Is Background Sim being pushed into... well, the background?

[Rubbernuke]

Yeah... so... there's a step that has been completely under- exploited by FD here, and that's higher- tier NPCs.

I honestly don't know where superpowers fit these days, unless that became a thing.

At tier 1, it's basic faction interactions like we currently have
At tier 2, it's individual contacts with factions like we get with on- foot Odyssey, and engineers.
Tier 3 is a power representative.
Tier 4 is a superpower rep/liaison.

... with all reps having their own independent reputation to you.

The game path would be you simply doing work for Imperial factions.... eventually you do enough to get noticed by the specific reps, who offer better rewarding missions and unique services.

Do enough work with reps and factions like this, and you eventually get a contact referral from an agent of patreus from powers, who offer more substantial work at that level, loosening the grip of other powers in particular areas and such. Such activities are not day-to-day tasks like the factions offer, but are instead overarching objectives that encompass factional work... such as fighting wars that support Patreus and hinder Archer over the course of a week. Patreus' representative also offers access to services with much broader impact than a faction.

Support patreus long enough and representative of the emperor herself contacts you, with a need to influence large- scale activities, furthering the domain of the Empire at large, potentially even resolving disputes between like- superpowers, because Aisling's anti- slavery stance is interfering with Torval's ability to compete with LYR on the economic stage.... with actions being relevant for a long period, and the rewards almost orders-of- magnitude better than anything you could get elsewhere, shaping your playstyle in a major way.

All if you choose to do so, of course.

Ages ago I thought they'd wind up like this (as in, super passive but a thing)

Superpower BGS effects: make superpower alignment numbers have BGS consequences

Issue: IN ED we have the BGS, which via abstractions simulates human activity in the bubble. We have Superpowers (Fed, Imp and Alliance). At a local system level we have factions and PMFs that are 'aligned' to these superpowers- these fight and sometimes you will see Imperials v Fed...

forums.frontier.co.uk

But as with a lot of ED, because its been developed in isolation and separated by years nothing really fitted together. Its why I think the cadence of PP2, TB and soon VG is trying to sweep some of the cruft under the carpet and establish some kind of new hierarchy. We also don't know what the second super secret feature is in Phase 5, that might be suping up superpowers or properly embedding them into powers perhaps (such as with ranks).

 

[rootsrat]

the cadence of PP2, TB and soon VG is trying to sweep some of the cruft under the carpet and establish some kind of new hierarchy

100% I get that vibe too, hence this thread. In addition I think we'll see less and less of semi-scripted storylines in the game, feels like fdev want players to make their own stories.

Again not judging, just observing

Though I'd love for the official fdev created lore stories to carry on (so many loose threads...)

 

[Rubbernuke]

100% I get that vibe too, hence this thread. In addition I think we'll see less and less of semi-scripted storylines in the game, feels like fdev want players to make their own stories.

Again not judging, just observing

Though I'd love for the official fdev created lore stories to carry on (so many loose threads...)

The triad of PP2, TB and VG is already quite clever and flexible, essentially allowing you, groups and (eventually) guilds to have a plethora of self made goals. PP2 (as well as PP1) had this where it was players and groups made objectives and campaigns- add on TB this also extends to making stations and systems and VG acting as the 'glue' for the group part.

I also think FD lore will be toned back a tad, mainly as its only really useful for CGs to provide ample separation between a dominant player driven galaxy and what FD think it should be doing.

 

[Kira Goto]

Though I'd love for the official fdev created lore stories to carry on (so many loose threads...)

There is no reason both cannot coexist (or even complement each other). I'd find it very bland if all we had from here was occasional GalNets about occasional noteworthy things which the players do (especially when colonization might act to push actions apart from one another), and no development of why the Thargoids assaulted the Bubble, went to Sol, the whole Nemesis and Salvation thing, where the True Chapters are at after Hudson's idiot muscling because he wanted a scapegoat for his stupidity toward the Thargoids... and so on. Basically, yeah, all those hanging threads.

