Mercenaries of Mikunn - The Background Simulation and Colonization Test

[Walt Kerman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPTCPHKGgws&t=1m19s

The only thing really is whether this was done by the simulator, or dev triggered.

What was the purpose of that youtube video? I watched the whole 16 minutes but couldnt figure out what you wanted to show me.

Edit; Oh I see. he looks at his navigation screen and it shows bao as an outpost at one point. It looks like thats a video from beta though maybe full release it was changed? I knew stations were supposed to be able to upgrade and i have taken many photos from different angles of Spassky

 

[JeT2686]

What was the purpose of that youtube video? I watched the whole 16 minutes but couldnt figure out what you wanted to show me.

Edit; Oh I see. he looks at his navigation screen and it shows bao as an outpost at one point. It looks like thats a video from beta though maybe full release it was changed? I knew stations were supposed to be able to upgrade and i have taken many photos from different angles of Spassky

It could be beta, for some reason i was under the impression it was gamma.

Also yes you are completely correct, it could have been updated by devs. However whats making me lean that this is true is (besides hope! haha) that we also seen security forces from the dukes, this seems like a upgrade tick. There is probably sequential progress to upgrading

 

[Walt Kerman]

It could be beta, for some reason i was under the impression it was gamma.

Also yes you are completely correct, it could have been updated by devs. However whats making me lean that this is true is (besides hope! haha) that we also seen security forces from the dukes, this seems like a upgrade tick. There is probably sequential progress to upgrading

I know someone announced that security forces (Im assuming that you mean system defense) from the dukes were new recently, but they are not. I actually saw system defense forces in Spassky before anywhere else including HR 7327 and Ho Hsi. I don't know why Spassky has them.... but they have been around for a while. Not many - but they are definitely there.

Also that may have been gamma, but beta or gamma doesn't matter, it could have been a manual change in either case. I would like to hope, but I've become a tad disillusioned.

 

[LiU-KanG]

I think we should concetrate on missions in HR with a negative effect on the local factions:

See here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...bamvEUf5SL-T7vpKNxlj3Nr5N8/edit#gid=162046424

We still require more data!

i think we should only try those missions that have a negative effect on the other faction (red) and should be done from within HR.

Please discuss. i dont think that these few missions have had an influence since the patch. though the 1.04 patch has not changed the backround sim.
A word from the DEVs would be good.

 

[Walt Kerman]

A bunch of this info is in the old thread, but since we moved I'm remaking it here.

Expansion

When the Dukes first expanded into Mikunn there were only two players working on it. My friend in a eagle and me in an adder. We did missions, the common missions we did at the time were transport food cartridges, personal weapons, slaves, lithium, the occasional delivery message. We did some independant bounty hunting (no missioning) in HR, and I turned in about 600,000 credits worth of exploration data to Spassky's of the nearby sphere around Mikunn.

We noticed it said expansion and the "expansion critical", we weren't playing too hard and the Duke's expanded shortly after I hit allied status with them. The only traffic in the system was me and my friend according to the station. When we expanded we immediately had 9.1% of HR 7327 and it grabbed influence about equally from all factions according to the amount of influence they already had.

The whole thing too 4 - 5 days, and we were into the next system. Real easy. Since then nothing has changed except for status changes for HR that we induced out of boredom.

Things we have tried
It would be easier to list things we haven't tried.

• Trade
  • Buy and sell at Mikunn
  • Buy and sell at Kwatee
  • Buy and sell at Sukua
  • Buy and sell at HR 7327 (We have since ceased this)
  • Absolute inundation of the Mikunn commodities market. Demand items actually below galactic average.
• Missions
  • Missions to all stations in Mikunn'iverse from Spassky's
  • Missions in HR that originate from the Dukes.
  • That agri-medicine mission from the "Chief medical officer" I have gotten 10 messages about has definitely been done.
• Reputation Status
  • Everyone has or is in the process of obtaining allied status.
• Exploration
  • Turning in data to the dukes
• Bounty Hunting
  • Every system although with a tendency to avoid Mikunn and HR 7327
• Killing authority
  • Mostly in HR 7327 some in the other systems (according to peoples posts)
• Other random stuff
  • "Looking for trade" mobile traders
  • Alternate path missions to backstab HR

If there is anything I have forgotten let me know. This was all off the top of my head.


