War and Civil War: BGS Guide - Best Current Thinking

[Sarasoatablack]

There is a conflict related situation I would like to touch on. Sometimes a CZ will bug out. Enemy ships will stop spawning but the battle is not over. Waiting dose not fix it. Solution.... Have a wing mate drop wing, leave CZ, drop back in CZ, join enemy, Deploy fighters, pew pew.... Problem solved.

Not so sure about the ethics but desperate times..

 

[Jmanis]

Just wanted to flag this somewhere, as I'm not sure where else to throw it... it's not really worth a whole thread though.

Fighting some High-Intensity CZs recently when a friendly capship spawns in... "Ah cool, I've won this I guess", since NPC's are potatoes and don't hit the heat relays. Or at least, that was the case as recently as a couple months ago.

Within 5 minutes, I hear a "Massive framshift charge detected", and the capship is bugging out with all it's heat relays exploded, and for their efforts the enemy gains about 20% on it's conflict progress bar!!!

I jump in another high-CZ, capship spawns in, and I see a handful of enemy ships take up positions and start wailing on the heat relays. If other NPCs or I engage, they disengage and start fighting.

Either way, NPCs aren't potatoes around capships anymore, and the whole thing makes for even more fun in the CZs.

For comparison,
Before Capship Rout

After Capship Rout

 

[FrogsFriend]

Yeah, those Cap Ships get done over real quick these days. Yesterday, after my friendly NPCs routed the enemy Cap Ship I noticed it only took 14 kills in total to win the CZ.

 

[Screemonster]

Yeah, those Cap Ships get done over real quick these days. Yesterday, after my friendly NPCs routed the enemy Cap Ship I noticed it only took 14 kills in total to win the CZ.

Between capital ships and spec ops / wartime correspondents not counting as kills towards massacre missions (you don't even get to be all "that only counts as one!" Gimli-style for routing a capship), if I'm looking to score nothing but massacre kills I just go into low-intensity zones. At least then everything I blow up counts.

 

[Kissamies]

I've seen the capship heat relays being damaged by some other party than me when the spec ops are in the play, so I'm guessing it's them doing that. Could be that every NPC ship is capable of doing that, but the spec ops definitely are.

 

[Jmanis]

I've seen the capship heat relays being damaged by some other party than me when the spec ops are in the play, so I'm guessing it's them doing that. Could be that every NPC ship is capable of doing that, but the spec ops definitely are.

Yeah... def any ship. Had the capship routed with no spec ops on the scene.

 

[Kissamies]

Yeah... def any ship. Had the capship routed with no spec ops on the scene.

Ah, thanks for clarification. I support an independent faction so the big ships are generally on the side that I'm fighting and I tend to jump on them ASAP, not giving the NPCs much time to work on them.

 

[Jmanis]

So... I've got a running theory... keen to see if there's any thoughts on this. For the purposes of this post, I've got the following definitions:
Passive Draw - A draw resulting from no activity occurring for both sides of a conflict
Active Draw - A draw resulting from equal activity for both sides of a conflict occurring

I always assumed a conflict tick resulting in no change to either progress bar (i.e a draw for that tick) is when the contributions of two sides exactly match. That is, for a single tick:

• If both sides did a single low CZ, it'd be an active draw.
• If both sides did a single low CZ, and one handed in just 1cr in combat bonds, that'd be a win for that side.

... but the amount of times I see an "active draw" and the, frankly, unlikely chance of getting a complete match of activities on both sides without perfect intelligence makes me wonder if the "active draw" condition is a range, based on the total contributions.

We know that an untouched conflict results in a draw, and a single courier mission will tip that as a win for the relevant side. As I said earlier, my assumption was, if the contributions are X and Y for each faction

• X < Y, Y gains a point
• X = Y, draw
• X > Y, X gains a point

What if that's not right? What if the difference between X and Y needs to be, say, 10%(1) of the total contributions? So, if Z = X + Y, then the above becomes

• X < (0.45*Z) , Y gains a point
• X > (0.55*Z) , X gains a point
• Any other score, that is, 0.45*Z < X or Y < 0.55*Z, day is a draw

That would explain the, what I would consider, uncanny amount of "Active Draws" I observe.

Any thoughts?

(1) Not an actual guess at the figure, just using for the sake of argument.

 

[FrogsFriend]

Having a range of, rather than exact, values determine win/lose/draw would make sense, assuming the activity based scoring is sufficiently fine grained to make exact matching, and therefor any chance of an active-draw, unlikely.

Alternatively, and I haven't thought this through, would simple scoring i.e. something like 1,2 or 3 points for various activities, also give a sufficiently good chance of an active draw?

 

[Factabulous]

Alternatively, and I haven't thought this through, would simple scoring i.e. something like 1,2 or 3 points for various activities, also give a sufficiently good chance of an active draw?

We already see Scenarios declaring 'small increase in ...' on completion, so presumably that means there may be other things with 'large' at least. Can't say I've noticed that displayed in the UI, but not been paying that much attention.

What if the difference between X and Y needs to be, say, 10%(1) of the total contributions?

