Feature Request: Missions should bias towards targetting the same faction

[Nightstorm]

Hi all,

I'm sure this must have been brought up many times before. The Crimson State Group has 11 controlled systems, and a couple more that we're working on taking over. Since the systems are relatively close, we often see missions that deliver to one of our other systems. But right now I'm guessing that there's only a one-in-seven chance that the target faction will be also Crimson State Group.

We're always thrilled when it does happen:

Spoiler

And our hearts sink a little when we realise we've done ourselves harm:

Spoiler

It doesn't feel like it would take much intelligence on the part of the mission server to bias positive missions to the same faction if it exists in the target system, or another one (especially the one with the highest influence!) if it's negative. The NPC text could reflect this, mentioning that it will boost our influence in the target system or that it will keep our rivals under control. This would make it feel a bit more natural, like the missions were created by the faction rather than by RNGesus. And it would honestly be much more fun to hop from system to system doing good work for your faction!

Are there unintended consequences I'm not seeing here? It would create a positive feedback loop, pushing player factions to grow more quickly. But surely that could be balanced somehow.

 

[sirius42]

Yes it can be very frustating if you are doing missions for your faction within your systems and push other factions because they are the mission target besides that it is very unrealistic that a faction gives out missions that help to gain influence for their rivals in the same system.

 

[Jmanis]

You gotta do business somehow. It can't always be taking money from your left pocket and putting it in the right pocket.

Just remember, factions are *not* generally antagonistic to each other, unless they're explicitly at war (or Criminal Ethos, and that's reflected in their mission availability).

Commanders who support a particular faction may see other factions as "The enemy"... but commander's don't actually have a say who is an enemy and a friend in the eyes of that faction, as much as there's a (false) perception that they do/should. Factions do business with each other just like "the real world".

For example, a system may have a Corporate and a Democratic faction in it. This is a bit like, say, the governing party of a country, and a big business like Amazon. There's no reason, unless they're literally at blows with each other, they shouldn't/wouldn't work together where mutually beneficial.

 

[Nightstorm]

You gotta do business somehow. It can't always be taking money from your left pocket and putting it in the right pocket.

Just remember, factions are *not* generally antagonistic to each other, unless they're explicitly at war (or Criminal Ethos, and that's reflected in their mission availability).

Commanders who support a particular faction may see other factions as "The enemy"... but commander's don't actually have a say who is an enemy and a friend in the eyes of that faction, as much as there's a (false) perception that they do/should. Factions do business with each other just like "the real world".

For example, a system may have a Corporate and a Democratic faction in it. This is a bit like, say, the governing party of a country, and a big business like Amazon. There's no reason, unless they're literally at blows with each other, they shouldn't/wouldn't work together where mutually beneficial.

I certainly appreciate that. But a company (or faction) is likely to source components and materials internally if possible, so some bias would make sense. Our Paitina system is dedicated to extraction, so missions to fetch minerals from there to LTT 4487, a refinary, would make sense. From there to industrial Lugh or high tech Hill Pa Hsi.

It's kind of like the EU Single Market. Why would a country intentionally decide to trade more with the Faroe Islands instead? [noob]

 

[MrMarkusCZ]

I think it is amazing opportunity to introduce another dimension to BGS - relationships between minor factions. Limit it only to neighbouring factions (optimization) and use the similar scale of relations as players have with reputation with faction (Allied, Friendly, Cordial, Neutral, Unfriendly, Hostile). Add slow auto-balancing to neutral position every server tick so players must do missions damaging target faction intensively everyday to keep hostile relationship between mission issuer and target. Always generate balanced set of missions (both positive and negative effects targeting factions near) but add several missions reflecting state of relations as bonus. I like how current mission generator uses economy and state of the faction. With added factions relationships the game can be much more real simulation.

 

[Sapyx]

I have always thought that it would be a good thing if the selection of mission destination target factions was biased towards:
- The same faction that gave the mission;
- The same superpower alignment;
- The same government type (Democracies help out their fellow Democracies, and so forth).

What levels of bias each of these should have is debatable, or even if it "ought" to be a cascading bias (eg. IF same faction not present AND IF no matching Alignment present THEN bias towards same government type).

