A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[Bomba Luigi]

very interesting. might be also a side-effect of killing ships -> influence shift to the other factions. does that system has 3 factions or more? is there ab effect visible on the fourth/fith faction?

It has four Factions, What I could see every day is that influence has gone up on my faction and the one where I sell bonds, the other two lose influence. Haven't really remembered how much influence the other factions did gain or lose before but I took notes today and will check tomorrow how much changes for every faction.
But the big movments are from the two factions at war. the other two should have farily low gain/loss of influence.

 

[HecklerThrob]

Greetings CMDRs,

I come with additional questions :

- How the expansion state works ?
- Once reach the expansion state, how long it takes before a faction expand to another system ?
- Is there is a cooldown period (before and/or after) ?
- If the influence is kept at 75% (or more) for 2 weeks, is it possible to the main faction to expand to many systems ? If not, is it required to lower the influence to 70% and after a small cooldown period, raise it again to 75% to trigger a new expansion ?
- How to "guide/influence" the expansion to a specific system ?

Any tips and advices are welcome.

Thank you all in advance for your precious advices and valuable knowledges.

o7

 

[Perseus]

It has four Factions, What I could see every day is that influence has gone up on my faction and the one where I sell bonds, the other two lose influence. Haven't really remembered how much influence the other factions did gain or lose before but I took notes today and will check tomorrow how much changes for every faction.
But the big movments are from the two factions at war. the other two should have farily low gain/loss of influence.

I'm expecting to be engaged in two conflicts (differeny systems) this week. I'll try and do a bit of testing and post observations.

 

[jimbeau1571]

How it works? Current theory is next closest system with 4 or less factions, up to 30 Ly (although this seems to be open to debate)
How long? Mulitple factors to take into account. If Pending Expansion is present in the right hand panel (select the faction involved to see current/pending states), and no other state is current, then 5 days to when it Expands. If however you have another state current, then you have to clear that BEFORE the countdown of 5 days can start. Expansion has the longest countdown of all states, so be very careful not to induce Boom, War etc during the countdown period, as these will reset the Expansion countdown.
Cooldown? Kinda answered. With a clean run at it, no state interferring then 5 day countdown, 3-5 days Expansion, 2 day cooldown. Then the next Pending Expansion can come in.
Yes. Leave it above 75%, and you can force another expansion from the same system.
How to guide? Difficult but you can kind of plan it, assuming the thoery of how it decides where to expand to is correct. Firstly, if the system you want ot go to has 5 or more factions, then its going to be very very hard if not impossible and a very very long way away from happening as far as i can see. I have a destination system I want to get to, and have checked every system out to 30 ly from my starting position. I know where I am expecting to expand to next, and therefore have again checked every system to 30 ly from there. I now have to expand twice from this system to get to my next system I need. (Excel spreadsheet on the go for this listing them all with distance and faction info and sorted under the criteria mentioned above). Same again, check every system to 30 ly. I need to expand from here 3 times in order to maybe get to where I want (in order to be present in all the systems with 4 or less factions). Maybe, as this has 6 factions present.

There is a couple of tables at the very start of this thread explaining the cooldowns/countdowns for the states you may encounter.

Welcome to the BGS, and good luck.

o7

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Okay, maybe I was wrong. The last two days the faction where I cash in the bonds had influence arrow up but today it shows down and they lost 0.1%. I think.... maybe.. Becasue it looks like I made an error when I took notes of the influence levels yesterday because the results today confused me a bit and looking back at the numbers I noted yesterday and doing some maths I found out why: the numbers combined made 100,4%

Must have written down something wrong yesterday, will take a screenshot today ^^


Edit: Wait a minute, was so focused on looking at the influence levels that I completly didn't notice that the system ownership has flipped! My Faction is now in control of the system and one of the two outpost but the war is still going?
What did change is that the CZ where I did fight has disappeared and instead theres now a Checkpoint around that planet.

 

[CMDR pollycough]

IF you get far enough away from the faction you are pending war with the war may never start. So be careful.

As I was being asked this question, and was made aware of your post, I thought I would test it.
We had a system that just went pending election @ 17.9 apiece, we pushed them apart by 28.6% (38.9 vs 10.3) by today and the election did start. The system has 5 factions, 2 were already in CW with 7.7% each and had been like that without movement either way for 9 days. When the election hit today, the 2 in CW went down to 5.7% each. low pop.
Another test we where running is "Does trading out of a station benefit the owner?" NO! In 2 tests in 2 separate systems that have had Zero movement since i used them for a test on 1st April, Trading out 192 individual trades in each system, had zero effect on influence. Trading In 192 individual trades in each system yesterday threw up more questions, but did show that the 2 systems are not stuck. We will be running more tests but it would seem ATM that exporting has no effect. Both systems low pop

 

[HecklerThrob]

How it works? (...)

Thanks for your advices CMDR! o7

Everybody, any others advice/tips ?

 

[jimbeau1571]

Cdmr pollycough - you might find the Election kicked in, but will only last the minimum 3 days as you have well surpassed the required margin for the win. I had the same in my election. I'd won it while it was still pending.

 

[goemon]

As I was being asked this question, and was made aware of your post, I thought I would test it.
We had a system that just went pending election @ 17.9 apiece, we pushed them apart by 28.6% (38.9 vs 10.3) by today and the election did start. The system has 5 factions, 2 were already in CW with 7.7% each and had been like that without movement either way for 9 days. When the election hit today, the 2 in CW went down to 5.7% each. low pop.
Another test we where running is "Does trading out of a station benefit the owner?" NO! In 2 tests in 2 separate systems that have had Zero movement since i used them for a test on 1st April, Trading out 192 individual trades in each system, had zero effect on influence. Trading In 192 individual trades in each system yesterday threw up more questions, but did show that the 2 systems are not stuck. We will be running more tests but it would seem ATM that exporting has no effect. Both systems low pop

very interesting!

"individual trades" - means "trade transactions"? did you do 1T trades, and might that be blocking any effect?

did you trade high supply goods?

 

[Szyslak22]

As I was being asked this question, and was made aware of your post, I thought I would test it.
We had a system that just went pending election @ 17.9 apiece, we pushed them apart by 28.6% (38.9 vs 10.3) by today and the election did start. The system has 5 factions, 2 were already in CW with 7.7% each and had been like that without movement either way for 9 days. When the election hit today, the 2 in CW went down to 5.7% each. low pop.

Same experience here. I've never seen a conflict not go active after it's pending, no matter how big a gap we open up. Our group did see in the distant past where conflicts would go active and immediately end if the gap was wide enough, but that was many updates ago (1.2 I think). In many cases that made it look like the conflict never happened. But once minimum durations were implemented, that issue was resolved.

Besides, I don't think that mechanic would fit in with conflict for control triggering at 60%+. In that scenario, you're guaranteed to have a large gap between your faction and the controlling faction, so outpacing the conflict wouldn't make any sense.

So there might still be a scenario where the conflict won't happen, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. Watch, now that I said that it'll happen to us next week.

 

[irongut]

Edit: Wait a minute, was so focused on looking at the influence levels that I completly didn't notice that the system ownership has flipped! My Faction is now in control of the system and one of the two outpost but the war is still going?
What did change is that the CZ where I did fight has disappeared and instead theres now a Checkpoint around that planet.

Wars/Civil Wars continue for 1 day after assets change hands. This was not originally the case but has been for some months. CZ can move around (I have no idea how or why) so they may be at different planets now but you have won your war so they are unimportant. Your war state will end tomorrow and any remaining sites dissapear.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Wars/Civil Wars continue for 1 day after assets change hands. This was not originally the case but has been for some months. CZ can move around (I have no idea how or why) so they may be at different planets now but you have won your war so they are unimportant. Your war state will end tomorrow and any remaining sites dissapear.

Thats almost a shame, because I did go again into a CZ and my god a farragut came in guns blazing!
I mean, I'm not complaining since its pretty cool but I do wonder what makes a cap ship appear? This is really just my tiny little war in a tiny little system with a population of only 55'000 so its certainly not the kind of place where I would send a capship to.

But I gotta say that was my first time doing something with the BGS after over a Year of playing and it was quite a ride. Starting a war, flipping the system and then getting capship support from the Feds. I'm so hooked for doing more BGS stuff

 

[CMDR pollycough]

very interesting!

"individual trades" - means "trade transactions"? did you do 1T trades, and might that be blocking any effect?

did you trade high supply goods?

Both out trades was high supply items, one was slaves & one was superconductors. All test where done in individual transactions, both the export and the import to test that the systems were not stuck.

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

Thats almost a shame, because I did go again into a CZ and my god a farragut came in guns blazing!
I mean, I'm not complaining since its pretty cool but I do wonder what makes a cap ship appear? This is really just my tiny little war in a tiny little system with a population of only 55'000 so its certainly not the kind of place where I would send a capship to.

But I gotta say that was my first time doing something with the BGS after over a Year of playing and it was quite a ride. Starting a war, flipping the system and then getting capship support from the Feds. I'm so hooked for doing more BGS stuff

WOW! you got so lucky as i think it just happens by random.
was it a CZ (high) or a CZ (low)?
and was the cap ship on your side or the enemy?

 

[irongut]

Thats almost a shame, because I did go again into a CZ and my god a farragut came in guns blazing!
I mean, I'm not complaining since its pretty cool but I do wonder what makes a cap ship appear? This is really just my tiny little war in a tiny little system with a population of only 55'000 so its certainly not the kind of place where I would send a capship to.

But I gotta say that was my first time doing something with the BGS after over a Year of playing and it was quite a ride. Starting a war, flipping the system and then getting capship support from the Feds. I'm so hooked for doing more BGS stuff

I asked about what makes a cap ship appear a few months ago and the general opinion was it is random. Since then I've fought several wars and have had cap ship support in every one. Provided one of the factions is Empire / Federation there is a chance that a High Intensity CZ will spawn a cap ship. If a particular site does not have a cap ship then it will not appear there at any point during the war. Once you find a site with a cap ship it will be in that site for the rest of the war. So don't always pick the nearest site to your home station, check out all the High Intensity CZ in system.

It's a great buzz to see your faction win a war and take control of a system or station, especially when you get capital support. As an ALD pledged pilot I RP it as the Emperor recognising my contribution and sending me her support.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Both out trades was high supply items, one was slaves & one was superconductors. All test where done in individual transactions, both the export and the import to test that the systems were not stuck.

But if your individual transactions were all 1 ton each, it will now have very little effect on the BGS.
Trading in lots of 1 ton transactions used to have a huge effect on the BGS, but 2-3 weeks ago this exploit was turned off.
.
I only learned about the 1 ton trading effect on the BGS just before it was turned off. But I had a brief play with it. Here is an example of how it worked:

19th march I went to Borasetani. I filled up my Asp at the BGL outpost, 1 ton at a time. I then sold it at a loss at the LOB station 1 ton at a time
I did the same thing for 2 more days.
20th march there is a huge change in influence, same for 21st march.
But 22nd March, the 1 ton trading has nearly no effect. There was an update that day that fixed the exploit.
22nd March I did the same trade for a loss, but in one transaction. The BGS effect appears the same as the previous day 1 ton at a time.
.
I haven't been back to Borasetani since, but I have been tracking the factions every few days.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Thats almost a shame, because I did go again into a CZ and my god a farragut came in guns blazing!
I mean, I'm not complaining since its pretty cool but I do wonder what makes a cap ship appear? This is really just my tiny little war in a tiny little system with a population of only 55'000 so its certainly not the kind of place where I would send a capship to.

But I gotta say that was my first time doing something with the BGS after over a Year of playing and it was quite a ride. Starting a war, flipping the system and then getting capship support from the Feds. I'm so hooked for doing more BGS stuff

That's great! Be aware though, that capships dropping in to say "hi" is a rare event.

It's awesome when they drop in though, isn't it?

 

[CMDR pollycough]

But if your individual transactions were all 1 ton each, it will now have very little effect on the BGS.
Trading in lots of 1 ton transactions used to have a huge effect on the BGS, but 2-3 weeks ago this exploit was turned off.
.
I only learned about the 1 ton trading effect on the BGS just before it was turned off. But I had a brief play with it. Here is an example of how it worked:
http://i65.tinypic.com/34oc32p.jpg
19th march I went to Borasetani. I filled up my Asp at the BGL outpost, 1 ton at a time. I then sold it at a loss at the LOB station 1 ton at a time
I did the same thing for 2 more days.
20th march there is a huge change in influence, same for 21st march.
But 22nd March, the 1 ton trading has nearly no effect. There was an update that day that fixed the exploit.
22nd March I did the same trade for a loss, but in one transaction. The BGS effect appears the same as the previous day 1 ton at a time.
.
I haven't been back to Borasetani since, but I have been tracking the factions every few days.

Back last year I asked several times about how trading effects the BGS and the answers were always "not a lot". That is when Tinybigjacko & I started testing it. That was when we found that everything is single transaction based. It has always been believed that trading out was positive and in was negative. We have continually shown that trading in including BM's has a positive effect, no matter what is traded. The tactic of buying either in the same station or elsewhere and selling into a station something not wanted had a large negative effect and was nerfed early March. The test I done was to test the long held belief that exporting has a positive effect, I now believe that it never has had.

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

Hi all, this is a question please for any of the wonderful mercs.
1.Which minor factions have civil wars and which have elections please?
Our ally players group the Angeli Imperial are feudal - empire and they are fighting the Bureau of Wangal who are dictatorship-independent. They always get elections.
2.We are patronage - empire, and we love civil wars, so who should we avoid so we do not have elections please?
In our system we have corporate - empire (we have civil wars with them)
Democracy -independent
Patronage - empire
unfettered - inderpendant.

Thank you all in advance!

 

[the100thmonkey]

It has always been believed that trading out was positive and in was negative.

By whom?