Community Goal Extensions - 29/04/2022

[xzanfr]

Well, the information on how many participants and what quantity of actions were carried out for those CGs is publicly available through Inara and other sources - why not have a go for the next one? (Seriously, it's good fun)

I'm not sure it'd be much help in this case: there have only been two Thargoid Combat Bond CGs in the current plot, and both were a while ago (specifically, before the rebalance in bond payouts for Thargoids!)
- Coalsack, 16 November 3306: 80B bonds in four days
- Witch Head, 21 October 3306: 80B bonds in six days
Prior to that the last one was on 17 March 3304: 3.5B bonds in three days - but that of course was before a lot of the larger Interceptors, or most of the anti-Thargoid weapons, were available, so hardly comparable at all.

So this one has done - for the three CGs combined - 433B bonds in five days. I'm not sure that was necessarily predictable given a baseline of three CGs, all of which were in very different circumstances.

FD know how popular AX combat is, how many bonds are gained per hour in normal play and how many bonds have been stored by players. In addition they can see how popular the CG would have been if they ever read the forum so it's not a great leap to have an accurate target.

I do like an extended target as it can sometimes mess up the payment for tiers and they can become very lucrative which is especially handy early on. I am however, not in the slightest interested on doing a CG involving AX combat.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

FD know how popular AX combat is, how many bonds are gained per hour in normal play and how many bonds have been stored by players. In addition they can see how popular the CG would have been if they ever read the forum so it's not a great leap to have an accurate target.

I'd certainly have personally guessed higher than they did too, probably around 500B per CG if I wanted them to be completable in principle based on how AX squadron scores were affected by the rebalance, and probably higher than they currently are if I'd not wanted that.

On the other hand ... participants so far in all three CGs combined, and there will be some overlap, is at most 2686 players with most of the week gone. Last time's routine (under-subscribed, if anything) trade CG had passed that in just 48 hours and finished at 4794. I think it's fair to say that forum enthusiasm for an AX CG hasn't translated into in-game mass participation in the same way that forum lack of enthusiasm for routine trade CGs does, so if they'd used that as input they'd have been way over what was needed.

 

[aRJay]

I'd certainly have personally guessed higher than they did too, probably around 500B per CG if I wanted them to be completable in principle based on how AX squadron scores were affected by the rebalance, and probably higher than they currently are if I'd not wanted that.

On the other hand ... participants so far in all three CGs combined, and there will be some overlap, is at most 2686 players with most of the week gone. Last time's routine (under-subscribed, if anything) trade CG had passed that in just 48 hours and finished at 4794. I think it's fair to say that forum enthusiasm for an AX CG hasn't translated into in-game mass participation in the same way that forum lack of enthusiasm for routine trade CGs does, so if they'd used that as input they'd have been way over what was needed.

I haven't done CGs for a while because I found that I was focussing more on the CG than doing other things to develop my game, so are participation figures routinely that low nowadays?

I haven't visited the CG forums so as not to get hooked in again.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I haven't done CGs for a while because I found that I was focussing more on the CG than doing other things to develop my game, so are participation figures routinely that low nowadays?

It varies.

The Colonia Bridge trade CGs were generally much better subscribed - phase 3 with its popular module reward got 15352+1406 which was a record one-week participant count at the Colonia end by a huge margin, and I think top-3 all-time at the bubble end. Phase 4C was a more typical 5342+358.

The participation figures in general definitely did take a knock after the Odyssey release having been relatively high in the "new plot" before that (which started out well ahead of the average 2018/2019 CGs).

I'd say 4000-6000 was probably about normal for a routine trade or non-AX combat CG nowadays, which is down on pre-Odyssey but slightly better than the usual Beyond/post-Beyond numbers.

AX, mining, other specialist CGs definitely more in the 1000-3000 range for participation, which was generally the case before as well.

 

[Northpin]

You'd be surprised that it's not months of bonds. I was first place in Sosong before the extension and that was 2 weeks of bonds

15 billions in 2 weeks? oh well! that's god damn impressive
Can you share some of it? As in:
winged? solo? is it faster to go for mostly for Basilisks? Are medusas more efficient in terms of credits/hour?

Death in AX Combat is also pretty rare once you are experienced.

I fully agree here, but mistakes do happen
Even the noob me died only when pushing it way too far. It was more like a suicide than a death

But knowing the bonds are safe can allow someone to take some extra risks and push for the kill instead of wasting time to bail out, repair and then come back.
And i bailed out from an AX CZ more than once with hull below 3% - because getting that cyclops or that basilisk in the AXCZ before bailing out meant that i didnt wasted time for nothing (10-15 scouts worth of 600-900k is not really efficient for the time spent in an AxCZ)

 

[Raxiel]

But knowing the bonds are safe can allow someone to take some extra risks and push for the kill instead of wasting time to bail out, repair and then come back.

I know that's true, but so far I've managed to avoid a single death from the Xenos. In an open CZ yesterday that had spawned a Hydra, and whenever it got close (that's often a precursor to me going home without a canopy) I couldn't help but get very anxious that my streak would finally come to an end.