rare trade hub ;-) ... have a look at ochoeng pirates, and them expanding.
A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim
- Thread starter Walt Kerman
- Start date
rare trade hub ;-) ... have a look at ochoeng pirates, and them expanding.
I expect the mission interaction with the BGS to change significantly. And then you've got the changes the devs warned about in the live stream: lockdown is changing, conflict zone / combat bonds re-balanced, the new faction "Retreat" functionality, boom triggers. Probably any other balancing adjustments they've been aiming to put in.
I'm expecting to have to re-test and verify just about everything.
What I really, really hope for (and what I've asked for repeatedly in the past) is any sort of guidance from the devs on what needs to be hammered out in the beta. imo, 1.4 was a BGS disaster. One of the reasons for that was a very ineffective test plan in the beta. They started a BGS beta testing thread, and just said "We can't tell you what we changed, but we're very interested in your feedback. Do what you normally do, and let us know if you see anything." So of course no one really knew what to test or what to report as issues. I sincerely hope they learned a lesson from that. They have plenty of willing and able testers if they just share some information.
Since you have populated systems available within 20ly then yes I'd put in a ticket.
Day 1 - 10x approx 500k combat bonds, roughly 5.2m total. After the tick my faction's influence increased by 4.2%.
Day 2 - I was too intoxicated to shoot straight so took the day off from war.
Day 3 - 1 combat bond worth 5.2m. After the tick my faction's influence increased by 0.4%. (0.4% seems to be the smallest change I can cause in my systems)
Day 4 - 5x approx 500k combat bonds, roughly 2.6m total. After the tick my faction's influence increased by 1.6%.
My conclusion is that once again quantity of transactions is more important than their value.
I have seen evidence of this, too, but I'm going absolutely batty trying to figure the dichotomy between Day 1 and Day 4. If a cap was involved, then I would expect the influence curve to flatten out based on number of transactions, but you had less of an effect with 5 transactions than you did with 10. Note that I have seen similar weird results as well with my tests, and the results vary as well. Interference is always a concern, but doubtful in my situation, too. Any ideas?
for me, the data looks very clear. day 3=1 transaction: 0,4. day 4= 5 transaction = 1,6 ... 4 times day 3. day 1= 10 transactions = 10,5 times day 3. so it is roughly linear. one would expect a 2% change at day 4, but there can be many reasons, why it wasn't 2% - rounding up/down the day before and the day itself can make already a 0,2% difference. same goes for 4,2 instead of 4% on day 1.
also, irongut didn't mentioned the number of ships shot - i assume, that shipkills do still count for influence change in combatzones.
Thanks and good point. I'll have to start tracking these as well.
I certainly agree that the most significant factor is transaction count. However, my biggest concern is that day 1 was 0.42% per transaction and day 5 was 0.32% per transaction, a ~33% difference. For fine tuning purposes it could cause an overshoot, especially in small systems, which I'd like to avoid if possible. Starting a war with the wrong faction costs at least a week. Been there, done that.
I had been pre-loading the war while it was pending, handing in bounties for my faction so they had a lead when it started. On the recent livestream the devs said that it is possible some actions may not be counted on the next tick but you'll get their effect eventually. I think it possible that day 1 had some influence change left over from my bounty hunting on day 0.
That is another possiblility. The number of ships killed on each trip to the CZ was fairly random; sometimes I'd get a couple of condas and Pythons and be done, other times I'd have to shoot lots of Vipers and Asps.
And now questions... I've got an Election pending for control of a system. I've never had an Election before, what influence difference do I need to win it? Is it different if one of the factions is not native to the system?
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5% to win (or 3% if you believe the Livestream from a couple of weeks back). I had a 20% gap in the pending period and had to halt there otherwise I would have overtaken the next faction.
Elections are almost pointless, other than being a way to end Boom.
Also, as long as there is only one conflict going on in the system, you're taking that influence from one other faction. The amount of influence you take from the other faction is usually a percentage of the influence they currently have.
So let's say the faction you're fighting has 30% influence on the first day of the conflict. You totally crush them in the CZs or other combat actions, and based on the system population the BGS lets you take 12% of their influence. So you gain 3.6% and they lose 3.6%. They're now sitting at 26.4%. You can hit them exactly the same on the second day, and they'll still lose 12% of their influence, so they drop 3.2%, etc.
The caps on influence movement in conflicts are more about percentages of existing influence of conflicting parties than they are raw influence movement based on 100% in the system. I'm not saying that's what happened in irongut's test, but it's an important thing to keep in mind when testing the effects of combat bonds. The magnitude of influence movement will be very different depending on the starting values.
Very interesting. Something I had read but not considered for conflict states, previously. That does explain some of the trouble I'm having, though. BTW, war (not civil war) really sucks when both factions have less than 15 total influence between them.
Yeah, that blows. They've increased the minimum threshold for conflicts recently, and we think that was one of the reasons. It can still happen though, especially if both factions get pushed down while the conflict is pending.
The only thing you can do is start another conflict in the system and steal influence from the other conflict once it goes active.
That's the plan!
But the factions closest to each other are blocked by another conflict in a different system. The irony is that I just need to end this war, so I can get one of the factions involved in the war I want them in to begin with (in a 3rd system). Traffic jam alert!
I do hope FDev just enables multiple conflicts for a faction someday. Otherwise, the galaxy will eventually harden up like a block of concrete.
An obvious solution would be to have wars end when one of the factions hits 1%. Would be a fair way to resolve ones where there isn't enough influence available.
I feel your pain, commander. Best of luck with it! And people wonder why it's difficult to have a faction in 8+ systems [wacky] It's much more than just the expansions to worry about. Preaching to the choir though, I know.
Our member Turlorn has created this great guide to the Elite Dangerous Background Simulation:
http://elitediplomats.com/?q=content/working-background-simulation-guide-turlorn-0
A great place to start and find what its all about.
http://elitediplomats.com/?q=content/working-background-simulation-guide-turlorn-0
A great place to start and find what its all about.
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I've seen that as a player suggestion, but not heard anyone from Frontier mention it. Might've missed it though. The only thing I remember them saying for 2.1 was the ability to sort by active states on the gal map (war, expansion, boom, etc).
Being able to search for a faction without system data from a discovery scan would be a bad idea, imo. The positive is that it would help find expansions, but there are many negatives too.
yes, that is a thing, i will look up the official source for that.
i was actually wondering about that - whether states will be shown without system data.
i guess it will bring more player traffic to central systems at war, and make them hard to influence.
I wonder about those filters... which state are they going to show?
In one of my systems today there are 2 factions in Civil War, 2 factions in Election (including the controlling faction) and another with no state. If you select Civil War then the map should show this system but will it when the controlling faction is not involved? The UI shown allows you to select multiple states, if you have both Civil War and Election ticked will this system show and what colour will it be?
I suspect that it will function like the trade route display, where you can filter by categories and items within the category. In that way, a system will show up as having both states in the category view, but you can make the filter more granular as needed.
The devs showed a sneak peak of this in the livestream a few weeks back.