About that Pi Mensae system permit....

[FoxTwo]

I've always understood (in the past) that if a system is locked by a permit, you go be friendly with the controlling faction of that system to gain access. Have always worked that way in the past before....

So, lately I stumbled across this system pretty near to Shinrarta, called Pi Mensae. Seeing it locked, I looked for who I might need to get friendly with:

So ok Controlling Faction says "Dukes of Pi Mensae", no problem... then later on, by accident, I was at a station which had one of the minor factions in that locked system, and THEY were the one offering the permit...

I still proceeded to run missions for the Dukes, but everywhere I go that has a Dukes presence, none of the missions offered ever showed me a system permit one. The Brotherhood however, shows a permit mission (yeah even though I'm not at the required rep with them yet).

So, this a bug, or working as intended? Has to be a bug, right?

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I would guess that the Pi Mensae Brotherhood were the original owners of the Pi Mensae system, which is why they control the permit, but they lost influence in the BGS and are no longer in control. Yet they still control the permit.

Look at Ross 128. Because of player manipulation of the BGS, it is now an Alliance system which requires a Federal Navy permit to enter...I think the permits are hard-coded, or at least not dynamic.

 

[Factabulous]

As intended - the controlling faction is not necessarily the permit-wielding one. At least you found the faction that's giving it out - I've never seen a faction mission before I got allied with the faction

Edit: That's really interesting, was going to look for some of the 'broken' permits, but if the permit givers are so obvious I don't know how they've been missed - guess they're really broken.

Edit: Reference: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/122593-Updated-Permit-List - in the first yellow block of text

 

[FoxTwo]

Huh... I still think it should be a bug. Otherwise, how would a player who does not frequent the forums know? In all other locked-system situations, it's always been (so far) the controlling faction giving the permits out. This is the first time it's been NOT this way for me.

If it was originally the Brotherhood that controlled Pi Mensae, and thus had the system permits to give out, when the BGS kicked them out to let the Dukes take over, then the system permit should have been "transferred" along with the change in power... IMHO anyway.

 

[redVENGEANCE]

Lucky I got the permit when I did. This is my "Home" system. Nice pretty station to

 

[Factabulous]

Huh... I still think it should be a bug. Otherwise, how would a player who does not frequent the forums know? In all other locked-system situations, it's always been (so far) the controlling faction giving the permits out. This is the first time it's been NOT this way for me.

If it was originally the Brotherhood that controlled Pi Mensae, and thus had the system permits to give out, when the BGS kicked them out to let the Dukes take over, then the system permit should have been "transferred" along with the change in power... IMHO anyway.

You are free to raise a ticket "Universe does not bend to my will bwahahaha!" or somesuch - Well, I suppose you can just ask for the game to change.

Mention the permits where we can't find the permit giver at all at the same time please - thanks!

 

[FoxTwo]

You are free to raise a ticket "Universe does not bend to my will bwahahaha!" or somesuch - Well, I suppose you can just ask for the game to change.

Mention the permits where we can't find the permit giver at all at the same time please - thanks!

This is not a "bend the game to my whim" thing. It's just not "logical". A pattern had been established. Now the pattern has been broken.

You are of course free to accept whatever is in the game and call it "working as intended". Until I see an FD Dev saying so, I do not think it's "working as intended".

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Very few permit factions still control the systems that they manage the permits for.

Personally, I think this is a bit silly. If you can control who has access to your system like this, you should be able to stay in charge of your system. Player factions and even powerpants are able to sneak into permit systems, both of which I think shouldn't be possible.

 

[Sapyx]

In my head-canon, that faction paid trillions of credits to obtain the permit from Universal Cartographics. The right to issue the permit does not change ownership just because the star system changes ownership - it belongs to the faction, not the system.

 

[QA-Mitch]

Hey Cmdrs,

Sorry for the confusion.

The system permit is not related to the controlling faction of a system. This mechanic is working as intended.

 

[Factabulous]

I guess QA are clearing out their bug repo ready for 2.4

 

[FoxTwo]

Hey Cmdrs,

Sorry for the confusion.

