Influence caps

[Jane Turner]

I thought that this would be another useful discussion - that again different groups have slightly differ
ing views on.

It's our experience that population most affects the amount a faction can gain through positive BGS activity. The amount of effort to achieve that gain is the same, the variable is the limit itself. We don't see much/any evidence of diminishing returns in the positive cap - e.g. without opposition 10 + missions has an effect indistingushable from 200 + missions. The +ve cap appears to be related to 1/log[10]Population, though its actually quite likely that its determined by the CC value from poweplay.

We almost never have the luxury of a clean test system, but have been tracking the amount of "BGS points" equivalent to a + mission we have put in versus the starting influence and influence gained. In the graph here the bubble size is proportional to effort and the strength of colour related to the starting influence. You can see an upper limit (the effective cap) emerging from the data.

Spoiler

We have certainly seen the falls greater than the cap in our own systems when under "attack", suggesting that negative effects do indeed have a diminishing returns factor as opposed to a hard(ish) cap. We have never tested this, being mostly concerned with defence!


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[Dommarraa]

Agreed with the population being the main limit on +ve gain (although gain from -ve leaching is another thing entirely and not limited in several situations)
I am still convinced there is some sort of diminishing return based on Cmdrs e.g.
2 x CMDRs doing 10 mission > 1 x CMDR doing 20 missions.

I suspect, that the number of CMDRs that can be effectively involved may also vary by Population.

 

[Jane Turner]

We are almost certain that its the actions not the number of commanders that matters

 

[operant]

The BGS remains a mystery to me.
Useful post that helps pollute some of the other 'debates' with facts - shame on you; not that facts matter much there.
It appears then that the effects of each mission decreases rapidly (exponentially) and, if I understood, the value of a mission is irrelevant?

 

[Jane Turner]

Payment is irrelevant - eg all surface scans have the same effect regardless of payout

 

[Aasgard]

We are almost certain that its the actions not the number of commanders that matters

I would agree based on what I've seen from the way in which influence and reputation can be built (through #s of missions) between commanders and factions. Also the decay seems to have sped up in addition to the system state decay... there does seem to be a link.

 

[Mrjupp]

What everyone needs to remember is that whether it's missions or cargo or data, the Frontier server is regulated by transactions so it's all about how many entries are put through the server. There is a cap on individuals and how many transactions they can enter before it has no obvious effect (diminishing returns).

 

[Dommarraa]

We are almost certain that its the actions not the number of commanders that matters

I am going to need some documented tests before I believe that wholeheartedly, especially when you assert the number of missions to hit the cap is so low.
I know I have done more than 30+++ unopposed missions and got an 8% swing. Next day with other CMDRs help, we get 12%
Something doesn't add up between the simple theory and my observations in an admittedly uncontrolled environment. We could of course BOTH be correct, and there is something we are not considering, such as separate but addition limits for different inputs (missions/bounties/trade/exp data)

Wish we had more documented tests like Geomon did. Pity he is out of loop right now.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

I'm restricting myself to Passenger missions, preferably Bulk ones to push the MF in question as much as possible. VIP ones are the best to build reputation quick (only faster way would be in a Civil War / War turning in 1-shot-kill Combat bonds). Both Bulk / VIP ones are to my knowledge and experience still the best ways to generate %.

Not to mention the most time efficient. If you swap the boards and get lucky with having your Cabins full going towards one destination and unloading there it sure works nicely for your goals.

 

[Jane Turner]

We think (as all these comments should be prefaced with) it makes a huge difference if even a small amount of work is done for another faction - especially one with low influence.

If say you did 30 +++ missions into a large population system with 50% starting influence, we'd expect a lift of about 6.1%. If someone put one ++ mission into a different faction which started at 5% then you should get about 5.7% rise intstead, and if they put 3 into a faction at 1% your gain would be more like 4.7%.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

We think (as all these comments should be prefaced with) it makes a huge difference if even a small amount of work is done for another faction - especially one with low influence.

If say you did 30 +++ missions into a large population system with 50% starting influence, we'd expect a lift of about 6.1%. If someone put one ++ mission into a different faction which started at 5% then you should get about 5.7% rise intstead, and if they put 3 into a faction at 1% your gain would be more like 4.7%.

Agreed. Also (as mentioned) the population density is always a factor.

We had to push against some incursions in one of our smallest Systems (2.5k) and managed to go from 1.0% to 18.9% within 24h (where our MF equalised with another, otherwise it probably would've gone even higher).

Now if we'd tried the same in the biggest System we currently control (14.69bil) that number would've never been possible. The highest we were able to manage was 3.0% with many people working all sorts of Missions, supporting us with Bounty vouchers and tons of Exploration data.