Compromised Navigation Beacons vs Controlling Factions

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

Hi,

I have a theory I'd like to test, however I'm not that active on the BGS personally (just have a passing interest) and don't have systems I can test this with, so I'm asking for help from anyone who might be able to do something like this relatively easily:

Compromised Navigation Beacons can come and go, and it seems to do this based on a change in the controlling faction of a system. Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...e-compromise?p=5665312&viewfull=1#post5665312

My theory is that every system has some kind of hidden value, and if the controlling faction matches this hidden value, the navigation beacon will become compromised.

The obvious thing would be government types. In the link cited above Orrere was taken over by an anarchy faction, and the beacon lost it's compromised status; once a different government type took over, it went back to being compromised.

It's not strictly about anarchy factions though, because Nastrond has had a consistent anarchy faction in control, and it's navigation beacon has also been consistently compromised.

I'd love to do some experiments and see if this mystery can be solved. It does seem to me that compromised navigation beacons are not strictly random.

 

[Jane Turner]

We've only ever seen (noticed) one go and it was commnist before and afterwards.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Interesting theory. In Colonia, I've not seen any changes in what systems have CNBs in either direction even with governance changes.

Galcop CDC (Confederacy) is probably providing the best natural experiment here - in their five systems:
- they started in one, and still own it, no CNB.
- they took over Ogmar and Saraswati from Cooperative factions, which did not introduce a CNB
- they took over Juniper and Asura from Dictatorship factions [1], which did not remove the existing CNB.

Another system - Canis Subridens - has had four owners so far:
- Smiling Dingo Crew (Criminal-ethos Feudal)
- Radio Sidewinder Galactic (Authoritarian or Corporate-ethos Theocracy)
- Likedeeler of Colonia (Social-ethos Democracy)
- Carpe Noctem (Authoritarian or Corporate-ethos Dictatorship)
It's never had a CNB.

So ... I'm unconvinced that ruling faction is the key here, though I don't have enough data to absolutely disprove it as it could just be a series of coincidences.

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

Hmm. So government doesn't appear to be a direct factor. Thanks for the insights.

Maybe it's simply a random chance of appearing whenever there is an control change, and perhaps different government types or some other factor change the likelihood (which could explain why it seems so few anarchy systems have CNBs).

 

[dAlexis]

Theory may be interesting, but no confirmation from Colonia, as Ian wrote. By the way, I do not remember exactly, but beacon in Pyrrha or Meretrida was NOT compromised 1-2 days after inserting the fractions into systems. Seems 2 me, that one beacon became compromised a bit later. I think, that it's Meretrida - not exact, but I have a strong feeling, that the beacon in Meretrida was OK during 1-2 days.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Theory may be interesting, but no confirmation from Colonia, as Ian wrote. By the way, I do not remember exactly, but beacon in Pyrrha or Meretrida was NOT compromised 1-2 days after inserting the fractions into systems. Seems 2 me, that one beacon became compromised a bit later. I think, that it's Meretrida - not exact, but I have a strong feeling, that the beacon in Meretrida was OK during 1-2 days.

Yes, that's true. A lot of things for newly-added Colonia systems only fully appear after the Thursday server reset - RES are pretty similar.

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

From what I gathered in other threads, the change between regular and compromised always seemed to take a few days - which would point towards the possibility that it only ever happens on the Thursday reset and we didn't connect the dots until now.

 

[NeilKD]

From what I gathered in other threads, the change between regular and compromised always seemed to take a few days - which would point towards the possibility that it only ever happens on the Thursday reset and we didn't connect the dots until now.

A change doesn't only happen on a Thursday. Our Faction took Control of a System with a CNB on Thursday 18 January. The War ended on Friday but the Asset change and System Control changed on Thursday. After the Government change, from Corporate to Democracy, the Nav Beacon was still Compromised. On Sunday 21 Jan we went into Lockdown and the Nav Beacon is no longer Compromised.

I have read that you don't get CNBs in Anarchy Systems - because there is no Law anyway - but if the System is flipped to, for instance, Democracy it will revert back to being Compromised (if it was before the System went into Anarchy.)

 

[Jane Turner]

Lockdown increases security - that's possibly an explanation - lets see what happens when your lockdown ends.

