"Everything about the background sim"....?

[saremun]

Hi everyone!

I watched the latest video in ED about the background sim but i must say that i was so dissapointed with it for many reasons:

1. everything they said is known and already discussed by the sim community.

2. They didn't give specifices and avoided giving solid informations about many points and questions.

3. This stream was kinda useless because many key feutures will change in 2.1.

and what really dissapointed me the most is the idea behind the design of the Background sim, one of the two Devs basicly said it all that they don't reveal information about the "Background sim" because that is the point of it being a "background sim" but i find that just lazy, so instead of them devoloping clever mechanics and try to understand the need of the community they just hide the information and turn the game into a big testing ground where players don't know whether a feuture is working as intended or just buged..

Some people say that they should hide the information and if there are bugs then they would find them but after how long time?, i mean i have to tell people to do something in game for many hours and days only to find that their effort means nothing because a bug in the "Background sim".

They also revealed that its "hard" to introduce a tool where players can direct the expansion..so that was one more feature which the "background sim" really needs in order to make it a bit more interesting and tactical based but i guess they rather hide information in the background cause its easier.

What do you thing, was i the only one dissapointed with this last stream?

 

[Alex Brentnall]

1) To be honest it was like every other stream they've done in that series. Those streams arn't designed for the players with 30,000 hours in the game that have worked everything out for themselves, they are there for the new(ish) players, those wanting to try something new and also marketing to people who arn't players yet.

2) Yes it would have been nice to get the exact values and code and all the finer details but that'd just lead people to try and push states for the most influence gain or whatever (push to famine to offload tons and tons of food etc) as they currently do with surface mission stacking.

3) 2.1 bit, fully agree timing wasn't great.

Tl: dr - I agree with what you are saying but didn't go in with your expectations so wasn't disappointed.

 

[Ziljan]

Agree with Alex. This is the normal game experience. Learn by doing. A black box sim may be "annoying" to some, but it is also the most realistic way of making a sim with today's limited technology. They can only make it so complex. The more complex it is, the more realistic it is, and the less deterministic it will seem.

Life may have rules like Newtonian mechanics, but rl politics have a way of ignoring the rules. We don't always fully understand why either. So this "not knowing for sure" aspect of ED is quite realistic. Even many rl hard nosed sciences labor under this constraint of constant uncertainty. This is true right down to the nature of space, time, matter, and energy.

On a more prectical note i understand that it's nice to have inside info. But if everyone knew how to become Bill Gates, then the lack of mystery would destroy the illusion and give everyone a fulcrum on which to topple the world.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Hi everyone!

I watched the latest video in ED about the background sim but i must say that i was so dissapointed with it for many reasons:

1. everything they said is known and already discussed by the sim community.

As said above, I don't think it was aimed at us. It was a rather shallow cast for experienced BGSers, but they actually covered a lot of the questions you find about the BGS on the forums.

2. They didn't give specifices and avoided giving solid informations about many points and questions.

Good!

3. This stream was kinda useless because many key feutures will change in 2.1.

A new challenge? They did indicate which things they were talking about would change in 2.1, so at least we have a headstart.

and what really dissapointed me the most is the idea behind the design of the Background sim, one of the two Devs basicly said it all that they don't reveal information about the "Background sim" because that is the point of it being a "background sim" but i find that just lazy, so instead of them devoloping clever mechanics and try to understand the need of the community they just hide the information and turn the game into a big testing ground where players don't know whether a feuture is working as intended or just buged..

Some people say that they should hide the information and if there are bugs then they would find them but after how long time?, i mean i have to tell people to do something in game for many hours and days only to find that their effort means nothing because a bug in the "Background sim".

They also revealed that its "hard" to introduce a tool where players can direct the expansion..so that was one more feature which the "background sim" really needs in order to make it a bit more interesting and tactical based but i guess they rather hide information in the background cause its easier.

What do you thing, was i the only one dissapointed with this last stream?

I rather appreciate that - the devs have been asked for a BGS manual since the gamma test period when it went live. While there are certainly bugs (the devs indicated that proper bugs have been discovered by the community,) they aren't that common and they aren't game-breaking usually. We have factions that have expanded into up to fifteen or sixteen systems - roughly one a month since the game went live, or pretty much the maximum possible rate.

Personally, I prefer that the developers won't give us a manual, and frankly I don't think it would reduce the numbers of players claiming that their systems or factions are afflicted by a bug. In fact, I think it would increase it because players would develop far more fixed expectations about what the sim should do, and they'd kick up a fuss every time it didn't, which would be quite a common phenomenon given how faction states in a system 30LY from the system you're working can affect it. The BGS rewards organisation and a methodical approach.

