ED Background Simulation - Large Faction Influence Swing Mechanics

We'll have to agree to disagree then I think ;) Add a couple of decimal places to the influence figures if you want to see a eagle pilot making a difference....the point is that anyone starting out in the game wont really be all that interested in the BGS, they'll be busy with earning credits, upgrading ships, ranking up etc, only when they get to a position of having a good trading ship might they actually give a cr*p about the BGS, like most of us here I assume....

this assumption neither meets my "career" (i started working the BGS with an Adder), nor my experience in working with larger player groups - very often new cmdrs assume that they can't help or make a difference, or that they can't help in war, because they have "only" their exploration AspE.... in all those cases they can always help by getting a small trader or a small combat ship, and share the efforts.

actually i pretty much believe that people who like to "progress" in ships are only in rare cases those who like to play the BGS ;-)
 
actually i pretty much believe that people who like to "progress" in ships are only in rare cases those who like to play the BGS ;-)

I'm my experience of working with a group, it is the BGS that drives the need for certain ships as more efficient tools. For instance a dedicated trade ship, explorer ship, murder ship, and murder support ship. In this case the goal is not to get the ship, but to get the ship to be able to do more.
 
this assumption neither meets my "career" (i started working the BGS with an Adder), nor my experience in working with larger player groups - very often new cmdrs assume that they can't help or make a difference, or that they can't help in war, because they have "only" their exploration AspE.... in all those cases they can always help by getting a small trader or a small combat ship, and share the efforts.

actually i pretty much believe that people who like to "progress" in ships are only in rare cases those who like to play the BGS ;-)

Okay, lets look at it another way.....if someone starting with the game really wants to play the BGS first and foremost it wont be long before they get themselves into a trading ship with decent cargo capacity to make a bigger difference.....however I don't buy your view anyway, in the player faction I'm in all the new players (several a week) are always asking about what ship to get next and are working themselves part way up the ships ladder first, maybe helping where they can with the BGS if given direction. Most of the time though only once they've gotten a little accomplished in the game might they look for more BGS faction based activity to get in amongst, by which time they've got a good trading ship sorted anyway
 
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Okay, lets look at it another way.....if someone starting with the game really wants to play the BGS first and foremost it wont be long before they get themselves into a trading ship with decent cargo capacity to make a bigger difference.....however I don't buy your view anyway, in the player faction I'm in all the new players (several a week) are always asking about what ship to get next and are working themselves part way up the ships ladder first, maybe helping where they can with the BGS if given direction. Most of the time though only once they've gotten a little accomplished in the game might they look for more BGS faction based activity to get in amongst, by which time they've got a good trading ship sorted anyway

Working the BGS was never the biggest earner in the game! Again the credits is just another tool.
 
Working the BGS was never the biggest earner in the game! Again the credits is just another tool.

Curiously its good for Elite Rankings (well trade and combat), military progression if you happen to back a minor faction aligned to a super power, and the income is steady - but I agree not stellar. Funded a nice Combat/Trader Python, Vulture and Type-9 for me and 500MCr is the bank. I started with an Asp and our little group did the BGS for about 7-8 months.

Double Elite, Admiral and rich in 7-8 months seemed OK to me, but by modern expectations of progression and income not that great.

Simon

Simon
 
Ah found the video and bug report I made about this a while back.

[video=youtube;ja0P7vl7alk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja0P7vl7alk&feature=youtu.be[/video]
 
FD also intend developing the BGS into something far deeper. Its a never ending task to keep track of all this.

I don't see this happening personally. When they introduced the first Player Minor Factions, they had the opportunity to really play with the BGS and make some radical changes to drive the move forward of player involvement.
Each new major update, it feels like the BGS gets rinsed of any updates that sorted out 'minor' bugs, but we all have seen old ones reintroduced. The latest major frustration (1t) a prime example.
Look at the update to PP in the latest Beta test of a patch .... nothing for the BGS.
The further the game develops, the deeper any issues will become ingrained if they are not fixed making it more likely they will have effects on the new developments if they try and repair later.
A major update to the BGS will only ever come as a X.1 type patch, as the BGS doesn't sell ED. Bells, whistles, coloured lasers and walking around will.

