A Guide to Minor Factions and the Background Sim

[goemon]

From what I gather so far, now bounty hunting in the system damages the controlling faction.

if >1 superpower aligned minor factions are in system, and superpower bounties are redeemed, that's sure.

now - how to explain people, adn even more random people in a system, never to cash in superpower bounties, even if the controlling minor faction is superpower alugned?

it is very contra-intuitive, bit like pirate factions hurting themself by selling stolen goods at their stations.

 

[goemon]

some armchair-theorizing on activties and influence buckets

what do you all think?

are there different influence buckets for different activties?

like: is there a trade ifleucne bucket per minor faction, filling or emptying by actions?

and/or a system wide trade influence bucket, which is calculated before all activty influence buckets are combined?

I'm trying to get my head around, why combining several action-types feels more effective than repeating only action type. is that simply down to more actions per docking?

 

[Jane Turner]

We've always worked on the principle that its one big bucket

 

[Schlack]

From what I gather so far, now bounty hunting in the system damages the controlling faction. (at least in numerous circumstances).

Besides being the utter nonsense, it quite ruins playing this game for many of us.

It is a little more complex. What appears to be happening is that systems now have a lower equilibrium point, making it harder to get ahead and expand.

Where there is significant BH traffic (like where there are major trade hubs and mission grinding spots) managing a faction in that system is much more problematic - even practically impossible in some cases. This change has turned many more systems into ones that we would normally avoid if possible due to levels of activity. It took us a 6 week campaign to return Leesti to the Alliance due to the levels of player activity - but that level of activity is not sustainable to manage a system.

A strategic change may therefore be necessary: Let those particular systems go, be content with presence rather than ruling, focus on other systems. Not a palatable option for sure, but space is big and the grinders cannot be everywhere. We have some experience in dealing with a similar situation with skimmer grinding. Its a horrible choice but one that may be required if you wish to see your faction progress.

- - - Updated - - -

We've always worked on the principle that its one big bucket

Same here.

 

[glojo]

I look at the bounties being claimed.

With us it is always up in the hundreds.

We do NOT go bounty hunting in our systems.

We very, very rarely see any other players in open, it appears that the majority of players fly in either private or solo.

We know for sure that Xbox etc most definitely contributes to influence etc.

We are royally screwed.

Today I finally 'caught' someone bounty hunting in our system.

They only speak Italian and evidently the translating software is not good enough to help us explain what they are doing is hurting us.

To me the developers are really, really ruining our game.

How can we speak to these folks?

Goenon has been extremely supportive and he must be fed up to the back teeth with all my many questions but the bottom line to me is the developers need to fix this issue yesterday, if not before.

 

[Starwolfe]

In my area - of which I am thankful is so devoid of traffic I actually don't suffer most of these issues.

Makes it great for testing, but I lack the manpower to say for certain about that influence bucket.

The best I can say is that there is a diminishing returns trend, but I cannot say for certain if it operates on each activity or a whole.

I have had success in influence swings by mixing Bounties and Missions with some Expansion turned in, but could also do the same just by spamming enough missions - both approximately equal in total transaction counts.

 

[Sentenza]

I look at the bounties being claimed.

With us it is always up in the hundreds.

We do NOT go bounty hunting in our systems.

We very, very rarely see any other players in open, it appears that the majority of players fly in either private or solo.

We know for sure that Xbox etc most definitely contributes to influence etc.

We are royally screwed.

Today I finally 'caught' someone bounty hunting in our system.

They only speak Italian and evidently the translating software is not good enough to help us explain what they are doing is hurting us.

To me the developers are really, really ruining our game.

How can we speak to these folks?

Goenon has been extremely supportive and he must be fed up to the back teeth with all my many questions but the bottom line to me is the developers need to fix this issue yesterday, if not before.

I can help you on that but that's beside the point. I don't want to try to convince other players to not have fun playing their way (killing baddies) because the devs screwed up and are ruining my fun. I want the devs to stop ruining fun for us all.

 

[Macklroy]

I don't want to derail the conversation, but ... Is anyone noticing massacre missions for player factions recently? It has been a couple months since our faction has seen one.

 

[goemon]

I don't want to derail the conversation, but ... Is anyone noticing massacre missions for player factions recently? It has been a couple months since our faction has seen one.

yep. actually quite some.

but as you know - mission boads are erratic, even if you have a military economy port in system.

 

[Sentenza]

I don't want to derail the conversation, but ... Is anyone noticing massacre missions for player factions recently? It has been a couple months since our faction has seen one.

Yes, but always for the opposite faction.

 

[Bzek]

Hmm, not sure if related, war a minor system (2mil total pop or so) a friend and I turned a few massacre missions and +10mil bonds each. We couldn't get any significant headway into that war. Since it is a tiny, unremarkable system I don't expect there was much opposition from other players. We did it over the duration of the war, pushing like that every day, and ended up with the war coming to a draw at the end of the week period.

