New PMF - War - Non-combat players

[RisingPhoenics]

Firstly, pretty new to using the forum, so please try to excuse anything i've overlooked.

Background: Our player group has been going for a year, spread across 2 continents, we found our squadron in the top 100, or top 10% of squadrons on leaderboards a few times, were elated but also very surprised as there's only a handful of regulars. We thought sod it, let's apply for a player minor faction. Today we got approved and are now in-game.

Issue: We've been in the game less than 3 hours, i've just arrived, and setting up squadron bookmarks, and we're now in 4th place of 8 minor factions (the other 7 are all NPC obviously) and noticed it says War pending with a non-native NPC minor faction.

I'm vaguely aware of how the system works, influence, bounties/explo data/trade profits help the station's controlling MF, piracy harms them etc.

During a war/civil war, what can our players who don't feel comfortable with combat zones specifically, but are happy with combat/smuggling/trade etc do, in order for us to win this upcoming war, as it says the other faction is at risk of losing a planetary outpost if they lose, and this would be a tremendous boost for us.

Now, i'm not at all wanting to sound ungrateful, we feel very lucky and excited to now be in this position finally, but, whilst most of us are Combat rank 3-5 of 9 (Nov/Comp/Exp), and are getting more proficient with Anti-Xeno combat, to the point the "big 3" of our player group can solo NHSS 3-4 with ease, and solo Expert/Master/Dangerous human NPCs pretty decently, it seems to be that combat zones we get our butts handed to us. Admittedly it's been a while since i've been in a human combat zone, but it seemed that once i'd chosen a side, every single NPC targeted me at once and i lasted a few seconds, whereas the same ship would have no issues at Nav Beacons etc.

So, primarily, what can the members that aren't ready for Human Combat Zones do to help, and secondly, how does a war work "exactly", i.e. what does and doesn't affect it, and thirdly, what tips for combat zones do you have?

Any and all help is appreciated, even if it only answers a small part of the post

 

[Starwolfe]

I'll try to help, but I've been out of active play enough over time that some of my info may be out of date, but its not failed me with my PMF historically speaking.

A War is a restricted conflict involving a non-native faction to the system it is occurring, and works much like Civil Wars now between native factions to the system with little difference outside the name. Influence will be locked for the duration, and you'll fight each other for victory over the conflict by com completing related tasks. Each day your progress can move by 1/3 of the bar, positive or negative or remain neutral and unchanging depending on your success and opposition.

In the case of Wars and Civil Wars you need to do Combat related activities to count. Specifically, Combat Zone success, Combat Bonds and Bounties handed in that system of the conflict. The devil in the details give you a few unique options if regular successful CZ runs aren't a possibility.

First, when pledging within a CZ, don't do it immediately if your not confident you can tank hits - wait for the spawns to show up and start fighting so you aren't an immediate target. It should lessen the risk of being the first thing they aim at. Another help might be to stay outside at the edges, +7km or so from other ships so you can pick where you start fighting.

A common suggestion I should say for CZ work is to use Target Only for turret tracking, or use Gimballs/Fixed to avoid unwanted attention and try and travel with the pack. Stick nearer to the group of Friendlies in the CZ and try and follow their targets they shoot. You'll be less likely a target most of the time, and if in trouble it ought to mean you'll have backup if its an issue. CZ ships are far more difficult to fight than other ships you'll likely encounter so remember to fly with friendlies in there to make things easier.

Since the BGS is transaction-based, its the quantity of things done can count just as well if not better than volume of something depending on the time it takes to do it. Hoping into a CZ to snipe a ship and return a Combat Bond repeatedly will assist in your victory, although you will need to do it multiple times to counter the work of a successful CZ fight and the handed in value of Bonds it generates. However such an action could be easier than struggling in the CZ.

From my observations on how instances work, so long as the CZ no longer has a Player in it, the fight will cancel, so there shouldn't be a risk of its failure opposing your work.

Likewise, Bounties handed in will help in a similar fashion. It does not matter where your bounties originate, just that they like the Bonds are handed in that system you are fighting. So if you don't have a suitable Rez or other Bountyhunting site in that system, you can go elsewhere to avoid needing to hunt USS or fighting with the Interdiction of wanted ships.

If all else fails, Murder of the opposing faction ships can help, but I tend to shy away from saying that as an option - especially in the case of your question with people that already don't like CZ work. I say this because depending on System Security level the incoming police can really make any attempts frustratingly difficult.

Hope the tips help with your efforts.

 

[Jmanis]

During a war/civil war, what can our players who don't feel comfortable with combat zones specifically, but are happy with combat/smuggling/trade etc do, in order for us to win this upcoming war, as it says the other faction is at risk of losing a planetary outpost if they lose, and this would be a tremendous boost for us.

