Is Uncontrolled Expansion Really a Problem?

[Greybeard_LXI]

I had a thought inspired by this quote from the "Medicine worse than the disease?" thread.

We know several factions who now bemoan their constant expansions into systems they did not want to enter and cannot seem to retreat from.

Are undesired expansions really that bad? Is it a problem if you ignore an expansion into a new system?

I know that they were before 3.3 because they were just opportunities for blocking wars and would interrupt other plans.

Does a presence in a system controlled by another PMF cause conflict if you just leave it stagnate at the bottom of the influence list?

 

[Screemonster]

My squadron's faction expanded into another PMF's space shortly after 3.3 went live thanks to that reversed-influences bug. We just got in touch with the other faction and told 'em "hey, go ahead and retreat us, we're not looking to take over".

 

[Starwolfe]

I tend to treat my area as unique in the galaxy thanks to the non-existent traffic there, as a result I don't have any issues with co-habitation with other PMFs.

 

[Mrjupp]

It's an issue. We have had 2 unwanted expansions, 2 failed unwanted expansions and we are in the process to have a 3rd unwanted expansion attempt. It's real easy to raise influence. It's damn harder to lower it.

 

[Jmanis]

I guess it's a problem for two squadrons wanting to do negotiate between each other, thus "wanted" or "unwanted" expansions go.

As far as the literal Faction's concerned though, at least through it's representation in game, no such thing as an unwanted expansion, so it's not really a problem imo.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

As long as there's some level-headed talks between two Wings where one side pops into places where others are already established all is fine. Besides, due to the Retreat problem its not as if the removal would be easy to facilitate in the first place.

Before 3.3 hit we've had a PMF sitting in one of our Systems for almost a year and couldn't get it out, because some of the Commanders in that Wing had a complete haywire concept of the Retreat function and were fearing for a negative impact of some sort. They ignored the orders of their WC to leave their PMF be so we could drag them out. It didn't help that they were internally split between their current WC and the former one who still resided in the Wing but aside of being a Keyboard warrior wasn't active at all anymore.

When the current leader threatened to abandon his post and leave the Wing they finally fell in line and let us retreat them out. But it shows that a few unruly Commanders can cause quite the headache for an entire Wing.

Either you acknowledge and respect the orders given out by your superiors or you don't. But then you're not fit to be playing alongside others if your actions cause problems for them too.

 

[lollo1572]

I don't like undesired expansions in undesired systems.... so at the end of a good expansion me and my group put our systems under 75%

 

[Screemonster]

The thing that's most galling is that with retreats you have to drop your influence to a minimal level and keep it there while the surrounding systems generate missions to boost your influence back up so random traffic ends up making it difficult as hell to retreat, but if your inf touches 75% once then bam, you're pending expansion. And without blocking states any more, there's absolutely nothing you can do to cancel it.

If there was a need to keep influence high in order to expand, just as there is with retreat, things would be a lot more manageable. But like murder versus bountyhunting, fdev have made things crazily one-sided yet again.

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

The thing that's most galling is that with retreats you have to drop your influence to a minimal level and keep it there while the surrounding systems generate missions to boost your influence back up so random traffic ends up making it difficult as hell to retreat, but if your inf touches 75% once then bam, you're pending expansion. And without blocking states any more, there's absolutely nothing you can do to cancel it.

If there was a need to keep influence high in order to expand, just as there is with retreat, things would be a lot more manageable. But like murder versus bountyhunting, fdev have made things crazily one-sided yet again.

I would be guessing it is that way to stop players coming in and messing with your faction when you are not looking?

 

[Screemonster]

I would be guessing it is that way to stop players coming in and messing with your faction when you are not looking?

See, that's fine for retreats, to stop a single day of influence tanking being able to remove someone from a system (which you only know is happening when the tick happens and you notice your inf has dropped, and I'm not sure if mass-murder even has that effect of uncapped influence-tanking any more) but when it comes to expansions you only find out it's gonna happen when the tick hits and you're already over 75%, at which point it's too late. You used to be able to trigger conflicts to cancel them as expansions took longer to go active than conflicts did, but that's no longer an option.

 

[Jmanis]

Coincidentally.... this is all a symptom of the fact the new expansion mechanic didn't make it in.

That is:
- high influence [1] across all systems the faction is present triggers expansion; and
- expansion happens from the happiest system.

[1] for some definition of high... i.e it may not necessarily mean over 75%

 

[Sapyx]

It's a "problem" if you are attempting to manage an entire region of space with specific goals in mind for the factions, not just pushing one faction to eternally expand.

Suppose you and your squadron are trying to make {that} faction expand into {this} star system, in order to try to make it progress towards a specific {destination}, but {another} faction you've been supporting in {another} system has an unexpected (and thus "unwanted") Expansion, and Expands into {this} system and steals the last available faction slot. {That} faction now has to try to find another route to get to {destination} system.

The suppression of Retreats and unexpected and unwanted Expansions means that the carefully tended gardens some player groups and squadrons have been cultivating are now exploding with weeds.

 

[Screemonster]

Meanwhile I'm trying to push a faction into expansion (just a random NPC faction that'll expand and take up the last slot in one of our systems, isn't present anywhere else) and one of the factions there went into retreat a couple of days ago.
They instantly leapt up in influence, enough to drain some from the controlling faction despite me running missions for them exclusively and no other traffic as far as I can tell, leapfrogged a few of the other low-influence factions, and locked into a pending conflict.

In another system we're in, a faction went into retreat, we gave them a little nudge in one day to stop it, and their influence rocketed and went pending for control of the system. This was a low-population system, but the fact that this retreat bounceback is enough to take a faction from <2% to 40-odd in a couple of ticks is... odd.

 

[BaddMongo]

Before 3.3 it used to be that when in expansion the faction would lose 3% influence per tick in the system, which worked well to prevent uncontrolled further expansions from the system.

But since 3.3 it seems that this no longer happens, as with no player intervention a factions influence seems to stay above 75% for the duration, which means that uncontrolled expansions are going to happen a lot more.

In our area of space we are seeing a lot of other PMF are chaining expansion after expansion from the same system as their influence no longer goes down and have seen our own PMF's influence no longer reduces like it used to while in expansion.