ED Background Simulation - Large Faction Influence Swing Mechanics

This also explains why mining has such a massive influence shift when done on its own and then sold in anohter system. As there is a 0 base cost and then x profit for minerals mined, that does explain a few things ( and i would hazard that selling mining cargo one unit at a time)

yes, for mining being pure profit, the influence (as well as the reputation) effect of mining is very huge - but i don't think that tht provides any problem.
 
it seems the maximum swing you can archieve to a faction with negative trading is just under 10%/tick max.

you need about 700t/15 mil population. that will put the faction into bust at the next tick (as long as there is no counter).
but... if you do another run with the same amount while that faction is in bust, it doubles the amount of %/tick.

to put that into other words: 2 ticks effectively drop a faction 30%.... 50 in 3.
 
it seems the maximum swing you can archieve to a faction with negative trading is just under 10%/tick max.

you need about 700t/15 mil population. that will put the faction into bust at the next tick (as long as there is no counter).
but... if you do another run with the same amount while that faction is in bust, it doubles the amount of %/tick.

to put that into other words: 2 ticks effectively drop a faction 30%.... 50 in 3.

does this work with bulk/larger batches? or just with 1T no demand - selling for a loss?

i assume, that#s legal tarde, not black market?
 
buying bulk, selling 1t at a time with profit - unsignificant effect altough i got some interference. needs more testing.
buying bulk, selling 1t at a time with loss - no effect at destination but a small gain at the source
buying 1t at a time, selling 1t at a time with profit - huge gain at the destination, some gain at source
buying 1t at a time, selling 1t at a time with loss - huge drops at destination, some gain at source

This does not quite make sense... the result at the destination depends on how you buy at the source? Did you repeat the tests?
 
normal trade, no blackmarket. and its quite essential to buy 1t and sell the same way. larger batches seem to count as a single transaction, thus lowering the effect quite alot.

and yes, repeating the tests since saturday and i can 100% reproduce even with active traffic/counter in the systems.

the confusing part is that selling to a blackmarket, getting the commodities batch or 1t/time doesnt seem to matter. for normal trade it certainly does.
 
it seems the maximum swing you can archieve to a faction with negative trading is just under 10%/tick max.

you need about 700t/15 mil population. that will put the faction into bust at the next tick (as long as there is no counter).
but... if you do another run with the same amount while that faction is in bust, it doubles the amount of %/tick.

to put that into other words: 2 ticks effectively drop a faction 30%.... 50 in 3.

I'm intrigued to know more about the system/faction you put into bust with loss trading. Black Market trading overwhelmingly causes economic bust, however it's certainly not the only thing.

But with that in mind, with all the testing I did on 1t trading back in (whenever that bug report happened), it never put a target faction into economic bust, and some of my targets were as small as 15,000 pop'n and as large as 20 mil, with trade amounts in excess of 1000t. I got drops of up to 40%.

That said, I'm skeptical about a 10% "cap" trading effects; this would break the influence bucket model quite severely. Loosening and tightening of the rubber band between patches so to speak is one thing, but completely different mechanics is a whole other bag. I'd suggest you're looking more at the effect of diminishing returns .
 
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I'm intrigued to know more about the system/faction you put into bust with loss trading. Black Market trading overwhelmingly causes economic bust, however it's certainly not the only thing.

But with that in mind, with all the testing I did on 1t trading back in (whenever that bug report happened), it never put a target faction into economic bust, and some of my targets were as small as 15,000 pop'n and as large as 20 mil, with trade amounts in excess of 1000t. I got drops of up to 40%.

That said, I'm skeptical about a 10% "cap" trading effects; this would break the influence bucket model quite severely. Loosening and tightening of the rubber band between patches so to speak is one thing, but completely different mechanics is a whole other bag. I'd suggest you're looking more at the effect of diminishing returns .

The bust is the one thing I can confirm. Sold a boatload of slaves at the BM, next day pending bust.
 
