PMFs: data, charts, and the coming galactic player wars...

[Ian Doncaster]

Now that you spelled it out I am incredibly fearful that that's exactly what FDev might do. Let's just hope none of them ever read this...

I think it's more-or-less their default option if they don't find an alternative, they've ended up with that approach before for player-submitted Galnet and player-submitted CGs when demand massively exceeded their ability to supply (and there were other issues too)

But the galaxy becoming "full" was always going to happen.

Well, indeed - Mangal Oemie started this thread three years ago to draw attention to that It would probably have happened without PMFs, too, as people would have just continued adopting the existing factions.

Speaking from a Colonia perspective, "full" is the more interesting state, of course.

 

[Factabulous]

I think FD genuinely thought they were just offering up the opportunity to put some player-flair in the universe, not facilitate player- representation in the game for competitive purposes.

It's not even just that - you have people like this who are basically just wanting themselves added into the galaxy - some people just want to see their name in lights. (Let's hope fdev do more validation than I think they do.)

Request for Minor Faction

Put in a request to form a Minor Faction but expect it to be rejected as I only have me & 1 other member in my Squadron. But here is what I put as a description of the Faction: THE ZANDER DUVAL EMPIRE The origins of the Zander Duval Empire are a mystery but they claim to be descended from a...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Darkfyre99]

Yeah, the reasons why players request a player-named faction range from their own personal monument to Ozymandias, through canonizing their Elite fanfiction, to making it easier to manipulate the BGS in favor of their Power. I’m pretty sure Frontier was thinking of the middle motive, in attempt to flesh out the Bubble, but they pretty much opened the door for everyone the way they did it. Which is why we get BGS manipulators railing against factions created for RP purposes (it’s not being “played”, so get rid of it!) and to a lesser degree RPers railing against factions created for meta-gamiing purposes (this faction makes no sense, so get rid of it!)

 

[Kissamies]

I think rebranding existing NPC factions to PMFs would be more elegant way to fit more PMFs in the game. They would keep the same government and superpower affiliation, but the name would change. I think another requirement should be that the faction is insignificant enough. No head start to multiple system empires.

 

[Factabulous]

I think rebranding existing NPC factions to PMFs would be more elegant way to fit more PMFs in the game. They would keep the same government and superpower affiliation, but the name would change. I think another requirement should be that the faction is insignificant enough. No head start to multiple system empires.

Yeah - I was thinking that earlier - make one of the pre-requisites to support a faction for X months - submit the names of your 10 CMDRs and if fdev see that you have actually worked on that faction you get to rename it. I guess the game isn't written to allow that, which is a shame. Hey ho, hindsight and all that.

 

[DragoCubX]

Realistically, FD just shouldn't have added PMFs in the first place.

Well I for one know that I probably wouldn't be playing Elite anymore if they hadn't. Or at the very least it would have become a game I play once every other month. Faction work with light amounts of roleplay are my sole motivation for playing this game nowadays

 

[Darkfyre99]

Yeah - I was thinking that earlier - make one of the pre-requisites to support a faction for X months - submit the names of your 10 CMDRs and if fdev see that you have actually worked on that faction you get to rename it. I guess the game isn't written to allow that, which is a shame. Hey ho, hindsight and all that.

Considering how much Frontier cooperated with changing things on behalf of the Crimson State Group way back during the Gamna and the first few months of 1.0, including renaming one of the worlds in Lugh, there really isn’t anything stopping Frontier from adopting something like this... beyond investing the necessary resources, of course.

 

[Jmanis]

Well I for one know that I probably wouldn't be playing Elite anymore if they hadn't. Or at the very least it would have become a game I play once every other month. Faction work with light amounts of roleplay are my sole motivation for playing this game nowadays

It doesn't sound like any of that is contingent on a PMF though? NPC factions are functionally no different in any regard to PMFs, so you could still do all those things with an NPC faction.

In actuality, it's caused issues for roleplay rather than given them. For example, I'd argue a majority of players who have PMF put in the game don't realise they aren't members of that faction, and neither does pledging a squadron to a faction change that, which is a huge source of cognitive dissonance from a roleplay perspective.

 

[DragoCubX]

It doesn't sound like any of that is contingent on a PMF though? NPC factions are functionally no different in any regard to PMFs, so you could still do all those things with an NPC faction.

