Oh what a wonderful world (galaxy)...without famine.

[Camisade]

Dear FDev: I'd like to issue a golf clap for your starry-eyed BGS fiddlers, who've finally created a galaxy without famine and managed to keep it that way for MONTHS! Truly a remarkable achievement.

Now, please task one of ye olde underlings with an assignment to clean up that short-sighted BGS meddling. Specifically, have them address the ramifications of their gloriously abundant galaxy by having them go rummaging thru the old, disused code which caused Distribution Centers to spawn in response to famine system states. Have them noodle some other way to spawn those beloved sites. Maybe as a result of Outbreak in a system instead of Famine, since your Horsemen meddlers have at least re-introduced disease into the galaxy.

Now, we understand that this kind of code change is likely to put the community through some bizarre results. We fully expect your changes to result in Distribution Centers appearing inside CZ's or NHSS's. But we'll take it, if that's the price we have to pay!

Or, more preferably, simply extend the algorithm that assigns occasional data drops to ships being scanned in supercruise, so that we might obtain the occasional DWE that way.

[And now, in a half-hearted attempt to fend off the inevitable "helpfulness": (1) We know all about fitting a wake scanner and scanning wakes as one taxis around the bubble (which never seems to deliver DWEs for me, so yay for you and your RNG devotion; no need to post that tired kludge of a solution again), and (2) Gushing advice suggesting acquiring DWEs at 6X the cost of other G5's at a material trader is a well-understood and hated mechanism (especially after getting those other encoded materials you're trading by cheesily re-logging at a crash site); we're tired of hearing your adoration over buying things at inflated prices. K'thx!] ;-/

 

[Jmanis]

I'm a broken record... but: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/472325-Time-to-buff-antagonistic-PvE

FD have since introduced mechanics to taper the amount of positive states to occurring, but this is a bad fix... what's still needed is reliable, incentivised mechanics to cause the negative states.

 

[FrogsFriend]

Or, instead of waiting for others to create the Famines for you, you could go create them yourself. Admittedly it takes some effort but if the rewards are that great then it's probably worth your time.

 

[Speedcuffs]

Or, instead of waiting for others to create the Famines for you, you could go create them yourself. Admittedly it takes some effort but if the rewards are that great then it's probably worth your time.

How do you do that then?

 

[Factabulous]

How do you do that then?

The usual ways

I'm more worries about the lack of wars at the moment. Wish I had the historic data so I could be sure of what's happening, though with recent BGS changes I guess it's logical.

 

[Camisade]

Or, instead of waiting for others to create the Famines for you, you could go create them yourself. Admittedly it takes some effort but if the rewards are that great then it's probably worth your time.

Have you seen any recent examples of anyone successfully doing that? And, more importantly, since there are no more "system states" per se, has anyone successfully done that for the faction in control of their target system AND did that then result in a Distribution Center showing up? Right now, I'd forecast a whole lotta work...and still no Distribution Center.

How do you do that then?

Thou must first goeth on a quest (in a stock sidewinder, in Open) to find the Bubble Oracle, who will then tell you where within Beagle Point you can find the Second Horseman, who will only manifest if thou are still flying aforesaid stock sidewinder (a 1A fuel scoop and class A FSD is allowed, *if* he's in a good mood (no guarantees)).

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm more worries about the lack of wars at the moment. Wish I had the historic data so I could be sure of what's happening, though with recent BGS changes I guess it's logical.

There's definitely fewer than there used to be - all a logical consequence of the changes - but especially I think Wars that show up on the galaxy map because they affect the controlling faction are less frequent.

 

[Jmanis]

Wish I had the historic data so I could be sure of what's happening, though with recent BGS changes I guess it's logical.

Well, to compare the figures from my old post, steering clear of conflict for a moment, we've got:

None state: 8000-odd - Now 13,000 odd

For economy
4,860 systems in Investment - This is now 331
2,094 systems in Boom - This is now 4,000-odd
0 in Bust - Now 2
0 in Famine - Still 0

And for Security
2,671 systems in Civil Liberty - Now 1,192
12 systems in Civil Unrest - Now 10
4 Systems in Lockdown - Now 0

This is comparing like with like - systems in control in these states via EDDB, not all states. But if you go by factions using something like Inara, you don't get a much better picture. For any states within 200LY of Sol, you get something like 2 factions in Famine, 50-odd in Bust, 0 in Lockdown and 50-odd in Civil Unrest. Compared to the *thousands* in positive states, it's still showing the massive disparity between negative states and positive states.

And what's changed?
- Well, conflicts (which I avoided before) are easy to explain. Factions without assets no longer enter conflict, so that's already going to explain the massive drop-off of wars/elections pretty easily.
- As for the most noticable other state change (Investment), that's because FD introduced an effect which normalises states towards None. Since Investment has such an extreme requirement (on the slider), all the thousands of systems in that state before have all dropped off to Boom. Meanwhile, "general" levels of activity accountable as trading and bounty hunting are enough to keep most systems around Boom and/or Civil Liberty. This shows it's actually kinda balanced; Investment should only really exist in extremely strong economic conditions.
- Conversely though, not even basic levels of economic/security underperformance present in the galaxy, and the extremes are virtually non-existent. This is again, because there's an insufficient level of activities/incentive to do activities which cause these states.
- Further evidencing this is the bump of of systems in a None state from 8,000 to 13,000. This is because most of the galaxy doesn't see enough activity to drive it in one direction or the other.

A lot of this boils down to a big assumption FD made. Way back when, in one of the first BGS videos, one of the staff (can't remember who) basically said "Good things happen when commanders succeed, and bad things happen when commanders fail. Commanders generally succeed so we usually see more of the positive states".... or words to that effect.

That's a bad design choice IMO. Instead, successful Commander activities should cause all states, depending on the activity. That does happen, but the only *targetable* effects are positive. There's minimal activities available, nor incentive to do them, which achieve negative results.

EDIT: I should probably mention... I leave out the following states, for the following reasons:
Outbreak, Pirate Attack: Basically, these appear to be random, though if there is logic, it makes it appear to be random. There certainly doesn't seem to be any visible player actions which cause these
Expansion, Retreat: Special states for adding/removing factions, these should be triggered by intense player activity and not readily achieved.
Thargoid Realted States: Well, because Thargoids.

 

[Camisade]

Thanks for that -- very educational (from someone whose preferred interaction with any kind of BGS activity is generally limited to conflict-zone diplomacy!).