BGS work without Players?

[Privata]

I remember a while back david braben talked a bit about NPC trading.
That the system was that in the background NPC would trade.

Needless to say its ''fake'' NPCs and not the ones you see in game.

So my question to the BGS guru's is : does the BGS move without player input?

 

[Sapyx]

I believe the economic BGS "moves" back to the happy medium when no players involve themselves in a system.

For example: a flood of players come in (eg. a player group adopts a system, or perhaps a CG starts up there). Local markets are flooded with imported goods, causing demand and prices to fall. Likewise, exports are snapped up until high demand makes buying them unprofitable. Then the players all go away. The BGS slowly "rights itself": demand for imports and supply of exports both slowly rise, until the default "high" supply and demand are restored.

The political BGS does not change without CMDR manipulation. Influence levels freeze where they're at, until a player influences the system again. A war declared but where no players get involved in either side ends in a stalemate.

 

[Bernie65]

Hmmm... I remember the moment when the BGS went live some 18-20 months ago during beta IIRC. I was in a station in a Cobra and a dozen T9s appeared and left the station, and a few hours later my nice local trade route was totally depleted. I think that the NPCs you see in game *do* have an effect since that moment.

 

[Privata]

I believe the economic BGS "moves" back to the happy medium when no players involve themselves in a system.

For example: a flood of players come in (eg. a player group adopts a system, or perhaps a CG starts up there). Local markets are flooded with imported goods, causing demand and prices to fall. Likewise, exports are snapped up until high demand makes buying them unprofitable. Then the players all go away. The BGS slowly "rights itself": demand for imports and supply of exports both slowly rise, until the default "high" supply and demand are restored.

The political BGS does not change without CMDR manipulation. Influence levels freeze where they're at, until a player influences the system again. A war declared but where no players get involved in either side ends in a stalemate.

So in a sens the galaxy has its status quo and we are the ones that change it.

I would like it if NPC could change the political simulation , but its better than nothing

 

[Spacemarkl]

I would like it if NPC could change the political simulation , but its better than nothing

Yeah, but then casual players would complain more. And being a casual player with very little time i'd even even make an exception and whine too. I'd like to work for a faction, but I wouldn't like my contributions made nil just because the AI shuffles everything i'd be very frustrated.

 

[Thetele]

Hmmm... I remember the moment when the BGS went live some 18-20 months ago during beta IIRC. I was in a station in a Cobra and a dozen T9s appeared and left the station, and a few hours later my nice local trade route was totally depleted. I think that the NPCs you see in game *do* have an effect since that moment.

No npc don't effect bgs. There is no npc if there is no player in instance, they also don't buy or sell stuff they just spawn and despawn. In terms of simulation the npc don't exist and are there just to fake traffic. NPC aren't persistent so its impossible to make them have impact. Only thing that effect bgs is players actions. I remember reading some where that bgs simulation only happens if there is player in that system doing something that effect bgs. So if the system have never had any players tarding/fighting etc. in it, it is still in same situation than it was on release of 1.0.

The stuff players have done in system will slowly decay to default if player activity in system ends or slow down. Players can't do permanent changes to systems, every system state is just temporal state that will end and after that the system return to default situation. Only thing that in system can change is the system owner, names of the factions in system and its relation to other major factions. No other changes can be done by bgs and need to be done by fd.

 

[Privata]

Yeah, but then casual players would complain more. And being a casual player with very little time i'd even even make an exception and whine too. I'd like to work for a faction, but I wouldn't like my contributions made nil just because the AI shuffles everything i'd be very frustrated.

I think players have to much power.
Never mind godlike powers for the DDF members , normal players allready have godlike powers.

I remeber the pitch being we were just as unimportant than NPCs in elite

 

[jimbeau1571]

No. I have 6 systems on the edge of the bubble, have been out in the void exploring for nearly 2 months and my all but 2 systems haven't budged a bit.
My fellow Cmdr went in one and did a mission, so that changed. The second was another player faction owned system, so my faction changed as a consequence of their actions.
NPC's do not influence the faction % levels in one iota.

The 'decay' that was previous (long standing arguement about the meaning of decay, bleeding, leaking etc), but this disappeared with 2.1 .... read above as proof of. With no interaction from Players, markets will return to the ED 'default', but the faction %'s will remain as left at the time of the last tick following the last action of a player.

 

[Privata]

No. I have 6 systems on the edge of the bubble, have been out in the void exploring for nearly 2 months and my all but 2 systems haven't budged a bit.
My fellow Cmdr went in one and did a mission, so that changed. The second was another player faction owned system, so my faction changed as a consequence of their actions.
NPC's do not influence the faction % levels in one iota.

