Can a cmdr who is supporting a minor faction in a small population system have any affect on the assets (e.g. station types) and/or the facilities within those stations, by working the BGS? I saw a random comment in another thread about anarchy factions taking control of a station resulting in IF legal facilities appearing, and that got me thinking.
Can players affect system assets and facilities?
- Thread starter zipline
- Start date
Assets, no. Facilities, yes, a little, by changing the government which controls the asset.
Black market: requires Social or Criminal ethos faction, also opens Commodity market if not normally present
Interstellar factor: if system security is medium or higher, requires Anarchy faction
Search and rescue: requires non-Criminal faction
Material trader: requires non-Criminal faction
No fire zone/speed limit: requires non-Anarchy faction
And of course the commodity market will have different legal and illegal goods depending on the government and superpower.
Black market: requires Social or Criminal ethos faction, also opens Commodity market if not normally present
Interstellar factor: if system security is medium or higher, requires Anarchy faction
Search and rescue: requires non-Criminal faction
Material trader: requires non-Criminal faction
No fire zone/speed limit: requires non-Anarchy faction
And of course the commodity market will have different legal and illegal goods depending on the government and superpower.
Many thanks Ian. When you say non-criminal faction, which factions are classed as criminal?
Generally, anarchy governments. However, there are one or two anarchy factions which aren't criminal, and one or two non anarchy factions which are criminal ethos.
Apparently.
I've never directly observed it myself.
Thanks cmdr, how is it possible to determine the ethos, is it via in game info or external tools?
I think factions generally belong to certain ethoses depending their goverment types, but there might be exceptions with some PMFs and even NPC factions that were added later.
Related question because I fail to pay enough attention myself: Do the station traffic controllers change with the factions?
Related question because I fail to pay enough attention myself: Do the station traffic controllers change with the factions?
Yes. It has been my primary motivator to start a conflict in some cases.
It used to be in the faction local news articles - at the end they thank their membership, and the wording is ethos-specific. I haven't actually checked one since 3.5.2 to make sure it's still there, though... If it is, that's the easy way.
Otherwise, you can deduce most of it fairly easily from obvious signs in-game (it's not in the journals or similar):
1) If it offers lots of smuggling missions it's Criminal
2) If it doesn't do that, but has black markets at stations it owns, it's Social
3) If it doesn't (generally) have black markets, it's either Corporate or Authoritarian. I've seen some indication that Corporates disable black markets while Authoritarians remove them entirely, but that's hard to reliably test.
Social, Corporate and Authoritarian factions have Elections if the other faction is the same ethos, and Wars/Civil Wars if it's a different ethos. Criminal factions always fight Wars/Civil Wars even with each other. This can be used to determine Corporate or Authoritarian for an unknown faction, if you have one you do know, especially if you have a good history of previous conflicts.
For factions in the bubble, the following will be accurate 99%+ of the time:
Social: Communist, Cooperative, Confederacy, Democracy
Corporate: Corporations
Authoritarian: Dictatorship, Feudal, Patronage, Prison Colony
Criminal: Anarchy
Theocracies in the bubble are either Social or Authoritarian - as far as I can tell, the older Theocracies (most NPC) are Social and the newer ones (most PMF) are Authoritarian.
This can't be relied on for non-bubble factions hand-edited in by Frontier - Colonia is very different, and Explorers' Anchorage has five democracies (3 Social, 2 Corporate) at it, for example.
Wow, thanks so much Ian, that is a massive help, much appreciated sir.
1) System wealth. Long period of boom can result in more outfitting options opening up over time, but over really long periods. Makes it kind of hard to monitor since this is on length of months.
2) New assets do not generally appear unless its part of a major update to the game. e.g. space installations. Megaships have an itinerary of where they jump next. Some rare cases of expanding into a new, prior uncolonized system generates surface installations.
2) New assets do not generally appear unless its part of a major update to the game. e.g. space installations. Megaships have an itinerary of where they jump next. Some rare cases of expanding into a new, prior uncolonized system generates surface installations.
Thanks cmdr. To me, this should be a big part of how the BGS works. We affect the state of systems and that has consequences e.g. boom results in population growth which results in more stations, more facilities, etc, and famine results in population decline, with other consequences e.g. abandoned settlements, etc. It is encouraging to hear that some of this may be happening over time, but discouraging that it is rarely observed.