Makes sense. Finding out how that works is going to keep someone busy for a few months

 

[Jmanis]

Alternatively, and I haven't thought this through, would simple scoring i.e. something like 1,2 or 3 points for various activities, also give a sufficiently good chance of an active draw?

Yeah, that did cross my mind, but it would have to be very simple scoring, imo.

Things I'm aware of which help win a CZ are, with "notional" awards assigned:

• Missions (1 point)
• Bonds (1 point)
• Scenarios (2 points)
• Resolving CZs (Low: 2, Med: 4, High: 8).

If I had a draw because after resolved 4 medium CZs and handed in 4 batches of bonds (= 20 points), then there's a high degree of ability to match that

But then there's times when I've done, say, a high CZ, two low CZs and some missions... that'd give, what, 19-23 points? An opposition with no intelligence of my activities is going to have to be pretty bang-on with the combination of activities they do to get an exact match on that.

Part of this theory is that there doesn't seem to have been any meaningful progress on working out the exact values of what different activities are worth. This would spanner that somewhat.

Something that would make it more likely is if something was broken behind the scenes, and everything was worth 1 point.

We already see Scenarios declaring 'small increase in ...' on completion, so presumably that means there may be other things with 'large' at least. Can't say I've noticed that displayed in the UI, but not been paying that much attention.

The ratings are Small Moderate and Significant (low, medium and high)

My point assignment is based on standard FD logic in the old mission system, where mission influence gains of low/med/high equated to 1, 2 and 4 "points"

 

[Jmanis]

POTATO

 

[Walter2]

Things I'm aware of which help win a CZ are, with "notional" awards assigned:

• Missions (1 point)
• Bonds (1 point)
• Scenarios (2 points)
• Resolving CZs (Low: 2, Med: 4, High: 8).

That's my working assumption. There's also the factor that pushes one side or the other to win a drawn contest; is it a contingency arrangement or always included in the calculations?

 

[Riverside]

Things I'm aware of which help win a CZ are, with "notional" awards assigned:

• Missions (1 point)
• Bonds (1 point)
• Scenarios (2 points)
• Resolving CZs (Low: 2, Med: 4, High: 8).

This is interesting, I was discussing this the other day with a colleague.

I have no test data to back my assumptions up but I go on the assumption that:

• Missions (1 point)
• Bonds (1 point)
• Scenarios & CZ objectives (1 point each)
• Resolving CZs (Low: 3, Med: 4, High: 5).

I win a lot of wars by doing lots of low CZs to complete a massacre mission (or two or three) per day and cashing in bonds on every return to port to service the ship.
I have never seen an 'active draw', although I have seen one attempted & failed.

 

[Retropolitan]

In the interests of more complete data and enhanced confusion, you might add bounties back in. It's still possible to win an unopposed war just by turning in a bounty voucher every day.

 

[Walter2]

In the interests of more complete data and enhanced confusion, you might add bounties back in. It's still possible to win an unopposed war just by turning in a bounty voucher every day.

If you're unopposed, just one will do the job, but one on four consecutive days gets it done quicker.

 

[Retropolitan]

If you're unopposed, just one will do the job, but one on four consecutive days gets it done quicker.

Well, sure, but it's war. You don't want those things to drag on, do you?

 

[Jmanis]

So, something I just noticed... it might not be worth running High-Intensity CZs at all... it seems they now award only "Moderate Influence"... whatever that means... but regardless, that's the same outcome as clearing a Medium CZ.

That is, "Influence" rewards for clearing a CZ (which is presumably what dictates how much effect on the war state it has) is currently:
Low Intensity: "Small Influence"
Med Intensity: "Moderate Influence"
High Intensity: "Moderate Influence"

... instead of "Significant Influence" like it used to be.

 

[Jmanis]

I don't know how you came to this conclusion, but are you sure that's a general (new?) truth now and no other factors are involved?

Just screenshots of the updates when you clear the relevant CZ.

Medium CZ (Booched this screenie because the CZ 7km away is half under my ship on the right:

And High (displayed lower left)

And for reference, low intensity showing Small Increase

FWIW, I observed it during The Scourge II during the CZ CG, confirmed it in my own wars.

 

[Jmanis]

Ah I see, thanks. Maybe a noob question, but is it known if and how the CZ gained influence helps in progressing the war? I never did care about it since INF is locked during a war, so I thought it wouldn't matter. Another possibility could be that it adds to the INF value once the war has been concluded and INF being unlocked again. Just curious...

All we really know is on 3.3's deployment, it was a straight translation of Influence -> "score" in the war. This... short version... had issues, so now it "uses it's own measures"... what that is is not really known.

EDIT: Here we go... https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/background-simulation-update-01-03.479111/post-7447856

Previously, the day's score was determined by diverting faction influence inputs (subject to the usual rules of combat actions affecting War and Civil War and non-combat actions affecting Elections). However, we've now changed faction Conflict scores to be driven by their own set of equations.

FWIW, base on other things, I believe the calculations are still based on influence events, but don't follow "the usual" influence rules.