In actuality, it's caused issues for roleplay rather than given them. For example, I'd argue a majority of players who have PMF put in the game don't realise they aren't members of that faction, and neither does pledging a squadron to a faction change that, which is a huge source of cognitive dissonance from a roleplay perspective.

To answer your second part, I know that, and it's actually something that made me really sad when I saw that the devs wouldn't allow any closer association.

And for the first part, yes, the functionality is the same. However, a randomly named faction in a randomly named system holds absolutely no value to me. The faction that we named, chose the allegiance, government and background story for, however, does hold quite a big value to me. Which is what keeps me playing.
Or in other words I'm not playing the BGS because of the system, but because we were allowed to "input" something of our own into it.

 

[Mersozz]

To answer your second part, I know that, and it's actually something that made me really sad when I saw that the devs wouldn't allow any closer association.

And for the first part, yes, the functionality is the same. However, a randomly named faction in a randomly named system holds absolutely no value to me. The faction that we named, chose the allegiance, government and background story for, however, does hold quite a big value to me. Which is what keeps me playing.
Or in other words I'm not playing the BGS because of the system, but because we were allowed to "input" something of our own into it.

I would agree here.

Technically speaking, nothing prevents another player from helping or spiking the PMF I created. Heck, I’ve even been fined by “my” faction for sloppy driving on a couple occasions, among other things.

But like you noted, placing something in the game that can be influenced by your actions is a cool feature, regardless of the BGS ramifications. All things being equal, I will gravitate toward a faction which holds some emotional investment.

It’s like being able to name a city street; I don’t own the street, but it means more to me than other streets.

For a long times (thousands of hours), I didn’t bother with a PMF or the BGS. But now, it’s added some additional depth to the game. Mission running, bounty hunting, cargo transport, etc., carries the added dimension of BGS impact. And even if that ripple is like tossing a small stone into the sea, it’s cool to know I can impact the power dynamics while I am gaming.

 

[Furyan_ST]

What I would like as a solution is a colonisation mechanic:
Existing factions should be given the ability to colonise uninhabited systems, maybe with requiring massively more work than regular expansions. The BGS state seems to fundamentally already exist and just hasn't been implemented yet.

And then new groups could use that exact mechanic as their founding: To allow them to start off all on their own in a fresh, previously uninhabited system that they can form into their home. Choice would obviously have to be restricted, e.g. the selected system must be within X Ly of another inhabited system or such. But it would allow for nigh-infinite new faction additions without screwing anyone over.

I love this idea too and wish it was something that had been added years ago. To coincide with it, there should be the ability to actually have population change, famines should actually cause major issues, as should population growth!

 

[Mersozz]

I love this idea too and wish it was something that had been added years ago. To coincide with it, there should be the ability to actually have population change, famines should actually cause major issues, as should population growth!

I agree this would be cool. I have to think that would be in the cards someday.

 

[DragoCubX]

No April charts? (Someone has to be the first to ask )

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

No April charts? (Someone has to be the first to ask )

I thought we can get it from here now from "orac" https://twitter.com/AedcCartography

But i may have that wrong as I have never used it https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...he-coming-galactic-player-wars.419845/page-18

 

[Gully Foyle]

Hi BGS'ers and ED CMDRs in general...

I am happy to announce the soft-launch of the AEDC Cartography Department Twitter bot. If you like the monthly "state of the human populated bubble" updates, you're probably going to like this. Through this bot, you can get most of these charts on-demand, whenever you want, up to date with the latest eddb/api data dump (within a few hours)

https://twitter.com/AedcCartography

It is working, though I will be tinkering with it a bit more today (put the script properly in the background, add a few finishing touches, log properly etc.), so there may be a few late replies in the next couple of hours, but it is otherwise fully functional. The bot will reply and in general it's working.

Note: give it a little time to reply - the process is actually remarkably involved - if the bot is unable to produce the chart, it will let you know.

Here's how it works: tweet at the bot with a request. There is a format (see below), but it is basically based on a CMD SUBCMD structure. Doesn't matter where in the tweet, and you can add words to make it more personal just make sure the two key words are space separated. So something like "hey @AedcCartography please map Alliance for me". Upper or lowercase also doesn't matter.

The bot replies with a basic usage example, but the following list will help get it right first time.

Supported commands/charts/maps:

bubble pmf

chart govtypes
chart govtypes-allegiance
chart govtypes-allegiance-systems
chart states
chart stats-totals
chart stats-normalized

histo pmf
histo pmfallegiance
histo all3plus

map bubble
map alliance
map empire
map federation
map superpowers (NEW!)
map alliance-assets
map empire-assets
map federation-assets
map independent-assets
map pmfhomes
map largefactions
map mediumfactions

The charts may not look quite as good as the monthly datasheets, where screencaptures are made directly from the SVG. This has some automated conversion behind it, and the results are not always quite the same - the histograms, for instance, have wonky text labels. They also don't contain any embedded images within the SVG as <image> tags error out. Otherwise, the charts and graphs should look quite familiar.

Enjoy!

Thanks Mangal you leprechaun you

 

[Gully Foyle]

Yeah - I was thinking that earlier - make one of the pre-requisites to support a faction for X months - submit the names of your 10 CMDRs and if fdev see that you have actually worked on that faction you get to rename it. I guess the game isn't written to allow that, which is a shame. Hey ho, hindsight and all that.

Never too late

 

[Gully Foyle]

Ok, Now I just don't know which is cooler, the reports or the hardware...

Excellent job!!!

Stop by Gateway anytime and grab some papers! Most mediocre PP weapon ever!

Forget PMFs I want my own pub with Ed Mahon eating pizza on Norm’s stool

 

[DragoCubX]

I thought we can get it from here now from "orac" https://twitter.com/AedcCartography

But i may have that wrong as I have never used it https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...he-coming-galactic-player-wars.419845/page-18

Hmm, guess I'll have to piece them together on Twitter then. I personally quite liked having all the charts in one list, monthly. Sending a dozen tweets to the bot seems like a step back to me personally

 

[Thimeus]

Interesting topic.

I've seen it myself a lot lately. Even Powerplay and BGS rub against each other.

The logical step would be the insertion of an PMF-war-feature. It could look like this:

The leader of a faction can deklare a war to another PMF and starting at the next tick the war beginns. That means:

• No PMF-Member can dock at a station controlled by the other.
• If the enemy faction controlls the sytem, the system authority atacks you.
• Expanding in an enemy system beginns a invasion war. The winner gets everything from the looser inside the system, the looser retreats completly out of the system.
• The leader of both PMFs can send a peace request, that will be transmitted at the next tick. The leader of the other PMF can accept it, refuse or ignore. If the peace request is ignored for a whole week, the war ends (For the case he stopped playing ED)
• If a PMF controlls no system, their headquater system doesn't attack its members or denys their docking request even if the enemy PMF is controlling the system/station

To avoid nasty tricks: The declaration of war can be sent to:

• the PMF only
• the PMF and each current member (stays active if they leave the squadron)
• non-PMF-squadrons
• non PMF-squadrons and each current member
• single commanders.

What do you think about this idea, commanders?

 

[goemon]

Interesting topic.

I've seen it myself a lot lately. Even Powerplay and BGS rub against each other.

The logical step would be the insertion of an PMF-war-feature. It could look like this:

The leader of a faction can deklare a war to another PMF and starting at the next tick the war beginns. That means:

• No PMF-Member can dock at a station controlled by the other.
• If the enemy faction controlls the sytem, the system authority atacks you.
• Expanding in an enemy system beginns a invasion war. The winner gets everything from the looser inside the system, the looser retreats completly out of the system.
• The leader of both PMFs can send a peace request, that will be transmitted at the next tick. The leader of the other PMF can accept it, refuse or ignore. If the peace request is ignored for a whole week, the war ends (For the case he stopped playing ED)
• If a PMF controlls no system, their headquater system doesn't attack its members or denys their docking request even if the enemy PMF is controlling the system/station

To avoid nasty tricks: The declaration of war can be sent to:

• the PMF only
• the PMF and each current member (stays active if they leave the squadron)
• non-PMF-squadrons
• non PMF-squadrons and each current member
• single commanders.

What do you think about this idea, commanders?

not much, because "The leader of a faction" is a NPC for all factions including PMFs.