Intentionally losing and working against your own faction

[Konan]

I apologize for this thread ahead of writing if it belongs in another thread. I don't post too many threads so forgive me.

There are some mechanics in gameplay that disturb me though. Two in particular.

1. Losing a cz on purpose. The way a CZ works atm is you fight for your particular faction and win the battle gaining the upper hand to win the war. All done and good. But what if another group comes in and intentionally loses CZ battles to hurt your faction in the war? I see nothing to prevent this and if so is a very very crappy element of the game. Intentionally losing like that could be described as griefing. I do see a possible solution.....make it where Losing a battle doesn't hurt you....but winning one definitely helps you.

2. Working against your own faction. If your faction passes up a station, you have to lower your own faction's influence to trigger a war to win it. That seems very counter intuitive and just doesn't "feel" right. Why can't it be if you maintain 75% to 80% influence for a week that you have a right to fight for the other stations? It is intuitive and makes a group have to work for its own faction to win the chance to gain another station. The way it is now feels like your cutting off your nose to spite your own face. Imho it shouldn't be that way.

I'd like to hear some of y'all 's ideas and thoughts on the matter

 

[BL1P]

Both seem like reasonable suggestions to me.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

If I don't happen to like your faction, and want to lose to work against it, I should have that option. Taking options away from people should never be an option.

 

[Tarman]

Point 1 sounds like perfectly legit gameplay to me. If one group of players can manage to lose harder than you can win, such is life in the 3300s. Space politics should be a tough row to hoe. Once the BGS settles down into the new paradigm of multiple-state factions, it should be easier to at least see what you need to do, even if it might be more different now to accomplish.

I don't want a niceynice galaxy where nothing I do can be overturned. That's Minecraft Creative Mode. I'd rather live with creepers than live without risk.

 

[StalkerMac]

Point 1 sounds like perfectly legit gameplay to me. If one group of players can manage to lose harder than you can win, such is life in the 3300s. Space politics should be a tough row to hoe. Once the BGS settles down into the new paradigm of multiple-state factions, it should be easier to at least see what you need to do, even if it might be more different now to accomplish.

I don't want a niceynice galaxy where nothing I do can be overturned. That's Minecraft Creative Mode. I'd rather live with creepers than live without risk.

I agree. Wings also need the ability to sometimes undermine a system they own in order to progress in a more productive manner or positive direction.

Fly safe Cmdr's
o7

 

[Riverside]

I try never to work against any faction, if I want to win a station from another faction I will support them until they reach up to the higher one rather than bring one of them down, and if the faction I want to go to war with is the higher one I will just do the work to increase my faction's influence to match theirs (which of course allocates a smaller portion of the pie to that other faction).

But sometimes an honest days work is too hard & some prefer more underhand tactics. This is their choice, not mine. That I will not go as far as them to achieve a goal is my choice and I must live with the consequences of my decisions for better or worse.

Play your own way, let them play theirs

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Point 1 sounds like perfectly legit gameplay to me. If one group of players can manage to lose harder than you can win, such is life in the 3300s. Space politics should be a tough row to hoe. Once the BGS settles down into the new paradigm of multiple-state factions, it should be easier to at least see what you need to do, even if it might be more different now to accomplish.

I don't want a niceynice galaxy where nothing I do can be overturned. That's Minecraft Creative Mode. I'd rather live with creepers than live without risk.

I'd rather live with cats.

 

[Tarman]

I'd rather live with cats.

Well now you've gone too far, Indigo! Cats are Warp creatures destined to ruin all of material reality.

 

[Konan]

So flying in a CZ and doing nothing but watching one side lose is gameplay? I think flying in a choosing the opposite side and fighting against a faction is fine. But choosing a faction and then making it lose is horse malarkey. That's griefing. If you want to undermine a faction...then do it legit....choose the other side....the other way is cheesy and lazy and downright sorry as hell imho. You're not losing a choice.....you're refusing to make one

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Well now you've gone too far, Indigo! Cats are Warp creatures destined to ruin all of material reality.

Cats are proof the Earth cannot be flat. If it were, they'd have pushed everything off the edge of it by now.

 

[Tarman]

So flying in a CZ and doing nothing but watching one side lose is gameplay? I think flying in a choosing the opposite side and fighting against a faction is fine. But choosing a faction and then making it lose is horse malarkey. That's griefing. If you want to undermine a faction...then do it legit....choose the other side....the other way is cheesy and lazy and downright sorry as hell imho. You're not losing a choice.....you're refusing to make one

Using all the avenues available that aren't hacks or bugs is called playing the game and is totally legit; nobody has ever gotten heck for that in the history of the game. Call it fifth-column gameplay if you need a name for it. Calling it griefing is kind of funny really, or did you think politics combined with war was a fair and equitable thing? I'd rather not fight according to 19th century "let's meet here and fight like true men" rules when I could win by undermining the opponent's ability to function. Be grateful you're not getting UA bombed.

