Specific Commodities, Faction States and Influence

In certain faction states, these can be extended in duration, or reduced in duration, by selling certain items on the market of a station they control. For instance, sell food to reduce famine duration, sell legal weapons to increase security etc.

I've noticed when doing a few source and return missions, instead of it saying the economy/security of our faction increased in our home system, it said the likelihood of outbreak was reduced. Completing a trade mission of delivering wine, increased our economy, but decreased the security of the faction we delivered too.

Our economy is nearing boom, and security is nearing civil liberty, so is unlikely we would be at risk of things like Famine etc. My question is: "what commodities have an effect of system states, outside of those states?" Does delivering a bunch of medicine, when you're not in outbreak, reduce the likelihood? Same for machinery with infrastructure, water for drought etc. Or is this only for those missions and the commodity market wouldn't count?

My understanding is profitable sales to the market increase the owners economy, and legal weapons increase the security. Black Market decreasesthe security.
Does weaponry increase the economy too? Does black market decrease the economy? If the recipient of wine in missions have a negative effect, does that also count for the market?

In short, which commodities have extra effects, on a faction, when that faction is not in a particular faction state?
 
1. you have to differentiate those states being triggered by security- and economy slider (e.g. civil liberty or famine), and those which are not (e.g. outbreak, pirate attack)
2. i know of no usefull test design testing state effects - and that's the situation since over 6 years (if someone comes up with it and want to run a test, that would be very usefull!)
3. there are devs quotes around, though. trading medicines reduces (the chance of) outbreak, all non-food trade increases (the chance of) Pirate Attack, all weapons trade increases security, all trade increases influence and economy.
4. smuggling is said to decrease economy and influence and increase (the chance of) Pirate attack; only smuggling weapons decreases security, while smuggling medicines decreases the chance of outbreak.
 
Last edited:
The only thing which is absolutely certain is the visible effects... there's things which can be implied from missions, but that doesn't necessarily hold for all cases afaik... eg your weapons delivery which reduced outbreak could have been an outbreak flavoured mission (could, you'd have to have a screenshot to be certain).

Beyond that, there's what FD say things do, which doesnt always hold true and is only really good for the time it was said
Off the top of my head:

Legal sales for profit:
Weapons: improve security, economy and influence
All drugs: improve economy, influence, decrease security
Medicines: increase economy, influence missions improve/ prevent outbreak , so presumably market sales do too
Food: increases economy, influence, missions improve/ prevent famine, so presumably market sales do too
Biowaste: improve economy, influence, missions decrease / cause outbreak, so potentially market sales do too.
All others: increase economy and influence

Legal trade for loss: lose influence, but i think that's all?

Black market trade (unless owned by anarchy faction, then see legal trade):
Pretty much make any positive effect mentioned negative.

Purportedly trading weapons helps the relevant faction in a warlike conflict, but in my experience there's a lot more that helps a faction (enough that the general statement of "combat activities help in war/nomcombat help election" doesn't hold true)

Part of the problem as goemon alludes is the distinction between the states with associated sliders and those that don't. The ones with are easy to verify. The ones that aren't, well, are impossible to tell (particularly since states like outbreak have a natural tick that progresses towards causing an outbreak, makes checking biowaste trade impossible to verify beyond just missions) because there's no visual verification of effects in the game.

Additionally, there isn't guaranteed correlation between mission effects and comparable non mission actions.
 
Last edited:
Mission completion summary screen:
Influence: System Name, Up arrow
With fewer reported cases of illness, Faction hope they have prevented a full scale outbreak in the system name system.

Haven't seen any other wordings though, but I'm keeping an eye out.

When you say increase the likelihood of pirate attack, how is that worked out? Is it that a system with say, boom, has a 1 in x chance per week to have a pirate attack? Or, the higher the economy the more likely?

And, is there a decay on any of these values? I saw all faction states have a pending, active and cooldown duration, so, that implies that when you get to Boom, the bar starts to go to the left again? Yet some of the factions in our local area, after each tick occurs, have had no +/- to their Economy or security. Or do Economy/ security states no longer have that aspect to them?

What would be a good source of info to use, as tbh, I've a lot of questions, and don't want to clog up the questions. The wiki when it comes to BGS stuff is pretty vague. I've found a few guides for BGS for I think it was 3.2 but I've seen a lot say that no longer applies, does anyone have a link?

Thanks for the info!
 
