News Background Simulation - Update (01/03)

[Aasir Omondi]

I've discussed this point with the leaders of my PP group who have a lot more experience with system manipulation than me and according to them you are poking on outdated information (as a lot of people tend to do in this forum by just repeating what others have said somewhere some time ago). Should be fixed by now. Otherwise, prove me wrong.

This is fairly common because some assume pre-3.3 rules are all still place. This is simply not true. Granted the BGS wasn't rebuilt from the ground up, all the new aspects alter the environment in such a way that classic mechanics are no longer viable on their own. Combat Zones are indeed the best way to win war (mileage may vary because bugs). Since 3.3 dropped, my faction has won every single war by winning CZs and turning in bonds, yet CZ victories are surely most important. I have tested this (accidentally) by soloing CZs for days in a war (my PMF is tiny) and not turning in bonds. Every . . . single . . . time, winning battles meant winning days. Supericially, the mechanics seem pretty straight forward: if I fight in 4 CZs and win 3, my PMF wins the day (assuming no player opposition) because my faction had more wins than NPC faction.

I think it's incredibly important given the new Conflict Zones and the knowledge of people being able to "game" the submission of combat bonds to provide some explicit clarity around the following:
- Does resolving a conflict zone give a proportionate boost to winning the war? That quote suggests actually winning the conflict zone, until recently, had no effect. Resolving a CZ should be substantially more effective than handing in bonds.

Correct. And from my experience before the very first patch following 3.3, CZs have been the primary means to win the day, assuming individual battles are won. Will's post also states that CZs are the "obvious" way to win, which basically means they are the surest and best way.

- Do missions count for winning the war? Historically, they have not, but they really should. This also creates the argument that Combat Bonds should have *no* effect for winning a war (rather, winning conflict zones and doing missions should)

Historically they have not but this update fixes that as long as they are combat missions. My PMF actually started war today with the update and the mission board is populated with "war effort" missions in the conflict system, something we haven't encountered before. Maybe that's coincidence or the update included more obvious missions. /me shrugs

I am very new to this player faction play and before the changes today we a small group of players are trying to understand this this is our 3rd war.

The last war we did on day 1 we did very little CZ due to time zones and etc and one that day the other 4 days we hit CZ hard as much as we could handed in our bond and such only to loose the 4 days in a row. S the last 3 days of the war we did zero combat and won each day ( sounds strange to us and i hope you).

On all the CZ we did we won each time so how come the side that lost 20 CZ win on the day again don't make sense to me

The new war which started on thursday this week and we focused on just trade till the ticker of today and you hit us with NEW UPDATE. We lost so we have now done some combat and hope to be doing more before the ticker kicks in on the next day to find out how well we done.

Why not have a 2 bars on the screen where we can all see that days progress of who is winning that days war at least for me i would be able to Visualized my progress on that days war we have right now and may be in the future of Elite.

Because right now players say do less combat and trade to win and other say do more combat and win as for the bonds systems my self i would like to gone as the pay on them is not much if we have to keep handing them in after every fight we do take us away from the long fights we could be having.

I think that a more Visualized scale for that days ticker should be more in plain sight easy to read at least for me it way better to under stand than having to read forum posts saying this and that to win as for me right now their is no Clear to win u need to do this and do loose you need to do this.

So why not have the Visualized bars for us to easily understand.

Sorry if it feels i not read the post by Wil i just think its all over too complicated than it should be.

Sorry if doesn't make sense but i suffer from dyslexia to reading is not my strong point hence why i just like to to be made most simplified for players like my self

There is a lot to unpack here and some information you may not realize to look for. So I'll just throw some bullet answers.