I keep going back to the stream shows on the day Engineers was being introduced, and the commentary from DB, 'I wish more people would play the BGS' or something to that effect. It would be a hell of a lot more likely that people would play it, and stick with it if we had more idea of its true mechanics, if it was reliably stable with following each new major update, and we didn't have to rediscover what the hell is going on each time.
I don't understand why things have to change so radically each time. It certainly isn't for development of the BGS. Because its never (almost) adding anything new, just changes what already exists. The exception was the introduction of Retreat and Investment. And these we added not to develop the BGS, but to stop stagnation occuring (Retreat) and to hopefully correct a failing mechanic (Expansion).
 
By the way, all my tests have shown that there must be a cap somewhere. We were not able to gain or lower the influence for more than 3 %.
 
Some of you may have noticed big swings (6% - 13% drops for The Pilot's Federation per day) in Shinrata Dezhra over the last few days, The Pilot's federation dropped from 72% to 42% in 4 ticks. Some will no doubt be surprised that the effects on Shinrata Dezhra, a 85 million population system with lots of activity. This was achieved by a single commander using 5 cargo loads of goods each day only which is impressive.

All that was done on each of the 4 days listed below was the following, using a trade Cutter:
  • 2 x Black Market runs with 720T (1T at a time) of Imperial Slaves at Gallun's Inheritance (The Pilot's Federation)
  • 3 x Positive Trades with 720T (1T at a time) of Medical Diagnostic Equipment at Puleston Arsenal (The Dark Wheel)

Related post in reply here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...son-Memorial?p=4891227&viewfull=1#post4891227

Here's the first 4 days of screenshots to prove it:

Day 0 Pre-Tick:
kWdYNPT.png


Day 1 Tick:
F3lC5dk.png


Day 2 Tick:
WNjT5ye.png


Day 3 Tick:
ZXGgMWS.png


Day 4 Tick:
GPnJFzI.png
 
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By the way, all my tests have shown that there must be a cap somewhere. We were not able to gain or lower the influence for more than 3 %.

It depends on population. With the same amount (500t) I pulled 10% on a 500k system and 3% on 700M one.
 
It depends on population.

Very much. I have a nearly-untestable theory that the brackets for population vs. influence cap might be the same as those used for CC value in Powerplay.

They are as follows:

<3185
3,185-31,850
31,850-318,500
318,500 - 3,185,000
3,185,000 - 31,850,000
31,850,000 - 318,500,000
318,500,000 - 3,185,000,000
3,185,000,000+

So I've seen a maximum per-faction influence change in 8 billion pop (i.e. the highest bracket) of 3.5% - feel free to correlate (or not) here. If the theory holds and we can determine the maximum for a <3185 pop system, we could roughly know the cap for each population bracket. If the theory holds ;)

Edit: No, I don't know why FDev has a phobia of round numbers, but there are various examples like this where e.g. 3185 or 5013 (fort trigger base) is used as basis instead of a round 3000 or 5000. /shrug.
 
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this mechanism i would think would be easier to apply in low traffic systems ( should be easier to swing with less random opposition). So shaping outer rim areas for creating specific mission friendly gov / economic / state systems which can be exploited for profit ( ie setting up a sector of low traffic space to spawn more skimmer missions while they remain overpowered).
 
Thanks a lot. This is how yiu actually prove stuff.
I wish I could take credit but it's one of my player group members who got on it :) No names will be disclosed hahaha

Lets keep it going the dark wheel needs a lot of help

I think its safe to say that SD is a "safe system" in the BGS - you'll never take it over from the Pilot's Federation.

Yep, they don't trigger a match, we ensured that the pilots federation were out of election in a neighbouring system before bringing them close on day 5/6 and no war state matching took place, FD have excluded the pilots federation from that particular mechanism :)

We can still drop the pilots federation to 0% for giggles if we want though :)
 
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I wish I could take credit but it's one of my player group members who got on it :) No names will be disclosed hahaha





Yep, they don't trigger a match, we ensured that the pilots federation were out of election in a neighbouring system before bringing them close on day 5/6 and no war state matching took place, FD have excluded the pilots federation from that particular mechanism :)

We can still drop the pilots federation to 0% for giggles if we want though :)

That would trigger a coup if the Dark Wheel rises above a certain treshold. Worth trying.
 
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Curiously its good for Elite Rankings (well trade and combat), military progression if you happen to back a minor faction aligned to a super power, and the income is steady - but I agree not stellar. ...

I would probably be highest Alliance rank and eligible to purchase the 1000 Hauler Alliance Cap Ship ..... if the Alliance only had ranks and ships :D
 
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