BGS balancement, missions and making the game fun for people playing for a faction.

[Bard Voronwe]

A little premise: in the last few months I had a little "vacation" from Elite Dangerous, sometimes it happens to everybody in here, then I was back with Odyssey and started the grind for engineers and personal equipment.

And surprise surprise: I had a lot of fun doing that.

This is mostly because I found out I had to do multiple different actions to gather materials faster (especially missions) and even if grinding makes things repetitive anyway (like raiding a settlement clean even if you are doing a lawful mission), I honestly had fun with the game itself maybe for the first time in years (when usually the "fun" is looking at the results of the actions I usually did).

Then I came back to my usual business, basically playing the BGS to have results (Powerplay related in my case) and suddenly the funny part was gone.

This is mostly because influence is affected by many aspects (like bounty hunting, fellony, positive or negative trading, smuggling etc.) and missions are often the far less effective way to see a tangible change in BGS, because they are basically time spending (especially the most funny Odyssey missions) and INF reward is usually totally unbalanced towards the easiest missions (delivery etc).

In the end a player willing to affect the BGS will be "forced" to ignore the most funny features of the game, and this is a great flaw in game design in my opinion.

So here is a little proposal about how to "fix" things, and make the players involved ability really matter instead of their perseverance in doing the same repetitive actions.

CHAPTER 1 - REBALANCE INF REWARD FOR MISSIONS
Right now we've got basically 1 up to 5 "points" of INF reward for every mission, but we have the optional influence reward that, sometimes, makes even a very easy and fast mission like a data delivery extremly effective. As I said before, the result is that the player will look for those kind of missions mostly to be most effective, ignoring other more difficult and time spending. I believe that INF should be assigned to missions considering:

• time necessary to complete the mission
• the effective difficulty of the mission itself
• the preparation to complete the mission (for example if a bigger ship is needed, if engineering is something strongly adviced, etc)
• the risk to fail the mission itself (which is the most important thing)
• the problems that completing the mission could do to the player (becoming wanted, notorious etc)
• the economy and security states of the faction giving the mission in relation of the type of mission offered (will come back later to that)

This way we'd have some missions that could not even give INF as a reward (for example the donation missions), most delivery missions should just give 1 INF (unless saboteurs are expected), smuggling and other illegal transport 2 INF, etc, up to 5 INF that I would make exclusively for missions that can actually (and very easily) fail, like non-violent theft, covert ops etc.
Of course the INF optional reward should be no more because it would make things unbalanced.

CHAPTER 2 - ECONOMY AND SECURITY

the economy and security states of the faction giving the mission in relation of the type of mission offered (will come back later to that)

As I was saying. These states should become more important in giving better INF missions for the faction too, in particular:

• positive economy states should give boosts in INF to economical flavoured missions
• negative economy states should make economical flavoured missions less effective in terms of INF
• positive security states should give boosts in INF to security and combat missions in general
• negative security states should make security and combat missions in general less effective in terms of INF

In some way this already happens but it is not explicit enough in my opinion. This would make crucial for players to invest time in building up (or down) such states.

CHAPTER 3 - ONLY MISSIONS MATTER FOR INF
This might be one of the most divisive things in this proposal: other actions (trading, bounty hunting, smuggling, killing security etc) should only affect their respective states (economy and security), this way they'd have an indirect effect over INF by triggering economy and security states, but at least they would not become the best choice to actively move INF, forcing players to repetitive (and let's say it: far too easy) actions.

CHAPTER 4 - ONLY SUCCESSFUL ACTIONS MATTER
Right now failing missions have a negative effect over factions and this is usually without consequences. Yes, you can become hostile too, but every experienced BGS player knows too well how easy it is to build up reputation again. And: failing missions is one of those easy things that only need stubborness. On the other hand is understandable that we need "something" to hit other factions, because diluting them with positive actions toward other factions can be painful and, again, not funny at all. I think we need a new contact, a sabeuteur contact to understand what I mean, that gives negative missions towards the factions of that system. This would make things spicier and, again, ability driven (these missions should be quite difficult imho); in this particular case negative states would give the most effective missions to successfully sabotage a faction.

Anf that's it, this is just a couple of ideas to make the BGS more interesting and engaging, instead of the grind fest which is it right now.

This kind of BGS would prove most effective to almost nullify actions that could be easily scripted, making it even slower in some way, to make it more realistic.