So there's a few things that can be done:

• As far as I'm aware, bounties issued by your faction count to the war effort
• There are often Threat 1 Combat Aftermath USS floating around the system. They'll contain war scenarios... Find some owned by your faction and complete them (either salvage a black box or scan an anaconda). Just make sure to accept the scenario first.
• Missions should work... I have regular success doing missions to win wars, but when I posted my findings results seemed mixed. I would argue that any war-themed mission should work (with different flavour text). At the very least, FD confirmed that missions have a variable effect depending on state, so some missions should work regardless.

Note that none of this is really as effective as clearing conflict zones.

 

[goemon]

welcome to the forums!

we had some reports here, that some war-themed missions do not work, i think two players reported over the last half a year that war themed courier missions seem to have no effect. others might have, though.

Scenarios as Jmanis decribes should work though.

as we often team up with non-combat players - i'd suggest taking another approach, if combat is not no-option for principal reasons: wing up - a wing of unengineered viper mkIIIs or eagles can be great fun. or one combat player goes into CZ with a non combat player and backs his six. spread out that a single bond or bountie already helps. we have one no-combat player around who settled for a turreted t-10, which he just steers through a RES.

playing the backgroundsimulation brings all style of play with it.

- and look up, with which factions your faction goes to war, and with which it goes to election. check assets in system, and bind other factions in conflict to jump them.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I wouldn't worry too much about npcs in CZs afaik they scale to your combat rank for the most part. I've been clearing out CZs since a cobra 3 using unengineered beams and multicannons.

You don't actually have to finish the CZ just earn combat bonds. Iirc ea $250k worth of combat bonds is worth 1 point towards winning the wars. Each CZ win is 1 point and in med and high CZs each additional objective is 1 point each.

This means you can just earn bonds and never finish a CZ and still dominate the opposition.

Congratulations on your PMF cmdr and good luck in your ventures

o7

 

[RisingPhoenics]

Thanks everybody for the responses. With some of the players they've only been playing for a week, they've been in voice chats for our gaming group, become intrigued, tried it and liked it. With some of the others, it's not that they don't want to do combat, they go bounty hunting in a wing at Nav Beacons etc with us, it's partly an... perhaps the word is intimidation? Getting to grips with the flying can be a learning curve, let alone the combat. One of our big 3 players, had been to Colonia, and was Elite in Exploration and Trade and had destoyed less than 10 ships. When asked, it seemed to be a case that as combat was hard at the start, they didn't feel ready for it, and that kinda stuck with it.

We all wing up regularly in general, and when i was prepping my first AX build, and asked if others wanted to join, it was a resounding "Thargoids?! hell no"
My response was, tell me your build, we'll do wing cargo missions and get you a build, tell me your rebuy costs, and i'll cover 3x rebuy costs, and you come along. I made a support tank AX FedCorv build, lot of Decon and Repair Limpets, got them to slave FSD to me, we jumped into NHSS3, immediately attacked, i kept stationary, turrets firing, they engaged, the 2 scouts died, and they were like oh how many more waves are there?!?! none, that's it. "wait, that was it?" nobodies shield's went offline, no damage, 1 needed decon as he flew through the debris cloud. we hit up another 10 ThLv3, then turned the bonds in and called it a night.

Objectively, some of our active enthusiastic players aren't ready yet but we're working on that. some of the others i think it's more a case of confidence more than anything else holding them back. With combat, 1 or 2 of us will join them on a non-wing combat mission, and then say if the sheet hits the fan, we'll keep them busy while you jump out, and we'll repair you, or, you start firing, and we'll fire too, as long as you stay near the target, it'll count. With time, they get experience, confidence and start to do things solo

I did have a go at some installation combat stuff while i was there. where it asks if you wanna attack or defend, and says how many ships remain. the 2x joint 2nd place NPCMF are in civil war, and they're hitting the non-dockable orbital installations. That was a lot of fun, and i was in my search and rescue anaconda as i was getting a feel for the area (setting squad bookmarks for nearest tech broker's etc), so not a combat ship. Maybe 20 ships either side? Is that how the conflict zones are these days? trying to figure out if either they've "fixed" them since i last tried, or if perhaps i was just in a far less engineered older ship (iirc it was a cargo Python that i switched up a bit and wasn't very engineered at the time)

 