What we observed was that the main faction in the system gained consistently, while both factions at war were consistently dropping. Both factions at war ended at a draw at 8% influence. We were wondering whether turning combat bonds was being attributed to influence gains of the faction that owned the station or something. It was absurd.

 

[goemon]

We were wondering whether turning combat bonds was being attributed to influence gains of the faction that owned the station or something. It was absurd.

without traffic reports and bounty hunter reports there are no real conclusions to draw, and i really recommend recording at least those two, if you have the feeling some system is behaving strange.

let's assume your backwater system has a RES close to station, and there is a wing of 3-4 people doing 2-3 RES runs each day (they wouldn't even show up in the traffic report), and your scenario would exactly look like what you have described. or it spawns some type of missions people like to stack, for exampel passenger missions, and people are returning with some explo data transactions, missions to hand in and maybe even a bounty or two for the controlling faction every 4-5 hours etc.

on the other hand, jane turner was reporting what "felt" like wrong attribution of bounties to the controlling faction, which couldn't be reproduced in tests, though. there was an infamous bug which attributed bonds to the wrong side of a conflict many patches back in some rare cases. bugs are always a possibility.

i generally recommend filing a ticket and bug report, if traffic report and bounty hunter report show nothing extraordinary so FDEV can look into it, which have the numbers.

 

[CMDR Heydan Seegil]

We at the Confederacy of Vulcan have been trying to see if there are any system affects when different Minor Faction Government types gain majority power. Like if a Anarchy or Unfettered takes power then does your security rating lower or if a Venturist takes over are there now more trade missions.

Any charts for that?

 

[Starwolfe]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qeC7JtO9rG0wqHckktGD169rJjPMSb3qD9nXdFTlOhk/edit?usp=sharing

Cartoq day 6;

The controlling faction Cartoq Purple Major Organisation continued to loose 1.5% today, still proving the effects of the superpower bounties being negative even for the controlling faction.

Gaohikel for Equality continued stable for the second day in a row, an interesting turn of events all things considered.

However the Values party of Cartoq is still in Outbreak and is loosing ground again, another 1% down.

The Independents of Yuqui did manage to end the Civil Unrest and gained another 1.6% while the Esumindii for Equality gained another 0.9%, slowing down.

The Indi factions continued to be shot, tho not changing from the positions.


I suspect the fed factions would balance off around 20% along with Gaohikel for Equality, or thereabouts in the eventual future thanks to the superpower bounty sharing.

Really wish the Outbreak for the Values Party of Cartoq was done, but oh well. The result is still quite obvious so far - the sharing effect does have a balancing nature to it, but it only favors superpower affiliations. Independent factions loose out, and the controlling factions get yanked down. Although slowing the Expansion effects has some merit, the negative factors certainly aren't good in the long run.

 

[the100thmonkey]

*lose.

 

[Schlack]

Our experience is that bonds are being attributed correctly.

 

[Bearcat]

So my player group has been fighting a large player group and keeping them in a constant state of war. The BGS changes everyone is complaining about do not seem to affect them very much. I believe this is because once they take control of a system they add it into an empire-spanning trade route and have a fleet of T6's doing trade amongst their systems all the time. The BGS changes have had negligible effect on them. The 3 day countdown between wars has been more than adequate for their trade activities to keep their faction in the high 50/60% range even though they have 14 or 15 systems.

 

[CMDR Endincite]

So my player group has been fighting a large player group and keeping them in a constant state of war. The BGS changes everyone is complaining about do not seem to affect them very much. I believe this is because once they take control of a system they add it into an empire-spanning trade route and have a fleet of T6's doing trade amongst their systems all the time. The BGS changes have had negligible effect on them. The 3 day countdown between wars has been more than adequate for their trade activities to keep their faction in the high 50/60% range even though they have 14 or 15 systems.

Is that just a statement, or are you suggesting there's a problem? Seems (without further info) to be working perfectly to me; your constant effort to hurt them negated by their constant effort to bolster whichever instance of their faction you're attacking.

 

[Bearcat]

Is that just a statement, or are you suggesting there's a problem? Seems (without further info) to be working perfectly to me; your constant effort to hurt them negated by their constant effort to bolster whichever instance of their faction you're attacking.

Yeah, just a statement which may suggest to some who may be suffering from the change a way of adapting to it.

 

[Sentenza]

So my player group has been fighting a large player group and keeping them in a constant state of war. The BGS changes everyone is complaining about do not seem to affect them very much. I believe this is because once they take control of a system they add it into an empire-spanning trade route and have a fleet of T6's doing trade amongst their systems all the time. The BGS changes have had negligible effect on them. The 3 day countdown between wars has been more than adequate for their trade activities to keep their faction in the high 50/60% range even though they have 14 or 15 systems.

High volume trade seems effective.