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

[Nauril]

Same problem for me: today no update.

Yesterday the update I got was much smaller than I antecipated and some people were complaining they didn't see anything happening in their systems so I am starting to have a feeling the job got stuck midway yesterday and no one "unstuck" it yet. Hopefully our work is being queued somewhere and not lost (I did see state changes today, just no influence changes so they appear to be different jobs).

I'm really dissapointed. So many votes on forum from us about influence issues, so many experiments, but...
There was no influence update since patch 1.06. Since then, I did around 60 missions by myslef in Exphiay for Crimson Dragon's and killed a lot of authorites + 4 more ppl of my team also cleared few checkpoints and did their own missions. Only statuses changed for opposite, federation factions - Lockdowns triggered. So statuses works in real time. It changes for crtitical and then triggers when you do more missions.
I know that we work alone over there (nobody works against us), and we can make around +2% influence per day for our faction. (around 100 missions per day should make +2% influence)
Here is the prove of that:
01.19 - 55 missions, 15.6% (+0.1%, Boom)
01.20 - 32 missions, 17.0% (+1.4%, Boom)
So situation with daily influence updates even worsen, then before patch 1.06. Before, every day devs manually (or not) updated it at 3-4 p.m (european time).
I thought new fixes will make influence updates in real-time automatic mode, but i see opposite of that. Great job on main problems of this game.
Yea, but fixing the bug about not showing all the time landing platform is more important(like it is a big deal to just look again in 5-10 sec time - and i land like 50 times per day - so it is not a big problem)
Also station lights and deeper gas clouds are the key thing to keep players in the game. I mean, come on - these are just graphic details, like adding rain in World of Warcraft. Please fix the main issues first.
This patch didn't give us anything.
I think i will start to make bets - when we will see influence updates.
When i play a game, i would like to see effects right away. This is why it is called a game, not the real life, because in real life to change system goverment it would take +100 years.
And my goal in this game is try to expand influence of chosen faction. It connects all other aspects of the game - exploration, trading, combat.
Makers promised me that it will be possible, before i bought Elite, but they should told me, that it will take 1 year to do it, and i will see my unclear missions results once a week, or whatever the feel like sharing it.
I dont want any personal rewards for doing same missions all over again (MMO game i accept that), i just want to see my faction progress in the Galaxy. I want to see real numbers.
And it is not even my faction. I can't sign to be a member, and they attack me like crazy, when they scan that i have 1 ton of grain. Suddenly from allied, green friends, they want to destroy me. So i can even have that in Elite atm.
Everything is so alien, even allied factions. Its not allowing player to feel symbiosis in the chosen part of Galaxy.
But afcorse there is no info from devs if they will fix that. The only answer from them is to make a TICKET - yes i've heard about these tickets - nobody cares about them.

And Walt - yes pending statuses of other factions in the system disappers, when you click details of the faction that does not have any pending or active at the moment.
You need to relog to see it again. Another bug.

P.S
And afcorse because there is no influence change, I see only few missions available. :/

 

[CMDRKNac]

Same problem for me: today no update.

Yesterday the update I got was much smaller than I antecipated and some people were complaining they didn't see anything happening in their systems so I am starting to have a feeling the job got stuck midway yesterday and no one "unstuck" it yet. Hopefully our work is being queued somewhere and not lost (I did see state changes today, just no influence changes so they appear to be different jobs).

State and influence work separately yes. I'm honestly starting to get very annoyed. The claim this is fixed, stop monitoring it and is stuck again. Every thing is bugged in this game.


Really annoying...

I know this is not your system, but @ 31 Aquilae the numbers are moving quite a bit....

Well, it is like before, some systems are stuck and some are not. Is either an other bug or someone forgot to add the fix to the production build lol.

 

[WalterHWhite]

To be fair if you're going to try be as subjective as possible, the fix was only a couple of days ago. There's a saying about "two swallows making a summer"... basically you should wait and see after a week to declare it "stuck".

 

[CMDRKNac]

To be fair if you're going to try be as subjective as possible, the fix was only a couple of days ago. There's a saying about "two swallows making a summer"... basically you should wait and see after a week to declare it "stuck".

Systems update on a daily basis, some systems are updating, other are not. 'Coincidently' the systems not updating seem to be the same that were not updated before the "fixes", I hope someone comes and tells me that their previously bugged system is updated, at least that would be a (yet an other) new bug, but does not seem like it.

I'll wait, maybe an other month like the last time, I'll even fill tickets (not very useful anyway, they never get processed and eventually you receive an e-mail saying that they are closing the ticket and to reply to an e-mail address that you cannot reply to), but this won't make it less annoying...

P.S: trying really hard to have fun or stay positive, but FD is not making it easy tbh.

 

[Rearden]

Same problem for me: today no update.

Correction, mine just updated. Took its time today it seems.

The amount of influence I am gaining does not seem to correlate with the effort though... There was a day I gained 0.8% without doing much and the last 2 days I have been working much harder (hey... got some days off) and getting much less than that.

 

[CMDRKNac]

Correction, mine just updated. Took its time today it seems.

The amount of influence I am gaining does not seem to correlate with the effort though... There was a day I gained 0.8% without doing much and the last 2 days I have been working much harder (hey... got some days off) and getting much less than that.

Yeah it seems they have processed it. Now I happily shut the ... up and can go back and play

 

[Nauril]

Correction, mine just updated. Took its time today it seems.

The amount of influence I am gaining does not seem to correlate with the effort though... There was a day I gained 0.8% without doing much and the last 2 days I have been working much harder (hey... got some days off) and getting much less than that.

Haha, just had influence update in Exphiay Crimson Dragon's and this is SO WRONG. With couple of guys we were working our buts off to do missions (around 100 of missions, most of them informed us that we have gain +1% influence, and federation faction lost -1% of it, as the second effect), killing federal ships at checkpoints, killing authorities ships that should gave us extra influence as we are second influence faction in the system (as devs promises!!).......two negative statuses effects triggered - Lockdowns for both federation faction we are against....and guess WHAT - WE LOST almost 1% influence and main faction gain +0.9% from us!
This is damn absurd. And this system has only 75000 population. What else should I do in my experiment to make supported faction to gain influence?
Looks like Lockdowns statuses HELPED federation factions.

I'm starting to belive that really nothing depends from players actions!
Another prove i see from Lu Pah system (small system with prison camp colony - noone give a damn about it), where i manage to push Lu Pah Prison faction to BOOM status. (was experimenting there for few days)
I left them one week ago to start Crimson Dragon's project again and guess what - they are still in BOOM state and gaining influence, like 0.5% per day! No player is doing missions for them.
So really, NPCs is controling everything.

When you ppl think, that after a day of hard flying and doing missions you make +2% influence for dukes of Mikunn...maybe you did 0.0002% max, rest is NPC's background simulations.
I dont think missions or other player actions are in any que waiting for manually implementing. Just NPC's actions are updating once per day.

If this is experiment as you call it. You should now stop all the actions for 24h and then see how influence will change.
It will change despites of what you doing.

 

[WalterHWhite]

Nauril, what's the "ship traffic report" like for your system. Are there way more ships than people working towards your cause? If there is, then they're possibly trading (and helping the controlling faction)

 

[Nauril]

Nauril, what's the "ship traffic report" like for your system. Are there way more ships than people working towards your cause? If there is, then they're possibly trading (and helping the controlling faction)

Nope man, only my ppl ships were flying in the system - 17 ships (but not really) - game counts every entrance to the system of same player as the new ship. It does not look at your IP, only if the ship is piloted by player. Which sucks btw. So my ASP entered Exphiay 8 times in 24h. There was no 8 different ASP's, piloted by 8 different players in Exphiay system, but me entering system 8 times. This is how traffic report works. lol.
So there is a Python, Viper (2 flying so a little more entrances), Cobra, afc - all are my ppl ships. Noone else. We are at the end of galaxy, noone really flies here. In a week time I met like maybe 5 ppl which were just pasing by (i talked with them, because i was always checking if perhaps they dont work against me), and i was playing 15h per day. Really, the Traffic Report should be build differently. It should check your IP and then report that this player in that ship was in a system in 24h -then how many times.

So damn NPC's maded influence raise by using background sim behaviors, like trade etc. I'm helpless here, and me playing like crazy for 15h a day, doing so many missions (like maybe 5 normal players) - I can't support chosen faction. This is what i suspected about that background simulator, that really it;s NOT BUILD for players. I think DEVS never allow us to change the galaxy the way we want to. I dont see other reason to hide behind the frase "Black Box". All normal games explain mechanics to players. Devs have their own story going on GalNet (i wonder how long they will keep it going) and if suddenly ppl would shift powers across the galaxy, devs will lost control of the story. So really, this game is about flying right now and trading, spaceship track simulator. Maybe exploring for maniacs. Great idea of 1:1 Galaxy, nicely done, but really gameplay here for us is max 2-3 weeks and then do what?
You buy Anaconda and Type 9 for what? If you can't change anything in this game. Why to waste 1 year of you life to play this game and explore 1000 of systems if you can't build your own station or atleast make your faction to bring the light of civilization to it.
Missions are useless, results are not right (+1% influence per mission is a lie), so there is no really the point to do it. Propably trading is most powerful thing to help with influence, but WHAT CAN YOU DO if your faction does not OWN the station - nothing. So there is no balance in this, like there is no balance between profits in trading, combat or exploring.