As someone who is attempting to actively support about 50 different small Superpower-aligned factions, having a higher probability of "kill two birds with one stone" missions would be good. As it is, I'm frequently having to void otherwise-good missions because it would hurt my favoured faction in the destination system.

 

[Sapyx]

Just remember, factions are *not* generally antagonistic to each other, unless they're explicitly at war (or Criminal Ethos, and that's reflected in their mission availability).

I would disagree with that premise. Simply because there is no such thing in this game as a "non-aggression pact", or "peaceful coexistence" - every single faction in the game would go to War or enter Election with every other faction in the game, if given the chance. As such, I would say that every faction would see all the other factions as rivals, if not outright enemies. "Same superpower alignment" and "same government/ethos type" would be the only possible exceptions I could envisage.

 

[Alshain]

I could not agree more, I was thinking about making this request myself. It might solve some of the issues people are complaining about that was even mentioned in the last patch note.

 

[Jmanis]

I would disagree with that premise. Simply because there is no such thing in this game as a "non-aggression pact", or "peaceful coexistence" - every single faction in the game would go to War or enter Election with every other faction in the game, if given the chance. As such, I would say that every faction would see all the other factions as rivals, if not outright enemies. "Same superpower alignment" and "same government/ethos type" would be the only possible exceptions I could envisage.

I didn't suggest there was "peaceful coexistence" or "non-aggression pacts"... just that they were generally not antagonistic to each other, i.e there was no assessable reason why a faction wouldn't work with another faction.

I certainly appreciate that. But a company (or faction) is likely to source components and materials internally if possible, so some bias would make sense. Our Paitina system is dedicated to extraction, so missions to fetch minerals from there to LTT 4487, a refinary, would make sense. From there to industrial Lugh or high tech Hill Pa Hsi.

You're assuming the refinery and extraction facilities at a given station are owned and exclusively operated by the faction owner.... I also totally disagree that a faction is likely to source components and materials internally if possible. The reality is, much like Sapyx alluded to, there simply is not enough exposure to how day-to-day activities occur on a station.

Were I, say, a coporate faction in control of an extraction and refinery, I would totally provide minerals to my competitors. Why? Because I would (potentially) turn a better profit than refining them myself.
Extracing Indite would have a cost involved (say, 300cr/t). You could sell that on the market (presumably to competitors) for ~700cr and turn a 400cr profit and turn it into Indium. Refining typically isn't a magic process where 1t = 1t, so lets say it takes 10t of indite, which sells for 4,900cr, so that's 900cr profit. But you've sunk 4,000cr profit to get there which you could've made just by selling indite. As well, rather than use those Refinery facilities, you could rent them out, and not only make profit selling raw materials, but also rent out the means to refine those goods... reducing your overheads and turning a bigger profit than you otherwise would have.

Alternately, if you have 10 extraction economies with billion-pop systems, and only 1 refinery economy in a 10,000 pop system, do you expect all 10 of those economies to feed that 1 refinery? Absolutely not.

This is the level of detail the BGS *doesn't* provide, so it's baseless assumption to say a faction should bias itself for delivery targets. The granularity to assess that it should simply doesn't exist.

Even at the superpower level, it doesn't make sense. Wheeling and dealing within your own entity doesn't stimulate an economy, it requires money to be injected from sources other than yourself.

If anything, a faction doing delivery missions to itself should gain no influence. They experience no growth, they curry no favour with externals noting influence is a measure of proportion of the population who support that faction. How do you gain the support of others if you refuse to provide services?

Further, if you want, you can already exclusively ship to and from your faction... just use the commodity market. You gain influence, economic benefit and profit. Missions are not the only way.

It's also worth mentioning... if there's a specific need for goods by a faction, there will be a bias to send to that faction. For example, if a faction is in famine, nearby agricultural stations will almost exclusively have food delivery missions to the afflicted faction.

EDIT: Take for example... you have 5 apples and 50 credits. You can buy an apple for 10 credits, or grow an apple for 5 credits. This means you've got 5 apples, and potentially 10 more, so let's call that 15 apples.

Sell 5 apples to yourself and you have.... 5 apples and 50 credits. You've still got a net worth of 15 apples. Sell 5 apples to someone else and you have 0 apples and 100 credits. That's 20 apples. That's growth.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

...But a company (or faction) is likely to source components and materials internally if possible,...

