Anarchy Factions / Systems - Influence Loss Reports

[Riverside]

At it's core the issue seems to have come about as a result of the Odd C&P & mats farming. I'd look there for solutions rather than attempting to make more rule changes. Adding alternate ways to gather suit upgrade mats, making 'losing consciousness' and getting back to one's ship a bit less inconvenient maybe.

That said I quite like Fake Newts' civil unrest idea, there is some logic to it. It seems like the kind of rule that should always have applied rather than a band-aid.

 

[Fake Newts]

Having none of the benefits associated with security, yet being hit hardest by negative security effects does seem staggeringly unfair. For whatever reason it didn't occur to me this bluntly before... excuse me while I reel from my own miniature revelation. It's like paying a real mortgage for a fictional house.

 

[Jmanis]

Also some time ago someone asked the question "why do players want to support anarchies anyway", can't remember which thread it was in. This is honestly the Big Reason for lots of us; because they are different. That and removing law enforcement from a system is the single biggest change a faction can exert over the gameworld, I guess we are just vain.

As someone who doesn't support an Anarchy faction, I just want to say I would love to support Anarchies if it meant helping to topple my enemies.

I once tried to support an anarchy in a system where my faction wasn't present, in the hopes of getting a rich environment of missions targeting my enemies in systems I occupied.

It.... didn't go well. It's just far easier to provide support for my faction, and meta things a bit by deliberately failing missions for lawfuls. But enemy of my enemy stuff is really what would tickle my fancy.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Personally I'm still of the opinion that if you've gone into an anarchy system and blown up an innocent trader in a T-6 for no reason other than scavenging some materials, it would make sense if this was accompanied by notoriety. You have still killed an innocent, same as if you'd have blown up a clean ship in a lawful system. Notoriety is just a reflection of your murderous reputation after all.

I'd also agree with comments about mission rewards as well. A political assassination earns potentially less than a pirate assassination for example, but has more potential for something going wrong. The risk/ reward balance does need a look if anarchy factions are to be encouraged to at least stabilise.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Why isn't it something like:

• Anarchy - Target everyone, prioritise corporate targets
• Authoritarians - Target other Authoritarian, Social and Anarchy governments, prioritise targeting social, neutral to Corporate
• Social - Target Anarchy and Authoritarian, friendly to social and corporate
• Corporate - Neutral to all, target anarchy

While this makes sense on paper, wouldn't the actual result be even more dog piling on anarchies from random traffic/PMF activities because iirc most PMFs are corporate?

I'd also be cautious by making anarchy settlements more well defended, because I think FDev has said loot rarity is also tied to settlement difficulty somehow. If anarchies had better defenses without the extra loot that could probably be a slight deterrent to some players though.

 

[Jmanis]

While this makes sense on paper, wouldn't the actual result be even more dog piling on anarchies from random traffic/PMF activities because iirc most PMFs are corporate?

I'd re-emphasise my definition of Neutral here, that it's a mix (and would elaborate, a "proper" mix, not the current system that frequently results in runs).... and also drop a line for my wont of a "criminal" mission board that allows targeting of factions with negative effects through missions, as an antithesis to the current mission board.

But PMFs aren't the problem here. This sort of thing is. The old "get rich quick" scheme that 80% of the player base who genuinely do not care about the BGS go for. Or, as it is right now, the mat grind.

It would certainly be better than the current system; at the moment, factions simply do not normally target lawful factions. You're lucky to find at least four or five targeting lawful factions, but can easily find 40-50 (of a 100 mission board) targeting anarchy factions. Using my rules above, and assuming you're looking at a mission board with nothing but corporate entities, you should end up with significantly more missions targeting Anarchy. Again, assuming you've got 15-20 systems in range of the system you look at a mission board for, that gives (given a typical spread for factions):
80-100 Lawful Faction targets
15-20 Anarchy Faction targets

Spitballing, that's ~20% chance a mission will target anarchy, and a ~80% chance targeting a lawful, and if it targets a lawful, it's a 50% chance it's a negative effect. So you'll end up with 20% of missions having negative effects against anarchy, 40% chance of it being negative against lawful, 40% chance supporting a lawful. This is in stark contrast to the current system which results in about 40% missions hurting anarchy, about 5% missions hurting lawful, and the other 55% helping lawfuls. But hell, let's lean into this and make corporates neutral to anarchy too, sure!

But again, a criminal mission board, which separates lawful activities (and as it stands, anarchies do offer plenty of lawful missions) from unlawful, and allows you to specifically target a faction with unlawful effects (but loses control of who gains the positive effect). Combine it with some of the other suggestions such as more lucrative results for targeting lawful factions and higher risks, and you're halfway home to fixing things.

