contact uselessness is frustrating

[daveal]

I spent about 15 hours on a set of merchant captains in the last couple of days.  I can get a sufficient number of contacts; but it is very frustrating to get them to do anything.  Is there something I am missing?  After the early game, any contact mission takes at least 6-10 jumps to get one bump in personal rep.  At least 1-2 missions are needed to get their rep high enough to do *anything*.  And then more than half the time, their influence is negative or at least too low to get what I want.  I can see that personal rep is something the player can manage; but influence "seems" random.  I am sure there is a sophisticated simulation behind it.  But it is too opaque for me.  I have something like 20 contacts, but the last 4-5 times I wanted something from a contact, I could not get it.  Their influence was too low.

Carrying around a few loads of intel is sufficient preparation to get the contacts who buy intel, to immediately get their personal rep high enough.  But without influence, they still can't do anything.  And for contacts that don't buy intel, it just takes forever to get them enough personal rep.

Are there techniques for ensuring contacts have both personal rep and influence?  Or, is my expectation unreasonably high that a contact should be "useful"?

Is influence supposed to be capped between 0-100?  Many of my contacts have negative influence, and I saw one who had influence 107/100.

[fallen]

The cap is -10 to 100. There are some bugs that still let Influence get over 100 occasionally.

Interesting feedback. Definitely out of band with what we are hearing from the player base at large. Hopefully some other players will hop on and post some suggestions. Personally, in my play, I find I wouldn't get anything done if it weren't for my Contacts.

You can also join the Discord and ask some of the crew haunting the channels:
discordapp.com/invite/TreseBrothers

[Brutus Aurelius]

I like to look at it like this. Just as the crew and your ship are investments, so are Contacts. You need to dedicate time, credits and effort to get the good favors from your allies. Sometimes it's as simple as swapping Intel for sponsorship for a Trade Permit. Other times you need to run missions or help turn the tide of a Solar War.

And just like bad crew, you need to learn to recognize a bad Contact who won't be alive long enough to do you any good.

[daveal]

Thanks for the suggestion. For a contact who does not accept intel, how do you kickstart them? I guess you can do one or two of their long missions (by the midgame most missions are 4-6 jumps each way) for reputation. But, how do you even affect influence if theirs is negative or too low? I had a string of 10-15 contacts in a row generated by my merchant who all had negative/low influence. I feel these are useless unless there is an effective, visible way to change their influence.

[contributor]

So the biggest thing affecting their influence is probably the outcome of faction conflicts. When a faction wins or loses a conflict all of their contacts have the opportunity to gain or lose influence respectively. If most of your contacts are from the same faction and they're all low on influence it's probably because they have consistently been losing conflicts. So working for a contact increases their influence from doing the mission, but, if it's related to a conflict, it also helps change the conflict score which can gain them even more influence when the conflict resolves. So picking a few contacts and working consistently for them is very much in your favor and will help snowball their influence. There are other ways of affecting conflicts as well, such as blockade and patrol. If you prefer those, pick a side (where you have lots of contacts) and make sure they win every conflict. Eventually they will all have good influence.

The other option is to be an opportunist. Look through the logs and see what faction has consistently been winning conflicts. Their contacts should have more influence and then all you'll need is a bit of rep with them. Everybody loves a winner right?

[drspendlove]

Rare Trade Goods can help when that's an option. Also, while I don't know why, some missions grant slightly more influence than others. I'm not sure which though and that's still a very small amount (+2 for some steps instead of +1 or +0)

[Cory Trese]

May 16, 2018 0:43:38 GMT -5 daveal said:

I feel these are useless unless there is an effective, visible way to change their influence.

Thanks for the feedback and posts. I am sad to hear that you have come to this unfortunate conclusion. I hope you will change your mind in the future.

Thanks for playing!

[Cory Trese]

May 16, 2018 9:12:08 GMT -5 drspendlove said:

Rare Trade Goods can help when that's an option. Also, while I don't know why, some missions grant slightly more influence than others. I'm not sure which though and that's still a very small amount (+2 for some steps instead of +1 or +0)

This is simply based on their Traits and current Influence. Very powerful Contacts will take longer to gain Influence. That's all, pretty straightforward. Mission types have variations in them as well, just like they do for the payout to the player.

I hope that helps!

[albma]

I've generally been playing merchant, which gives me a ton of contacts. Generally I'll make friends with just the one most influential prince/smuggler prince/high prince in any faction to get lvl 4 trade permits (except for Aataan Char, she hates my guts)
And also the most influential person who sells rare trade goods in any particular quadrant.

The rest of 95% of contacts I do not bother with.

[fallen]

May 16, 2018 4:11:32 GMT -5 contributor said:

So the biggest thing affecting their influence is probably the outcome of faction conflicts. When a faction wins or loses a conflict all of their contacts have the opportunity to gain or lose influence respectively.

Huge. Don't miss this Invest in your contacts and their Conflicts.

[daveal]

May 16, 2018 11:26:49 GMT -5 albma said:

Generally I'll make friends with just the one most influential prince/smuggler prince/high prince in any faction to get lvl 4 trade permits

I'll try that. Don't get me wrong, I am having a great time playing. But, in that particular game it seemed that every single contact I wanted something from, had negative/low influence and could not do anything for me. I can try figuring out which conflicts they are involved in, and try to help win those conflicts. I have also found that by the time I find a place to affect a conflict, it's already over. This also seems kind of indirect for a new player to figure out.

[daveal]

May 16, 2018 9:19:23 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

May 16, 2018 0:43:38 GMT -5 daveal said:

I feel these are useless unless there is an effective, visible way to change their influence.

Thanks for the feedback and posts. I am sad to hear that you have come to this unfortunate conclusion. I hope you will change your mind in the future.

Thanks for playing!

I didn't intend to sound negative.  My suggestion was that fewer contacts should have negative influence, and it should be more obvious for a new player how to raise their influence.

[drspendlove]

I wish there were a somewhat easy way to know how likely a conflict were to expire in the next few weeks.

[Brutus Aurelius]

May 16, 2018 12:11:26 GMT -5 daveal said:

May 16, 2018 9:19:23 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Thanks for the feedback and posts. I am sad to hear that you have come to this unfortunate conclusion. I hope you will change your mind in the future.

Thanks for playing!

I didn't intend to sound negative.  My suggestion was that fewer contacts should have negative influence, and it should be more obvious for a new player how to raise their influence.

Contacts don't spawn with negative influence. By the time you find them though, depending on their traits and the conflicts their Faction has won and lost, they could very well be doing badly and in need of a hand. A good skill to gain is to try and recognize how these Contacts in the negatives got there. Did you notice their Faction losing a lot in Spice Hall rumors? Did they have negative, Influence draining Rumors active in their Quadrant or Zone? Or do their traits, like Spice Addict, show that they have just been wasting turns or Influence doing nothing but run around a Spice Hall?

[Cory Trese]

I have been doing some analysis and have found some clues that the addition of Contacts 44 to 58 has adjusted the overall Influence economy more dramatically than I than I had thought it would. This may or may not be related to the observations in the OP.

I'll work on this part