While I think we all appreciate a bit of stability after the initial chaos of the 2 months after 3.3 was released, and the latest patch certainly did that, it also seriously slowed down faction work.
Part of that patch was the early ending to conflicts, which I am happy to say seems to work as advertised. Conflicts will end when one side can no longer lose it, and on next tick it immediately moves to None and transfers any assets. This is great. Moreover, I've only seen one empty CZ since the patch, and where conflicts went the wrong way, we suspect opposition/traffic, rather than it just going the wrong way, as it did initially.
However, part of the patch as well was to lower the influence of each activity. The same influence gains require something like 5x-10x more effort than before, which is bad enough in low traffic areas, in high traffic areas that is... discouraging.
Mission effects are way down.... while at the same time we no longer can board flip. So, even if I would like to do 20 missions or more, it basically ends up with 3 salvage missions and a cargo delivery.... if I am lucky.
It's discouraging to work for your faction and not see your efforts rewarded. But it is not much better to work daily for a couple of 10ths of a percent improvement, making a run on a system's ruler a multi-week slog, when in comparison armed conflicts are won sometimes with remarkable little effort.
At the moment, an armed conflict is a quicker path to influence growth by locking inf, winning 4 days in a row and get a free 4%. Meanwhile, getting that war organized now can require a completely insane effort over multiple weeks.
Is it perhaps time to bump influence effects up a bit again? Are people still seeing a lot of basic mechanic problems?
And please make explo data work again, as well as mining and trade. At the moment it seems missions and combat zones is most effective. Trade works under certain conditions but remains disappointing for effort involved, and missions are rare and if you're unlucky, stuck on pirate kills and salvage missions... Meanwhile some systems are self-growing themselves to expansion, making which system to expand hard to control.
I like the new mechanics. The ways armed conflicts work is great. But now I'd really like to make some progress...
Can we get the influence effects bumped up again? Is the BGS now stable enough to do that?
Love to hear your thoughts.