FDEV, question for you with BGS, please answer

It's not the influence or reputation that I care about. We were trying to expand into a new system. Before the January update we were still increasing our economy and security even though the influence was not growing.
 
We have studiously ignored all these new states, and nothing noticeably bad has occured. They are nearly all low traffic, and we already owned the ones that are not.
 
It wouldn't let us recover until 2 weeks after that.
The 2 week recovery time from an Infrastructure Failure has no effect on your economy and security at all. All it does is make sure that you can't get another Infrastructure Failure (or any other Event-type state) happening to you in those two weeks, which is generally a good thing.

It's not the influence or reputation that I care about. We were trying to expand into a new system. Before the January update we were still increasing our economy and security even though the influence was not growing.
To expand into a new system, you need 75% influence in one of your systems, and your economy and security states are not important (other than possibly affecting how easy it is to gain influence, in some cases, but that's very indirect)

If you're trying to expand you absolutely must care about the influence! (Which is why Hutton Truckers have been suggesting trying to expand from Lutyen's Star instead, as they have no intention of letting you get to 75% influence in Wolf 359, and would have to push back on you if you got much above 30%)
 
Purely out of morbid interest, we've been tracking the counts of these new states local to us (>=150ly). The numbers are fairly steady, which at least gives some evidence to suggest that what you're experiencing is not a bug, but an intended side effect of the BGS mechanics as designed.

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didn't know about the 75%, thought it was just based on economy since we were almost to investment
Yeah investement used to be an expansion like state, not anymore, its just the top of the economy slider.

Its a big effort to get some systems to 75% to hit an expansion (some are much easier, eg small,quiet systems)

to expand, your faction needs to hit 75% and usually that ends up being in control of that system
need to be hitting all aspects of the bgs, trade, missions, bounties, exploration data etc

A lot of these new states, effect what is asked for in the mission board, esp in the deliver x, or source and return type missions.

Please do pop around by our discord, we're a friendly bunch, a bit on the crazy side tho.. we have delivered a mug to 80% of the known stations in the galaxy that have a market so far.
Trying not to be too rude here, but you wont be expanding from w359, I would reconsider luytens star., It is your home system afterall.
 
we have delivered a mug to 80% of the known stations in the galaxy that have a market so far.
Trying not to be too rude here, but you wont be expanding from w359, I would reconsider luytens star., It is your home system afterall.

It may please you to know graeme that we also monitor commodity availability and saw The Hutton Mug appear in a few of our stations a few weeks ago :) God speed to you all!
 
I hate to be the guy that states the obvious here..but seems to me another BGS player is working the BGS without having any real idea how.
Wes 7659 - look through this for starters. If nothing more, at least save the charts from this thread, even though they are old they are for the most part still very relevant and very useful
here are 2 more that are also very useful

If you were not aware of the 75%, and no mention anywhere from anyone on how to expand from a system without owning or controlling..
not to rehash, but learn the basics, then learn to test. Don't be dependent on what others try to tell you, being wrong and not wanting to teach tricks is a thing.
And that particularly bad bit of knowledge of the status sliders and inf and how they work.(the only real value on the sliders is the up/down/flat pointers) More to it than that, but during conflicts the number is locked and only the arrows or lack of matters, the rest of the time you can figure it out easily enough.
FWIW, once your factions INF hits 75%, next day should be pending expansion, only being below 75% and never reaching 75% will prevent expansion from pending, then eventual.

The most useful tools start with information. Sounds like you have next to zero.

Happy to help, prefer you have some better idea than you currently have though, so read, learn, plan, and ask when you are stuck.
Good LUCK!

o - listen to the hutton advice, always keep in mind " Know your abilities and know your oppositions " don't waste your time on Goliaths until you know exactly what you are doing and how to do it with correct and accurate information and hopefully some very useful experience.
 
Use the large BGS section in the CODEX, it is created by the Devs and explains how the BGS works, with all the needed information.
Every state is listed, with pending times, min duration, max duration, cool down time and what priority the state has over others.
All relevant information on how to manipulate the BGS or run a player faction is listed in great detail in the CODEX.

Oh wait... sorry I dreamt that, it doesn't exist. What a shame.
 
Use the large BGS section in the CODEX, it is created by the Devs and explains how the BGS works, with all the needed information.
Every state is listed, with pending times, min duration, max duration, cool down time and what priority the state has over others.
All relevant information on how to manipulate the BGS or run a player faction is listed in great detail in the CODEX.

Oh wait... sorry I dreamt that, it doesn't exist. What a shame.
A fair amount of BGS information was once provided through regular Galnet articles. After months of complaints, players finally managed to get Frontier to take it out. (e.g. https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/uid/56ea87a79657bac839b3d3dd and similar)

That said, it's fairly clear with the new Event states that they're not supposed to be predictable and easy to cause/avert - and Frontier doesn't really want people to be able to plot out BGS actions precisely on a spreadsheet like Powerplay (not that it stops certain groups).

(The Codex is for in-universe information, so something like "Natural Disasters are caused when a faction loses trade or smuggling ships [1], last for 5 days, and cannot recur for at least 23 days" really wouldn't belong in there. Powerplay's CC model is part of what got it so many complaints at the time about being a board game stuck on top, because it shows what no-one in the game universe should actually be able to know [2])

[1] Or whatever the cause actually is. They are caused by something, though.
[2] Yes, even with that tourist beacon handwaving it as super-advanced sociology.

Every state is listed, with pending times, min duration, max duration, cool down time and what priority the state has over others.
Noting that a lot of states nowadays don't have durations or cooldown, and no state has a priority in the pre-3.3 sense, of course. ;)
 
All good points Ian, though I feel more info inside the codex would help both new and old players of the BGS.
It would also be upto date info, which is hard to find after 5 years of changes to the BGS.

I realise that some of the info would be seen a gamey and immersion breaking, but i think a balance could be reached using some creative lore for why we have such info as 75% inf for Expansion etc.
 
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