The Elite Dangerous ingame reputation system thread

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I was always under the assumption that PhD candidates don' t have enough time in the day to bother with nonsense like playing video games; unless of course your doctorate will be based on observing video game related activities or basket weaving.

You are mostly right. This game is a bad addiction, and is probably hurting my publication record :p
 
I was always under the assumption that PhD candidates don' t have enough time in the day to bother with nonsense like playing video games; unless of course your doctorate will be based on observing video game related activities or basket weaving.

My job involves supporting primarily scientific PhD candidates, mostly in a technical capacity. They have waaaaay more spare time. PhDing is about thinking, not doing up to a point. Until they have to write up, of course. :) And then... I play ED on long lunch hours and laugh at them toiling over their 1st chapter. Hee hee.
 
But, ... it is.... I mean, it is quite literally codified. Probably in C?

And the Devs have an excellent Black Box strategy (they will never tell). Game should be unknowable, use your judgement and live with the consequences. I have no problem with people discussing it, but when the Op wanted a "what effect would my actions have" tool, he blew it.
 
Hi! Good luck with the PhD. I have a colleague who has a PhD in Computer Science, and it's a rare thing indeed. Got any plans with your career path from there?

In answer to your question, the back-end should be a black box to us which layers of complexity to take care of a multi-user audience influencing it a little every time they act. It should however be able to provide us with information relevant to us when we use it, perhaps a little more than it does right now. This is especially true for certain missions, where you only find out who you annoyed when you deliver, by which point you're Unfriendly, and being called outsider by every space station allied to the annoyed faction.

Don't look into the black box, for that way madness lies!

Thanks for the kind words. As for career aspirations, I've got a few balls in the air: prospective research positions (still going through interview process), I have post doc funding to fall back on, and I have a startup in the works. It's very likely that Feb/March will be the highlight of my ED career :)
 
That is a very good question, OP. Given the scarcity of documentation from FD on the subject, you could might as well ask if there is an afterlife beyond death (and not the one in Elite)... Who knows? Everything I've read about the rep system has been anecdotical attempts of reverse engineering.
 
Hmm, you truly must be busy with your dissertation, otherwise you would know that the back ground simulator is broken, at max, or not working as intended, at the least.

Many experiments have led to some improvements here and there, but yes, there is a lack of clarity or the simulation not acting logically, let alone the delays that has a lot to do with FD also inputting effects manually on every day's servers maintenance.

The Community Goals, specially Yembo, were also testing for probable expansions in the future. But all should be atomated, not having a poor FDEV at FD managing Galactic wide changes manually.

This is what many people, including myself, are expecting that 1.3 Powerplay will be dealing with and expect that it will be solving most, if not all of the current issues with the BG SIM.

Until then, and as TriumphANT said, just don't look into the black box....have some Lucan Onionhead, blast some Beatles music in the player, and mind your trade....
 
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But, ... it is.... I mean, it is quite literally codified. Probably in C?

If I recall correctly from my chats with the Devs, it is indeed programmed in C++ (I believe?)
Memory's a bit hazy these days though...

Though I know they do a lot of their App games and such in C#...

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if it was all done in Unity due to the Peer to Peer networking nature of the game.! ^_^
 
And the Devs have an excellent Black Box strategy (they will never tell). Game should be unknowable, use your judgement and live with the consequences. I have no problem with people discussing it, but when the Op wanted a "what effect would my actions have" tool, he blew it.

I think you'll find though that a game can't be unknowable. Every system can be studied and reverse engineered, and the is no different. Unless it is entirely random, people will figure it out. And that's good, as the part where you figure out how things work is often just as interesting.
But this isn't the 90s anymore, we can freely share information and as such it will soon be entirely possible to min/max every aspect of the game with a simple google search. You can't rely on the game being intentionally complicated (please note I didn't say complex) to add longevity to the gameplay. This used to work back then because people had no choice but to figure out stuff on their own, but now games have to rely on actually good and engrossing game mechanics, not just on slowing down the player's progression with an artificially steep learning curve.
 
Ok, let's get this discussion back on track. The Tanmark community goal is a great example of what I mean. See here for example:

Dont kill Tanmark Defence or Jet and you should be
fine. Target the Posse at all times.


Actually, that is half wrong. You can freely kill Tanmark Defence when they are wanted in their own space, because that means their own faction issued the bounty, which is the one case where you don't lose reputation. I don't know how exactly the other posters lost their reputation with them, but they have never moved down when shooting their wanted ships, while the other two or three factions do lose reputation when I attack.


I think that is how it should be, and what was fixed in 1.04 or 1.05, but now it's broken again. I lost reputation with pretty much every faction after killing a bunch of wanted targets in Dakvar - Empire, Dakvar Ring and so on, and I only killed wanted targets.
 
