One thing that's been noted repeatedly recently is that systems with heavy Powerplay activity tend to get rapid rises in controlling faction influence. Galaxy-wide, this leads to a lot of systems with the controlling faction in Expansion state, which - especially with hyper-expanded factions - flattens out a lot of the variation and makes the "background" less interesting. This is, I think, a generalisation of the problem that "undirected" action in a system tends to benefit the controlling faction influence, economy and security sliders - and while Powerplay encourages a lot of action not focused on any minor faction in particular, any development which encourages people to play the game and do stuff in particular systems could do the same.
So, to settle things down/change things up a bit, some suggestions to make "undirected" action a little more neutral (though not totally so) with respect to the balance of influence. The overall aim is to make BGS consequences more varied while keeping the general principle that "lots of players doing stuff" in a system should certainly do something, just not the same something every time. Making life easy for deliberate BGS manipulators has not been an aim, though it should resolve the current immediate complaint there too.
Trade Rebalance
At the moment, all trade influence goes to the station owner. Instead:
1) Calculate the prices each faction would offer, based on its state. The faction offering the best price (lowest export, highest import) is the one offering that good at the Commodity Market today.
So for example, if faction A is in Infrastructure Failure it pays roughly twice as much for Water Purifiers than faction B in state None. On the other hand, faction A only pays a tenth as much for Clothing. In this case, Faction A would set the price and demand and receive the influence and state effects from Water Purifier sales, while Faction B would do so for Clothing sales.
If two factions have identical states and are both setting the same best price, the influence gain should be split in proportion to their current influence. Reputation gains would follow the same distribution.
2) Odyssey settlements which only have a single faction present would continue to only consider that faction's state, and receive all trade influence at that site.
3) Black Market trade should be split in the same fashion, but only between Anarchy/Criminal factions (for which it should be a positive effect). Whether or not there is an Anarchy faction in the station should determine whether Black Markets appear, rather than the type of the station controller. Anarchy factions may still benefit from normal trade too if their states are the "best" for a particular commodity.
This not only balances out the influence gains between factions, but also exposes more of the interesting price fluctuations from states without requiring every minor faction in a system to own a range of markets.
Bounty Rebalance
At the moment, the controlling faction of the system gets default jurisdiction almost everywhere, and therefore gets the vast majority of all bounties collected (and all bounties collected without KWS). Instead:
1) The KWS is now only required to show out-of-system bounties and bounties in Anarchy space. In-system bounties regardless of jurisdiction and faction show up by default unless the jurisdiction is Lawless. The KWS will reveal an out-of-system bounty of a suitable amount in the situations it would currently add another in-system bounty.
2) A faction will never place a bounty on its own ships or personnel (this was always a bit weird)
3) The originator of the in-system bounty on a ship will be generated - after rule 2 - in proportion to the relative influence. For example, if there are three factions A, B and C on 50-30-20 influence, 5/7 of the wanted ships belonging to faction B will be wanted by faction A, and 2/7 by faction C.
This means that undirected bounty hand-in will generally not move influence levels very much (except against Anarchy factions, but it won't make things much worse for them) while still allowing some fluctuation.
State Rebalance
As almost all deliberate player actions (whether with BGS-manipulating intent or not) are positive for Security and Economy states (and changing this would be much larger in scope) this leads to a lack of variety here. Instead, the default position of these sliders in the absence of activity should be Civil Unrest+Famine, with actual activity (if not necessarily much activity) needed to lift them into more positive regions.
This would cause a wider spread of states across the bubble, especially for secondary factions, rather than the spread of None/None seen almost everywhere and only imperfectly kept moving by the intervention of states like Blight or Terrorist Attack. The largely abandoned fringes of the bubble would be suffering wastelands (but good trade and bounty hunting opportunities!) except where players had made them their home, while the popular core would have investment and civil liberties for all.
This would also allow for some additional "positive" Event states like Public Holiday to be introduced which could give a short-term boost to Economy and Security instead of draining them, and having the default be to decay below None would allow the state sliders to be "loosened up" to move more freely and quickly, further increasing variety.
So, to settle things down/change things up a bit, some suggestions to make "undirected" action a little more neutral (though not totally so) with respect to the balance of influence. The overall aim is to make BGS consequences more varied while keeping the general principle that "lots of players doing stuff" in a system should certainly do something, just not the same something every time. Making life easy for deliberate BGS manipulators has not been an aim, though it should resolve the current immediate complaint there too.
Trade Rebalance
At the moment, all trade influence goes to the station owner. Instead:
1) Calculate the prices each faction would offer, based on its state. The faction offering the best price (lowest export, highest import) is the one offering that good at the Commodity Market today.
So for example, if faction A is in Infrastructure Failure it pays roughly twice as much for Water Purifiers than faction B in state None. On the other hand, faction A only pays a tenth as much for Clothing. In this case, Faction A would set the price and demand and receive the influence and state effects from Water Purifier sales, while Faction B would do so for Clothing sales.
If two factions have identical states and are both setting the same best price, the influence gain should be split in proportion to their current influence. Reputation gains would follow the same distribution.
2) Odyssey settlements which only have a single faction present would continue to only consider that faction's state, and receive all trade influence at that site.
3) Black Market trade should be split in the same fashion, but only between Anarchy/Criminal factions (for which it should be a positive effect). Whether or not there is an Anarchy faction in the station should determine whether Black Markets appear, rather than the type of the station controller. Anarchy factions may still benefit from normal trade too if their states are the "best" for a particular commodity.
This not only balances out the influence gains between factions, but also exposes more of the interesting price fluctuations from states without requiring every minor faction in a system to own a range of markets.
Bounty Rebalance
At the moment, the controlling faction of the system gets default jurisdiction almost everywhere, and therefore gets the vast majority of all bounties collected (and all bounties collected without KWS). Instead:
1) The KWS is now only required to show out-of-system bounties and bounties in Anarchy space. In-system bounties regardless of jurisdiction and faction show up by default unless the jurisdiction is Lawless. The KWS will reveal an out-of-system bounty of a suitable amount in the situations it would currently add another in-system bounty.
2) A faction will never place a bounty on its own ships or personnel (this was always a bit weird)
3) The originator of the in-system bounty on a ship will be generated - after rule 2 - in proportion to the relative influence. For example, if there are three factions A, B and C on 50-30-20 influence, 5/7 of the wanted ships belonging to faction B will be wanted by faction A, and 2/7 by faction C.
This means that undirected bounty hand-in will generally not move influence levels very much (except against Anarchy factions, but it won't make things much worse for them) while still allowing some fluctuation.
State Rebalance
As almost all deliberate player actions (whether with BGS-manipulating intent or not) are positive for Security and Economy states (and changing this would be much larger in scope) this leads to a lack of variety here. Instead, the default position of these sliders in the absence of activity should be Civil Unrest+Famine, with actual activity (if not necessarily much activity) needed to lift them into more positive regions.
This would cause a wider spread of states across the bubble, especially for secondary factions, rather than the spread of None/None seen almost everywhere and only imperfectly kept moving by the intervention of states like Blight or Terrorist Attack. The largely abandoned fringes of the bubble would be suffering wastelands (but good trade and bounty hunting opportunities!) except where players had made them their home, while the popular core would have investment and civil liberties for all.
This would also allow for some additional "positive" Event states like Public Holiday to be introduced which could give a short-term boost to Economy and Security instead of draining them, and having the default be to decay below None would allow the state sliders to be "loosened up" to move more freely and quickly, further increasing variety.
