Hostile from fighting in CZ - no missions taken

[Jane Turner]

If anyone wants to progress the boundaries of our understanding.

1. Work out the cap on bond value.......
Find a war in a backwater system - fight for either side but do not complete an objective/zone. You should be able to get 500,000 out of a Med CZ - drop 500K for one side and say 200 K for the other. It should be a win to the 500K or a draw.

If its a draw, you know the transaction cap is the less than lower value in which case try 200k v 100k and repeat until its not draw, then gradually home in on it (we got as far as 190k = 140k before having 147 simultaneous wars put pay to any possibility of non-vital activity) Since then its been clear stuff has been changing so I'm reluctant to spend the time just now.

If it's not a draw, increase the lower value until you do get a draw.

2. Test v Bounties
Once you know the cap for bonds - try and run 1 bond >cap v a bounty drop until you know the cap for bounties.... To be clear I mean the value at which increasing the value of the drop makes no difference.

3. Test bonds v Objectives
We are currently operating on 1 bond >100 k = one objective (inc a clearance) But its not been tested since beta!

 

[Kaocraft]

I have to say, I'm on the side of "good, it's immersive". You should quickly become hated by a faction that you're actively fighting against in war zones. But I do agree, there has to be some kind of mitigation, particularly in a "entire star system is now hostile to me" scenario.

The "logical fix" to it would be to temporarily add one new dockable megaship per faction that is at war. Let's call them "flagships", because calling them anything else might make them confused with the hopefully-still-to-come squadron carriers, which should also form a second friendly base of operations in-system once they are implemented. Flagships should have basic refuel/rearm/repair facilities and offer missions to support the war effort for the owning faction, including making an "attack run" on the enemy flagship. Once the war is over, the flagships disappear again.

Eh, I still prefer taking bonds and missions out of the equation entirely. Now that we have the CZ scenarios and the progress bars for each side, everything else is superfluous. Let the outcome of the war be decided entirely by winning or losing battles. We don't need a giant coupon sweepstakes relay race on top of it.

I also think that docking while being hostile to a faction should behave exactly like being wanted by a faction. Either the faction can or can't ID you and it either takes a scan or it doesn't take a scan. It makes no sense to work one way for bounties and another way for hostility.

 

[Jane Turner]

Well, this change certainly caused an interesting problem for me. I was fighting in a war for the control of a system, against the controlling faction. Docked at a station, picked up a massacre mission, headed out to the CZs to kill ships, got the mission done but now I'm hostile towards the faction owning the station I took the mission from and can't dock, since the station opens up on me on approach.
So I guess I now have to work FOR the controlling faction in one of the neighboring systems they're present so I can dock and complete a mission AGAINST them.
This change really makes fighting wars become fighting wars with extra steps.

We've perfected having one person with good rep stay behind for the last kill while the rest jump out and dogde the rep hit... our working assuming is that bonds are counted x 4 in a win but the completion is independent of how many are present

 

[Jmanis]

Eh, I still prefer taking bonds and missions out of the equation entirely. Now that we have the CZ scenarios and the progress bars for each side, everything else is superfluous. Let the outcome of the war be decided entirely by winning or losing battles. We don't need a giant coupon sweepstakes relay race on top of it.

I also think that docking while being hostile to a faction should behave exactly like being wanted by a faction. Either the faction can or can't ID you and it either takes a scan or it doesn't take a scan. It makes no sense to work one way for bounties and another way for hostility.

I wouldn't mind missions counting, though yes, they'd have to count probably for 1/10-1/4 of a Low CZ for me to be happy.... they're available to both sides (now...), and for me it makes sense that things like "Wartime Surface Scan", "Strategic Data Deliveries" and the supply of weapons/armour would actually help the cause. Even massacre missions are different from combat bonds... the former being a specific request to thin out enemy forces (possibly for some planned strategic outcome), versus simply being paid for a non-specific request.

I figure part of the problem though is that we can now get missions from multiple states, so if a faction was at War and Boom, you'd see a "Wartime Surface Scan" and an "Economic Data Recovery" or whatever the flavours are called. Wartime one should count, economic one shouldn't, and I don't think the game can differentiate that.

If I had to put values to actions, I'd say something like:

• Missions: 0.25 per plus (as it currently is)
• Scenarios: 2
• Low: 8
• Med: 16
• High: 32

 

[Lee Taylor]

Honestly this isn't a huge problem. If the controlling faction has spammed into other systems, you can quite easily grind rep by turning in bounties there. You only need a little rep to get out of out of the hostile zone- then, if you want, you could sell exploration data with 20 million or so to get your rep up quite high. Less than two hours work, really, and it should last you for days.

Even then, you don't really need to drop bonds. You can smash out a medium CZ in a quarter of an hour for ~two BGS points, and some times those CZs are so far away from the nearest large pad it's not even necessarily with your time to go and redeem them anyway before carrying into the next CZ.

Let's be clear here- in an unopposed war, you only need to drop one bond or complete one CZ to win for the day- opposed, you only need to do more work than your opponent. So, it really comes more down to time multiplied by people.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

I have the feeling that the rep degradation has been reduced, to 1/2 or less of what it was. I may have to properly count, but I seem to be able to do more victories now than even a week ago, with reputation dropping slower.

Nothing a few mapped ELWs or Ammonia worlds can't handle. So I think this is now much less of an issue.

 

[Ulon Yuanshi]

Well, it's still an issue.

 

[Jmanis]

I have the feeling that the rep degradation has been reduced, to 1/2 or less of what it was. I may have to properly count, but I seem to be able to do more victories now than even a week ago, with reputation dropping slower.

Nothing a few mapped ELWs or Ammonia worlds can't handle. So I think this is now much less of an issue.

So, I'm deliberately tanking my rep with a bunch of factions at the moment... and I think I might've found what you're seeing here.

Particular system I'm tanking in has 5 independent factions, 2 federal factions. Remember, I'm -100% (hostile) with Federal Superpower.

I've abandoned a similar amount of missions across all factions... the Federal Factions are still neutral, but Independents are all hostile.

What I think's going on...
Your reputation gain is tied to your Superpower rep... that is... if you're Allied to, say, Empire, rep gains with Imperial factions is increased. Likewise, if you're Hostile to the Superpower, rep gains are decreased.

Pretty sure that based on the above, the Superpower rep effect is a raw multiplier on any rep changes.

I started at the default rep position with both these factions, and have abandoned a similar amount of missions between the two.. this is the result:

So... if you're Hostile to a faction, rep losses are greatly reduced. This feels like a bug (and would also explain why, given I'm Allied to empire, any negative rep effects with Imperial factions tends to be massive). Can someone try to confirm?

Relevance to the quoted post is; if the enemy in a war isn't part of a superpower you're allied to, that rep loss in conflict will be greatly reduced.

EDIT: Just deliberately failed another 4 missions, and here's the Before/After difference for the federal faction

Compare against the rep drop for an independent faction, failing another 4 missions

That's about 2 times the difference. (just did a rough measure, it's about twice as many pixels in difference, which'd make sense, "default" rep gain for independents which have no superpower affiliation, and hostile is half the rep gain... allied is probably double.)