A lot of the BGS seems to have a bias towards "good" activities, always had. The only reliable way to target a particular faction for negative attention has been murdering or smuggling, and the latter isn't really an option if they don't have a black market at a station they own.
It wasn't so bad pre-3.3, because the buckets weren't opposed. So for example, Famine was caused by just as few things as it is today, but one thing which
did cause it was Skimmer Missions (Why? No idea...).
Of course, that meant to cause a famine you had to get:
- Skimmer Missions, which
- Targeted that faction.
Run enough and you'd get Famine, eventually. Boom, Civil Unrest, Lockdown would all happen much sooner for <reasons> but, you'd get it.
Skimmer missions still exist, but they're
really rare compared to back in the day, and now they drop Economy, so you gotta push back against every positive economic action now.
And that's only possible if you luck-out and get a skimmer mission spawn,
and it happens to target your target faction. tl;dr It's practically impossible[1]
This is why I've suggested, amongst other things, that there should be a criminal mission board[2] which, as opposed to the standard mission board offering missions to
support a chosen faction, the missions on the criminal board are grouped by the
target faction, and offered up by "anonymous entities". That way you can actually target factions for those negative effects[3]
[1] "Lawful" governments usually target Pirates with their missions like Assasinations and Massacres, so you
can get an anarchy down. But getting a lawful faction down? Good luck...
[2] I'd also make the argument that the criminal mission board should only be accessible with anonymity protocols active, and you must have notoriety, but that's by-the-by.
[3] At this point, someone usually gets their knickers in a knot and says "Oh but the game shouldn't encourage griefing!". It's not griefing... negative states are not inherently bad things (except maybe Lockdown, but that's a whole other debate). The BGS is about creating that living, breathing universe which is not homogenous like it currently is. Famine as we all know is a great source of DWE's, and creates fun market effects like making food worth lots of money. Not having these occur
regularly as a consequence of
player action (which Blight, afaik, is not, and seems more like Outbreak in implementation).
I recall one of the comments in the 3.3 BGS livestream was how the (not implemented) expansion mechanics would work based off happiness, and a way to get the correct system expanding was, instead of making that the happiest, to make everywhere else unhappy. That wouldn't be a viable option in the current game.
and medicines.
