Expansions: BGS Guide Best Current Thinking

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
No - it needs setting up over a much longer time period to ensure that expansion targets you don't want are lower priority (e.g. by expanding other factions into them) and the one you want is higher priority. If your faction is present in multiple systems, then balancing influences above or below 75% to ensure that the expansion starts from the most advantageous system is usually necessary. Some player groups are very organised and good about this, but it takes a lot of coordination to really get right, and it helps if other player groups are not trying to do the same thing in the same region...

The priority order is:

First priority: systems which have less than seven factions present, no previous retreats. Closest system within priority is chosen. If none exists, go to second priority.
Second priority: systems which have less than seven factions present, previously retreated. Closest system within priority is chosen. If none exists, go to third priority.
Third priority: systems which have exactly seven factions present, including a non-native target faction not currently in a conflict. System with the lowest influence target faction is chosen (effect of previous retreats is uncertain). If none exists, go to fourth priority.
Fourth priority: no expansion this time, next expansion has extended range. If this expansion already had extended range and still couldn't find a valid target, then this system will not generate any expansions at all for a while.
 

teje3

T
Is there any webpage to see which systems are close to a given system?
Inara only offers the first 49 systems and it is not enough in very populated areas.
 

drty

D
Another question. Is there any site that can show what systems are within the 20LY/40LY cube centered around the specific system?
 

teje3

T
In the last days my PMF has made an expansion by invading a new system.
At the moment of ending the expansion, there was several systems with no native MF with low influence.
In fact, there was a system at 11 ly with a non native MF with 3,1% (no states), and another system at 13 ly with 2.3% in retreat state.
We are invading the second one, what was a surprise for us.

How much influence can have the non native MF to be suitable for invasion?
Is distance a factor in the invasion destination?
 

FrogsFriend

FrogsFriend
teje3 said:
In the last days my PMF has made an expansion by invading a new system.
At the moment of ending the expansion, there was several systems with no native MF with low influence.
In fact, there was a system at 11 ly with a non native MF with 3,1% (no states), and another system at 13 ly with 2.3% in retreat state.
We are invading the second one, what was a surprise for us.

How much influence can have the non native MF to be suitable for invasion?
Is distance a factor in the invasion destination?
Click to expand...
I think (and I could be wrong) that it goes for the lowest Inf non-native faction within the 20LY cube, rather than the closest below a certain value.

EDIT - I'm curious if they could retreat out before the war ends. Let us know how it works out.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
FrogsFriend said:
I think (and I could be wrong) that it goes for the lowest Inf non-native faction within the 20LY cube, rather than the closest below a certain value.
Click to expand...
Yes, this seems to be the case now.

FrogsFriend said:
EDIT - I'm curious if they could retreat out before the war ends. Let us know how it works out.
Click to expand...
The equalisation of influence for the war - since the entering faction would have been nominally at 7-8% - will put the war at least at 4%, comfortably outside the retreat zone. And then of course the war will decide whether they leave or not.

One exception: if they were also in Blight or Infrastructure Failure, that drains 1% a day even with a conflict active (probably a bug, but you could with exactly the right line-up get someone retreating mid-war that way)
 

teje3

T
Ian Doncaster said:
Yes, this seems to be the case now.


The equalisation of influence for the war - since the entering faction would have been nominally at 7-8% - will put the war at least at 4%, comfortably outside the retreat zone. And then of course the war will decide whether they leave or not.

One exception: if they were also in Blight or Infrastructure Failure, that drains 1% a day even with a conflict active (probably a bug, but you could with exactly the right line-up get someone retreating mid-war that way)
Click to expand...
First day with war as pending, both MF were at 5,5%.
With 5,5% it is supposed that the retreat is automatically failed.
But at the second day (fist active war day) the MF in retreat has gone to 3,6%. This MF is not in Blight or Infrastructure failure.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
teje3 said:
But at the second day (fist active war day) the MF in retreat has gone to 3,6%. This MF is not in Blight or Infrastructure failure.
Click to expand...

That reminds me - I did see this one
Iron Phoenix Enterprise attacked by INO Research in invasion election, while in Retreat. On the 14th (release day) IPE take a sudden 2% influence hit through the election on their final retreat day.

I put this down to being release-day oddities, but looking at some of my other data, it may be that Retreat now has a 2% daily influence penalty as well. If your retreating faction still has days left to run on that state it will be interesting to see what happens next!
 

Dommarraa

Dommarraa
So our favourite expansion system seems to have run out of targets. We are in all close systems. The closest one we don't own is 40ly away.
Just failed to expand, and have the next pending. Does the naughty list still exist, and after this 2nd failure will we start to expand from one of our other 75+ systems ?
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Theoretically, I think the following would cancel it if the expansion wasn't from the faction's home system.

1) Expansion goes pending for A, from a system with 7 factions
2) Another faction B invades that system, and all other non-native factions in the system are in conflict already, so it attacks the expanding system controller
3) The invasion conflict resolves before the controller's expansion does, so the controller is forced out of the system before it completes.

In practice, since you need:
- to start B's expansion about a week before A's expansion even goes pending
- to have B unable to prefer invasion of any other nearby system (already present, controllers of those systems on even higher influence than A, other non-native factions already in conflicts, etc.)
- to then quickly win the invasion conflict (4-0 ideally, unless B's expansion is very well timed)
...it's not likely to happen in practice, and anyone that organised can probably just keep A below 75% in the first place.

(And as A gets kicked out of system control and presence, even if you could plan it in advance you certainly wouldn't want to use this method to stop your own expansions, except to show off how good you were at setting up implausible BGS sequences)
 
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