well that blows my theory out of the water, we do not own all the station so it must be someone just doing missions for us?
A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim
- Thread starter Walt Kerman
- Start date
Just to "stir the pot" a bit, it's entirely possible there*is* no decay, but an effect "like" decay can be observed, as a result of combining some effect we haven't observed yet filling one of the "influence down" buckets, combined with "diminishing returns".
Assume that "doing nothing" for a faction has a net positive or negative effect. This isn't hard to imagine really, since, say, doing zero trade for a faction would generally have a negative effect (in the real world).
Dav and Ed said that you'll sometimes see influence for a faction go down even when you did lots of stuff, which just means that other factions did *more* stuff than you.
If the idle "effect" on influence is nonzero, then you can also apply diminishing returns, which means some factions will lose less than the main faction in the case of a negative equilibrium, or gain more in the case of a positive equilibrium, and it'll give the effect of normalisation, without being an explicit thing.
There could also be other hidden effects at play. maybe merely entering a system has a minor effect?
Assume that "doing nothing" for a faction has a net positive or negative effect. This isn't hard to imagine really, since, say, doing zero trade for a faction would generally have a negative effect (in the real world).
Dav and Ed said that you'll sometimes see influence for a faction go down even when you did lots of stuff, which just means that other factions did *more* stuff than you.
If the idle "effect" on influence is nonzero, then you can also apply diminishing returns, which means some factions will lose less than the main faction in the case of a negative equilibrium, or gain more in the case of a positive equilibrium, and it'll give the effect of normalisation, without being an explicit thing.
There could also be other hidden effects at play. maybe merely entering a system has a minor effect?
Love a good pot stir!
Now Dav spoke in terms of, and you quote above, about other factions doing 'more stuff' than you. Well what about those fringe systems where no one does anything, and yet if you monitor one from afar you see this 'equilibrium' occuring.
I watch one, in view to expanding to it. Only 2 factions in the system. You can tell when someone visits, by the influence spike that occurs as a consequence. Tiny Pop of about 50000
Fac A controls the main station and has about 65% Boom state.
Fac B controls a planet station and has about 35% Bust state.
Day by day, 0.1% swaps from A to B.
Now and again, A receives the spike and rises by 2-3%. That I assume is the rare player doing something.
But when A is in Boom and B in Bust, in 'idle' player activity I would expect A to rise a little and B to fall a little.
So yes I agree in terms that there is no decay as it always adds to 100%.
But in a personal perspective, running a faction that controls systems, yes I see 'decay' from my Fac if nothing is done, but the system remains 100%.
And the influence down bucket? ... how is this working when in idle?
Perhaps 'decay' is not the right term (although it seems reasonable to me); it's a regression to the mean or a striving for equilibrium - we've always call it 'top slicing' as a quick reference to the phenomenon.
But whatever it's called, I interpreted Adam's statement as unequivocal: it doesn't happen. I have records like yours: 28 days of 0.1 taken from the leading faction and given to the only other faction - and we all see it in systems with more factions. Consistent daily change is definitely not the result of actions taken by unseen players in other modes of instances.
I'm fairly sure States aren't relevant.
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Walter2 has come close to hitting it on the head with his second statement. There's no explicit mechanic that says "If no activity occurs to affect a faction's influence, it will decay". That much is "certain" from the dev stream.
What this doesn't mean is that a decay effect cannot be observed. There's simply no explicit mechanic to cause an idle faction to decay. It's a bit like the "My car is allergic to vanilla icecream" problem.
The claim is that "If nothing happens in a system, the leading faction loses influence", which is contrary to what Adam and Dav said. So what's most likely happening is that something is occuring to affect influence, we just have no idea what that is, which is why we *think* it's nothing, which ties neatly into readdressing this:
I'm a human. If I'm completely idle and do nothing, that's a bad thing. For one very basic thing, if I don't eat, I starve to death in a week or so.
Dav and Adam alluded to stats that can't be seen. We know "famine" is a functional state that can be hit, derived from a lack of food, and it's a bad state. So maybe, when we "do nothing" in a system, what that actually translates to is "Nobody traded any food here today, and my system has demand for food, so that's a negative occurrence in the bucket.". What about agricultural systems which have a constant supply? Could be a similar occurrence for medicines. Famine and Outbreak themselves don't have to occur though; just the same as killing authority ships can drop a faction's influence, and can, but doesn't necessarily always, cause a Lockdown.
