Taking down an Anarchy faction, and other BGS questions

[Aesthetech]

I dabbled a bit with BGS pre-3.3, but it was mostly experimental. I've been catching up on how 3.3 works, and have been involved in trying to prop up a minor faction that has a very large and in charge Anarchy in the way.

The information in this forum by the various researchers and the post updates by Jane have been incredibly helpful!

While finding ways to boost the faction I'm supporting are straightforward, I'm a little less certain as to how to best undermine this Anarchy faction. It seems info on them is scattered and conflicting at best.

So far, our strategy has been to take pirate massacre missions that target them in other systems (preferably targeting them in that system--though we only need 1 of those active at a time to spawn mission targets in that system, so we've been taking missions that target them in other systems as well), and assassination missions when available. Unfortunately, both of these are somewhat sparse at times. Regarding the massacre missions, I'm not sure how badly the mission hurts them. If it targets them in that system, when turning in the mission the mission screen shows it lowers their influence but increases their economy (assuming this is because they're the controlling faction... still, what?). Otherwise, having the mission spawns a metric crapton of their ships to kill, but as they're an anarchy faction, I'm not sure it hurts them. However, using this method and this method alone seems successful in chipping away at their influence, I'm just not sure if it's optimal.

In short, what are the best ways to harm an Anarchy faction? And more specific questions...

1) Does shooting 'clean' ships of their faction do anything to them (as all ships in Anarchy systems are lawless, and as such this does not constitute a crime)?
2) Does shooting wanted ships of their faction do anything to them?
3) Does turning in bounties at stations in the system not owned by them do anything to them (I understand it boosts the faction owning the station we're turning in to)?
4) Does regular trade and black market trade both boost the Anarchy faction? Does negative trading affect them? (My understanding is this was nerfed in general)
5) Is taking and dropping missions from the Anarchy faction advised?
6) Did we make our lives unnecessarily difficult by targeting an Anarchy faction? (Other than how much we did so by choosing to BGS to begin with, haha)

Perhaps it's better to just focus on boosting the faction we want to boost rather than targeting the anarchy faction at all, as time is a limited resource? So far, we've been working on building the influence of the desired faction, and as there's a soft cap on how much we can influence per player, switching to harming the anarchy faction when we reach the point of diminishing returns.

The rest of my questions are not specific to dealing with the Anarchy factions, but rather, the importance (and means) to pursue various states:

1) Are we better served trying to get a specific state first for the faction we want to boost before trying to boost them, and if so, which one(s) and how?
2) Are we better served trying to get a specific state first for the faction we want to hurt before trying to hurt them, and if so, which one(s) and how?
3) In regards to both factions, do their states and general success in their other held systems have any effect on them as a whole, or are we better off focusing on specifically the system we're trying to change?

Thanks for the time taken to answer these questions! I will be reading/searching more in the meantime and trying to find answers of my own.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

1) Does shooting 'clean' ships of their faction do anything to them (as all ships in Anarchy systems are lawless, and as such this does not constitute a crime)?
2) Does shooting wanted ships of their faction do anything to them?
3) Does turning in bounties at stations in the system not owned by them do anything to them (I understand it boosts the faction owning the station we're turning in to)?
4) Does regular trade and black market trade both boost the Anarchy faction? Does negative trading affect them? (My understanding is this was nerfed in general)
5) Is taking and dropping missions from the Anarchy faction advised?
6) Did we make our lives unnecessarily difficult by targeting an Anarchy faction? (Other than how much we did so by choosing to BGS to begin with, haha)

1) Probably not
2) If you can find a jurisdiction they're wanted in, you'll get a bounty which you can use, but not directly.
3) Turning in bounties boosts the influence of the faction the bounty is for, regardless of who owns the station (this is true whether or not the station owner is an anarchy). If your faction owns another system, bounty hunting there and then handing in the bounties in the Anarchy's system can be quite effective.
4) Yes, black markets help Anarchy factions. Negative trading probably will hurt but it'll be pretty marginal.
5) If you have nothing better to do. Just abandoning the mission won't have any effect - you have to actually fail it (e.g. passenger missions which fail on scan) or let it time out after a day. Generally you'll be better using those mission slots to actually run missions for your own faction.
6) No, I don't think so - Anarchies can't support themselves with bounty hunting, which is a big normal source of "casual" support for a controlling faction they can't use. That cancels out their advantage from '1' a bit.

Something to consider is the system population, and the player traffic level as reported in local news. If the population is high or local traffic contains a lot of ships your group can't account for, then you'll only move the system slowly no matter what you do.

Perhaps it's better to just focus on boosting the faction we want to boost rather than targeting the anarchy faction at all

Quite possibly. Take opportunities like massacre missions to target it if you see them, but positive actions for your own faction are likely to be much easier to do.

So far, we've been working on building the influence of the desired faction, and as there's a soft cap on how much we can influence per player, switching to harming the anarchy faction when we reach the point of diminishing returns.

The cap is per faction, not per player. It doesn't make any difference whether it's ten players doing ten things or one player doing 100 things. Realistically, if you're opposed at all - either by deliberate player activity, or just by things like trade and exploration data from passing players accruing to the Anarchy because it owns most of the stations - you don't need to worry too much about the cap and diminishing returns.

(Per-player caps and bounties helping the station owner rather than the bounty owner are both fairly persistent BGS myths - it might be worth throwing out your BGS guidebook and looking for another one)

1) Are we better served trying to get a specific state first for the faction we want to boost before trying to boost them, and if so, which one(s) and how?
2) Are we better served trying to get a specific state first for the faction we want to hurt before trying to hurt them, and if so, which one(s) and how?