There is some simple math that can explain why we should see some influence change after a couple of missions if we are the only presence (and I chose this system for that reason). The influence counter is actually very precise, as it goes to the first decimal place. This might not sound precise but lets say it took ten missions to move it up .1 percent.... That would be 10,000 missions to fully take a system.

Alternatively, if we got a .1% increase tomorrow, for three weeks of work, 1 year of work would see an increase of 1.7 percent. That means 58 years of the same level of work. I don't know about you.... but I feel that is (a tad =p) unrealistic. This is the argument I have been giving for a while. For this reason the argument more effort must be put in to see results doesn't hold water.

We are experiencing one or a combination of several things:

• A bug
• Intended and poor game design ( seriously 70 people 50 years?)
• Misunderstanding of inscrutable game mechanics (70 people working together cant figure it out)
• The devs are faking it til they make it and we are so far out they haven't noticed us enough to change the system.

I have no clue what the problem is, and we won't know what the problem is until Frontier is straightforward with us.

 

[ollobrains]

Well got very lucky in my 8 hour stint today, 5 missions exporting gold for the dukes from HR gabriels station to all 3 of the other systems nearby. 150,000 credits for each one, the dukes must be getting very rich and exporting their wealth to nearby systems instead of using it to buy favour and increasing their influence in HR. Im happy enough to assist the dukes in achieving what they wish to do with their wealth it aids me in getting rich quickly.

Does anyone know the nearest station to get agri medicines im getting the medical officer at spisskys station in mikunn asking me all the time to cure some plague thats running amok on the lower levels. Id love to help them out to keep the station clean of hostile viruses.

Well nothing has moved. Devs are on the weekend off, so nothing will probably change to next week. But like others on this forum have said keep at it folks whatever youre doing, get rich get sexy ships all pimped up and some nice reserves to pay for insurnaces should the need arise because soon the devs will fix things up and we can see the fruits - the day the dukes take over HR ill open a bottle of rare wine and drink until im durnk.

 

[dr.zli]

adding another strange effect - anaconda hunting mission issued by dukes of mikunn hunts a criminal in mikunn and on completion I lost rep with dukes. Facepalm

 

[Ridon]

Hi Guys,

even though i am not participating in your Mikunn activities i am following your progress closely, because i am very interested in the outcome.
I am doing the same in a different system, but with the same result. My allied faction spreaded into a nearby system with about 9% and... nothing...
THe expansion status changed to boom status (in both system so i guess it's faction based not system based). In the homesystem they have nearly 90% influence, 2 other have only 1% and state: civil war but i never got attacked by anyone in here.

During trade i noticed that the commodities market ist nearly 100% stable. Only 3 or 4 wares have different numbers each day. Also i can sell hundreds of tons and the "needed amount" never changes. Also if it states needed 0, i can sell and nothing changes. Only the amount i can buy is reduced and will fill up slowly (every X minutes).

The missions created by my allies doesn't seem to have anything to do with the amount of stuff needed in the station.. there are some high demand commodities but i usually get missions for commodities which are in medium or even low demand.

Overall my experience with the "background simulation" is, that it's not active or it's bugged at the moment. I can imagine that it is indeed complex and that they maybe underestimated the player activities or impact. But i wasn't able to find any statement about the situation. And that's very disappointing. A lot of players want to be part of this "dynamic faction system" , so at least a statement would be very appreciated.
if the system is bugged or not active, then we could focus temporarily on other activities instead of trying and trying and trying :/


p.s.: sorry, english is not my native language

 

[ollobrains]

Hi Guys,

even though i am not participating in your Mikunn activities i am following your progress closely, because i am very interested in the outcome.
I am doing the same in a different system, but with the same result. My allied faction spreaded into a nearby system with about 9% and... nothing...
THe expansion status changed to boom status (in both system so i guess it's faction based not system based). In the homesystem they have nearly 90% influence, 2 other have only 1% and state: civil war but i never got attacked by anyone in here.

During trade i noticed that the commodities market ist nearly 100% stable. Only 3 or 4 wares have different numbers each day. Also i can sell hundreds of tons and the "needed amount" never changes. Also if it states needed 0, i can sell and nothing changes. Only the amount i can buy is reduced and will fill up slowly (every X minutes).

