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

[rootsrat]

The recent moves from FDEV regarding BGS and minor factions:

- decoupling MF from PP2.0
- linking BGS actions to PP2.0
- allowing to expand freely via colonisation
- inserting CG's into tiny systems (bit of a stretch this one tbh)

(And probably a few more which I had in mind observing how the game develops in the last year, but fargod forgot.)

Either directly taking organised control out of players' hands or introducing a bit of randomness and, let's call it "chaos" to the populated space (via the stuff listed above) - do you think FDEV are pushing BGS to actually be a background simulation - or at least to be more of a background, rather than forefront sim? I have a feeling they want PP2.0 to become the forefront gameplay and BGS to just be there doing its stuff in the, well, background.

 

[Desirsar]

Meh, it'll settle down after the initial rush and the new colonies start to fill in.

- linking BGS actions to PP2.0

"BGS actions" is pretty much everything you can do in the game, were we expecting all new gameplay actions for Powerplay?

 

[Screemonster]

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, so groups that want to go sandcastle-building can do so without needing to apply for a whole minor faction to do so.

There was always demand for a map-painting game layer for small groups and solo players to build their sandcastles (relatively) noncompetitively and the BGS was never intended to be a strategic 4X sim, nor is it particularly good at it, nor do the vast majority of small/medium groups want to get involved in sandcastle-kicking contests about snatching territory from their neighbours.

The only thing really missing from colonisation now is the ability to claim for/as a squadron instead of an individual or at least display the architect's squadron tags.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

One might think so. It started when Frontier plonked the Thargoid war in the middle of players' "territory" with little regard to the consequences. In all fairness, what can they do? My understanding is, the BGS was meant to be exactly that, background. If they would have tried to tiptoe around the territorial claims to not colide with the precious BGS claims of the player groups, they might as well not have deployed the goid war at all.

Provocative position: Maybe it's a good thing that the new features like the Thargoid war, Power Play 2.0 and now Colonization stir up a bit of <bleep> in the BGS. But then again I'm not the biggest fan of player factions in general and the sense of ownership and "get off my lawn" attitude of some groups. So yay, go Frontier, I say.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Addendum: I understand that it's a fickle dance to not urinate off the part of the player base that is heavily into BGS turf wars. But maybe it's just impossible to please every BGS group, so Frontier possibly just said "sod it" and took ownership of their game?

 

[Mohrgan]

After the details of PP 2.0 were released, I divested my PMF and it's tiny empire, having seen the writing on the wall. It was obvious to me that FDev were warning us that PP 2.0 was going to swamp everything. By that time I was ready to get myself out of the micro and into the well, macro might be a stretch, but you get the gist.

Colonization has done nothing but reinforce that impression. The BGS is not the top of the pyramid, but rather it's the base.

 

[rootsrat]

For the record - I am not judging whether this is good or bad, merely asking the question. Just some evening musings if you like

 

[rootsrat]

The BGS is not the top of the pyramid, but rather it's the base.

Oh it always has been!

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

For the record - I am not judging whether this is good or bad, merely asking the question. Just some evening musings if you like

I'm judging .

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Either directly taking organised control out of players' hands or introducing a bit of randomness and, let's call it "chaos" to the populated space (via the stuff listed above) - do you think FDEV are pushing BGS to actually be a background simulation - or at least to be more of a background, rather than forefront sim? I have a feeling they want PP2.0 to become the forefront gameplay and BGS to just be there doing its stuff in the, well, background.

I would agree that Frontier are certainly no longer attempting to support the BGS as a wargame. (With their last doomed attempt to rescue Anarchies for both background and wargame purposes being back in early 2022)

They are also certainly introducing new features without worrying too much about their effect on the BGS wargame - the Thargoid War buried systems for years, Powerplay changes players incentives to do stuff, Colonisation makes expansion so easy (and almost entirely decoupled from the BGS itself) that the "be in (control of) as many systems as possible" objective stops meaning anything in most cases. Colonisation also encourages building "proper" systems rather than single-faction BGS strongholds, which is nice.

