I need an explanation

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.

Northpin

Northpin
Jmanis said:
I don't have time to read 5 pages of responses since I'm heading out the door to work in a minute, but I'll give you the short version that most don't understand, and even fewer would acknowledge.

FD manipulate the BGS overtly, all the time, and that's absolutely fine. They have to in order to progress things like CGs, core narrative, Thargoids, which factions appear in a newly founded system after a CG, etc. . Back in the day, a good deal of CGs were player-submitted, so it was quite literally a popularity contest to put together a CG for FD to run with. I'd personally love a Thargoid attack against my home system one day... but I know that's pretty unlikely. But other players have also said they'd hit the roof if FD attacked "their" systems unannounced with Thargoids.

And this is the kicker... although FD have acknowledged the growing player base who directly manipulate the BGS, the BGS does not exist to provide a group-vs-group strategic conflict game. That's what Powerplay is for. The BGS is, simply, the backdrop against which we all play. It has to be, otherwise FD cannot run any more narrative events. The fact we use it as a strategic game of chess is actually just a secondary effect, and FD have on many occasions said that if people played with the BGS effects at the forefront of their mind, they've done the BGS wrong... I think they've said that on three occasions now and are yet to directly contravene that.

Other posters already said that Sirius got three settlements because they're Odd settlements and that's the mechanics of any conflict... so that's your actual reason. As for this "rabbit hole", there's no consipracy or employee malice at the end of this. FD have to and do manipluate the BGS to drive their narrative focus, and that is absolutely not beholden to the activity of players. It's a fundamental piece to understanding the BGS and it's design decisions (and a big reason why we don't have "direct control" over factions like so many ask for).

EDIT: As for conspiracies about FD having a bias and railroading CG outcomes, which many have made mention of... that's a thing, but it's probably not intentional, and just a byproduct of bad design.

EDIT: And just to be clear, this isn't a suggestion FD randomly interject into random conflicts because "Oh, we want this random faction to win". Only that BGS manipulation as an activity outright does exist, and any "BGS Play" is secondary to that.
Click to expand...

This one should be stickied

LumpTheNoLeggedDog said:
Thank You for your input but you must understand one major fact. All oldschool players know and understand what Sirius and Old Worlds is/are and how both are a big part of Elite history in whole. At first when I saw Sirius inside Old Worlds I thought it is some kind of mistake. Maybe one of content creators made a boo...boo...and it will eventually be reverted.
This is not about CG or BGS, this is a principality of Elite game narrative. Sirius inside Old Worlds is equal to....lets say.....putting a Kremlin in the middle of Washington D.C.

edit...There are systems, right next to Old Worlds, literately 3-5 ly away. Why inside Old Worlds which is against Elite narrative.
Click to expand...

Get over it.
It's been stated multiple times that ED has retconned a lot of the lore from older Elite games
IF you dont like the retcon, play the older Elite games.

In other words, There is no conspiracy theory here.
Just a game with a narrative that has to progress.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Ian Doncaster said:
Jmanis already gave the correct answer to this one, but to reiterate it:

1) Frontier reserve the right to set up a necessary BGS situation for the plot or the interests of the wider lore. This has been going on since the start of the plot in the 1.0 release, and has historically included such things as:
- placing factions in systems they could not ordinarily have reached
- removing factions from systems without an organic Retreat state or invasion conflict
- setting particular states on factions (either as a one-off or persistently)
- setting two factions into conflict with each other
- attacking a system with Thargoids
- setting economic production or consumption or price in a system to atypical levels
- setting outfitting or shipyard content in a system to atypical levels
- adding new stations to a system with a particular ownership
- moving stations between systems
- locking one or more assets in a system to their present owners
- preventing organic expansions into a system
- preventing all conflicts within a system
- preventing all BGS movement of influence or state within a system at all
- changing the home system of a faction
- changing the allegiance of a faction
- changing the government type of a faction
- changing the reserve status level of a system
- changing the security level of a system
- changing the economy of a station
- changing the type of a station
- adding or removing permit locks on a system
- damaging a station
- probably a bunch of others I've forgotten
If they weren't able to and "allowed" to do this virtually none of the plot events since 1.0 would have been possible.