TL;DR we *know* things like standard of living, tech level etc. are "hidden" attributes in the game that we can't see, but can be influenced. We also know based on the table Dav and Adam showed us, sales of food and medicine affect a system differently to "standard" trading, and are therefore tracked differently^. So it's not unrealistic to say a system and it's factions may have "basic needs" we can't see, and by playing the game and "not doing anything" we're actually applying a negative effect across the board to all factions within a system. "Action through inaction" if you like. Then "diminishing gains" takes hold of those effect, and results in an "equilibrium" effect caused by players actions (or lack of in this case).
It's the only way I can explain what's going on given the following to be true:
- Players observe an equalizing effect when they "do nothing" (which is possibly actually doing something!); and
- There is no mechanic to cause a faction's influence to decay if a faction is idle (as per the dev stream).
At this point though, it's completely untestable, because we're talking about mechanics and statistics we can't observe (which are definitely in the game)
^ We also know that there is some form of tracking for Unknown Artefact and Meta Alloy sales for station failures/repairs, so no reason why it can't happen for other items.
What this doesn't mean is that a decay effect cannot be observed. There's simply no explicit mechanic to cause an idle faction to decay. It's a bit like the "My car is allergic to vanilla icecream" problem.
The claim is that "If nothing happens in a system, the leading faction loses influence", which is contrary to what Adam and Dav said. So what's most likely happening is that something is occuring to affect influence, we just have no idea what that is, which is why we *think* it's nothing, which ties neatly into readdressing this:
The BGS, systems and faction influence are meant to be a "living, breathing universe" so to speak. So let's treat it like one.
I'm a human. If I'm completely idle and do nothing, that's a bad thing. For one very basic thing, if I don't eat, I starve to death in a week or so.
Dav and Adam alluded to stats that can't be seen. We know "famine" is a functional state that can be hit, derived from a lack of food, and it's a bad state. So maybe, when we "do nothing" in a system, what that actually translates to is "Nobody traded any food here today, and my system has demand for food, so that's a negative occurrence in the bucket.". What about agricultural systems which have a constant supply? Could be a similar occurrence for medicines. Famine and Outbreak themselves don't have to occur though; just the same as killing authority ships can drop a faction's influence, and can, but doesn't necessarily always, cause a Lockdown.
TL;DR we *know* things like standard of living, tech level etc. are "hidden" attributes in the game that we can't see, but can be influenced. We also know based on the table Dav and Adam showed us, sales of food and medicine affect a system differently to "standard" trading, and are therefore tracked differently^. So it's not unrealistic to say a system and it's factions may have "basic needs" we can't see, and by playing the game and "not doing anything" we're actually applying a negative effect across the board to all factions within a system. "Action through inaction" if you like. Then "diminishing gains" takes hold of those effect, and results in an "equilibrium" effect caused by players actions (or lack of in this case).
It's the only way I can explain what's going on given the following to be true:
- Players observe an equalizing effect when they "do nothing" (which is possibly actually doing something!); and
- There is no mechanic to cause a faction's influence to decay if a faction is idle (as per the dev stream).
At this point though, it's completely untestable, because we're talking about mechanics and statistics we can't observe (which are definitely in the game)
^ We also know that there is some form of tracking for Unknown Artefact and Meta Alloy sales for station failures/repairs, so no reason why it can't happen for other items.
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It seems there are 4 groups (political structures):
1. Pirates - no elections at all.
2. Corporate (ruled by money)
3. Dictatorship, Patronage, Feudal (ruled by small group of individuals).
4. Democracy, Communism, Cooperative, Confederacy (ruled by society)
When 2 factions belong to same group, they have elections (except pirates). Otherwise they have war-type conflict. Not sure about Prison Colony (group 3?) and Theocracy (group 4?), very rare governments anyway. Major faction allegiance does not matter afaik.
As I have said I really enjoyed the feed, and learned a few things. What I also learned was, we aren't the only ones not getting CZ's in War systems!!!!!!!