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Chaos and uncertainty are built into the fabric of reality.
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Its only right that Elite Dangerous should follow in suit with some non-determinism of its own!

Am I the only one who gets frustrated when I spend a few hours in a conflict zone or bounty hunting community goal only to find that I've taken a massive beating in rep from the faction I thought I was helping?

If so... I'll shut up, and ask a mod to close the thread.
 
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:DGood luck with the PhD, and remember the phrase "do you want fries with that" as it may prove useful:D

Don't dish McDonalds, they have excellent and well paid graduate schemes.

He could be working at their UK Head Office as their top IT guy on £120,000 in 5 years.
 
Am I the only one who get's frustrated when I spend a few hours in a conflict zone or bounty hunting community goal only to find you that I've taken a massive beating in rep from the faction I thought I was helping?

If so... I'll shut up, and ask a mod to close the thread.

I have my own beef to grind. I bounty hunted a t6 who dropped bucket loads of gold. I scooped it up, went to sell it at my local station, then discover what stolen goods were after being scanned by the police.
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The Federation hate me and I have never managed to recover my reputation!
 
:DGood luck with the PhD, and remember the phrase "do you want fries with that" as it may prove useful:D

All kidding aside.... I think Master's degrees represent peak employability. A master's puts you in the front of the stack of CVs. PhD's... well there are fewer jobs, and competition is massive. And all those Master's jobs... well they wonder how long you would stick around since the job is clearly not your first choice.

You don't do a PhD to get a better job. You do it because you like research IMO.
 
Am I the only one who get's frustrated when I spend a few hours in a conflict zone or bounty hunting community goal only to find you that I've taken a massive beating in rep from the faction I thought I was helping?

If so... I'll shut up, and ask a mod to close the thread.
Nope, you're not the only one. Reputation via combat is unpredictable, currently, and has been for quite some time.
In particular, not even assassination missions are predictable. I've done quite a few, for testing, and every time I turn them in, the reputation adjustment makes no sense whatsoever. Why would my rep decrease with the faction I complete the mission for? Ridiculous.

So, now, I only do non-assassination missions for reputation, I only sell my exploration data to the founder's world, and if I want to fight, I go to a nav beacon in an Anarchy system. That way, at least I know my reputation isn't going to decrease.

And yes, it should all be publicly documented, both on the website and in-game, despite what the onionheads might claim. :rolleyes:
 
Ok, first let me explain: Around here, you need a good title for a thread to get noticed, hence the whole PhD thing -- but fwiw it's true, I am defending my PhD dissertation in computer science in a few months (that's more about hard work than about intelligence though).

So why did I start this thread? Well, I find the rep system too black-boxy. Every time I think I understand it, a new exception, corner case, or bug crops ups. I'd like someone to set me straight as far as the rep system goes.

So here is what I currently understand:

- Kill a wanted target, and the aligned factions get upset
- That is, of course, unless they are the ones who placed the bounty

Great. That makes sense. Cool.

Now my questions:

- Where do the major factions fit in?
- How can I tell if killing a target wanted by a minor faction will impact my rep with a major faction?
- What happens in conflict zones when two minor factions are in civil war, but are both aligned to the same major faction?


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There is a decent guide out there, check it out. But let me sum up some basic points. Your major faction reputation is a function of individual minor faction reputations. Kill a minor faction wanted that results in minor faction rep drop, your overall major faction reputation will drop and vice versa.

As was posted by the developers, warzones are universes on their own, so there is no faction gain loss for killing unless you took a kill mission. I am not sure if cashing the war bonds induces a hit with the opposing faction or just a rep gain with the faction you fought for. I presume the latter - you are just a merc.

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You don't do a PhD to get a better job. You do it because you like research IMO.

Nope, not necessarily. I'm a Ph.D. and I got it to get a better job and pay. Having to do something interesting along the line is a perk.
 
All kidding aside.... I think Master's degrees represent peak employability. A master's puts you in the front of the stack of CVs. PhD's... well there are fewer jobs, and competition is massive. And all those Master's jobs... well they wonder how long you would stick around since the job is clearly not your first choice.

You don't do a PhD to get a better job. You do it because you like research IMO.

A 2.2 honours degree will get you a job doing what you want at most businesses.
A 2.1 is required by 60% of FTSE 100 companies for most degree subjects (unless its a hard subject like physics, engineering, social studies, accounting, law, business, etc, then for most its 2.2).
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The masters only comes in use if you got a 2.2 and want to work at one of those 60% of FTSE 100 companies. A doctorate has little value employment wise, its more about satisfying personal interest. That's unless he is going to work at GCHQ or similar!
 
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