Errr... where exactly is the motive for trade? So your minor faction is a corporation? Then why don´t share goods with another corporation like the ones you cannot produce/mine/invent otherwise? What you want sounds a bit like goddies for your favorite faction all day every day?

I had missions benefiting a minor faction i was at war with in another system a day before? That´s kind of odd...

 

[DNA-Decay]

“Feedback loop”

These things need to be tuned very finely not to escalate into a screaming, tweeter-blowing shriek!

Given some of the crazy edge cases that the BGS throws up I would hesitate to implement this.

 

[Nightstorm]

You're assuming the refinery and extraction facilities at a given station are owned and exclusively operated by the faction owner.... I also totally disagree that a faction is likely to source components and materials internally if possible. The reality is, much like Sapyx alluded to, there simply is not enough exposure to how day-to-day activities occur on a station.

Were I, say, a coporate faction in control of an extraction and refinery, I would totally provide minerals to my competitors. Why? Because I would (potentially) turn a better profit than refining them myself.
Extracing Indite would have a cost involved (say, 300cr/t). You could sell that on the market (presumably to competitors) for ~700cr and turn a 400cr profit and turn it into Indium. Refining typically isn't a magic process where 1t = 1t, so lets say it takes 10t of indite, which sells for 4,900cr, so that's 900cr profit. But you've sunk 4,000cr profit to get there which you could've made just by selling indite. As well, rather than use those Refinery facilities, you could rent them out, and not only make profit selling raw materials, but also rent out the means to refine those goods... reducing your overheads and turning a bigger profit than you otherwise would have.

EDIT: Take for example... you have 5 apples and 50 credits. You can buy an apple for 10 credits, or grow an apple for 5 credits. This means you've got 5 apples, and potentially 10 more, so let's call that 15 apples.

Sell 5 apples to yourself and you have.... 5 apples and 50 credits. You've still got a net worth of 15 apples. Sell 5 apples to someone else and you have 0 apples and 100 credits. That's 20 apples. That's growth.

But you're not selling apples to yourself. You're transporting apples to a pie-making factory, making higher value goods that should sell for better profit per ton of raw material than just selling the apples to someone else. Modern SimCity has a lot of this - start by selling raw, then upgrade to reprocess, then reprocess again, each time making more money per ton of raw resource. Sell the excess, by all means, and sell the things you can't reprocess yourself.

But part of my argument is that it would make playing the game more satisfying, feel like you're helping your faction to grow. Having some missions that say "hey, we need these resources couriering to our depot on Knight Dock, could you do that for me?" would feel good. Sort of the commodity equivalent of clearing our pirates or such. Having said that, pirate missions make no sense either. They seem to pick on a faction in another system for no reason.

“Feedback loop”

These things need to be tuned very finely not to escalate into a screaming, tweeter-blowing shriek!

Given some of the crazy edge cases that the BGS throws up I would hesitate to implement this.

Very true. Maybe reduce the influence effect somewhat. But FDev have no qualms with chucking 1m Cr mining commodities into the game... <shrugs>

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

Very true. Maybe reduce the influence effect somewhat. But FDev have no qualms with chucking 1m Cr mining commodities into the game... <shrugs>

Sheesh! Because you view the game from a perspective of a player in a PMF with all maxed out ships. A new player wanting to explore mining might appreciate these kind of missions?

 

[Jmanis]

But you're not selling apples to yourself. You're transporting apples to a pie-making factory, making higher value goods that should sell for better profit per ton of raw material than just selling the apples to someone else. Modern SimCity has a lot of this - start by selling raw, then upgrade to reprocess, then reprocess again, each time making more money per ton of raw resource. Sell the excess, by all means, and sell the things you can't reprocess yourself.

You are still making a heap of assumptions that aren't necessarily the case. You're assuming making apple pies is worth more as an activity. That simply might not be the case, but you're shaping a game mechanic entirely around a specific scenario, when many, many more exist.

But part of my argument is that it would make playing the game more satisfying, feel like you're helping your faction to grow. Having some missions that say "hey, we need these resources couriering to our depot on Knight Dock, could you do that for me?" would feel good. Sort of the commodity equivalent of clearing our pirates or such. Having said that, pirate missions make no sense either. They seem to pick on a faction in another system for no reason.

