nothing in the patch notes. i would assume that your faction was in the wrong state, therefore no gain from exploration data (conflict in any other system?), or similar. i suggest you put your question with some more info here -> https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/193064-A-Guide-to-Minor-Factions-and-the-Background-Sim, many helpfull people around in that thread.
[BGS] Trading for Influence
- Thread starter goemon
- Start date
nothing in the patch notes. i would assume that your faction was in the wrong state, therefore no gain from exploration data (conflict in any other system?), or similar. i suggest you put your question with some more info here -> https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/193064-A-Guide-to-Minor-Factions-and-the-Background-Sim, many helpfull people around in that thread.
nothing in no patch notes, and many recent reports how powerfull exploration data is - reads more like a bug, or wrong state of faction.
anyway, it isn't like "all the things are nerfed" - in fact, to some extend trading was buffed by upped profits due to state effects and security level. more profitable goods hitting the influence gap for gaining influence from profit earlier - less trading needed ;-)
Deleted member 38366
D
Hm, now that you mention Security Level (Lockdown bucket?), I got an old Trade question in my head that I'm still unsure about :
- does selling of legal Weapons (Non-Lethal Weapons/Reactive Armour) still increase Lockdown trend?
Long time ago, I read numerous reports that seemed to confirm that. To this date, I hence avoid trading these into our Markets.
(still would seem counter-intuitive, I personally always saw legal Weapons in natural demand should be -Lockdown effect when legally trading them in into a normal Market)
afaik it never counted towards lockdown, but towards civil unrest (and a player group i sometimes plays with has used it succesfully to get into civil unrest instead of lockdown under attack more than once... this is also inline with the tables shown during the first BGS livestream), and i have not seen any report that that has changed.
civil unrest isn't such a "bad" state, if your group likes bounty hunting.
I can guarantee that unless it was done today, exploration data was not nerfed.
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Tell me about it. I was mystified when it happened, and what problem it was supposed to fix...
Abandoning goods outside the station for a mate to pick up and sell for pure profit. Could even use goods on sale in the station.
That was really only a problem if done with goods from the same station, and nerfing those would have been sufficient.
FDEV especially mentioned mission reward commodities in context of the patch on zero purchase commodities, so i assume the patch was aimed on those (as said before).
FDEV introduces low profit mission rewards for engineering. FDEV raises the sell price for those after they are no longer needed for engineering. FDEV patches the effect of zero-purchase commodities.
some of the ex-engineer commodities got doubled and tripled in sell price. looking to my test, and assuming profit had no cap before the patch, it is clear why to do so - basically mission reward commodities add a lot of small transactions with a lot of profit to the table.
Exploration data still has an effect, however there is a limit and it's a lot lower than 213 million in a day. I use it regularly out in Colonia when we need to compensate for influence drops during elections and such. I don't know where the roof is, on daily contributions, it seems like it's maybe up towards 20M including first finders bonuses.
If your faction was in a "negative momentum state" when you sold the data, the positive effect could easily have been neutralised by that. (States like war, expansion and such)
He! Tell me about it. During the first month in Colonia, when Mobia didn't have any missions, I spent hours and hours every day trading commodities in Mobia.
Oh whelp, let's hope (imagine) it has an effect on a super hidden growth bucket....
UPDATE ON SMUGGLING VS. TRADING (with a warning)
I have promised to give an update on smuggling.
as described in the OP, i have found that trading and smuggling is neatly balanced on a basic level.
further testing has shown me results, that it is either bugged with consitent triggers (very possible with anything illegal trade), or gets pretty unbalanced if you combine several parameters in a certain way, which woudn't be the case in daily play, or both. i have therefore filed a ticket for a potential exploit, and won't share my tests till it is patched. please don't pm me to ask how-to.
instead of it, to the best of my current knowledge:
if you suspect, that you are under a smuggling attack (which isn't easy to spot in the first place, as random traffic or running missions for all other factions for exampel can have very similar effects)
1. do a few maximum influence gaining trading runs as you can construct from the OP: as many different profitable commodities as possible, with 700 cr/t profit or more if possible, but not necessarily.
2. do not try a trade war, instead of it use all other ways to gain influence additionally at once.