The system permit is not related to the controlling faction of a system. This mechanic is working as intended.

So how does one find out who to be friendly with to get a system permit, WITHOUT resorting to 3rd party websites and forums? Assume the person doesn't even know such things exist... all he knows is what's in the game (aka, my pilot).

 

[Factabulous]

1) Find a permit locked system - what is it called?
2) Look in nearby systems - is there a faction with a name containing the system name from (1)
3) Get allied with faction (2)
4) If that does not work return to (2) - find another faction to get allied with
5) Done (or faction is broken)

No external tools, pretty straight forward really. You should try doing things in-game, rather fun. That's what we're doing to try and find the broken permits.

(Of course it will take longer doing things completely manually as there is more chance of trying to get allied to the wrong faction, but you did that after using the forum already - didn't you )

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

So how does one find out who to be friendly with to get a system permit, WITHOUT resorting to 3rd party websites and forums? Assume the person doesn't even know such things exist... all he knows is what's in the game (aka, my pilot).

What, using the community is breaking your "immersion"?

as Factabulous says, you can go through all the same steps yourself, or talk to other players. All the effort has been done in the game. Your CMDR will go to bars, etc. or have access to communication tools.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

The system permit is not related to the controlling faction of a system. This mechanic is working as intended.

It is. Though I think a permit system should be far harder for factions (both player and NPC) to expand into. once they are there, fine, it's BGS mechanics for all.

There are still some permit systems that are completely broken though. Mingfu and 4 Sextantis are impossible to get the permit, as the permit giving factions don't exist outside the systems. They will never expand out, as players can't get there.
Again fine, if these systems are supposed to be perma-locked, for reasons.

 

[Aashenfox]

Hey Cmdrs,

Sorry for the confusion.

The system permit is not related to the controlling faction of a system. This mechanic is working as intended.

Please could you explain the intended method of finding out which faction is the permit giver? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

 

[Factabulous]

Please could you explain the intended method of finding out which faction is the permit giver? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

Sounds like you expect the game to point you to everything ... or are you willing to work at it? Most aspects of this game are opaque / under-explained (hence all the out-of-game explanations) - making us work out the permits is just another one. And as I posted earlier they are actually easier to work out in-game than many things (well, where they are not broken, but that is a different issue!)

Edit: Limoncello makes a good point
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[Limoncello Lizard]

Please could you explain the intended method of finding out which faction is the permit giver? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

Permit giving factions often have a permit mission in the unavailable mission list. These actually generate far more reliably when you can't do them than after you have earned the reputation for the permit. I see it as another of the sadistic game elements that Devs have added for giggles.

 

[Aashenfox]

Sounds like you expect the game to point you to everything ... or are you willing to work at it? Most aspects of this game are opaque / under-explained (hence all the out-of-game explanations) - making us work out the permits is just another one. And as I posted earlier they are actually easier to work out in-game than many things (well, where they are not broken, but that is a different issue!)

Oh, handwavium, why didn't you say? I can use Inara as good as the next guy, but really, I'm not being deliberately facetious, I'm curious if there is an in-game method, short of making a note of all the factions in the system, then looking one by one in nearby systems to see where the factions also exist, go there, check their missions board for unavailable missions, hope that I was lucky enough to go at a time the permit mission spawned (it does often, but not 'always'), I honestly wondered if I was missing something. Wouldn't be the first time. Took me a year to realize the allegiance filter was a dropdown on the gal map. As you can imagine, on that day, there was much rejoicing.

Permit giving factions often have a permit mission in the unavailable mission list. These actually generate far more reliably when you can't do them than after you have earned the reputation for the permit. I see it as another of the sadistic game elements that Devs have added for giggles.

Quite.

 

[lysan]

So how does one find out who to be friendly with to get a system permit, WITHOUT resorting to 3rd party websites and forums? Assume the person doesn't even know such things exist... all he knows is what's in the game (aka, my pilot).

Well first you need to unlock the engineer and then do some material collection...

Spoiler

Spoiler

Sorry could not resist.