2) More subtly, Frontier are also of course through Galnet and game mechanics able to influence players to take actions with particular BGS effects. Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes it is not.

A result of this is that certain BGS actions become impossible not because there is an outright bar on them but because anyone attempting to do them would need to fight against the uncoordinated but powerful efforts of thousands of other players moving the BGS the opposite way.

3) Frontier employees are also allowed to play the game in their own time and this will have the usual BGS effects for whatever actions they take, but that's going to be insignificant compared with the above, and they'd have no special advantage in that context over any other player opposing you (and probably rather many disadvantages as they'd be

4) Equally, in many cases, Frontier will sit back and see how BGS situations develop, and use those player-led developments as input to the next stage of the plot. Examples relevant to recent plot lines include:
- the support for Marlinist colonies
- the support for Nova Imperium / Nova Paresa
- the lack of support in general for factions defecting from Federal to Independent allegiance
- the Alliance takeover of the Witch Head nebula
- the ejection of Sirius subsidiaries from the Colonia nebula
- (possibly) the corporatisation/Mahonisation of the Alliance during its post-1.0 expansions
- the relocation of Aegis to Sol following criminal attacks on its original home of Socho



In this specific case the manipulations are:
- Sirius has been inserted into the Leesti System
- Sirius has been granted a megaship with locked ownership in the Leesti System
- Sirius has been granted protection from Retreat in the Leesti System
You will not be able to carry out BGS actions which affect those points.

The manipulations are not:
- which Odyssey assets they lose or gain through the normal BGS operation of the War / Civil War states.
You will - if you understand how the BGS works and have sufficient strength - be able to keep any Odyssey asset you like out of their hands.

It may still be possible to affect the storyline by keeping Sirius pinned down at low influence in their Alliance systems, too, though there are other factors at work
Click to expand...

And this should be stickied as well for all the "FDev is god-modding the BGS" tin-hatters
 

aRJay

aRJay
LumpTheNoLeggedDog said:
I don't do BGS, my owner assembled Old Worlds freedom fighters once we noticed Sirius is present in Old Worlds. WE ALL OLD SCHOOL PLAYERS KNOW, SIRIUS CAN'T BE PART OF OLD WORLDS !!!
Click to expand...
You shoot stuff and hand in bounties don’t you? You might even buy and sell some stuff as well.
You are doing BGS as FDev originally conceived it before clever players got involved.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Can we just take a moment to think about how boring the game would be if changes to the galaxy could only ever be made by players? FDev throwing curve balls at us is essentially what is going to keep the game interesting to the majority of players, because as noisy as we can be, we are not representative of the playerbase as a whole.
 

varonica

varonica
Dillon Fallon said:
Can we just take a moment to think about how boring the game would be if changes to the galaxy could only ever be made by players? FDev throwing curve balls at us is essentially what is going to keep the game interesting to the majority of players, because as noisy as we can be, we are not representative of the playerbase as a whole.
Click to expand...

Played a game like that "Atlantica Online", player guilds could take control of towns and regions garnering rewards and benefits including in game gold, new and existing guilds could go to war with guilds that controlled towns in wars. After a couple of years 3 empires emerged that controlled every town on the map, agreements were made between guilds and empires, no wars ever happened, new guilds never stood a chance of ever controlling a town, leaving old fat cat guilds basically ruling everything, nothing ever changed for years.

This is the human way, give us the ability to control stuff and eventually everything will be controlled by established groups and nothing will ever change. This same scenario basically happens in every game where guild type groups are given the ability to actually control the game world. Huge groups just take over and suppress any new groups coming in. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that this sort of mechanic is a bad idea!
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom