BGS question

[Jmanis]

Assumptions:

• No conflicts possible with the equalized factions
• 100 points in the "pool" for this system, for simplicity
• Faction B is the target faction

OK, so 7 faction system... let's say it's something like

Faction A: 50% (50 points)
Faction B: 10% (10 points)
Faction C: 10% (10 points)
Faction D: 10% (10 points)
Faction E: 10% (10 points)
Faction F: 5% (5 points)
Faction G: 5% (5 points)
Total: 100 points

So you run a mission for, let's say five points, twice, for each faction. This looks like:
Faction A: 60 points
Faction B: 10 points
Faction C: 20 points
Faction D: 20 points
Faction E: 20 points
Faction F: 15 points
Faction G: 15 points
Total: 160 points

Normalising back to 100 points at the tick, we get:
Faction A: 31.25 37.5%
Faction B: 6.25%
Faction C: 12.5%
Faction D: 12.5%
Faction E: 12.5%
Faction F: 9.375%
Faction G: 9.375%

So yeah, Faction A gets wrecked, Faction B is hurt for far less than A is hurt for, all other factions experience an uptick.... noting this is probably reflective of a low population system.

This wouldn't change for Faction B if it was all for one faction, as the normalisation of 10 points would still be against a pool of 160, though whether there's hidden modifiers for diminishing returns (a-la trading) or not for excess missions for one faction... that's the only thing that could make a difference.

@Ian Doncaster , you'd think if negative influence actions were that much of a problem, they'd do it as an inverse bucket... so instead of doing say, -10 points against a 10% influence faction per above in a positive bucket situation, which would result in a quick trip to 1% town, they could represent 10% influence as -90% influence for the purposes of a negative influence bucket... taking the above initial state and doing -10 would result in -100 and a total pool of -110, so the outcome would be a new influence of 9.1%, rather than 1%.

Then at least the idea of a criminal mission board and an antagonistic career path could become a reality.

Edit: of note, the concept of "diminishing returns" comes up entirely from the normalisation process. Nothing actually "returns less effect the more you do it", rather, the pool of actions grows larger. That said, there are (apparently) some effects that diminish things like 1t trading, but don't completely invalidate 100 players trading 5t each as equivalent to a single player trading 500t in one go.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

you'd think if negative influence actions were that much of a problem

Most of the ones I can remember getting seriously reined-in were ones where they were in the original (entirely non-strategic) design as reasonable consequences for failed actions, before people started realising that if you set out to deliberately fail actions for a faction you don't like, you can do so very efficiently.

 

[Thinking]

Normalising back to 100 points at the tick, we get:
Faction A: 31.25%
Faction B: 6.25%
Faction C: 12.5%
Faction D: 12.5%
Faction E: 12.5%
Faction F: 9.375%
Faction G: 9.375%

Could you write what equation/formula you got it?

 

[Jmanis]

It's not really a single formula... just percentages and normalisation.

If you've got 6 green things and 6 blue things, you have 12 things, 50% are green, 50% are blue.

If you add a green thing, you've now got 13 things, 7 are green, 7/13 = 0.538... (53.8%) , 6/13 = 0.462... (46.2%). That's what the tick does.

But what the BGS would now say after the tick is that "You're now back to having 12 things, 53.8% of them are green, 46.2% of them are blue"

"12" is the bucket size, which is set by population and won't change (unless FD changes it, or goids nuke it). Positive/negative actions add/remove things from the bucket, and at the tick, the portion of the bucket you own is calculated, and the number of things in the bucket reset (in this case, back to 12, but in the BGS case, whatever that bucket size based on population is)

Nobody knows what size the buckets are.

 

[Thinking]

ok, so the least problematic is setting up to 100 points.

 

[Jmanis]

ok, so the least problematic is setting up to 100 points.

Yup. Is just for the example. Likewise, things don't do "5" points, rather it's something like 0.274973529 or some other ridiculous decimal.

The suspicion is that the total bucket is some logarithmic scale of the population... such that working a 1b pop system is not a million times harder than working a 1k pop system.