• There may have been bonuses handed out per previous rules that are now gone.
• Have you checked traffic reports? This will tell you if others (players) are potentially contributing to the conflict effort, and maybe against your faction.
• If you are trading in the system in which you are at war, it does NOTHING. All factions engaged in conflict have their influence locked and only war efforts aid in the conflict. If you were trading and not fighting, that could explain your loss for Thursday.
• Trading is not and was not a viable contribution to war (even if delivering military commodities makes sense). You may be confusing a conflict with a Community Goal. Community Goals can have CZs and offer trade options.
• Since days won are calculated upon the server tick, a real-time bar would be useless. Instead, you already have information at your disposal via local news boards. When docked at a station within a conflict system, scroll through the factions in the middle-bottom and look at the factions engaged in war (or elections). Within there you will find how many days won/lost and assets at risk.

Hope this helps.

I'm sure someone might correct me, but keep in mind I am only using post-3.3 BGS experience. A very intelligent and dilligent group is gearing up to start pulling real data and updating the math (looking at you, Jane Turner), and I'm looking forward to their findings. Hopefully we'll have more detailed information soon.

 

[Camisade]

[*]To reduce the number of Conflicts in the galaxy and to make them more meaningful, Conflicts will now only be triggered during invasions or when one or both factions control an asset that's at risk by that Conflict.[/list]

So this means that after entering a system (or if we've worked to push a faction down to the bottom of the INF hierarchy and in so doing stripped all their assets), there are FEWER roadblocks than before in climbing from the bottom and potentially (re)gaining control of a system. Because the faction doing the climbing may now ONLY have to fight factions that control assets, rather than having to fight every faction on the way up.

Not sure if this is a good thing. After having worked our butts off for months prior to these changes, pushing a faction down into the muck, they now only have to work half as hard to climb back to the top and threaten retaking control of a system (and yes, I consider wars "work" now that we have to fight (almost) all seven days (given that such things as double and possibly even triple wins are possible). :-/

 

[Night Parrot]

Yes! This is great news! Go the BGS!
Now, if we could possibly start phasing out Power Play that’ll be awesome!

 

[Jmanis]

Not sure where you got this opinion from or how old the information your statement is based on actually still is. Some people from my PP group who have a deep knowledge and long experience with reverse engineering, didn't even bother to hand in combat bonds anymore and yet are effectively winning wars by solving combat zones.

I do agree though that an official word from the devs about the issue would go a long way.

... and not to say CZs are now bug free - far from it! I've ran into a few rare bugs or inconsistencies just recently, though very hard to report as it's almost impossible to reproduce them.

So, if you re-read my post, you'll note I said it needs to give a proportionate boost. Although again, I'm not convinced the influence effect is being counted, based on the fact the reputation effect *does not* occur. That second bit about the reputation effects is most definitely true, and I'm currently participating in a war where I've had multiple CZ resolutions, and I'm still allied with no negative impact to reputation against the enemy.

But assuming CZs do count, again, emphasis on proportionately. If a combat bond transaction counts for 1 point, what's a Low-CZ count for? 2 points? That's not adequate... I can more quickly do combat bond submissions than resolve a CZ with that comparison. Assuming a combat bond transaction is the lowest possible influencer and it's worth 1 "point"... a Low CZ should be worth at least 5. And based on my clearance rate for CZs, Medium should be 10 points and high is 20. It is next to impossible to verify that, and I highly doubt, given the various issues to-date with CZs, that anyone would have done it because it would either take at least a month of consistent effort. But based on my recent experiences with opposition in conflict, I'd suggest the relative score of CZs is much lower. We need validation of that.

On that note, there's numerous people saying that Missions now count. If that's 100% true, then FD have now introduced a bug. Missions were made to not count explicitly because massacre missions double-dipped influence effects with bonds. This is just further justification for removing any effects of submitting bonds. But while Bonds are still effective, what even is their effect? Is it still transactional? Or has it been fixed so that 1m in bonds is 10 times more effective than 100k in bonds. And in that case, again, how's it compare to CZ resolutions?

