As far as I remember from FDEV stream, initiating both Famine and Outbreak ais no longer connected to player actions. They are states that occur randomly now. Player actions can reverse them, but not initiate.
Famine can definitely be created by player action, I've done it using the assassination method. It's just the Economic state below Bust.
Outbreak on the other hand appears to be semi-random at least, although I've noticed persistent and repeated Outbreaks within a local group of systems so there may be some 'infection' effect from players not clearing them.
As far as I remember from FDEV stream, initiating both Famine and Outbreak ais no longer connected to player actions. They are states that occur randomly now. Player actions can reverse them, but not initiate.
No, Factabulous' advice would also work on a controlling faction - you'll just have to work harder to keep them in control while their economy sinks.
There's two options for that:
1) Keep their influence up. This will be tricky, since if you're targeting an Anarchy you can't just bounty hunt for them. There are some mission types which boost Security rather than Economy - surface salvage missions (space salvage boost economy - don't do them!), for example, or some of the "special transport" missions that Anarchies offer [1]
2) Let their influence fall, and when they get into a war, make sure that they win it by running CZs for them. You should still be able to run your assassination missions against them in this time as well, so they win the war but suffer economically for it.
Another alternative option - also potentially tricky - would be to get a non-controlling Anarchy faction into Famine, then use lots of +Security missions (like surface salvage) to get them into a War for control of the system, while keeping up the pressure from the missions against them on their Economy slider. Then when they take control, they should still be in Famine.
[1] You will need to be very careful with these, because some illegal cargo missions boost Economy, and some boost Security. Test them on a different Anarchy faction first to make sure you've got the right types!
No, Factabulous' advice would also work on a controlling faction - you'll just have to work harder to keep them in control while their economy sinks.
There's two options for that:
1) Keep their influence up. This will be tricky, since if you're targeting an Anarchy you can't just bounty hunt for them. There are some mission types which boost Security rather than Economy - surface salvage missions (space salvage boost economy - don't do them!), for example, or some of the "special transport" missions that Anarchies offer [1]
2) Let their influence fall, and when they get into a war, make sure that they win it by running CZs for them. You should still be able to run your assassination missions against them in this time as well, so they win the war but suffer economically for it.
Another alternative option - also potentially tricky - would be to get a non-controlling Anarchy faction into Famine, then use lots of +Security missions (like surface salvage) to get them into a War for control of the system, while keeping up the pressure from the missions against them on their Economy slider. Then when they take control, they should still be in Famine.
[1] You will need to be very careful with these, because some illegal cargo missions boost Economy, and some boost Security. Test them on a different Anarchy faction first to make sure you've got the right types!
We've been watching a cycle take place in one system. It's only been three iterations, but it seems to look like:
1. Controlling faction gets to Investment+Civil Liberty
2. Market prices, usually including Void Opals, spike
3. System traffic explodes as miners arrive to make big, 100% profits on sales
4. Pirate Attack state begins; security state plummets
5. When security hits "None", Pirate Attack ends and Void Opal prices drop, sometimes on the same tick; economic state may decrease afterward
6. System slowly crawls up to Investment+Civil Liberty; restart
Granted, this is just a few cycles in a single system. But we've been thinking that a lot of highly profitable sales in a market can cause Pirate Attack, which acts as a brake on security and so ends the economic spike.
And... I just reallized this is way off-topic, but it's something I've been watching with interest.
Random doesn't necessarily mean uniform. Roll two fair dice and you're much more likely to get a 7 than a 12 or a 2. So far as I can tell, Pirate Attack and Outbreak are a bit like that - they're random rather than deterministically based on player action like the other states, but there are things which bias their appearance towards particular systems and factions.
From the Colonia region data I'm confident about the following statements:
- unlike other states, the appearance of Pirate Attack and Outbreak is not determined directly by player actions, but by a random process
- a faction can't be in both states at once in the same system (but can be in both states in different systems, and both states can occur together in the same system on different factions)
- Pirate Attack is more likely to affect controlling factions
- Outbreak is more likely to affect non-controlling factions
- Both states are more likely to appear in systems with higher player traffic
- there are additional biases (which are different for the two states, and in some cases may be powerful enough to overcome the effect of the above known biases) which have not yet been discovered
I have not yet seen a convincing theory about what those additional biases are. Several plausible theories have turned out not to fit the data particularly well. But certainly it's not the case that every system and faction has an equal chance of being hit by these states.
I have not personally seen Pirate Attack harming either economy or security states - I certainly have examples of an Investment+Civil Liberty faction entering Pirate Attack, then leaving Pirate Attack with its economy and security states intact. Similarly I have examples of factions in None+None entering Pirate Attack and leaving it again without further economy or security loss ... or much in the way of obvious player intervention at all.
I would be extremely cautious about disagreeing with The Doncaster when it comes to statistics.
So I'm just going to put these two excerpts together to see how they look:
I would be extremely cautious about disagreeing with The Doncaster when it comes to statistics.
So I'm just going to put these two excerpts together to see how they look:
I'm going out on a limb, but I think Ian's referring to how in old BGS, the player could directly cause Outbreak (by conducting Biowaste Delivery missions). I'm (somewhat suprisingly) unsure if that effect is present anymore.
For the Pirate Attacks and Outbreaks which have occurred in my local area recently, I've not observed any correlations between player activities. There's been a few "hot" systems recently, and Pirate Attack at least seems to have occurred as equally in those systems as it has in "colder" systems.
I would be extremely cautious about disagreeing with The Doncaster when it comes to statistics.
So I'm just going to put these two excerpts together to see how they look:
Interesting, isn't it. The word "directly" in the first excerpt is probably the most important one.
A mechanism like "every transaction regardless of type has a 1/10,000 chance of triggering Pirate Attack" or "every 10,000th transaction recorded across the galaxy generates a Pirate Attack" would strongly bias it towards higher traffic systems and towards their controlling factions, but still be essentially random and unpredictable on the level of any individual system.
And, yes, as Jmanis suggests, correlation vs causation. Pirate Attacks could well be caused/encouraged by factors - proximity to regional centres, for example, or presence of material traders - which also tend to correlate with higher player traffic, without the player traffic actually causing anything itself.
I'm going out on a limb, but I think Ian's referring to how in old BGS, the player could directly cause Outbreak (by conducting Biowaste Delivery missions). I'm (somewhat suprisingly) unsure if that effect is present anymore.
On the one hand, the system in Colonia with the most outbreaks (Deriso) is also a popular destination for Biowaste Delivery, and a high traffic system, so it probably gets a lot of them to all its factions, which all spend a lot of time in Outbreak ... including, unusually, the controlling faction. All seven "top Outbreak" factions are in that one system. Also, the missions still say +Outbreak on the results page.
On the other hand, there are many other system-faction pairs in the region which have spent almost as much time in Outbreak as the factions in Deriso, and most of the other Agricultural systems have either been completely outbreak free since the start of 2019, or are way down the list.
But back to the first hand, most of the other agriculturals are placed so that they don't get many Biowaste missions and weren't getting much in the way of Outbreaks in 3.2 either.
There are a lot of correlations and confounding factors going on. I'm leaning towards it still working, but not with any confidence.
I can confirm - just ran a query against all factions in the galaxy, using eddb.io's latest data dump, and as of now, there is not a single faction in Famine anywhere.
There have been a few famines since 3.3 launched, but the typical situation is that Famine has been banished from the galaxy. Even Bust only occurs 139 times, whereas Investment is at 317 systems/factions, and Boom is at 7,084.
After reading all of these posts half seem to have some kind of information that Famine is a player action that selling Blackmarket Goods causes this state; While others have some kind of information to the contrary that Famine is some kind of Naturally accruing state.
I was under the impression that Selling Black Market Goods causes Famine but its extremely hard for any single person to force a single system into this state either; Because of the amount of commodities required to force the state or because other players see this as a hostile action and take steps to prevent it. I was also under the impression that Systems have a Natural mechanic to slowly balance towards a favorable state also making it harder for players to work towards a famine state.
It also just strikes me as Odd that with the sheer amount of systems in the Bubble that there is a total of Zero Famine and Zero Bust System's. I honestly do not understand how that is even possible.
Further more going all the way out to Colonia just for DMWE seems extreme, there should be ample ways to get what ever material/data/resouce a person needs without having to go 20kLy.
After reading all of these posts half seem to have some kind of information that Famine is a player action that selling Blackmarket Goods causes this state; While others have some kind of information to the contrary that Famine is some kind of Naturally accruing state.
I was under the impression that Selling Black Market Goods causes Famine but its extremely hard for any single person to force a single system into this state either; Because of the amount of commodities required to force the state or because other players see this as a hostile action and take steps to prevent it. I was also under the impression that Systems have a Natural mechanic to slowly balance towards a favorable state also making it harder for players to work towards a famine state.
It also just strikes me as Odd that with the sheer amount of systems in the Bubble that there is a total of Zero Famine and Zero Bust System's. I honestly do not understand how that is even possible.
Further more going all the way out to Colonia just for DMWE seems extreme, there should be ample ways to get what ever material/data/resouce a person needs without having to go 20kLy.
tl;dr The reason there's (almost) zero factions in Famine is because achieving the state competes directly with positive economic effects generated by players and most missions. Positive effects are very easily directed, negative effects are not, so there's a complete imbalance resulting in what I call the Elite: Best Friends universe.
Talking pre-3.3 BGS first, so I'll put it into spoilers in case it's misconstrued as relevant to current mechanics; this is just some background:
Selling Black Market goods to create Famine was an often-held belief, but incorrect. Black Market sales only caused Economic Bust, while famine was caused by:
Skimmer Destruction missions
The random "uptick" FD introduced to make Famine and Outbreak occur more often.
So Boom and Bust reflected positive/negative economic state (Market sales caused boom, black market sales cause bust), but Famine and Outbreak were, for the most part, fairly random, but able to be "negated by player activity"... somehow. FD were never clear on that part.
So Famine was a mostly-random state just like outbreak, and occurred regularly around the galaxy. Post-3.3, Famine is now the Extreme-bottom of the economic status slider, sharing the same position as Lockdown for the security slider... noting at present a mere six factions are in Lockdown at the moment. This is very important to note.
Previously (excluding war/elections), any state could occur from any other state... it wasn't uncommon for a faction to be pending Boom and Bust, which clearly made no sense... but critically it meant states were non-competitive; Economic bust was still rare by comparison, but easily achieved without having to counter any extant economic conditions.
Now, they're competitive. That is, if you want to achieve Economic Bust, you need to work against any positive economic effects; you can no longer have Boom and Bust pending at the same time. And since Famine is now part of that Economic slider adjustment (the extreme negative state beyond Bust) you have to work a system constantly to achieve it. That is, just like targeting a faction with positive Economic effects will eventually achieve Investment, you need to target a faction with constant negative Economic effects to achieve Famine.
Enter my previous post, which I think you read/repped:
During an older FD livestream, FD basically said (highly paraphrased): "Positive states are the results of commander success, negative states are the results of commander failure. Commanders are generally successful so we generally see more of the positive states". In other words, FD don't seem to have figured any plan to make activities where Player Success = Negative State effects. This needs fixing.
You generally cannot reliably target a faction for negative economic effects. You can target a faction with negative security effects via murdering their clean ships, but this can be unreliable and generally unrewarding... though people tend not to do that to achieve lockdown, rather, to reduce a faction's influence.
At this point someone might point out that most missions have a negative effect, so you could just take those missions. The problem is:
99% of missions targeting a non-anarchy faction with negative effects do not actually advertise what faction you're going to target (e.g wetwork, spec ops, surface scan, powerplant destruction). So while anyone can come along and guarantee direct support to a faction by taking missions... you need to hope the RNG pics your target faction out of potentially hundreds of target factions. In other words, there's a massive imbalance between the ability to support a faction, versus the ability to attack it.
There's one type of faction which actually can be reliably targeted; Anarchy factions.That's because 4/5ths of the galaxy is lawful (=~ 50,000 factions), and 1/5 of the galaxy is anarchy (=~ 15,000 factions). Outside of a conflict, lawful factions almost always target Anarchy factions with Assassination/Massacre missions. Assassinations cause Economic degradation, Massacres cause Security degradation.
As a corollary to that last point, if you look at systems currently in Bust/Civil Unrest (precursors to Famine/Lockdown), almost all of them are Anarchy factions. In a selection of 50-odd Bust and Lockdown states, I only found one or two of each which were non-anarchy factions. That's because they're constantly the target of negative effects from lawful factions.
What's needed is an effective Military career path & mission system which lets you target hostilities against other factions (presumably; belonging to other superpowers) and cause those negative effects.
I think it is getting more difficult to target one system, now that the mission board is generating targets of further systems than it was, and can't be flipped.
When I learned about the BGS, I saw more ways to achieve positive status than negative, less benefit of achieving or maintaining negative status. And anarchy sux because no one prefers an anarchy system unless they're crazy murderhobos. Total imbalance.
FDev should never put status that players can't manage to achieve in the BGS. Because blaze your own trail.
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