I disagree it would make the game more satisfying. It would instead make the game more homogenous and uninteresting. I already feel like I'm helping my faction, regardless of the destination faction. And like DNA-Decay, it would be imbalanced as all heck. A faction already gets significant benefits from owning a station, making them the preferred target for deliveries would be ridiculous.

Again, if you want to support *only* your faction there and back, the commodity market is your answer. Profit, Influence and Economic Boost. Why do you need missions to do that instead? If that were the case, there'd be no point to trading on the market.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

You are still making a heap of assumptions that aren't necessarily the case. You're assuming making apple pies is worth more as an activity. That simply might not be the case, but you're shaping a game mechanic entirely around a specific scenario, when many, many more may exist.

Exactly.

OP: Please try to remember when you were having one tiny ship with 100k credits in the bank. The kind of scenarios you want is not nessecarily plausible for new players.

Yes there are "odd" missions but nothing breaking the game... except for ppl wanting to boost their favorite faction to expansion in 2 missions.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

It´s not that i don´t share you dedication for the game but automated systems do entail unintended consequences. Like the google search algorythm leading to flat earthers believing their fantasy is science. You cannot hand craft every mission. And for my taste there are bigger construction sites in the game mechanics than "odd" missions....

 

[Nightstorm]

Exactly.

OP: Please try to remember when you were having one tiny ship with 100k credits in the bank. The kind of scenarios you want is not nessecarily plausible for new players.

Yes there are "odd" missions but nothing breaking the game... except for ppl wanting to boost their favorite faction to expansion in 2 missions.

If I was a brand-new player, joined a squadron, asked what I could do to help? I'd love it if I could courier goods between my new-found squadron faction's system stations. That would feel like I was really part of an ecosystem.

But it should only be a part of the mix. I've not suggested there should be lots of these, just a bias to make it a bit more common, and NPC text that reflects that the game knows this isn't just any random target faction.

 

[Jmanis]

I'd love it if I could courier goods between my new-found squadron faction's system stations. That would feel like I was really part of an ecosystem.

You can. The commodity market. Nothings stopping you doing that and it achieves everything you're asking for.

 

[Nightstorm]

I think it is amazing opportunity to introduce another dimension to BGS - relationships between minor factions. Limit it only to neighbouring factions (optimization) and use the similar scale of relations as players have with reputation with faction (Allied, Friendly, Cordial, Neutral, Unfriendly, Hostile). Add slow auto-balancing to neutral position every server tick so players must do missions damaging target faction intensively everyday to keep hostile relationship between mission issuer and target. Always generate balanced set of missions (both positive and negative effects targeting factions near) but add several missions reflecting state of relations as bonus. I like how current mission generator uses economy and state of the faction. With added factions relationships the game can be much more real simulation.

Wow, factions having relationships between them? That's a big step beyond what I was thinking. Back before the Lugh Rebellion, we always saw the Fed faction Lugh for Equality as our enemies. It was part of our internal storytelling. If the BGS had been able to react to that, if it learned that our faction had good relations with certain others, that would be awesome. But the BGS would have to be much more sophisticated to do that across the galaxy, and oh, the unintended consequences!

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

If I was a brand-new player, joined a squadron...
...and NPC text that reflects that the game knows this isn't just any random target faction.

Please i do understand how you´re hooked up on this but another very narrow scenario (what new player knows about PMF in the first place?) and the result of automation (you cannot sensibly make all texts fit all naratives)?

Frontier is a multi million £ company working on several projects at once and they shurely don´t read every post. I´d appreciate if you´d channel your energy into one of the bigger construction sites of the game mechanics. If we players join in one thread maybe we can make ourselfs heard? You´re not alone when it comes to dedication for the game but you must agree your problem is a very narrow one: mainly pushing a PMF by funneling as many missions as possible into your faction. Please consider teaming up with an issue improving all of our game experices? The user Rubbernuke suggested how to improve BGS, PP and PMFs two years ago? I definately think his suggestion is worth supporting as it will definately help with your problem as well.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-concept-using-the-BGS-and-player-groups-PMFs