you can rewatch the first livestream on the BGS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5DGyG6Qwvk
- there is a (soft-)cap for maximum influence gain, which depends on population size.
this reads unnecessary complicated, but describes pretty much how the BGS works. in a 60k population system you can move the influence of a faction ~ +15% per day, but you can gain more, when you hurt other factions (as their influence losses are shared with all other factions). as for numbers - comes with experience in a system. i can pretty much predict for systems i'm working in more often, how much i need to do for that maximum influence gain (if i'm the only one working in that system)
- a single "action" (for exampel: a single mission) has less effect in a huge population system than in a small population system.
- there is no single commander cap (explictely stated in that livestream, i asked the question). no action isn't taken into account.
generally you want to generate as many actions towards your goal as possible "per docking" (per time).
a typical run if i work the BGS for a minor faction looks like that: bring something profitable, cash in exploration data and bounties, pick up missions, don't forget fetch and salvage missions (as you anyway will return), do the missions, get stuff by travelling via systems which i haven't explored, return with stuff, jump into USS to get 1 bounty claim, dock - cash in exploration data and bounties, deliver mission cargo, sell the rest with profit, pick up more missions ... so, per docking in system I'll generate
1 positive "trade"-action
1 positive "bounty"-action
1 positive "exploration-data"-action
+x positive "mission"-actions.
___
from experience:
a) it looks as if combining different positive influence actions or different negative influence actions have more effect, than repeating the same action all over. e.g.: trading with profit, cashing in exploration data, and cashing in bounties has a better effect, than doing 3 trade runs.
b) the BGS is heavily weighted on transaction-numbers instead of CR-value. cashing in 10 times 20K bounties is nearby 10 times as effective as cashing in 1 time a 200K bounty, or even 1 time a 2 mio CR bounty. same goes for trading to some extend, black market tarde, etc. which is why a dedicated player in an Adder can have nearby as much effect as a dedicated player in a cutter. i fly what i enjoy - cobra mkIII, python, DBE - sometimes cutter or courier - size doesn't matter for the BGS much.
if you have more detailed questions, this thread is where you find all the answer (by asking the questions, and finding a lot of players with long-time experience answering. nobody expects you to read through 512 pages):
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/193064-A-Guide-to-Minor-Factions-and-the-Background-Sim
