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

[Deareim]

Snip..
A Trader handing in 500tons of the single most profitable Commodity has far less effect than a BGS Trader dropping off 10 Commodities @ 10 tons plus a high-profit Commodity filling up the remaining 400 tons.

snip

In your case, how do you do when you want to sell only ONE commidity to the specific station ? 10 times 10t (taking back your example) and then wait for next tick since it seems the bucket is filled up for trading part after ten transactions for a tick.
or like i thought, sweet spot was 200t by transactions and 10 transactions by tick system/station.

That is my interpretation so could be wrong.

 

[Schlack]

While we are here talking about transactions, is it true there is a cap of possible transactions by player/system or player/faction by day ?

its complicated and there are competing theories.

My current understanding is that there is a hard positive action faction cap per system based on population size. This is complicated by other factions influence moves and relative influence positions.

 

[Andovar]

I've never played the BGS (well, at least not with direct intention), but have to agree that the transaction based approach seems like an odd design choice.

I have a feeling that this likely falls into something like the powerplay category, meaning: "sure we'd like to revamp it, it just comes down to time and resources"

 

[GroundxZERO]

I’ve always suspected that this was true but wasn’t interested enough to investigate. Kind of saddened by it but its not a big surprise.

 

[ALGOMATIC]

Would be nice if those ships were in OPEN so you can kill them and minimise their missions completion rate, but as long as this trash exists with all modes are equal nonesence, min maxing can happen in PG / Solo without running into any risk of resistance.

 

[Unknown Zombie]

While I can nod my head to a lot of what you are saying Walt, the problem with making it by value pushes people into the big ships.

The game already pushes players into big ships. Big ships are already carrying more "transactions" than small ships.

My Cobra could carry 10 tons of four different commodities. My Type-10 could carry 10 tons of forty different commodities...

Even the mission system pushes players out of small ships.

"Carry 128 tons of biowaste to Sol"
"85 senators seeking transport to Sol"

I believe that the system being value based would make more sense; it would be more intuitive. Until I read this today, I had no idea that me trading 400 tons of Advanced Medicine to a system in Outbreak was basically completely ineffective. The system working this way is totally counter-intuitive; in the course of playing the game in a normal way I would have never assumed that. The system being transaction-based means to be as effective as possible you must play abnormally.

Dear God Why???
I don’t know for sure, but before we call anyone stupid for a horrible implementation, my guess is that the purpose was to allow anyone, be they in a sidewinder or an anaconda, to have an effect on the game and “blaze their own trail”. Problem is, as we discover the thresholds and frontier patches them higher and higher, the threshold will become out of range of the sidewinder, but still provide an exploitative spamable transaction giving the worst of both worlds.

Only Frontier can really say why.

I think the reason FDev did it this way is because they never expected the BGS to be something that players would focus on and actively try to manipulate. It was just something that should provide a changing game experience that players wouldn't really pay attention to. But players being players, and people being people, some did take interest and it's completely understandable why they would. Then FDev introduces PowerPlay and tacks it onto this system that was never meant to be focused upon, which gets even more players into manipulating it and really brought the flaws and shortcomings to light.

 

[Schlack]

Would be nice if those ships were in OPEN so you can kill them and minimise their missions completion rate, but as long as this trash exists with all modes are equal nonesence, min maxing can happen in PG / Solo without running into any risk of resistance.

Please keep that thought to one of the million or so open/solo debate threads.

 

[Starwolfe]

I would like to think that FDev already has a part of it implemented, just not doing it right yet.

I have noticed that there is a discrepancy with how much is turned in, but its normally so negligible that it makes me think that the value modifier is just set too low.

So you hand in 300k bounties min a mid-sized system and it moved 0.3%, but the next day you hand in 2 million and it moved 0.4% or something like that.

What if they just reworked the coding so the value effect could multiply the effort better?

So that 2 million in a mid-sized system could move it 1% while that smaller batch only does 0.3%? To me something like that would be a good idea to reward the effort you can put in without diminishing the work of someone that hands in 4x smaller trade-ins for that 1.2% effort.

 

[the100thmonkey]

4. I think the value vs transaction debate is really a debate on balanced mechanics.

Finally! Someone talking some ing sense!

 

[Deleted member 38366]

In your case, how do you do when you want to sell only ONE commidity to the specific station ? 10 times 10t (taking back your example) and then wait for next tick since it seems the bucket is filled up for trading part after ten transactions for a tick.
or like i thought, sweet spot was 200t by transactions and 10 transactions by tick system/station.

That is my interpretation so could be wrong.

Yes, you could generate the amount of BGS Inputs by generating different sales from different trips and be effective. But that'd be quite a hassle, so unless there's harsh Cargo Space limitations, making "BGS Trade runs" is clearly the fastest way, since (depending on Economy) upto some 12 Inputs can be generated in a single Trip and still build some Volume for the Multi to act upon.

