[BGS] Trading for Influence

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.

i'll edit the OP acoordingly. "non-observable effect" sounds about right.
 
With mining nerfed to pointlessness

I was always wondering about the influence impact of mining, and couldnt find any real information. Could you explain a bit when/how mining was nerfed in that respect?

edit: Also you said bulk passenger missions are one of the rewarding activities, why not normal missions (cargo delivery etc)?
 
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Hum, so this means I'll hit the cap in a single run if I fill up my Cutter with different commodities?

Maybe, or maybe not. The test is done with a single run, so we still do not know if this is a total cap or per session cap - that is, this could be just a limit on what can you do in a single run, and the total cap could be much higher. That would be a reasonable choice otherwise, as noted, trade would essentially cease to have any significant influence. So we now need to test what happens with multiple runs.
 
Re: the term "bucket".

It was used by Dav Scott (all hail) in the Amazon Web Server livestream.

And he used it to refer specifically to STATES.

So an action puts a drop in the STATE bucket.
So positive trade - with profit / to demand puts a drop in the Boom bucket.
When the bucket is full the State goes pending.
When a State goes live all buckets spill empty.

That much he was explicit about.

But he didn't refer to an "influence bucket".

I suspect that the Value of your Action has some modifiers applied and gets put on the Influence pile.
Modifiers being: log of population, log of Value, positive or negative effect, traffic.

Point being that the modified value is what is stored at time of transaction. That the rest of the journal for that transaction is discarded. When the Tick is calculated it's just a sum of values for influence, and weighing the buckets for states.

That's what I believe the Hamsters do.

But the way goemon is proposing that cap works seems to need some sort of look back over the transaction history. "This CMDR has done too much X and must be nerfed"
Possible - and his evidence supports it. But my belief is that every transaction is unique and is over, done, finished once that little spinny thing is gone.

But I'm like the little kid at he grown ups table offering a political opinion with neither the experience nor insight to back it up.




Next in this series: the sigmoid colon vs the log.
 
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.

Considering how many real-life economic strategies rely on short-term loss for long term gains, I don't find it gamey at all. ;)

To maximize profit loss, you want to bring in goods that are already selling for a low price: i.e. goods that are produced by the system, which are already in excess supply. Given that the faction in charge of the station is trusted, by the population that supplies it, to sell the fruits of their labor quickly and profitably, having someone deliver more for sale results in less native goods being sold. Less native goods being sold results in layoffs in the industry, reduced market share, falling stock prices, and very hungry families frightened about their futures.
 
But he didn't refer to an "influence bucket".

this is correct. that term was brought up by coatsilver, you'll find the link in the opening post.

i still think that it is an very adequate term.

there are state buckets, which are emptied and filled.

and than there are thingies, call them what you like, "influence baskets", "influence pools", where + and - influence actions are added. at least for trade this is action specific. from those "baskets"/"pools" new influence values are calculated, caps applied and normalized to 100% influence in system.

i still will stick with "influence buckets", as it is coatsilvers term and his idea made analysing the BGS much easier. note that he found it while analysing influence movements by rounding (without action, which shouldn't happen).

it is also somehow backed by Adam Waites comments in this thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Bounties-Mechanic-and-Bountyhunting-after-2-3 , from which i took the term raw influence gain. it wouldn't make sense to talk of raw influence gain, if there would be no "bucket"/"basket"/"pool" to add those raw influence gain to, before calculating actual influence.

but feel free to use a different word for the same concept!
 
Thanks for this rigorous testing. I look forward to further results on smuggling as we had some observations since 2.3 that it no longer reduced influence. Not rigorous controlled tests of course, just observations.
 
Thanks for this rigorous testing. I look forward to further results on smuggling as we had some observations since 2.3 that it no longer reduced influence.

i can already answer that, in my system it has reduced influence. there were two smuggling related patches in the 2.3.x patches concerning smuggling (one on smuggling weapons, one on smuggling with low profit) - if your observations are not on those, it might be worth to open a bug report. there are quite some bugs around smuggling still open.

anyway, in my testing system and as posted in the opening post:
WAL4tuA.png


retested twice.
 
I was always wondering about the influence impact of mining, and couldnt find any real information. Could you explain a bit when/how mining was nerfed in that respect?

edit: Also you said bulk passenger missions are one of the rewarding activities, why not normal missions (cargo delivery etc)?

It was a relatively recent patch, so likely 2.3, where they patched out "zero-buying-price commodities", i.e. mined goods.

It used to be that you could get real good gain from mining. I'd say equivalent to even higher than trading in the same time. (i.e. travel + 1 hr of mining roughly equated the time taking to do 1-2 hop A -> B trading, if not better).

Since the patch, mined goods give more or less the same inf benefit as a trade run, where with the latter you of course don't spend the time mining. So yeah, nerfed.

Re: bulk passenger missions, they give +++ inf. Some regular missions give +++ inf, too, but they often take longer to complete. Delivery and data missions are mostly + inf only. You can see this for each mission before you pick them up, there will be a number for rep and one for influence.
 
i can already answer that, in my system it has reduced influence. there were two smuggling related patches in the 2.3.x patches concerning smuggling (one on smuggling weapons, one on smuggling with low profit) - if your observations are not on those, it might be worth to open a bug report. there are quite some bugs around smuggling still open.

anyway, in my testing system and as posted in the opening post:
http://i.imgur.com/WAL4tuA.png

retested twice.

Awesome. Thank you.
 
Very interesting!
I was planning on doing a test like this myself the next time I'd visit the old bubble.
I had always assumed the demand/supply had an effect on influence, though now that you've gotten the numbers on it, it does make sense those would only affect reputation.

