Transactions: BGS Guide Best Current Thinking

[Jane Turner]

The BGS is no longer transactional - it is value based, however you still interact with the BGS via transaction as described below


Influence changes in factions are brought about by player activity. . Each tick the BGS calculates the net points for each faction and converts them into a new influence value. Best current thinking on full transaction definitions are listed below.

Activity	Transaction Definition	Required for Initial 10% of unopposed possible influence gain. NB strongly diminishing returns. Approximate square the number for the next 10% etc.
Bounty Hunting	A drop of one or more bounties at a station at which the faction is present is a transaction. Bounties dropped through interstellar factors do not count as a transaction.	765k​
Combat Bonds	A drop of one or more bonds at a station where the faction is present. The effect is where they were obtained rather than where they are dropped. Bonds dropped through interstellar factors do not count.	na​
Trade	A profit-making sale of any volume of goods in demands	400k​
Scenarios	tbd	strongly positive [not quantified]​
BM Trade	presumed to be a profitable sale of any volume to the owners of a station.	similar to positive trade but not measured​
Missions	Outwards and probably inwards per + accepted on completion	4​
Exploration	A sale of one or more systems to the owners of a station [Currently too variable to be sure]	2 million​
Murder	Each clean ship lost	[1] Subject to strongly diminishing returns and appears primarily to redirect influence distribution rather than directly take influence from the affected faction.​ ​
Fines	A fine occurred over a low threshold value	tbd​ ​

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Link to >> DEFENCE STRATEGIES <<


If you have evidence to suggest that this is incorrect - please shout and I will update the post or at least register the alternative point of view.

 

[Jmanis]

Doesn't Goemon's BGS trading stuff invalidate the trade definition you've got?

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/357715-BGS-Trading-for-Influence

That seems to scale the value a lot more than a simple linear per-transaction increment.

On an aside, my own experience with bounty hunting/combat bonds is that value matters as well, but not enough to outweigh the impact of individual transactions, but I have no collected evidence of that, just personal experiences.

 

[Jane Turner]

We certainly get a different (but rather larger effect to Goemon) so I think there is more to be uncovered. The top points of the graph is the equivalent to one transaction and about 1/10th of what is possible - so it may be less of a binary threshold and more of a sliding scale. (which incidentally has interesting implications if FD implement a hybrid trasaction/value approach)

 

[Marra Morgan]

Jane, it might be good to call out Black Market trade. the effects are the same as legal trade for anarchies, but negative (value unknown to me) for other govt types.

 

[MottiKhan]

We've tested the transactional nature of trading fairly thoroughly and recently. Geomon's test is nice, but it's from last year. The BGS seems to be tweaked at every update.

Perhaps a retest of the value based method is due.

On the other hand, the transaction based system works pretty well.

 

[Jane Turner]

Jane, it might be good to call out Black Market trade. the effects are the same as legal trade for anarchies, but negative (value unknown to me) for other govt types.

I left it out simply because I wasn't certain.... my assumption is that BM trading in anarchies is identical to normal market trading and that negative trading is the same as positive but worth -1. I've not got any test data though. If anyone has that would be fab!


Best guess added!

 

[Abil Midena]

Technically, is a mission a transaction? Each one is a transaction with the value stated in the reward screen. I'm not convinced the + rating in the reward screen is directly comparable to the numbers in your chart though. E.g. is a mission with +++ inf equal to a +3.

I'm not sure about state effects either. E.g. taking a 'kill x pirates' mission during election state doesn't get you anything for the kills, but doesn't the inf from the mission itself still count to inf? I highly doubt the BGS counter cares about the text of the mission, is what I mean.

 

[Deareim]

Technically, is a mission a transaction? Each one is a transaction with the value stated in the reward screen. I'm not convinced the + rating in the reward screen is directly comparable to the numbers in your chart though. E.g. is a mission with +++ inf equal to a +3.

I'm not sure about state effects either. E.g. taking a 'kill x pirates' mission during election state doesn't get you anything for the kills, but doesn't the inf from the mission itself still count to inf? I highly doubt the BGS counter cares about the text of the mission, is what I mean.

That is the one million dollar questions. Under current testing.

 

[Jane Turner]

Technically, is a mission a transaction? Each one is a transaction with the value stated in the reward screen. I'm not convinced the + rating in the reward screen is directly comparable to the numbers in your chart though. E.g. is a mission with +++ inf equal to a +3.

I'm not sure about state effects either. E.g. taking a 'kill x pirates' mission during election state doesn't get you anything for the kills, but doesn't the inf from the mission itself still count to inf? I highly doubt the BGS counter cares about the text of the mission, is what I mean.

[AFAWCT] its a transaction worth 1to5 points at origin, as it says on the tin* and -x to +y at destination assuming the states of the giving and receiving factions are suitable. Its fiddly to test destination effects hence the fudge on x/y and not putting it in the table yet. Missions either do what they say or nothing at all.


*For much of 2.4, the labelling of some missions did not appear to be correct. Bulk passenger missions were marked +++ but only gave the effect of +
** [AFAWCT] As far as we can tell!

 

[El-bizor]

is the low threshold value known?

 

[Jane Turner]

It's a hard thing to know for sure - because generally, you don't want to fail to complete a transaction. Also its subject to changes. Something like 1k for bounties and explo data, 10k for war bonds and 800Cr for trade - but take that with a pinch of salt! Goemon's figures above are a very stong hint for trade!

