If you haven't joined the BGS discord, you should. This topic has come up there several times and there are a number of proposed reasons for this apparent mechanic. But the BGS community doesn't appear, so far, to be in agreement — so I thought I'd make this thread to lay out my experience in the hope that we can figure out how this works.
Bypassed conflicts are "expected" conflicts that don't trigger for reasons other than blocking states. I have encountered this twice in nearly three years.
First Case: HR 7766, 2.5b
The Praetorian Curiate Assembly expanded into this system on 8/26 with the following influence levels:
Only PCA and Gold Comms are present in other systems. At this time, there were no pending conflicts in the system. We also controlled all other systems we were present in — no blocking states for us.
Our first action in the system was to attempt to push Workers into conflict with PCA. To do this, we put 31 points work into Workers. We expected a pending conflict between Workers and PCA. Here was the result:
As you can see, Workers skipped PCA and went straight for League. How odd. I raised this in the BGS discord and a number of other CMDRs offered examples and explanations. I encourage them to share their examples here.
Second Case: Redacted, 40k
We are still working in this system, so faction names have been edited.
Factions A, B, and C are in conflicts elsewhere. Our objective is to keep Faction D, the only other multi-system faction in this system, out of conflict (Factions E, F, G are native and not present elsewhere). To do this we pushed Faction F, intending to trigger a conflict with Faction E. Work done was 15 points.
Here is the result:
Faction E has been "skipped." Some proposed explanations:
I view these two cases as different in two key ways: population (and therefore maximum influence gained) and the ending position of the bypassed faction, which in the first case remained above the conflict threshold and in the second case ended below.
Bypassed conflicts are "expected" conflicts that don't trigger for reasons other than blocking states. I have encountered this twice in nearly three years.
First Case: HR 7766, 2.5b
The Praetorian Curiate Assembly expanded into this system on 8/26 with the following influence levels:
| Gold Comms | 34.8 |
| Purple | 21 |
| United | 15.3 |
| League | 11.5 |
| PCA | 10.7 |
| Workers | 6.6 |
Only PCA and Gold Comms are present in other systems. At this time, there were no pending conflicts in the system. We also controlled all other systems we were present in — no blocking states for us.
Our first action in the system was to attempt to push Workers into conflict with PCA. To do this, we put 31 points work into Workers. We expected a pending conflict between Workers and PCA. Here was the result:
| Gold Comms | 33.1 |
| Purple | 19.6 |
| United | 15.4 |
| League | 10.9 |
| Workers | 10.9 |
| PCA | 10.1 |
As you can see, Workers skipped PCA and went straight for League. How odd. I raised this in the BGS discord and a number of other CMDRs offered examples and explanations. I encourage them to share their examples here.
Second Case: Redacted, 40k
We are still working in this system, so faction names have been edited.
| Faction A | 36.4 |
| Faction B | 26.9 |
| Faction C | 14.1 |
| Faction D | 9.9 |
| Faction E | 7.8 |
| Faction F | 3.9 |
| Faction G | 1 |
Factions A, B, and C are in conflicts elsewhere. Our objective is to keep Faction D, the only other multi-system faction in this system, out of conflict (Factions E, F, G are native and not present elsewhere). To do this we pushed Faction F, intending to trigger a conflict with Faction E. Work done was 15 points.
Here is the result:
| Faction A | 34.8 |
| Faction B | 23.2 |
| Faction C | 1222 |
| Faction D | 11.1 |
| Faction E | 6.7 |
| Faction F | 11.1 |
| Faction G | 1 |
Faction E has been "skipped." Some proposed explanations:
I view these two cases as different in two key ways: population (and therefore maximum influence gained) and the ending position of the bypassed faction, which in the first case remained above the conflict threshold and in the second case ended below.