I also recommend you never ever play EVE. One of the corps there got completely ruined by a mole who had been planted at least a year before he implemented his plans; he became a trusted high-ranking officer, cleaned out all of their assets and gave them to the corp's enemies. It was brutally beautiful. ED is the kiddie pool by comparison.



Edit: Come to think of it, being intentionally incompetent in a CZ to the point of losing would actually be tougher than signing up to the opposing side; you'd have to somehow obstruct your own side without aggroing them. Much easier to just take and fail multiple missions to burn down faction influence.

 

[Weps]

Point 1 sounds like perfectly legit gameplay to me. If one group of players can manage to lose harder than you can win, such is life in the 3300s.

The problem starts when this kind of gameplay becomes easier than the intended type of gameplay. I have no idea how hard it is to lose or win a CZ currently, but, if out of the two final outcomes (winning/losing), losing is the much easier one to achieve, then you have a design problem.

The BGS is ultimately a results driven activity rather than a gameplay one - meaning that players engage in these tasks in a certain setting for the end result, not for the gameplay (which could be experienced anywhere else for that matter). If the end result is easier to achieve through method B rather than method A, then they will simply go for method B.

So in other words if it's easier to achieve BGS results by losing CZs, then what the game is doing is simply goading players into this nonsensical situation where they join CZs and lose on purpose. That does not sound like fun gameplay to me, even if it's "possible within the game world". It should be overall less efficient, in the long run, to lose battles on purpose than to try to win them. Any other scenario is simply not an accurate representation of how human reality works.

I believe this was a problem with PP also - back in 2015/2016 I had set my mind to finally try PP, since this was supposed to be the "end game" to my understanding, and when I read a little about 5th column gameplay and how it defined the entire activity, I ended up staying away.

 

[Tarman]

The problem starts when this kind of gameplay becomes easier than the intended type of gameplay. I have no idea how hard it is to lose or win a CZ currently, but, if out of the two final outcomes (winning/losing), losing is the much easier one to achieve, then you have a design problem.

The BGS is ultimately a results driven activity rather than a gameplay one - meaning that players engage in these tasks in a certain setting for the end result, not for the gameplay (which could be experienced anywhere else for that matter). If the end result is easier to achieve through method B rather than method A, then they will simply go for method B.

So in other words if it's easier to achieve BGS results by losing CZs, then what the game is doing is simply goading players into this nonsensical situation where they join CZs and lose on purpose. That does not sound like fun gameplay to me, even if it's "possible within the game world". It should be overall less efficient, in the long run, to lose battles on purpose than to try to win them. Any other scenario is simply not an accurate representation of how human reality works.

I believe this was a problem with PP also - back in 2015/2016 I had set my mind to finally try PP, since this was supposed to be the "end game" to my understanding, and when I read a little about 5th column gameplay and how it defined the entire activity, I ended up staying away.

As I posted in my edit above your post, it probably is more difficult to lose a CZ on purpose than to simply win it against the faction you're hurting. For BGS work, intentionally failing missions is more robust for doing faction damage, outside of other more straightforward terrorist actions like UA bombing and rampant civilian murder. It still takes a real effort to do that though, and it can still be countered. For me it's simply another level of the game. Political machinations completed by pilot action. As far as human reality, history is full of spies, moles, turncoats and saboteurs, controlled by Machiavellian leaders who would kill some of their own people to take down their enemies.

I think the 5th column stuff in PP was a lot weirder, because there's the whole element of the Toy Mercenaries, who only do what they need to until they get their toys and then bail. They're not even concerned with the damage that they do to the PP faction, as their whole purpose is to obtain their desired shiny. That seems less interesting to me than trying to counter an intentional 5th columnist; at least they're trying to ruin you on purpose.

 

[Myou]

About point 1. I honestly dont see the issue. If someone is working against you, why should they join your side to intentionally lose? How? Cant exactly shoot the green guys without getting chased out from both sides focusing you. Afking maybe?? CZ take ages this way.

Much more effective and profitable to join the side fighting against you...


For point 2, well its weird but what can you do. Realistically wars (besides civil wars maybe, as in the people uprising against the ruling faction instead of 2 armies duking it out) dont have anything to do with influence, but we need a way for factions to pick fights that doesnt involve the players selecting some button "fight x faction" cause the BGS is big no-no for direct player agency according to fdev...

