Greetings fellow Commanders and hopefully Devs that may see this thread.
I come to you today as part of a holy crusade to get the Power Play Conflict Zones, as well as the BGS in general, fixed to the point of playability once more. I mention both of these things together because from my own opinion, experience, as well as the experiences of my friends, I believe the two systems to be linked, and I believe that linkage is the reason why neither is working correctly anymore in the first place.
And I believe that comes back to why THIS issue continues to come back: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/67320
To be clear, this isn’t an open letter, this isn’t a cry for help, this isn’t a declaration that “we will never play again lol game dead”, this is an offer of aid from the cynical cobwebs that exist within a commander who for a day job has been in customer facing IT support rolls and system administration for more than two decades.
Short, short history of the issues at hand:
When Powerplay 2.0 went through it’s first launch and series of bug fixes (culminating seemingly with the re-enablement of rare matireals and permanent shut down of escape pods for it) we had initially been told that Powerplay 2.0 and the Background Simulation – referred to hereafter as BGS – would not tie into each other for the purposes of how influence works for BGS, and merits for Powerplay. However, we had learned in the months since that update the two systems were not only tied together, but seemed to be inexorably tied together. (this is a simplification of what has been happening but it gets the point across)
Today in BGS:
In a way, this is okay for the most part, but that tying of the systems has also led to many of what is either unforeseen side effects within the BGS (for instance, many systems in what is “loose screws space” (ie: Qama) have run away influence for the system controller that is only in the recent days beginning to cool off, as well as other systems (like Miolia) to go completely bonkers for a lack of a better way to put it, as that system currently has the system controller in a war with two other factions in the system at once (with empty conflict zones). One of these wars even ended with the Loose Screws Network Winning the war against the Pretorian PMC faction…but that faction that lost the war took control of the asset in question instead (Harris hospital). On top of that, the BGS tick would sometimes simply not occur within some star systems. During the war, BGS conflict zones worked for the most part but there were reports of some of them being empty at times. It appeared to be intermittent on the empty CZ side of things.
On the powerplay side:
I personally have been working with LYR against the forces of Archer, but to what is now no success because every single power conflict zone I have attempted to enter against Archer, has been empty of ships. Not just allied, not just enemy, ALL ships are missing. I have also read about and heard from commanders in other powers who have been experiencing the same bug within but not limited to the powerplay of: Winters, Grom, Delaine, Aisling, and Antal. Additionally, I have also heard from commanders and seen with my own eyes that power conflict zones will simply disappear if a BGS war starts in the system, while the power war is still ongoing. While many things on the side of powerplay have been fixed lately (even with a recent patch) this particular issue appears to be ongoing, and according to it’s post on the issue tracker, has been ongoing since November of 2024.
Interestingly, commanders who are in North America can get around the empty Power CZ apparently, by using a VPN that is spoofing it’s location either from South America, or Europe, and while that is all fine and good, that is not something commanders should have to do simply so they can participate in a game loop. This issue also appears to persist when the commander experiencing it is in Open, Private Group, or in Solo.
What I believe is causing both the Empty CZ Issue, and the runaway BGS issues:
Server Ticks. Both Powerplay and BGS Server ticks to be precise.
I believe that both the Powerplay daily ticks, the BGS daily ticks, as well as the Powerplay weekly tick, and BGS weekly tick, are sharing influence between each other.
How I believe that is causing the issues:
Now when I say "I believe", I am literally trusting my IT gut instinct on this, but I believe that the link between Powerplay 2.0, and between the Background simulation is causing all of these issues because of the way influence change works within the Elite Dangers galaxy.
Normally if one wanted to change influence levels for Minor Faction A within a star system in order to get that faction to say, take control of a star port from Minor Faction B, then a commander would run Missions for the Influence Reward for Minor Faction A, or they would do things like attack the members of Minor Faction B to reduce their influence, or sometimes, both. Eventually the changing influence levels from missions and work against Minor Faction B would cause the influence levels of both factions to run into each other, triggering a War between the factions (if the factions are the same government type it would trigger an election but for the purposes of this example we will say a war).
After the war, assuming Minor Faction A won the war, then ownership of the station in question would go to minor faction A.
In Powerplay, you have power X and power Y, both factions are trying to get into and exploit then reinforce a star system. To do that, commanders for each power will run weekly tasks, trade missions, and even BGS missions if they align with that power’s goals to gain merits and points towards system control. Or in other words, to gain influence over the system. If the powers remain neck and neck enough to a certain point of influence points in the system, a war between the powers kicks off in system, and the winner of that war will stay, and gain control (see exploitation / influence) over that star system. Sound familiar?
