And I'm sure you're very good at it, still, the carrot may be more effective than the stick - leave merit gain where it is (for the most part) in private and solo, and buff the rate in open play.
Farming Npc’s at stronghold carrier’s
- Thread starter Arkman07
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- ascendancy elite powerplay
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200 per Cmdr, you multiplied by an extra four
. Dividing your final number by 4 gives 9000 total per hour for two Cmdrs. That's not far off what peak undermining in PP1.0 was in a wing. But the question is "is it unbalanced" i.e. can two equal sides working equally hard each side of the coin compete against each other. If the answer is no then that needs to be fixed unless FDev's design is that powers tend to lose territory.
But what is the issue? A few people have said this now... but with the diverse opinions in this thread, it's not clear what anyone wants.
- OP sounded like they were claiming there was no way to defend against people in PG/solo.
- that evolved into "there's no mechanism to defend against a stronghold attack"
- that seemed to evolve into "murder is too overpowered"
- that's further evolved to "NPCs are underpowered"
These are all very different issues, with different ways to solve them... so at least we can agree this is hardly straightforward.
First point is just hotel California, so i won't go there.
People complaining about the stance of "just go hurt them back" could have a point, were this implemented in a different way.
But let's look at the BGS and PP1 (to which pp2 is, by all accounts, just a souped-up PP1) as case studies...
Neither of these systems have ways to "defend" against the actions of other players, open or no. They've always been competition to fill buckets faster than the other players.
- want to win a war? Win more fights and kill more enemies than the other side. Explicitly, you don't win by preventing the other side winning wars.
- want to stop the negative effects of black- market trade? You "win" by engaging in more legit trade, not preventing the opposition from doing black market trade.
- want to win in PP? Earn more merits than the other side, don't prevent the other side earning merits.
So there's no "defence", there's just "offense" dressed up like defence. So the lack of defensive options is consistent with everything else so far.
Now maybe there's merit to the idea that the available defensive options for a stronghold are grossly outweighed by the offensive options.... sounds like an issue.
Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's deliberate. My understanding of PP1 was how static the landscape became. Strongholds confer bonuses yeah? So maybe the intent is to choose when to raise a stronghold for best tactical effect, on the understanding that maintaining them against dedicated assault is difficult... and by extension creating a world where its much harder for a group to turtle-up like old PP, creating a stagnant and boring system of play.
Incidentally, that continues to be a massive problem with the bgs... it's just not dynamic enough because it's stuck in those same old ruts.
There's a few things with merit here, particularly around some of the things Rubbernuke says about, say, the flaccid NPCs. Attacking a stronghold should be high risk, high reward... but a good sand castle becomes less stable the higher you go... and strongholds sit pretty high up there.
Because realistically, what would look worse in the local media?
" Three allied ships destroyed in contested criminal backwater""?
Or
"Three allied ships destroyed in high security, stronghold capital"?
Well what do you think the average Joe will do if he gets punished for not wanting to play in open?Blocking enemies... shameful, lol
From this post it's quite clear that you haven't put much thought at all into the relative effectiveness of different PP methods, and are just annoyed because a few opposing players weren't in Open. (Which only makes much of a difference because the PP 'police' were nerfed by the preview people saying it was too hard.)
FDev nerfed the trade and exploration stuff into oblivion, not combat, so it seems pretty obvious that this wasn't close to the No.1 way to earn merits.
Its thinking about a power holistically- at its edges is weak and brittle- but as you go inwards the difficulty should creep up until you have the inner sanctums of stronghold fleet carriers.
Since this is a game it should be harder but not impossible to attack- just reward more and more the closer you go inwards to compensate. Its why I suggested spec ops being more common as you go inwards too- ATR can be killed, but they are a hard stop / restart which disrupts the flow of a game.
The Titans are good examples of this- in that they are hard but not impossible to deal with.
100%. High risk, high reward.
That ties to what I'm suggesting though... that the absence of ability to defend doesn't really seem to be the problem here, and why i (genuinely) asked "what is the issue?".
Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if i spent an hour doing some excessively dangerous operation striking at the core of a stronghold and destroying the best ships that power had to offer, if it could be overturned by orders of magnitude simply by a T9 shipping 5000 widgets in the same time?
If the issue is "stronghold npcs are too weak, but ATR are too much"... that sounds pretty reasonable.