Broadly, no. Doing positive actions for your faction will tend to move it towards Boom and Civil Liberty anyway, but it's not a big deal either way.

3) In regards to both factions, do their states and general success in their other held systems have any effect on them as a whole, or are we better off focusing on specifically the system we're trying to change?

There are some very subtle effects of other systems but you can safely ignore them and just focus on the system you want.

(Unless the Anarchy is player-backed, in which case diversionary work in its other systems might distract them)

 

[Hantif]

While I haven't tried it with an Anarchy faction, undermining any CF is easily done by running high influence missions for any other faction present. Any gain for the lower factions has to come off of the CF (or highest influence faction).

 

[Aesthetech]

1) Probably not
2) If you can find a jurisdiction they're wanted in, you'll get a bounty which you can use, but not directly.
3) Turning in bounties boosts the influence of the faction the bounty is for, regardless of who owns the station (this is true whether or not the station owner is an anarchy). If your faction owns another system, bounty hunting there and then handing in the bounties in the Anarchy's system can be quite effective.
4) Yes, black markets help Anarchy factions. Negative trading probably will hurt but it'll be pretty marginal.
5) If you have nothing better to do. Just abandoning the mission won't have any effect - you have to actually fail it (e.g. passenger missions which fail on scan) or let it time out after a day. Generally you'll be better using those mission slots to actually run missions for your own faction.
6) No, I don't think so - Anarchies can't support themselves with bounty hunting, which is a big normal source of "casual" support for a controlling faction they can't use. That cancels out their advantage from '1' a bit.

Something to consider is the system population, and the player traffic level as reported in local news. If the population is high or local traffic contains a lot of ships your group can't account for, then you'll only move the system slowly no matter what you do.


Quite possibly. Take opportunities like massacre missions to target it if you see them, but positive actions for your own faction are likely to be much easier to do.


The cap is per faction, not per player. It doesn't make any difference whether it's ten players doing ten things or one player doing 100 things. Realistically, if you're opposed at all - either by deliberate player activity, or just by things like trade and exploration data from passing players accruing to the Anarchy because it owns most of the stations - you don't need to worry too much about the cap and diminishing returns.

(Per-player caps and bounties helping the station owner rather than the bounty owner are both fairly persistent BGS myths - it might be worth throwing out your BGS guidebook and looking for another one)


Broadly, no. Doing positive actions for your faction will tend to move it towards Boom and Civil Liberty anyway, but it's not a big deal either way.


There are some very subtle effects of other systems but you can safely ignore them and just focus on the system you want.

(Unless the Anarchy is player-backed, in which case diversionary work in its other systems might distract them)

This is awesome info, thank you much. I had been wondering about the personal cap vs faction cap thing; information is so over the place and inconsistent it's been difficult to tie together some of the finer points coherently, but getting there. Good to know that bounties help the bounty owner as well; I thought I'd observed that behavior but I did not have enough actually recorded data to be able to confirm.

So tl;dr, current meta is positive actions, focus on those and chip in negative as is readily available, and this applies even more so for Anarchy-controlled systems.

One last question in regards to raising influence -- what affect, if any, does selling mined resources have? This seems less clear as opposed to trading, as trading apparently relies exclusively on trade profit, up to a certain amount.

 

[Hantif]

Mined materials count the same as selling, but it is 100% profit.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Anarchy Factions carry an almost unique Achilles heel : they typically represent the prime Mission Target for Assassination Missions (i.e. Kill Pirate Lord etc) from adjacent Systems.

Executing these Missions from nearby Systems into the Target System and with the Target Faction being the Mission Target has a direct and profound raw -Inf effect against that Target Faction.
Combined with supporting other Faction(s) to additionally weaken their Influence via BGS Inf Normalization mechanics, this provides a quite effective way to directly undermine Influence and counter any +Inf effect by the defending Target Faction.

So in essence, this is what you'd have to do :

• scout all adjacent Systems within approx. ~15 LY and check if their Factions offer Assassination Missions into the Target System
• one with plenty of Factions and multiple places to dock is good, two Systems would be perfect

Exclusive emphasis should be on swift Mission execution, so Massacre Missions (i.e. Kill x Pirates) should likely be avoided due to typical high kill counts required and limited Mission Target spawn rates.
The Mission Timers of Assassination Missions are quite lax, so keeping a permanent larger Stack should be possible in most cases, allowing non-stop Operations (amount of Missions offered depends quite a bit on issuing Faction ethos and Faction state though + some RNG; in the past Planetary Bases used to have a larger amount of Combat Missions on offer).
Additionally, any Assassination Missions with the Planetary Landing shown to them will usually require to scan a Planetary Data Point, which drastically slows Mission execution.

Bonus effect : take and do a KWS on Targets, this typically generates Bounty Vouchers from other Factions within the Target System.
Handing these in within that Target System can be used to additionally boost those Factions and reduce Inf of the Target Anarchy Faction.

Caveat :

• next to the direct -Inf effect on the Target Faction, Reputation loss will also occur with them
• this means that it's easily possible to become Hostile to the Target Faction
• as soon as a Conflict over System Control begins, AFAIK this can effectively block from being able to dock to hand in Combat Bonds if they control all or the only asset
• in that case, it's beneficial to have the Target Faction present as a non-controlling entity in another System, where minimal Missions can be done to recoup Rep back to Unfriendly
• alternatively, following War Operations can be conducted from any secondary Asset within the Target System not controlled by the Target Faction, if one exists