Research on Compromised Navigation Beacons

As of approximately a week ago, we gained the ability to systematically track nav beacons changing from compromised to normal and vice versa, as the information is now sent from the journal over EDDN. I made a bounty hunting tool that automatically keeps up with these changes. I also made a CNB changelog display.

I think a lot of people will be surprised at just how often beacons change state, as the previous research has been entirely manual. I have seen a lot of assertions that CNBs never change, or that only FDEV changes them, and a lot of other speculation about why they change. Well, here's some data, so now we can do real science.

In just one week, we've seen 25 beacon flips, of which 3 systems flipped one way then back. (And AFAIK only EDMC supports the schema so far, so our data is not as complete as it could be).

So for starters, those systems were: Teveri, Huiche, and Berzitibi.

Code:
System     Previously_Seen   Change_Seen       Changed_To
---------  ----------------  ----------------  -----------
Teveri     2022-06-20 21:37  2022-06-21 06:10  Compromised
Huiche     2022-06-21 02:04  2022-06-22 20:19  Compromised
Berzitibi  2022-06-21 16:09  2022-06-23 14:39  Compromised
Teveri     2022-06-22 19:38  2022-06-24 06:37  Regular
Huiche     2022-06-23 23:57  2022-06-24 22:27  Regular
Berzitibi  2022-06-24 16:14  2022-06-25 11:08  Regular

Teveri (Union of Jath for Equality) entered and left Terrorist Attack on the same days.
Huiche (Brotherhood of Terra Mater) entered and left Pirate Attack.
Berzitibi (Berzitibi Life Ltd) also entered and left Pirate Attack.

So clearly(?), state changes affect the nav beacon, although I haven't correlated with system security changes and it might not directly be the state change.

If you want to look yourself and don't have a listener, ROSS does not handle the new schema, but EDGalaxy.space does. The schema is FSSSignalDiscovered.
 
see this recent post on black markets:

a similar spawn/despawn, i could imagine a similar play of hidden values for cnb.

question: i think haz res are, differently to cnb, constant. can you confirm that with your data?

from experience there are also some cnb which are constant ... my assumption is because the hidden values are too low to be pushed over a threshold by states/controlling faction/security etc modifiers.

great research!
 
Unfortunately, the journal never provides a complete, consistent view of the FSS signals in a system. It only prints some of them upon jump-in (the Nav Beacon is always there, though, probably because it's right next to the star); and it prints surrounding signals when FSS scanning a body or when dropping in on a signal. So it's impossible to automatically know if/when a RES goes away as we never get a batch of lines that says "this is ALL the signals!" so we can't know if there are none, or just none scanned.

I believe RES are permanent except for hand of FDev. There was a bounty CG a year or two back that had little to no hunting spots (no RES, no CNB, no missions, no installations, faction not present in other systems; leaving just random supercruise pulls and repeated ring-dropping) and FDev added some RES.
 
You never get a full view of everything due to the nature of the data sets (well, unless you do your own research). Best thing is usually to follow normal scientific research:

1) Look at the data for patterns
2) Come up with a hypothesis (or many) that fit your data
3) Look for confounding data. Go back to 2 if hypothesis fails
4) Attempt to prove hypothesis by predicting some outcomes and seeing if you are accurate
5) Publish!

I get a feeling this will be like many parts of the BGS - you will be able to show 'X and Y allow a CNB to happen', but there will be hidden parameters that stop it being predictive across all systems. But good luck - these types of research are fun :)

(I expect the 'CNB change multiple times a day' maybe different people submitting data around the tick - ppl from before the tick can still see old system state for a while so can report things 'going back'. At least I think that happens with faction state, no idea if it happens with other things, and I could be completely wrong 🤷‍♀️ )
 
There was a bounty CG a year or two back that had little to no hunting spots (no RES, no CNB, no missions, no installations, faction not present in other systems; leaving just random supercruise pulls and repeated ring-dropping) and FDev added some RES.
actually the latter was a mistake of what happened. the cg in question was for the marlinist colonies.
those were "settled" at thursday. nav beacons and so on spawned next tick. that was as seen when new systems at the colonia bridge were populated.
as the CGs went live on thursday people assumed res spawn to be god-handed, but missed that evennav beacons were missing before.

i think the whole process of freshly populated systems speaks even more of something dynamic going on.
 
I can confirm Feudal governments taking ownership of a Comp Nav Beacon will turn it into a normal Nav Beacon. My PMF is Feudal and we took over a system with a Comp Nav then it was gone.
 
I can confirm Feudal governments taking ownership of a Comp Nav Beacon will turn it into a normal Nav Beacon. My PMF is Feudal and we took over a system with a Comp Nav then it was gone.
Pretty sure that's not a general rule tho, I know of a system that was feudal and had a comp nav beacon while under feudal control. Though I won't deny that perhaps feudal makes it more likely to get the hidden value "over the edge" to turn a nav beacon normal.
 
Pretty sure that's not a general rule tho, I know of a system that was feudal and had a comp nav beacon while under feudal control. Though I won't deny that perhaps feudal makes it more likely to get the hidden value "over the edge" to turn a nav beacon normal.
To add some info I can confirm the case of Patronage -> Communism (beacon becomes compromised) -> Another Patronage (beacon stops being compromised) so it might be a group of government types not just limited to Feudal affecting this hidden value.
 
Feudal is basically Anarchy that gives out bounties. Everything is legal in Feudal besides murder and going over 100m/s while docking/undocking lol
 
Feudal is basically Anarchy that gives out bounties. Everything is legal in Feudal besides murder and going over 100m/s while docking/undocking lol
You might be thinking of dictatorships there. Slavery is illegal (although independent agricultural dictatorships can export imperial slaves) but everything else is legal, if I remember correctly.
 
More data points

Meene: Owned by Brazilian League of Pilots.
Changed to Compromised on 2022-06-22, which is the same day they entered Civil Liberty. Curious. Is CL actually reducing security?
Changed to Regular on 2022-06-30 when they left CL.
Changed back to Compromised on 2022-07-08 when they entered CL again.

Multiple other beacons going compromised and back with CL starting and ending.

Namab:
After a war, Namab Purple Brothers (Anarchy) took the system over from Bhotho Commodities (Corporate) and the beacon changed to Regular

La Rochelle:
After a war, Equestrian Naval Fleet (Feudal) took the system over from Izumo Heavy Industries Ltd (Corporate) and the beacon changed to Regular (y)
 
Is CL actually reducing security?
Yes, CL causes a minor security reduction. Can be seen up here flipping systems from Medium to Low with the associated opening of IF services, since a lot of ours are just one side or the other of that borderline in default states.

Investment, War, Civil Liberty, Civil Unrest: slight decrease
Lockdown: slight increase
I suspect some of the event states might as well but it's hard to catch those on a controlling faction without one of those others as well.
 
Thanks, the wiki steered me wrong then when it said increase
I would advise not assuming that page is correct about anything else either. Between "things which were true pre-3.3 but aren't any more", "things which have never been true", and "statements which are technically true but omit important details" picking out the bits it actually gets right is pretty tricky.
 
As spotlighted by Cemiess this week, EDH3.8 and EDH4.0/EDO can disagree on whether the beacon is compromised or not. This is probably a game bug.

For my purposes, I've belatedly started ignoring beacon reports from EDH3.8. I might introduce an EDH3.8-specific field, but I think EDH4.0/EDO is the future.
 
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