But neither are they directly unpicking (at the BGS level) any of the changes they made during their "support as a wargame" phase which have counter-background purposes, which would actively destabilise existing "secure" factions. e.g. reintroducing the original powerful negative actions or reducing the substantial pro-controller bias (except Anarchies, obviously) that "normal" activity has. With colonisation substantially diluting the player-per-system counts the "background" side of the BGS is likely to get more boring too.

"BGS actions" is pretty much everything you can do in the game, were we expecting all new gameplay actions for Powerplay?

There's a substantial separation between the two, in terms of the specific actions. Powerplay 1 only had actions which didn't affect the BGS (though it did also have a big incentive for Powerplay groups to separately carry out BGS-affecting actions). So it wasn't a given that there'd be any overlap, and they seem to have tried to avoid a few of the more "controversial" ways it could overlap.

	Affects BGS	Doesn't affect BGS
Affects Powerplay	Rares trading (until it got disabled for Powerplay) Commodity trades (sometimes) Support mission types Murder Search and Rescue (until it got disabled for Powerplay) Exploration Bounty Hunting [1]	Ship Datalink Scanning [2] Powerplay Commodities Powerplay Odyssey Data/Goods theft/uploads [3] Powerplay Kills Powerplay CZs Holoscreen Hacks Mining Scanning ships and wakes Exobiology Commodity trades (occasionally)
Doesn't affect Powerplay	BGS War CZs Commodity trades (most of the time) Most mission types Smuggling to the Black Market	Anything Thargoid-related (and various other things not important to list)

[1] 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.
[2] You can of course get missions to do this, which affect the BGS but not Powerplay
[3] Though massacring the settlement population to make this bit easier can of course have an effect

 

[Jmanis]

It does feel like things are going in that direction... which is why i was disappointed with PP2 having less dramatic effects on the galaxy.

Power territories should really be the equivalent of "biomes" for the populated galaxy, and the BGS/factions the minor variants within that biome.

 

[Kira Goto]

Anything Thargoid-related

How should this be interpreted as “not having an effect on Powerplay”? I’d say nuking systems back to square zero (even if the only notable time we’ve seen it - yet? - was Cocijo planting itself in Sol) does have an effect in some way. Even if it probably ends up negligible due to the spread of power territories and/or various imbalances or just non-functional aspects that remain in the system.

It does feel like things are going in that direction... which is why i was disappointed with PP2 having less dramatic effects on the galaxy.

Power territories should really be the equivalent of "biomes" for the populated galaxy, and the BGS/factions the minor variants within that biome.

On that note, I have to say it for myself that it always looks a little jarring for the way Powerplay supposedly affects things but then you have a system “controlled” by Grom or Aisling (or any other Imperial power really) while the superpower allegiance is to the Federation because that is the minor faction in charge.

Still trying to get my head around it. Or how it would make any sense that Sol is supposedly “controlled” by an Imperial power regardless of the fact that it’s the Federal capital. Had the attempt to take it from Archer following Cocijo’s destruction succeeded, anyway.

 

[Jmanis]

"BGS actions" is pretty much everything you can do in the game, were we expecting all new gameplay actions for Powerplay?

I personally didn't expect different actions, but certainly what i didn't expect was the motivation to doing PP being a thin layer of "extra rewards" for doing things you'd otherwise do normally.

Rather, i expected there to be a reason to get powers to exert their influence in different ways. A very minor example of that was the old Torval-Delaine slave runs... which were rare circumstances falling out of Torval and Delaine control of particular systems resulting in the best profits at the time, but obviously it was tenuous and depended heavily on what systems they controlled, which was constantly shifting

tl;dr the reason to do Powerplay should be because that power having influence is better for whatever your goals are, not because "they give me credits and materials".

