Selling exploration data gives positive influence - but how?

[Sapyx]

We all know that dumping exploration data gives a nice boost to influence for the ruling faction of the station where the data is sold. But what exactly determines the size of the boost?

(a) Credit value?
(b) Number of objects scanned?
(c) Number of systems scanned?

The answer makes a difference to anyone tempted to go exploring specifically for BGS work, because it affects what targets you are seeking.

If (a), then scanning high-value planets is best - following the Road to Riches, for example.
If (b), then scanning every iceball in a large unexplored system with lots of moons might be the way to go.
If (c), then quick-and-shoddy scans of just the star is all that;'s needed.

I'm guessing (c), simply because (c) is what counts for Exploration CGs and I'm assuming the crediting mechanism is the same. But does anyone know one way or the other?

Finally, what's the cap on exploration-derived influence? I'd hate to "waste" data getting dumped when it's not doing any good.

 

[Starwolfe]

Its a combination of things.

Like much of the BGS it is transaction-based, but it does have a credit cutoff limit per faction per system. I do not believe it is per station, so no stacking it crazy in multiple port systems.

If you click the entire page, it counts as one transaction then modified by value for the influence impact, much like Bounties or Bonds.
So to get the most for influence, the per system is a better route typically.

The general cap doesn't seem to be influenced by population, its pretty much around 5 million total per system for maximum influence you can add. How you add it may vary thanks to the transaction split.

The maths get screwy in how its done. I have not done a complete field test to get an accurate feel of it - but it certainly does seem to behave like that.

The result is I think if you want to go all crazy on it, per scanned body, turned in, then scanned again to get the absolute most out of it - but that's a massive time-consuming task.
In the end for me, it doesn't matter what or how its scanned, but handing in data is helpful nonetheless.
I just don't dedicate my time to only do that as the amount of time it takes can become quite astronomical. I just take the pay when it comes up as I play.

 

[William H. Bonney]

my observations differ slightly to Starwolfe's, i'm part of a player faction who recently expanded... here's some info we found along the way....

home system = 14 billion population and we control all stations & assets. If we sell 50 systems individually via cartography data, our faction gains roughly 1% in overall influence (with no other missions or passenger missions knowingly happening, whether for us or against us). if 2 members sell 50 systems each, we would gain 2% and so on.

Expanded system = 55,000 population, selling 50 systems individually here would gain us between 6-15%, although this seems to jump around too freely and we suspect either another player or two are taking high value missions for the fed aligned factions or are completing their own Back Ground Story methodology.

Other findings...
- it appears to us that 50 is a safe number of systems to sell in one "sitting" (selling 50 x 1 systems per daily tick).
- selling to different stations in the same system has little to no effect or gain.
- Value of the data only affects your reputation with the controlling faction, we believe it's capped at 10 million credits per cmdr per daily tick, nothing hard and fast tested though.
- contents of the data you sell doesn't affect anything, so simply jump in, scoop, honk, jump out (i don't even bother scanning the main star)
- Road to riches breaks the boredom and highly recommend economical jumping between the "Rich Systems" to get more systems scanned.


hope that helps

 

[Chaffers]

I've noticed that when I sell data some of the other npc factions benefit slightly too..

Could it be partly tied to your rep with the factions?

 

[Syrelai]

my observations differ slightly to Starwolfe's, i'm part of a player faction who recently expanded... here's some info we found along the way....

home system = 14 billion population and we control all stations & assets. If we sell 50 systems individually via cartography data, our faction gains roughly 1% in overall influence (with no other missions or passenger missions knowingly happening, whether for us or against us). if 2 members sell 50 systems each, we would gain 2% and so on.

Expanded system = 55,000 population, selling 50 systems individually here would gain us between 6-15%, although this seems to jump around too freely and we suspect either another player or two are taking high value missions for the fed aligned factions or are completing their own Back Ground Story methodology.

Other findings...
- it appears to us that 50 is a safe number of systems to sell in one "sitting" (selling 50 x 1 systems per daily tick).
- selling to different stations in the same system has little to no effect or gain.
- Value of the data only affects your reputation with the controlling faction, we believe it's capped at 10 million credits per cmdr per daily tick, nothing hard and fast tested though.
- contents of the data you sell doesn't affect anything, so simply jump in, scoop, honk, jump out (i don't even bother scanning the main star)
- Road to riches breaks the boredom and highly recommend economical jumping between the "Rich Systems" to get more systems scanned.


hope that helps

Thank you for the valuable information. I have a specific question, and I know this is waaaay late, but hoping you can hopefully shed some light on my best course of action.

I want to heavily, consistently, daily push our influence gain in a pop of 9.5 mil, to eventually go to war with the controlling faction.