And you? What would you change in BGS to make it more interesting and less repetitive?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Point 1: the 5 INF missions can already grant more than 5 INF, it's just that 5 is the max displayed. Agreed that mission rewards are in a lot of cases out of line with the time or resources needed to do the mission, in both directions.

Point 2: I'd make this the other way round - the higher the economy or security state, the less effective missions on that axis are. After all, a faction already in Boom doesn't need trade support as much as one in Famine does. Might be a nicer way to implement diminishing returns.

Point 3: There's too many situations in which factions either don't get missions at all or only get a very limited selection for this to be practical. Though it would mean that the advantage a controlling faction has virtually disappeared, which would significantly increase instability, which would be a good thing. Turning up the effectiveness of missions relative to the other actions probably would be a good idea.

Point 4: definitely needs more missions specifically targeting the non-Criminal factions

 

[Bard Voronwe]

Point 1: the 5 INF missions can already grant more than 5 INF, it's just that 5 is the max displayed. Agreed that mission rewards are in a lot of cases out of line with the time or resources needed to do the mission, in both directions.

I know, later on the post I wrote that one of the problems is for example the INF optional reward, making trivial missions most effective.

Point 2: I'd make this the other way round - the higher the economy or security state, the less effective missions on that axis are. After all, a faction already in Boom doesn't need trade support as much as one in Famine does. Might be a nicer way to implement diminishing returns.

Even if it makes sense in a "realistical" way, this is a game anyway and I think it needs something more "balanced" than "realistic": this way it would make sense to invest time trading and bounty hunting to have that boost in influence (that all things considered it is what that the players aare interested into, usually).

Point 3: There's too many situations in which factions either don't get missions at all or only get a very limited selection for this to be practical. Though it would mean that the advantage a controlling faction has virtually disappeared, which would significantly increase instability, which would be a good thing. Turning up the effectiveness of missions relative to the other actions probably would be a good idea.

Well this is how it is right now (I think you are talking about Lockdown), maybe things could become different. What I tried to do is to give some "hints" about what I think it doesn't work right now and that makes BGS-dedicated gameplay repetitive and boring especially when you compare it with regular gameplay.

Of course just my opinion.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

(I think you are talking about Lockdown),

Making Lockdown a way to completely freeze system influence I agree would be overpowered, but there are also systems which due to their isolation (absolute or relative) get no or very limited mission selections and would be effectively BGS-locked as a result ... or have such a limited selection (your choice of 60 mining missions) that allowing people to gain inf by trade, combat and exploration would actually significantly improve the variety.

Even if it makes sense in a "realistical" way, this is a game anyway and I think it needs something more "balanced" than "realistic"

Balance was my main reason for applying it the other way. The controlling faction gets most of the eco and sec benefit from trade, exploration and bounties as things stand, so a situation where the controller is in Boom+CL and the other factions are in None+None at best is very common. That just reinforces existing system control - probably even more than the current situation does.

Doing it the other way where the controller's positive states actually slow down its influence gain and let the others catch up would be more interesting.

 

[Bard Voronwe]

or have such a limited selection (your choice of 60 mining missions) that allowing people to gain inf by trade, combat and exploration would actually significantly improve the variety.

Well there's passenger missions too that are kind of exploration missions. But yeah: we need more dedicated missions for the different areas of the game, that's for sure. Combat missions should be more local and directed to uninhabited systems too imho.

Balance was my main reason for applying it the other way. The controlling faction gets most of the eco and sec benefit from trade, exploration and bounties as things stand, so a situation where the controller is in Boom+CL and the other factions are in None+None at best is very common. That just reinforces existing system control - probably even more than the current situation does.

In my opinion a faction controlling facilities should have an advantage in gaining better missions, right now it's almost a disadvantage and it makes less sense, don't you think? To the point that sometimes you work for an undesirable faction to have a facility, so you can kick them out.

 

[goemon]

i'm very happy, that at least in BGS play guided gameplay like missions can be avoided and i can do my sandboxing by doing all the other stufff there is.
if it would be for me, missions had zero inluence or state effect on the bgs, and people would take them for CR and material rewards.
imho that would make the bgs gameplay much more interesting - to interact without missions with all the different access points to influence and state. it should be worth it to find a trade to that small pad odyssey settlement and work around low demand.
of course there would come other problems from it...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In my opinion a faction controlling facilities should have an advantage in gaining better missions, right now it's almost a disadvantage and it makes less sense, don't you think? To the point that sometimes you work for an undesirable faction to have a facility, so you can kick them out.