But it seems there's no organic reason to support a particular power to expand into particular areas beyond "make system my colour", because there's very inconsequential effects from their control.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

 

[Rubbernuke]

I think FD are taking a step back and seeing what the BGS, PP and PMFs were used for and certainly reorienting things- PP2, TB and soon(ish) Vanguards will interlock to form a rather interesting 'do it yourself' kit that goes far beyond the very abstracted (and sometimes distant) effects and gameplay.

 

[Jmanis]

On that note, I have to say it for myself that it always looks a little jarring for the way Powerplay supposedly affects things but then you have a system “controlled” by Grom or Aisling (or any other Imperial power really) while the superpower allegiance is to the Federation because that is the minor faction in charge.

For me, it 100% makes sense... unfortunately all RL examples i can provide will fall afoul of forum rules.

Suffice to say my view is the Powers in Elite wield mostly soft-power, especially in those situations, and compete in the grey- zone political space[1].

Grey-zone (international relations) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Soft power - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

[1] if only, per my above post, the effects of that power were more drastic

 

[Rubbernuke]

For me, it 100% makes sense... unfortunately all RL examples i can provide will fall afoul of forum rules.

Suffice to say my view is the Powers in Elite wield mostly soft-power, especially in those situations, and compete in the grey- zone political space[1].

Grey-zone (international relations) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Soft power - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

[1] if only, per my above post, the effects of that power were more drastic

I think really powers are the new superpowers of old, and that superpowers like the Feds / Imps / Alliance are really for lore now and have little footprint in the game.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

How should this be interpreted as “not having an effect on Powerplay”?

In the sense that Thargoid-related actions - killing Thargoids, handing in AX bonds, repairing stations, etc. - neither gives Powerplay merits nor affects BGS influence levels.

Yes, the Thargoids themselves can have an effect - either by returning Powerplay ownership to neutral, or by freezing (or completely suppressing) factional influence and presence in a system - and players can then have the indirect effect of re-enabling Powerplay/BGS activity by removing them, but removing them alone doesn't change the situation.

On that note, I have to say it for myself that it always looks a little jarring for the way Powerplay supposedly affects things but then you have a system “controlled” by Grom or Aisling (or any other Imperial power really) while the superpower allegiance is to the Federation because that is the minor faction in charge.

In the original Powerplay, the Powers all had a passive effect on the systems they were present in which was
- greater influence gains for superpower-aligned factions
- reduced influence gains for everyone else

So you'd view the Power presence as "soft" influence over the system - some bribery, some careful assassinations, that sort of thing - which would then if maintained make it more likely over time that a superpower-aligned faction would rise in influence to take over, and make it easier for that one to stay in charge once there, giving the superpower (or lack of) control over the system.

In practice this never worked: the effect was very marginal, and completely swamped by both any deliberate attempts to change factions for either Powerplay or non-Powerplay reasons (including Hudson and Duval's problem that their preferred government type completely mismatched their superpower), and also by the substantial "existing controller" bias in how the BGS relates to typical player actions.

But it seems there's no organic reason to support a particular power to expand into particular areas beyond "make system my colour", because there's very inconsequential effects from their control.

And what effects there are, aren't documented any more.

 

[Jmanis]

I think really powers are the new superpowers of old, and that superpowers like the Feds / Imps / Alliance are really for lore now and have little footprint in the game.

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.

That's what i feel is the power of the BGS is... hard- shaping of how you undertake activities, but not preventing it.

 

[Kira Goto]

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense (as reply to both responses to mine).

Still, there are some edge cases I don’t think would really make much sense (like that Imperial presence in Sol which I somehow doubt would be tolerated in most circumstances). Now yes, Aisling is probably more about the soft power but a (from my possibly superficial perspective) a heavily militaristic power like Grom in core Federation territory? Not so much, I would say… but I suppose it still remains a game.

Anyway, I’ll probably leave the subject to those more deeply into it. But I am all for stuff being integrated with one another more properly than everyone having their own sandbox in each corner.