Mercs of Mikunn - 3 Year report: The Once Secret BGS mechanics and how to figure out exploits

[Walt Kerman]

They are. With credits.

Creating change in influence levels is it's own reward, and per my suggestion before, does not necessarily equate to credits earned.

As you well know and point out, some people's sought reward is influence not credits, which entirely invalidates that argument. The devs even added in a choice for missions where you can choose between the two.

If your sought goal is influence, you should be awarded per the effort you put in, not by how you game the system, in an entirely unrealistic way.

 

[Jmanis]

As you well know and point out, some people's sought reward is influence not credits, which entirely invalidates that argument. The devs even added in a choice for missions where you can choose between the two.

If your sought goal is influence, you should be awarded per the effort you put in, not by how you game the system, in an entirely unrealistic way.

Go read my suggestion, because it's pretty clear you didn't. It doesn't support a transactional model, but neither does it support credits=influence.

 

[Jane Turner]

So lets say you theoretically attack a player group, and remove them from systems one by one using using micro transactions, while they try to defend their systems not knowing about it with lump sum bounties. Yes its exploity, by definition, and entirely unfair to the target.

I do not understand, how you don't understand, nuking a system to 0 by selling goods at a loss one by one with trip is not an exploit. Added the definition of an exploit to the OP at the bottom.

​

Except, unless you know something I don't, microselling was removed from the game over a year ago. Understanding transactions has only helped defensively against murder sprees, and that information has been widely shared on this forum to anyone who asked.

 

[Jane Turner]

Doing it by value can not be exploited more easily. Name me an exploit easier than pushing a button over and over again. I think most agree that its odd, but I understand that changing it would make high traffic systems more difficult to move, which terrifies some groups. But that would also be realistic, and what the devs intended.

People should be awarded per the effort they put in.

I did - you didn't read it

 

[Walt Kerman]

I did - you didn't read it

Fines is the only one and its still not easier than clicking a button. Besides fine damage its removed, and the alternative also has one equally bad where you just let ships scan you over and over again. So for fines only they are equally bad. Not worse.

 

[CMDR Zadian Lichtfrost]

…, credits earned by a commander during an activity would have absolutely no effect on the BGS.

…
Firstly, let's just agree on this. A faction losing money, in isolation from anything else, would not be of benefit. …

I agree with you, that influence and reputation should be based on the activity or action.

But - credits in this game are used as a way to indicate how important activities and commodities for a faction are. If a CMDR makes a profit or earns a lot of money, then that CMDR is doing something the faction wants to be done and while the faction spends money on that that faction gains something they value more than the credits - commodities, jobs that got finished, problems solved.

In Elite credits are used as a way to measure how important, needed and useful something is.*

The whole problem of trading could be fixed by making the price match the demand more closely and selling goods that are not needed should result in no profit at all. In that case selling goods at a loss should have no impact on the BGS - way to easy to exploit and since buying stuff at a loss doesn't make sense and is only a result of a rather rudimentary economy system it can be ignored for the BGS.

Not trying to get into details and concentrating more on the big picture:

Credit value of activities could be seen as a proxy for transactions. The different credit rewards for activities functioning as a way to balance the importance/influence of those activities.
Adding everything up would then be a nice simple way to get an easy to understand system.

The main problem with this approach is, that the amount of credits earned are constantly changed - players demand more credits for various out of game reasons.

This makes a transactional system, while more complicated, a better choice as the credit rewards can be adjusted independently from the effect on the BGS.

But overall I don't think the discussion should be about transaction vs. value, it should be about what the BGS should be and how it can be turned into a system that works for the majority of players.



*) btw: that's why credit farming "exploits" are so problematic

 

[Walt Kerman]

Except, unless you know something I don't, microselling was removed from the game over a year ago. Understanding transactions has only helped defensively against murder sprees, and that information has been widely shared on this forum to anyone who asked.

Yes. As i said, removed because its an exploit (with ways around it), which is one of the problems of a transactional based system.

I never disputed it wasn't a semi-well known exploit. Murder sprees are transactional, which is why transactions must be used against it.

 

[Walt Kerman]

Go read my suggestion, because it's pretty clear you didn't. It doesn't support a transactional model, but neither does it support credits=influence.