The 'decay' that was previous (long standing arguement about the meaning of decay, bleeding, leaking etc), but this disappeared with 2.1 .... read above as proof of. With no interaction from Players, markets will return to the ED 'default', but the faction %'s will remain as left at the time of the last tick following the last action of a player.

There was no decay , FD debunked that.
Its a shame , NPCs should change the tide of the galaxy

 

[Quineloe]

the biggest issue I see with the BGS is that pirate factions only get exterminated by players. Most high influence pirate factions I saw when the game launched are dead today. Eventually, there wil be no more pirate factions.

 

[jimbeau1571]

There was no decay , FD debunked that.
Its a shame , NPCs should change the tide of the galaxy

What FD perceived as decay, and what the community did were obviously two different things. They debunked it in that they said it wasn't 'coded' in to decay. The community repeatedly gave of a 'bleed' of % from leading minor factions despite this.
Either way, it no longer happens in 2.1

 

[Privata]

What FD perceived as decay, and what the community did were obviously two different things. They debunked it in that they said it wasn't 'coded' in to decay. The community repeatedly gave of a 'bleed' of % from leading minor factions despite this.
Either way, it no longer happens in 2.1

They said that it was due to unseen players (being in solo , private or in open) playing the game and reducing the influance of a faction

 

[Agony_Aunt]

the biggest issue I see with the BGS is that pirate factions only get exterminated by players. Most high influence pirate factions I saw when the game launched are dead today. Eventually, there wil be no more pirate factions.

They can't be killed off. A faction can never be removed from its home system. They can lose control. Besides, out the on rim, still plenty of anarchy factions in control. The center is becoming more civilized though... well, kind of.

As for OPs question, i always thought not. But a good while back, perhaps in the days of 1.3/1.4. I spent a little time in an outback system where the pirate faction there was at war with another one. How had that state actually occured without players? I looked at the traffic report over several days. Nobody but me, and I hadn't done anything to affect the BGS in that system.

Maybe its not something that happens automatically due to some simulated action, but maybe just some factions are in some borderline states, and if FD tweak something, or a player just passes through and tips the influence of a faction slightly, it could be enough to kick something off.

 

[Privata]

the biggest issue I see with the BGS is that pirate factions only get exterminated by players. Most high influence pirate factions I saw when the game launched are dead today. Eventually, there wil be no more pirate factions.

Thats what scares me.
NPCs should have an effect on the BGS.

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They can't be killed off. A faction can never be removed from its home system. They can lose control. Besides, out the on rim, still plenty of anarchy factions in control. The center is becoming more civilized though... well, kind of.

As for OPs question, i always thought not. But a good while back, perhaps in the days of 1.3/1.4. I spent a little time in an outback system where the pirate faction there was at war with another one. How had that state actually occured without players? I looked at the traffic report over several days. Nobody but me, and I hadn't done anything to affect the BGS in that system.

Maybe its not something that happens automatically due to some simulated action, but maybe just some factions are in some borderline states, and if FD tweak something, or a player just passes through and tips the influence of a faction slightly, it could be enough to kick something off.

Intresting. maybe the BGS works on its own when the number of players in a region is very small.
I hope FD can tell us , but I dont think they will

 

[jimbeau1571]

They said that it was due to unseen players (being in solo , private or in open) playing the game and reducing the influance of a faction

Which we all said was 'horse***t' as the traffic reports all showed nil activity. And to reduce it by 0.3 each day, and for that 0.3 to be split equally to the other 3 faction (0.1 each).

 

[goemon]

reposting bits of the ongoing discussion of the BGS thread upon this:

from a BGS-"manipulating" perspective there shouldn't be NPC from non-controlling minor factions trading in stations/systems at all ... but there are, plenty, spawning.

now, we know from various sources, that without players visiting a system no NPCs are spawn... we also know that NPC activity doesn't influence a system. but we also do know, that the BGS is moving influence and states in a system without players influence, very slowly, much more stabile then with player influence, but still a changing background. i did monitor some systems without player activity, beside myself docking doing nothing.

i think, there is something like a wator-simulation running in the background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa-Tor). and that simulation got new conditions which lead to outbreak.

Something's going on. Why would a single faction in a system suddenly go into famine? We experiences a Bust last week for no reason that I could see. A Wat-or simulation would be a very sophisticated feature of the Elite universe - more likely that changes are introduced via RNG, given FD's history. And we all know what happens when your number's up.

The Wa-Tor simulation requires an RNG!

It would be awesome if FD had introduced something like this. However, I doubt it for two reasons:

1. If they had, they would have told us - it would be something to be proud of, and to my knowledge the first time that truly emergent gameplay was actually coded into a consumer title.
2. Small drifts have been recorded since players started tracking influence and states in systems.

