A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[CMDR pollycough]

Before 2.1, when two factions were in a civil war, they affected each other's influence but were not unduly affected by whatever happened to other factions in the system. This no longer seems to be the case.
Two factions in the system a few of us are working have been in civil war since before 2.1. they were fairly stable before, but have both slowly but steadily dropped in influence since 2.1.
Has anyone else noticed this?

Yes there seems to be a slow drift of about 1% each taken from war/civil war if it is unsupported. It would also seem that wars no longer "lock" the influence.

A question: I started monitoring a system on Thursday and the total influence added up to 98%, Yesterday it was at 97.4%. I am waiting for today's tick to see what happens, but has anyone else experienced any examples of less than 99.9% since 2.1?

 

[Szyslak22]

Yes there seems to be a slow drift of about 1% each taken from war/civil war if it is unsupported. It would also seem that wars no longer "lock" the influence.

A question: I started monitoring a system on Thursday and the total influence added up to 98%, Yesterday it was at 97.4%. I am waiting for today's tick to see what happens, but has anyone else experienced any examples of less than 99.9% since 2.1?

We did have an issue with 2.1 where faction influence would add up to 100.2% instead of 100.1%, but nothing less than 99.9%. Very strange that you'd be getting values that low.

Our acceptable range is 99.9 - 100.2% range right now in our tracker and we haven't had issues since adjusting the top end of the range. It's a good catch, because usually if something is off by a few percentage points it's either user error, or a faction has retreated back in to the system, expanded in, etc.

I think I'd submit a bug report about that. Depending on the population, having 2 - 3% of the people in you system missing could be a serious problem

 

[CMDR pollycough]

We did have an issue with 2.1 where faction influence would add up to 100.2% instead of 100.1%, but nothing less than 99.9%. Very strange that you'd be getting values that low.

Our acceptable range is 99.9 - 100.2% range right now in our tracker and we haven't had issues since adjusting the top end of the range. It's a good catch, because usually if something is off by a few percentage points it's either user error, or a faction has retreated back in to the system, expanded in, etc.

I think I'd submit a bug report about that. Depending on the population, having 2 - 3% of the people in you system missing could be a serious problem

Yes it is a worry but we have had 0.1% of them return today, but there are still 3.5K missing (2.5%).
Report submitted.

 

[irongut]

I wonder how expansion states affect the handing in of exploration data.

If expansion fails then exploration data contributes to the investment phase, I don't know if it affects a successful expansion.

Yes there seems to be a slow drift of about 1% each taken from war/civil war if it is unsupported. It would also seem that wars no longer "lock" the influence.

A question: I started monitoring a system on Thursday and the total influence added up to 98%, Yesterday it was at 97.4%. I am waiting for today's tick to see what happens, but has anyone else experienced any examples of less than 99.9% since 2.1?

Oddly it seems other factions can take influence from the factions at war but not the other way round - the factions at war still only take influence from each other.

I've seen a range of 99.8 - 100.2% total influence since 2.1 but nothing outside that so far.

 

[Patau82]

Can confirm that investment works
our expansion state that followed our investment has successfully completed and we have expanded to our nearest inhabited system 24.74ly away
we will continue pushing expansions from same system and see what happens, we have another 2 systems within 30ly but want to see if we can go further

 

[Patau82]

If expansion fails then exploration data contributes to the investment phase, I don't know if it affects a successful expansion.

I have a feeling investment doubles the normal effect of handing exploration data

 

[Walter2]

Oddly it seems other factions can take influence from the factions at war but not the other way round - the factions at war still only take influence from each other.

That's what makes me think the current methodology doesn't 'see' the conflict and reassigns points as per normal. Conflicts aren't designed to take points from outside the bounds of the conflict so they don't, but other activities take a varying proportion from all subjected factions.

As to whether this is working as intended . . .

 

[Shock]

Has anyone expanded into a system in 2.1? If so, how far away did you expand? I'm asking as I've seen 3 expansions in 2.1 and 1 expansion in the 2.1 beta and they all ignored the rules that FDEV layed out in the fairly recent live stream. All 4 of these expansions (from different factions) expanded into the system that is closest to the system they were expanding from.
I did see an expansion just before 2.1 went live (in 2.0) and it followed the rules FDEV noted perfectly, but it looks like the rules have changed in 2.1

 

[Szyslak22]

Has anyone expanded into a system in 2.1? If so, how far away did you expand? I'm asking as I've seen 3 expansions in 2.1 and 1 expansion in the 2.1 beta and they all ignored the rules that FDEV layed out in the fairly recent live stream. All 4 of these expansions (from different factions) expanded into the system that is closest to the system they were expanding from.
I did see an expansion just before 2.1 went live (in 2.0) and it followed the rules FDEV noted perfectly, but it looks like the rules have changed in 2.1

Yeah, it changed quite a bit. The biggest change in target selection is that systems with 5 factions are no longer "full". Systems aren't full now until they have 7 factions. So basically every expansion for a long time is going to pick the nearest system with less than 7 factions.

The good news is that this opens up close by systems that you might not have been able to expand to before. The bad news is that it's quite difficult to move your faction any significant distance away (like you could in 2.0).

There is new functionality in 2.1 called an "Invasion War". From the description, I'd think this is the functional replacement for expansion with displacement. I'm guessing instead of just displacing a faction back to the expansion source, you'd have to fight a War against them to see who stays.

But imo, we won't see that for a very, very long time. No systems had 7 factions native to the system when the game started (that I know of). Retreat makes factions leave if they have very low influence in a foreign system. So having every system within 20 Ly full of 7 factions? Not very likely any time soon.

I'm disappointed on one hand, because it killed the functionality that enabled the "targeted expansions" that we were starting to get good at. Placing your faction in exactly the system you want 25Ly away is a very rewarding experience. On the other hand, targeted expansions were an enormous amount of work, and there were so many things that could go wrong at the last minute. So I'm a little relieved that expansion is back to just being "simple" for a while. But I do look forward to seeing invasion wars someday. Hopefully the dev that coded them will remember how they work by the time they roll around

 

[irongut]

Yeah, it changed quite a bit. The biggest change in target selection is that systems with 5 factions are no longer "full". Systems aren't full now until they have 7 factions. So basically every expansion for a long time is going to pick the nearest system with less than 7 factions.

Do you know if expansion prefers systems with fewer factions or is it just closest with less than 7? e.g. If system A is 5ly away with 5 factions & system B is 15ly away with 4 factions would you now expand to A?

 

[Szyslak22]

Do you know if expansion prefers systems with fewer factions or is it just closest with less than 7? e.g. If system A is 5ly away with 5 factions & system B is 15ly away with 4 factions would you now expand to A?

I don't know yet, to be honest. Our area was really full, so the expansions we've seen since 2.1 have been to the closest system. But those systems have only had 5 factions and there were none with 4. So it could be either.

In 2.0 and before, it preferred closer systems rather than systems with less factions. But that could have changed. I'll watch for that scenario.

 

[irongut]

I don't know yet, to be honest. Our area was really full, so the expansions we've seen since 2.1 have been to the closest system. But those systems have only had 5 factions and there were none with 4. So it could be either.

In 2.0 and before, it preferred closer systems rather than systems with less factions. But that could have changed. I'll watch for that scenario.

I've got a system that still has two 4 faction systems within 20ly. Once I finish my current plans I'll push for expansion from there and report back what happens. (probably in 2 weeks)

 

[CMDR pollycough]

Following putting a bug report on this sytem that is not adding up to 100%, It experienced a second tick but it still only adds up to 97.5% and was very strange.

Does any of that make any sense? The time under 9/6 was taken @13.15 10/6.

 

[Walter2]

Following putting a bug report on this sytem that is not adding up to 100%, It experienced a second tick but it still only adds up to 97.5% and was very strange.

http://i.imgur.com/G1IimZj.png
Does any of that make any sense? The time under 9/6 was taken @13.15 10/6.

Trying very hard not to be pedantic, Pollycough, but the update tick currently takes place around 1700UTC (game time), so technically there was only one tick on 11 June. But this does not invalidate your argument.

Edit: I can't find your bug report, but I did find this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=263795

 

[Patau82]

I don't know yet, to be honest. Our area was really full, so the expansions we've seen since 2.1 have been to the closest system. But those systems have only had 5 factions and there were none with 4. So it could be either.

In 2.0 and before, it preferred closer systems rather than systems with less factions. But that could have changed. I'll watch for that scenario.

seemed to be the same for us, it picked closest system not the one with least factions
only 4 expansion options nearest 3 all have 5 factions (25-27ly) , furthest has 3 factions (29ly)

 

[CMDR pollycough]

Trying very hard not to be pedantic, Pollycough, but the update tick currently takes place around 1700 UTC (game time), so technically there was only one tick on 11 June. But this does not invalidate your argument.

Thank you, You managed it.
But if we say that the figure i took on the 10th @ 13.15 was the tick from 9/6 @17.00 UTC, There should only be 2 more sets of figures after tick on 11/6 @17.00 UTC (current), So there is something wrong.

I reserve the right to disagree with you on the tick time until later OK I have been a bit lax and hadn't noticed!

Ref bug report: Yes that's the one

 

[Deathwatch]

The current way the state of war works does seem to be a bit of an extreme representation of war, though I can understand why the dev's made it so it locks a factions influence to not be able to make gains globally, it seems to be a bit of an extreme that it then prevents that faction from putting even a small amount of resistance to their influential decline.

It would be more interesting to see it be set by a Percentage by population that minor faction controls in comparison to what they are going up against using the security states maybe as an additional factor to decide the military strength of factions, in addition to what they have as assets in a system.

 

[Shock]

seemed to be the same for us, it picked closest system not the one with least factions
only 4 expansion options nearest 3 all have 5 factions (25-27ly) , furthest has 3 factions (29ly)

Yep, same for us. It picked the closest system which already had 6 factions (now it has 7 factions, no faction was kicked out). Within the 20 ly range there's systems with 5, 6, 7 and 8 factions.

 

[Saool]

SMAC are currently five days into a second expansion attempt. Our first worked, but we expanded into the Children Of Raxxla's system so left that alone as we are friends.

Does anyone know if the method by which the expansion system is selected has changed at all? Previously, by my understanding, it looked for a system with four or less faction within a 20ly-ish bubble. If that failed it looked for a system where a faction had a very low influence. This then tended to make systems with a successful faction magnets for expansion. If you had a reasonable group of players keeping your chosen faction at 80% then it would be highly likely that there would be other factions in system with 1%, thus you would be likely to have A. Systems like HR 6421 with ten factions in, and B and lot of player factions (there are three in that system).

Also does any one know if the expansion data missions have any effect on the system selection? Looking at the mission board it does rather look like that are all regular missions, just with "because we are expanding" added in. EG deliver this to help with our expansion. Kill this person to help with our expansion. Source this to help with our expansion. Boil an egg to help with our expansion etc, as opposed to them having any clear influence in the system selection.

 

[goemon]

Also does any one know if the expansion data missions have any effect on the system selection?

not tested, but i doubt it. "flavour-text".