Incorrect, because of this:
I'd really like to get it clear what I think is going on here, as that seems to be the point I'm having trouble communicating (my fault, nobody elses
), so lets run some numbers.A while back (I'll grab the link after this post) I posted a proposition for "base values" of influence effects for mission running, and the effect of diminishing returns. Without regurgitating most of that again, any influence gains are multiplied by 1 - (your faction's influence as a decimal), so if you were at 25%, and you were set to gain 4% raw influence, 4*(1-0.25) = 4*0.75 = 3, so you'd gain 3%.
Presumably, negative effects are the opposite (haven't tested this), so instead of RAW * (1-INF) it's just RAW * INF.
So if you were at 25% and set to *lose* 4% raw, it'd be 4*0.25 = 1% loss. This is proven by missions if you think about it a bit.
So that's diminishing returns. Here's why that's important.
Lets say "starvation" as we'll call it is a simple 4% loss (for ease of calculations). A single station is in the system, so "everyone's affected" so to speak.
Faction A has 75% influence.
Faction B has 50% influence.
Faction C has 25% influence.
All factions end up with 4% raw in the bucket, but after diminishing gains, it looks like this:
Faction A will lose 3%
Faction B will lose 2%
Faction C will lose 1%.
This is *not equal* across the board. Now, my mission tests were for a single faction. I have no idea what happens to resolve multiple buckets of influence gain/loss for different factions at the same time so I can't back up any speculation on that. However, here's what I think will happen (details in spoiler tag)
In this case, just like gains are given to one faction and taken from all other factions "evenly", losses are distributed "evenly". "Evenly" also has special meaning here, and I *have* done research here, but that's a whole other bag which I'll go into at the bottom...
Going through faction by faction (not adjusting numbers yet). Colouring for ease of reference
Faction A will lose 3%. "Even" distribution gives 2% to Faction B, 1% to Faction C
Faction B will lose 2%. "Even" distribution gives 1.5% to Faction A, 0.5% to Faction C.
Faction C will lose 1%. "Even" distribution gives 0.6% to Faction A, 0.4% to Faction B.
Final adjustments to the factions are:
Faction A: 1.5% + 0.6% - 3% = -0.9% (loss)
Faction B: 2% + 0.4% - 2% = +0.4% (gain)
Faction C: 1% + 0.5% - 1% = +0.5% (gain)
These then get applied.
Going through faction by faction (not adjusting numbers yet). Colouring for ease of reference
Faction A will lose 3%. "Even" distribution gives 2% to Faction B, 1% to Faction C
Faction B will lose 2%. "Even" distribution gives 1.5% to Faction A, 0.5% to Faction C.
Faction C will lose 1%. "Even" distribution gives 0.6% to Faction A, 0.4% to Faction B.
Final adjustments to the factions are:
Faction A: 1.5% + 0.6% - 3% = -0.9% (loss)
Faction B: 2% + 0.4% - 2% = +0.4% (gain)
Faction C: 1% + 0.5% - 1% = +0.5% (gain)
These then get applied.
Faction A: 69.1%
Faction B: 50.4%
Faction C: 25.5%
And everything still adds to 100%. That's how I think this is happening. Not an explicit decay mechanic, just observation of "doing nothing" actually equating to "doing something".
Notes on "Evenly Distributed"
While 1t-trading for loss to hurt other factions was "still a thing" I had plenty of time to observe how "losses" were distributed amongst the factions.
Factions with higher influence would gain more from other factions losing, while smaller factions would gain less. I ran a few figures on this and found that it's distributed as an "opposed ratio" if you will, of factions other than the one losing the influence.
So, 4 factions in a system,
Faction A - 40%
Faction B - 30%
Faction C - 20%
Faction D - 10%
Lets say Faction A loses 10% influence (somehow). This will get distributed as an opposed ration between B, C and D i.e
B:C => 30:20:10 => 3:2:1 (six parts total) So;
Faction B will gain (3/6)*10 = 5%
Faction C will gain (2/6)*10 = 3.33%
Faction D will gain (1/6)*10 = 1.66%
Similarly, if Faction B lost 10%, it would be A:C => 4:2:1 (7 parts) So;
Faction A will gain (4/7)*10 =~ 5.71%
Faction B will gain (2/7)*10 =~ 2.85%
Faction C will gain (1/7)*10 =~ 1.42%
Factions with higher influence would gain more from other factions losing, while smaller factions would gain less. I ran a few figures on this and found that it's distributed as an "opposed ratio" if you will, of factions other than the one losing the influence.