Alternatively, perhaps the devs included some iterative code to make the bubble seem more "alive," and after an indeterminable number of iterations (ticks), the tiny differences combine to produce states seemingly ex nihilo. The butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon really does lead to twisters in Texas. In other words, the devs introduced emergent behaviour into the BGS unintentionally (which is potentially more awesome.)

Unless your traffic is zero, then someone is doing something.

Here's and experiment....find a small, system that will be easy to influence...that has no traffic. Then just watch the numbers and see if there is any movment. There shouldn't be...since the system will have no changes.

Now do the same thing and change something...and then sit back and watch.

What you should see is that the change continues onwards, until the system returns to its original resting state...the larger the disruption the longer it takes to get back to the original state.

This SHOULD be how the game works, as per the 60,000 player hour video...<shrug>

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I like this idea...a system of simple things that bring about unexpected results...because of small coding errors...

True, but within a modest set of rules. I suspect the FD version is just a table of potential events, each triggered if a single RNG throw produces a number within a narrow range. Does it need to be more complex?


Love the idea. I would have expected that if FD had limited ED to the BGS - a sophisticated version of Civilization - a single facet with a lot of depth and subtlety.

With so many different facets, increased complexity introduces the possibility of contamination as the facets communicate. Every time you make a change you risk the chance of a minor change adversely affecting the behaviour of another facet if you don't have iron-clad controls over each routine. Unexpected behaviours with difficult-to-identify sources could be rampant - some bugs would never be tracked back to source. You would lose control of the software.

Who would release code like that?

Of course, I'm not being entirely serious here.

Since the end of the Influence drift towards the average, I can't say I've seen anything like this except for the Commodities markets. We have systems nobody has been in for over a month and the figures are unchanged, remaining as they were following the last activity.

I quite enjoyed the Influence decay: it meant a lot of work, but it hinted that there was life going on even if you couldn't observe it directly.

And at least it told you that the tick had occurred.

 

[Privata]

Which we all said was 'horse***t' as the traffic reports all showed nil activity. And to reduce it by 0.3 each day, and for that 0.3 to be split equally to the other 3 faction (0.1 each).

They know better than us. I am sorry but its true , they have the tools and they can see whats going on in the background

On top of that , you dont need to use a starport to change the infulance.

You can :
Bounty hunt
Kill ships
Do missions that use that system as its host.

The traffic notification only tells you who landed at the port , nothing else

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

Hmmm... I remember the moment when the BGS went live some 18-20 months ago during beta IIRC. I was in a station in a Cobra and a dozen T9s appeared and left the station, and a few hours later my nice local trade route was totally depleted. I think that the NPCs you see in game *do* have an effect since that moment.

Players in solo/group mode are in the same galaxy as we, only a different instance. They can also make changes to the BGS

I think players have to much power.
Never mind godlike powers for the DDF members , normal players allready have godlike powers.

I remeber the pitch being we were just as unimportant than NPCs in elite

We are no longer in the 80's and no longer in a singleplayer game. We have no storyline here so we have to write our own story. This is only possible when we ARE able to do and change some things. Nothing to change here. Between the 'power' of players depends on their number, how many follow the same way and the population of systems. It is easy to change things in a system with 2.500 inhabitants (i already did this) but you will hardly see any changes from a handfull players in systems with multiple millions of inhabitants.

There was no decay , FD debunked that.
Its a shame , NPCs should change the tide of the galaxy

For whom was this game made? For players. Who wanna have fun and change things? The players. If the NPC's would be able to affect the BGS we would never be able to change things or create playerfactions. We would always be still too less to affect anything!!!! It is good how it is!

Thats what scares me.
NPCs should have an effect on the BGS.

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Intresting. maybe the BGS works on its own when the number of players in a region is very small.
I hope FD can tell us , but I dont think they will

The same as above. No NPC influence! And about small number of players and their changes....look to the population!


EDIT:
players in solo/group mode are visible in traffic.

Our playerfaction has a great tool to follow influence in systems. If players don't do anything, the influence freezes and all will go to state (none).
So things like famine/war/bust/boom are always happening through playeractions.
Shooting a pirate from a local faction by passing by in this system can already change things!

 

[goemon]

The traffic notification only tells you who landed at the port , nothing else

the traffic report tells you, how many of a type of ship entered a system.

e.g.: one player in an AspE enters, leaves, enters again: traffic report: 2 AspE
one player in an AspE in system: docking, going to RES, cashing in bounties, than leaving: traffic report: 0

 

[Paineframe]

Thats what scares me.
NPCs should have an effect on the BGS.

What effect do you expect them to have? Every faction has NPCs, so the net effects would all add up to nothing.