3. redeem bounties as often as possible (number of redeems, not CR value!).
4. cash in up to 11-20 mio in exploration data daily.
5. run missions.
6. prefer civil unrest above boom.
7. trigger a war/civil war in any of your system.
8. if nothing else helps, trigger a lockdown.
good luck!
I have promised to give an update on smuggling.
as described in the OP, i have found that trading and smuggling is neatly balanced on a basic level.
further testing has shown me results, that it is either bugged with consitent triggers (very possible with anything illegal trade), or gets pretty unbalanced if you combine several parameters in a certain way, which woudn't be the case in daily play, or both. i have therefore filed a ticket for a potential exploit, and won't share my tests till it is patched. please don't pm me to ask how-to.
instead of it, to the best of my current knowledge:
if you suspect, that you are under a smuggling attack (which isn't easy to spot in the first place, as random traffic or running missions for all other factions for exampel can have very similar effects)
1. do a few maximum influence gaining trading runs as you can construct from the OP: as many different profitable commodities as possible, with 700 cr/t profit or more if possible, but not necessarily.
2. do not try a trade war, instead of it use all other ways to gain influence additionally at once.
3. redeem bounties as often as possible (number of redeems, not CR value!).
4. cash in up to 11-20 mio in exploration data daily.
5. run missions.
6. prefer civil unrest above boom.
7. trigger a war/civil war in any of your system.
8. if nothing else helps, trigger a lockdown.
good luck!
you mean, trading during bust, or how to trigger bust?
generally, as we can't really observe state buckets, i haven't tested anything in that direction.
So, I know Bust is triggered with large amounts of black market trading, but things I wonder are:
- Does Bust decrease/negate the effect of standard trading (information about it suggests it does)?
- Does Bust increase the negative effect of BM trading and loss trading?
Granted there's not much fun to be had trying to cause these scenarios, but it'd be interesting to see.
Nice work Goemon! +1 
I will double my efforts to make sure that traders in our space are interdicted, inspected and if needs be, have their goods confiscated. You can never be too carefull
I will double my efforts to make sure that traders in our space are interdicted, inspected and if needs be, have their goods confiscated. You can never be too carefull
first of all - yes, i can confirm you can trigger bust by BM trade (and probably by trading for a loss, too).
in bust, actions should have no influence effect if i'm not mistaken, so that might be a similar case to lockdown and could be a defensive tool, too?
You don't need BM to trigger bust. I did it more than once selling slaves (either regular or imperial) at loss at regular market.
Yeah, I seem to recall loss trading also causes bust too.
For what it's worth... I've been doing BGS profit trading a while now, but I put some of your points into practice, and got a whopping 9% increase for two factions for a half dozen cutter runs (granted both were at 36%, up to 45%, but I'd expect some major mission running to get parity).
Points I found that also helped:
- Where possible, trade between two places you want to support (no brainer, but it ties in with the next points).
- Find out where missions from your supported faction are going and try to make that your trade destination, that way you're adding a different influence source, and it also leads into the next point
- Missions tend to generate wrinkles which attract high bounty targets. Wait til you're in a system owned by your supported faction and take them out. I made 1.5m in bounties for my supported faction during one combined mission + cargo run. It made my run take longer, but at the end of the day I had: 688t cargo sold at =~ 1,000cr/t profit, 4 missions complete, and 1.5m in bounties handed in. Diversity of influence generation helps a lot.
For what it's worth... I've been doing BGS profit trading a while now, but I put some of your points into practice, and got a whopping 9% increase for two factions for a half dozen cutter runs (granted both were at 36%, up to 45%, but I'd expect some major mission running to get parity).
Points I found that also helped:
- Where possible, trade between two places you want to support (no brainer, but it ties in with the next points).
- Find out where missions from your supported faction are going and try to make that your trade destination, that way you're adding a different influence source, and it also leads into the next point
- Missions tend to generate wrinkles which attract high bounty targets. Wait til you're in a system owned by your supported faction and take them out. I made 1.5m in bounties for my supported faction during one combined mission + cargo run. It made my run take longer, but at the end of the day I had: 688t cargo sold at =~ 1,000cr/t profit, 4 missions complete, and 1.5m in bounties handed in. Diversity of influence generation helps a lot.