 

[Konan]

When the update dropped, we lost several CZ conflicts due to the constant disconnects we experienced, which did not let us finish the scenarios. We effectively lost those battles and It was credited against us. This is when this idea hit me. So I then experimented (against my own faction) and killed a couple of my factions ships in a CZ, flew to safety, then eased back close enough to watch the other side win.....it was that simple. The next time I didn't have to kill any...the enemy side got the upper hand and won. This is not good gameplay nor do I believe that Frontier saw this coming.

There is no precedent set by any other mechanic in the game that encourages this or does this. If you fail a mission, your faction doesn't lose influence, you lose reputation. If you want to lower a factions influence, you have to raise another factions influence (except for murder and we're not quite sure how that works out in the new setup). I appreciate the comments about subterfuge and spying.....this is not that. As for the Eve Online thingy...Thank God Elite is not like Eve.....Elite is a lot better than Eve ever will be imho. But that is subjective....personal taste and all....no, I think Fdev didn't think it all the way through. Wouldn't be the first time....

 

[Konan]

On point 2, what about if for expansion, they let us choose an internal war for a station....or expanding to another system.

 

[Julio Montega]

Winning and loosing a cz need to have an impact.
When you wage war there needs to be a risk.
You can't take that away.

Regarding station ownership:
If you would change it according to your suggestion
we would see system where only the governing faction had all stations.
That is a very bad move and basically fortifies much against loosing control
making the BGS more static.

The only thing that really would work, is
if the BGS is changed in the way, that a player
in a squadron pledged to a minor faction acts
as a supporter and can then, like in powerplay,
suggest courses of action.

The factions need to be controllable to circumvent
the iditotic need of hurting your own faction
to allow for it to conquer anything.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

1. Losing a cz on purpose. The way a CZ works atm is you fight for your particular faction and win the battle gaining the upper hand to win the war. All done and good. But what if another group comes in and intentionally loses CZ battles to hurt your faction in the war? I see nothing to prevent this and if so is a very very crappy element of the game. Intentionally losing like that could be described as griefing. I do see a possible solution.....make it where Losing a battle doesn't hurt you....but winning one definitely helps you.

To intentionally lose a battle you'd either have to sit it out entirely (and hope the other side eventually randomly wins, despite them being distracted by shooting at you as well) ... or you could just select the other side and fight for them so that they are more likely to win. I can't see "tanking but not helping" being a particularly effective way to win a CZ compared with "actually firing at the side you want to lose". Even if you're using peashooters you're still distracting them from doing damage to your allied ships, so making a victory for the side you support more likely.

2. Working against your own faction. If your faction passes up a station, you have to lower your own faction's influence to trigger a war to win it. That seems very counter intuitive and just doesn't "feel" right. Why can't it be if you maintain 75% to 80% influence for a week that you have a right to fight for the other stations? It is intuitive and makes a group have to work for its own faction to win the chance to gain another station. The way it is now feels like your cutting off your nose to spite your own face. Imho it shouldn't be that way.

The counter-argument is:
- you've just expanded into a big system with 10 stations
- you get a couple of them on the way up, and then fight the controlling faction for the main station
- you now have all the stations you actually want in the system (that outpost 300,000Ls away at a secondary star, and that planetary base with no market, and that industrial installation you have no use for? other factions can keep them)
...and right now that's fine. But if you put the "reverse coup" you're suggesting in, then any time your influence got too high, you'd end up in a war where you stand to win an asset you don't care about ... and you're staking system control on it. (And the more stations you took, the fewer options you'd have to hold your influence down below the threshold)

For a big faction, being able to be pushed into a war for control of the system by someone else temporarily raising your influence would make you more vulnerable to attack than you currently are.

 

[Tarman]

When the update dropped, we lost several CZ conflicts due to the constant disconnects we experienced, which did not let us finish the scenarios. We effectively lost those battles and It was credited against us. This is when this idea hit me. So I then experimented (against my own faction) and killed a couple of my factions ships in a CZ, flew to safety, then eased back close enough to watch the other side win.....it was that simple. The next time I didn't have to kill any...the enemy side got the upper hand and won. This is not good gameplay nor do I believe that Frontier saw this coming.

There is no precedent set by any other mechanic in the game that encourages this or does this. If you fail a mission, your faction doesn't lose influence, you lose reputation. If you want to lower a factions influence, you have to raise another factions influence (except for murder and we're not quite sure how that works out in the new setup). I appreciate the comments about subterfuge and spying.....this is not that. As for the Eve Online thingy...Thank God Elite is not like Eve.....Elite is a lot better than Eve ever will be imho. But that is subjective....personal taste and all....no, I think Fdev didn't think it all the way through. Wouldn't be the first time....