The caps for a small system are a lot lower than I had thought. Good to know, indeed, for us Coloniaites!
 
It was a relatively recent patch, so likely 2.3, where they patched out "zero-buying-price commodities", i.e. mined goods.

It used to be that you could get real good gain from mining. I'd say equivalent to even higher than trading in the same time. (i.e. travel + 1 hr of mining roughly equated the time taking to do 1-2 hop A -> B trading, if not better).

Since the patch, mined goods give more or less the same inf benefit as a trade run, where with the latter you of course don't spend the time mining. So yeah, nerfed.

Re: bulk passenger missions, they give +++ inf. Some regular missions give +++ inf, too, but they often take longer to complete. Delivery and data missions are mostly + inf only. You can see this for each mission before you pick them up, there will be a number for rep and one for influence.

Hm ok... But if zero-buying-price commodities were "patched out", wouldnt that mean that mining contributes zero to influence then?

And also are we sure that mined goods are really included in that patch? I thought the idea was that you dont take missions that give you cargo and just sell them, wouldnt make too much sense if that applies to hard-earned mined goods? Did anyone test this?
 

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Hm ok... But if zero-buying-price commodities were "patched out", wouldnt that mean that mining contributes zero to influence then?

And also are we sure that mined goods are really included in that patch? I thought the idea was that you dont take missions that give you cargo and just sell them, wouldnt make too much sense if that applies to hard-earned mined goods? Did anyone test this?

They weren't patched out, AFAIK their effect was reduced (by unknown factor). Mining still contributes nicely (especially if you deliver many different Minerals/Metals for the Input Multiplicator), it's just not a BGS sledgehammer anymore.
 
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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.

Has exploration benefits not been nerfed as well? I just came back from an exploration trip, dumped circa 213m credit of data at my preferred faction and it had no impact at all on the influence, stayed at 8% even after a couple of days.

I know this thread is about trading, so apologies if this diverts the course. I like playing the BGS but am finding it frustrating these days to try and drive my faction forward with all the changes.
 
Hm ok... But if zero-buying-price commodities were "patched out", wouldnt that mean that mining contributes zero to influence then?

And also are we sure that mined goods are really included in that patch? I thought the idea was that you dont take missions that give you cargo and just sell them, wouldnt make too much sense if that applies to hard-earned mined goods? Did anyone test this?

No, it means the Profit accounted for Influence gain is capped at about 700cr like all other goods. Mining still works, but no better than high profit (700cr/t) trading.
Add in the lack of mining missions except the dull 3 (Mono, Brom and Osmium) and it really isnt worth your time as far as BGS goes. You are better of trading.
 
Hm ok... But if zero-buying-price commodities were "patched out", wouldnt that mean that mining contributes zero to influence then?

And also are we sure that mined goods are really included in that patch? I thought the idea was that you dont take missions that give you cargo and just sell them, wouldnt make too much sense if that applies to hard-earned mined goods? Did anyone test this?

yes.

see first post, graph profit. if somebody really want me to, i can run a test with, for exampel, 125T of mined palladium and compare that to regularly traded palladium, but comparing the new test to older tests of mine, i don't think there will be any observable additional influence gain from more profit anymore. if there would, we could see it in the 3,9 mio trade overcharging the system with rares. the game does not take purchase price into account, or difference to average profit etc., just the actual profit.

the patch DID NOT patch out all influence gains from selling zero-purchase-commodities (for exampel: mission rewards. mining goods. legal salvage).

it looks as if it capped the influence gain from profit at ~700 cr/t as a fix. more profit per ton = not more influence gain. pre patch (at least that is what experiences and less detailed tests looked like) this number was either uncapped, or capped out far beyond 700 cr/t.

a ton of mined palladium, having 14 000 cr/t profit, doesn't gain more influence, than a ton of palladium bought and sold with 800 cr/t profit. this is the problem here. pre patch mining was a heavy hitter in a BGS battle, now you are always better off trading. pre patch you could make some nice group action by loading huge ships with rares, and push your influece, now you are better off doing bulk trading.

i don't think FDEV targeted mining, or rares (high profit) with this, but mission reward commodities (zero purchase). those gave a massive permanent influence buff to factions, where players fiished a lot of missions (and sold their neofabric insulation etc.) - but they hit mining and rares with it along.

the "problem" of selling mission commodities via the black market was differently patched: selling commodities on the black market (no matter how you got them) let's you not gain REPUTATION any longer; as you have to abandon the mission to sell the cargo, you'll quickly will have no access to missions from the faction; but reputation is a different game in the game. actually, for reputation, both mining and rares are very valid strategies.
 
Has exploration benefits not been nerfed as well? I just came back from an exploration trip, dumped circa 213m credit of data at my preferred faction and it had no impact at all on the influence, stayed at 8% even after a couple of days.

I know this thread is about trading, so apologies if this diverts the course. I like playing the BGS but am finding it frustrating these days to try and drive my faction forward with all the changes.

Uh, this is sad if true? Anyone knows more? There is a daily cap probably, so 213m on one day would never give the full effect, but it would be stupid if it only had very small or no effect like in your case?

And thanks for the answers regarding mining, makes "sense". Still sad, I liked mining for BGS instead of trading, why do they have to destroy it?
 
...but no better than high profit (700cr/t) trading.

one of the problems here for me is, that due to state depending trading plus security effects on profit, you have a hard time to trade something less profitable than 700 cr/t... basically, "high profit trading" for influence is pretty much the standard trade these days. at least if you trade between matching economies.
 
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