After some discussion in another thread regarding the "ethos breakdown" of minor factions, and their proportionate representation in the superpowers, I thought I'd sit down and crunch the numbers. I haven't seen any of the third party tools that directly calculated and compared these numbers. I couldn't find any other threads here in BGS that discussed this either, but if there are, my apologies for the duplication.
Here are the summary stats for the total number of minor factions that exist in the game, as reported by EDSM, broken down by government type and superpower affiliation.
And here are the current controlling factions of star systems, again broken down by government type and superpower affiliation. EDSM's stats may be a few days out of date for some smaller systems.
So, data-mining these tables, we can make some interesting observations.
With 75,725 factions spread out across 20,465 inhabited star systems, there are, on average, over three unique factions per star system. 3.696, to be precise. This does not take into account any expansions those factions may have undertaken.
The ethos split between the superpowers is informative: the "social group" dominates the non-Corporate side of the Federation. The "authoritarian group" dominates the non-Corporate half of the Empire. Still, I am surprised that the Empire is more politically diverse than the Federation. The Alliance is split roughly 1:2; Surprisingly, for a superpower that espouses the democratic ideal, authoritarianism is in the majority of Alliance factions, though the Alliance BGS workers seem to prefer expanding the social factions instead. And of course if it were not for FD unilaterally removing the only procedurally-generated Alliance prison colony, the Alliance would be able to claim at least one of every government type within its membership. On the downside, this does mean that green-on-green wars are harder to avoid than red-on-red or blue-on-blue.
Corporations rule the galaxy. It doesn't matter whether you're Fed, Imp, Allie or Indie, corporations control the most number of minor factions in your superpower (30% of the galactic total), the largest percentage of systems (34% of galactic total) and also control the largest share of controlling factions in the Federation, Alliance and the Indies; only the Empire resists corporate dominance of actual control of systems, but not by much. With a total of 23,110 Corporations scattered across 20,486 systems, that's an average of more than one per inhabited star system. I've often heard dyed-in-the-wool Imp and Allie supporters claim that their superpower is free of the corporate corruption that dominates the Federation, but this seems to be untrue. Or, look at it this way: if all the aligned Corporations in the galaxy seceded from their superpowers, joined with the Indie corporations and formed their own superpower, they would control 7049 systems; that would be only slightly smaller than the other three superpowers combined (7109 systems).
The effect of the superior BGS ability of Alliance players and player groups is easily evident. There are only 820 Alliance minor factions for them to work with, yet they control 859 star systems. That's an average of over one star system per Alliance faction, while the other two superpowers can claim only half of that. Given the tiny proportion of minor factions that are Alliance aligned, that's quite an achievement: 1.1 percent of the galaxy's minor factions control 4.2 percent of the inhabited galaxy. Though, with such a small powerbase to work with, one does have to wonder how much longer can the Alliance continue to expand? Many of those Alliance factions must be getting stretched beyond the capability to manage easily. Surely they will soon reach the point where continued expansion becomes impractical, even for Machiavellian BGS experts, unless FD start creating more Alliance factions for them to work with.
With 15,000 factions but only claiming control of 1000 systems, Anarchies are the galactic whipping boys, which is not surprising as FD often pick them as "the opposition" to the intended ruling faction in hand-crafted systems. This is also a legacy of the BGS historically being actively biased against Anarchies, something which the recent changes to BGS effects in 2.4 and 3.0 have alleviated somewhat, but not entirely.
One surprise observation is Confederacies. We all knew that Patronages were "an Imperial thing", with the majority of Patronages within the Empire. But I had not realised that a significant majority of Confederacies within the galaxy are Fed-aligned.
I was surprised at how few Theocracies there were; they are the least common minor faction type. That so many systems are (proportionately) under Theocratic control can be put down to there being a relatively large proportion of them being player-made factions.
Here are the summary stats for the total number of minor factions that exist in the game, as reported by EDSM, broken down by government type and superpower affiliation.
| Federation | Empire | Alliance | Independent | TOTAL | Percentage | ||
| Democracy | 4361 | 2 | 115 | 4898 | 9376 | 12.4 | |
| Confederacy | 1914 | 2 | 12 | 637 | 2565 | 3.4 | |
| Corporate | 5933 | 3617 | 222 | 13338 | 23110 | 30.5 | |
| Patronage | 0 | 2889 | 167 | 339 | 3395 | 4.5 | |
| Dictatorship | 0 | 1375 | 119 | 10155 | 11649 | 15.4 | |
| Feudal | 0 | 539 | 66 | 3470 | 4075 | 5.4 | |
| Communist | 0 | 0 | 34 | 2348 | 2382 | 3.1 | |
| Cooperative | 0 | 0 | 45 | 3269 | 3314 | 4.4 | |
| Prison colony | 0 | 47 | 0 | 135 | 182 | 0.2 | |
| Theocracy | 7 | 0 | 4 | 121 | 132 | 0.2 | |
| Anarchy | 5 | 6 | 36 | 15498 | 15545 | 20.5 | |
| TOTAL | 12220 | 8477 | 820 | 54208 | 75725 | ||
| Percentage | 16.1 | 11.2 | 1.1 | 71.6 | |||
And here are the current controlling factions of star systems, again broken down by government type and superpower affiliation. EDSM's stats may be a few days out of date for some smaller systems.