The missions created by my allies doesn't seem to have anything to do with the amount of stuff needed in the station.. there are some high demand commodities but i usually get missions for commodities which are in medium or even low demand.

Overall my experience with the "background simulation" is, that it's not active or it's bugged at the moment. I can imagine that it is indeed complex and that they maybe underestimated the player activities or impact. But i wasn't able to find any statement about the situation. And that's very disappointing. A lot of players want to be part of this "dynamic faction system" , so at least a statement would be very appreciated.
if the system is bugged or not active, then we could focus temporarily on other activities instead of trying and trying and trying :/


p.s.: sorry, english is not my native language

In reply the devs are either slowly implementing, fixing things each day and not saying anything, the federal and imperial systems seem to be getting attnetion, so the bigger ones i guess if either of them hit the same bug, it might get addressed so we can mvoe forward. Or its a skeleton at the moment and same it may be slowly built up and adjusted with time. But id like to see them clarify where its at, where tis going and so forth. Just my personal viewpoint. But im just going to keep building up my credits, as they might come in handy later on when we get new ships and new things to play with - there is a mission seen rarely but not here but mentioned in some other threads where a faction asks for 500,000 credits to expand their operations or to help win a war - yet to see that in mikunn but who knows what the future holds.

At the moment it would appear the devs are a bit sensitive about a dynamic universse simulator that really isnt a dynamic universal simulator, its more really just giving the appeareence u can influence the universe - its skeletal at best and plain mis advertising at worse. They dont like to talk about it, ive had a few private messsage from the devs essentially i sent some pointy questions designed to get a response and all i got was an automated please ticket it, i replied that i had , the ticket has been ignored and they devs havent moved on any information. Its extremely disappointing.

 

[dr.zli]

HI Ridon, thanks for the info, this further proves my recent hunch that the background simulation is a placeholder, the changes are done manually by devs -_-

 

[Walt Kerman]

Its definitely a possibility.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Hi Guys,

even though i am not participating in your Mikunn activities i am following your progress closely, because i am very interested in the outcome.
I am doing the same in a different system, but with the same result. My allied faction spreaded into a nearby system with about 9% and... nothing...
THe expansion status changed to boom status (in both system so i guess it's faction based not system based). In the homesystem they have nearly 90% influence, 2 other have only 1% and state: civil war but i never got attacked by anyone in here.

During trade i noticed that the commodities market ist nearly 100% stable. Only 3 or 4 wares have different numbers each day. Also i can sell hundreds of tons and the "needed amount" never changes. Also if it states needed 0, i can sell and nothing changes. Only the amount i can buy is reduced and will fill up slowly (every X minutes).

The missions created by my allies doesn't seem to have anything to do with the amount of stuff needed in the station.. there are some high demand commodities but i usually get missions for commodities which are in medium or even low demand.

Overall my experience with the "background simulation" is, that it's not active or it's bugged at the moment. I can imagine that it is indeed complex and that they maybe underestimated the player activities or impact. But i wasn't able to find any statement about the situation. And that's very disappointing. A lot of players want to be part of this "dynamic faction system" , so at least a statement would be very appreciated.
if the system is bugged or not active, then we could focus temporarily on other activities instead of trying and trying and trying :/


p.s.: sorry, english is not my native language

And thanks for the info. I think i will make a list of other people having similar problems tomorrow.

 

[donpost]

adding another strange effect - anaconda hunting mission issued by dukes of mikunn hunts a criminal in mikunn and on completion I lost rep with dukes. Facepalm

Seems to me that the Anaconda hunting missions work like this: The original mission always declares three systems where the criminal can be found. You will always find a USS in those systems where a NPC directs you to a fourth system where the criminal is. The criminal will be a member of a random(?) faction in this fourth system. So theoretically you could take a mission from the Dukes, where the three original systems do not include Mikunn. If the USS NPC reveals the fourth system where the criminal can be found is Mikunn, then the criminal is allocated the the Dukes faction (as they are the only faction in Mikunn). As you always lose rep with the faction the criminal belonged to when you destroy him, this results in losing rep with the Dukes even though they provided the mission in the first place.... Probably not intended behaviour - maybe it's worth a ticket?