AFAIK the Input limit for Trade is significantly higher than 10 before entering clear diminishing returns. And that's per Player for all I know, so bringing friends has distinct benefits if you really want to hit it off.

Of course, what comes out of it all depends on the different factors that'll always mangle your raw inputs eventually into Influence on the next BGS cycle.

 

[ALGOMATIC]

Please keep that thought to one of the million or so open/solo debate threads.

It all comes down to the same issue though. If everyone would be in the same mode those debates of "who is pushing transactional pve tokens faster" could be easily solved.

 

[Starwolfe]

It all comes down to the same issue though. If everyone would be in the same mode those debates of "who is pushing transactional pve tokens faster" could be easily solved.

No it won't. Peer-to-peer connections can often mean you just don't connect with another player in the system.
Then there is the timing issue, if one guy works a system for an hour, what's to guarantee that someone else on another part of the world's timezne will be online during the same hour?

The debate is pointless and doesn't reflect the intent of the OP either, so it doesn't fit. Best leave that silly debate for some other place.

 

[Unknown Zombie]

It all comes down to the same issue though. If everyone would be in the same mode those debates of "who is pushing transactional pve tokens faster" could be easily solved.

You always say "if it was open only we could solve the problem" like you'd be the omnipresent reaper there to send every carebear who dared to impact the BGS at all to the rebuy screen. Give it a rest.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I bet there is both upsides and downsides to either of transact or value thresholds. I guess a mix of both would be ideal but what do I know? Maybe their math cracks have determined that it's some kind of P-NP problem that would force the transaction server to the knee.

 

[Ouberos]

Not that FD would ever change the nature of the BGS, ( I mean come on, surely you aren't that naive are you?!) but if they did shift to a value based measure then I would hope, for fairness and to exclude a hedgemonising bot swarm they would also make OPEN BGS work of more value than Soloso you could at least stand a chance of defending your system.

Otherwise what's the point?

 

[iFred]

Would be nice if those ships were in OPEN so you can kill them and minimise their missions completion rate, but as long as this trash exists with all modes are equal nonesence, min maxing can happen in PG / Solo without running into any risk of resistance.

Another wise guy who thinks that Open has an endless count of ships in the instance.

 

[ALGOMATIC]

Another wise guy who thinks that Open has an endless count of ships in the instance.

Doesnt have to be. I am not the only one working against everyone. Someone else will instance with the ones I didnt.

 

[Patau82]

Doesn't every serious BGS player know its transaction based and has always been?
I happy with how it works at the moment apart from conflicts, they tend to be pretty boring as we win them before they even start!
Might be because my faction is on the edge of the bubble, no PP, very few player factions and little to no random traffic, the joys of the frontier

 

[the100thmonkey]

Aside from the clickbait title (seriously, Walt, very poor show), and the fact the there's nothing in the OP that hasn't been very public knowledge for more than a year, there are a few things that suggestions so far on this thread don't address:

1. How will replacing transactions with a value-derived input actually differ from the status quo? Does anyone here seriously think that the BGS-oriented groups don't know how to grind when they have to?
2. Does anyone here seriously think that switching to a value-derived influence calculation is going to be qualitatively different, at the point of player perception, from a transaction-based sum?
3. Might there not be a good reason to have a transaction-based influence calculation? (This is a question for the devs rather than one that players can realistically comment on)
4. How many of the posters on the thread actually understand the BGS, as it is now, well enough to comment on it with any real knowledge? Many of the posts are basically saying "noob it up guys!"
5. The only activity that will be penalised by switching from a transaction-based to a value-based influence calculation is trading. RES-farming is not a challenge, even a HazRES. Switching to value for bounties without acknowledging transactions will basically push everyone into the noobRESHIRES because that's simply the most efficient way to farm bounties. Take your super-ship with turrets. Put a ton of gold in your hold. 4-0-2. Fire at will. Go AFK. Profit.
   • Long-range exploration will be utterly unaffected, while short-range exploration will basically devolve into planning your route with EDSM.
   • How else can you calculate mission effects except by arbitrarily assigning it a value? Often, the goods involved aren't actually that valuable.
6. Why shouldn't the BGS be balanced around players working in groups and in small/medium ships? What's so bad about that?

Just a few questions to push this thread in a direction that's actually interesting.

 

[Deareim]

Doesn't every serious BGS player know its transaction based and has always been?
I happy with how it works at the moment apart from conflicts, they tend to be pretty boring as we win them before they even start!
Might be because my faction is on the edge of the bubble, no PP, very few player factions and little to no random traffic, the joys of the frontier

Deleted.