[BGS] Trading for Influence

[goemon]

single commander potential, while significant, is limited

there is a "practical" single-commander cap for sure, as there is only so much a single commander can do between two ticks. also, as many smaller actions are more effective than single large actions, but we have pretty hard "caps" in place, like ship size or number of profitable commodities, that should always reward group actions.

as stated before in other threads, i like this aspect of the BGS design. you can work the BGS alone in an Adder and get some results in a small pop low traffic system. You can create quite a bit of more influence shift in a python or cutter. but a player trading in a cutter will still be outclassed by a fleet of adders and sideys, each making 1 8T trade run during lunch time

i often get this question from other players - "i only have a cobra ... can i help at all?"... or "i can only play 2 hours a week, can i help at all?" - and i really like that i can encourage them by saying: your contribution will count a lot. you don't need a huge ship or many hours at hand. that's for me a huge part of the fun playing the BGS in larger groups.

 

[DevilzmyShadow]

Extremely Informative.

Our Group had suspicions that diverse trade loads were more effective for affecting influence than loads with only 1 commodity. We never tested it though like you to confirm.

 

[Bottom Hat]

Outstanding work goemon, thank you for sharing this - it will be very useful for us o7

 

[Vingtetun]

if you get the time could you test the effect of just BUYING from the system - no sales, just taking things out?
Also - if demand drops to 0, is it affected?

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

if you get the time could you test the effect of just BUYING from the system - no sales, just taking things out?
Also - if demand drops to 0, is it affected?

goemon states "Buying has no effect".

I suspect that there are buckets that are affected by buying, as well as other buckets for supplying demand items. But what effect they have on the system, I have no idea.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

goemon states "Buying has no effect".

I suspect that there are buckets that are affected by buying, as well as other buckets for supplying demand items. But what effect they have on the system, I have no idea.

I remember a failed Population Test of mine.
Purely Trade-based in a tiny Pop System, and basically shipping out all Production items + filling any High-/Medium Demand items.

Only one Commodity locally sold (Silver I think) was left untouched to monitor its stock.

Turned out, the production/stockpile capacity of the market (was observed rock-steady for weeks, only subject to the digital Faction State changes) kept slowly increasing after feeding in large volume supplies and trading other stuff out.
The Test was cut short after a mere 48hrs due to Faction State change and no Population changes observed (original goal for the Test).

So in the end, nothing but a spurious thing, but the Trade seemed to do something.
Arguably, not a "Trade out of the Economy" test though.

Test was later repeated on a larger Extraction Economy. Again, continously supplying High-demand items caused a creeping production increase over several days (I think I got it up by a tad over 10% after 3 days).
Can't recall if the results were persistent though, since another State change gave me the typical, digitally changed figures and I had no way of knowing if the figures I then saw were higher-than-normal for that State or not.

 

[DNA-Decay]

I feel like some old divinity philosopher arguing with Galileo.
You've got telescopes and I've got angels on the head of a pin.

But anyways:

My assumptions are these:
1) For all BGS actions - the tally counts more than the value.
2) The nature of the beast is logarithmic.
3) The State buckets are independent of the influence value of the action.
4) Traffic doesn't differentiate between one CMDR many visits and many CMDRs visit once.

The effect of assumption 1) is that breaking your work down into smaller parcels and going for variety is more effective than big hits.
2) Is about the value of your individual action. If you can hit an order of magnitude easily (100kCr in bounties instead of 10kCr) then it's worth doing, but chasing a second order of magnitude - you're better off selling ten times. Same with the nerfing of effect due to population it will be devalued proportional to the log of population. (I believe)
3) Is where I feel we have to argue from first principles because we can't do evidence on invisible buckets. My notion is that pushing the trade bucket to boom or bust is done from the tally, and it's geared to demand not profit. You say high demand feeds a likelyhood of high profit. I think the states are fed differently from the influence gains. But yeesh I have not the patience for that test.
4) Is just a guess and is testable. But my belief is that influence caps are geared to traffic not specific CMDRs. The test would be for one CMDR to run an activity at a rate that is known to hit cap, and for a mob of others to just dock and leave. If I'm right you'd get more influence change with the high traffic.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Thanks for the research, but a depressing outcome.

Essentially, trading is no longer an effective tactic, but something you might do while you're delivering explo data or run missions. If one run is enough to hit a cap, there is no point in repeated A -> B trading.

With mining nerfed to pointlessness, 1-click trading removed, BH no longer tied to asset ownership, and now trading clearly barely effective beyond a single run, asset ownership becomes increasingly meaningless. And if your faction doesn't close down black markets, could be a net negative.

I am a little disappointed that this makes effective and efficient BGS play reduced to smuggling (negative effect), explo dumps, bounty hunting and bulk passenger missions, as well as combat bonds during armed conflict.

 

[Vingtetun]

goemon states "Buying has no effect".

I suspect that there are buckets that are affected by buying, as well as other buckets for supplying demand items. But what effect they have on the system, I have no idea.

Might need some more testing. When we hold monthly mugmeets at Hutton for instance and do nothing but buy up huge shiploads of mugs and gin to take away, alpha C gains a huge boost.

The team don't tend to being anything IN nor do they take missions out, purely buy mugs and gin.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Influence gains from the market are transaction based and are lumped together into single transactions with a hangover period (possibly for the duration of the instance) where selling the same commodity adds to the influence cap for that transaction, until it is maxed out. By implication, then, selling multiple in-demand items is more effective because it increases the number of transactions.