 

[Thinking]

It's not really a single formula... just percentages and normalisation.

If you've got 6 green things and 6 blue things, you have 12 things, 50% are green, 50% are blue.

If you add a green thing, you've now got 13 things, 7 are green, 7/13 = 0.538... (53.8%) , 6/13 = 0.462... (46.2%). That's what the tick does.

But what the BGS would now say after the tick is that "You're now back to having 12 things, 53.8% of them are green, 46.2% of them are blue"

"12" is the bucket size, which is set by population and won't change (unless FD changes it, or goids nuke it). Positive/negative actions add/remove things from the bucket, and at the tick, the portion of the bucket you own is calculated, and the number of things in the bucket reset (in this case, back to 12, but in the BGS case, whatever that bucket size based on population is)

Nobody knows what size the buckets are.

wait but if I calculate it according to your data it works out for me
35.29%
11.76%
11.76%
11.76%
11.76%
8.82%
8.82%

even assuming that in Faction B: you wrote 10 and counted 20,
where am i making mistake?

for Faction A: 60 points / 170 points (I assume it was a mistake - it was supposed to be 20 and not 10) which gives 35.29%....

 

[Jmanis]

wait but if I calculate it according to your data it works out for me
35.29%
11.76%
11.76%
11.76%
11.76%
8.82%
8.82%

even assuming that in Faction B: you wrote 10 and counted 20,
where am i making mistake?

for Faction A: 60 points / 170 points (I assume it was a mistake - it was supposed to be 20 and not 10) which gives 35.29%....

Ah, I did botch the original, I divided 50 by 160, not 60... so that should be 37.5, which I corrected now.

But it's divided by 160, not 170. Original pool is 100, you work 10 points for each faction except B, that's an extra 60 points, 10 per remaining six factions.

 

[Thinking]

Is it possible to increase the influence of a given faction taking part in the elections during elections?, but not through sensitive data poll and liberate bag missions, etc. ,??? I thought that the influences were frozen, as in the case of war, and only CZ operated. And I see that the faction that lost the elections for the second day in a row increased its inf. from 10% to 13%,... How is that possible!?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

You can't change the influence of a faction in an election through direct actions - but it can change as a result of the effects of states.

For example, if there's an election going on between two secondary factions, and the controlling faction completes an expansion from that system, the controlling faction pays 15% expansion tax at that point. That tax gets distributed to the other factions in the system including any in conflicts. Or if a new faction expands into the system, it needs to get its starting influence from somewhere, so that comes out of the conflict factions as well as the non-conflict factions.

Or, if a faction in a conflict also gets Public Holiday active, that gives it an influence boost ... or if it gets Infrastructure Failure or Pirate Attack or many of the other Event states, that gives it an influence cost. Those also apply directly and can move it despite the conflict (indeed, having them apply to factions in conflict is the easiest way to find out how large they are!)

Moves like this don't affect the result of the conflict in any way - though if you get a significant enough divergence it can rarely be enough to outweigh the post-conflict win-loss separation.

 

[Thinking]

You can't change the influence of a faction in an election through direct actions - but it can change as a result of the effects of states.

For example, if there's an election going on between two secondary factions, and the controlling faction completes an expansion from that system, the controlling faction pays 15% expansion tax at that point. That tax gets distributed to the other factions in the system including any in conflicts. Or if a new faction expands into the system, it needs to get its starting influence from somewhere, so that comes out of the conflict factions as well as the non-conflict factions.

Or, if a faction in a conflict also gets Public Holiday active, that gives it an influence boost ... or if it gets Infrastructure Failure or Pirate Attack or many of the other Event states, that gives it an influence cost. Those also apply directly and can move it despite the conflict (indeed, having them apply to factions in conflict is the easiest way to find out how large they are!)

Moves like this don't affect the result of the conflict in any way - though if you get a significant enough divergence it can rarely be enough to outweigh the post-conflict win-loss separation.

Ok. Thx a lot