So at the end - Grats about experiments - yours and my.
Results have proven that Elite was not made for players to change the Galaxy the way they want to. To take it to the personal level and stay here for more then a month.
Right now the powers of background simulator are like 20% player 80% NPC's. or maybe not even that. We can't do anything at Checkzones or Deadzones, that means that we should just watch and wait for the result for a week when there is a Civil War, because we can't do anything to help the side we want to.
I dont really see other way to explain the thing that happen today, and afcorse i wont find the explanation in the games manual.
Maybe there is a guy that sits in Frontier office and just adding influence as he likes. Hmm...only 100 missions for Crimson Dragon's...and 100 authority ships destroyed....hmm nah -0.4%.

Was playing for 7 days non-stop (only 6h sleep per day), helping Dragons and only 1.5% influence raise overall (2x -0.4% lost - god knows why). And i wasn't the only one.
Just great way to motivate me for more.

Look here how influence changed:
01.19 - 55 missions, 15.6% (+0.1%, Boom)
01.20 - 32 missions, 17.0% (+1.4%, Boom)

Only missions by me. There is no logic in that. 55 missions made +0.1%, but next day 32 missions +1.4%. It is not up to players at all.

 

[WalterHWhite]

Sounds like you've got a close eye on it, thanks.

Yeah, perhaps in the average case you're going to need more than a couple of players to make influence go in a one-way direction.

>This is what i though about that background simulator, that really it is NOT BUILD for players.

Since we're really in the 1st week of it being 'working', it's something they can tweak over time, if it proves too time-consuming or difficult to flip a system. It does make sense that it'd require a big effort, though.

 

[Rearden]

It does make sense that it'd require a big effort, though.

I have mixed feelings about that. If no other players are working against you it should not take that long, just enough time (a few days) to actually get other players informed and involved if they want to work against you.

Fighting NPCs only should be easier.

 

[carniak]

Mission rewards should show Influence gain in Population numbers.

Sorry - but only part of the queue has been processed - the issue isn't fixed.

Michael

Hi Michael,
I'm not sure if this has ever been suggested, but why not measure Influence by population instead of a percentage value on the mission rewards page?

The current percentage system is quick to read, but not very intuitive. A difficult faction mission would yield 1%, but so would an easy courier mission. From this, we can only draw one of two conclusions:

• Both missions have the same impact
• Or, the influence value is rounded up.

Either way, a player has no way to measure the impact of their actions.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the reward screen to say:

Influence: Faction gains X supporters.
​

This method would seem to make much more sense since even in the modern world we have opinion polls and exit polls. In the early 20th century, these polls had to be gathered painstakingly. In our modern world, pollsters can gather information almost in real time! It would only make sense that in the futuristic world, these polls are even more readily available.

Along these same lines, the influence screen in our statistics page should show the delta value of the supporter gain/loss as well!

 

[Nauril]

I have mixed feelings about that. If no other players are working against you it should not take that long, just enough time (a few days) to actually get other players informed and involved if they want to work against you.

Fighting NPCs only should be easier.

Im 99% sure that no other players are working against me and 4 other players that helps me. And i'm doing missions like crazy. Atm of my life i dont have a job, so i can play non-stop, and i'm an old gamer (no-life in WOW in the past etc). I play since i was a little kid (now im 36 years old). I was there when game indrustry was created and first games was there to play. Im always trying to play the best i can and have huge game experience, so when I see that devs are destroying such a great game with huge potential, just to control it (and they all underline that they are players themselfs) im really mad. If they are real players, why they make this background simulator so unplayable for players. I mean for me - the best FUN (and games should be entertaining) the best FUN in this game, despite flying and see all that wonders of galaxy, is to be able to shift the powers of the galaxy. This is the dream of every one of us. I mean there is 400 billions systems, so really why not to enable for players to do it. To explore and build civilization. If devs only wants to show their great work of building real galaxy 1:1, they should made a software called "Galaxy Simulator", where you could explore new systems and zoom in planets and stars, not a game when real players can't mean something.

 

[Soda Popinski]

I mean for me - they best FUN (and games should be entertaining) the best FUN in this game, despite flying and see all that wonders of galaxy, that was virtualy created is to be able to shift the powers of the galaxy. This is the dream of every one of us.