The current problems really are:

• The only way to overthrow another lawful faction is by supporting yours. This is oftentimes through running missions, which as a general rule support your faction, and hurt anarchies.... Elite: Best Friends
• All the best cash grind guides target anarchies in their actions, because they're the easiest to stack. It's impossible to stack, say, massacres, against a lawful faction easily, and it's not helped that those missions are kinda broken (or at least, very frustrating)

Simply put, lawful factions just don't target each other as a matter of course at the moment. The mechanic needs to be switched such that if you want to hurt a faction, the best way is to actually hurt that faction, not help someone else kill pirates.

 

[Ruurka]

@Jmanis Regarding criminal mission board (Or criminal board), in one of my suggestion topic (here, there's also nice lecture) I also was mentioned about it. Additionally, in criminal board, source and return missions can only accept stolen goods (or in normal mission board as an optional objective for anarchy factions)

The problem of massacre missions for anarchies is of course less anarchy factions compared to lawful factions, but also too sharp drop reputation (If you have for example massacre civilian against federal faction, then reputation drop is also additionally affected by your current reputation with overall federation, so they can even more sharply drop reputation against that faction). And of course is not additionally rewarded with bounty vouchers like in massacre pirates.

Oh, remember that anarchies is also unpredicted. If one of other anarchies have for example civil unrest or expansion state, other anarchies also see it by spawning properly delivery missions to that faction affected by properly states (same is in lawful factions).

 

[aclout]

It's happening again. There has been a very noticeable uptick in settlement raiding forcing wars to break out again in anarchy space.

Once again, Frontier's failure to bring anything or do anything of substance on this issue speaks volumes after the amount of time elapsed - you have had almost five months where this issue was first noted and the response is still inadequate.

The cause is clear, even a temporary solution to protect anarchy PF's in required NOW to head off the next wave of slaughter and damage to the game and Frontiers rep - customer and even commercial - to do nothing is a dumb option.

But given past performance, future action is not expected until it is too little, too late.

I mean, they cant even make black markets work properly for anarchies. What hope have we got here?

 

[Fake Newts]

Can confirm, things are ramping up again at an alarming rate (not that they ever really settled down). Possibly some players are returning after initially bouncing off Odyssey's performance problems, combined with the available anarchy systems and settlements having shrunk dramatically - there are fewer places for them to congregate so the effect is amplified in the systems that remain.

We're constantly putting out fires and if the current trend continues we'll be back to mid-June levels of burn. This problem is not solved and we are starting to lose hope that any respite is coming.

Edit: we ask for dates so that we can isolate and examine specific events. We understand that some issues are "always on" but please give specific instances where possible.

Unfortunately the answer remains basically "any system where an Anarchy owns ground assets" the negative influence and security damage ramps up in tandem with traffic count and the traffic moves through systems like locusts leaving civil unrest and war behind. The systemic bias against anarchies, specifically the toxicity of settlements for our government type still really, really needs attention.

We stop posting about it from time to time because frankly it's exhausting, but we are still dealing with this non-stop every time we log in.

Any information or hope you can offer us would be greatly appreciated. We've been in 60 wars since May 24th and they keep coming, this represents ~2 years worth of war in a 5 month period.

 

[Ruurka]

Can confirm, things are ramping up again at an alarming rate (not that they ever really settled down). Possibly some players are returning after initially bouncing off Odyssey's performance problems, combined with the available anarchy systems and settlements having shrunk dramatically - there are fewer places for them to congregate so the effect is amplified in the systems that remain.

We're constantly putting out fires and if the current trend continues we'll be back to mid-June levels of burn. This problem is not solved and we are starting to lose hope that any respite is coming.


Unfortunately the answer remains basically "any system where an Anarchy owns ground assets" the negative influence and security damage ramps up in tandem with traffic count and the traffic moves through systems like locusts leaving civil unrest and war behind. The systemic bias against anarchies, specifically the toxicity of settlements for our government type still really, really needs attention.

We stop posting about it from time to time because frankly it's exhausting, but we are still dealing with this non-stop every time we log in.

Any information or hope you can offer us would be greatly appreciated. We've been in 60 wars since May 24th and they keep coming, this represents ~2 years worth of war in a 5 month period.

Yeah. FDev should give us any changes (or even upgrades), to make us having breathing room. Since bad entering Odyssey add-on (still remembering that sharp security down), I was have at least 5 to 8 civil unrests. The problem for us is of course Odyssey settlements (which still is a problem when Scree showed in a example of permit locked system), but also some missions, which cause problem with economy state even with doing a positive trade. Changes for them (for anarchies) are still needed, that's for sure.