 

[Nowski]

I think it's more that fdev are decoupling the "make your mark on the shape of the galaxy" layers of the game from the BGS,

Regards that, the Update 15 announcement shows a focus on "galaxy shaping" was already in the works two years ago:

Player Made Factions have played a key role in expressing your will over the shape of the bubble. This goal is at the heart of our plans for Elite and reflected in the Thargoid War. Our focus is now turning to investigate how upcoming systems will allow every player and player group to have a meaningful impact on the galaxy’s landscape. This means we will be closing applications for PMFs, however we will process any remaining applications.

This now reads like it directly references Colonisation, of course, but "upcoming systems" is plural; the imminent Vanguards feature was probably on the table too, I'd guess. How tightly it couples to BGS is unknown at this point but perhaps the removal of PMF indicates there's a faction tie-in involved in Vanguards somewhere.

So it seems FD have been thinking for a good while (way before the Update 15 announcement) about how to extend more "galaxy shaping" agency to players and probably welcomed continued engagement with BGS manipulation as a stopgap without it ever being the preferred solution.

Now these "upcoming systems" are arriving, along with the Powerplay update mentioned in the same announcement, it's clear fdev aren't letting existing BGS gameplay get in the way of their long term planning, but things like the "3rd faction" colonisation feature show they're not completely oblivious to BGS/faction focused players (IMO). A lot of the answer to OP's question will hang on the details of the Vanguards feature set (and maybe even on the new New Mystery Feature, 2025 edition.)

 

[rootsrat]

Regards that, the Update 15 announcement shows a focus on "galaxy shaping" was already in the works two years ago:



This now reads like it directly references Colonisation, of course, but "upcoming systems" is plural; the imminent Vanguards feature was probably on the table too, I'd guess. How tightly it couples to BGS is unknown at this point but perhaps the removal of PMF indicates there's a faction tie-in involved in Vanguards somewhere.

So it seems FD have been thinking for a good while (way before the Update 15 announcement) about how to extend more "galaxy shaping" agency to players and probably welcomed continued engagement with BGS manipulation as a stopgap without it ever being the preferred solution.

Now these "upcoming systems" are arriving, along with the Powerplay update mentioned in the same announcement, it's clear fdev aren't letting existing BGS gameplay get in the way of their long term planning, but things like the "3rd faction" colonisation feature show they're not completely oblivious to BGS/faction focused players (IMO). A lot of the answer to OP's question will hang on the details of the Vanguards feature set (and maybe even on the new New Mystery Feature, 2025 edition.)

Nicely dug up!

 

[Nowski]

Nicely dug up!

Wasn't the first time

 

[Jmanis]

This now reads like it directly references Colonisation, of course, but "upcoming systems" is plural; the imminent Vanguards feature was probably on the table too, I'd guess. How tightly it couples to BGS is unknown at this point but perhaps the removal of PMF indicates there's a faction tie-in involved in Vanguards somewhere.

On the contrary, my read on that, given the removal of PMF applications, might be a harder pivot in the other direction. We've seen how drastically Colonisation has shaken up the BGS game in a short space of time... perhaps the pivot is to make Vanguards the way players "do that competitive stuff" instead of via Factions?

 

[cybort]

Everything is associated with BGS actually. And it runs in the background. That's why it's called BGS. Or you want something like FGS.

 

[Nowski]

perhaps the pivot is to make Vanguards the way players "do that competitive stuff" instead of via Factions?

Could be indeed, but then factions are so deeply embedded within the mechanics of system occupancy and control that it's hard to see how Vanguards have a "meaningful impact on the galaxy's landscape" without them being somehow involved - unless Vanguards can act in some sense as factions themselves.

ETA: or yeah, perhaps Powerplay and SCol integration would meet that brief.