| Federation | Empire | Alliance | Independent | TOTAL | Percentage | ||
| Democracy | 2153 | 0 | 154 | 979 | 3286 | 16.0 | |
| Confederacy | 928 | 2 | 25 | 386 | 1341 | 6.5 | |
| Corporate | 2847 | 1739 | 362 | 2101 | 7049 | 34.4 | |
| Patronage | 0 | 2291 | 104 | 209 | 2604 | 12.7 | |
| Dictatorship | 0 | 846 | 46 | 1081 | 1973 | 9.6 | |
| Feudal | 0 | 350 | 24 | 836 | 1210 | 5.9 | |
| Communist | 0 | 0 | 40 | 742 | 782 | 3.8 | |
| Cooperative | 0 | 0 | 70 | 900 | 970 | 4.7 | |
| Prison colony | 0 | 29 | 0 | 80 | 109 | 0.5 | |
| Theocracy | 9 | 0 | 13 | 102 | 124 | 0.6 | |
| Anarchy | 2 | 2 | 21 | 1013 | 1038 | 5.1 | |
| TOTAL | 5939 | 5259 | 859 | 8429 | 20486 | ||
| Percentage | 29.0 | 25.7 | 4.2 | 41.1 |
So, data-mining these tables, we can make some interesting observations.
With 75,725 factions spread out across 20,465 inhabited star systems, there are, on average, over three unique factions per star system. 3.696, to be precise. This does not take into account any expansions those factions may have undertaken.
The ethos split between the superpowers is informative: the "social group" dominates the non-Corporate side of the Federation. The "authoritarian group" dominates the non-Corporate half of the Empire. Still, I am surprised that the Empire is more politically diverse than the Federation. The Alliance is split roughly 1:2; Surprisingly, for a superpower that espouses the democratic ideal, authoritarianism is in the majority of Alliance factions, though the Alliance BGS workers seem to prefer expanding the social factions instead. And of course if it were not for FD unilaterally removing the only procedurally-generated Alliance prison colony, the Alliance would be able to claim at least one of every government type within its membership. On the downside, this does mean that green-on-green wars are harder to avoid than red-on-red or blue-on-blue.
Corporations rule the galaxy. It doesn't matter whether you're Fed, Imp, Allie or Indie, corporations control the most number of minor factions in your superpower (30% of the galactic total), the largest percentage of systems (34% of galactic total) and also control the largest share of controlling factions in the Federation, Alliance and the Indies; only the Empire resists corporate dominance of actual control of systems, but not by much. With a total of 23,110 Corporations scattered across 20,486 systems, that's an average of more than one per inhabited star system. I've often heard dyed-in-the-wool Imp and Allie supporters claim that their superpower is free of the corporate corruption that dominates the Federation, but this seems to be untrue. Or, look at it this way: if all the aligned Corporations in the galaxy seceded from their superpowers, joined with the Indie corporations and formed their own superpower, they would control 7049 systems; that would be only slightly smaller than the other three superpowers combined (7109 systems).
The effect of the superior BGS ability of Alliance players and player groups is easily evident. There are only 820 Alliance minor factions for them to work with, yet they control 859 star systems. That's an average of over one star system per Alliance faction, while the other two superpowers can claim only half of that. Given the tiny proportion of minor factions that are Alliance aligned, that's quite an achievement: 1.1 percent of the galaxy's minor factions control 4.2 percent of the inhabited galaxy. Though, with such a small powerbase to work with, one does have to wonder how much longer can the Alliance continue to expand? Many of those Alliance factions must be getting stretched beyond the capability to manage easily. Surely they will soon reach the point where continued expansion becomes impractical, even for Machiavellian BGS experts, unless FD start creating more Alliance factions for them to work with.
With 15,000 factions but only claiming control of 1000 systems, Anarchies are the galactic whipping boys, which is not surprising as FD often pick them as "the opposition" to the intended ruling faction in hand-crafted systems. This is also a legacy of the BGS historically being actively biased against Anarchies, something which the recent changes to BGS effects in 2.4 and 3.0 have alleviated somewhat, but not entirely.
One surprise observation is Confederacies. We all knew that Patronages were "an Imperial thing", with the majority of Patronages within the Empire. But I had not realised that a significant majority of Confederacies within the galaxy are Fed-aligned.
I was surprised at how few Theocracies there were; they are the least common minor faction type. That so many systems are (proportionately) under Theocratic control can be put down to there being a relatively large proportion of them being player-made factions.
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