[E:D] BGS and Power Play 2.0

Introduction to Power Play 1.0 (BGS play) and Power Play 2.0

Jan 29, 2025

[Thargoids by Chris MkV.]

Republished: 2025-03-21

Part [ 1 ] 2 3 of 3

Commanders,

The rejuvenation of "Power Play" in Elite: Dangerous (E:D) with the release of Power Play 2.0 (PP2) in late 3310 (2024 CE) has been well received. It, like the previous version of Power Play, is based on the Background Simulation (BGS).

This article series examines PP2 briefly to move on to the BGS and “BGS play”.

The motivation for the article series is as a thank you to the E:D community wherein Crashed Cmdr YesXorNo has found joy and inspiration. It pays tribute to the work of that community’s study of the black box of the BGS, published as articles and tools to which are refered in the References section.

Lastly, a thank you to Lave Radio who are as mad as all of the rest of you, and as determined as the Hutton Orbital Truckers, Project Ida and the Fuel Rats. Long live the E:D community in all of its wonderful extremity.

Overview

This short article series is an exploration of E:D's Background Simulation. It attempts to convey a conceptual understanding of the BGS and to weigh benefits and burdens of working to manipulate it for “fun and profit”.

The series is mostly based on 4 published guides of the BGS and some other informative sources like Frontier forum posts. All of these, and important reference sites and community resources are provided as references below. The primary source which readers are encouraged to consult is "The Complete Elite Dangerous Background Simulation Guide 2024 v2.0" abbreviated hereafter as [TCG].

"BGS play" is the phrase used to describe enjoying E:D while working to manipulate the BGS.

Audience

This series is written for Commanders with a little experience in E:D. It assumes familiarity with general E:D terminology. It attempts this low barrier of entry into the world within BGS.

Capability and Story

In any game which requires time to be invested to upgrade one's capabilities within it (grind) a player will naturally initially focus on capacity increase. Most modern computer games also come with a story. Elite: Dangerous is both, a game with plenty of potential for capability increase and a large story, or narrative. It is also an “open world” (open galaxy) playground in which future tech meets physics.

The following brief examination of PP2 and more detailed exploration of BGS distinguishes between narrative value and capability value. The latter is occassionally termed concrete benefit. Narrative is important in a fictional world, even if it is based on a 1:1 model of our Milky Way galaxy. How a Commander values each of these will differ, and probably change over time.

This article series makes no judgment between narrative and "concrete" benefits. The intention is merely to clarify that different types of benefit are present in different aspects of BGS play and PP2.

What is BGS?

Each star system in the E:D model of our Milky Way galaxy which is populated, i.e contains human built structures, has a government. That government is run by the (local branch of a politcal) minor Faction which has the most influence in the system at the time. Each faction, and thus also the government, has attributes. These are affected by player actions.

Each populated star system also has an economy influenced by the types of structures built within it and the volume of trade. Surface ports can be constructed for agriculture or mineral extraction, for example. Star ports may have markets. Production of and trade in commodites in the system is its economy.

How it is that this is precisely modeled is not the topic of this series. The Background Simulation (BGS) is a consistent set of daily calculations run across all populated systems. It applies changes to the attributes of political factions, including the economy, of all populated systems based upon the actions of players in the E:D game since last the BGS ran.

The BGS is a daily “tick”, “live”, political economy model of the political factions of the populated systems in the galaxy.

PP2 and BGS

E:D's lore provides three named Super Powers (Federation, Empire, Alliance) and the 'outsiders' quasi-Super Power of "Independent". These are almost entirely mechanically unrelated to PP2, with the exception of the availability of two different Super Power ships as components of technologies made available to Commanders in PP2.

BGS is entirely mechanically disconnected from Super Powers. The connection is only by lore, the game's story.

In PP2, a Commander pledges to one of 12 Powers represented by famous non-player characters (NPCs). Each of those Powers is allied to one of the 4 Super Powers. This provides a narrative relationship, placing Powers within the Super Power story arc of E:D.

A Commander receives benefits from the Power to which they have pledged by gaining Reputation ranks measured in Merits (points). Merit earning activities (Missions) increase the Influence which the Power has over star systems while also progressively raising the Commander's rank as Merits are earned.

In BGS, minor Factions vie for controlling Influence over populated star systems. The most influential minor Faction in a system forms the government, and thus government type, as defined by the Faction's government type preference.

PP2 is an overlay, working above or beside the BGS, with concrete benefits for a Commander. At the Power Play layer, system influence data presented as cumulative influence for the Power is updated once per "weekly" tick. At the BGS level, each system is updated on a "daily" tick. This hints at their partial relationship. The connection between PP2 and BGS is mechanically unclear. The narrative commonality is via the "Allegiance" attribute to a Super Power, present in both Powers and minor Factions. (The qualifier 'minor' is not descriptive of Factions. There are no “major factions”. Henceforth, minor Faction is just written as Faction.)

An interesting difference between Powers and Factions is that a Faction declares a government type preference. A Power does not. Neither do Super Powers. Yet, the government type has a direct affect on a system in which it governs. Anarchist governments have a unique security attribute of None. The manner of resolution of conflicts between political factions in a system is determined by the ethos of their government. Both of these are of considerable import in “BGS play”, as we shall see.

Each Power is described as controlling a collection of systems. The Power's influence level in those systems are labeled, from some to most, as Exploited, Fortified and Stronghold. Systems in the higher categories provide a regional anchor from which further influence expansion, the creation of newly Exploited systems, can be attempted.

A small mystery exists for Crashed Commander YesXorNo. How are systems assigned to Powers? For example, listed under Aisling Duval's controlled systems is Aakushu. When composing this article, it was controlled with 74.3% of influence by "1st Galactic Line of Defence", a player requested Faction. The Faction and Aisling Duval are both allied with the Empire Super Power. Why Aisling Duval gets Aakushu rather than the other Empire aligned Powers of Arissa Lavigny-Duval, Denton Patreus or Zemina Torval is the mystery. Cmdr YesXorNo has not identified any researchable, quantified, (i.e) mechanical relationship between this Power and this Faction which thus forces Aakushu to be a part of Aisling's "systems". The simple and plausible answer is that many of the Commanders which are working to support "1st Galactic" are pledged to Aisling.

This little mystery is revisited in part 3.

Interestingly, from the perspective of BGS, an answer to "what is the Faction/Power connection?" may be, it doesn't matter. Who cares? Let's just call it Imperial shenanigans, or Federal, Alliance or Independent shenanigans for other systems.

PP2, Briefly

In PP2, as mentioned, a Commander pledged to a Power ranks up by earning Merits. The primary method for earning Merits is by registering the completion of missions issued by the Power. Weekly batches of 5 missions, when completed, generate a "care package" of concrete rewards.

Higher ranked Commanders allied to the Power receive additional benefits which vary per Power. These include other quantifiable benefits like increased profits for 'in game' activities, not necessarily related to missions. These include bonuses for selling Exobiology data, mined materials or combat missions. Another concrete benefit received as a Commander 'ranks up' are the availability of a sequence of technologies.

The primary difference between the Powers for technology availability is the order in which technologies become available, with two exceptions. Those are the two ships mentioned earlier, which are locked to Powers allied to the Super Power to which the ship design belongs. These are the Federal Corvette [a Federation ship] and the Imperial Cutter [an Empire (Imperial) ship]. All other technologies provided by ranking up with a Power are provided by any power, with the order of availablility being the difference.

From guides for selecting a Power, the best advice seems to be to choose a Power which issues missions which fit your play style. Benefiting from aligning with a Power is a long term goal and best achieved by pursuing the game loops which one enjoys. Because it is a long term goal, spending a little time choosing it seems wise.

FFLN's video on Power selection describes a variance in the Powers as their combination of major focus and secondary focus. Several Powers will, for example, prioritize finance (trade). The variety is then on the secondary focus, of which combat is an example.

These variations are seen in their approaches (choice of missions) for Acquisition (creating initial influence in systems), Reinforcement (maintaining influence in systems) and Undermining (weakening other Powers' influence in systems).

