Minimum number of system factions

I recently found a system in the bubble with only one native faction. The other three are non-native. This got me wondering, is it theoretically possible to manipulate theae factions such that each of the non-native factions is forced into retreat, leaving only one faction present in the system? Or is there a hard minimum on the number of factions in a system such that as soon as one enters retreat, a new one will expand into the system automatically?

Edit: I may have found my own answer. If I understand correctly, the retreat state will not activate if there are less than four factions in a system. So the hard minimum number of factions is three?
 
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There's no hard minimum - systems can quite happily have just a single faction present, though it's nowadays extremely rare in practice and does cause some BGS oddities.

Edit: I may have found my own answer. If I understand correctly, the retreat state will not activate if there are less than four factions in a system. So the hard minimum number of factions is three?
The retreat state will not go Pending unless there are at least 4 factions in the system, but once Pending it will play out regardless of the number of factions.

So if you can get the system close to 97-1-1-1, ideally in a single day so that all three other factions get the pending retreat at once [1], and then hold it there ... you should be in a 1-faction system after the retreats are done. Not easy to get or hold that influence spread if there's any other system traffic, of course.

[1] This will be easier to try in 3.3 when you don't have to worry about blocking states in other systems.
 
Worth noting... some systems (particularly in the Pleiades) have no native factions, and I'm fairly sure it's impossible to retreat the factions who were populated in those to begin with.

When Horizons became a thing, some systems had only planetary settlements added to them, and factions were populated from neighbouring systems, rather than natively generated.
 

Jane Turner

Volunteer Moderator
There are systems that started with one (and they spammed expansions spectacularly). We've not dropped a system below 2 by retreat.
 
Minimum is 3 by retreats AFIK.

Last real test was about 6 months ago tho, but I had the controlling faction near 98% with the other two non-native at 1% and no retreat was ever pending.
 
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