If it's "we can't defend against that" or "we can't defend against cross- modes"... your suggestion wouldn't resolve that, and that's fine imo.
Preventing the other side from winning wars is absolutely what should be the way to win a (defensive) war in any believable setting.
Orcs attacking one of your villages? Gather your troops, march there and kill them. Village defended, war won.
You cannot do that in ED because if your stronghold is under attack and you go there to defend it, you won't find anyone there, everything will seem totally calm and normal. The attackers will be in a parallel universe, totally out of your reach.
At least in 'war' systems you can (as you said) try and win more CZs than the opponents, but you cannot do that in your PP stronghold system because you won't find anyone to fight.
The core issue for me is balance- and a tricky one. You have identified it with the trade v aggro quote and one that FD flunk time after time in the BGS.
Powerplay defence for FCs is really a) opportunistic open defence (as in, you are lucky enough to run people off for that session) and b) set PvE.
FCs are not meant to be impregnable (because how else would you drive them off?) so you are correct in that attack is defence, to an extent.
So in short, both are correct- PP2 is not PP1 where Open would be the ultimate leveler. At most Open should skew merit rewards so that if you do risk it (the carrot) you risk someone coming to get you- and in PP2 past a certain point thats 'free' since merits are redeemed instantly.
No I worded myself poorly I meant 200 per kill200 per Cmdr, you multiplied by an extra four
actually we did look into the other methods we spent hrs looking into it, and no not just me we have an entire powerplay discord for the power there’s dozens of us, my math was wrong I’ve gone back and removed what I said because it didn’t make sense when I read it back, but it doesn’t matter because it’s not actively able to be defended because there’s no way to stop them, it’s just grind more merits than them so it’s offense vs offense really and again we watched it happen when they were brave enough to do it in live, and once there were enough of us there to stop them they went to pg or solo and the numbers just kept climbing, yeah maybe there were more of them in solo or pg to begin with at this point I don’t care, I completely regret even making the post as some of you have just been so off putting, have a nice life.
Like I said... that's not the Elite way. Filling buckets faster than the other people is. Nothing else is like it in the game, so unless there's plans to change that across the board, why would PP2 be any different? If it were, it would be an inconsistent experience and detract from the game.... many such systems which were inconsistent have been removed as the game's gone on.
The "risk" levers on Open are entirely controllable (or not, as it were) though, so skewing towards Open makes no sense... but that's going towards Hotel California.
Between time zones, instancing woes and the ability to clear you instance with the block list if need be, I find all this "but but but... open only! More rewards for open! Punish those who hide in Solo! I need to face my enemy!" increasingly silly.
This ain't that kind of game - it's not so much that the Orcs are destroying your village right now and you can go and defend it in real time - it's more like you come home and find the Orcs raided your home hours ago while you were sleeping. Going to adjust rewards for people not in your time zone too?
This ain't that kind of game - it's not so much that the Orcs are destroying your village right now and you can go and defend it in real time - it's more like you come home and find the Orcs raided your home hours ago while you were sleeping. Going to adjust rewards for people not in your time zone too?
It is, but if you want certain Open aspects like stronghold FCs to be arenas (not to mention Open is the only way 'losing' powers contesting a system can mess with the two fighting it out for control) it needs a carrot.
It isn't that sort of game, no. The core issue is that PvE is not currently functional- its somehow worse than PP1 making it a simple farming mode.
Every power has players all over the world, so that's a non-argument. It's a multiplayer game and the village is not only yours, it belongs to your power. You only need to worry about those Orcs who live in your timezone. Polynesian Orcs will be repelled by Polynesian supporters of your power.
Do FD want them to be PvP arenas though? Or are they just high-stakes PvE (assuming the NPCs were given more bite)?
Both- high stakes PvE with the possibility of commanders finding you. The issue is there is no reason to go into Open because like PP1, no NPC can stop you (yet...hopefully).
The closest we ever got from Frontier was a very timid and careful "the new PP might encourage PvP a bit more" from Zac when he introduced PP 2.0. I've never seen any statement from Frontier that PP 2.0 is "designed for PvP". As someone who never really dealt with PP 1.0 and looks at PP 2.0 with a very fresh and untainted eye, I think this is very much a player fantasy. I don't see it.
Those Taipans near stronghold carriers give you ~67 merits per kill, and they are much easier to kill in Solo because they can be laggy as hell in multiplayer instances.