 

[El-bizor]

It's a hard thing to know for sure - because generally, you don't want to fail to complete a transaction. Also its subject to changes. Something like 1k for bounties and explo data, 10k for war bonds and 800Cr for trade - but take that with a pinch of salt!

1k for bounties? Blimey, that is low

 

[Jmanis]

Technically, is a mission a transaction? Each one is a transaction with the value stated in the reward screen. I'm not convinced the + rating in the reward screen is directly comparable to the numbers in your chart though. E.g. is a mission with +++ inf equal to a +3.

I'm not sure about state effects either. E.g. taking a 'kill x pirates' mission during election state doesn't get you anything for the kills, but doesn't the inf from the mission itself still count to inf? I highly doubt the BGS counter cares about the text of the mission, is what I mean.

"Back in the day", for some "standard" system environment (hypothetically, a system with 10,000 population) when mission influence values were low, medium and high.

Low = 1% increase
Medium = 2% increase
High = 4% increase

That "value" scaled with population, and was thought to have a logarithmic relationship... so if that was the relation of influence gain to missions for that 10,000 pop system, then it (may) have been 0.5%, 1% and 2% respectively for a 100,000 pop system, 0.25, 0.5 and 1 for a 1,000,000 pop system, etc., though that could never be reliably proven. Note this these values also didn't take into account diminishing returns

In my experience, I see significant differences between doing a couple ++/+++ missions, versus doing an equivalent amount of ++++/+++++ missions... so my gut tells me they probably follow the same (or a similar) relationship model, but the "peak" influence gains still seem to be similar (though you can, in some circumstances, really drive the knife into a faction if you want). Tangentially, I find it most effective to run +ve gain missions for one faction, and -ve inf gain missions for other factions, as it means you make adjustments to different buckets and avoid those diminishing returns. I knocked a faction down from 22% influence to 1% influence in one tick in a 100k pop system doing just this; had they had more influence, the results could've been more substantial.

 

[Abil Midena]

...and -ve inf gain missions for other factions...

I am probably misunderstanding, but I'm not aware of any missions that give the issuing faction -ve inf. Can you clarify?

 

[Jane Turner]

I am probably misunderstanding, but I'm not aware of any missions that give the issuing faction -ve inf. Can you clarify?

Perhaps I was unclear - what I meant to convey was that some missions give a negative effect at destination or location - and we've not thoroughly tested them

 

[Abil Midena]

Perhaps I was unclear - what I meant to convey was that some missions give a negative effect at destination or location - and we've not thoroughly tested them

Nah, you were clear. Jmanis seemed to say there were -ve inf missions, but he may have meant the same thing you did.

 

[rekurzion]

Nah, you were clear. Jmanis seemed to say there were -ve inf missions, but he may have meant the same thing you did.

there are, in a way, but you have to hunt and peck for them. and it eventually comes back to whether the text on the mission is accurately describing the influence effect taking place.


in the system i am currently working there is a main faction with presence in 7 systems and the main faction in 2 of them including its home system, which i am trying to flip. there are about 6 systems in the neighborhood so i go about each of these systems and find missions that negatively affect the faction i'm targeting: skimmer missions in the target factions homes system, bringing back refugees and rebel leaders, illegal black box missions which are located in SOI's controlled by the faction i'm targeting or are explicitly labeled for my target faction, smuggling missions.

sometimes i've found assassination missions for my target faction which is rare since they are not an anarchy but a corp.

so you are really finding missions which have this origin/destination relationships now with influence (i've come across some black box missions that affect influence changes to 3 factions at once and where one faction may get both negative and positive influence).

the question i have is whether the influence counters indicate the destination influence change as well. that is, if i do a +5 influence black box missions that states on the mission text upon completion there was a negative effect on another faction, was that negative effect equal to the positive effect gained by the mission giver?

i do not have an answer for this.

 

[rekurzion]

It's a hard thing to know for sure - because generally, you don't want to fail to complete a transaction. Also its subject to changes. Something like 1k for bounties and explo data, 10k for war bonds and 800Cr for trade - but take that with a pinch of salt!

sounds like a mission is more like a pending transaction.

 

[Jmanis]

Nah, you were clear. Jmanis seemed to say there were -ve inf missions, but he may have meant the same thing you did.

Yup, I meant what Jane said. Missions I've found with a -ve target faction effect so far are:
- Assasinations (legal and illegal)
- Massacre missions (legal and illegal)
- Skimmer/Goliath missions
- Space Salvage missions (legal and illegal)

Others which probably have a negative effect which I haven't tested are:
- Destroy Powerplant missions
- Smuggling missions
- Liberate cargo (Legal and illegal)

Note, my memory is shady on surface salvage missions. Interestingly, surface scan missions have no target faction effect (despite having a target faction)... this might be a bug.

I don't know about the target influence effect... I've thought the same about the rep too... unfortunately since rep rewards seem so variable despite whatever the mission says, it's hard to tell what effects are actually meant to be.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Others which probably have a negative effect which I haven't tested are:
- Smuggling missions

Note, my memory is shady on surface salvage missions.

Surface salvage missions don't have a target faction

Smuggling missions don't affect target faction influence, but do have a state effect which can be positive or negative depending on the type of good.