That’s because it is familiar, the powerplay 2.0 system and BGS system either intentionally, or unintentionally, are sharing influence between their ticks that shouldn't be shared between those two systems, and it is breaking both in different ways.
I believe this is the root cause of all of the issues we are seeing in the BGS, as well as the root cause issue of the empty powerplay conflict zones.
The reasoning:
If PP2.0 and BGS are sharing their influence changes, this explains completely the star systems so many minor player factions are seeing in their BGS where their own influence (at least for a long while) gets pegged into the 90% area and cannot be reduced, because that powerplay influence getting absolutely dumped into a star system would be the explanation for that.
That would ALSO explain the bug where turning in missions for any faction but the minor faction in power for influence, causes that influence to go to the faction in power, because if PP2.0 is in that system, the power only cares about the star system as a whole, and the minor faction that is in charge of that star system, thus dumping the influence to that faction instead of the minor faction it should have gone to.
I believe that those systems sharing is the reason powerplay conflict zones are empty for many North American commanders because when the commander enters the PCZ, the game goes to the server to double check what factions should be in it before generating the instance for the commander and dropping them in. Instead what is happening is the commander goes to drop into the PCZ, the client checks what should be there, gets sent back BGS information, and then drops the commander into an empty conflict zone, because the game doesn’t know what to do with that since it isn’t the information the game expected to get.
This would ALSO explain the bug that has been exploited left right and center, where if a Power CZ exist within a star system, it can be "overwritten" by starting a war between minor factions in the BGS, which by the bug/exploit, push the Power CZs out of the system.
Do I have logs or anything other than my own gut and word of mouth to back this up? No.
Do I have proof of what is happening on the server side? No.
But does it make sense to me? Absolutely.
This issue has been on and off the issue tracker many times at this point and it keeps coming back, and keeps being intermittent, and intermittent issues are always the hardest to fix.
If you are still with me by the end of this post thanks for at least reading the whole thing, I literally have nothing but my gut instinct to go on for this.
I hope this helps any of the developers for the game at all, and all I know is that my IT gut instincts are usually right.
Thank you for coming to my Tin Foil sponsored, Caffeine and Rage Fueled TED talk.
Go upvote the issue on the issue tracker, please.
I come to you today as part of a holy crusade to get the Power Play Conflict Zones, as well as the BGS in general, fixed to the point of playability once more. I mention both of these things together because from my own opinion, experience, as well as the experiences of my friends, I believe the two systems to be linked, and I believe that linkage is the reason why neither is working correctly anymore in the first place.
And I believe that comes back to why THIS issue continues to come back: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/67320
To be clear, this isn’t an open letter, this isn’t a cry for help, this isn’t a declaration that “we will never play again lol game dead”, this is an offer of aid from the cynical cobwebs that exist within a commander who for a day job has been in customer facing IT support rolls and system administration for more than two decades.
Short, short history of the issues at hand:
When Powerplay 2.0 went through it’s first launch and series of bug fixes (culminating seemingly with the re-enablement of rare matireals and permanent shut down of escape pods for it) we had initially been told that Powerplay 2.0 and the Background Simulation – referred to hereafter as BGS – would not tie into each other for the purposes of how influence works for BGS, and merits for Powerplay. However, we had learned in the months since that update the two systems were not only tied together, but seemed to be inexorably tied together. (this is a simplification of what has been happening but it gets the point across)
Today in BGS:
In a way, this is okay for the most part, but that tying of the systems has also led to many of what is either unforeseen side effects within the BGS (for instance, many systems in what is “loose screws space” (ie: Qama) have run away influence for the system controller that is only in the recent days beginning to cool off, as well as other systems (like Miolia) to go completely bonkers for a lack of a better way to put it, as that system currently has the system controller in a war with two other factions in the system at once (with empty conflict zones). One of these wars even ended with the Loose Screws Network Winning the war against the Pretorian PMC faction…but that faction that lost the war took control of the asset in question instead (Harris hospital). On top of that, the BGS tick would sometimes simply not occur within some star systems. During the war, BGS conflict zones worked for the most part but there were reports of some of them being empty at times. It appeared to be intermittent on the empty CZ side of things.
