Yet another failed retreat, can the devs confirm the retreat mechanism is working as intended?

[CunningStunt]

And by confirm I mean actually play the game for the time it takes to force a faction below 2.5% and then hold them there for 6 active server ticks until they actually retreat!

It's damn near impossible since 3.3

I've seen it mentioned on various threads in the bgs forum that no matter how much effort a PMF puts into forcing a faction into retreat the bgs will always spike them above 2.5% influence during the retreat state essentially resetting the timer and forcing you to put them back below 2.5% to start the whole process over again.

We we're beaten to our target system as an NPC factions expansion ended one day before ours. It then took us 5 weeks just to get them below 2.5% by working for the other factions to drain their influence. We could not force them into a conflict as no stations were at risk so equalisation would not occur with the lower ranking factions. Finally we started to make consistent progress on a daily basis by using our previous tactic, and also taking missions for the factions we want in retreat and intentionally letting them expire. It was looking like it would be a success as their influence would fluctuate between 1.2% and 2.0% during the retreat state, but today (day 5 of the retreat) they spiked from 1.2% to 2.8%

I'm pretty certain this faction is not receiving any support from human players, and even if they are there is no way it could match the work of at least 10 members of my faction working against them on a daily basis.

It's pointless opening a bug report on this as it would not even be looked at until confirmed by other cmdrs, so I plead with you, Frontier Dev team, test it yourself and ensure the retreat mechanism is functioning correctly. And maybe address why the bgs is giving a faction 1.6% growth whilst at the same time being hammered into the ground by a player supported faction. Something does not add up.

System in question is Mandh
Faction refusing to retreat is Keltim Empire Party.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I've seen it mentioned on various threads in the bgs forum that no matter how much effort a PMF puts into forcing a faction into retreat the bgs will always spike them above 2.5% influence during the retreat state essentially resetting the timer and forcing you to put them back below 2.5% to start the whole process over again.

This is, however, a myth.

A couple of recent examples where the influence never spiked at all
https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/systems/12/history?minrange=3305-06-24&maxrange=3305-07-03 - Explorer's Nation drops below 2.5%, never recovers above it or even gains influence on a tick, retreats
https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/systems/16/history?minrange=3305-06-22&maxrange=3305-06-30 - Iron Phoenix Enterprise drops below 2.5%, never recovers above it or even gains influence on a tick, retreats

And a couple where the faction did briefly get back up above 2.5, but was pushed back down again and the timer did not reset - it retreated as normal on day 6
https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/systems/12/history?minrange=3305-06-16&maxrange=3305-06-25 - Lobos de Loki get to 2.6% but fall back down again
https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/systems/73/history?minrange=3305-06-18&maxrange=3305-06-26 - Colonia Council get up to 2.9% midway but still depart on schedule

There have been 184 successful retreats so far in 3305 in the Colonia region (almost three per system) ... compared with 187 in the entirety of 3304. They're not impossible by any means, but they can be accidentally (or deliberately) opposed relatively easily.

I'm pretty certain this faction is not receiving any support from human players

Is this "I have personally verified that the entire traffic report for the last week is accounted for solely by my squadron, who are all trustworthy and competent individuals who would never put in any transactions in favour, even accidentally" or "I can see no plausible reason for anyone to intentionally support the faction and we have no nearby BGS enemies"?

If it's the latter, a faction on extremely low influence (because of the "wine analogy" mechanism for allocation of influence) will require considerably more transactions against it or for other factions to keep it down than it does to push it up - someone completing a mission from a nearby system which happens to push them up, or someone passing through gets interdicted, runs a kill-warrant scan, and hands in a bounty for the retreating faction will give them a significant boost, which will require multiple transactions to counter.

 

[FrogsFriend]

As Ian said, trying to pin a faction down by boosting everyone else takes a lot of work and is easily undone by almost any activity that benefits them, whether intentional or just from a casual passing Cmdr (it's just the way the 'normalisation' maths that keeps the combined total to 100% works).

Although it's the last day, you may still have time to finish them off by inflicting some direct Influence reduction. Murdering their ships should work but there is also a way to do it with nobody getting killed, just a few dented shields (unless of course you're very slow and let the police catch you )...

