Are factions that disable black markets overpowered now?

[Marra Morgan]

It's no longer possible to change details of an application once it has been submitted: "We will not accept any edit requests after your submission to the form below."

Does this apply to established PMFs?

Murdoc says Sovereign Justice Collective had theirs changed from Democracy to Dictatorship, which makes them immune to the negative effects of black markets. Hence, I agree with the OP that Dictatorships and other governments which shut down BM's are overpowered.

Should all player groups with Democracy, Cooperative etc governments follow SJC's example and switch to Dictatorships to even the playing field?

Or should Frontier consider Jmanis' and Walter2's suggestions that black markets should react more dynamically to State, rather than be set by govt type?

Personally, I favour the latter.

 

[_trent_]

I'm not entirely sure that Frontier need to change the ability of certain factions to disable black markets, because this ability has been in the game for a long time and it didn't become a noticeable problem until 3.0 came out.

We've been in our little part of the bubble for more than 20 months now, and it's only since 3.0 came out that we've found ourselves watching certain types of faction constantly gain/lose influence in a way that they didn't before. The determining factor from what we have seen is that a pattern has emerged where factions that have no BM are rising and ones with BMs are dropping.

Since we've never had to prop up local NPC democracies and cooperatives before, and we've been in the this part of space since 2.1, it suggests to me that something else within the 3.0 BGS that has been changed. It could be something as simple as FD have made Black Markets more effective at lowering influence, I don't even know for sure that the same trend is happening elsewhere.

I just really wanted to create a thread to see if others are noticing the same pattern within their local areas. I wouldn't like it to become personalised between players from different types of faction. We're all just playing the BGS that FD give us as best we can.

 

[Starwolfe]

Alot of the changes I am seeing appears to be stemming more from the Missions effecting destinations than from Black Markets I think.
Many factions around me are fluctuating now and not many have markets at all.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

I agree with that. Influence fluctuates more wildly now, as if the mission destinations are added on top. We had something like 5.5% movement in a multi-billion system the other day, when previously I had not seen it move more than 3.1-2 or so. I also see it as the reason for higher attrition during wars, as not only are mission effects cut off, so are destination effects.

 

[Starwolfe]

I agree with that. Influence fluctuates more wildly now, as if the mission destinations are added on top. We had something like 5.5% movement in a multi-billion system the other day, when previously I had not seen it move more than 3.1-2 or so. I also see it as the reason for higher attrition during wars, as not only are mission effects cut off, so are destination effects.

I noticed that with Passengers earlier, but have not done a conclusive test on it yet.

It does appear it calculates the max influence swing for missions done in the system then adds the max swing for missions done from outside. So you can get double the max basically by just doing both outgoing and incoming focused missions.