The fact that its a bit unpredictable, is what I like about the new system.
BGS does't work in this way!!!
- Thread starter lollo1572
- Start date
Well, in my case, the faction "rising in influence" was being supported by missionrunning and bounties, apparently by a group with good numbers for running noncombat (or light combat) activities, but when it came to an actual war those methods are considerably less effective.
I can't outgrind an entire wing of players on the mission board by myself when the mission board is the only thing I have to rely on, but if they don't know what they're doing then I can win a conflict against them. The guys over in Carcosa mentioned experiencing the same thing - explorers can run missions to support factions all they like to try and bring the Nameless down, but if they can't hack it in a CZ they'll never win a war.
For the sake of fair-play, perhaps an acceptable compromise might be for the station menu to provide more information about who's doing what in a system?
We currently have the top 5 Wanted cmdrs shown in the station menu.
Perhaps it could supply additional info' such as top 5 traders, top 5 explorers and top 5 combatants - also including info' about which faction those cmdrs did the majority of their work for?
That'd give people some idea of the level of opposition they face and if it was shown that somebody'd spend an improbable amount of time/effort doing something it might, at least, give FDev an idea of who to pay some extra attenion to with regard to possible cheating.
Re: Carcosa
Absolutely correct - we had player groups running missions/BH'ing/explo data to bring about a couple of wars against The Nameless, but they continued to use the same tactic during conflicts where Loren's Reapers (and quite a few other players who joined us) spent time playing in the CZ's (in open) and winning each day because of the weighting put on CZ play.
The BGS isn't broken, just has rules that change according to the current situation, so different actions are needed for each state
that's part of why I posted the suggestion for a station bulletin board too - as a means for players to reach out and say "okay, obviously there's other players here but we haven't met in person due to different times/modes/whatever - let's talk and work something out"
That's a good idea in it's own right.
I guess the hardest part might be "policing" the content of messages but it'd go a long way to making the game seem more "lived-in" - as well as serving the purpose it's actually intended for.
One thing that's always disappointed me about ED (if only slightly) is the lack of evidence of human habitation.
Ideally, I'd like to see the debris of wrecked spaceships and SRVs left floating around for, say, a month or so and specific things remaining permanently.
In KSP, for example, whenever you land on a planet you can plant a flag and a small plaque on the ground with a short bit of text on it.
Obviously that's a single-player game and creating this sort of stuff to be persistent in a multi-player game is a totally different ballgame but it'd be nice if there was more evidence that other humans had been around before you.
I like it when I find exploded DC 'roids in a hotspot because it's one of the only "natural" indications of another human's presence.
Obviously players need to know what they have to do to win a conflict. Trading and selling exploration data isn't going to be very effective in a war, combat is not going to be very effective in an election.
Not sure why players trigger a conflict and then don't do what is needed to win. If a group isn't willing to do what is needed to be done, then BGS manipulation is simply not the right aspect of the game for them.
And because we' re talking about it for the continuous lack of reliability of the game system, it's happened again that in addition to losing time against the "ghost" actions, the counter of the CZ has been reset for the umpteenth time. Twenty minutes thrown in the toilet like those of the past days.
I think a lot of it might be down to people not realising how the BGS works and just think "support this faction but not this other one" is what they need to do, often without thinking about the effect of states and why some seemingly bad states are a good thing even for goody-two-shoes players.
I've smuggled and run criminal missions into highpop independent systems specifically because I want to trigger improvised component spawns so I can fit out my AX ship with reinforced shields, for instance. The skimmer goldrush was only possible because the target faction was an anarchy in boom that owned a planetary settlement, and so on and so forth.
Another system I ran in last year with a bigger player group, under the old BGS rules, we specifically didn't take over the anarchist outpost and worked to make sure it stayed anarchy, because friendly fire happens and we wanted to have a guaranteed IF. Playing the BGS has layers, man.
You must be stupid if you fight BGS in Open. Instead of logging BGS transactions that matter you would be doing PVP stuff that does not. Open is not the mode for effective BGS fight. Of course your opposition may be doing the same stupid open thing, just on a different platform or on a different continent which mostly prevents instancing with you.
Nothing wrong with playing the BGS in Open. It's a good way to meet other players and to discuss matters of BGS with them - finding friends and foes. (Obviously depending on the region of the bubble).
Just don't get distracted by PvP
Not stupid, fun
I agree PvP isn't the most effective use of player time to win a conflict. Nevertheless playing in open allows the opportunity for more nuanced interactions than just combat.
It's pretty annoying that players can contest areas without ever meeting opposition, yet their actions have an effect on other players whose only recourse is to "play harder" instead of properly opposing them. It is what it is, Open Only would be the solution, at least you would have a chance to meet your opponents. However you'd presumably not meet console players, so you'd still end up being undermined by an entirely invisible foe. If you want the ability to directly contest players, Eve Online might be your only choice. In principle I tend to feel like people who don't have a problem with being able to undermine another player's efforts without ever meeting them are rather... What's that word? Beta. They're the sort that would go over your head at your work place instead of taking their greviances to you face-to-face. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
BGS transactions in Open don't receive any intrinsic penalty, so there are two possibilities.
1) Your opposition, if any, is not in Open, not on the same platform and/or not in a compatible timezone or networking position. In that case you won't see them and it makes no difference where you do the actions. But you have the biggest chance of meeting unaligned visitors to the system and convincing them to work for you, so you can gain some advantage that way.
2) You can see your opposition and so long as you restrict PvP to opportunistic approaches (i.e. kill them or drive them off if you see them but don't waste time patrolling for them) you can gain a minor advantage.
The game is a social experiment, in part designed to put players at odds with one another. Paranoia should be a selling point
I'd rather the BGS were eliminated entirely first.
yes, this is exactly what I call stupid, purely from the strategy perspective. A winning combination here is to send somebody with enough re-buy money, or just in a good enough ship that can always retreat to distract your opposition, assuming you lucked out to get somebody dumb enough to do it in Open, while the rest of your team logs transactions in PG as fast as they can.
Assuming good enough coordination, each of them can log a High CZ every 15 min. Or, they can chase you and waste their time on this. This is assuming the instancing gods favor you and your playing hours match, which is not always the case.
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god forbid people play games for fun instead of whinging about the meta optimal way to play the game without socialising