I think we should concetrate on missions in HR with a negative effect on the local factions:

See here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...bamvEUf5SL-T7vpKNxlj3Nr5N8/edit#gid=162046424

We still require more data!

i think we should only try those missions that have a negative effect on the other faction (red) and should be done from within HR.

Please discuss. i dont think that these few missions have had an influence since the patch. though the 1.04 patch has not changed the backround sim.
A word from the DEVs would be good.

I've just added a few more missions It seems the missions that cause negative effects are pretty rare, and even then the target faction sometimes appears to be random. For example, I had a mission to supply Mikunn with Superconductors, which I fetched from HIP 93685. On turning in the mission, in addition to the positive status effects with the Dukes, I got some positive status effects with the Dominion of Kwatee who were not involved in the transaction in any way.

.​

Considering nearly all the missions give Boom+ to the Dukes it's strange that we haven't got the Boom status yet. Looking at the design documents referenced in the OP, it says that a Boom was to be activated when population is below a certain amount and wealth is above a certain amount. Well the population of Mikunn is tiny so that can't be an issue. I just went to Spassky's Inheritance to see what the wealth level is at....and it's not there? I'm sure normally when you enter a station commodity market it would tell you the wealth, EG "Large population, poor extraction economy" etc. However at SI it just says "Tiny population extraction economy". Odd.

 

[Walt Kerman]

You don't have to go that far for superconductors. They are in Sukua.

 

[donpost]

You don't have to go that far for superconductors. They are in Sukua.

You're right, in fact you can't even buy superconductors from HIP 93685 because it's a High Tech system. I ought to facepalm myself for that! I actually bought them from Kwatee (Smith Dock). But still I got rep with a faction who WERE NOT the owners of the station.

 

[dr.zli]

Seems to me that the Anaconda hunting missions work like this: The original mission always declares three systems where the criminal can be found. You will always find a USS in those systems where a NPC directs you to a fourth system where the criminal is. The criminal will be a member of a random(?) faction in this fourth system. So theoretically you could take a mission from the Dukes, where the three original systems do not include Mikunn. If the USS NPC reveals the fourth system where the criminal can be found is Mikunn, then the criminal is allocated the the Dukes faction (as they are the only faction in Mikunn). As you always lose rep with the faction the criminal belonged to when you destroy him, this results in losing rep with the Dukes even though they provided the mission in the first place.... Probably not intended behaviour - maybe it's worth a ticket?

completely true, this time mikunn was among the 3 systems, i took off from spasky, 1st USS was contract update and guy told me a criminal is in mikunn, 3 more USS later, conda appears, i kill it, lose rep with Dukes -_-

 

[Steuben]

MAybe expansion for a small fraction like the Dukes is only possible through the slow aquisition and build up of systems that have no or very small populations. Taking on the well developed faction in HR 7327 might be a bit to much. Even if people pound away at the target system it doesnt make much difference in the bigger picture for the background simulation! Because its 2000 vs Millions. Its perhabs more about economic power and numbers than indiviual missions.

 

[dr.zli]

MAybe expansion for a small fraction like the Dukes is only possible through the slow aquisition and build up of systems that have no or very small populations. Taking on the well developed faction in HR 7327 might be a bit to much. Even if people pound away at the target system it doesnt make much difference in the bigger picture for the background simulation! Because its 2000 vs Millions. Its perhabs more about economic power and numbers than indiviual missions.

yes, it's logical when you put it that way, but then we'd see some movement in system, some gains or losses as the obviously dominant hr throws puny faction out. But all we have is 9.1 percent stuck at all times and that's it.

 

[Steuben]

9.1 Its probably the default number were every faction that is not strong enough to get a real foothold in a system gets stopped and stays there until it has enough power to advance?

 

[dr.zli]

9.1 Its probably the default number were every faction that is not strong enough to get a real foothold in a system gets stopped and stays there until it has enough power to advance?

consider our action then - we destroyed so many ships in system HR dynamics would be broke by now, we destroyed so many traders, so many civilian ships. Where's the civil unrest? Where's some kind of change? All they do is throw even more ships at us.

 

[Steuben]

Thats how we think it is. I have the suspicion the background simulator weighs the importance of individual missions (when it comes to NPC vs NPC Faction war) by players way lower then the things the npc are doing.