Each Power selects from four approaches (Finance, Social, Combat, Covert) for the 3 activity types (Acquisition, Reinforcement and Undermining). For each Power, one approach is used for two activities. A different approach is used for the third activity, except for Archon Delaine's Power which selected Combat for all three.

[4 examples of the 2 to 1 splits of approach types.]

FFLN's video includes a section in which he examines a specific mission issued for an activity type. He then visits the Pilots' Handbook to clarify the details of that mission type. Via this research one can obtain a detailed understanding of which mission types, including their precise requirements, are associated with the general approaches (mission collections) for a Power's 3 activity types. From this detailed understanding of missions issued, an informed choice of the best Power to pledge to can be based. These 3 collections of missions should be dominated by missions which fit within one’s game loop preferences.

Another consideration is the benefits that ranking up will grant. These too should align with one’s play style.

An additional selection method is the good ol’ “suck it and see”: to briefly pledge to a sequence of candidate Powers to get a feel for the mission types and see if they match one's play style.

A combination of the above should enable an informed choice. One may filter out the Powers which do not focus on one's main game loop preferences, and then trial a few of the remainder.

A Downside

The counter to pledging with a Power is that when one is pledged one gets shot at by system security near the stronghold assets (stations, fleet carriers and perhaps settlements) of other Powers. To avoid this aggro while visiting a stronghold asset of an opposing Power, one must pledge to the owner Power or unpledge altogether. This will cause a loss of all reputation with the Power from which one unpledges.

If this duplicity or annoyance of having to manipulate one's declared allegiance to access some assets causes rust on one's FSD, then the solution is to just not get involved in PP2 at all, by refraining from pledging.

As mentioned, from the perspective of BGS, it doesn't matter if one is pledged to a Power or not. The BGS engine is unconcerned with Powers or Super Powers. The political organisations it operates on are Factions.

An hypothesis to explain the above, potentially confusing but accurate statement, is double accounting. Each commander action, all missions, all sales, all combat in populated systems, have an affect on those systems and that affect is registered primarily against the Factions, and more importantly the ruling Faction, in that system. Whatever accounting is made with respect to the faction, has another entry in a separate ledger for the Power to which the commander is pledged. How this works and how the accounting of these dual ledgers are reconciled is a topic of study. Indeed, the hypothesis of double accounting may be wrong. But, BGS is disinterested in Powers or Super Powers. It cares about Factions.

BGS: The Underbelly of Power Play

With FDev's efforts to reduce grind during 2024, Commanders may be more motivated by narrative or role playing elements of the game than by concrete incentives.

Because almost almost every interaction a Commander makes with NPCs or human constructed assets affects the BGS, learning about it enables a Commander to tune some of their behaviour towards BGS objectives while still benefiting from their actions. Indeed, enjoying playing E:D and engaging in BGS play is about "force multipliers", or gaining multiple benefits from single actions.

Another way to think of the BGS and PP2 relationship, rather than PP2 as an overlay, is that BGS is a superset of PP2. PP2 is dominated by missions issued by Powers. BGS is more expansive. The major overlap, from a Commander's perspective, are missions. BGS includes them, and all of the other interactions.

The canonical guide to BGS is the black box of the E:D proprietary software source code. Outside of that, the mechanics of how the black box of BGS operates has been studied, and measured by Commanders. Tested results have been published in several advanced guides. Nonetheless, the box is designed to be black.

One is advised to reduce one's desire to understand all. One learns what one can and works with that knowledge. A little mystery is a good thing.

BGS answers some of the “why?” questions

Studying BGS is one way to understand why certain instructions are offered by the community to new Commanders, still learning the ropes, to achieve certain tasks.

A commonly offered piece of advice is to sell goods at a market in a system which is in Boom. Markets there offer higher prices for goods. To reduce the likelihood of being pirated whilst super-cruising to the market new Commanders are advised to look for systems with a High security. Contained in this combined good advice is an error in expression. This can lead to a conceptual misunderstanding the BGS engine. This misexpression is unpicked and clarified in Part 2, Nuts and Bolts.

