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

[Michael Brookes]

Hi Michael,

While I certainly agree that internal processes should be a black box, I think players need to know what results they should expect from their actions. I.e. what different states a star system can be in, how those states differ from each other from a player perspective, and what exactly needs to be done by a player in order to change those states. Otherwise we're blindly doing stuff knowing neither what the consequences of our actions are, not whether we want those consequences or not.

Just my $0.02

Agreed, some of that feedback is in place but maybe it isn't clear enough. With the two bugs we've discovered the feedback would be correct, but the changes wouldn't have been applied.

Michael

 

[GlyphGryph]

It happens per station and when it occurs for the controlling station then system ownership changes.

Currently civil war is the only way to change ownership.

Michael

Thanks, that's great!

Is it correct that expanded factions share the "state" of their home system faction and are unable to have states of their own? Should they ever end up in civil war, it would be incredibly confusing. Is this supposed to be happening?

(Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, it's great that you're doing this. )

 

[Ytheleus]

It happens per station and when it occurs for the controlling station then system ownership changes.

Currently civil war is the only way to change ownership.

Michael

This is absolute gold, and exactly the sort of thing I want to know to get involved in this aspect of the game.
Is it sensible that to find this sort of information out, we have to ask the Executive Producer of the game directly?

Some sort of guide is badly needed, or even better would be contextual in-game feedback per system/faction, in my opinion.
Perhaps this is in the pipeline, or not, idk.

Edit: This has been frustrating me for a while. Sorry to appear pushy. When it's more mature, this will be great fun to play around with.

 

[_Flin_]

An update on this - we've identified two issues that would be causing problems here. The first is that expanding minor factions into nearby systems is causing the changes tobe applied to the wrong systems. There's also an issue where some systems aren't processing the queue of changes in a timely fashion so they haven't been applied yet. We're working on fixes for these two problems.

Michael

That's a ray of light.

 

[Xavier Saskuatch]

It happens per station and when it occurs for the controlling station then system ownership changes.

Currently civil war is the only way to change ownership.

Michael

More speculation trying to put 2+2 together.

So if you want to take the system I am wondering if you have to flip each station one at a time starting with the weakest faction first.

That way you can gather enough influence via exposure to a greater number of available missions in other stations.

Also going to assume you'll have to be selective on what groups of missions you take relative to the start and end points.

 

[GlyphGryph]

Michael Brookes,
Last question: Can a civil war be started unilaterally, by a much higher influence faction? I ask, because one of the system's we're working in has faction whose influence is so high that missions from the other factions that own the stations in question never appear. It would be great to know if it's even possible to work towards them eventually taking over that station, or if it's a bit of a lost cause.

Okay, one more:
Is it even intended for a station-controlling faction's influence to fall so low they stop offering missions at all? I have one system where the dominant faction is 99% influence, but two stations are controlled by 0% (0.2 and 0.3 I think from the system screen) influence factions.

 

[Rearden]

It happens per station and when it occurs for the controlling station then system ownership changes.

Currently civil war is the only way to change ownership.

Michael

Well this is good to know and I wish that the game would have told me this by displaying influence per station instead of per system instead of finding out like this. Don't want to sound negative, just giving an example of what I think a reasonable difference between a black box and "in-game" feedback should be.

In any case I am very much appreciated as I have been splitting my efforts across stations and will now target a specific station in the system due to this new information.

 

[ollobrains]

Good to have some answers, heck if mikunn ends up expanding to 10 systems, sooner or later they would bump into other factions, and of course anyone can get into a backwater system and start to flip minor factions back into power. So both expansion and contraction look to be balanced once the system is working proplery and we still have 400 billion stars to expand into, and the whole process is a over time thing anyway so plenty of room for everyone to move

 

[Eggplant!]

It happens per station and when it occurs for the controlling station then system ownership changes.

Currently civil war is the only way to change ownership.

Michael

Hi Michael! Thank you for being so active with the community! Rare for a producer on a big project.

It would be nice if this feedback was more real. I'd think a station under civil war would be a pretty disruptive. I can imagine traffic control and the commodities market shutting down at least. If the takeover is military in nature, maybe firefights breaking out around the station as factions vie for control. A station in turmoil would be a pretty dangerous place to be!

 

[BigBadB]

This is correct - civil war refers to a conflict between minor factions in the same system. It is how a minor faction takes over a system.