 

[Shurimal]

I sure hope that BGS is pushed back into the background, but also that it becomes less governable by player actions with frequent random player-independent events like revolutions, coups, pirate raids, natural disasters and spontaneous faction withdrawals. This would make maintaining large PMF hegemonies difficult (you'd constantly be putting out brushfires all over your 50+ system empire) and make the galaxy a more dynamic and interesting place.

It'd be fun to see a PMF pushed into war with the controlling faction to gain dominance, and then the local anarchy/dictatorship faction decides to take advantage of the chaos and seizes control overnight; or the war winning non-native faction deciding that it was a phyrric victory that wasted too much resources and retreats from the system completely

Strictly speaking, the two are separate - bounty hunting gives merits when you make the kill, but only has a BGS effect if you later hand the bounty in. But most of the time people are going to hunt and then cash the bounty in shortly after to the same system.

I'd think that a sizable portion of bounty hunters would be turning in bounties in a neighbouring system—the one where they pick up and hand in a massacre mission stack. I can't be the only bounty hunting focused commander who has this as the preferred modus operandi

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I sure hope that BGS is pushed back into the background, but also that it becomes less governable by player actions with frequent random player-independent events like revolutions, coups, pirate raids, natural disasters and spontaneous faction withdrawals. This would make maintaining large PMF hegemonies difficult (you'd constantly be putting out brushfires all over your 50+ system empire) and make the galaxy a more dynamic and interesting place.

I don't think it even needs random event injection for that, necessarily - it just needs passing traffic (i.e. people playing the game without caring about the BGS effect) to give spread-out benefits rather than piling up huge amounts of +INF on the controlling faction, which then requires steep diminishing returns curves to stop pinning every controlling faction to 95%; we've seen what happens when Frontier accidentally tone those down a little too much and it wasn't pretty.

Then every controlling faction gets the Anarchy experience, as player traffic generally destabilises rather than stabilises a system.

I put a few ideas about that here - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ssing-traffic-effects-are-more-varied.630775/ - though some of them are not really suited to how colonisation has been implemented.

That said, random events might be more necessary now that colonisation is halving the players-per-system [1] and making "nothing ever happens here" more likely.

I'd think that a sizable portion of bounty hunters would be turning in bounties in a neighbouring system—the one where they pick up and hand in a massacre mission stack. I can't be the only bounty hunting focused commander who has this as the preferred modus operandi

Yes, true. Though with so many controlling factions also being expanded ones, there's a good chance the hand-in will still have an effect.



[1] Right now it's not actually doing that, because the boost to player numbers outweighs it. But even if that boost is mostly sustained long-term, it's unlikely to lead to a continual rolling increase in player count to keep pace with the number of new systems.

 

[Tifu]

We've seen how drastically Colonisation has shaken up the BGS game in a short space of time... perhaps the pivot is to make Vanguards the way players "do that competitive stuff" instead of via Factions?

... that it's hard to see how Vanguards have a "meaningful impact on the galaxy's landscape" without them being somehow involved - unless Vanguards can act in some sense as factions themselves.

In Battletech, your unit can be directly affiliated with a major or independent superpower or be a mercenary unit for hire. There is no real equivalent of a PMF setup.

I think we're headed in that direction with Vanguards strengthening the unit idea by shared resources between members and the capacity of PMFs to control the BGS mechanics in their systems being reduced by PP 2.0 activities and now the Trailblazer colonization wave.

 

[Jmanis]

In Battletech, your unit can be directly affiliated with a major or independent superpower or be a mercenary unit for hire. There is no real equivalent of a PMF setup.

I think we're headed in that direction with Vanguards strengthening the unit idea by shared resources between members and the capacity of PMFs to control the BGS mechanics in their systems being reduced by PP 2.0 activities and now the Trailblazer colonization wave.

I almost misread your post.... but yes... I think we're heading less towards the idea of player agency through faction manipulation, and more through influence of the environment writ large around us.