So, 4 factions in a system,
Faction A - 40%
Faction B - 30%
Faction C - 20%
Faction D - 10%
Lets say Faction A loses 10% influence (somehow). This will get distributed as an opposed ration between B, C and D i.e
B:C
=> 30:20:10 => 3:2:1 (six parts total) So;Faction B will gain (3/6)*10 = 5%
Faction C will gain (2/6)*10 = 3.33%
Faction D will gain (1/6)*10 = 1.66%
Similarly, if Faction B lost 10%, it would be A:C
=> 4:2:1 (7 parts) So;Faction A will gain (4/7)*10 =~ 5.71%
Faction B will gain (2/7)*10 =~ 2.85%
Faction C will gain (1/7)*10 =~ 1.42%
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Incorrect, because of this:
I'd really like to get it clear what I think is going on here, as that seems to be the point I'm having trouble communicating (my fault, nobody elses
A while back (I'll grab the link after this post) I posted a proposition for "base values" of influence effects for mission running, and the effect of diminishing returns. Without regurgitating most of that again, any influence gains are multiplied by 1 - (your faction's influence as a decimal), so if you were at 25%, and you were set to gain 4% raw influence, 4*(1-0.25) = 4*0.75 = 3, so you'd gain 3%.
Presumably, negative effects are the opposite (haven't tested this), so instead of RAW * (1-INF) it's just RAW * INF.
So if you were at 25% and set to *lose* 4% raw, it'd be 4*0.25 = 1% loss. This is proven by missions if you think about it a bit.
So that's diminishing returns. Here's why that's important.
Lets say "starvation" as we'll call it is a simple 4% loss (for ease of calculations). A single station is in the system, so "everyone's affected" so to speak.
Faction A has 75% influence.
Faction B has 50% influence.
Faction C has 25% influence.
All factions end up with 4% raw in the bucket, but after diminishing gains, it looks like this:
Faction A will lose 3%
Faction B will lose 2%
Faction C will lose 1%.
This is *not equal* across the board. Now, my mission tests were for a single faction. I have no idea what happens to resolve multiple buckets of influence gain/loss for different factions at the same time so I can't back up any speculation on that. However, here's what I think will happen (details in spoiler tag)
After all that, final adjustments are:In this case, just like gains are given to one faction and taken from all other factions "evenly", losses are distributed "evenly". "Evenly" also has special meaning here, and I *have* done research here, but that's a whole other bag which I'll go into at the bottom...
Going through faction by faction (not adjusting numbers yet). Colouring for ease of reference
Faction A will lose 3%. "Even" distribution gives 2% to Faction B, 1% to Faction C
Faction B will lose 2%. "Even" distribution gives 1.5% to Faction A, 0.5% to Faction C.
Faction C will lose 1%. "Even" distribution gives 0.6% to Faction A, 0.4% to Faction B.
Final adjustments to the factions are:
Faction A: 1.5% + 0.6% - 3% = -0.9% (loss)
Faction B: 2% + 0.4% - 2% = +0.4% (gain)
Faction C: 1% + 0.5% - 1% = +0.5% (gain)
These then get applied.
Faction A: 69.1%
Faction B: 50.4%
Faction C: 25.5%
And everything still adds to 100%. That's how I think this is happening. Not an explicit decay mechanic, just observation of "doing nothing" actually equating to "doing something".
Notes on "Evenly Distributed"
While 1t-trading for loss to hurt other factions was "still a thing" I had plenty of time to observe how "losses" were distributed amongst the factions.
Factions with higher influence would gain more from other factions losing, while smaller factions would gain less. I ran a few figures on this and found that it's distributed as an "opposed ratio" if you will, of factions other than the one losing the influence.