No I did, I don't disagree with it really. We are talking past each other . I'm not advocating credits equals influence. I said value. Im talking about the value of work. Im not assigning credits to it. For example, value could be a ship count as you bounty hunt. This would help it equalize with system authority killing in a way.

In some cases value would be credits though as you yourself wrote:

"This is also easy, but needs a fix. It should be a combined measure of # of reports and value of those reports *purely from a body type perspective^*. Luckily, this translates to the credit value (with ELWs being most valuable), so we can actually take that on face value. But selling 50 reports at once should result in the same influence gain as selling 1 report 50 times; currently that doesn't happen (pretty much the theme of this post)"

 

[Walt Kerman]

Sorry for the triple post.

But I refute that fines would be a problem in a value based system. When I say value Im talking about the value of an action has for a faction. A faction shouldnt lose utility value by assigning a fine. It should be neutral. The city of London doesnt recoil in pain when it gives a fine to a parking violator. It gains utility when the fine is paid. So no, fines would not be exploitable in a value based system.

If you do an illegal action, successfully that should be a negative. If you get caught and fined for it, it should cancel your negative action out, or even better, gain some for the faction when it catches you. Catching criminals has value to governments. That is a value based system.

 

[Jane Turner]

Yes. As i said, removed because its an exploit (with ways around it), which is one of the problems of a transactional based system.

I never disputed it wasn't a semi-well known exploit. Murder sprees are transactional, which is why transactions must be used against it.

Balance is the issue and always will be.... and like my esteemed friend from the AEDC, a balanced game is all that matters (ideally tipped just in favour of defence). At first glance. value seems superficially like attractive idea - that was what we were thinking over 2 years ago, for about a week, but as soon as we thought deeper, and talked to others about how the game operated and what it would take to get the balancing issue right, then the attractiveness evaporates. If the game was in alpha and there was another few years of tinkering to get the value to effort ratio of all activities that currently affect the BGS as well as those that have no value to measure, it might be worth the amout of turmoil a change would cause. It would need someone from FD to comment, but I imagine that they thought long and hard about the best way to give them a tunable (till it worked) way of altering how the BGS was affected by various activities, that also left them free to "tinker" with payouts for mining, exploration, bounty hunting etc without having to deal with BGS chaos. Consequently I expect they took a deliberate decision to separate the BGS from the reputation system and made one transactional and one value based.

I'd be quite happy with a value-based BGS influencing system IF it was.

1. Possible to do without a complete re-jig of the game
2. Possible to get balanced to the level of stability that there is currently in the game
3. That balancing period took less than a month.

 

[Roybe]

I was in a voice chat with about 15 different groups this month and last and the transactional nature of the BGS and the problems it causes were one of the number one complaints. Its definitely well known I agree, as i stated in OP. I was supposed to compile that with the intent of sending it to Frontier... I just thought it would be better to include more groups that might want to have a word in.... and its certainly happening

I bet it gets worse as the use of bots goes up.

This is already a bannable offense, with in-game monitoring...so it won't.

As for the rest, we shall see.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Sorry for the triple post.

No you aren't.

But I refute that fines would be a problem in a value based system. When I say value Im talking about the value of an action has for a faction.

"Refute" means to demonstrate that something isn't true, which you have failed to do. You might reject, or otherwise deny that fines would be a problem in the pie-in-the-sky system that you have as vague brushstrokes on an otherwise blank canvas, you utter charlatan.

With regard to the value that an action has for a faction, might you not be referring to the +, ++, +++, and +++++ suffixes on mission posts the clearly outline what completing the mission will do for your rep or the faction's influence?

In otherwords, you're suggesting what happens already.

 

[Starwolfe]

Thinking about it more critically, its a layer of control.

I don't care for it personally, but I understand its nature.

Think of it like how Wars and Civil Wars lock out every action to stall the growth of a faction during it. The Transactional nature of the BGS is intended I think to minimize the exponential growth of certain aspects in a way to limit explosive opposition. Its a means to limit the impacts of the casual players.

While it does leave the exploitative nature there for those that understand it to create an upset or outcome that others may not want, the basis of it remains. In most parts of the galaxy it helps keep things in check.