Btw. about security dropping, did you tried positive trade weapons? I also was had same problem with security state, but when with bounties I also added weapons, then security started raising.

 

[Fake Newts]

Btw. about security dropping, did you tried positive trade weapons?

Literally every day for the past 5 months, yeah. Once you're out you slide right back in again.

 

[Cmdr Aos_Si]

My suggestions, to be shot down in flames:

1. Make negative actions, crimes, murder etc against non anarchy factions primarily benefit anarchy factions. eg 50% of the influence from crimes agains non anarchy factions goes to anarchy factions, the rest is shared out with the remaining non anarchy factions.
2. Negatives actions, crimes, murder etc against anarchy factions have reduced negative influence agaust that faction, eg 50% of the negative influence that a non anarchy would suffer
3. Make notoriety harder to get and to clear quicker, effectively reduce notoriety by 50%

I also think the community should consider how we can support anarchy factions. So maybe do some missions for them to counterbalance the harm we inflict on them. The way Odyssey is set up now the anarchy factions are vital for new blood coming into the game.

 

[Screemonster]

Any kind of "make X action have less effect against anarchies" is a band-aid at best.
The problem isn't that killing everyone at a settlement and taking everything that isn't nailed down has a negative effect.
The problem is that players are heavily incentivised to do those things to specifically anarchies, and heavily disincentivised from doing it to anyone else.

 

[aclout]

Well we can procrastinate like has been happening the past few months, or we can actually do something before there wont be an anarchy faction issue because there will be scant anarchy factions left. A band-aid is an improvement on oblivion.

Time has already out for some factions who are already gone. The rest are trying to delay the inevitable, but when you are copping constant 6 to 8%+ swings in influence without respite, you sorta run outta time real quick.

So do something. Stop wasting time. The body of evidence is clear where the issue is.

But here is a simple idea: In anarchy systems, due to the cut and thrust of life where population matters and the large survive, settlements spawn influence per turn trying to attract others for safety and local security. This would help offset the raids.

A massive increase in the difficulty of settlements as well would not go astray. Anarchies are brutal hard places, so they naturally have far more defenders, at a higher skill, with better weapons. If you survive a settlement raid in an anarchy system, it should feel you escaped within an inch of your life. it should be the god tier of foot combat.

 

[GroG79]

Number of inhabited anarchies seems to have stabilized to around 480

 

[Cmdr Aos_Si]

Any kind of "make X action have less effect against anarchies" is a band-aid at best.
The problem isn't that killing everyone at a settlement and taking everything that isn't nailed down has a negative effect.
The problem is that players are heavily incentivised to do those things to specifically anarchies, and heavily disincentivised from doing it to anyone else.

I think you need to look at the three suggestions in combination rather than any one in isolation. The idea is that you make the effect on anarchies less severe and the consequences, for the Cmmdr, of scavenging at non anarchies also less severe. So Cmdrs are more likely to scavenge at non anarchy settlements than they currently are and when they do so the anarchy faction in the system get the lions share of the benefit. Without knowing the coding implications, it seems that such changes could be implimented without thowing out the baby with the bathwater so-to-speak.

 

[aclout]

Number of inhabited anarchies seems to have stabilized to around 480

We've noticed an uptick in large influence loses in anarchy systems. It's already started at least two wars in Diamond Frog space for example, and there have been several near misses it seems they have averted or at least delayed a conflict.

As players come back into the game and do Odyssey content, they will head straight to anarchy space. When a commander targets an anarchy faction to farm they do tremendous damage, again as much as 8% loss in a single tick has been observed in the last week alone (Frog) - and they settle in tick after tick, next moment in three days a 23% loss has been observed.

That is not sustainable.

 

[Ruurka]

They should something to do, to prevent that influence loss and state loss (to anarchies of course). Those players, who don't have Odyssey add on, have more problems, since they don't have many ways to prevent dropping economy or influence. One update should definitely be dedicated to anarchies.

I think that Fdev definitely wants to kill us. And I'm afraid that our revolt (in game) sooner or later will be unavoidable, if nothing changes our situation.

 

[Riverside]

I agree with Screemonster, it seems to me the place to make changes is to the on-foot notoriety & general hassle of accruing bounties on foot in lawful settlements.

I'm back in the bubble for at least the next week or so, if anyone's looking for help with (space) CZs by all means message me & I'll do what I can to help any lawless faction.

 

[GroG79]

Its funny. Players want to influence the galaxy.. They do by an masse raiding anarchies and thus tanking them.
Now.. If you keep chopping down trees; the forest will disappear over time.


But no.. This is suddenly all Fdevs fault. No one looking at themselves? Or at the get xx fast tutorials?