A Year of Anarchy In Colonia

Phisto Sobanii

Phisto Sobanii
Nickolai said:
Hey Reapers, perhaps you could educate me a little bit, as clearly I've underestimated the amount of work it takes to help an anarchy faction...

The other day I decided to try something...and found an anarchy faction in a system nearby with only 1500 population...and they were unhappy, with only 1% influence. I figured with such low population, I'd be able to swing the numbers a little bit.

So I spent the entire day doing missions for these guys...and I kept track of the number of Influence+ points. I managed to get them about 100 influence points (no joke, this took hours and hours of smuggling and source-and-returns).

The next day I check, and they went up to 2%. I was hoping to see at least a 10 point swing. But it looks like my entire day of mission running did...pretty much nothing. This "upswing" to 2% lasted a couple days, and they are now back down to 1%.

Is this because of opposition? Because there are enough "massacre pirate" missions being done by people from nearby systems that I can't affect a change? How much work would it actually be to flip this station?

Also, the next day I noticed the No Look Here Gang lost control of the Pit a couple months ago (this is not the faction I was trying to help initially), so I did another day of mission running for them, for a total of ~50 INF+ points. Next day I checked, and there was zero movement (their economy state actually went down). So what's the deal? Am I just too small a fish to make a difference, even if I spend an entire day running missions?
Click to expand...

Hey friend!

Anarchies have it rough in Colonia. You've already identified one big reason why: massacre missions from neighboring systems. The No Look Here Gang in Pennsylvania were particularly vulnerable to this. It's a relatively well known "gold mine" kind of thing. When The New Order went to flip it they worked for a very long time and had lots of help for the war.

A few of the others are in high traffic systems with active player groups. Kinesi is a good example of this. Then you have Ratraii, which is BGS locked. Brian's Thugs will never control the system regardless of how high their influence gets.

Diminishing returns also seems to play a much bigger role than in the past. You've got to mix your missions up along with doing exploration data, bounty hunting, and trade. Of course you need a station to take advantage of those last three, so it's another reason you're in a tough spot. @Paul Smith the 3rd might be able to shed more light on this.

My best advice would be do a little bit every day for a week or so, see where you stand then. A couple days work isn't all that much anymore.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Phisto Sobanii said:
Yes, Brian's Thugs could expand. They've done it in the past!
Click to expand...
Theoretically possible.

However, they only ever managed it under the old BGS rules (pre-3.3) when Colonia Cooperative could be locked in a war elsewhere and therefore lose trade/mission influence back home. Since the separation into multiple states CCoop have rarely dropped below 90% influence, so it would take a massive amount of work to shift them.
 

Just Paul

Just Paul
Nickolai said:
Hey Reapers, perhaps you could educate me a little bit, as clearly I've underestimated the amount of work it takes to help an anarchy faction...

The other day I decided to try something...and found an anarchy faction in a system nearby with only 1500 population...and they were unhappy, with only 1% influence. I figured with such low population, I'd be able to swing the numbers a little bit.

So I spent the entire day doing missions for these guys...and I kept track of the number of Influence+ points. I managed to get them about 100 influence points (no joke, this took hours and hours of smuggling and source-and-returns).

The next day I check, and they went up to 2%. I was hoping to see at least a 10 point swing. But it looks like my entire day of mission running did...pretty much nothing. This "upswing" to 2% lasted a couple days, and they are now back down to 1%.

Is this because of opposition? Because there are enough "massacre pirate" missions being done by people from nearby systems that I can't affect a change? How much work would it actually be to flip this station?

Also, the next day I noticed the No Look Here Gang lost control of the Pit a couple months ago (this is not the faction I was trying to help initially), so I did another day of mission running for them, for a total of ~50 INF+ points. Next day I checked, and there was zero movement (their economy state actually went down). So what's the deal? Am I just too small a fish to make a difference, even if I spend an entire day running missions?
Click to expand...

As Phisto said Colonia has lot's of massacre missions targeting the local Anarchy factions. Plus random traffic favors the non-anarchy factions as they have usually better missions or are higher up on the missions board. Bounties are hard to come by for an Anarchy, and they seem to be the best inf+/hr atm. So you are always at a disadvantage. This combined with many people associating Anarchy with gankers and you have people actively working against you too.
Pennsylvania has not only massacre missions, but is also actively worked by people opposing Anarchy. It's not a system for 1 person to flip.

A few months ago I did a test in the bubble and could raise the Anarchy faction in my home system to 2nd place by doing around 5-10 missions a day, plus winning a couple of wars with the help of some friends. Then the controlling PMF noticed and started working the system, with running missions and selling stuff on the black market I could keep a sort of stalemate, but didn't advance anymore. I had to focus on Colonia a little after and left the system to itself again, it took awhile but now they are back at 1%.:(

Every bgs action has diminishing returns after a while. Trade, explo, bounties, missions are the 4 main buckets to fill. If you are an Anarchy and not in charge of a station you are left with mission running only, which is a disadvantage. If there is a black market you could run some trade to hurt the controlling faction. The things you sell need to be in demand and sell for a profit. You could also sell for a loss on the open market, but I don't know how effective that is.
Run 5-10 5+inf missions a day and see there it goes, check the traffic and bounty board for opposition. You get a better picture of what is possible after that. Work steady and don't burn out from doing to much or getting disappointed if the needle doesn't move as much as you hoped. BGS is the long-game.

I can't go into to much detail, but we do run our BGS seriously. Not spreadsheet level, but we try to use all the tools available to get the best bang for our bucks. Lot's of people get surprised/frustrated that we are not mindless gankers.

Nickolai said:
Hmm, unfortunate that they cannot take control. But I'm wondering, their influence can still be raised over that of Colonia Co-operative...so in theory they could gain enough influence to expand into other systems, right?
Click to expand...

It would be an uphill battle, as Ratraii is a popular bounty hunting spot, plus you have trade, mission, and explo data working against you too. There are also some people supporting Colonia Co-operative, but I don't know how serious they are about it now after they disbanded.
Best to look at a system on the outskirts of Colonia with none or not to active player faction and work there to see what can be done.
 

Screemonster

Screemonster
Nickolai said:
Hey Reapers, perhaps you could educate me a little bit, as clearly I've underestimated the amount of work it takes to help an anarchy faction...

The other day I decided to try something...and found an anarchy faction in a system nearby with only 1500 population...and they were unhappy, with only 1% influence. I figured with such low population, I'd be able to swing the numbers a little bit.

So I spent the entire day doing missions for these guys...and I kept track of the number of Influence+ points. I managed to get them about 100 influence points (no joke, this took hours and hours of smuggling and source-and-returns).

The next day I check, and they went up to 2%. I was hoping to see at least a 10 point swing. But it looks like my entire day of mission running did...pretty much nothing. This "upswing" to 2% lasted a couple days, and they are now back down to 1%.

Is this because of opposition? Because there are enough "massacre pirate" missions being done by people from nearby systems that I can't affect a change? How much work would it actually be to flip this station?

Also, the next day I noticed the No Look Here Gang lost control of the Pit a couple months ago (this is not the faction I was trying to help initially), so I did another day of mission running for them, for a total of ~50 INF+ points. Next day I checked, and there was zero movement (their economy state actually went down). So what's the deal? Am I just too small a fish to make a difference, even if I spend an entire day running missions?
Click to expand...
I'd check the local traffic in station services to see what's going on, and the bounty report in particular to see if there's a lot of other traffic in the system, if so it might be hard for one player to shift it by themselves. Sitting at 1% influence suggests that they get missions directly targeting them - especially if the system's low population with no large orbital stations, in which case it's unlikely that anyone actually uses the system as a home base so the biggest influence lever is going to be missions from surrounding systems - and since most factions are lawful, and lawful factions tend to generate missions that directly target anarchies, passive traffic tends to be heavily weighted against non-controlling anarchists.

Taking a quick look on Inara (since there's no way I'm going to scout the system directly - if it were in the bubble I'd take a quick hop out there and take a look for myself), there are three populated systems within 10ly, of which two are high-traffic systems (for colonia) with large orbitals, which means those stations will be generating a lot of pirate massacre missions. Kojeara in particular will be generating a lot as Pennsylvania is the only system within 10ly of it that has an anarchy faction.

The other thing, as Phisto pointed out, is that some people get mad about anarchies for some reason. One of the things that got me going on my anarchist kick was the crazy traffic spike that happened in my otherwise-backwater home system at the time when I decided to see what would happen if I supported the anarchy faction in a war for a non-landable installation. As far as I can tell, people got absolutely mad that the anarchists didn't even take over the system, but that they held an asset at all. I'm talking daily bounty drops of 200-300 bounties. Hunting in the system next door and turning them in there, since that system's controlling faction was also present and they could push them up and keep the anarchists constantly snarled in a war for the no. 2 spot. Absolutely nuts. Notably, none of them appeared to be capable of actually fighting a war, it was just lots of passive BGS traffic.
Anyway, I picked out a few other systems and flipped them. One was permit-locked (and thus received no missions from neighbouring systems), another was in a complete backwater and I don't think anyone particularly noticed that I was doing it until the war kicked off, and while there was opposition they didn't seem to care enough to take it back afterwards. The third was over 10ly from the nearest populated system so it doesn't get any massacres sent its way. Now I'm back in the first one - I let the anarchists shed their installations to the factions that had given me trouble before, got them snarled in a war themselves, then leapfrogged them in influence while they were locked.

This is all in the bubble though, while Colonia tends to be a lot more hotly contested. There really aren't many "free" systems that nobody cares about.
 

Kloppage Time

K
Phisto Sobanii said:
Right? What gankers move their fleets 22,000 light years, flip Carcosa to the Nameless, keep it that way for a year, and all the while build up a community of kind, fun loving players?

If we're gankers we're the weirdest ones ever.
Click to expand...

First, that's a pretty high bar!

& second, "Black maleing services??....Inquire within?!"

WTH is going on out there???...& do you have any spare tickets?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom