What happens when abandoned PMFs are removed?

LeptonFields

LeptonFields
How do the assets and influence get handled when FDEV determines a player-minor-faction has been abandoned (now squad logins in some period)?

Has anyone seen a PMF removed from the game? Does the PMF get replaced with an NPC faction of the same ethos? Or does the assets drop to the next highest faction and influence spread out to the remaining factions?
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Minor factions, either NPC or PMF, are never removed. Ever. Even ones that are "deleted" by FD, such as Emperor's Dawn, remain in the game. I'm not even sure it's technically possible to delete a minor faction.

"Abandoned" PMFs are indeed just like procedurally-generated NPC factions, just with a bit of flavour text in a system. Otherwise, there is no difference, as far as FD or the BGS is concerned. Anyone is free to come along and decide to support that faction.

Factions are different to Squadrons. Squadrons may be affiliated with a faction, but there is no direct connection in-game, or any acknowledment at the BGS level that a certain factions, whether PMF-originalted or proc-gen-originated, are being supported by a squadron.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
LeptonFields said:
Has anyone seen a PMF removed from the game?
Click to expand...
Once. An administrative error led to them being placed, not in wherever they were supposed to go, but in another PMF's home system about 20 LY from Colonia. They disappeared again on the next tick.

I imagine them getting out, looking around, there's a shout of "I told you we should have turned left at Sirius", and they get back in the carrier.


Frontier also reserve the right to remove PMFs if they discover you lied on the application form (e.g. about this being the only PMF your group had, or indeed, about actually having a player group at all). I'm not aware of any actual cases but then Frontier wouldn't make a big thing of it.
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
Here's a parallel question about player minor factions.

If a pmf is exclusively xbox, does a parallel faction in the pc universe get created even though no pc players "own it".

If a pmf is dead (no players are actively supporting it), and no squad exists for it, can you pirate the faction - create a squad with the name of the faction and essentially operate the pmf without official handover?
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Commander Danicus said:
If a pmf is exclusively xbox, does a parallel faction in the pc universe get created even though no pc players "own it".
Click to expand...

You may not have heard - it's a shared galaxy between all platforms.

Commander Danicus said:
If a pmf is dead (no players are actively supporting it), and no squad exists for it, can you pirate the faction - create a squad with the name of the faction and essentially operate the pmf without official handover?
Click to expand...
You can work for who you want, when you want. It's nice to coordinate if they are actually around.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Since we were talking about abandoned PMFs never being removed - I was just scouting Arque (Palin's alleged new home) and noticed the system description going on about Wings of the Void - who appear to not exist in the game at all (according to eddb). They certainly aren't in the system at all.

137966


Edit: I guess they may not have been a PMF 🤔
 

FrogsFriend

FrogsFriend
Factabulous said:
Since we were talking about abandoned PMFs never being removed - I was just scouting Arque (Palin's alleged new home) and noticed the system description going on about Wings of the Void - who appear to not exist in the game at all (according to eddb). They certainly aren't in the system at all.

View attachment 137966

Edit: I guess they may not have been a PMF 🤔
Click to expand...
Curious, I've seen a number of factions in EDDB that were added to the database by direct player input in error (miss spelt, etc.) and they don't get removed again, they just don't have a system associated with them. I wonder if it's a player group that got their description but didn't actually get inserted? Back when adding PMFs took months or years, quite a few people stopped playing before their faction made it in so they may not have noticed.
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
Factabulous said:
You may not have heard - it's a shared galaxy between all platforms.
You can work for who you want, when you want. It's nice to coordinate if they are actually around.
Click to expand...
I had not heard that the BGS was shared between platforms, that is good to know. I've sent out a FR to a Commander on Inara that has the same name on PC, but no reply yet.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Factabulous said:
Since we were talking about abandoned PMFs never being removed - I was just scouting Arque (Palin's alleged new home) and noticed the system description going on about Wings of the Void - who appear to not exist in the game at all (according to eddb). They certainly aren't in the system at all.

View attachment 137966

Edit: I guess they may not have been a PMF 🤔
Click to expand...
I can possibly explain this one.

There seems to have been a round of PMF insertions a while back where FD updated system descriptions before checking if the PMF placement was valid.

On one occasion... we expanded to and took over a system just before an update... after the update the system description had changed but no PMF was present. I later found a (belated) post from FD which included a list of PMF request statuses. On that list was the faction bearing the descriptions name and the status of rejected due to a PMF (my PMF) already being in that system.

There is a PMF in Arque, so maybe that's what happened.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Factabulous said:
You can work for who you want, when you want. It's nice to coordinate if they are actually around.
Click to expand...
The implicit corollary to that is that any PMF can have allegience pledged by any number of Squadrons... this is just one little factoid demonstrating why pledging allegience ultimately means nothing in the context of ownership or representation of that group faction.
Commander Danicus said:
I had not heard that the BGS was shared between platforms, that is good to know. I've sent out a FR to a Commander on Inara that has the same name on PC, but no reply yet.
Click to expand...
A follow-on from that is why people who suggest OO-BGS (or that you can only affect the BGS when in Open) under the claim that players should be able to stop other players affecting them are off the mark.

BGS is that living, breathing universe that moves when players touch it, regardless of mode, platform, or location. Even though XBOX/PSN/PC players can never interact cross-platform, they share the same BGS and the effects that occur. The fact player groups compete over it is a secondary effect.

Think of it like the gambling industry running bets on who is going to win an Election. An Election is a process which a government can use to elect it's new leader... but people gamble on it. That's fine, but it would be ridiculous for the gambling industry to lobby a government to change it's Electoral process to better facilitate gambling. It simply wouldn't make sense.

Sorry, bit of a tangent.

EDIT: Struck group and replaced with faction, because for clarity:
Group: A collection of players identified by FD as "a group", represented to FD by their leader whose email is on a distro
Faction: An NPC collective body of citizens ascribing to a particular government type.
Squadron: A collection of players (Pilot's Federation Commanders) who have banded together for some collective purpose.
 
Last edited:

Marcus Machiavelli

Marcus Machiavelli
Jmanis said:
The implicit corollary to that is that any PMF can have allegience pledged by any number of Squadrons... this is just one little factoid demonstrating why pledging allegience ultimately means nothing in the context of ownership or representation of that group faction.
Click to expand...
Hey Jmanis, we kind of roll with this. The leaders and owners of “our” faction are all in the system discription in the galaxy map and we are just privateers who work for them. It works for us.
With just a name of a faction being inserted into a system we go from murder hobos to caring about a faction.
I think it is actually very clever because it is very simple game design and totally changes how we play.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Marcus Machiavelli said:
Hey Jmanis, we kind of roll with this. The leaders and owners of “our” faction are all in the system discription in the galaxy map and we are just privateers who work for them. It works for us.
With just a name of a faction being inserted into a system we go from murder hobos to caring about a faction.
I think it is actually very clever because it is very simple game design and totally changes how we play.
Click to expand...
I just thought it was implicit in the application process. To get a PMF in the game, you needed to be in group of commanders, and the form asks for your group name, and your requested PMF name separately. This post by FD explicitly shows that distinction, and how many player groups (probably) don't understand there is a distinction between them. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...sion-form-and-information.241826/post-6086259

With my RP hat on, our group's title identifies us as "Loyalists"; Commanders who'd see our home system and it's neighbours run "the proper way" at all times. While I'd happily chuck lots of negative labels on our group, we're essentially (again, in RP terms) a "patriot group" who try and effect influence on the way government operates and who it targets. Unlike most real-world patriot groups though, we actually have impact, and basically sit in as shadow-puppeteers to the government we support.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom