How Influence Works

The core mechanics behind faction influence in the Background Simulation.

Key principle: Influence in a system always adds up to 100% across all factions. When you boost one faction, others lose influence. When you reduce one, others gain. The most effective approach is to do both — push your faction up AND pull competitors down.

The 4 Influence Buckets

Every BGS action falls into one of four buckets. Each bucket contributes independently to a faction's influence. The buckets, ranked by impact per effort:

Bucket	Slider	Impact	Source activities
Combat bounties	Security	Highest	Bounty hunting, resource sites, nav beacons, KWS
Exploration data	Economic	High	Universal Cartographics, Roads to Riches
Trade profits	Economic	High	High-demand trade loops, station-to-station
Missions	Varies	Moderate	Any mission with INF reward (max 5 Horizons, 4 Odyssey)

Bounties are portable. You can earn bounties in one system and hand them in at a station in another system to boost your faction there — as long as the faction is present at that station. If the faction is absent, you still get reputation but no influence.

Exploration data has no counter. Unlike trade or combat, there is no negative action that can undo exploration data. It's the only "pure positive" bucket.

Diminishing Returns

Each bucket follows a logarithmic curve. Your first contributions have the largest effect, and each additional contribution in the same bucket gives less and less. The curves taper off quickly.

Do a little of each, not a lot of one. Because of diminishing returns, spreading effort across all four buckets produces more total influence than maxing out a single bucket. Doing 10 mCr bounties + 5 mCr exploration + 10 mCr trade + 15 INF missions is likely better than doing 35 mCr of bounties alone.

The approximate formulas (credit: Cmdr Taipandot):

Bucket	Formula
Bounties	`1.33 × log2(bounty / 450,000)`
Exploration	`0.5 × log2(value / 1,000,000)`
Trade	`0.5 × log2(value / 100,000)`
Missions	`0.5 × log2(mission_influence)`

These formulas give relative influence points, not direct percentage changes. The actual influence change also depends on population size (see below).

Population Scaling

Larger systems require more effort to shift the same amount of influence. The relationship is roughly:

Effect = max(0.025, (1 - log(Population) / 10.875)) × Effort

A 1 billion population system needs about 6x more effort than a 1,000 population system to achieve the same influence change.

What this means in practice:

Small systems (<1M pop) are easy to move — a single operative can make a visible difference
Medium systems (1M-25M) need consistent daily work from a few people
Large systems (>25M) require coordinated team effort
The maximum achievable daily influence shift is lower in large systems regardless of effort

Recommended Daily Contribution

Suggested effort per operative, per system, per day to get good results without burnout. Going beyond these amounts gives diminishing returns.

Bucket	Small (<1M) Uncontested	Medium (1-25M)	Large (>25M) Contested
Combat bounties	10 mCr	20 mCr	30 mCr
Exploration data	5 mCr	10 mCr	15 mCr
Trade profits	10 mCr	20 mCr	30 mCr
Missions INF	15 INF	25 INF	50 INF

These are guidelines, not hard limits. If you're in a contested system, you may need more. If uncontested, even less can maintain control.

Push & Pull (Yin-Yang Model)

Since influence adds to 100%, there are two ways to help your faction:

Push (positive): Boost your faction with bounties, trade, exploration, missions
Pull (negative): Reduce a competitor with murder, smuggling, unprofitable trade, failed missions

Doing both is significantly more effective than doing only positives. A good rule of thumb: pick one beneficiary faction and one victim faction per system.

Low influence factions steal disproportionately

Pushing a faction below ~10% influence has an outsized effect on the controlling faction. If you want to reduce a dominant faction, boosting several small factions a little each can be more effective than direct negative actions against the big faction. This is a useful force multiplier.

Defending high influence is harder

A faction at 60%+ influence is harder to push higher. Your defensive effort needs to be larger than an attacker's effort because they benefit from the low-influence boost effect. When defending, keep competitors low rather than just pushing yourself higher.

Influence mechanics derived from The Complete BGS Guide 2025 v3.0 by Cmdr Purrfect (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), with testing by Cmdrs Cluster Fox and Taipandot.