Our group is very small, and we're in a very popular place.

I know to release by transaction and not by page. The question is though, how much?

I've been told about 10mil's worth per day would be safe.
I've been told 50 systems would be the best bet.

I'm in the black, goldilocks scanning planets and stars on an economy trip to and from colonia. I plan to have at least 2000 systems worth when I return.

What would your advice be here, given this instance. Should I go with 10 mil per day (which can be ~50 systems at the rate I've first discovered systems), or 50 systems per day?

Thanks for any help. I appreciate your time.

 

[Jane Turner]

we are pretty sure that over a low value say 1-2k any sale of data is equal in effect and counts for 1 point.

You need 10 points to achieve the maximum influence game in a system where that is the only activity. In busy systems there is value in going as high as 200 points. Scenario 1 is 10 points to another faction with a low starting influence, scenario 2 is 10 points to all other factions

 

[Schlack]

Thank you for the valuable information. I have a specific question, and I know this is waaaay late, but hoping you can hopefully shed some light on my best course of action.

I want to heavily, consistently, daily push our influence gain in a pop of 9.5 mil, to eventually go to war with the controlling faction.

Our group is very small, and we're in a very popular place.

I know to release by transaction and not by page. The question is though, how much?

I've been told about 10mil's worth per day would be safe.
I've been told 50 systems would be the best bet.

I'm in the black, goldilocks scanning planets and stars on an economy trip to and from colonia. I plan to have at least 2000 systems worth when I return.

What would your advice be here, given this instance. Should I go with 10 mil per day (which can be ~50 systems at the rate I've first discovered systems), or 50 systems per day?

Thanks for any help. I appreciate your time.

I see you are afflicted with the bane of the BGSer, traffic.

There are no hard and fast rules, it really depends on how much of which activity is ongoing in the system in the context of relevant faction states. You will have to figure out what works in your system by trial and error. Find a level that works and refine it.

That said if you have the misfortune to be stuck in a known grinding spot you're gonna have a bad time!

 

[Syrelai]

I see you are afflicted with the bane of the BGSer, traffic.

There are no hard and fast rules, it really depends on how much of which activity is ongoing in the system in the context of relevant faction states. You will have to figure out what works in your system by trial and error. Find a level that works and refine it.

That said if you have the misfortune to be stuck in a known grinding spot you're gonna have a bad time!

I will take all of this (even Jane's post) into consideration definitely. The system in question is none other than LHS 20, which has been known to be a popular place to bounty hunt, have a 15% discount thanks to LYR, but as far as I can tell, that's the only major impact. It's a High Tech system too, so probably trading is a factor.

I guess it doesn't help much we have less than 10 people... lol.

Not sure if this gives any sort of context to the situation, but I think that graph is a pretty helpful insight.

BTW, Jane, I've seen your posts and you're like the BGS guru. Thank you!

 

[Jane Turner]

What's your population and starting influence? I'd try 50 transactions and see where this gets you. There is a change coming to the definition of BGS transactions, probably in 3.1. My bet would be on a raising of the transaction threshold.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

It's a High Tech system too, so probably trading is a factor.

Several Fed factions there too, so players doing random Fed missions for rank will be a large factor.

You should take advantage of the fact that the controlling faction has a blackmarket.

If your group is struggling to rise in influence. When the two dictatorships are out of their election, start a civil war with one of them. This will get some of that random Fed traffic working for you.

 

[Syrelai]

What's your population and starting influence? I'd try 50 transactions and see where this gets you. There is a change coming to the definition of BGS transactions, probably in 3.1. My bet would be on a raising of the transaction threshold.

Population is 9.5 million. Starting influence will depend on when we get back from exploration, likely 5-10% influence. We do have a base (Jacobi Silo, 10k ls from the star) that we can turn exploration data in, but unfortunately doesn't have a commodities market.


As far as the black market at Ohm City though, we've definitely done some trips between Lazutkin and Ohm, as Laz actually sells 4 out of the 9 banned items at Ohm City.

3.1 and raising the transaction threshold...? I hope this doesn't muck up all our work exploring....... bleh.
Thanks for the heads up though...

 

[Jane Turner]

so this is the approx maximum gains you can make - starting influence is the 1st figure, max theoretical gain is the second figure.

5 10.2
10 9.6
20 8.6
30 7.5
40 6.4
50 5.4
60 4.3


In a noisy system you will never get that - eg. 100 points will get you 0.3% if all other factions get 10 points, 500 will get you 3.1

 

[DNA-Decay]

I don’t know that you need to send your team to Colonia and back collecting data. Hopefully you know to filter the Gal Map by unvisited and apply filter to route. Then you pick a far star and for the outbound journey choose fast and economical for the return. Even a trip to the Pleiades will net you 50 new systems. Which should cover you.