Last edited:
When you say increase the likelihood of pirate attack, how is that worked out? Is it that a system with say, boom, has a 1 in x chance per week to have a pirate attack? Or, the higher the economy the more likely?
We don't know for certain, but one theory which fits the observations would be a "leaky bucket".
  • Systems have "buckets" for Pirate Attack, Outbreak, Public Holiday, Infrastructure Failure, etc. for each faction - the larger the population, the bigger the bucket.
  • Actions can fill or empty one or more buckets for a faction. Frontier have given out some information on what might do this but it's mostly not known and hard to test. [1]
  • The buckets will also drain back to zero over time.
  • If a bucket fills up the state begins. All these states are mutually exclusive. There's probably a priority order if two buckets fill up on the same day.
  • At the end of the state's recovery period, all buckets are reset back to zero.
[1] In general, positive actions seem to lead to Pirate Attack or Public Holiday, and negative actions to the other event states, with Outbreak having the special case that Biowaste delivery missions cause it at the destination, and therefore being almost the "default" state in any mid/high-traffic Agricultural.
I saw all faction states have a pending, active and cooldown duration
The slider states have 1 day pending and cooldown, but their active duration is just however long the faction spends in the right zone on the slider - could be a day, could theoretically be infinite if inputs are stable (I've seen several last well over a year).

There is a slight natural tendency in the absence of player input for these states to return to the middle of the bar. Takes a few weeks, and I'm not sure if it's visible on the trend indicators while it's happening.

What would be a good source of info to use
Unfortunately I don't know of any post-3.3 BGS guides which are all three of
- public
- reasonably comprehensive
- accurate to all the changes in 3.3, never mind anything more recent

Generally you have to piece it together from observation, reading back through the threads here, and asking questions.
 
I'll add, that a system without player traffic (and therefore no actions) will have all factions in none states over time.
so there is a decay in place.

one of the few devs quotes, which is very old though, states that after a state the bucket of states is reset to zero. this is for sure not longer true for all states, but might be still the case for each state bucket (so, any "bucket" of outbreak is set to zero once otubreak ended (whether that means in recovery or after recovery).

i'm differing from Ian D. in so far, as i think all non-slider states have a probability to happen above a certain threshold, so "increases pirate attack" means "increases chance of pirate attack", with that chance getting to almost 100% over time (so is bound to happen at some point).

generally i recommend, beside reading here and firing away any questions, to relax and enjoy - it works perfectly well to work the BGS with those mechanics which are very, very well understood, and look at the more obscure effects as something between blackbox, rich background and events in a factions history. e.g. we have been hit by outbreak, probably by selling bonds, maybe by something else, but it doesn#t matter know - let's take advantage of that state!
 
(also, you could start writing a new guide by collecting all info from all threads in this subforum and asking for input/clarifications... and hope it won't be outdated by odyssee update)
 
I might start collating info. I have had a tendency to ask a lot of questions when it comes to games, not necessarily to make the game easier, sometimes just for curiosity like entering a gas giants/ Black hole exclusion zone and seeing how far I can go, simply because I wanna know. It likely won't be of use in day to day play sure, though it's helped squadmates out a few times by knowing how to get them out of scrapes.

What's a good way to test if info is 1) still correct and 2) was correct in the first place. Given that a lot of it seems to be "it seems like when we do this, this happens so they're probably related somehow". I mean I know for a fair bit of it that's the best we'll get as I doubt FD will give us every in and out to it.

But to use an example, a lot of modern day people, believe that those in the medieval era believed the world was flat. To the point that it's seen as common knowledge despite the evidence being opposite. I'm curious about how much of that may be true with info on here, as in, some pieces of info that are held to be true, actually aren't. Thankfully a lot of the posts do have a fair bit of data, the thing is, the interpretation of the data. I'm still getting used to some BGS aspects, the finer details, partly as they seem to change a fair bit.
Do FDev have something akin to a patch notes list? A list of changes to the BGS, even if they're not in detail. Like, May 2020, changed how bounty hunting affects influence, as an example. The f formula isn't revealed, but we're aware it was changed, and so inferred things from prior to that change are now known to be less accurate
 
Do FDev have something akin to a patch notes list? A list of changes to the BGS, even if they're not in detail. Like, May 2020, changed how bounty hunting affects influence, as an example. The f formula isn't revealed, but we're aware it was changed, and so inferred things from prior to that change are now known to be less accurate
Broadly, no. You might get some cryptic hints that something has changed in the main release patch notes, which may sometimes resemble the effect that occurs, but they very rarely discuss the actual details even to that level.

As far as "official information" goes - they did a BGS stream a few months after 3.3 which is probably mostly accurate still. There's a table in that which is incomplete - and of course doesn't cover the new states from 3.6 - but decent for "what causes what state" information.
 
Broadly, no. You might get some cryptic hints that something has changed in the main release patch notes, which may sometimes resemble the effect that occurs, but they very rarely discuss the actual details even to that level.

As far as "official information" goes - they did a BGS stream a few months after 3.3 which is probably mostly accurate still. There's a table in that which is incomplete - and of course doesn't cover the new states from 3.6 - but decent for "what causes what state" information.
Yeah... most you'll see is "Included new states X, Y and Z"... or if it was a hot-topic patch, you might see "Fixed trading to make 1t trading less effective[1]" or somesuch.