Focus

That BGS play can become deleteriously engaging has been expressed as "BGS play is not a second job!" Taking this warning into consideration, one can learn about BGS and weave interaction with it into the game loops one enjoys. Indeed, this seems one of FDev's intentions in Power Play 2.0, to not have PP2 become a grind with insufficient concrete rewards. Irrespective of PP2, this idea of engagement to a comfortable level is also the core recommendation of this series: learn, understand, augment.

The second main advice echoes that offered in the reference guides consulted, and from experience: if having studied a little a Commander wishes to try out BGS play, they are advised to join a group which is already involved in the activity to further their education. By engaging in BGS play with others one learns if and how it will add to one's enjoyment of E:D.

There is a throttle here. One can ignore BGS and PP2 and just enjoy E:D. One can engage in PP2 for the rewards and not care to learn much about BGS. Or one can learn about BGS and decide to engage in both BGS (Faction manipulation) and PP2. If one falls into the trap of a "second job", one can ease back to PP2 only, or neither of them.

Why take an interest in BGS?

Playing BGS is primarily a narrative rather then concrete benefit choice. It is also fundamentally a group activity, adding a community to one's E:D experience.

If one's purpose is achieving some specific concrete benefit, one should just do that. If one wants to earn credits, mine or trade or explore. If one enjoys combat, fight. The BGS part is choosing where to sell one's mined materials or where to buy and sell one's cargo, in which systems to fight, who to fight, or where to sell one's exploration (or exo-bio) data. Selling and combat are inputs into the changes which the BGS engine makes on Factions and their states. Over time, these affect the ownership of stations and settlements and which Faction governs a system.

Assets

Human constructed structures within populated systems which cannot be moved between systems are known as assets in BGS play. Fleet carriers are movable assets and can be owned by Commanders. While they are technically assets, they are not intrinsically assets in BGS play because they are player owned rather than Faction owned. BGS play is about Factions and their governments.

Just as one cannot create stars or planets, one cannot create starports, terminals or surface installations in populated systems (unless one is the system architect, see Colonization below). They are an unchanging asset list. It is the Faction which owns them which changes.

The new Colonization expansion, to be beta tested in 2025, will allow for gravity well fixed asset creation in new systems outside of those already populated. This will no doubt be very interesting, but it is not BGS play (yet). BGS play is about controlling which Factions own the existing, fixed assets in systems, which type of government rules a system containing those assets, and the states of that system's government, for a collection of "managed" systems.

BGS group play is about ruling a fiefdom in the Bubble.

Factions and a Misconception

Factions come in two varieties, player requested or not. The BGS makes no distinction between them.

A potential mistake when thinking about BGS play is that one needs to "own" a player requested minor faction to be involved in managing it. One owns one's Commander (or perhaps multiple) which owns some ships. One could be delegated the privilege to edit some properties of a player requested minor faction. One cannot "own it".

Factions are to be manipulated. If one plays BGS one will be manipulating tens of factions within no time. Why confuse oneself thinking that one should or can "own" them?

The in-game construct for collaborating to manipulate Factions is the Squadron. As shall be presented, the purpose of a Squadron is mostly narrative and diplomacy. The core assets of a BGS player group are its Commanders and a Discord server (or other Commander communications facilities) via which objectives can be coordinated. A Squadron or Squadrons is/are useful, but not essential. Understanding, a plan, and coordination are the key ingredients.

The Roleplay

One can play E:D and BGS as an idealist, proclaiming peace and prosperity and believing in the good of humanity. To do so is to play with one hand tied behind one's back. BGS play is for all comers, those who connive and undermine, and those who promote and laud. The mainstay is their cooperation.

Coordinators behind a group playing BGS are better equipped if they have capabilities from all aspects of E:D play within the group. The collective benefits from miners, traders and explorers, and pirates, smugglers and assassins with those capabilities and skills applied in synergy towards objectives.

Some BGS operatives, to borrow a phrase from former CIA Director Pompeo, "lie, cheat and steal". The real world analogy for player groups behind BGS manipulation would be the US State Department and CIA, or the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and MI-6, or the Kremlin and SVR. Which Faction (nation/political party) shall we manipulate today?