[goemon]

the number of kills needed to end a conflictzones depends on level and a bit on how much the npcs do kill, and so does the total number of ships (different to an installation scenario). with my eagle or cobra, i usually need 10-12 in a low CZ, 12-14 in a medium CZ, and 15-18 in a high CZ. with my corvette i often get only ~12-14 kills in a high CZ before i have cleared it, because faster.
plus - never forget that any bond redeem helps. nobody has to win a CZ to make it count - so, for a new player the lowest target can be to do a single kill, and redeem that bond. unopposed by other players that already wins a day.
and - if CZ are too much, bounties work as well. and you can get bounties from threat 1 USS (where usually a low ranked pirate spawns plus a system security to help you).

anyway - what you describe about your AXI activities just reads brilliant for your group, and the same can be applied to CZ.

on another note - playing the BGS in a group also allows to split up. with a group, everybody can do what they enjoy and take a break (or work a different system) during, for exampel, a war. if they like exploring, and once you control a station, you'll be happy about the exploration data one might have collected during that time for exampel. or a t9 full of mioned opre to rebuild the economy or use it at mining missions. etc. pp.

 

[RisingPhoenics]

that's very true, better to get 1 kill and get out alive, than try for 5, be killed, rebuy costs and no vouchers

EDSM says 0 ships in last 7 days, and Inara says 0-5 in the last 24 hours, so for registered users of those sites at least it's pretty quiet thankfully.

For now, we are saying to sell ExploData anywhere 15ly+ away, and spreading it around. After this upcoming war, if we win, we'll have a planetary outpost to sell the data at.

We've been getting everyone to use the black market here too, as been told that also helps.

We often split up, we might have a wing of 4, 3 will do wing trade missions and a 4th will be out mining to get Selene Jean for instance, we'll say join the wing anyway, carry on mining, and if no jackpots, at least you have the wing money to collect

Might be a dumb question but do NPCs actually claim combat bonds? If no player is fighting for the opposing side, judging by the traffic reports as a rough guide, would that then make it more likely for us to win. As in, lets say our players got like, 20/30/40 bonds a day, if NPCs do claim them, what kinda quantities are we talking? and if they don't claim them, how do they win?

Reason i ask is as part of the research to get ready, i started keeping track of civil wars in quieter systems. with maybe 4 wars, after the 3rd day, it said both NPCMFs had dominated for 0 days. Is that them being evenly matched, i.e. the NPCs claiming 20 combat bonds each day each side as example, or is that no players are joining in, so it's 0 each day each side.

Once a war is over, is there a cooldown before another war/civil war/election can start or is it just the 1 day pending?

As we started in joint 4th place, there are 4 NPCMFs with less influence, some of which have assets, if we race to the top so to speak, as our influence lines won't meet, does that mean we'll never be able to win those assets in a war as we'll never be within the 4% threshold of them? the 8th place one has 3 assets and is below the 7% influence which i've read means they can't enter wars or civil wars. would we need to kinda, manipulate it so everyone with assets stays staticish, everone without assets gets pushed down, and boost up the 8th place NPCMF to our level and then take their assets and then send them to the bottom again? i'm trying to find posts on some of the finer details, but so far nothing written anywhere and what is written seems to be inferred by people who have played and analysed

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

If no one (players) oppose you in your systems it takes minimal effort to maintain controlling faction imo

Also using a kill warrent scanner in your system you have a chance of acquiring bounties for your faction even if your not controlling faction

 

[goemon]

EDSM says 0 ships in last 7 days, and Inara says 0-5 in the last 24 hours, so for registered users of those sites at least it's pretty quiet thankfully.

you can check the traffic report at any station in system under local galnet for a total traffic of all platforms and modes of the last 24 hours. the same AspE jumping into system twice during those 24 hours will be counted as 2 AspE (and ships transferred into system don#t show up). But if you know your groups roundabout traffic, this will give you much better information than edsm or inara and such.

 

[Northpin]

The most effective way of winning a war is to actually fight in it and win battles.

So if you have friends in other squadrons - or any ingame friends you can always ask them to win some CZ for you

But winning low CZ is actually easy and fun even for non engineered ships. All you need to to is to kill 6 ships, which is easy enough if you go for targets already damaged or for easy kills like Eagles or Asps

 

[RisingPhoenics]

i think in-game system traffic report said Beluga x1 (me), Anaconda x4 (me, if that's counting me arriving 4 times) Corvette x1 (me), Hauler x1 (no idea who)

The installation battles i was having (checking out what everything in system looked like, who owned what etc, and thought hey i'll join in), was a lot more fun than i had thought it would be, especially given it was my search and rescue anaconda so not kitted out for combat at all. i did i think 4 waves at 2 places, got 8 million in bounties and 250k in combat bonds (somehow, not sure how as it wasn't a conflict zone but an orbital installation), so if conflict zones are anything like that, i'll be happy to spend couple of hours a day doing that

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Conflict zones usually provide an equal amount of enemy and friendly npcs. Very similar to 'repel the attack' events but without waves