[1] Historically, trade was measured by the BGS not in tonnage, but in transactions, so trading 1t a hundred times was a hundred times more effective than trading 100t once. But that got patched a long time ago.
 
a) on patch notes: if fdev actually does BGS related patch notes, they have the quality of "balance of incluence gain ongoing" - just try to imagine the outcry, if they would do the same on weapons. "multicannon damage balance ongoing"

b) i think what is currently working: people report, for exampel here in the detailed threads for various states, if something does not match their expectations. Others either give their fresh idea about it ("this has changed in the last 2 years"), or come up with similar experiences.

c) Ian D.s work on colonia and Jane Turners Group have "a lot" of day-to-day data to analyse, so a more major change - for exampel the BGS effects of Bounty Buffs - will be visible in that data. many of the larger groups with a BGS attached also have a bunch of data/anecdotal evidence.

d) people run tests in no-traffic systems. e.g. if you want to know, whether war-themed courier missions can win a day in a war, run a few of them in a war in a no-traffic system and see whether you win the day. now - theoretically most mechanics are somewhat testable, but the attached time investment for tests is huge. e.g. trade is easy to test, as you can control almost all potential parameters. bounties is harder to test, as you can't finetune input. exploration data would require someone returning with 100-250 mio in explodata and the gut, to hand them in in no-traffic system over two weeks. testing missions requires waiting for the right missions to spawn etc.

on the other hand, the list of "broadly works" is quite large, like:
  • missions for a faction raise their influence.
  • profitable trade at a market increases the market controlling factions influence.
  • redeeming a factions bounties in system, where the faction is present increases a factions influence.
  • handing in exploration data raises the station controlling factions influence.
  • factions at low influence gain more from the same actions/transactions than factions of high influence.
  • gains of a faction are distributed as losses relative to influence in system - and the other way round.

with that set of rules, you can work almost any situation.
with that set of rules, you can even predict factions movements quite accurately in low traffic systems.
of course it would be interesting to know, whether a megaship scenario influence effect is as high, as a +++++ mission.
How influence loss of smuggling is calculated.
Whether the boom-effect of trade is still a total multiplier.
Whether it is that interesting to you to spend a week or two testing it, is a different question. me for exampel only plays missions if i can't avoid them (whenever i can, i take supply missions, as i hate guided gameplay). Of course i would love to see a test on return curve for missions+ .... is +++ three times worth +, is 10+ 5 times ++, and what happens at 10, 15, 20, 30+? Is that return curve depending on population size? are all missions only effective by +, or - e.g. trade missions have an additional trade effect? is the + a value, or is it rounded (so some missions are worth 1,25+ - other 1,75+, but it is shown to us as + and 2+?) but i'm unlikely to test all that.
 
a) on patch notes: if fdev actually does BGS related patch notes, they have the quality of "balance of incluence gain ongoing" - just try to imagine the outcry, if they would do the same on weapons. "multicannon damage balance ongoing"

b) i think what is currently working: people report, for exampel here in the detailed threads for various states, if something does not match their expectations. Others either give their fresh idea about it ("this has changed in the last 2 years"), or come up with similar experiences.

c) Ian D.s work on colonia and Jane Turners Group have "a lot" of day-to-day data to analyse, so a more major change - for exampel the BGS effects of Bounty Buffs - will be visible in that data. many of the larger groups with a BGS attached also have a bunch of data/anecdotal evidence.

d) people run tests in no-traffic systems. e.g. if you want to know, whether war-themed courier missions can win a day in a war, run a few of them in a war in a no-traffic system and see whether you win the day. now - theoretically most mechanics are somewhat testable, but the attached time investment for tests is huge. e.g. trade is easy to test, as you can control almost all potential parameters. bounties is harder to test, as you can't finetune input. exploration data would require someone returning with 100-250 mio in explodata and the gut, to hand them in in no-traffic system over two weeks. testing missions requires waiting for the right missions to spawn etc.

on the other hand, the list of "broadly works" is quite large, like:
  • missions for a faction raise their influence.
  • profitable trade at a market increases the market controlling factions influence.
  • redeeming a factions bounties in system, where the faction is present increases a factions influence.
  • handing in exploration data raises the station controlling factions influence.
  • factions at low influence gain more from the same actions/transactions than factions of high influence.
  • gains of a faction are distributed as losses relative to influence in system - and the other way round.

with that set of rules, you can work almost any situation.
with that set of rules, you can even predict factions movements quite accurately in low traffic systems.
of course it would be interesting to know, whether a megaship scenario influence effect is as high, as a +++++ mission.
How influence loss of smuggling is calculated.
Whether the boom-effect of trade is still a total multiplier.
Whether it is that interesting to you to spend a week or two testing it, is a different question. me for exampel only plays missions if i can't avoid them (whenever i can, i take supply missions, as i hate guided gameplay). Of course i would love to see a test on return curve for missions+ .... is +++ three times worth +, is 10+ 5 times ++, and what happens at 10, 15, 20, 30+? Is that return curve depending on population size? are all missions only effective by +, or - e.g. trade missions have an additional trade effect? is the + a value, or is it rounded (so some missions are worth 1,25+ - other 1,75+, but it is shown to us as + and 2+?) but i'm unlikely to test all that.
Best advice, tbh.
 
Top Bottom