Michael

Thanks, Michael - this is exactly the kind of thing I meant in my previous post. Without players knowing what 'Civil War' means within the context of the background simulation, it's very hard for us to make meaningful decisions.

Again, not asking for the details of the black box, just to understand what some of the inputs are and what some of the outputs mean.

 

[_Flin_]

It happens per station and when it occurs for the controlling station then system ownership changes.

Currently civil war is the only way to change ownership.

Michael

WHOW! What info!

THANKS THANKS THANKS!

So to switch a system we have to take over the controlling station.

 

[DaveC]

This is correct - civil war refers to a conflict between minor factions in the same system. It is how a minor faction takes over a system.

Michael

Errrm, I have a bit of a problem with this.

Dain (anarchy with population 1117) currently has a 100% faction in a state of Civil War.
It's been in Civil War for a few weeks.
Surely if Civil War is between factions there should be another faction showing up in the system?

Should Civil War only involve a single faction, or is this a bug?
I guess it might just be due to being an Anarchy or something.

 

[ollobrains]

Errrm, I have a bit of a problem with this.

Dain (anarchy with population 1117) currently has a 100% faction in a state of Civil War.
It's been in Civil War for a few weeks.
Surely if Civil War is between factions there should be another faction showing up in the system?

Should Civil War only involve a single faction, or is this a bug?
I guess it might just be due to being an Anarchy or something.

someone has done enuogh to tick a civil war - two outcomes here the faction splits in two ( ala creation of new factions via internal civil war) perhaps a democratic faction might rise to drive out the anarchy governing group. Which then raises the question how do u reduce the civil war. Pacification missions and content.

Or they are at war with a faction outside of the system and not listed.

 

[lefty1117]

The beauty of getting all of this worked out, including the bug fixing, is that this is really the meat and potatoes of the sandbox gameplay. We talk about content and having things to do - if we know for sure that the player driven changes in economy, system ownership, etc., are really working, then that gives the incentive to continue on because we know that what we do matters. In a sandbox game that's what it's all about.

 

[GlyphGryph]

someone has done enuogh to tick a civil war - two outcomes here the faction splits in two ( ala creation of new factions via internal civil war) perhaps a democratic faction might rise to drive out the anarchy governing group. Which then raises the question how do u reduce the civil war. Pacification missions and content.

Or they are at war with a faction outside of the system and not listed.

Other outcomes:
It stays in civil war status forever because it is a bug.
The civil war eventually goes away and nothing changes.

 

[ollobrains]

FD wanted an onlne game, and the quickest way to keep ppl playing ala eve online is to make sure the meta game works, and this is far more complex than ccp has ever developed. If u want to keep players long term give them a lot of varied things to do. This fits the bill perfectly and can be just scaled up so many itmes over and made more complex with time, we still ahve colonisation to come yet.

 

[LiU-KanG]

Hi Michael,

While I certainly agree that internal processes should be a black box, I think players need to know what results they should expect from their actions. I.e. what different states a star system can be in, how those states differ from each other from a player perspective, and what exactly needs to be done by a player in order to change those states. Otherwise we're blindly doing stuff knowing neither what the consequences of our actions are, not whether we want those consequences or not.

Just my $0.02

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vFHe40t93-SKc22s7bamvEUf5SL-T7vpKNxlj3Nr5N8/edit?usp=sharing

here is a gathering of missions and there effect ...

 

[Cosmos]

I find it extremely fun so it matters to me.... and the 80 others involved with the link in my signature....

And the hundreds involved with lugh....

and the other various smaller groups doing their own....

you get the idea.

Well far be it from me to interfere with other peoples fun but there is something about this whole situation that reminded me of a scene from Red Dwarf

[video=youtube_share;Qa_gZ_7sdZg]http://youtu.be/Qa_gZ_7sdZg[/video]

 

[Nauril]

Hi Michael,

Also be aware of the Commodites Market bug: demands amount does not change after sells.
Only supply quantity changes when a player buy some goods from a station.
I dont belive market demands/supply should work only one way.

Also waiting on fix on background sim, so i can expand the influence for one, lovely prison colony.
I did like 70 missions yesturday for Lu Pah Prison Colony there, but nothing really changes - only economic boom effect pending on/off after reloging (and other players have same issue with it in other systems), but no constant effects on any kind or influence raise to even +0.1%.

Regards

 

[CMDR_Irishbros]

Wasn't this issue picked up in beta? The Lugh system take over?

And only now they found a bug!