Livestream Discovery Scanner 6 - Reshaping the Simulation

[Arkadi]

... not sure about that botting

really?

Even after Grom was driven from the game by bots?

I don't doubt that there is botting and that it's a problem for the game. I am just not sure to what extent and how far it really goes. Since I have no real idea how much and how intricate botting has become in the game, I refrain from making too many assumption and concentrate my arguing on things, where I know the matter. Also there already is one megathread covering the problem, so I'd rather keep it there. But sure, it's a thing that Frontier should fight.

 

[IPFreely]

I wanna dredger !!!

 

[GormDeGamle]

Finally found the time for watching this yesterday.
Great stream, thanks - please keep this kind of interesting background information coming!

 

[Rebel Yell]

Pirate factions want pirate missions!!!

Pls also clean up the bugs like "mission giver is fac-A, mission receiver is fac-B" and fac-A/fac-B are at war.

 

[Stephen Benedetti]

Greetings Commanders,

Thank you for all of your questions related to our Discovery Scanner stream, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did but, if you missed it, then you can still watch it here. After going through your feedback, we have put together a list of questions with answers from the experts, Dav Stott (Lead Server Developer) and Adam Bourke-Waite (Principle Design Lead):

Why does only the bounty count towards a negative BGS outcome from a murder?
Bounty count is not the only thing that counts negatively towards a BGS outcome; the act of committing any violent crime, murder, interdiction, or assault, has a negative effect for the relevant factions.

Will ATR ever be changed to be more random?
No, the ATR are meant to be a direct response to player actions, rather than random occurrences.

Can Conflict Zones appear anywhere?
Conflict Zones appear as close as they can to faction assets involved in a conflict.

Does FD see Powerplay as an extension/evolution of the BGS or something different?
Powerplay and BGS are two different things that work in tandem with one another.

What's your aim when it comes to balancing the desire of "people playing the BGS" to have a reasonably predictable and controllable system, with the desire of "people living in the BGS" to have interesting things happen around them?
With the changes that we implemented last year with Beyond - Chapter Four, we wanted to move towards making it so that if you backing a faction that had a wide influence, then you would need to deal with all the encompasses, such as multiple states across many different systems. We feel that this, in turn, provides more interesting experiences for those who do not directly engage with the BGS. Ensuring this is balanced is an ongoing process and we will continue making tweaks where necessary.

What's the nature of the relationship between a squadron and the faction they're pledged to? Is there a difference between Player Minor Factions and NPC factions?
By aligning a Squadron with a faction, you're able to receive information about the faction's status and performance across the galaxy. As for the second question, Player Minor Factions (PMFs) and procedurally-generated NPC factions are both treated equally in-game. The two different faction 'types' both work on the same rules and guidelines as each other, the only difference is that one has details that are submitted by the player.

How often does the BGS hamster misbehave? What treats do you feed him when he's been a good little BGS hamster? Can said treats be used to influence him in to increase the impact of trade in the BGS?
We're not at liberty to speak about the BGS Hamster.


o7 Commanders.

 

[Lightspeed]

BGS Hamster confirmed

 

[Misaniovent]

What's your aim when it comes to balancing the desire of "people playing the BGS" to have a reasonably predictable and controllable system, with the desire of "people living in the BGS" to have interesting things happen around them?
With the changes that we implemented last year with Beyond - Chapter Four, we wanted to move towards making it so that if you backing a faction that had a wide influence, then you would need to deal with all the encompasses, such as multiple states across many different systems. We feel that this, in turn, provides more interesting experiences for those who do not directly engage with the BGS. Ensuring this is balanced is an ongoing process and we will continue making tweaks where necessary.

Thank you and the team for your thoughts. What is the ETA on fixing (implementing) happiness-based expansions and a functioning happiness system? It seems to me that the failure of this system, which is central to balancing many of the changes introduced by 3.3 — particularly simultaneous states and expansions — has resulted in a number of negative consequences.

 

[Riverside]

What's your aim when it comes to balancing the desire of "people playing the BGS" to have a reasonably predictable and controllable system, with the desire of "people living in the BGS" to have interesting things happen around them?
With the changes that we implemented last year with Beyond - Chapter Four, we wanted to move towards making it so that if you backing a faction that had a wide influence, then you would need to deal with all the encompasses, such as multiple states across many different systems. We feel that this, in turn, provides more interesting experiences for those who do not directly engage with the BGS. Ensuring this is balanced is an ongoing process and we will continue making tweaks where necessary.

Good to know that balancing is ongoing. The 3.3 changes seem to me (as a lone player) to be allowing large groups to dominate, in an Eve-like fashion edging out the smaller player factions. Faction happiness does not seem to be a factor in this, and maintaining a large region of space should ideally require management of their existing population happiness as a higher priority than simple domination & expansion tactics in my view.

Looking forward to seeing the invasion retreat bug fixed so that the losing faction of an invasion war is removed immediately (and retroactively to return systems to a 7 faction max).

 

[Either]

Greetings Commanders,

Thank you for all of your questions related to our Discovery Scanner stream, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did but, if you missed it, then you can still watch it here. After going through your feedback, we have put together a list of questions with answers from the experts, Dav Stott (Lead Server Developer) and Adam Bourke-Waite (Principle Design Lead):

Firstly, thanks for the livestream and for continuing to provide answers to our questions. It’s HUGELY appreciated by everyone who plays the strategic layer of Elite whenever we get more information.

So, my question to the Dev Team.

Is the effect on a factions influence in a system calculated purely based on an a credit value for that action?

Ie if 5M credits in trade profit are earned, does it matter if I do this in a single 5M credit transaction, or I do it in five 1M credit transactions, or if 10 commanders each do five 100k credit trades?