This is fairly common because some assume pre-3.3 rules are all still place. This is simply not true. Granted the BGS wasn't rebuilt from the ground up, all the new aspects alter the environment in such a way that classic mechanics are no longer viable on their own. Combat Zones are indeed the best way to win war (mileage may vary because bugs). Since 3.3 dropped, my faction has won every single war by winning CZs and turning in bonds, yet CZ victories are surely most important. I have tested this (accidentally) by soloing CZs for days in a war (my PMF is tiny) and not turning in bonds. Every . . . single . . . time, winning battles meant winning days. Supericially, the mechanics seem pretty straight forward: if I fight in 4 CZs and win 3, my PMF wins the day (assuming no player opposition) because my faction had more wins than NPC faction.

I don't doubt your observations, but challenge that your assessment is a "smoking gun". It is *impossible* to tell if there is outside influence affecting your outcomes, as you can fight a war and stay invisible to daily traffic reports if you never leave the system. But again, there is no information about the efficacy of clearing CZs and their proportional impact on bonds, and I have numerous examples where I've overcome the effects of, say, a low CZ, with a small handful of bond submissions for the other side.

For clarity. I'm not saying CZs don't count, just suggesting that CZs don't count enough... because hitting on your next comment:

Will's post also states that CZs are the "obvious" way to win, which basically means they are the surest and best way.

It's not the first time FD would've said certain things are meant to have an effect, and haven't.... so says years of flavour text for war missions saying it'll help, when they don't.

Historically they have not but this update fixes that as long as they are combat missions. My PMF actually started war today with the update and the mission board is populated with "war effort" missions in the conflict system, something we haven't encountered before. Maybe that's coincidence or the update included more obvious missions. /me shrugs

It's highly likely your PMF was suffering from this bug, which was present from 2017 til late last year: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/410124-Still-no-War-theme-missions-when-in-a-War-state

War-themed missions have been in the game for a long time, and have never had an effect.

Thing is, everything you've said is, for sure, how the game *should* work. But given the lengthy history of things simply not working that way, and frankly, how off-mark some of the big groups were with their bugreporting, compared to Will's assessment here, I take a grain of salt with everything people observe (even my own observations).

For any confidence, FD *must* confirm what specific activities will have an effect, and which won't, for the given states (just like the whole, incorrect, "selling biowaste on the commodities market causes outbreak" claims). Just that as a minimum would work, because statements like this:

(subject to the usual rules of combat actions affecting War and Civil War and non-combat actions affecting Elections).

While sounding all well and good, fall apart when you realise "Missions" count as non-combat, so an Assassination or Massacre mission works for Elections, but not for War.

 

[BL1P]

Ive said it many times, the devs need to tell us what is doing what with the BGS. Or what its supposed to do anyway.
A dev also needs to go through all the flavour text ingame related to the BGS and fix it.

Once players know for sure what is supposed to happen we can assist much more in reports.
Best place for this information is in the game in the codex. With the ability for the devs to update this easily.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

THANK YOU !!!

And no more conflicts without assets is a great feature.

Depends on which side of the equation you'll stand entirely good Sir.

I am very concerned that this change will heavily penalize groups that have worked to earn as many assets as possible — a challenging and, perhaps until now, a strategically valuable objective. Settlements and installations will be factors, but it is my hope that we do not find that the net result of this change is to allow factions at the bottom end of a system to move directly for control with no roadblocks.

As has already been discussed on the BGS forum, we need better tools to help us plan around these changes. Hunting through planetary maps to find the owner of settlements is tedious. There's got to be a better way.

Being in support of a PMF that always has been trying to dominate all landable assets in a System from Day 1 I can positively say that it never was something easy to do and to maintain. But that's where the challenge part comes in.

With the 3.0+ BGS, owning all useful assets within a System is no longer a problem, for now each place would need to be put into a Lockdown separately (and the effect of Murder, even if recently fixed, has been a far cry from how devastating it once was).

So the only real problem if one wants to call that is if the possible opposition finally goes into supporting one MF that holds no assets and makes sure any other in the System gets into conflicts with each other first. Then it is quite well possible to skip everyone inside and go straight for the controlling one.

Assuming nobody watches the System and just lets this happen.