Think of all the Haz Rez sites that are popular - how explosive would the growth be there if it was based off value? Just by holding a popular site you would hold a perpetual safe haven that cannot be opposed, while the flip side would be true in which by inserting a faction into a popular site said faction couldn't possibly gain control of the region - it would be constantly pressed down by the controlling faction.

The nature of the transaction is to put a choke on the system, a way for others to use it so those casuals don't unintentionally ruin the fun of the few that want to change things.

With this revelation I am torn, I don't like it but I understand we can't go full-on in a value-based system due to the effects the casual mobs would have on the system. We just wouldn't be able to alter the effects no matter the effort we put in certain areas.

 

[Abil Midena]

As far as what Starwolfe mentions for bounty farmers, what they need to do is balance the effect of the farmers first. That should impact the SECURITY of the system way more than the inf, but security can't be changed at all.

I'm also surprised by some of the people in here supporting transactions based inf. It seems to have more to do with them "knowing the system and how to manipulate it now" than wanting a better system that made more sense and was balanced. That is a bummer.

Overall though, FD is not changing the BGS. Maybe a small tweak here and there, but based on effort vs return on investment, there's no way the BGS is anywhere near the top of the list of things to fix/improve. It's just not going to happen. Also a bummer.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

From what I've heard and understand, FD is going to change Exploration data use and effect in their Q4 update this year.

While this thread is a good way for to communicate a problem (or not being one, depending on the Point of view) it's been 4 years now since Elite went live. For how long of this time did the knowledge of the transactional nature exist? How many have kept the knowledge to themselves? Used it to break the spirit of others trying to establish themselves?

How many do care? Or now that they have finally wrapped their head around on how things currently work (counter-intuitive as they may be) wouldn't want to see yet another big change where they have to learn everything from scratch once again?

I am open for any positive changes, but that has to be communicated to FD in a sensitive way and not a Sledgehammer method.

Not saying anyone did, just making you realise there are people on the other side as well. Who have their own schedules and stuff to keep.

And please keep the I paid money for this game thus I am entitled to demand things out of any possible interaction. Yes, you paid money once for the original game, maybe twice for the Horizon DLC. And that's it.

 

[Jane Turner]

While this thread is a good way for to communicate a problem (or not being one, depending on the Point of view) it's been 4 years now since Elite went live. For how long of this time did the knowledge of the transactional nature exist? How many have kept the knowledge to themselves? Used it to break the spirit of others trying to establish themselves?

It was announced by frontier in Jan 2016
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/221826-Dev-Update-(07-01-2016)

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

It was announced by frontier in Jan 2016
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/221826-Dev-Update-(07-01-2016)

So for almost 2 years now. That's quite the time.

 

[Jane Turner]

There was a series of earlier announcements by Michael Bookes that were eventually summarised in the thread above.... I failed to find them - but thought this would do.

 

[the100thmonkey]

So for almost 2 years now. That's quite the time.

That's more than two years, not almost.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Thinking about it more critically, its a layer of control.

I don't care for it personally, but I understand its nature.

Think of it like how Wars and Civil Wars lock out every action to stall the growth of a faction during it. The Transactional nature of the BGS is intended I think to minimize the exponential growth of certain aspects in a way to limit explosive opposition. Its a means to limit the impacts of the casual players.

While it does leave the exploitative nature there for those that understand it to create an upset or outcome that others may not want, the basis of it remains. In most parts of the galaxy it helps keep things in check.

Think of all the Haz Rez sites that are popular - how explosive would the growth be there if it was based off value? Just by holding a popular site you would hold a perpetual safe haven that cannot be opposed, while the flip side would be true in which by inserting a faction into a popular site said faction couldn't possibly gain control of the region - it would be constantly pressed down by the controlling faction.

The nature of the transaction is to put a choke on the system, a way for others to use it so those casuals don't unintentionally ruin the fun of the few that want to change things.

With this revelation I am torn, I don't like it but I understand we can't go full-on in a value-based system due to the effects the casual mobs would have on the system. We just wouldn't be able to alter the effects no matter the effort we put in certain areas.

It's certainly clear that the devs put a lot more thought into their decisions than Walt has (which is basically none at all. I'm surprised he can breathe and walk at the same time, to be honest.)