Okay, done like that it does sound kind of weaksauce, though I'd wager on a game-metrics level that doesn't look or even play any different than earnestly trying to win but being seriously incompetent at it. Might be tough to add a safety that isn't ham-handed or overly restrictive. Just having a loss create zero effect though, I am not cool with that at all.

For the BGS, unless it's been changed very recently or my BGS sources are flakey, failing missions loses influence as well as rep; usually takes a coordinated/sustained effort to have real impact. Simply abandoning them loses rep only; it used to affect influence as well but got nerfed for abuse, because that's a lot easier to pull off than having to ride out the mission failstates.

For your other point, I think that'd be a decent addition to the game, to have a way to influence whether the expansion was to another system or whether you could direct it into the system to push control over more internal assets, though I see others have some concerns on this point as well. Always tons to consider when poking at the BGS.

 

[Jmanis]

1. Losing a cz on purpose. The way a CZ works atm is you fight for your particular faction and win the battle gaining the upper hand to win the war. All done and good. But what if another group comes in and intentionally loses CZ battles to hurt your faction in the war? I see nothing to prevent this and if so is a very very crappy element of the game. Intentionally losing like that could be described as griefing. I do see a possible solution.....make it where Losing a battle doesn't hurt you....but winning one definitely helps you.

It's a non-issue. "Intentionally losing" a CZ for a faction is *more* effort than winning it for the other side.

There's been a rumour going around that "Leaving a CZ before there's a winner loses it for your side"; there's no evidence to back up this claim yet, and, in my opinion, is ignorant of the fact that CZ's are functionally identical between solo and open, and in the open/PG case, such a mechanic could have no (simple) possible way to resolve the presence of commanders on both sides of the CZ fleeing. I understand you think that's what's happening... I just think you were being opposed, or a victim to the BGS bugs going round at the moment. I have "started" many more CZs which have then had no ships spawn than I've won, and never had a problem in those conflicts coming out on top.

So assuming the only way to have an effect against a faction is to win or lose the CZ...

The baseline activity here is, say Faction A and B are at war, and you want Faction A to win, you join Faction A, and destroy Faction B's ships until Faction A win the CZ. Let's also assume a "fair" fight, that is, without Commander intervention, neither side will emerge victorious. The outcome is that, by fighting for Faction A and having them win:
- Faction A gains points by winning the CZ
- Faction A gains points when handing in the bonds
- Commander intervention helps win the war for Faction A

1. Go to the CZ and join the Faction B (the faction you want to lose). Sit there and do nothing.
There's multiple issues with this. Firstly, you earn no bonds, so you can scrub that part of hurting Faction B... and even if you did earn bonds, they'd be for the wrong faction and therefore useless.
Second issue, assume the "fair fight" above... you'd be sitting there forever, and never actually getting a resolution. So, nothing achieved.

The fair fight scenario isn't a realistic one though, one side usually ends up with the upper hand. And the biggest determining factor is, in my opinion, if one side gets a spec ops/capship spawn, and the other doesn't. That's almost always the primary determination for who wins the fight, without any commander intervention. So really, you're just leaving it up to chance as to who's going to win.

2. You join Faction B (the faction you want to lose) and actively work against them.
Problem number 1 again, you'll get no bonds. So you instantly lose that effect you could have got by handing in bonds working for Faction A (you only get issued bonds for kills made against the enemy of the faction you align to).

The biggest problem is, start shooting against the opposition, and the entire instance will now be Hostile.... Faction A, because you aligned with Faction B, and Faction B because you're shooting their ships, so your chances of seeing out the whole CZ are instantly reduced, because both sides will be shooting at you.

That said, it's doable. I've accidentally shot my own faction's ships at the 50% mark of the fight, and had everyone go hostile, yet still killed enough enemy ships to lead my faction to victory. Another problem here as well though is as soon as you do this, while kills will count for the appropriate sides, all bonds stop.

So, assuming you join Faction B, *and* kill Faction B ships, *and* somehow do it as quickly as someone aligning with Faction A, what's you're net result?

Faction B loses the CZ, Faction A gains the points, but you *still* have no bonds to hand in for Faction A.

So you're *still* worse-off than if you just aligned with the correct side and fought for them like normal.

So... yeah... total non-issue imo. Go ahead and 5th column if you like, you're contributing far less effectively than you could just playing normally.