It can not come soon enough! So very excited!
Powerplay 2.0 : what we know from partners' streams
- Thread starter Bard Voronwe
- Start date
I'd suggest its been more profitable than 'proper' trading for quite some time, particularly after the arrival of Thargoid Scouts.
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I don't understand why you would counterpoint an obvious and possibly fatal flaw in the new system everyone's foaming about. Every heroic effort by legitimate players will be a source of deep suspicion on the part of their opponents unless things like this are mitigated. It's one of the things that killed 1.0, where it wasn't even profitable.
Whilst I understand it definitely could end up being a problem, fdev has always struggled to balance conventional human combat in terms of risk vs reward. I wouldn't be surprised if it starts out like the beginning of the Thargoid War, where they massively overestimated how much players could do. (though that may have been intentional), In my experience, 30 mins of dedicated farming usually equates to 2 maybe 3 hours of AFK farming in a high res. As long as we ALL agree not to use underhanded tactics, things should be fine, but I don't see it becoming prevalent as I don't think it will be worth it for most.
No idea if thargoids will count towards PP 2.0, I would assume they would have to be farmed in the system you are trying to boost.
A lot of it will depend on the balance between "background" and "foreground" Powerplay activities
- scanning ships, collecting bounties, trading high-value goods, exploration data, etc. are all things that will probably happen more because someone who is pledged happens to be doing them, than because they're part of an intentional plan
- obviously anything that involves "pick this thing up from a Fortified/Stronghold system and take it elsewhere" or "destroy Power NPCs" or "raid Stronghold Carriers" is going to be much more intentional.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me if the "background" things had a much lower merit rate than the "foreground" things; their purpose primarily being to keep the system moving and encourage people to stay pledged for a gradual set of rewards.
In that case AFK farming isn't necessarily a problem - if you can counter 24 hours of farming with one Odyssey malware upload run, or a bunch of Power commodity deliveries, it's going to be near irrelevant in any system anyone actually cares about fighting.
On the other hand, if it's more powerful than that and actually a competitive possibility...
But equally, it's the sort of thing where Frontier can just rebalance it downwards if it turns out to be a problem. There are going to be balance issues anyway from all sorts of causes so the first few months at the very least are going to be both players and Frontier getting used to the system rather than anything likely to have long-term effects on the results.
- scanning ships, collecting bounties, trading high-value goods, exploration data, etc. are all things that will probably happen more because someone who is pledged happens to be doing them, than because they're part of an intentional plan
- obviously anything that involves "pick this thing up from a Fortified/Stronghold system and take it elsewhere" or "destroy Power NPCs" or "raid Stronghold Carriers" is going to be much more intentional.
It certainly wouldn't surprise me if the "background" things had a much lower merit rate than the "foreground" things; their purpose primarily being to keep the system moving and encourage people to stay pledged for a gradual set of rewards.
In that case AFK farming isn't necessarily a problem - if you can counter 24 hours of farming with one Odyssey malware upload run, or a bunch of Power commodity deliveries, it's going to be near irrelevant in any system anyone actually cares about fighting.
On the other hand, if it's more powerful than that and actually a competitive possibility...
...there's no chance of this one going through. There's not even a way to contact all players to ask them; the design of PP means that at least some of the time people will be AFK farming for the credits and just happen to be pledged as well.
But equally, it's the sort of thing where Frontier can just rebalance it downwards if it turns out to be a problem. There are going to be balance issues anyway from all sorts of causes so the first few months at the very least are going to be both players and Frontier getting used to the system rather than anything likely to have long-term effects on the results.
One more quick thing from me, in my earlier video of all the PowerPlay screens I missed the PowerPlay related galaxy map help pages (they pop up when you first open the map but I didn't see how to get them back again).
Anyway ...
Source: https://youtu.be/oFPcvZPj3kU
Oh, and by the way, Frontier fixed the Mandalay wings hitbox issue!
Anyhoo, that's it from me for a while as I see a new Buckyball race back in the live server that needs my attention now.
Anyway ...
Oh, and by the way, Frontier fixed the Mandalay wings hitbox issue!
Anyhoo, that's it from me for a while as I see a new Buckyball race back in the live server that needs my attention now.
I have a question about a previous video from you.
Is there a reason why you are not on the leaderboard?
