What on earth is wrong with influence, and why does nobody care to ask?

[Ouiche]

That's like New Zealand and Singapore combined.

Take a look at this thread, where influence changes were effected without needing a mass player effort. The choice there was a system with a population of 1200.

Give 1000 tons of weapons, body armor and combat drugs to an hostile faction in a 10 million pop country and you'll definitly see radical modifications. Even if they don't use them it's going to vastly influance the politics, the population opinions and so on.

One player can do that in a day.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

Interesting thread. The faction I supported in one of my home systems did increase their influence by over 10 percent (actually more - can't check, I'm at work), 2 independent factions in the system were reduced to 0% and were at a state of civil war the last time I checked.

moreover "my" faction has started expansion into a neighbouring system, but is stuck at 9%.

I've stopped running missions for the time being as income scaled too badly plus in order to try increasing the expansion, I'd need to be able to land on outposts, which I can't do in the Clipper.

I'm not saying that I played a significant role in all that - otoh I've only seen 2 other CMDRs there in all my time playing and I doubt many have set up camp there (I only moved there for Rp reasons - will need to check the population size when I'm back)...

 

[Roybe]

At the player level, I've read that standings with individual factions affect prices you'll see in the market and in outfitting. Friendlier status = better prices. Can anyone confirm or deny?

If you are allied with a faction (step above friendly, station appears green, allied NPC's are green also)

1. You get better outfitting choices.
2. I am uncertain of outfitting pricing.
3. It appears you have a reduced chance of being scanned bringing in illegal goods, but you can still be scanned.
4. The Commodities market does not appear to have a difference, however, I will test this as soon as I can with someone unaligned.
5. Shooting a hostile NPC within the No Fire Zone still warrants a fine with your allied faction.
6. You can be interdicted AND attacked by an Allied NPC..this might be a bug, because i was interdicted once by an allied NPC and was not scanned or fired upon, at an earlier time.

 

[Werppa]

If you are allied with a faction (step above friendly, station appears green, allied NPC's are green also)

1. You get better outfitting choices.
2. I am uncertain of outfitting pricing.
3. It appears you have a reduced chance of being scanned bringing in illegal goods, but you can still be scanned.
4. The Commodities market does not appear to have a difference, however, I will test this as soon as I can with someone unaligned.
5. Shooting a hostile NPC within the No Fire Zone still warrants a fine with your allied faction.
6. You can be interdicted AND attacked by an Allied NPC..this might be a bug, because i was interdicted once by an allied NPC and was not scanned or fired upon, at an earlier time.

Can you provide a link for that or did you just do some testing? I tried to up my rep with feds I kinda figured it's pointless since there are no meaningful consequences/rewards for doing that. But if what you're saying is true there'd be atleast some influence if your rep was high enough.

About influence, I did some missions for feds in BD-22 3573 and federation's influence was 54% in that system and 56% after I was finished. There are other independent factions in that system too and the station where I was haning around had missions for 2-3 factions, I just chose the feds' ones. I've noticed that the game doesn't always tell you which faction you're working for so I accidentally did a couple for the silver allied group or w/e, it wasn't affiliated with federation.

 

[Roybe]

Can you provide a link for that or did you just do some testing? I tried to up my rep with feds I kinda figured it's pointless since there are no meaningful consequences/rewards for doing that. But if what you're saying is true there'd be atleast some influence if your rep was high enough

These are the results we have seen in Lugh. Major faction rep is different than local faction rep. Personal rep is different than influence. If you go into a large population, industrial station, and look at the outfitting, and begin running missions and trading hihg demand items in and high supply items out (missions will work faster), for the factional owner of a station, you will become friendly, then allied. Check your outfitting, you will have many more choices. The first 3 we are near as certain as we can be. 4 is unknown as we never thought to check...but can be checked quickly enough. 5 i have done verified fact, 6 is verified as I also have had this occur..just yesterday.

 

[palang81984]

There are definitely some bugs regarding faction influence. It has been well documented in one or two threads, mostly the "Barons of Mikkun" effort, involving almost 60 players; they had literally no effect on the actual influence scale after a week.

I've sort of put down the joystick for a while to allow some time for these things to get sorted out by FD. I've gotten pretty comfortable money-wise/ship-wise, and am basically at the stage where I want to start having an impact. I'll still pop in and blow some things up in my viper from time to time, but my usual 4-5 hours/day (or almost an entire Saturday) will kick back into action a patch or two from now I figure.


EDIT: It just occurred to me, I haven't done exploring yet! I think I'll outfit a nice explorer vehicle, pick a nebula in the distance, and embark upon an epic journey. When I get back.... hopefully these things have been sorted out, and I can return to civilization.

 

[ollobrains]

Yeah once u hit expansion into another sys and then 9% youre stuffed.

 

[Blast Hardcheese]

I, for one, enjoy how this game doesn't build you up to be some sort of beacon of light savior of the galaxy. You're just one guy, you needs loads of people to make a difference, no matter how much your own status inflates your ego.

 

[ollobrains]

i dont mind working with or against others if the system works properly but the fact it doesnt is a serious issue

 

[Macgyver]

I tried missions and it did more harm than good.
So I flew out to an extraction point, killed bunch pirates till I'd made 300k bounty, handed it in and boom... Empire and everyone else all friendly, radar full of green friendly ships and stations now.
i tried one more mission and it dropped me back to neutral.... So no more missions.

i went back out to the extraction and 100k bounty later... All green again

 

[ollobrains]

yeah u dont loose a lot, theres a scale from hated to allied, and then u get special missions as u get further up, this could be a key to expansion of factions to

 

[Agony_Aunt]

What on earth is wrong with influence, and why does nobody care to ask?

Hehe, its been asked a million times already.

There are known issues and FD i'm sure will deal with them in due course. In the meantime, work around it.

However, i can assure you OP that you can affect faction influence. Me and some friends have been building up imperial ratings in some systems and i'm currently trying to help out put down some civil unrest in a system.

I'm friendly with a few subfactions, trying to get allied slowly with Empire, but its a bit of a slog.

Check the stations influence on the map, run a few missions for that faction and then check again.... as long as there are no players working against your faction you might see an increase. If you are trying to do this alone, best to find a remote system to do it in to see the difference, to avoid other players undoing your good work.

 

[_Flin_]

1. Influence updates once per day. Around christmas the time was 20:00 GMT.
2. 11.1 million is a rather big system.
3. Demand does change with player actions. It seems as if there is a threshold that has to be overcome, then it goes down with every delivery. Every full hour the system produces goods, which has an effect on supply and possibly demand (e.g. when a refinery / industrial system produces Beryllium)

If you want to find out more, come and join the Elitediplomats.com . We are an alliance faction that concentrate on stuff like this and have the occasional fun shootout with station security or authority vessels in the checkpoints of the system we mainly operate in.
We are currently setting up more experiments regarding the influence / economy mechanics and can still use some help.

 

[Devil's Refugee]

Take on a Capital Ship, amass a fleet and blow one up, would love to see the effect that has.