It all depends on what you see the BGS purpose as, and we are coming at this from very different perspectives, I expect.

I'm quite happy for owning assets to be somewhat disadvantageous - or at least double-edged - for a faction, as it provides overheads and active maintenance requirements, which make passing traffic more of a destabilising effect.

For the same reason I think non-mission activities should continue to have influence effects, because that makes passing traffic more important.

Obviously players who want the BGS to be a faction management game would often prefer passing traffic to have a heavily stabilising effect (as it currently does for dockable ownership), and asset ownership to be purely advantageous, because it means fewer people can maintain a larger territory. But that's I think ultimately tending to defensive stagnation as the remainder of the bubble fills up.

 

[Jmanis]

This is mostly because influence is affected by many aspects (like bounty hunting, fellony, positive or negative trading, smuggling etc.) and missions are often the far less effective way to see a tangible change in BGS, because they are basically time spending (especially the most funny Odyssey missions) and INF reward is usually totally unbalanced towards the easiest missions (delivery etc).

In the end a player willing to affect the BGS will be "forced" to ignore the most funny features of the game, and this is a great flaw in game design in my opinion.

A lot of people seem to argue that "Reward is the tradeoff for not having fun"... which is pretty in a game tbh.

I don't agree on the whole with missions being less effective... I think there's certain scenarios where missions can be the most effective... but it's situational.

So here is a little proposal about how to "fix" things, and make the players involved ability really matter instead of their perseverance in doing the same repetitive actions.

CHAPTER 1 - REBALANCE INF REWARD FOR MISSIONS
Right now we've got basically 1 up to 5 "points" of INF reward for every mission, but we have the optional influence reward that, sometimes, makes even a very easy and fast mission like a data delivery extremly effective. As I said before, the result is that the player will look for those kind of missions mostly to be most effective, ignoring other more difficult and time spending. I believe that INF should be assigned to missions considering:

• time necessary to complete the mission
• the effective difficulty of the mission itself
• the preparation to complete the mission (for example if a bigger ship is needed, if engineering is something strongly adviced, etc)
• the risk to fail the mission itself (which is the most important thing)
• the problems that completing the mission could do to the player (becoming wanted, notorious etc)
• the economy and security states of the faction giving the mission in relation of the type of mission offered (will come back later to that)

Agreed. All missions should be normalised around, say, a 5-15 minute level of interaction. This is difficult when you have stackable missions such as Delivery missions, source missions and such. Read on for more on that though.

It's one of the things Odyssey got right, but equally can't compete with Horizons on... each mission is a discrete, 5-15m activity. Some missions are mechanically opposed to this though; e.g mining.... getting 40t of Osmium is far quicker and much more rewarding than mining 600t of methane clathrates, but that's an artefact of the way missions are generated. Putting the extant mechanics aside, all mining missions should;

• Only be for 8-10t of materials at most
• Only accept mined materials

Then that's normalised around finding one or two good asteroids to get those materials, which is about that length of time. That sort of work needs to be done to all missions though.... part of that also needs missions to have a bit more activity involved in them.

CHAPTER 2 - ECONOMY AND SECURITY

As I was saying. These states should become more important in giving better INF missions for the faction too, in particular:

• positive economy states should give boosts in INF to economical flavoured missions
• negative economy states should make economical flavoured missions less effective in terms of INF
• positive security states should give boosts in INF to security and combat missions in general
• negative security states should make security and combat missions in general less effective in terms of INF

In some way this already happens but it is not explicit enough in my opinion. This would make crucial for players to invest time in building up (or down) such states.

I'm not so keen on making negative states bad, and positive states good. Rather, states should be opportunities for both good and bad. One of the issues is that FD have (and to date, not said otherwise) that "positive states happen when players are successful, negative states are when players fail"... that's a critical failing imo.

One thing that FD did suggest when discussing the never-released happiness-based expansion mechanics, was that the happiest faction would expand; this could be achieved by making a particular system really happy, or everyone else miserable.

My argument is that, say, an Authoritarian faction should want to stay in a lockdown, but switch up the mechanic so that you get more combat missions, and they increase influence and decrease security to maintain the lockdown.... "Civil Liberty" equally should be a pretty bad state for such regimes, though #notAllDictatorships or something like that I guess.