One chooses the roles which suit one's mood on the day, and acts in concert with the objectives of the group. Or, one just does other things. But, if one chooses to join a BGS group, one commits to not intentionally act against its objectives.

E:D has one golden rule:

Never fly without a re-buy

Working with a BGS group adds another:

If you betray your group, expect a response

Welcome to the James Bond version of E:D.

What is possible?

With a player group composed of a coordinators unit, a few dedicated operatives and a group of others who will assist in operations requiring more effort, the player group can control the Factions in a collection of systems without owning any of them.

The Factions and assets in a collection of systems can be manipulated to control which Factions own which assets and the states of those systems (or more correctly, their governments, as we shall see). One may be in Boom to aid prices when selling trade goods or mined materials. Another might be an anarchy to allow low risk combat missions. Another might have a black market for the sale of pirated goods.

The concept is that some concerted effort by a relatively small group of players can maintain a set of Factions governments’ ownership of facilities in a region in a manner which supports the group's play styles. This is a "tangible" benefit approach. To it can be added a story to provide meaning.

The bubble is yours to do with as you wish. Be warned that other groups are also doing this. It is best to avoid treading on each other's toes. Diplomacy is important. As we shall see in Part 3, that is easier said than done and partially speaks of the timing for the PP2 and Colonisation expansions.

If one chooses to aid in ruling a fiefdom, one becomes familiar with the assets and systems in and around it. One has interest in them. It becomes "your" group's part of the Bubble.

The Counter, or Why to Not Give a Damn

A Commander and friends who do not care about BGS just ignore Factions. They treat the assets (starports etc.) in the Bubble as services: places to buy ships, sell data, park their ships etc.. Assets are sufficiently numerous that a service one desires is never too far away.

PP2 has its own narrative reward and provides concrete benefits. Perhaps community goals, both global and those of smaller communities are of sufficient of interest for a Commander and friends. Buckyball racing or other player group activities may provide the additional "spice" to the galaxy. If this satisfies, great.

BGS play adds complexity and focused group play. It also adds nuance and territory. One would hope that the group one joins would also offer a narrative and role play reward, with perhaps some concrete rewards too.

References

All references/resources are listed here in this first article.

BGS Guides

The Complete Elite Dangerous Background Simulation Guide 2024, Cmdr Purrfect [Andrew van der Stock, Sirius Inc CEO], 2024 Edition v2.0 [TCG]

PDF
This is the primary source for the article series. Hint: Download the PDF.

The Powerplay Guide – Elite: Dangerous, REM Industries, 2019-08-17

A FULL BGS GUIDE TO ELITE: DANGEROUS, CMDR NewkTV, The Forgotton Inititative, 2018-10-17

The Elite: Dangerous Background Simulation, Factions, and Powers Guide, Nova Force

Elite: Dangerous 3rd Party Websites

Inara

Elite BGS

ED Star Map

One can search systems for security and faction state

Merit Miner

A website for optimizing merits from mining, via selecting mining and selling lcoations. [h/t The Buur Pit]

Mission Types / Power Play Activities

Missions, New Pilot Initiative (NEWP), last updated 2024-12-27

Mission Types, Colonia Region System Database,

NB: This data is applicable for the entire galaxy. There are 69 mission types listed, only the first 50 of which are displayed by default on the page.

Power Play 2.0 Activities, Nowski, Frontier Forums [h/t The Buur Pit]

Power Play 2.0 discord servers and sub-reddits. [h/t The Buur Pit]

Player Minor Factions and States

Player Minor Faction, E:D Fandom Wiki

Registration etc.

How do i make a player minor faction?, E:D Forums, 2023-05-29

Answer: you cant
These references are provided as official responses to the no longer possible “player” minor Faction, and that there is no damn difference between them and other Factions.

Establish your own Minor Faction and FAQ, E:D Forums, 2015-08-25 [No longer]

New Player Minor Faction System, E:D Forums, 2018-07-25

States, Elkyri, Reddit

Community Resources

Lave Radio