sharing!
The problem you're going to have, is maintaining any sort of total overwatch. You might *think* you have no other commander action, missions, bh-cashing-in, etc, but it's nigh-on impossible to be certain. Even keeping an eye on traffic-statistics is not a true indication, because that only seems to be incremented when a ship passes into or out of the system - someone staying in-system and not leaving, doesn't seem to be noticed by the 'traffic report'. This opens the way for someone to be in-system and messing up all your best-laid plans... and you'll never, ever know for sure.
My gut feeling (and one semi-supported by the fact that FD locked-down the Dev-Update thread where I raised the question) is that the BGS 'trade' mechanism is sublimely simple. I'm not entirely sure FD want us to realise that. Look at the backstory... the BGS was basically designed as something to give the illusion of a vibrant trading scene, a background stock market feel. They've already explained that all the NPC trades are 'virtual' and not directly accounted for in the BGS - it's smoke and mirrors to create an effect. Trading's effect on influence is worked out through averages and aggregates, computed on a daily cycle once the BGS scripts kick in and updates the trading part of the Stellar Forge (or whichever DB it lives in). Even FD's own 'explanation' post (Dev Updates, 7th Jan 2016) only specifies that trading has an effect of 'plus-one' into the Influence bucket. They specifically do not go into any detail as to the intracacies of what they mean by 'trading' - and I think that is because there are no intricacies being computed or calculated.
I don't mean that as any form of attack, though. I think it's perfectly logical and acceptable, given the BGS's original aims. I genuinely don't think that FD expected that we'd become so attached to it, and play it to the depths that we have. I think they assumed that the pew-pew and general profit-hunting from trade, rares, bounty-hunting, missions, CGs, et al, would fulfil our basic need to be space-traders, pirates, bounty-hunters and whatnot. I really don't think that minor factions and their lifecycle was on their agenda - but it has emerged as true 'emergent gameplay' and now they are probably thinking about beefing it up to make it more viable, believeable, less nonsensical. I believe that they originally gave us Powerplay in order to sate that need for 'system-flipping' and 'expanding our power-base' but not everyone enjoys the grind and repetitiveness of the PP tasks, so the BGS still has a great many takers. So much so, that FD have introduced the concept of PMFs now... and deeper and deeper we go into the black box.
So... my gut feeling is that the 'black box' of trading, actually only has one component. Trade. It's not about profit. It's not about quantity or tonnage. It's not about a combination of both. It's not about import nor export. It's about tills ringing. I hypothesised a few weeks ago, that the act of pressing the SELL or BUY button is what gets recorded in the big BGS script as an act of trade - nothing more, nothing less. Each button-press means one 'chip' into the 'trade-happened-here' pot. Get enough of those, and take away from them the murder and bounty/fine-given chips, add in all the cartography-selling, bounty-hunting, fine-paid chips, and you have an overall 'heat' level - positive or negative, for that particular faction in that particular system. Compare that with the other factions in the system, some of which will be 'hot or cold', positive or negative too, and you'll have an overview of how the influence 'rope' (which is always 100% between all factions in the system) is being pulled. It's like a giant game of tug-of-war with up to seven people. Some days, the same amount of 'pull pressure' from your faction will NOT yank the rope as much in your direction as it did yesterday - it depends how hard the other players (factions) are pulling their bit of rope, too.
But anyway, we tested this (as best we can). We have a low-traffic planetary station in our system, which we wanted to hurt by trade. The faction that owns it has no other markets or platforms worth considering in the system, so it's a reasonably isolated test-bed. We decided that shipping in (i.e importing) large quantities of scrap - which was a commodity that the station did not have any demand for, but did offer an uncompetitive price for - would be the way to 'hurt' them, via this 'selling in' theory that we'd read here many moons ago. We knew that it being a low-value item would negate any effect of 'commodity-price' (i.e. if we had dumped in Palladium, we'd never be sure it wasn't the value of the individual tonnes that was the catalyst). We also chose to run the scrap in via ground buggies (which have a cargo capacity of 2 tonnes each). This meant that we could negate the effect of any large drop happening in one go, as being the catalyst (i.e. we ruled out any 200t dumps, by limiting each dump to 2t per run). It basically meant that the tills in the marketplaces were ringing constantly, and without it being an exploit (i.e. we felt that sitting in the station with ten Pythons carrying 200t each, and selling in 1 tonne 200 times per Python was a bit 'cheaty', so we invented this buggy-run concept to make it fun and to make it feel right).
We expected that, come the BGS update cycle, we'd have made a nice fat negative effect, or no effect at all. If we had no effect at all, it might indicate that 'tills ringing' (i.e. quantity of buy/sell button pushes) is NOT the primary catalyst, and that it probably WAS something to do with either volume or profit or price-per-ton. If we got that negative effect, it proved that the 'till ringing' philosophy had merit, after all. Throughout all of this, we still believed the common view that 'imports in, hurt'.
What actually happened, we never expected at all!
The damned station's influence went up by 2% overnight - the most 'action' we'd ever seen from that place in one hit.
As far as we're concerned, it proved (not beyond all doubt, but reasonably well enough to keep testing the theory elsewhere, which we're still doing) that profit, value, quantity AND DIRECTION (import/export) of trade has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER. It's just 'tills ringing' that matters. Doesn't matter whether you sell in, or buy out. Doesn't matter whether it's mega-tons per transaction, or million-CR profits per transaction, or fantastic turnover per transaction. It's just... transactions. Sell a million tons by a million SELL clicks, and you'll add a million 'trade' chips into the trade-pool for influence reckoning later. I believe it's that simple.
And this does actually make some logical sense, if you think about it - and not just from the POV of the developers keeping the tracking and data management realistically small to be able to process it all in one nightly script. It makes sense from market POV, too. As someone who's played a fair bit of real-life stock market and been a successful day trader in the past, I'm familiar with the concept of 'market-makers' - perhaps you are too. They're the guys who 'make' the stock market run. When trading volume is low, they lower their offer price on a stock to make it look 'cheap' - and to attract buyers. The buyers they generate, feed the market. The market-makers will change their bid price too, to help influence, and indirectly control, the pressure of sellers against them, if the volume is great and they are running out of stock to be able to sell. They do not give a tuppeny hoot about the actual VALUE of the stock. They live for the spread - the bid-vs-offer price difference. What they care about is CHURN. Sales-volume. Tills ringing. Every ounce of stock they buy at price 'n' will be sold later at greater price 'n'+x - if the market is slow and volume is down, then x will be small. If business is booming and till are ringing, x doesn't matter, but it will be larger most likely, to capitalise on the volume. If the market gets really bad they will vary 'n' price, and offer to buy stock lower, causing the market to feed off its own fears and 'shake the tree' making the less-confident weaker ones sell up and run - but still, they will be selling that same lower-cost stock back to the market (if there are takers) at 'reduced-n' plus 'some-x-or-other'... i.e, always at a profit.
That is what market makers do. And imho, that is what Elite's Commodity Markets do, too. Prices alter (albeit slowly and in fits and starts) based on volume of transactions, demand and supply. Station markets don't lose money - they merely sit on stock for long periods when the market goes cold. The stock they buy in, they will sell again later, usually at a profit; sometimes healthy, sometimes not. On average, they always win, because they don't 'own' the stock; it's stock; they trade it. They churn it. Goods in, money out; goods out, money in - usually more. A ringing till is a happy till. Everything on the shelf has an asset value, and if it's lower today than it was yesterday, it doesn't matter, because tomorrow we will be buying it back for less than today, and although we're selling it for less than yesterday, it's still being sold for more than we paid for it - or it doesn't get sold.
Hence, I believe, that 'TRADE' in ED means just that. Tills ringing. Churn. Individual presses of the BUY or SELL button. That's all that matters.
Please test it. Please prove me wrong - I'd be happy to have supporting evidence, because we've spent a helluva long time working this through. But that's what we're seeing (more than the one example given above).
My other gut feeling is that all the observations about influence increases and decreases when exporting versus importing, value, profit, etc, is confabulation. We are cavemen in a spring storm, watching the lightning, hearing the thunder, feeling the rain, seeing frogs on the ground, heading for ponds and pools. Pretty soon, we reach the conclusion that lightning causes frogs, and frogs must come down from the sky when it rains. We don't know that it's because it's springtime, and the frogs are just coming out of their winter hibernation under piles of damp rocks, and heading for a pond to look for a mate - that's far too advanced a concept for the caveman, and unless he's in the habit of turning over the right rocks, all through winter, he'll just put his two-and-two together and get five. Frogs come down from the clouds via the lightning. Simple. Aren't we?
To be fair, we aren't. But you get the analogy, I hope. I believe it's actually the underlying trade calculation mechanic that is simple - but being human, we always look for a more complex, rounded, convincing and elegant explanation, sometimes because we can't see the simplicity, or can't imagine that it would really be allowed to be that simple. But just ask Occam. He's usually right. And he's very, very sharp.
TL;DR - buy, and most importantly, SELL one tonne at a time, loads and loads of times. See what happens to influence. Then tell us.
Legacy_LuckyLuke
Banned
Buying goods from a station to increase influence doesn't make total sense. If so, it would be really easy to 'game' this system. If I had enough money (and time) I could turn up in a T9 and fill it with high value commodities, then just dump them at the nearest station. Rinse and repeat. Or even simply drop out of SC, dump cargo, and return for another load.
It seems to make more sense that selling high demand goods to a station would increase influence, as this would take a little effort on behalf of the CMDR, plus you'd be satisfying a need, so helping the minor faction as a result.
All very unscientific and just my hypothesis. I would be glad to be proven wrong either way
It seems to make more sense that selling high demand goods to a station would increase influence, as this would take a little effort on behalf of the CMDR, plus you'd be satisfying a need, so helping the minor faction as a result.
All very unscientific and just my hypothesis. I would be glad to be proven wrong either way
I've a system under my control, with only 1 planet base as a station. I had it over 75% for 2 days (ticks) but no expansion pending.
In a second system, again under my control with the same faction, the day this tipped 75% (by accident, I pushed a little too much on it), the next tick expansion went pending.
Expansion has happened, and from the second system.
Has anyone expanded from a planet base only controlled system? Do I have a bug in mine do you think?
In a second system, again under my control with the same faction, the day this tipped 75% (by accident, I pushed a little too much on it), the next tick expansion went pending.
Expansion has happened, and from the second system.
Has anyone expanded from a planet base only controlled system? Do I have a bug in mine do you think?
a very impressive testing!
i think it is a very good approach to track back the "activities" in dev update, which are quoted in the opening post, to a single action/value the bgs recognize.
something like this:
TRADE= selling/buying commodities via a minor factions commodity market
ILLEGAL TRADING= selling commodities via a minor factions black market
MURDER= killing a minor factions ships
COLLECTING BOUNTIES= cashing in bounties of a minor faction
SELLING EXPLORATION DATA = self-explanatory
GAINING FINES/BOUNTIS = self-explanatory
PIRACY = selling stolen goods via a minor factions black market
now, we do assume from "COLLECTING BOUNTIES= cashing in bounties of a minor faction" that there is a secondary effect by station-ownwership you cash in those bounties. we assume there is a effect of the CR-value of bounties cashed in. so "COLLECTING BOUNTIES= cashing in bounties of a minor faction" could be "weight" by several values, aka:
a) number of hitting the cash-in-bounties button (e.g. total number of bountie-cashing-in. the more the better.
b) CR-value total of cashed in bounties (probably with diminishing influence effect?)
c) "profit" generated at a station (in case of bounties this doesn't need to be the bounty-giving faction)
- those effects would be mitigated by single-commander-influence-cap and system-population-influence-cap.
to come back to your exampel - it might be:
a) hitting the sell/buy-button = total number of transactions = always positive effect, as in your test
b) a factor of total trade volume in CR
c) a factor of demand
e.g. if you'd run your test again with a high demand commodity, you'd see more then >2%. if you'd run your test again with a more expensive no demand commodity= <2%.
thanks for bringing this up! i'll see to test it at some point (in a gamey way using a python....). can you name more deatils on numer of players/actions/population size?
Thanks Goemon for your reply !
Another question : We (Faction A) are in War against a faction B (no-controlling) in a system from 2 days for get the outpost.
But no conflict zones appears... (Missions for conflicts zones are on bulletin board)
We checked all of the system...
A bug ?
For win the outpost, we are trying to do missions "combats" for our faction (murder etc...) and kill the ships of faction B (but we can't find them in the system !)
Any advice to win the "ghost" battle ? (with 15% margin if i heard fine)
Undermining of security ship does help ? (it seems more than just distribute the lost of influence but we have to do more tests)
Thanks
Another question : We (Faction A) are in War against a faction B (no-controlling) in a system from 2 days for get the outpost.
But no conflict zones appears...
(Missions for conflicts zones are on bulletin board)We checked all of the system...
A bug ?
For win the outpost, we are trying to do missions "combats" for our faction (murder etc...) and kill the ships of faction B (but we can't find them in the system !)
Any advice to win the "ghost" battle ? (with 15% margin if i heard fine)
Undermining of security ship does help ? (it seems more than just distribute the lost of influence but we have to do more tests)
Thanks
Buying goods from a station to increase influence doesn't make total sense. If so, it would be really easy to 'game' this system. If I had enough money (and time) I could turn up in a T9 and fill it with high value commodities, then just dump them at the nearest station. Rinse and repeat. Or even simply drop out of SC, dump cargo, and return for another load.
It seems to make more sense that selling high demand goods to a station would increase influence, as this would take a little effort on behalf of the CMDR, plus you'd be satisfying a need, so helping the minor faction as a result.
All very unscientific and just my hypothesis. I would be glad to be proven wrong either way
It kind of makes sense in a purely economic sense. Exporting surplus goods enriches the population... and reduces any deficit created by purely importing goods. So, in theory, a balance is required, like in real life (leaving aside all sorts of arguments about the economic benefits or otherwise, of debt, capital and leverage). Now, purely importing, or purely exporting... that would be interesting to test in a very small system with a commodities market that is likely untouched by anyone else.
Thanks Goemon for your reply !
Another question : We (Faction A) are in War against a faction B (no-controlling) in a system from 2 days for get the outpost.
But no conflict zones appears...
We checked all of the system...
A bug ?
For win the outpost, we are trying to do missions "combats" for our faction (murder etc...) and kill the ships of faction B (but we can't find them in the system !)
Any advice to win the "ghost" battle ? (with 15% margin if i heard fine)
Undermining of security ship does help ? (it seems more than just distribute the lost of influence but we have to do more tests)
Thanks
definetly a bug, file a bug-report.
from my understanding, wars/civil wars can be only won through conflict zones... but you could try all other ways as a test...
actually killing ships of that faction should get their influence down, and - because during a war/civil war influence should (but sometimes isn't .... another bug?) only be shared between the two factions in conflict - raise your influence.
for "finding ships of that faction" - res, nav beacon, supercruise, uss, wss.... if the minor faction is in system, it will spawn ships.
have in mind you'll get wanted, so things might get ugly with system security around.... and it isn't the controlling faction you want to hurt in yur case.
if that faction owns the outpost, you can try to trigger "system security" there, which will be ships of that faction most of the times (check contact details!), by smuggling missions, or just a lucky spawn. in that case, attack and wait for their reinforcements. good thing is, you'll only get wanted in that factions jurisdiction around an outpost.
Yes ! Several tickets opened...
No .... No ship of faction A or B in the system !! Zéro at nav beacon, supercruise etc... (bugs loves us !)
Except rarely in a SSS... With wanted NPC.
We have too a "Checkpoints" ... with several ships marked faction : "federation" (very little ship like ARENA ... but with a fsd ) and security ships ...
But controlling faction as no state actually and nobody have Lockdown state...
It is the next step, after the outpost
, no worry about that, we are fighters and challenging several security anacondas is great ! If i understand well, attacking outpost (faction B) call reinforcement (security ship / faction C ) but killing them will hurt faction B ?
We tried this but there are very few ship.... We will retry...
Thanks again for your help !
PS : For the beginning of the WAR, we write the influence of the system
And Influence Faction A + Faction B are not exactely the same every day ... (but not a big difference, <0.5 %, and it change )
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