 

[Dommarraa]

We have BH the Hell out of our pet CNB and it has never changed back to a normal, so I dont think it possible to change all. There may be some systems where it is on the cusp and a change of security level is enough to tip it one way or another.

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

I have read that you don't get CNBs in Anarchy Systems - because there is no Law anyway - but if the System is flipped to, for instance, Democracy it will revert back to being Compromised (if it was before the System went into Anarchy.)

With the exception of Nastrond of course, which has been consistently Anarchy and has consistently had a CNB (I've been using it to grind my combat rank for weeks now). Note that it is a permit locked system and may be hard coded.

http://elitedangerous.hozbase.co.uk/bountyhuntingsystems/distancefrom/sol/400 does have a few more CNBs that it lists in Anarchy systems.

I recently checked Pyemmairre and Julung from this list and neither of them have a CNB. I plan to check Gullapites, Amahutii and Col 285 Sector YZ-P d5-127 and we'll see if the "anarchy == no CNB" holds true.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

With the exception of Nastrond of course, which has been consistently Anarchy and has consistently had a CNB (I've been using it to grind my combat rank for weeks now). Note that it is a permit locked system and may be hard coded.

Nastrond can't have been an anarchy from the beginning, as the permit giving faction isn't the anarchy one.

I guess that a CNB would be an advantage for an anarchy faction, as its authority ships won't be there to slaughter.

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

Nastrond can't have been an anarchy from the beginning, as the permit giving faction isn't the anarchy one.

I guess that a CNB would be an advantage for an anarchy faction, as its authority ships won't be there to slaughter.

You're assuming that the permit giver had to be in control of the system from the outset, which isn't necessarily true?

 

[Mangal Oemie]

We manage a patronage that has un-compromised a CNB over time. Just taking it wasn't enough. Once we had multiple assets, it started to flip back and forth a bit, and one we owned 2 outposts and a surface port, it settled in being a regular one.

In another system it sort of flips back and forth, but more recently has stuck on being compromised.

We have never really been able to detect a pattern how it flips, or if the flip can even be controlled.

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

I've taken the list of systems that reportedly have CNBs from mr.Gr3y's thread https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/241872-Finding-Compromised-Nav-Beacons-CNB, cleaned them up and then wrote a little program to query all the government types of those systems.

Here's the results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1flFaAMW61h9hSBnnWQEwms4_gPY8VJo_KBLQNb5x2OA/edit?usp=sharing

I visited Pyemmairre and Julung a few days ago and found they no longer have a CNB.

There's a couple more lists of systems reported to have CNBs which I intend to collate into the spreadsheet and then do a bit of a check over all the Anarchy ones, at least.

If anyone can work out what system "Vukub Huan" is meant to be, that would be great.

Trivia: You can't mention the system "Marya W_ang" (remove the underscore) on this forum.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

You're assuming that the permit giver had to be in control of the system from the outset, which isn't necessarily true?

Good point, and I suppose that they could have started being present in other systems

 

[Ian Doncaster]

This certainly makes me think security level might be the threshold (it would be logical), and different factions have different intrinsic security levels so the system security level can (but might not) vary with who is in control and what state they're in.

I suspect all Colonia factions have identical security intrinsics if so - at least, every system is Medium (Low if War) out here, except for Colonia itself - so changes out here would be unlikely.

An indirect measure of this would be: do CNBs show up more frequently in low security systems than high security ones.

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

This certainly makes me think security level might be the threshold (it would be logical), and different factions have different intrinsic security levels so the system security level can (but might not) vary with who is in control and what state they're in.

I suspect all Colonia factions have identical security intrinsics if so - at least, every system is Medium (Low if War) out here, except for Colonia itself - so changes out here would be unlikely.

An indirect measure of this would be: do CNBs show up more frequently in low security systems than high security ones.

I've added security and allegiance to the spreadsheet for reference.

Also added some tracking columns: still active, and last checked. I'll backfill the data based on the mr.Gr3y's thread later. Happy to give access to the sheet if anyone is interested in giving me a hand.

 

[Jane Turner]

NIce one!

 

[zzUrbanSpaceman]

I can add almost any data that's available from EDDB in fairly easily, so if there's other information you'd like to cross-reference let me know. With a bit more work I can also have it automatically updating based on EDDB daily dumps.