On the powerplay side:
I personally have been working with LYR against the forces of Archer, but to what is now no success because every single power conflict zone I have attempted to enter against Archer, has been empty of ships. Not just allied, not just enemy, ALL ships are missing. I have also read about and heard from commanders in other powers who have been experiencing the same bug within but not limited to the powerplay of: Winters, Grom, Delaine, Aisling, and Antal. Additionally, I have also heard from commanders and seen with my own eyes that power conflict zones will simply disappear if a BGS war starts in the system, while the power war is still ongoing. While many things on the side of powerplay have been fixed lately (even with a recent patch) this particular issue appears to be ongoing, and according to it’s post on the issue tracker, has been ongoing since November of 2024.
Interestingly, commanders who are in North America can get around the empty Power CZ apparently, by using a VPN that is spoofing it’s location either from South America, or Europe, and while that is all fine and good, that is not something commanders should have to do simply so they can participate in a game loop. This issue also appears to persist when the commander experiencing it is in Open, Private Group, or in Solo.
What I believe is causing both the Empty CZ Issue, and the runaway BGS issues:
Server Ticks. Both Powerplay and BGS Server ticks to be precise.
I believe that both the Powerplay daily ticks, the BGS daily ticks, as well as the Powerplay weekly tick, and BGS weekly tick, are sharing influence between each other.
How I believe that is causing the issues:
Now when I say "I believe", I am literally trusting my IT gut instinct on this, but I believe that the link between Powerplay 2.0, and between the Background simulation is causing all of these issues because of the way influence change works within the Elite Dangers galaxy.
Normally if one wanted to change influence levels for Minor Faction A within a star system in order to get that faction to say, take control of a star port from Minor Faction B, then a commander would run Missions for the Influence Reward for Minor Faction A, or they would do things like attack the members of Minor Faction B to reduce their influence, or sometimes, both. Eventually the changing influence levels from missions and work against Minor Faction B would cause the influence levels of both factions to run into each other, triggering a War between the factions (if the factions are the same government type it would trigger an election but for the purposes of this example we will say a war).
After the war, assuming Minor Faction A won the war, then ownership of the station in question would go to minor faction A.
In Powerplay, you have power X and power Y, both factions are trying to get into and exploit then reinforce a star system. To do that, commanders for each power will run weekly tasks, trade missions, and even BGS missions if they align with that power’s goals to gain merits and points towards system control. Or in other words, to gain influence over the system. If the powers remain neck and neck enough to a certain point of influence points in the system, a war between the powers kicks off in system, and the winner of that war will stay, and gain control (see exploitation / influence) over that star system. Sound familiar?
That’s because it is familiar, the powerplay 2.0 system and BGS system either intentionally, or unintentionally, are sharing influence between their ticks that shouldn't be shared between those two systems, and it is breaking both in different ways.
I believe this is the root cause of all of the issues we are seeing in the BGS, as well as the root cause issue of the empty powerplay conflict zones.
The reasoning:
If PP2.0 and BGS are sharing their influence changes, this explains completely the star systems so many minor player factions are seeing in their BGS where their own influence (at least for a long while) gets pegged into the 90% area and cannot be reduced, because that powerplay influence getting absolutely dumped into a star system would be the explanation for that.
That would ALSO explain the bug where turning in missions for any faction but the minor faction in power for influence, causes that influence to go to the faction in power, because if PP2.0 is in that system, the power only cares about the star system as a whole, and the minor faction that is in charge of that star system, thus dumping the influence to that faction instead of the minor faction it should have gone to.
I believe that those systems sharing is the reason powerplay conflict zones are empty for many North American commanders because when the commander enters the PCZ, the game goes to the server to double check what factions should be in it before generating the instance for the commander and dropping them in. Instead what is happening is the commander goes to drop into the PCZ, the client checks what should be there, gets sent back BGS information, and then drops the commander into an empty conflict zone, because the game doesn’t know what to do with that since it isn’t the information the game expected to get.
This would ALSO explain the bug that has been exploited left right and center, where if a Power CZ exist within a star system, it can be "overwritten" by starting a war between minor factions in the BGS, which by the bug/exploit, push the Power CZs out of the system.
Do I have logs or anything other than my own gut and word of mouth to back this up? No.
Do I have proof of what is happening on the server side? No.
But does it make sense to me? Absolutely.
This issue has been on and off the issue tracker many times at this point and it keeps coming back, and keeps being intermittent, and intermittent issues are always the hardest to fix.
If you are still with me by the end of this post thanks for at least reading the whole thing, I literally have nothing but my gut instinct to go on for this.
I hope this helps any of the developers for the game at all, and all I know is that my IT gut instincts are usually right.
Thank you for coming to my Tin Foil sponsored, Caffeine and Rage Fueled TED talk.
Go upvote the issue on the issue tracker, please.
It looks like a total disaster to me...