Again, that is the negative aspect of it all. The positive being the exact same thing: get MF into conflict with each other who own Settlements or higher, push your desired (P)MF to move up and equalise with the controlling one, make sure to win. That is assuming you only want to go for System control and nothing else. If you want to be thorough though you will be needing to fight at least 13 conflicts (13 being the max number of landable assets currently available in a System).

As for checking who owns what Settlement wise, I acknowledge that checking this way is a huge disadvantage to groups who own / need to maintain a large number of Systems. Which doesn't help Powerplay at all because they simply have to do that, contrary to a small / medium sized BGS with only a few Systems to worry about.

 

[Camisade]

And, as an additional side effect to all this BGS tweaking, not only does this make Outbreak HGE's virtually impossible to find, now War-related HGEs will become more scarce, too? GREAT!

This is all just one long, drawn-out ploy to make HGE hunting so painful we'll be HAPPY to pay for them via micro-transactions, right? Well, congratz! We're there now, so quit stalling and get on with it already!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

(and yes, I consider wars "work" now that we have to fight (almost) all seven days (given that such things as double and possibly even triple wins are possible).

Fortunately:

Winning Conflicts

• We've stopped awarding bonus days won if one side beat the other by a huge margin (designed to allow a faction to force a draw by heroic efforts if it was losing 4-0),
• Conflicts will now end earlier if there aren't enough days of the Conflict remaining for the losing faction to at least achieve a draw.
• This should make Conflict results less confusing and further reduce the number of Conflicts going on around the galaxy at any point in time.

...you won't have to deal with that any more. Double wins aren't possible and conflicts can be truncated if you get a big enough lead.

 

[CaptainKirby]

The Outbreak state no longer breaks War and Civil War scoring (a fix we introduced two weeks ago).

Good one, thanks.

To reduce the number of Conflicts in the galaxy and to make them more meaningful, Conflicts will now only be triggered during invasions or when one or both factions control an asset that's at risk by that Conflict.

I'm not sure about this change. It certainly helps to reduce the overall number of Conflicts, but as a result it will lead to even MORE conflicts for the factions that actually own assets. This will be an issue especially for factions present in multiple systems, because all those asset-less factions are going to hunt the asset factions down now and there's not much you can do about it except for continuous work in every system to push your faction out of reach - which might lead to unplanned expansions if you push a little bit too far, potentially raising the workload needed to stay out of conflict.

Factions with assets will trigger conflict after conflict after conflict.

I'm not sure how to tackle this issue, but I assume some kind of well-balanced, smart cooldown state after a conflict would do a much better job to reduce the number of conflicts. I'm thinking of something like this: If the attacking faction (the one that had lower influence before the conflict was triggered) loses the conflict, it cannot trigger a new conflict (with the winning faction) for, say, 10 days or so. I know this makes the system more complicated, but I don't think there's an easy answer to this.

 

[Camisade]

Fortunately:

...you won't have to deal with that any more. Double wins aren't possible and conflicts can be truncated if you get a big enough lead.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I obviously didn't read the OP thoroughly enough! That is indeed good news. (I much prefer the sprints to the marathons!)

 

[Nightstorm]

This all sounds good! As long as it hasn't made forcing a retreat even harder.

They changes look very good, but the proof will be in the pudding. Shame I can't try them out though as I am some distance from the bubble.

I'm sure the Lugh Freedom Fighters will be still trying them out when you return!

 

[Maeyat]

Wait&See(c) mode enabled.

 

[FrogsFriend]

"(subject to the usual rules of combat actions affecting War and Civil War and non-combat actions affecting Elections). "
While sounding all well and good, fall apart when you realise "Missions" count as non-combat, so an Assassination or Massacre mission works for Elections, but not for War.

I've tested this a few weeks back and have won days in conflicts by only doing war-themed missions.