Eventually we managed to achieve a retreat with a dedicated group of some five or six players. Key to success was to harass ships of the MF to be retreated. Harassing means shooting these ships e.g. at the nav beacon or pull them out of supercruise, but not killing them. You only incur bounties without gaining notoriety which greatly facilitate things! Every CMDR tried to harass at least 10 ships of the targeted MF each tick and this worked out.

You need to find, and shoot at (you don't need to kill them, just enough to get a Bounty) clean ships belonging to the target faction. If they own a station or space installation you can find lots of their ships there. Ground bases, including the type you can't land at, should have a few flying around. If they own nothing you'll need to find them in SC and interdict them or at the Nav Beacon, Resource Sites, Signal Sources, etc.

Pay off your Bounties at the nearest IF as often as you feel necessary. You will almost certainly end up Hostile to the target faction but that can be fixed.

I've tried this and found it very effective.
Good luck.

 

[Jane Turner]

Its definitely possible to force a retreat - even against opposition, but it is not easy or for the faint hearted

 

[Rubbernuke]

Please note its only day 6 that needs to be below 2.5%. And its very much possible to retreat factions- this year I retreated about 5 systems on my own, each of various sizes.

 

[MDHansen]

I have succesfully and without any issues at all, expelled over a dozen factions from a handfull of systems since April. I work alone, though I am somewhat on the outer rim of the bubble.

MDH

 

[Jane Turner]

Random traffic and an apparent bias for missions in surrounding systems to deliver to the retreating faction seems to be the cause of failed retreats

 

[Kissamies]

I haven't tried to get anything to retreat yet, but I have noticed that whenever a random faction goes to retreat, it's sure to be at around 10% very soon afterwards. I think the mission bias could use some toning down.

 

[CunningStunt]

We did eventually manage to force them out, but it involved hostile acts against the npc faction on a daily basis to ensure the bgs didn't spike their influence.

The problem we have now is getting our expansion pending again, from a system that rarely behaves like most systems when we try to build our influence. For example, over the weekend we had many cmdrs working for us (at least 10 people). We increased 2.4% on one day, then lost 0.1% the following day, even though we put roughly the same amount of work into each day to increase only our influence.

 

[SioNKursk]

[QUOTE = "CunningStunt, post: 7899971, member: 130394»]
В конце концов нам удалось их вытеснить, но это включало враждебные действия против фракции NPC на ежедневной основе, чтобы гарантировать, что bgs не увеличит их влияние.

Проблема, с которой мы сталкиваемся сейчас, заключается в том, что наше расширение снова ожидает рассмотрения из системы, которая редко ведет себя, как большинство систем, когда мы пытаемся усилить свое влияние. Например, на выходных у нас работало много команд (не менее 10 человек). Мы увеличили 2,4% за один день, а затем потеряли 0,1% на следующий день, хотя мы вкладывали примерно одинаковое количество работы в каждый день, чтобы увеличить только наше влияние.
[/ QUOTE]
and if there is no NPC?

 

[CunningStunt]

I don't think I understand your question.

We just got an expansion pending at 74.6%
Is that common? I hope its not a bug

 

[SioNKursk]

I don't think I understand your question.

We just got an expansion pending at 74.6%
Is that common? I hope its not a bug

We can not force the faction to retreat from the system, the faction has no assets, we can not find the NPC faction because they are also not, the job is not given since we are hostile to the faction

 

[SioNKursk]

We want to expand into this system, but there's no room. How do the mechanics of the invasion, how to choose a system where the invasion will be?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

We want to expand into this system, but there's no room. How do the mechanics of the invasion, how to choose a system where the invasion will be?

To get an invasion to a specific system, you need:
- to have already expanded to all systems within the 20 LY cube of your expansion centre which have fewer than 7 factions
- it to be the nearest system with exactly 7 factions which at the time of your expansion has at least one non-native faction which is not pending, active or recovering from conflict

 

[SioNKursk]

To get an invasion to a specific system, you need:

• to have already expanded to all systems within the 20 LY cube of your expansion centre which have fewer than 7 factions
• it to be the nearest system with exactly 7 factions which at the time of your expansion has at least one non-native faction which is not pending, active or recovering from conflict

We have all 7 + faction systems

 

[CunningStunt]

From our experience over the last 6-7 weeks putting a non player faction into retreat was fairly difficult. First you need to identify which faction(s) can be put into retreat, factions which are native to that system can never go into retreat so if they have the system name as part of their faction name ignore them. Once you have a target to force out you need to reduce their influence below 2.5% to trigger the retreat.

