This thread follows on from discussion here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/index.php?threads/pacifism-and-minor-factions.512386/post-7829438
tl;dr I'm just reporting a single observation over the course of two ticks... so I'm not saying "Missions definitely affect war outcomes". What I am suggesting is that we should revisit whether or not missions affect war outcomes with some anger to get a better sample size.
So, a war between two factions broke out the other day. They're relatively minor in the scheme of things, but I can't guarantee freedom from interference by other pilots. I decided to do a brief "test" of running missions during a war state.
The premise for this is an observation I made during a recent election when running missions for that faction. I noticed that despite there being an "influence" reward (noting influence can't change), on submission of a mission, any influence effects were missing from the table of results. This kinda made sense as there was a note in some patch notes about the outcomes of conflicts just being... "redirection of influence". Of course, missions didn't affect things at that time, because missions don't affect influence in war, and do in election. The patch notes go on further to say that there's now "... a new, different measure for war effects", or words towards that end.
Either way... we know missions help Elections, so the "disappearing influence bar" from the table suggested there was some other effect being recorded. Then, I noticed the same effect when handing in missions during a war. That felt odd, because if missions had no effect in war, and influence is locked, then why change anything?
So for tick 1 of this war, I ran one mission each for the warring sides, both with the same number of influence +'s. One was a "strategic data transfer", the other a "Boom time delivery" (as that faction is in boom and war). Both had the "missing influence bar" on submission, so I decided both were "affected" the same way by that war.... I was trying to determine if there was any difference between the type of mission run, during a conflict (this was actually to determine if running a "Boom time" mission in a election would function the same as an "election" mission; answer is yes in this case).
After the tick, the factions remained at draw. This meant either:
Before the most recent tick, I picked the less likely (geopolitics again) faction to support, and ran some strategic surface scans, and "kill deserter" missions which occurs in external systems. I did not enter any conflict zones or destroy enemy ships. Today, that faction is at close victory (i.e they won that day). Of course, somebody might have supported them, but considering the lack of activity either way the preceding day, that seems unlikely.
So, yeah, it's an anectodal observation at best, so that's why I've put it up here so others might test. Of course, some might say "Oh, we've recently tested this and found no effect."... well... test again, please. We know FD seem to be tweaking things here and there, maybe this change has been here for a while, or only the last day or two.
EDIT: In today's test, a faction in war in one system delivered to a faction in war in another system, and both had the same "missing influence" bar... so possibly it had an effect for both wars.
tl;dr I'm just reporting a single observation over the course of two ticks... so I'm not saying "Missions definitely affect war outcomes". What I am suggesting is that we should revisit whether or not missions affect war outcomes with some anger to get a better sample size.
So, a war between two factions broke out the other day. They're relatively minor in the scheme of things, but I can't guarantee freedom from interference by other pilots. I decided to do a brief "test" of running missions during a war state.
The premise for this is an observation I made during a recent election when running missions for that faction. I noticed that despite there being an "influence" reward (noting influence can't change), on submission of a mission, any influence effects were missing from the table of results. This kinda made sense as there was a note in some patch notes about the outcomes of conflicts just being... "redirection of influence". Of course, missions didn't affect things at that time, because missions don't affect influence in war, and do in election. The patch notes go on further to say that there's now "... a new, different measure for war effects", or words towards that end.
Either way... we know missions help Elections, so the "disappearing influence bar" from the table suggested there was some other effect being recorded. Then, I noticed the same effect when handing in missions during a war. That felt odd, because if missions had no effect in war, and influence is locked, then why change anything?
So for tick 1 of this war, I ran one mission each for the warring sides, both with the same number of influence +'s. One was a "strategic data transfer", the other a "Boom time delivery" (as that faction is in boom and war). Both had the "missing influence bar" on submission, so I decided both were "affected" the same way by that war.... I was trying to determine if there was any difference between the type of mission run, during a conflict (this was actually to determine if running a "Boom time" mission in a election would function the same as an "election" mission; answer is yes in this case).
After the tick, the factions remained at draw. This meant either:
- Nothing I did had an effect, and nobody else affected the war in any way.
- The missions I did balanced each other out, and nobody else did anything to affect the war; so no change.
- Either of the above, but there was balanced activity from other players
Before the most recent tick, I picked the less likely (geopolitics again) faction to support, and ran some strategic surface scans, and "kill deserter" missions which occurs in external systems. I did not enter any conflict zones or destroy enemy ships. Today, that faction is at close victory (i.e they won that day). Of course, somebody might have supported them, but considering the lack of activity either way the preceding day, that seems unlikely.
So, yeah, it's an anectodal observation at best, so that's why I've put it up here so others might test. Of course, some might say "Oh, we've recently tested this and found no effect."... well... test again, please. We know FD seem to be tweaking things here and there, maybe this change has been here for a while, or only the last day or two.
EDIT: In today's test, a faction in war in one system delivered to a faction in war in another system, and both had the same "missing influence" bar... so possibly it had an effect for both wars.
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