Just because one player can't make a difference, doesn't mean a group of players can't or that the Devs are controlling everything. I think we're proving that a group of players working towards a single goal can make a change, and finding the bugs along the way.

Personally, I like that it takes an entire group to enact change on planetary scales. If a single player can precipitate massive changes, shouldn't it just be a single-player game? Philosophical difference I suppose.

Anyways, with the latest states update, what are the currents states in HR 7327?

 

[GlyphGryph]

Our faction is down 0.1% after the updated values hit today as well, despite a lot of dedicated players working towards them (this is after two weeks unchanged).

I'm seriously wondering if the "fixes" aren't literally just the devs going in and fixing the broken stuff for the particular popular groups like Lugh and Mikunn but not implementing any galaxy-wide fixes.

 

[WalterHWhite]

I'm seriously wondering if the "fixes" aren't literally just the devs going in and fixing the broken stuff for the particular popular groups like Lugh and Mikunn but not implementing any galaxy-wide fixes.

I don't think so. Look at the "rares trade routes" threads. I've seen quite a few of the rare systems and the faction influences are massively in favour of the controlling faction (I assume this would be because of player trading). Lots of civil wars and conflict zones between the factions with tiny influences.

There is definitely automation going on at the very least.

 

[Nauril]

Just because one player can't make a difference, doesn't mean a group of players can't or that the Devs are controlling everything. I think we're proving that a group of players working towards a single goal can make a change, and finding the bugs along the way.

Personally, I like that it takes an entire group to enact change on planetary scales. If a single player can precipitate massive changes, shouldn't it just be a single-player game? Philosophical difference I suppose.

Anyways, with the latest states update, what are the currents states in HR 7327?

Soda pls remember how the Dukes of Mikunn experiment started - TWO players forced Dukes expansion to another system. Not 50 of them, so now we are experiencing either devs negative reaction (by blocking 50 ppl effort to move further), or major bugs that not allow 50+ players to shift powers in the system where Dukes expanded their influence. Two players in just few days, were able to increase influence to 100% in Dukes home system and then triggered critical expansion, (by doing missions) and now 50+ players can't raise their influence in the next system even by +0.5% after few days of hard work?
Where is the logic in that? This proves that the game is in devs chains atm, like the slaves we transfer sometimes.

 

[Soda Popinski]

Soda pls remember how the Dukes of Mikunn experiment started - TWO players forced Dukes expansion to another system. Not 50, so now we are experiencing with devs negative reaction (by blocking 50 ppl effort to move further), or major bugs that not allow 50+ players to shift powers in the system where Dukes expanded. I dont see logical balance in this situation. Two players were able in few days to increase influence to 100% in Dukes home system (by doing missions) and now 50+ players can raise their influence in the next system even by +0.5% over few days?

Remember Spassky's population was under 1200. What's the population of yours?

I'm not saying the balance shouldn't changing with 50+ players. I think it should. I just think it should be difficult for a single player to effect change in a large system.

 

[Nauril]

It is not very large system - 75000 population. I also belive that large population systems should react diffrently on changes, but Micheal B. informed us few days ago, that population numbers does not play big role in influence changes. Canopus Crimson Dragon's system has 900 population. Normally it would be impossible with 900 people to take over system with 75000 people, but I dont think this is the issue here in this game. Or if it is, lets hear about it, so we wont waste any more time tilting at windmills.

 

[GlyphGryph]

I don't think so. Look at the "rares trade routes" threads. I've seen quite a few of the rare systems and the faction influences are massively in favour of the controlling faction (I assume this would be because of player trading). Lots of civil wars and conflict zones between the factions with tiny influences.

There is definitely automation going on at the very least.

I'm not saying every part is broken. I'm saying the fixes they are implementing are local, specific fixes to highly popular areas where the problems have been noticed. They've admitted it's broken, and even that the queuing bug at least "is not completely fixed" - which might well mean "we've got someone watching it so it works in the situations people have noticed so they manually run the numbers if it goes wrong but everywhere else it's still the same crapshoot".

They even specifically mentioned having people going in and tweaking specific values, claiming that's how one of our stations got a second economy type (even though it never got the commodities of that secondary market type), and they obviously have tools for doing it which is how they do the galnet events. I'm just saying that might be what they're doing here and in Lugh, manually nudging things that come to their attention that are obviously wrong, but having not yet otherwise fixed the problems causing them to be wrong in the first place.

Edit:
I'm sorry, I'm just frustrated. I wish you guys all the luck in the world, but it's been a demoralizing couple of weeks that initially seemed so promising.