So, 4 factions in a system,
Faction A - 40%
Faction B - 30%
Faction C - 20%
Faction D - 10%
Lets say Faction A loses 10% influence (somehow). This will get distributed as an opposed ration between B, C and D i.e
B:C
Faction B will gain (3/6)*10 = 5%
Faction C will gain (2/6)*10 = 3.33%
Faction D will gain (1/6)*10 = 1.66%
Similarly, if Faction B lost 10%, it would be A:C
Faction A will gain (4/7)*10 =~ 5.71%
Faction B will gain (2/7)*10 =~ 2.85%
Faction C will gain (1/7)*10 =~ 1.42%
You were getting your point across fine, no need to apologise at all. And a great reply, thanks. You can see how my arguments were contradicting, which is why my head was in a tailspin but your reply makes sense and looks plausible.
But you know whats really funny, computers don't do random. It's all mechanics, and very clever mechanics but some of those have an unforeseen effect. And my suspicion is that this 'bleeding' (a better term to use I think) of influence from the top is one of those.
I would have rep'd you for this, but it won't let because .... it was yourself I rep'd last, so thats a rep in itself lol
Incorrect, because of this:
I'd really like to get it clear what I think is going on here, as that seems to be the point I'm having trouble communicating (my fault, nobody elses
A while back (I'll grab the link after this post) I posted a proposition for "base values" of influence effects for mission running, and the effect of diminishing returns. Without regurgitating most of that again, any influence gains are multiplied by 1 - (your faction's influence as a decimal), so if you were at 25%, and you were set to gain 4% raw influence, 4*(1-0.25) = 4*0.75 = 3, so you'd gain 3%.
Presumably, negative effects are the opposite (haven't tested this), so instead of RAW * (1-INF) it's just RAW * INF.
So if you were at 25% and set to *lose* 4% raw, it'd be 4*0.25 = 1% loss. This is proven by missions if you think about it a bit.
So that's diminishing returns. Here's why that's important.
Lets say "starvation" as we'll call it is a simple 4% loss (for ease of calculations). A single station is in the system, so "everyone's affected" so to speak.
Faction A has 75% influence.
Faction B has 50% influence.
Faction C has 25% influence.
All factions end up with 4% raw in the bucket, but after diminishing gains, it looks like this:
Faction A will lose 3%
Faction B will lose 2%
Faction C will lose 1%.
This is *not equal* across the board. Now, my mission tests were for a single faction. I have no idea what happens to resolve multiple buckets of influence gain/loss for different factions at the same time so I can't back up any speculation on that. However, here's what I think will happen (details in spoiler tag)
After all that, final adjustments are:In this case, just like gains are given to one faction and taken from all other factions "evenly", losses are distributed "evenly". "Evenly" also has special meaning here, and I *have* done research here, but that's a whole other bag which I'll go into at the bottom...
Going through faction by faction (not adjusting numbers yet). Colouring for ease of reference
Faction A will lose 3%. "Even" distribution gives 2% to Faction B, 1% to Faction C
Faction B will lose 2%. "Even" distribution gives 1.5% to Faction A, 0.5% to Faction C.
Faction C will lose 1%. "Even" distribution gives 0.6% to Faction A, 0.4% to Faction B.
Final adjustments to the factions are:
Faction A: 1.5% + 0.6% - 3% = -0.9% (loss)
Faction B: 2% + 0.4% - 2% = +0.4% (gain)
Faction C: 1% + 0.5% - 1% = +0.5% (gain)
These then get applied.
Faction A: 69.1%
Faction B: 50.4%
Faction C: 25.5%
And everything still adds to 100%. That's how I think this is happening. Not an explicit decay mechanic, just observation of "doing nothing" actually equating to "doing something".
Notes on "Evenly Distributed"
While 1t-trading for loss to hurt other factions was "still a thing" I had plenty of time to observe how "losses" were distributed amongst the factions.
Factions with higher influence would gain more from other factions losing, while smaller factions would gain less. I ran a few figures on this and found that it's distributed as an "opposed ratio" if you will, of factions other than the one losing the influence.