We found the best results when combining positive influence effect for all of the other factions (by doing missions for them) and negative influence effects for the faction we want in retreat. Harassing their clean ships has a good effect on lowering influence, interdicting and shooting them will incur fines but we had people prepared to take a hit on reputation and notoriety so we were killing them whenever we saw them. Threat level 0 USS's also provide targets for that faction and its usually a helpless ship that's run out of fuel.

Additionally I was stacking missions for the retreat faction and intentionally allowing them to expire which also seems to have an effect on their influence (abandoning missions does not have the same effect). Stacking delivery missions to expire (24h timer) is good for removing influence on the following days server tick, and donation missions (3hr timer) are good for removing inf from them on the same active tick.

The same faction has presence in a few systems nearby so we could go to stations they don't control and take donations for them to repair our hostile reputation enough to start getting more missions to expire.

Once the retreat state was active we had 2-3 cmdrs killing at least 10 of their clean ships daily to prevent the bgs from spiking them above 2.5% while continuing to work for everyone else so the other factions should have positive daily growth. Their influence can exceed 2.5% during the retreat state but as long as it is below 2.5% on the final day then they should be forced out of the system. Once there are less than 7 factions in the system you can expand there from a nearby system as long as there are no closer systems with less than 7 factions to expand to.

 

[SioNKursk]

[QUOTE = "CunningStunt, сообщение: 7911904, участник: 130394»]
Исходя из нашего опыта за последние 6-7 недель, перевести фракцию, не являющуюся игроком, в отступление было довольно сложно. Во-первых, вам необходимо определить, какие фракции можно отнести к отступлению, фракции, которые являются родными для этой системы, никогда не смогут отступить, поэтому, если у них есть имя системы в составе имени их фракции, игнорируйте их. Как только у вас есть цель для вытеснения, вам нужно уменьшить ее влияние ниже 2,5%, чтобы вызвать отступление.

Мы нашли лучшие результаты, комбинируя положительный эффект влияния для всех других фракций (выполняя задания для них) и отрицательные эффекты влияния для фракции, которую мы хотим отступить. Преследование их чистых кораблей имеет хороший эффект для снижения влияния, запрет и расстрел их повлекут за собой штрафы, но у нас были люди, готовые нанести удар по репутации и дурной славе, поэтому мы убивали их всякий раз, когда видели их. Уровень угрозы 0 USS также предоставляют цели для этой фракции и, как правило, беспомощного корабля, у которого кончилось топливо.

Кроме того, я складывал миссии для фракции отступников и намеренно позволял им истечь, что также, похоже, влияет на их влияние (отказ от миссий не имеет такого же эффекта). Укладывание миссий с истечением срока действия (24-часовой таймер) хорошо для устранения влияния на тик сервера в следующие дни, а донорские миссии (3-часовой таймер) хороши для удаления инфы из них на одном и том же активном тике.

Одна и та же фракция присутствует в нескольких системах поблизости, поэтому мы можем пойти на станции, которые они не контролируют, и взять для них пожертвования, чтобы восстановить нашу враждебную репутацию, достаточную для того, чтобы начать получать больше миссий с истечением срока действия.

После того, как состояние отступления стало активным, у нас было 2-3 кдр, убивающих по крайней мере 10 их чистых кораблей в день, чтобы не дать бигам поднять их выше 2,5%, продолжая при этом работать на всех остальных, поэтому у других фракций должен быть положительный ежедневный рост. Их влияние может превышать 2,5% в состоянии отступления, но если оно меньше 2,5% в последний день, их следует вытеснить из системы. Если в системе менее 7 фракций, вы можете расширяться из соседней системы, если нет более близких систем с менее чем 7 фракциями для расширения.
[/ QUOTE]

 

[SioNKursk]

on day 3, the effect is always growing !

 

[SioNKursk]

on day 6 will be 15% then again we could downgrade to 2.5%

 

[SioNKursk]

And so on all systems where they are