Mercs of Mikunn results after 3 weeks of effort - Also a request for documentation, in game and out

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CLICK HERE FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS THREAD. NEW ISSUES AT OUR THREE MONTHS POINT DISCUSSED HERE

Want a nice up to date summary of useful info in this thread <<<click here!

This isn’t intended to be another trash talk thread, a jab at Frontier, nor a rant, but rather a humble suggestion from a player who loves the game and those of us doing the Mikunn experiment, which has turned into an exercise in frustration. I have tried to summarize what many people have expressed in the original thread here.

Quick summary: The Mikunn experiment was made to test the background simulator, especially expansion into other systems through takeover and expansion.

Some links:

What did we discover from the experiment? Very little once it started


  • As little as two players can have an effect on a small system, especially if its far from the starter worlds.
  • There is some sort of bug or ‘problem’ that causes an influence gain freeze up immediately after expansion into another system.
  • 1.04 fixed whatever bug was preventing us from getting a second status in Mikunn, but the influence values are still stuck

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 Mikunn 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. We have easily done over 1000 missions, I must have done over 200 alone. 5000 In total is probably more accurate. But lets be pessimistic and round down to 1000. Let’s say that 1000 missions got us .1%. That means we would have to do close to 1 million missions excluding the 9.1% we already have.

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 to completely take over a system. 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 that 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. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect them to come in here or any of our other threads and explain it (although its so nice when they do). What I would like is some sort of documentation, especially in what has already been added to the game. Because of our Mikunn experiment I’m starting to have serious doubts whether certain items are in the game such as:


  • Station growth and contruction of new stations (I have heard rumors of proof but it’s still inconclusive)
  • Expansion into already occupied systems (partially implemented or bugged?)
  • Expansion into un-colonized systems

And by documentation, I not only mean whether or not these parts of the game have been implemented, but also documentation on how player actions have an effect. For example, if expansion into another system has been added, we have either encountered a bug OR the mechanics are so obscure and inscrutable, that 80 players working together over a three week period can’t figure it out. If either of these two scenarios are the case, I would just like to know so I don’t waste not only my time but the time of 80+ players encouraging them to fling themselves towards a task that cannot be achieved. Since our expansion into HR 7327 we have not gained or lost even .1% for any faction involved and that is a problem.

Fortunately, my wish has become partially true (or at least the promise of it becoming true), with this post. And a big thanks for that.

If certain parts of the game have not been implemented I would hope that the developers would be honest with us about it. It would be better for them to be honest with us about it – imagine player disappointment after trying to do achieve something in the game for several weeks only to discover it is not there. Players would appreciate it much more if they said, “Its not here yet” or “It’s a bug” and we are working on it.

Since these things were already promised in the kick starter it doesn’t hurt them to promise these things again, and it would certainly be much better for them to admit what is missing.


  • Documentation on what has already been promised but not added
  • Documentation on how the more obscure parts of the game work (like the background simulator) without giving ‘spoilers’
  • The development discussion archives are a little dated. Documentation on what has changed

I would like to leave this on a positive note by saying this is still one of the most amazing games I have seen, and has the potential to become my absolute all-time favorite. Please let this be so. So many people have become involved in the amazing experience FD has given to us here, and we understand that the scope is massive, help us understand the parts that we don't.



Post Edits:
An example of in game documentation how player actions could have an effect could be as simple as a local version of galnet giving in-game feedback. This was originally planned, but is it still? An alternative would be that when you get allied status, you see what the factions next plans are, ie - "we are considering to build a new station", which would be nice in game feedback letting you know the faction is nearing station building time. I feel like this would be easier to implement than galnet or could at least serve as a placeholder.

