Indirect manipulation of Sell to Market prices via behind-the-curtain BGS state tuning?

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

Hello,

Here's an idea. Given that (to my knowledge - happy to be corrected ) :-

a) There is no direct way for players to trigger Public Holiday.
b) Pirate Attack has a better chance of occurring if certain conditions are met, but again there is no direct way for players to trigger it.
c) Both states have a direct impact on the price a market will Buy certain mined commodities at.

Are we able to glean a reason for the counts of both said states in the game sharply increasing - in relative terms - around the time of the Fleet Carrier announcement, in comparison to other states? Particularly Public Holiday.

My initial thoughts:-

• Behind the curtain BGS tuning, with the goal of increasing player's chances of affording a fleet carrier, via the only real method of earning that large amount of credits? i.e. a small acknowledgement of the imbalance in the earning potential of different activities in the game.
• Perhaps it's a self fulfilling prophecy, the more mined commodities flood the markets, the greater chance of these states occurring.
• maybe a bit of both? Some other States (Infrastructure Failure, Terrorist Attack) show a small increase more recently. Perhaps a simple indicator of increased player activity having a knock-on effect on the BGS.

I'd be interested if anyone has any greater insight than me? (it shouldn't be too difficult )

 

[Dommarraa]

Maybe some buckets were not copied over during the clone.

Normally someone writing 'insert * from' gets their legs broken, bit sometimes it is better.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Here's an idea. Given that (to my knowledge - happy to be corrected ) :-

a) There is no direct way for players to trigger Public Holiday.
b) Pirate Attack has a better chance of occurring if certain conditions are met, but again there is no direct way for players to trigger it.
c) Both states have a direct impact on the price a market will Buy certain mined commodities at.

Are we able to glean a reason for the counts of both said states in the game sharply increasing - in relative terms - around the time of the Fleet Carrier announcement, in comparison to other states? Particularly Public Holiday.

My initial thoughts:-

• Behind the curtain BGS tuning, with the goal of increasing player's chances of affording a fleet carrier, via the only real method of earning that large amount of credits? i.e. a small acknowledgement of the imbalance in the earning potential of different activities in the game.
• Perhaps it's a self fulfilling prophecy, the more mined commodities flood the markets, the greater chance of these states occurring.
• maybe a bit of both? Some other States (Infrastructure Failure, Terrorist Attack) show a small increase more recently. Perhaps a simple indicator of increased player activity having a knock-on effect on the BGS.

a) and b) I'm fairly sure are only accurate in terms of current BGS knowledge and practicality, rather than literally being true. We don't know exactly what causes them - and I suspect they're designed to be deliberately difficult to spreadsheet - but the pattern of where they do and don't occur does seem to be consistent with them being entirely caused by player activity. The causes of the various event states probably overlap sufficiently that only in the lowest-traffic systems would it be practical to guarantee causing one and not another, even if you did know what caused them.

My guess would be the second and third of your suggestions - trade is a known cause of Pirate Attack and is very likely a cause of Public Holiday as well, and more people trading and mining makes them more likely. And certainly higher player activity makes Event states of any sort more likely.

You also have to adjust for greater coverage through EDDN of states which do occur - https://heatmap.sotl.org.uk/history - recorded EDDN activity is up about 50% in the last few weeks from the previous average, which will mean that more systems are getting into the daily state update. For short-lived states like PA or PH, that could easily mean that the rate of occurrence hasn't gone up much but the rate of detection has. Probably not enough to explain all of the difference, of course.

 

[[Cancelled Consoleer] boppa_]

All good points @Ian Doncaster , particularly about the differences in state duration, and the likelihood of states bring reported in, in the first place.

I took another look, this time at only those systems within 150ly of our home faction, and the increase is not as apparent there (actually at all). If it had been some back end configuration/modifier that was altered in order to increase public holiday then I'd expect to have seen at least a similar rise (factoring in traffic, more players, etc.) there.