"Beneficial" states should depend more on the government type, which should also have a bigger impact on mission availability, flavour and effects.

CHAPTER 3 - ONLY MISSIONS MATTER FOR INF
This might be one of the most divisive things in this proposal: other actions (trading, bounty hunting, smuggling, killing security etc) should only affect their respective states (economy and security), this way they'd have an indirect effect over INF by triggering economy and security states, but at least they would not become the best choice to actively move INF, forcing players to repetitive (and let's say it: far too easy) actions.

I can't say I really agree with this. However... I think the missions which just substitute basic game functions such as Delivery and Source missions, should either be removed, or reworked to function in a different way that doesn't just duplicate A->B trading.

For example, Massacre missions. Instead of being just a raw kill count to supplement otherwise standard hunt-pirate gameplay, the missions should require you to go to a USS and clear 3-4 waves of otherwise comparatively weak ships. Clear the final wave, clear the mission. Then we get:

• Assassinations: Big, singular targets
• Massacres: Waves of smaller, weaker targets

That way missions and basic mechanics remain viable paths. Missions are really the game-led activity, but that shouldn't come at the cost of not having player-led activity count for anything. That is, arguably, more fun.

CHAPTER 4 - ONLY SUCCESSFUL ACTIONS MATTER
Right now failing missions have a negative effect over factions and this is usually without consequences. Yes, you can become hostile too, but every experienced BGS player knows too well how easy it is to build up reputation again. And: failing missions is one of those easy things that only need stubborness. On the other hand is understandable that we need "something" to hit other factions, because diluting them with positive actions toward other factions can be painful and, again, not funny at all. I think we need a new contact, a sabeuteur contact to understand what I mean, that gives negative missions towards the factions of that system. This would make things spicier and, again, ability driven (these missions should be quite difficult imho); in this particular case negative states would give the most effective missions to successfully sabotage a faction.

Oh stop talking dirty to me

A criminal mission board is something I've long advocated for. (Un?)fortunately it means reworking anarchy factions to function more like normal factions, in that:

• Standard mission boards group otherwise lawful missions to support the faction of your choosing
• "Criminal" mission boards (which are accessible via anonymity protocols) group otherwise illegal actions to hurt the faction of your choosing.

The fact the best path to hurting a target faction is to either

• Help a different faction; or
• Bang-up a bunch of unrelated pirates in other systems

... creates what I call "Elite: Best Friends"; where the path to victory is lined with Friendly reputations with everyone. A critical component to this is to re-allow docking when Hostile, using Anonymity Protocols, just like criminals. Right now, Hostile is a cut-off switch to prevent you hurting a faction more. No such "switches" exist to cut off any other activity... and it's a massive load of trash.

I will disagree slightly here though.... while I agree that "failing" missions is a bit of a pants way to affect things right now... I think the methods of otherwise sabotaging missions needs to be formalised.

Back in the day, almost every mission used to get alternate paths offered. 99% of the time I didn't take them, because they meant supporting another faction instead of the one I was helping, so no thanks. Also, it was still random, but either way it got nerfed, so a strategy where I took some missions from an enemy faction in the hope I'd get an alternative (as taking the alternative almost always hurt the issuing faction) wasn't viable.

Instead, what should happen for several mission types is, there should be a way to complete it in a way that hurts the enemy, that is an equivalent amount of effort to otherwise finishing the mission normally. Some examples are:

• Assassinations: The USS almost always features a small clutch of civilian ships, alongside the pirate ship. Maybe you could open-fire on the civilian ships, causing an authority to spawn, and you need to destroy it in order to cover the escape of the pirate.
• Deliveries: Instead of delivering the cargo, sell it on the black market at the destination or thereabouts, then resolve the mission like normal (but for a successful sabotage)
• Bulk Transport Passengers: Sell them off as slaves
• Salvage: Instead of returning the salvage, offload it to a black market as well.
• Mining: Offload it to a competitor faction.

..etc.

There's already great examples of this in-play with Scenarios, as it's viable to do things like:

• Go hang at an enemy space installation (the undockable ones); ...when pirates inevitably raid, you can support the pirates, instead of defending the installation.
• Go to a Combat Aftermath during War state; one scenario is there's a black box to scoop... you can accept the scenario for a minor war effort boost... or you can accept, and destroy the black box, causing negative effects instead.

That's really what's needed; more ways to actively sabotage activities, on top of the criminal mission board... something something blaze your own trail?

EDIT: Conversely, "criminal" activities should have ways to lawfully resolve them; handing stolen/illegal goods back to authorities, protecting assassination targets, and repelling a secondary pirate when you refuse to hijack the goods from a ship.

 

[Rebel Yell]

I agree 100% with all the points above, having spent quite a significant game time in doing BGS/PP can also suggest:

a) wars/conflicts should make factions being enemies in all systems (I mean the game shouldn't spawn missions that clearly support the enemy) neither missions which clearly damage the faction itself (like supporting another faction in a system where the mission giver is struggling to stay)

b) introduce powerplay related missions (with merits/undermining effects)

The following will require a lot of rework:

c) mini-CGs may be introduced in certain scenarios, i.e. no one does 5.5k wing missions, let's make them like mini-CGs with increased rewards... these may also have some INF % effects with tick spread and delay (i.e. if successfull the faction will gain +1% INF for 5 days, unless conflict is triggered or a max % is reached)

 

[Bard Voronwe]

i'm very happy, that at least in BGS play guided gameplay like missions can be avoided and i can do my sandboxing by doing all the other stufff there is.
if it would be for me, missions had zero inluence or state effect on the bgs, and people would take them for CR and material rewards.

Well everybody is free to have their opinion I guess. ^_^' The whole point was addressing how repetitive (and usually not challenging) actions are not very attractive for players, but you proved me wrong. XD
It stays the fact (on that I think we could agree) that missions are more challenging and difficult to complete usually than the singular activities (especially new covert Odyssey missions).

imho that would make the bgs gameplay much more interesting

And it would cut off completely Missions, which right now are the only challenging activities in game (trading from point A to B and viceversa, farming "pirates" to HAZ-RES because they are like the dumbest NPCs ever etc are everything but challenging, they do not promote ability, they promote perseverance, which is bad for gameplay).

of course there would come other problems from it...

I'll tell you one of them, the biggest one: the simplier the action, the easier to automate it. Make only missions have an effect over influence and you'll have solved (almost completely) the "botting" issue, for example.

It all depends on what you see the BGS purpose as, and we are coming at this from very different perspectives, I expect.

If I understand well you are more a Colonia oriented player, honestly I do not have much familiarity with the Colonia situation, but we both agree in one thing: missions should offer much more variety and be "flavoured" considering the surroundings of the system. More types of missions could bring a different feeling around the Galaxy, I think it is potentially really cool (and we have scenarios and installations that are currently not used with space missions, sadly).

I'm quite happy for owning assets to be somewhat disadvantageous - or at least double-edged - for a faction, as it provides overheads and active maintenance requirements, which make passing traffic more of a destabilising effect.

Problem is that in competitive BGS that "effect" is terribly exploited making it a flaw in the game design. As you said before we clearly come from different backgrounds, with yours being clearly closer to what FDev had in mind: something that could generate "things" for the casual players quite often, to keep them occupied.
But technically speaking this is a MMO, and an MMO should balance the potential positive actions with the negative ones, promote ability over perseverance and in general make more worthy the most complex and challenging actions.

Obviously players who want the BGS to be a faction management game would often prefer passing traffic to have a heavily stabilising effect (as it currently does for dockable ownership), and asset ownership to be purely advantageous, because it means fewer people can maintain a larger territory. But that's I think ultimately tending to defensive stagnation as the remainder of the bubble fills up.

Totally agree about the fact that most of times we are talking about PMFs growing far beyond their real possibilities, but that is another kind of problem (and usually one that is solved by itself when to PMFs clash against each other, or against some Powerplay community interests), the problem here is not about the fact that we need positive and negatives, it's HOW to make these positives and negatives, how much they could be time spending and punitive. That's the point in balancement.

Right now aggressors are usually far more advantaged towards defenders.

Ok let's say we can summarize:

1- Players usually like complex and challenging actions more than simplier ones (with the obvious exceptions), but current BGS makes you chose different actions than missions at all, or just very fast and high rewarding INF missions (usually deliveries)
2- Missions as we know them are absolutely not enough in covering every aspect and gameplay inside the game itself (and let's not talk about Guardians and Thargoids, would be so cool to have "scientific missions" to study them)
3- Balancement per se is completely broken concerning INF between the different kind of missions (especially because of the optional INF reward).

Maybe what I proposed was a little bit "extreme", even if I gave a role to these actions by tweaking the economy and security states, making the factions give far better missions. (And there's the other special states too, btw)

 

[goemon]

Well everybody is free to have their opinion I guess. ^_^' The whole point was addressing how repetitive (and usually not challenging) actions are not very attractive for players, but you proved me wrong. XD
It stays the fact (on that I think we could agree) that missions are more challenging and difficult to complete usually than the singular activities (especially new covert Odyssey missions).

i think you have been missing my point.

for me, nothing is as boring as being told what to do by a mission.

i would be fully in for less repetitive sandbox gameplay.

to give an exampel on trade and trade missions.

currently:
trade missions: fetch x or deliver y. here is your cargo, pirates which you can outrun might spawn.

sandbox trade: sell anything with most profit in 150t batches.

what i would like to see:

• demand having an influence effect directly plus profit
• trading out profitably having an influence effect in exporting system
• security level having an effect on prices
• bgs pirate spawn in relation to high value goods
• supplying precursor commodities resulting in high-profit high-demand commodities production boost etc.

in that case, the bgs focussed sandbox trade would make it necessary to find new trades and trade sources for every system/station, change the commodities more often and generally make it necessary to get more into the economical side of the backgroundsimulation. researching, scouting, know your neighbourhood and all. less repetitive, and also more free than "fetch x or deliver y. there you go, here is your cargo, pirates which you can outrun might spawn."

 

[Bard Voronwe]

i think you have been missing my point.

for me, nothing is as boring as being told what to do by a mission.

i would be fully in for less repetitive sandbox gameplay.

to give an exampel on trade and trade missions.

currently:
trade missions: fetch x or deliver y. here is your cargo, pirates which you can outrun might spawn.

sandbox trade: sell anything with most profit in 150t batches.

what i would like to see:

• demand having an influence effect directly plus profit
• trading out profitably having an influence effect in exporting system
• security level having an effect on prices
• bgs pirate spawn in relation to high value goods
• supplying precursor commodities resulting in high-profit high-demand commodities production boost etc.

in that case, the bgs focussed sandbox trade would make it necessary to find new trades and trade sources for every system/station, change the commodities more often and generally make it necessary to get more into the economical side of the backgroundsimulation. researching, scouting, know your neighbourhood and all. less repetitive, and also more free than "fetch x or deliver y. there you go, here is your cargo, pirates which you can outrun might spawn."

And again: free to have your gameplay of choice.

But you will agree that having trading and bounty hunting affecting the BGS it makes the competitive BGS a grind-fest where the most stubborn wins.

Especially because all the scouting activity that you talk about, that could be really cool theoretically, it is basically made banal by eddb, Inara and other external sites.

And: missions are usually much harder to bot, which is a great advantage.

EDIT

I like very much the rest of your ideas about making trading much more meaningful, I did in the past a thread about how security should matter much more, for example. But I think we are talking about BGS balancement now so we risk to go OT.

 

[Dommarraa]

And again: free to have your gameplay of choice.

But you will agree that having trading and bounty hunting affecting the BGS it makes the competitive BGS a grind-fest where the most stubborn wins.

Especially because all the scouting activity that you talk about, that could be really cool theoretically, it is basically made banal by eddb, Inara and other external sites.

And: missions are usually much harder to bot, which is a great advantage.

EDIT

I like very much the rest of your ideas about making trading much more meaningful, I did in the past a thread about how security should matter much more, for example. But I think we are talking about BGS balancement now so we risk to go OT.

I dont agree. I see nothing wrong with trade or bounties, competitive BGS will ALWAYS be a grind fest.

The only thing we will all agree on is that the BGS could be better.
I also hope we are also sensible enough to agree that FD are not going to do any meaningfull changes, so all of our suggestions are just meaningless (but fun) theory crafting.

I love missions - I like being guided, I certainly dont like hours of spreadsheet work just to decide what would be an "optimal" use of my time. Are they all balanced exactly ? Hell no, but big deal. I do the type of missions I like, and choose the ones with the high inf, and if I am being clever, check what effect may be on the other end (but often cant be bothered)

The current Trade based on profit is plain dumb. Would like it to have more love, but also know its not neccessarily a good point of effort as it only applies to factions who own a market so isnt very "fair" (but "unfair" is a reason to control assets).
How about...

• Exports : Supply * (Inf-,Eco+++) : Faction gains cash that it could invest, but has less resources
• Imports : Demand * (Inf+++,Eco-) : Faction loses cash, but has usefull resources to use locally
• To have a healthy system, you would need to Export AND Import.
• In la-la land, we then have a process while in Investment that drains Eco, but enhances (or creates!) a factions assets (and reverse in Bust) - Improved Station Services, Increase in Population (increase Demand & Supply), Creation of Installation or even the mythical Expansion to an empty system!

The most usefull changes I think FD should be encouraged to do are :

1. Apply Distance from Home System as a diminishing factor on any effort so big factions (like mine) are restricted in size and give everyone a slice of the pie or at least a chance to defend a slice of the pie.
2. Send data directly to EDDN after the tick rather than waiting for CMDRs (or do a Journal for ALL a factions system when someone accesses Squad Page as a compromise). If you think BGS play can be a grindfest, wait till you have 100 systems, the data collection grind will make it look like a party.

I also have pages of stuff about how PP should have been done as a layer of the BGS instead of a seperate entity, but thats even less likely to happen (less than 0 change is hard)

 

[Bard Voronwe]

I dont agree. I see nothing wrong with trade or bounties, competitive BGS will ALWAYS be a grind fest.

Of course it will be: the point was to make the "ability" factor more important than the "stubborness" one. And about trading: it is currently exploitable using fleet carriers (I am always talking in terms of competitive BGS of course). And about bounty hunting: I think we are all aware that T10 turret boats in haz res can grind a huge amount of bounties while the player is not actually playing.

I love missions - I like being guided, I certainly dont like hours of spreadsheet work just to decide what would be an "optimal" use of my time. Are they all balanced exactly ? Hell no, but big deal. I do the type of missions I like, and choose the ones with the high inf, and if I am being clever, check what effect may be on the other end (but often cant be bothered)

Well it is actually a big deal in MMO when you have activities with different difficulties not rewarded accordingly (influence wise in this case). It makes the game itself prone to exploitation, and makes your players focus on the easiest and most profitable activities for your faction, making the game actually far more boring.

Send data directly to EDDN after the tick rather than waiting for CMDRs (or do a Journal for ALL a factions system when someone accesses Squad Page as a compromise). If you think BGS play can be a grindfest, wait till you have 100 systems, the data collection grind will make it look like a party.

Actually more than relying in external tools (even if they are very useful) I'd like it better for FDev to make the Galaxy Map data that you alredy discovered consultable online, by their very own website. And yeah, 100 systems... as I said before: Powerplayer, 100 systems is nothing for me (sadly XD ).

I also have pages of stuff about how PP should have been done as a layer of the BGS instead of a seperate entity, but thats even less likely to happen (less than 0 change is hard)

Sad but true. I have lost any hope of seeing any kind of balancement in this game. This game is a MMO designed as a single player game, at the current state of the art.

 

[cmdr milesred]

I agree 100% with all the points above, having spent quite a significant game time in doing BGS/PP can also suggest:

a) wars/conflicts should make factions being enemies in all systems (I mean the game shouldn't spawn missions that clearly support the enemy) neither missions which clearly damage the faction itself (like supporting another faction in a system where the mission giver is struggling to stay)

c) mini-CGs may be introduced in certain scenarios, i.e. no one does 5.5k wing missions, let's make them like mini-CGs with increased rewards... these may also have some INF % effects with tick spread and delay (i.e. if successfull the faction will gain +1% INF for 5 days, unless conflict is triggered or a max % is reached)

so, you never do missions for the opposition?

being facitious.
..why would you want to do away with such a powerful tool?
I would agree to a rethink of certain missions, as example I do not approve of my faction shipping goods to the enemy.
but even that has a purpose you can use to your advantage. therefore no need to remove, just think about how you can make it work for you.

also, same goes for the large cargo wing missions.
They are a great source of material, used in the right way. only the mission giver asks that you deliver it to the opposition, there is nothing stopping you from delivering it elsewhere.
if it is not from your faction, you can fail it, if it is from your faction you can abandon it, but either one, only after you sell the goods elsewhere.

I do these a lot.
when I damage my rep from missions like this, it is meaningless and easy to rebuild fast. but those goods are well worth it.