Erata Prime and "United effort" progress

[Vim]

So I don't think anyone actually likes Erata Prime, but it feels like no other open planets are possible to actually gain progress on. And how is progress calculated anyway? I have a huge feeling like it's all just smoke and mirrors, that player activity actually doesn't matter in the slightest.

Have the devs ever commented on this? I started playing a week ago, and so far the bug campaign has moved from Turing to Erata, and that's it. No sectors have opened, none have closed and it feels like the whole galaxy is just in a standstill. Please make liberating 1 planet something you can do in half a day, so we get a LITTLE bit of variety between missions... or have more than 1 open planet, (that can be progressed) so that we can avoid grinding the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥ environment for many days on end...

[Paul Caruso]

my theory is that the connection issues, defense mission balance, people AFKing in lobbies, low skill ceiling for the COD kids who don't understand the game, and server queues really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the algorithm or whatever for how progress is tracked

[Khryst]

one issue I think that is causing problems, is you got people doing the high difficutly operations that put up multiple missions in the operation, but only complete say the "Eradicate" mission of the group, because it super fast to do, then bail on the operation and choose another. The game register's this as a "loss" and we lose %.

It's the community taking "shortcuts" for medals/samples that are screwing over the %.

[Akameka]

the reasons others planets don't get captured is because of passive capture recovery.

Other bugs planets do not progress because there is no focussed war effort. Just like there wasn't no focussed war effort on Erata before it was the last planet of the sector. (because it sucks !) and it never progressed beyond 0%

purely speculatives numbers here, but this is basically how it works.
> 10K players on a planet can do about 0.2% capture per hour by their combined efforts.
> meanwhile, the bugs recover 1% per hour.
> Sum is negative, so all missions on the planet are pointless

> 120K players on a planet will do 2.4% per hour
> meanwhile, the bugs recapture 1% per hour
> That means capture increase by 1.4% per hour

Also, take in account that when player population decrease (when east/west Time zones superpose work/sleep time), War effort get reduced, meaning that bugs can actually recover a part of what they lost because war effort temporarily gets lower than passive recovery.

> besides defences of planets, It is not know if losing a mission makes war effort lowered or not, but not finishing an operation definitely do not contribute to war effort. So the guys farming for medals in horde extermination missions and not doing the rest of operation activelly hurt the war effort.

This is partially why we keep losing planets to robot ( beside the absurd difficulty of the rescue mission). Because lots of players just do the horde mission then change operation, so it count as defeat.

TLDR : If you want to contribute to war effort, play on planets with High player count and when host an operation, finish it completely before hosting on another planet/operation
You can quickplay/join friends freely as it keeps your operation progress in memory.

[Free Luigi M.]

Originally posted by Vim:

So I don't think anyone actually likes Erata Prime, but it feels like no other open planets are possible to actually gain progress on. And how is progress calculated anyway? I have a huge feeling like it's all just smoke and mirrors, that player activity actually doesn't matter in the slightest.

Have the devs ever commented on this? I started playing a week ago, and so far the bug campaign has moved from Turing to Erata, and that's it. No sectors have opened, none have closed and it feels like the whole galaxy is just in a standstill. Please make liberating 1 planet something you can do in half a day, so we get a LITTLE bit of variety between missions... or have more than 1 open planet, (that can be progressed) so that we can avoid grinding the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥ environment for many days on end...

The Terminid front has moved multiple times before. You have been playing only for a week.
Erata and Turing weren't even accessible the first week after release.

The Galactic War moves slowly. But not even that slowly. It's appropriate. Liberating a planet in half a day would make the front relocate way too fast.
Not to mention it would remove a lot of the charm from any offensive. Victories and losses are meaningful when they are hard-fought. Just the hilarious emergent narrative that sprung from Malevelon Creek wouldn't exist if it only took half a day to conquer.

Originally posted by Akameka:

the reasons others planets don't get captured is because of passive capture recovery.

Other bugs planets do not progress because there is no focussed war effort. Just like there wasn't no focussed war effort on Erata before it was the last planet of the sector. (because it sucks !)

purely speculatives numbers here, but this basically how it works.
> 10K players on a planet can do about 0.2% capture per hour by their combined efforts.
> meanwhile, the bugs recover 1% per hour.
> Sum is 0, so all missions on the planets are pointless

> 120K players on a planet will do 2.4% per hour
> meanwhile, the bugs recapture 1% per hour
> That means capture increase by 1.4% per hour

Also, take in account that when player population decrease (when east/west Time zones superpose work/sleep time), War effort get reduced, meaning that bus can actually recover a part of what they lost because war effort temporarily gets lower than passive recovery.

> besides defences of planets, It is not know if losing a mission makes war effort lowered or not, but not finishing an operation definitely do not contribute to war effort. So the guys farming for medals in horde extermination missions and not doing the rest of operation activelly hurt the war effort.

This is partially why we keep losing planets to robot ( beside the absurd difficulty of the rescue mission). Because lots of players just do the horde mission then change operation, so it count as defeat.

Not to mention that war-progress is only awarded at Operation completion.
All the newbies out there mortar farming, spamming defense missions, are literally contributing nothing.