A response by the devs on the 'bug'

More

1 Civil war happens between minor factions of the same system - the only way to take a system now.
2 Civil war happens per station - the only way for stations to change hands
3 On possibly unclear feedback
4 Influence tracked per system not station
5Win civil war -> Capture station -> Possibly capture system depending on station
6 Minor factions can't expand in virgin systems for now
7 Peaceful takeover not possible, included in future development plans
8 No eta for automatic expansion background sim. Likely the finished product won't be fully automatic to give devs some control
9 Civil war is influence driven
10 Market is owned by the minor faction that owns the station
11 System changes are handled automatically. Several bugs have held things up.
12 It hasn't been determined yet how developers will decide the who and where of expansion into virgin system. New stations are not added automatically in the colonized systems yet either. Outposts upgrading into stations automatically also has not been implemented.
13 Booms can change market but not station or market type. Station and market type don't change.(Except probably terraform when finished)
14 More on Mikunn bug, that is affecting other systems as well
15 Physical station and market do not change
16 Population size doesn't effect the difficulty in influence gain
17 A bunch of repeats and trade does affect influence of owning station faction
18 Station economy type doesn't change through simulation.
19 Influence is per system
20 Market description bug
21 Market types determined by makeup of system which doesn't change, except for terraforming.
22 Capturing a non -controlling station is not pointless as the capture of the market can help you gain more influence


Soda's Compilation

Soda's Complete Compilation
 
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This isn’t intended to be another trash talk thread, a jab at Frontier, nor a rant....

There is not a single organism in this solar system that could claim that what you 've been doing is a jab or a rant or anything alike. keep up the good work. I am really looking forward to experience a complete and fully working background simulator as promised
 
Keep up the good work. And I would like to join with the mercs. :D

If you would like to join the mercs. Msg me when you get to Mikunn in either a private message or the group which can easily be found in Dangerous groups or linked at the top of this thread.

Do not post that in here for the sake of this threads topic ;) which I feel is very important. Thanks for the comment. See you in Mikunn commander.

Also check out The Black Hole in the Wall
 

Michael Brookes

Game Director
I've said before in a similar thread that we won't provide details on how the mechanisms work. However if you amass information to demonstrate how you believe it isn't working correctly then we can take a look. I believe some people have already raised a tickets so we'll investigate these.

Michael
 
I've said before in a similar thread that we won't provide details on how the mechanisms work. However if you amass information to demonstrate how you believe it isn't working correctly then we can take a look. I believe some people have already raised a tickets so we'll investigate these.

Michael

That ticket would be me. :D Well I appreciate the response regardless..... and I hope you change your minds at least partially.:p

Also thanks for being so responsive elsewhere on the forum as well. Its made me at the very least feel a whole lot better.
 
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I've said before in a similar thread that we won't provide details on how the mechanisms work. However if you amass information to demonstrate how you believe it isn't working correctly then we can take a look. I believe some people have already raised a tickets so we'll investigate these.

Michael
His first post demonstrates it's not working correctly, Michael. How many more people doing thousands of broken things do you need, exactly?

Also, if you don't tell your customers how your game works, and it doesn't work how they expect it to work, don't expect them to stay around for years banging their head against brick walls. Those days are long gone.
 
His first post demonstrates it's not working correctly, Michael. How many more people doing thousands of broken things do you need, exactly?

Also, if you don't tell your customers how your game works, and it doesn't work how they expect it to work, don't expect them to stay around for years banging their head against brick walls. Those days are long gone.

Keep it polite. They can close the thread, and will be justified in doing so if things get nasty. And I will be among the first asking them to close it if it takes that route.
 
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Personally I think if the influence locks at a certain point its gated by one of two things - a singular event that takes place, like enough warzone wins or a specific mission, tipping point all that etc or..... Its not finished.

My moneys always been on not finished because they have some strange priorities if the background simulation works really well but they implemented mining how it currently is :p
 
I've said before in a similar thread that we won't provide details on how the mechanisms work. However if you amass information to demonstrate how you believe it isn't working correctly then we can take a look. I believe some people have already raised a tickets so we'll investigate these.

Michael

If you won't tell us how it works, how are we to know if it's not working correctly in order to inform you? A general overview of what's supposed to happen would be nice, as right now the system seems to have no rhyme or reason. Aside from missions, we get no feedback whatsoever to determine the result (if any) of our actions. Common sense logic does not seem to apply.
.​
Compare the situation to, say, iRacing. The developers of iRacing would never tell you exactly how the underlying simulation works, but we know if we turn the wheel to the left the car should go to the left. The way the background faction works currently in ED is akin to pressing the accelerator pedal and the car responding by changing colour.
 