Or have I missed some subtlety of the conversation? I confess I'm on a break at work and have only skimmed the last page or so.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Might need some more testing. When we hold monthly mugmeets at Hutton for instance and do nothing but buy up huge shiploads of mugs and gin to take away, alpha C gains a huge boost.

The team don't tend to being anything IN nor do they take missions out, purely buy mugs and gin.

If you could account for everyone present, you may have a point. Though I'd be surprised if rare goods had a high influence through purchase, as they don't usually cost much to buy.

 

[Vingtetun]

If you could account for everyone present, you may have a point. Though I'd be surprised if rare goods had a high influence through purchase, as they don't usually cost much to buy.

Whilst there may be some casual effect of the visits, Hutton is so darned far away that unlikely people attended that we didn't recognise in any volume so as to be significant.

We are talking 8 pont swings in some months. Lower when we are sitting in the 80s as we are now.

Will dig out the last 3 months data for the sat tick after the Fri mugmeet.

 

[Vingtetun]

Anecdotally, from GP and Epsilon where we also have rares there is a ruse as a result of casual traffic buying rates.

We noticed it on the Indi Bourbon Blues Cafe event we did for loading up as well.

 

[BL1P]

i'm currently testing exactly this, and will post an update.

As always m8 excellent work and a very big thank you for the time you put in to all this.
I am very interested in the smuggling info, As a means to combat such actions is important.

 

[goemon]

I feel like some old divinity philosopher arguing with Galileo.
You've got telescopes and I've got angels on the head of a pin.

But anyways:

My assumptions are these:
1) For all BGS actions - the tally counts more than the value.
2) The nature of the beast is logarithmic.
3) The State buckets are independent of the influence value of the action.
4) Traffic doesn't differentiate between one CMDR many visits and many CMDRs visit once.

i could imagine it works exactly like that.

demand having an effect on influence buckets for exampel. no single-cmdr cap, but a per visit cap, etc.

Might need some more testing. When we hold monthly mugmeets at Hutton for instance and do nothing but buy up huge shiploads of mugs and gin to take away, alpha C gains a huge boost.

The team don't tend to being anything IN nor do they take missions out, purely buy mugs and gin.

that's interesting. i'm generally thinking that there might be quite some other buckets in the game ... you know, back in those times refuel/repair/ammo-restock had an effect etc.

i could for exampel imagine there is a general "action bucket" .... or a "wealth bucket", things like this. i will search for another testing system, which sells something expensive, and try some loads.

it might well be that this effect isn't visible at all with the cargo loads i manage.

Influence gains from the market are transaction based and are lumped together into single transactions with a hangover period (possibly for the duration of the instance) where selling the same commodity adds to the influence cap for that transaction, until it is maxed out. By implication, then, selling multiple in-demand items is more effective because it increases the number of transactions.

Or have I missed some subtlety of the conversation? I confess I'm on a break at work and have only skimmed the last page or so.

i think this is correct, with the minor difference of multiple profitable commodities instead of multiple in-demand items.

 

[goemon]

Thanks for the research, but a depressing outcome.

Essentially, trading is no longer an effective tactic, but something you might do while you're delivering explo data or run missions. If one run is enough to hit a cap, there is no point in repeated A -> B trading.

With mining nerfed to pointlessness, 1-click trading removed, BH no longer tied to asset ownership, and now trading clearly barely effective beyond a single run, asset ownership becomes increasingly meaningless. And if your faction doesn't close down black markets, could be a net negative.

I am a little disappointed that this makes effective and efficient BGS play reduced to smuggling (negative effect), explo dumps, bounty hunting and bulk passenger missions, as well as combat bonds during armed conflict.

i don't draw the same conclusions.

basically you are right. but, assuming for a moment redeeming bounties has a similar cap in place, it is even more important to fill your trade cap along with exploration data and its cap, etc. something you can do along of everything else.

concerning mining, i share your sentiment. it looks to me as if it got hit hard by the "zero-purchase-commodity"-patch as well as rare trading. still you'll bring back ~10 commodities all above the maximum influence gain cap from profit.

 

[DevilzmyShadow]

Influence gains from the market are transaction based and are lumped together into single transactions with a hangover period (possibly for the duration of the instance) where selling the same commodity adds to the influence cap for that transaction, until it is maxed out. By implication, then, selling multiple in-demand items is more effective because it increases the number of transactions.

Or have I missed some subtlety of the conversation? I confess I'm on a break at work and have only skimmed the last page or so.

If by "in demand" you mean high profit per ton then yes. For max raw influence gain it's around 700cr profit per ton. If we're to believe the OP's findings.

 

[Sentenza]

goemon states "Buying has no effect".

I suspect that there are buckets that are affected by buying, as well as other buckets for supplying demand items. But what effect they have on the system, I have no idea.

1t trading showed that buying HAS effect. It's just very small compared to selling - with normal trading volumes it can probably move some 0.01%, way below observable.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Thanks for the research, Goemon!

I think I see one trick you missed, though: trading at a loss.

 

[goemon]

Thanks for the research, Goemon!

I think I see one trick you missed, though: trading at a loss.

yes, i haven't tested that - as i (personal opinion) find it too gamey...

even if, while reading the malazan book of the fallen, got some liking in ecomomical terrorism.

anyway, i assume, that the profit curve is actually a sigmoid, too - with going into negative at a small loss.

so basically profit gains = profit loss. untested.