[tested across multiple conflicts between low-ranked factions, where there was no player input for at least 2-3 days (zero days dominated by either side and a Draw) and then 2-3 missions completed in one day with no CZs, Bonds, Bounties, etc. used]

 

[Camisade]

One thing this new change flips completely onto its ear is that a previous strategy of championing a single faction and, through a succession of hard fought wars and other BGS work, pushing one or two other factions down to the bottom of a system's INF rank. That's been the strategy for forcing retreat, right? In so doing, with a LOT of hard work, people fought numerous wars for their favored faction(s), often ending up with all of a system's assets under a single ownership.

With this new change, it seems like an invader (or a bottom-ranked faction) can climb in INF all the way up to challenge the controlling faction without any barriers. Then, isn't the first war for the control of the most valuable asset?

So an invader can come into a system, fight ONE war, and potentially end up in control of the most valuable asset AND control of the system.

Do I have this wrong? Or should the change also have included a change that says that the faction that has risen in INF to challenge any of the system's asset owners must fight the war for the LEAST valuable asset?

 

[Jmanis]

One thing this new change flips completely onto its ear is that a previous strategy of championing a single faction and, through a succession of hard fought wars and other BGS work, pushing one or two other factions down to the bottom of a system's INF rank. That's been the strategy for forcing retreat, right? In so doing, with a LOT of hard work, people fought numerous wars for their favored faction(s), often ending up with all of a system's assets under a single ownership.

With this new change, it seems like an invader (or a bottom-ranked faction) can climb in INF all the way up to challenge the controlling faction without any barriers. Then, isn't the first war for the control of the most valuable asset?

So an invader can come into a system, fight ONE war, and potentially end up in control of the most valuable asset AND control of the system.

Do I have this wrong? Or should the change also have included a change that says that the faction that has risen in INF to challenge any of the system's asset owners must fight the war for the LEAST valuable asset?

I kinda see where you're going, but the situation is no different to the current mechanics (or the old ones) where, if you go to war with a faction with all assets, you'll win the most valuable (being the control station). That's no different. The difference now is that yes, you won't enter a bunch of intermediate wars where no sides hold assets along the way. I can see where this might appear problematic, but (especially if you were trying to expand), I feel it was a much worse situation having 2-4 factions locking up influence in a chain of pointless wars because they're all intertwined in terms of influence levels, leaving the lead faction unable to gain (or lose) any assets.

That said, the scenario of going to a single conflict with the faction owning all assets and winning control of the system has always been a point of contention. I don't think these mechanics change or introduce any problems that haven't already existed previously.

On your description of getting a faction with all assets to retreat and handing over all assets to the system controller... on consideration of the BGS as a "strategy game" I've always found that mechanic to be somewhat perverse and broken. Putting a faction down to >2.5% when they hold assets should, imo, actually trigger a conflict for control of that asset (like a reverse coup war), and the faction's retreat becomes a staged departure rather than an instantaneous handover of (potentially) 90% of a systems holdings to a faction who may not necessarily be the most dominant. Whether it triggers a war with the dominant faction or a random faction is debatable... but my preference would be a random faction. But I've never cared too much as, from my other posts, I don't really see the BGS primarily as that strategy game, rather just a "background sim"... and in that context the retreat/assets mechanic is at least "a decision" to answer a question.

Realistically, there's a greater rework of the whole conflict mechanics required for anyone who cares about the "strategy side" of the BGS. Just some spitball ideas
- As discussed, a faction going into a potential retreat state should actually go into a conflict for control of their asset (and as a safeguard from abuse, the triggering faction cannot 'attack' assets through such wars, only 'defend', to use the current terminology)
- Equalization conflicts (where the two faction influences equalize) should fight for the *least* valuable asset. Coup wars (<70ish% influence) should be for the most valuable.
- Another mechanic should exist (don't know what this needs to look like) in order for the controlling faction to "reach down" and trigger a conflict for other held assets... maybe something like the old investment state mechanics but focused on coup wars, and with an influence trigger higher than expansion.

So, yeah... I kinda see where you're going, but the conflict system is kinda broken anyway, so your suggested change to make wars be for the least valuable asset would, imo, just exacerbate extant issues.

 

[Kaocraft]

"Winning Conflict Zone objectives is the most obvious way to help win a war." - Does this imply CZ wins will have more of an effect than combat bonds currently do?

