Broken BGS - possible explanation

[TROG111]

FDEV appear to have implemented a mechanism where CMDRs can hand in bounties at any station - i say appear as i do not know if this is a bug or a design 'feature' that they didnt tell us about. And since FDEV continues to refuse to publish the rules/design that govern BGS it will remain impossible to know which.

Anyway, this new feature encourages CMDRs to claim bounties for small factions that appear in only one or two system - previously many would not have bothered to fly to the system to claim them and if they did go to the system or used the Interstellar broker functionality this would be far less frequently and bounties were be cashed in in bulk.

We already know that influence from bounties is based on transactions count and not the bounty value. Therefore, what i believe is happening - and what would account for many PMFs seeing other minor factions in their system influence inexplicably going up - is that all of these new bounty claims are being registered for the smaller factions and generating a significant amount of new influence.

Naturally this is exacerbated by the fact the bounty hunting has become much more worth while - NPC cargo has become more valuable in Res sites, the number of wanted npc ships appears to have increased.

There does seem to be an associate bug also coming into play, since, the bounties are for ships that may not have been killed in the system in which the faction that created the bounty is present. Therefore, while there is an increase in the influence for the faction giving the bounty, the security increase is being given to the system in which the bounty is claimed. So there is no way that controlling faction of the system in which the faction that created the bounty can see an increase in its security - we get these inexplicable increases in faction influence without a corresponding increase in the CF security.

From my experience over the last 4/5 days I would say that BGS is currently totally broken!

 

[TROG111]

One more thought that may be at play here. If the influence generated by handing in a bounty at a station where the faction is not present is shared between all systems in which the faction is present. en this would account for why the significant inexplicable gains are occuring for factions in only 1 or two systems. Where as the PMF which typically exist in 5+ systems are not seeing any significant gains (the influence is being shared between 5+ systems and becomes too dilluted)

 

[Sapyx]

The question would be: where is that influence from bounties being added? Consider this scenario:

Suppose System X has factions A, B, C and D. A Player blows up a wing of pirates in System X while passing thorough it, but doesn't stop to cash in the bounty, which is evenly split between factions A, B, C and D.

Player flies to System Y, notices they can now hand in the bounties they just bought without having to go through Interstellar Factors, so sells them all.

Faction D is only present in System X. Does Faction D still get the influence credit, even though it wasn't sold in a system where D is present? Logically, it should be just like the old IF sales and not affect.

Faction C is present in System X and System Z but is not controlling in either. Which system does the bounty voucher get credited to? As far as we know, the game doesn't keep track of bounty origins, so doesn't "remember" that those vouchers were earned in System X - unless this has changed with 3.3; I think such a major reworking to the mechanics of bounty vouchers would have been announced somewhere in the patch notes.

Faction B is present in System X and Y, as well as Z but is only controlling in Z. Does the bounty go towards the local branch of the faction in Y, or to X where the voucher was earned, or to Z where they are controlling, or is it spread evenly across all their systems?

Faction A is the controlling faction in both X and Y systems, and is present in half a dozen other systems. Where does the influence get delivered in this case?

 

[TROG111]

After a few more days BGS since the update Im wondering if there is another unpublished change to BGS which might also explain some of the inexplicable losses to faction influence.

I wonder if FDEV has implemented a limit on faction influence based on the sector of economy and security that the faction is in. Afer the update all factions were put into the mid sector (i will call this category 3) for economy and security. If we assume there is a limit for category 3 of 40% influence (for arguments sake). Then straight after the update any faction with influence above 40% would have seen its influence drop (inexplicably) - which is kind of what we saw - and no attempt to push its influence up would work until its economy or security categories had been raised.

This is kind of what i am seeing now. Of the 14 systems that my PMFis in, the only ones where the influence seems stable and above 60% are those where the economy and security category has been raised to 4. For the systems where we are still in category 3 for both economy and security the influence dropped but now seems stable in the 20-40% range.

I still think that the new bounty claimable at all stations is have a large impact on influence. But this secondary explanation might also account for the losses straight after the update and what i am now seeing as a level of stability.

 

[Jmanis]

After a few more days BGS since the update Im wondering if there is another unpublished change to BGS which might also explain some of the inexplicable losses to faction influence.

I wonder if FDEV has implemented a limit on faction influence based on the sector of economy and security that the faction is in. Afer the update all factions were put into the mid sector (i will call this category 3) for economy and security. If we assume there is a limit for category 3 of 40% influence (for arguments sake). Then straight after the update any faction with influence above 40% would have seen its influence drop (inexplicably) - which is kind of what we saw - and no attempt to push its influence up would work until its economy or security categories had been raised.

This is kind of what i am seeing now. Of the 14 systems that my PMFis in, the only ones where the influence seems stable and above 60% are those where the economy and security category has been raised to 4. For the systems where we are still in category 3 for both economy and security the influence dropped but now seems stable in the 20-40% range.

I still think that the new bounty claimable at all stations is have a large impact on influence. But this secondary explanation might also account for the losses straight after the update and what i am now seeing as a level of stability.

Not entirely convinced, as i have a freshly expanded system where i have 3% influence... i did a bunch of missions and today it's 2%. System is only a couple million pop... i did a comparable amount of missions and got a change of 5% in a half billion pop system from 39 to 44.

At such a low influence, some sort of increase should've occurred. That drop off ~1% is consistent the last few ticks regardless of my actions.

A theory I'm monitoring is that changes are delayed to the tick after the next expected tick... but not even convinced about that.

 

[Dommarraa]

Maybe.
But there is the underlying bug where some factions in some systems are not getting any influence at all from any actions.
No real way to understand any other changes or bugs till that is resolved.

 

[TROG111]

i havent monitored the tick since the update, however, it used to be the case (when the tick was at around noon utc)any missions done between the start of the tick and the time it wrippled to you systems (sometimes as much as 6 hours) would not go into that days tick and most likely into the next day. Maybe this is still happening, however, I blieve that one of the main reasons FDEV changes the states to be local and not global was to simplify the tick calculations so that they only need to consider the local system and not do recursive calculations across all systems. Therefore the tick wripple should be much much faster.

 

[TROG111]

Maybe.
But there is the underlying bug where some factions in some systems are not getting any influence at all from any actions.
No real way to understand any other changes or bugs till that is resolved.

it was exactly that behaviour i was thinking could be accounted for with the economy/security category limit hypothesis. If the economyand/or security is in a lower category, then influence will not be awarded to the faction until the economy/security is raised to a higher category.

 

[Dommarraa]

it was exactly that behaviour i was thinking could be accounted for with the economy/security category limit hypothesis. If the economyand/or security is in a lower category, then influence will not be awarded to the faction until the economy/security is raised to a higher category.

We are getting no influence in system where we are Investment and Civil Liberty (and controlling faction) which might pop your theory.

 

[Erbaran]

In my opinion there is another problem:
What will happen when the wars end and the frozen influences of the warring factions change?
How will that affect the rest of the factions that have not been involved in a conflict?
Hopefully it starts to resolve with the tick of today December 19