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

I'm currently around 1k ly from Sol and find unexplored juicy Systems left and right. All depends if you go places that aren't on the normal Tourist routes.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

There are rumors going about that FD is planning on changing explo's BGS effect.

Seems to me another one of those solutions where there is no problem. I have no details beyond that something is coming, and am already getting nervous that FD without fully understanding the impact, will make the galaxy burn by removing the one effective counter against murder.

Whether this is a knee-jerk reaction against some bad publicity recently by someone who doesn't have the support of the BGS community, but did get a famous content creator to pick up his contentious forum thread, or finally giving in to a certain Fed with murder-mono-tactics who want explo nerfed to leave his victims defenseless, or whether FDev wants to simply make player conflicts much more painful and destructive, I don't know...

... but I am deeply worried that another asset-related BGS mechanic will be removed or nerfed to death... Like they did with bounties, mining and trading already. If that trend continues, soon we'll all just be running missions....?

 

[Ryan Murdoc]

There are rumors going about that FD is planning on changing explo's BGS effect.

Seems to me another one of those solutions where there is no problem. I have no details beyond that something is coming, and am already getting nervous that FD without fully understanding the impact, will make the galaxy burn by removing the one effective counter against murder.

Whether this is a knee-jerk reaction against some bad publicity recently by someone who doesn't have the support of the BGS community, but did get a famous content creator to pick up his contentious forum thread, or finally giving in to a certain Fed with murder-mono-tactics who want explo nerfed to leave his victims defenseless, or whether FDev wants to simply make player conflicts much more painful and destructive, I don't know...

... but I am deeply worried that another asset-related BGS mechanic will be removed or nerfed to death... Like they did with bounties, mining and trading already. If that trend continues, soon we'll all just be running missions....?

Something to keep an eye on and continue to question FD about. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If the exploration reform planned for Q4 has much of significance to it, there'd have to be some change to how exploration data affects the BGS if only because what exploration data is will change somewhat.

 

[Sentenza]

FD motto is "if it ain't broke, fix it"

 

[AirBear]

Thanks for that info, just what I needed. I'm trying to guide my faction's first expansion from a system with 4.7B population, being retired I have more play time than just about all the other members combined. I dumped 10m in cart data on our main station (we own 3) last night and I'm waiting for today's tick to dump some more. In the meantime another player went out and got 23M in cart data. I had thought the limit for raising influence with cart data was 10M per tick for ALL players, but if it's individual that'll help us.

On a side note, the game is making us wait the entire 7 day period to find out where we're expanding to. We entered the active expansion phase on October 5th and yesterday (12th) still no update after the tick so today should be it. I've read all the BGS guides I can find and I'm pretty sure I know where we're going. We don't care about that system so we'll try to expand again from home system ASAP and this time it should be a system we'll take over (great bounty hunting with 2 Haz Rez close to the sun), and then expand a 3rd time from home system (Agricultural with lousy outfitting) to an industrial system with a large station just 5LS from the Sun and great missions and outfitting. That system has 6 factions which should allow us in but to be safe we're going to attempt to force an out of town AI faction into retreat. We intend to move our base of operations to this system and then pause for awhile. Two expansions from this new home would put us in a very large system with 3 large orbitals close to the sun which surprisingly only has 6 factions. But we only have about a half dozen very active players and another half dozen occasional players so don't want to bite off more than we can chew so to speak.

AirBear

my observations differ slightly to Starwolfe's, i'm part of a player faction who recently expanded... here's some info we found along the way....

home system = 14 billion population and we control all stations & assets. If we sell 50 systems individually via cartography data, our faction gains roughly 1% in overall influence (with no other missions or passenger missions knowingly happening, whether for us or against us). if 2 members sell 50 systems each, we would gain 2% and so on.

Expanded system = 55,000 population, selling 50 systems individually here would gain us between 6-15%, although this seems to jump around too freely and we suspect either another player or two are taking high value missions for the fed aligned factions or are completing their own Back Ground Story methodology.

Other findings...
- it appears to us that 50 is a safe number of systems to sell in one "sitting" (selling 50 x 1 systems per daily tick).
- selling to different stations in the same system has little to no effect or gain.
- Value of the data only affects your reputation with the controlling faction, we believe it's capped at 10 million credits per cmdr per daily tick, nothing hard and fast tested though.
- contents of the data you sell doesn't affect anything, so simply jump in, scoop, honk, jump out (i don't even bother scanning the main star)
- Road to riches breaks the boredom and highly recommend economical jumping between the "Rich Systems" to get more systems scanned.


hope that helps