A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

Sorry i have looked at the few guides I have on the BGS, but couldn't find the answer, so ..

If a Faction is in expansion, will it expand from the system that its influence is highest or from any of the systems its in?

Also is it still 20 lys max for an expansion?

Finally found a nice system/faction on the edge of the bubble and they are ready to expand, at the moment they are in 2 other systems with 2 more within the 20 ly range from their home system, but a few more are in range it you count the ones they are in.

Thanks in advance. Lok.:)

Expansion will originate from the first system to reach 75%, if more then 1 system is at 75% then from the first with expansion targets within 20.1ly
Local faction states galnet tells you which system expansion is originating from if you are not sure
 
Alternative theory: which ever system ticks first!

Yes this is also possible :)

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Expansion will originate from the first system to reach 75%, if more then 1 system is at 75% then from the first with expansion targets within 20.1ly
Local faction states galnet tells you which system expansion is originating from if you are not sure

Of course, but galnet tells you after expansion starts.
 
I continually read threads where folks quite innocently claim they are the only person actively involved in doing anything to effect influence and if things do not work out in the way they plan.... there is a bug!!

How on earth do we know we are the only player coming into this system?

We have had a player playing with their pesky Xbox creating havoc in one of our systems??? Yup an Xbox and YES this is fact.

I say it is a fact for the following reasons

This Xbox player was so active, they got a 3 million credit bounty on their head.

The commander name was NOT listed when I checked 'Add a friend' No trace of a commander with that name.

I first thought this was a generic commander name made up by the game but we had a player with an Xbox.

I simply asked them to see if there was a player with that name using the xbox...

sure enough there was and when he was contacted, they had NO idea their bounty hunting was creating havoc for us. They very kindly apologised and took their killing machine off to pastures new...

Okay we can now all say 'Yup, that is combat and nothing like that shows up'

What if this very energetic player was trading for a different minor faction to the one we want? They would not show up anywhere. we would not have a clue what was going on and would we be suggesting the game was flawed?

This is just one example of outside interference and no doubt more knowledgeable\experienced folks might have even more examples.
 
This is just one example of outside interference and no doubt more knowledgeable\experienced folks might have even more examples.

Traffic reports, crime reports and bounty statistics also help - check the most wanted too!

These are merely indicators though. Activity has to be inferred from influence changes. It helps to think of playing the BGS as similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)


1 CMDR? Try 1000 Cmdrs daily in one of our factions systems. Fingers crossed you don't become a victim of a popular skimmer grinding spot. All hell breaks loose.
 
What faction states were active for the controlling and target factions?

The control was the target - it was solely a test to see if killing control wanted in the RES had an effect. I believe the state was none, but I will have to check in with my colleague to confirm.
 
Traffic reports, crime reports and bounty statistics also help - check the most wanted too!

These are merely indicators though. Activity has to be inferred from influence changes. It helps to think of playing the BGS as similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)


1 CMDR? Try 1000 Cmdrs daily in one of our factions systems. Fingers crossed you don't become a victim of a popular skimmer grinding spot. All hell breaks loose.
Yup, I agree they are indicators and I cannot recall if the Xbox was registering. It would be easy to say it wasn't but I have no idea. At the time this was happening I was told it was impossible for Xbox players to influence the game being played by players using the PC; that was factually proved to be incorrect. I am simply suggesting that in a low population system with very little through traffic, we can most definitely manipulate influence
but never, ever think we have an infallible method.

We once had a nearby community goal which saw hundreds, if not thousands of human players passing through but none actually gracing our station with their presence. Thousands of ships passing through but not doing anything as opposed to one ship remaining in the system for several days working against the faction we might own.

Could we have one player enter our system and remain there for several days simply undermining us? Would the ship show up the day it comes into the system but for the duration of its stay, remain invisible to Galnet (unless it gets into the crime or bounty reports) Would one ship be documented when it comes in and from then on we might see Galnet stating that for the next 24hrs there has been no traffic even though we have skulduggery taking place :)
 
Could we have one player enter our system and remain there for several days simply undermining us? Would the ship show up the day it comes into the system but for the duration of its stay, remain invisible to Galnet (unless it gets into the crime or bounty reports) Would one ship be documented when it comes in and from then on we might see Galnet stating that for the next 24hrs there has been no traffic even though we have skulduggery taking place :)

If someone is attacking you, pretty much the only way of noting it is via the influence drop/state changes. Information is the key to successful BGS work. Track as much as you can as often as you can. This task becomes ever more vital and ever larger task the more you expand.

In our experience such direct targeting of a faction is rare despite some of the more public incidents on the forums/reddit. AEDC as a group tries to keep abreast of who is in our neighbourhood to ensure any difficulties are minimized. All groups we have had contact with have been open to such diplomacy and I'm quite grateful for that. If your faction is not obviously a player faction some powerplay BGS group might unknowingly try to flip the system to reduce fortification workload.
 
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Jane Turner

Volunteer Moderator
Alternative theory: which ever system ticks first!

In combat states at least, we have firm evidence that it is based on the something like the timestamp of the last action to push the influence over the threshold (a number of occasions we've defensively pushed more than one system into a war state for the same faction just in case we missed a developing blocking state in a 3rd party. I'd expect Expansion to be similar, though I beleive we have had situations where one system has been consistently over 75% whilst another has had successive expansions cause by recrossing the 75% line on the 1st possible tick
 
If someone is attacking you, pretty much the only way of noting it is via the influence drop/state changes. Information is the key to successful BGS work. Track as much as you can as often as you can. This task becomes ever more vital and ever larger task the more you expand.

Yup I agree to a great extent but we also have to always remember that going into expansion may well see a sudden drop in influence. My problem is the dreaded 'Speculation'

Our influence might suddenly drop and someone might have upset a human faction.... That incident may well stick in the player's mind and no matter what s said... That group is responsible for the sudden dip.. Who truly knows why the faction has go down say 10%? To speculate can probably only make things worse..

Having a Background Story is fun but be aware in this game we find.... NOTHING is black and white (apart from a black hole, space etc etc :) :) )
 
If someone is attacking you, pretty much the only way of noting it is via the influence drop/state changes. Information is the key to successful BGS work. Track as much as you can as often as you can. This task becomes ever more vital and ever larger task the more you expand.
I agree. This is why I try to graph the influence % of all factions in a system I am working, as well as keep an eye on the traffic, crime and bounty reports and the states of all the factions.
Like glojo suggests, it is possible to remain within a system and cause trouble without showing on the traffic report. but they will usually show in either the crime or the bounty reports - though it is possible that all they are doing is internal missions or trading within the system. I have also sometimes thought someone else was working the system after noticing a traffic report of 20 with 4 different ships, then realizing that they were all me.
 
i think the current CGs will deliver some interesting large scale data on weapons trade, black market trade and countering the effect with cashing in bounties.
 

Deleted member 115407

D
So, lazy question. As of 2.2.0.3 are passenger missions counting for influence?
 
Due to the enormity of the pages (411 as of this post,) it is possible that this question may have already been asked and answered?

I have noticed, and tracked, both the enemy and ally outside factions of two inter-system factions, currently in a civil war. Thought I (as a single commander,) do not posses the numbers moxie to test whether raising or lowering influence with any of these outside allied or enemy factions, would have any effect within the current civil-war system.

Has this item been looked into and/or tested by anyone?
 
The control was the target - it was solely a test to see if killing control wanted in the RES had an effect. I believe the state was none, but I will have to check in with my colleague to confirm.

Following up on this - the control state was 'Retreat' - although clearly not from that particular system :) We're going to look to retest for other states at somepoint.
 
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