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The bust is the one thing I can confirm. Sold a boatload of slaves at the BM, next day pending bust.

i can confirm that for black market trade, too.

concerning the 1t buying AND selling - if this is really necessary to produce the effect, i could imagine that was fdevs hotfix for the 1 t - trading exploit ... game stores purchase place and price since a very long time. interesting. it would also explain why other people see no effect - it is even more crazy to buy 1t at a time than sell it 1t at a time.

also, negative trading ("biowaste bombing") was patched out since 2.1. - this very much reads as if it is back with 2.3.
 
ok, another test: 11.4 BIL(!) population, some traffic, 10 mil bounties cashed in.

traded negative with the leading faction and positive with the second faction, 3 runs each, 720t. one lost roughly 3% while the other directly gained that 3%. the other factions stayed the same (+- .1%)
tbh, i didnt expect any movement regarding that it is a such high population system... only shows how effectiv this "mechanic" is.
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(sorry ifred, but after you said it doesnt work, i had to make my point clear)
 
1 T trading DOES work.

Did it last tick.

System info:

Population: 21 million
Traffic: 38 ships
Bounties: 350K last 24 hours

Delivered 1,965 tons at an avg loss of -1,376 credits per ton

Bought in 1x1x1 at source...sold 1x1x1 at destination.

1 tick dumped controlling faction 11%.

Not uber scientific, but no other reason can be accounted for this large drop happening.

Could you repeat the test selling the same value in larger transactions to provide a comparison?

Also, given that there was traffic of 38 ships, this cannot be considered a clean BGS test. I can think of at least 2 other BGS mechanisms that could account for such a drop even with so little traffic.

That is not to say that the effect is not there and real, but with such traffic other causes cannot be ruled out. For proper BGS testing you need to undertake it in a zero traffic system (or as close as possible).

But this looks bad.

- - - Updated - - -

so i got some time to do some testings... (all in around 15mil pop. systems)

buying bulk, selling 1t at a time with profit - unsignificant effect altough i got some interference. needs more testing.
buying bulk, selling 1t at a time with loss - no effect at destination but a small gain at the source
buying 1t at a time, selling 1t at a time with profit - huge gain at the destination, some gain at source
buying 1t at a time, selling 1t at a time with loss - huge drops at destination, some gain at source

but now the game breaker:
buying bulk, selling 1t at a time to black market with profit - massive drops at the destination, so much that it cant even be countered by the same amount of normal 1t trading

it does not work with factions being in war/civil war.

i did even some tests in very high traffic systems with >50mil bounties handed in and i could still drop influence by almost 10% per tick.

whoever called early on may need to test again. this explains the mess in our previously owned systems fully. a single person with a python can outdo 20+ ppl running missions, bounty hunting and trading with one run... fix please?

This looks very bad.

it does not work with factions being in war/civil war.

Right, its important to highlight that certain faction wide state effects negate the influence effects of trading. When testing make sure that there is no active state.

Hell, some states double the effect of trade.....

[video=youtube;1Isjgc0oX0s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Isjgc0oX0s[/video]
 
Could you repeat the test selling the same value in larger transactions to provide a comparison?

Also, given that there was traffic of 38 ships, this cannot be considered a clean BGS test. I can think of at least 2 other BGS mechanisms that could account for such a drop even with so little traffic.

That is not to say that the effect is not there and real, but with such traffic other causes cannot be ruled out. For proper BGS testing you need to undertake it in a zero traffic system (or as close as possible).

But this looks bad.

- - - Updated - - -



This looks very bad.



Right, its important to highlight that certain faction wide state effects negate the influence effects of trading. When testing make sure that there is no active state.

Hell, some states double the effect of trade.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Isjgc0oX0s



Surely you will enlighten us to the other two mechanics that you believe could have caused such a drop.
 
Don't get me wrong, It would be a hell of a coincidence if someone else was doing these activities at the same time as your test. My point was that given the traffic the test wasn't entirely clean.
 
ok, another test: 11.4 BIL(!) population, some traffic, 10 mil bounties cashed in.

traded negative with the leading faction and positive with the second faction, 3 runs each, 720t. one lost roughly 3% while the other directly gained that 3%. the other factions stayed the same (+- .1%)
tbh, i didnt expect any movement regarding that it is a such high population system... only shows how effectiv this "mechanic" is.
(sorry ifred, but after you said it doesnt work, i had to make my point clear)

Noting here that I do think 1t trading is actually still alive functional, your test results aren't correct (or possibly have found a bug) for a couple reasons

- An action which confers an influence drop on a faction will distribute that loss across all factions "evenly". Will explain what "evenly" means in a sec. (Similarly, an action to gain influence takes it from all other factions "evenly"
- I've just checked out the other factions in that system. In your first shot that is 60.2, 13.9, 7.9, and, looking at todays influences for the other factions, they're all around 6%(6.3,6.2,5.6). So for the non-dominant factions, lets say their influences were 14,8,6,6,6.
- This is roughly^ a ratio of 2:1:1:1:1:1, which is how the influence *should* be distributed on a loss action.
- What this means is the impact of your 1t trading, as a loss action, if it were 100% responsible for that 3% loss, should have been -3% for Secret Billionaires, =~ +0.9% for "I Carinae" Power Corporation and +0.45% for "Labour of I Carinae" and each of the other three factions out of shot.
- The above *didn't* happen... almost all the loss for Secret Billionaires went over to I Carinae Power Corporation. This means something else was going on, and it wasn't just your 1t trading.