Bro Sab was speculating that the Devs had added a couple of names manually, just to show something. Since the tick I have not seen him or anyone else stream and look at the leaderboard again. Not sure if that is 'live' in the test server yet. Also yesterday test server did get a code update, so work in progress I think
Would anyone be able to verify if this weeks powerplay changes were mirrored across
One of the interesting things in PP2 is the complete switchover of incentives - in PP1, overlapping Control spheres are actively bad and powers try to avoid them; in PP2, if your Fortified system isn't in range of another one, once it drops to Exploited it'll then vanish entirely (along with everywhere it supports).
So as a result there are going to be a lot of powers (all of them to at least some extent) starting on Tuesday with perhaps tens of "loose" Fortified systems which are themselves the only support for their entire cloud of Exploited ones.
This could go two ways:
1) A big frenzy of early attacks wipes out most of the unsecured systems, dropping power sizes substantially, which then have to be rebuilt relatively slowly. The shape of the powers in even a few weeks could look very different.
2) Everyone hastily rushes to reinforce systems and push up Exploited to Fortified to make intermediate links and only feel confident enough to go seriously on the attack a few weeks later once that's done. Attacks are then much slower because once multiple fortified/stronghold systems are covering a region, the only way to take it out is to consistently win multiple systems over multiple weeks.
Precedent is of course with '2'.
So as a result there are going to be a lot of powers (all of them to at least some extent) starting on Tuesday with perhaps tens of "loose" Fortified systems which are themselves the only support for their entire cloud of Exploited ones.
This could go two ways:
1) A big frenzy of early attacks wipes out most of the unsecured systems, dropping power sizes substantially, which then have to be rebuilt relatively slowly. The shape of the powers in even a few weeks could look very different.
2) Everyone hastily rushes to reinforce systems and push up Exploited to Fortified to make intermediate links and only feel confident enough to go seriously on the attack a few weeks later once that's done. Attacks are then much slower because once multiple fortified/stronghold systems are covering a region, the only way to take it out is to consistently win multiple systems over multiple weeks.
Precedent is of course with '2'.
It depends really on how aggressive powers / random players will be, and how easily it is to knock systems back.
Saying that this will also be a weakness for ZYADA - they have multiple powers and at least two were used as proxies, and if they come under sustained attack they'll be gobbled up.
It also hinges on how large powers / randoms deal with smaller powers now that diplomacy will be weaker (randoms won't care) to fend off 'nibbling' at the edges.
But honestly there are far too may variables (in a good way) to truly predict things now, people will be split on bonuses (LYR and Antal being explorer /exo supported for example), 'old guard' FUC, ZYADA, totally random players....my only fear is that the system will breed stability (as in your option 2).
I was going to say because I'd done hardly any PP but I clearly have some merits so should be 3rd at least?
Perhaps the leaderboard only updates on the tick? (or perhaps not at all on the test server?)
Sorry, I don't really know.
Stability does have its advantages though, as if 'taking a system' (or holding it) requires considerable continuous effort, we've now got a limited number of 'flashpoints' in which players are likely to be compressed if factions continue to act in a (mostly) coordinated manner
That would do it. The left column is "last cycle's top 10", the right column is the provisional standing for the current cycle.
The reason (or one of) PP1.0 failed was because everyone agreed not to do X or Y game-breaking thing and then some powers did it anyway, but not so often that it was truly nuclear. Itself justified, in part, by paranoia that the other side were doing X or Y and that summary justice was "required". In other parts just cynically I think. The powers have continued to accuse each other of doing "it" on the regular for 8 years and it still comes up. I can tell you categorically and honestly - and I'm not being hypothetical here - that my side weren't doing it and the other side were. And they will call me a liar and say the opposite. And you won't know who to believe.
You gave a good description of how the real-life PP goes on with the countries of the world.
Yes, imagine, in real life, no government wanting a superweapon that anyone can get, easily. In a game, on the other hand, it is feasible to take a principled stance because the worst consequences (a ruined game that the worst people "win", but not morally) are minor. And the consequences of an escalating downward spiral are still a ruined game - a moral defeat for both sides. But it's also likely that someone will take the cynical stance - and spoil things to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how evenly the consequences are spread out. Now, the better organised and able you are to constrain the ethics of your own group, the more you're put at a disadvantage, because the (relatively) unconstrained opponents will have the advantage. It can be mitigated by a good gamesmaster, I just hope we have that.
According to the surrounding text, the leaderboards are from last powerplay cycle. The test servers have not had a powerplay tick, so whatever effort streamers put in, it did not update the leaderboards.
Attempting to be Machiavellian without actually having read Machiavelli?