tl;dr: Nothing but factionless System Security in Conflict Zones.
I searched the forums and didn't find this exact problem so I figure I would ask and see if anyone has any insight.
I took a "Kill the Warzone"(or something similar sounding) mission to kill 3 warzone combatants in a system having a civil war. This was my first time going into a conflict zone and I was kind of excited(I'd seen them cruising around but didn't feel confident enough in my Sidewinder to drop in and see what they were).
I jumped over to the system with the civil war and found a light conflict zone with no problem. I expected to deshift into a fight so I was confused when all there was in the zone were 20+ System Security ships flying wing formations. I resisted my initial desire to start a fight with System Security. I don't like looking stuff up right away when I play Elite so I flew around aimlessly for a while sightseeing(looking for wreckage)/buzzing security anacondas and waiting for a fight. I parked myself as close to the actual "conflict zone" marker as I could and thought that might start the fight. I got frustrated and left and then found a few other conflict zones and when I cruised over to them it was the same thing. The "heavy" conflict zones didn't even have more System Security ships flying around than the light zones did so I started to get suspicious I was doing it wrong.
After maybe half an hour I looked up online about how conflict zones are supposed to work. I could see two different factions(one Alliance sympathizer and one Empire) in the system with 20-25% influence so there was definitely two sides in the conflict. Since I couldn't pick a faction and there was no fight happening I thought I might have the problem where only one side in the conflict will be around when you enter the zone. I took the forum advice about logging in and out/cruising in and out/etc. The fixes people gave for those problems seemed to indicate they would work instantly(e.g., no fighting? log out/log in and you'll be in the middle of a fight!) but I gave them some time/multiple tries before I gave up. I then noticed the System Security ships had no faction when scanned so now I don't think I was just waiting for the "other side" to spawn more ships. All in all i spent about an hour and a half flying around trying to fight in this civil war...Then I ran out of time and failed the mission.
Does anyone know what I did wrong? Does System Security crack down on conflict zones and wipe out BOTH sides so the conflict ends? (Shouldn't the zone go away?) Isn't System Security on a "side"(presumably whoever already has controlling influence in the system)? Do ships in a combat zone not have a faction until the fighting starts and those Security ships had juuuust finished winning when I got there(unlikely since I went to multiple zones)? If i HAD started a fight with System Security would the kills in the combat zone have even counted since they were factionless at the time?
I searched the forums and didn't find this exact problem so I figure I would ask and see if anyone has any insight.
I took a "Kill the Warzone"(or something similar sounding) mission to kill 3 warzone combatants in a system having a civil war. This was my first time going into a conflict zone and I was kind of excited(I'd seen them cruising around but didn't feel confident enough in my Sidewinder to drop in and see what they were).
I jumped over to the system with the civil war and found a light conflict zone with no problem. I expected to deshift into a fight so I was confused when all there was in the zone were 20+ System Security ships flying wing formations. I resisted my initial desire to start a fight with System Security. I don't like looking stuff up right away when I play Elite so I flew around aimlessly for a while sightseeing(looking for wreckage)/buzzing security anacondas and waiting for a fight. I parked myself as close to the actual "conflict zone" marker as I could and thought that might start the fight. I got frustrated and left and then found a few other conflict zones and when I cruised over to them it was the same thing. The "heavy" conflict zones didn't even have more System Security ships flying around than the light zones did so I started to get suspicious I was doing it wrong.
After maybe half an hour I looked up online about how conflict zones are supposed to work. I could see two different factions(one Alliance sympathizer and one Empire) in the system with 20-25% influence so there was definitely two sides in the conflict. Since I couldn't pick a faction and there was no fight happening I thought I might have the problem where only one side in the conflict will be around when you enter the zone. I took the forum advice about logging in and out/cruising in and out/etc. The fixes people gave for those problems seemed to indicate they would work instantly(e.g., no fighting? log out/log in and you'll be in the middle of a fight!) but I gave them some time/multiple tries before I gave up. I then noticed the System Security ships had no faction when scanned so now I don't think I was just waiting for the "other side" to spawn more ships. All in all i spent about an hour and a half flying around trying to fight in this civil war...Then I ran out of time and failed the mission.
Does anyone know what I did wrong? Does System Security crack down on conflict zones and wipe out BOTH sides so the conflict ends? (Shouldn't the zone go away?) Isn't System Security on a "side"(presumably whoever already has controlling influence in the system)? Do ships in a combat zone not have a faction until the fighting starts and those Security ships had juuuust finished winning when I got there(unlikely since I went to multiple zones)? If i HAD started a fight with System Security would the kills in the combat zone have even counted since they were factionless at the time?