With a high population system like this (11.5 billion), having worked similarly large systems before, what's more likely to have occurred is a combination of your 1t trading and influence bucket normalisation. Changes of up to 3% are possible as a result of this effect, especially in high population systems where an individuals activities have much less effect (because bucket sizes are much larger).

Again, I think 1t trading as an function still exists, just this doesn't necessarily demonstrate it existing.

On the flipside of all this, having been back in the saddle recently, I've noticed running missions is having a much bigger impact on the system I'm doing them in than usual (gains of =~7% where I could only get 2-3% for a similar amount of effort previously. It's highly possible that some tapering thresholds have been removed/relaxed in the last patch, which would explain why we're seeing bigger influence swings.

^ Rough numbers to save calculators and stuff and to keep it simple. Deviations would be in the order of around +- 0.075% influence.
 
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Ive run the same tests in empty systems and im actually seeing the results as reported, so its actually a go ( was state netural - boom was and still is pending)
 
i think i give up.... putting less effort into denying the whole thing and a bit more in just testing yourself would help...

but thanks for not reading my post. i said i did the same amount of work for both factions. one positive, one negative. if i only did the negative, you'd see one down arrow and all others up the next day.
 
i think i give up.... putting less effort into denying the whole thing and a bit more in just testing yourself would help...

but thanks for not reading my post. i said i did the same amount of work for both factions. one positive, one negative. if i only did the negative, you'd see one down arrow and all others up the next day.

all good henry we know it works, ive spoken to others and yes this is a working as intended thing until Fdev actually make a comment, so keep spreading the word it has uses beyond just mere single system influence. Its quite possible to go around key storyline locations from the last 2 years and cause a lot of havoc :)
 
i think i give up.... putting less effort into denying the whole thing and a bit more in just testing yourself would help...

but thanks for not reading my post. i said i did the same amount of work for both factions. one positive, one negative. if i only did the negative, you'd see one down arrow and all others up the next day.

nobody here is denying. all the people are asking for is "clean" testing, before assuming this or that mechanic - most of the people here are actually trying to help your cause by giving hints how to conduct a clean test. and most of the people here have run a lot of tests by themselfs - only, not at the very moment.

so basically take some system with a station 40k ls - 200 k ls and zero traffic, sell with your 1t mechanic, note all influence changes, sell without 1t mechanic, note influences, sell again with 1t mechanic, file bugreport.

criticizing the test design is not critizising the test result at all. i think, we are all driven here but wanting to know "the truth".

@dynamicbob. great! please share numbers :)
 
i think i give up.... putting less effort into denying the whole thing and a bit more in just testing yourself would help...

but thanks for not reading my post. i said i did the same amount of work for both factions. one positive, one negative. if i only did the negative, you'd see one down arrow and all others up the next day.

Going into work so i can't reply fully, but don't mistake my post for saying this doesn't exist. I'm actually trying to help improve your experiments, and I'll be doing my own soon to try and work it out.

Equal trading (loss for one faction, gain for another) will still result in uneven results.

The loss to the biggest faction will be distributed to the smaller factions on as 2:1:1:1:1 like i mentioned before.

The increase in your faction would hit the larger faction disproportionately. Power would take from the other factions on a ratio of 10:1:1:1:1. What this means is that you shouldn't see a balanced transfer, but the losses suffered by the main faction would be much higher than your gains. If you gained 3%like that, they're losses would be more like 4-5%.
 
I wonder what Frontiers reasons for implementing a per transaction mechanism versus a total volume mechanism ( given the latter ties in with supply/demand and population mechanisms)

It could just be another stop gap mechanism until braben devotes development resources to realy re working the BGS into the glorious beast it should be ..... but still - anyway now i know it works its time to turn the galaxy upside down.
 
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