As for directing expansions, that would fundamentally change the relationship between the player and the sim. It would put players firmly in control of the faction, something I'm against. Besides, you can direct expansions to a certain extent - if you're in three systems, keeping the faction below 75% in two of the systems and pushing it to >75% in one system will cause the expansion to occur from that system. It's not a surgical approach, but it works well if you want to expand in a particular direction.

So yeah, I'm not particularly disappointed by the BGS stream.

 

[Jmanis]

1. everything they said is known and already discussed by the sim community.

2. They didn't give specifices and avoided giving solid informations about many points and questions.

Actually, the gave a lot of specifics. Maybe not the specifics you were looking for, but they confirmed a lot of things that were still speculated on like;
- Expansion occurs in a (roughly) 20 LY radius. If you expanded further than that, you were lucky.
- Confirmed the 15% win margin required for wars, 3% for election/civil wars. That allows players to be certain when conflict victory has failed.
- Confirmed the minimum required influence of a faction to be able to start a war.
- Confirmed the expansion threshold of 75%
- Confirmed the "auto war" threshold of 60%

Go see my post here for more notes: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=193064&p=3771084&viewfull=1#post3771084

None of this was "fact" in the player base at this time. There were a lot of presumptions, but a lot of people had varying experiences, and some had even done these things and not got a result, but weren't sure to bugreport or not. Now there can be some certainty. If you go look in that thread now there's also a big discussion about influence buckets, which is possible based off the dev stream.

If I'm assuming correctly, what you were looking for is "A high influence mission will raise influence by X%, trading will raise influence by Y% per whatever" etc, but that's where their "foreground" sim statement is important to consider. It's not some experiment like you allude to, but while one of the primary goals is to give players a world that reacts to their touch, it's equally important to just create a sim that responds in a sensible way. tl;dr the BGS isn't meant as a way for players to dominate the galaxy, just inject a pulse into it.

In that regard, hiding those sorts of information is kinda important, otherwise it just becomes a case of minmaxing influence effects by players, and the galaxy just becomes homogenous, undoing what the BGS is meant to do.

3. This stream was kinda useless because many key feutures will change in 2.1.

Like? (that's actually a serious question. We know there's going to be a lot of changes, but some of the fundamental mechanics and numbers probably won't change)

Ultimately, I liked the stream and still got use out of it, despite doing the BGS thing for over a year now

 

[A-Train Amick]

Actually, the gave a lot of specifics. Maybe not the specifics you were looking for, but they confirmed a lot of things that were still speculated on like;

- Expansion occurs in a (roughly) 20 LY radius. If you expanded further than that, you were lucky.
- Confirmed the 15% win margin required for wars, 3% for election/civil wars. That allows players to be certain when conflict victory has failed.

I haven't watched through the whole thing as yet, but am interested since we have a pending expansion and you're saying (they said) the radius is max 20 Ly? Or on RARE occasions more than that? My (apparent incorrect) understanding is the range was up to 30 Ly. This new will make that a little easier to examine.

Also, the margin of victory in an Election is only 3%, as opposed to 5%? And I take it that is regardless if the two parties are indigenous to the system or not?

Thanks!

 

[Jmanis]

I haven't watched through the whole thing as yet, but am interested since we have a pending expansion and you're saying (they said) the radius is max 20 Ly? Or on RARE occasions more than that? My (apparent incorrect) understanding is the range was up to 30 Ly. This new will make that a little easier to examine.

Also, the margin of victory in an Election is only 3%, as opposed to 5%? And I take it that is regardless if the two parties are indigenous to the system or not?

Thanks!

- 20 ly was the figure given for expansion radius, yes. The concept of that still being flexible, with 'being lucky' to get a higher radius, bewilders me a little (as the max should surely be higher regardless then? ), but that's what was in the stream.

-i keep eyebrowing the 3% figure too. I actually want to verify it being in the stream, but I'm not in a position to watch all 90 mins of the stream again anytime soon. Again, horses mouth. A figure was mentioned, though imay have misheard. Even then, maybe they got it wrong, given 'livestream' pressure. Re: indigenous comment, i can't remember if it was in my larger notes post, but i think non indigenous factions always use wars, not elections, for conflict

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

If everyone was directly told how to work it the best, it would devolve to numbers.
No thanks.

 

[A-Train Amick]

Re: indigenous comment, i can't remember if it was in my larger notes post, but i think non indigenous factions always use wars, not elections, for conflict

They go to Election if they are the same (or similar) government type, regardless of being indigenous.

Thanks for your response.