So, 4 factions in a system,
Faction A - 40%
Faction B - 30%
Faction C - 20%
Faction D - 10%
Lets say Faction A loses 10% influence (somehow). This will get distributed as an opposed ration between B, C and D i.e
B:C
Faction B will gain (3/6)*10 = 5%
Faction C will gain (2/6)*10 = 3.33%
Faction D will gain (1/6)*10 = 1.66%
Similarly, if Faction B lost 10%, it would be A:C
Faction A will gain (4/7)*10 =~ 5.71%
Faction B will gain (2/7)*10 =~ 2.85%
Faction C will gain (1/7)*10 =~ 1.42%
i like the concept, but it would lead to all factions having the same influence after some time, which isn't the case from my observations. i wanted to track influence levels in systems without cmdr actions... you "normally" can see something like 60% corporate 16 % corporate 2 16% dictatorships 7% pirates ---- or similar.
i'm thinking along the lines of golden ratio or an equilibrium at wator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa-Tor)
Of course
any number of things could be going on behind the scenes, the "Starvation" idea is one. There's likely a combination of effects like "No crimes today, positive effect", "Starvation reduced standard of living, which counterbalances losses, and has increased standard of living", "Tech level increased slightly, resulting in less food needed", or who knows what. I'm not a believer of "Top faction decay" if that wasn't obvious already, but I also don't believe nothing's happening. I think it's procedurally generated "noise" if you will, but that's impossible to prove or disprove. Reasons for it, we just don't understand that yet as that's part of the magic black box. But I definitely don't believe players doing nothing = nothing should happen.
Noise is random and indiscriminate. This effect only works downwards - unless the process hasn't been observed for long enough. I was also wondering if equilibrium is ever reached or if there's another threshold where some other factor kicks in. Is it simply entropy or something more complex.Of course
I'm not a believer of "Top faction decay" if that wasn't obvious already, but I also don't believe nothing's happening. I think it's procedurally generated "noise" if you will, but that's impossible to prove or disprove. Reasons for it, we just don't understand that yet as that's part of the magic black box. But I definitely don't believe players doing nothing = nothing should happen.
But I understand what you mean - it's perhaps a biased leak of mathematical value.
Might well change with the update.
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I have wondered myself if after a certain amount of decay / bleeding / regression the effect may reverse or change to a different pair of factions. I haven't been recording influence changes for long enough to know but I am watching for it.
I performed the second part of this test last night. In both cases I bought 1,856t Marine Equipment from my home station, sold it in another sytem and returned with 1,856t Tobacco which I sold to my home station. In the first test I bought / sold 36 batches (mostly 50t, four were 64t) of each commodity and influence increased by 2.1%. In the second test I filled my T9 (464t), buying / selling 4 batches of each commodity and influence increased by 1.9%.
I put the 0.2% difference down to diminishing returns and would say there is no advantage to buying / selling in 50t batches.
So transactional trading effects did get looked at here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=238057. I don't know the exact outcome however, would be good to get some tests of that going, but for me that'll have to wait a couple weeks still
if we assume for a moment, that transaction numbers make influence in a system more "volatile", this could well explain some of the tests, for exampel bounty hunting.
something along those lines: 10 transactions set the influence cap to 1%. which direction it moves, it is decided by profit. to test that, one would need to back two different minor factions with very different transaction values.
also, this will probably be highly irrelevant for most player backed factions, because most of them will only back 1 faction.
something along those lines: 10 transactions set the influence cap to 1%. which direction it moves, it is decided by profit. to test that, one would need to back two different minor factions with very different transaction values.
also, this will probably be highly irrelevant for most player backed factions, because most of them will only back 1 faction.
It was confirmed on the BGS live stream that there is no intrinsic decay, just player actions that you may not be seeing can lead to what looks like a decay(i.e. other fractions gaining can cause you to loose). Check out the dev livesteam had lots of juicy info.
Heres the livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5DGyG6Qwvk
It is theory. In practice I have up to 0,4% decay for 75% inf main faction in several useless zero traffic systems every day.
We tested this months ago in a secluded, permitted system and there was no decay. Makes me wonder how accurate the traffic reports are.
Based on the video, I would track your systems and turn in a bug report for the devs. If what you state is true, either the BGS is wonky, or the traffic numbers are.
One thing to remember about traffic reports, it only counts those that enter or exit the system. If you have a homebody that is bounty hunting, trading internally, etc. you will see no traffic.
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did you push any of the factions before?