How to most easily win a war
- Thread starter Starman 1966
- Start date
Well, some people are using every means to keep their PMF or their galactical power on top. It's only the result that counts, neither fun nor something else.
I get involved in a lot of wars in the region of the bubble I have an interest in, before & since the changes. I found before the changes I would do better by doing short sessions in the endless CZs, regularly returning to base to cash in my bonds & re-arm/repair before returning to do some more.
In that way I didn't require skill so much as tenacity.
So while the new scenario CZs are a little shorter than I used to stay for they suit my existing approach. I will now stay until the battle is won (5-8 ship kills in a low CZ), return to base & immediately go back out again. I often take a single massacre mission for the lowest count available to me (I'm elite so usually expert level, 45 kills) and just whittle away at it in the nearest low CZ (because spec ops don't count for the mission & take longer to kill).
I work alone or team up with random strangers btw, generally against other small groups. Skill helps in the CZ itself but the thing that wins the war is still tenacity imo, not skill alone.
So have you tested it yet in a war? I'd be interested in what losing actually did.
Nope, we didn't tested it ourselves. But we have seen others doing it repeatedly, so it should definitely be a thing.
But being a BGS guy myself, just seeing it does not mean that it works. Without hard evidence and numbers thats hearsay- over the years lots of superstitions have popped up that have been debunked just by reproducing it and testing it.
I'm not saying that it isn't an issue, but without actual numbers its a paper theory. If an isolated war pops up I will definitely try it, just to see if losing BGS wise is -1 (or whatever each difficulty gives) or simply that you don't score any points. If its the former, that could be used, but if its the latter, its simply a red herring and a waste of time.
That's an interesting project. Now let's find a pristine war in a pristine system.
You are unlikely to find a 'pristine' war - wars only start because of player activity. But it isn't that hard to find a low or zero traffic system and start a war under controlled circumstances. Try it, see if it works. I don't think it will because the new CZs don't last long enough for the effect to be worthwhile compared to just doing it normally.
I just won another war, me & a mate against a player faction. We just kept going back to a low CZ, winning it & returning to cash in the bonds before returning to the same low CZ again & again. The number of transactions (completing the scenario, cashing in a bond, completing a mission) and playing every day wins the war, not the number of ships killed directly.
I don't think it's a total red herring, although please do the experiment if you get a chance!
My observations: with in-game scenarios (CZs, USSs, installations, etc) rewards are stated at one of three levels that I've seen: minor, moderate, and significant. Then the reward/penalty can be reputation, influence, security etc gain/loss. I'm sure I haven't seen all the possible combinations. Anyway, when I tested this in a Medium CZ, on winning the pop up said I got a moderate influence gain for my side, significant rep loss with the opposing side. On losing, IIRC the pop-up says moderate influence gain for the opposing side, significant rep loss with my side. So in a conflict of faction A vs B, the in-game text seems to suggest that fighting for A and winning gives exactly the same influence and rep outcomes as fighting for B and losing. Add in the bonus effect of bonds and CZ scenarios, and the incentives are clearly set up to favor fighting and disadvantage throwing. So that's good.
For the record, when I tested this, I wasn't that interested in speed. I was curious if throwing CZs would allow fighting a controlling faction without becoming hostile to their starports. Answer was no, you get the rep hit for losing just like if you'd fought against them.
Now what we don't know is how those minor/moderate/significant influence gains correspond to transactions. It'd be great if you BGS folks could measure that for the rest of us!
It was always a numbers game, though.
Then as now, one person working effectively could beat several people working ineffectively could beat tens of people just contributing random traffic.
The difference now is that the BGS has been studied considerably more so far more people know how to work effectively and tell lots of other people to work effectively ... and there are a lot more groups trying to do things in general as the player base expands and diversifies, so "clean" spaces to work are rarer.
Even in the old days, you'd still have lost if two people as good at it as you had been on the other side. Now, that's just a lot more likely.
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The best and fastest would be to combine both winning and losing a CZ at the same time. One CMDR pledging at each side and only shooting the SLFs deployed. CZ completed fastest way while doubling the INF gap.
Honestly: I've noticed this long ago but I tried not to make it so "public". There's a way to exploit this thing even more, anyway there's a easy solution to that, without calling back the old CZs which were even more exploitable (and bottable): just make the fighter kills non influent for the progession of the conflict itself. This way you can't affect a CZ negatively anymore.
Can I kill my own fighters to count against me? Asking for a friend...
Well, tell your friend I just opened an issue in the issues tracker, I told myself that I'd do that as soon as this thing went public, and here we are.
https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/2672
https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/2672
Back in the brief period when CZs were regularly spawning with no ships from either side, a friend and I did exactly that. One thing we did notice was that, due to the fighter launch delay, it took longer to complete a Low-CZ that way than the it took two of us to kill the required number of ships by working together in a functioning CZ. So it probably comes back to working out if the additional effect of one player being on the losing side is enough to offset the additional time taken (including re-stocking the fighters).