This is the thing I want a definitive answer from Frontier about. Personally I think that in order for CZ objectives to be worthwhile at all, they have to massively outclass all other methods of moving the needle during wartime. It's comparatively incredibly easy to do quick hit and run sorties to rack up lots of Combat Bond transactions, which is what everyone was doing before 3.3 and it would be such a shame if this remained the most effective method now that the (much cooler!) CZ objectives exist.

 

[aRJay]

This is the thing I want a definitive answer from Frontier about. Personally I think that in order for CZ objectives to be worthwhile at all, they have to massively outclass all other methods of moving the needle during wartime. It's comparatively incredibly easy to do quick hit and run sorties to rack up lots of Combat Bond transactions, which is what everyone was doing before 3.3 and it would be such a shame if this remained the most effective method now that the (much cooler!) CZ objectives exist.

If they massively outclass the other mechanics then it just comes down to one way to do things again and people get bored, much better to have all the mechanics are on average equally effective allowing choices.

 

[Witcher 7]

Thanks for the update Will.

Now can we also have longer breaks in between Expansion state, please? After expanding into a new system for couple of days, my PMF is pending Expansion again.

 

[rekurzion]

One thing this new change flips completely onto its ear is that a previous strategy of championing a single faction and, through a succession of hard fought wars and other BGS work, pushing one or two other factions down to the bottom of a system's INF rank. That's been the strategy for forcing retreat, right? In so doing, with a LOT of hard work, people fought numerous wars for their favored faction(s), often ending up with all of a system's assets under a single ownership.

With this new change, it seems like an invader (or a bottom-ranked faction) can climb in INF all the way up to challenge the controlling faction without any barriers. Then, isn't the first war for the control of the most valuable asset?

So an invader can come into a system, fight ONE war, and potentially end up in control of the most valuable asset AND control of the system.

Do I have this wrong? Or should the change also have included a change that says that the faction that has risen in INF to challenge any of the system's asset owners must fight the war for the LEAST valuable asset?

before the recent changes i would just get all the factions in my way other than the system owner into war. either in that system or surrounding systems. this was typically quite easy and little work given the system was of a manageable population. a mission here, a few there and war was set.

with only one state per faction allowed at a time then i could just bang away with positive influence of my faction of choice and challenge the system owner by leap frogging all the other factions without a conflict.

with multiple states now allowed the invader no longer has access to this tactic and thus removed a very important strategic element from the battlefield. i'm not going as far to say conflicts only for asset holders is the right move but i can understand it. if that is offset by reducing influence gain or other offset so it takes more work to rise up the food chain then that might be an acceptable compromise.

 

[Jmanis]

If they massively outclass the other mechanics then it just comes down to one way to do things again and people get bored, much better to have all the mechanics are on average equally effective allowing choices.

But what does "on average equally effective" even mean?

I 'm not going to roll with the same terminology as kaocraft, but, well, let's play a game. Let's call 100k of combat bonds "1 point". Howe would you then score the following?

- 1m in combat bonds
- two transactions of 100k bonds
- low/med/ high czs respectively
- missions (noting not all missions are equal)
- USS scenarios

I suggested before that if 100k bonds was 100k, then a low cz is 5, med cz is 10 and high cz is 20. Missions might be 2 points each... but is a courier delivery the same as a massacre mission? Doubtful... but do we further allow double dipping on bonds and massacre missions? With that in mind, massacres shouldn't count at all. But then... I'd prefer massacre missions count, and bonds don't.

But if you mean roughly equal in the literal sense... it'll be 1t trading all over again.

If FD do a naive solution, it will be horribly broken. If FD do a good solution, there will be subtleties which mean some activities may not have effects which they intuitively may.... e.g my suggestion where combat bonds have no effect.

I agree players need choice, but that choice needs to be informed. I may suck at combat, and so want to support by hauling cargo.... but i need to know it's actually effective, and how effective it is compared to me just doing combat poorly.