I will add to this with the results of my own experiments because I am facing similar issues with the "expansion" state. I will not publicly state the name of the system (it is a small one out of the way with under 100k pop) I am in as one of the things I am trying to test is precisely what can one (or two in this case) player change in the ED Universe (spoiler: not much so far). In the case a dev is watching though support request 00000021091 has all the information about the system and screenshots at various stages.

The experiment began 30th December so it will be 2 weeks tomorrow.

My system has 4 factions:
1) Owns the system (and 1 outpost) @ 55.5%
2) Owns an outpost @ 24.4%
3 ) Third independent faction @ 15%
4) Expanding faction @ 9.1%

Unlike the Dukes however I am not trying to help the expanding faction. I am simply trying to take down faction number 1 by promoting faction number 2. We have tried:

1) Trading only with station owned by faction 2
2) Killing ships belonging to faction 1
3) Doing missions like crazy for faction 2
4) Selling close to 1mil of exploration data at faction 2 outpost

Influence result after almost 2 weeks: 0% change for ALL factions. The ones I helped, the ones I killed and the ones I ignored.

What does this have to do with the Dukes? Well it seems 9.1% is the default value for "expanding factions" and no matter if you have 30 guys backing you to change a system or have 1 guy ignoring you the result is quite the same at the moment - you stay at 9.1% and don't go anywhere. Meanwhile all the other factions in the system remain at exactly the same percentage of influence as they were 2 weeks ago despite all the efforts that went in to aid faction 2. This in conjunction with the experiment from the Dukes leads me to the conclusion that once an "expansion" state is triggered the influence in the system is frozen - likely a bug.

Since patch 1.04 however I managed to put "pending state boom" on faction 2 due to the missions bug being addressed but that is all, influence has remained unchanged for all 4 factions in the system not even up/down arrows have been displayed in over 2 weeks.

If this is not a bug then the implementation of the background simulation needs to be more transparent communicating with the user. If anything is indeed blocking the progress of influence per design then what is doing that needs to be communicated to the player in-game so he can try to influence that. The problem is not just that it is bugged and guesswork but also that we have no feedback on our guesses.
 
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Then I'm glad I left out the part where I felt Michael's tone was adversarial. ;)

It was a tad adversarial but he also takes a good bit of his time responding to questions on forums (many of which are repeated) so he may have been in a hurry. Lets give him a break.

My desire is to show that despite their decision, a small bit of documentation would be great and is desired by the community. Note I am not asking for formulas, but rather 'has this even been implemented' or ' does this take weeks, months, or years'. When 80+ people can't figure out the game when working in tandem the pros of not providing documentation begin to wither, while the cons grow.

Judging by the response, he misunderstood the post and the level of documentation I was asking for, or maybe he didn't. Maybe they mean that for absolutely all documentation what so ever.

But then there are the development discussion archives, which is the same level (and beyond) of documentation I'm asking for now.... so I'm not really sure when they decided to implement this policy.
 
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ciger

Banned
His first post demonstrates it's not working correctly, Michael. How many more people doing thousands of broken things do you need, exactly?

Also, if you don't tell your customers how your game works, and it doesn't work how they expect it to work, don't expect them to stay around for years banging their head against brick walls. Those days are long gone.

Exactly, thinking the same... how many more people and evidence is needed for FDEVs to acknowledge something is off with the background simulation...
 
I've said before in a similar thread that we won't provide details on how the mechanisms work. However if you amass information to demonstrate how you believe it isn't working correctly then we can take a look. I believe some people have already raised a tickets so we'll investigate these.

Michael

While I appreciate that you do not want to divulge the exact mechanics of how this works, I feel that you need to throw us a bone or two on the intentions of states and what they do, otherwise it's going to be very difficult for any player to say "this doesn't appear to work" when they don't know how it's supposed to work. I would second Walt's comment that if 70 people can't understand what's going on then there's an issue at hand, even if things are working as intended.
 
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