Not been an issue for me - a little over 3 weeks since I pledged, I don't recall being attacked even once so far.
Powerplay kills the fun!
- Thread starter andre3000
- Start date
Then don't do powerplay.
I don't like mining, so guess what, I don't do mining. Easy.
Solve it completely? No. Make it painfully boring for anyone else by putting it 40kLy out? If we only could...
Since the weekly assignments give you something like 2k-3k merits each, and there are five of them, just doing those will advance you those 1-2 levels. So from that perspective it's a modest amount.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
the weekly assignments are boosted tho and finite in number. once they are done they are done . I guess we just have different expectations for what is acceptable progression rate or not. 3 weeks in and not really massive playing (tho admittedly it was significant) and i am over half way to level 100.
It appeared to be that way during the test server phase. However that doesn't seem to be a thing outside Strongholds.
Avoiding opposing strongholds (unless you're looking for trouble) might be a thing, but generally it's not noticeable.
During my 2 weeks pledged to Delaine in Open I encountered 3 Cmdrs. The first was unpledged and didn't seem to notice me, the second was an Aisling pledge in a Corvette who decided that the best course of action on seeing me was to high wake. The third was another Delaine pledge.
Wouldn't Sol and Sirius be stronghold systems? Seems a shame to have less access to places like that
(Rather than guess whether they're strongholds, I should probably go find out...)
Edit: Nevermind. It appears that Sol and Sirius are not Strongholds, at least based on looking at Inara
(Rather than guess whether they're strongholds, I should probably go find out...)
Edit: Nevermind. It appears that Sol and Sirius are not Strongholds, at least based on looking at Inara
Last edited:
I wonder how long before the 'Waaaah! I have a life' guys convince Frontier to make it happen in one day?
I tried a slightly different tactic (which is likely closer to what experienced core miners do): Equipped a larger prospector limpet controller, allowing two simultaneous limpets, and just started prospecting bright yellow-highlighted asteroids for monazite cores (prospector limpet tells if it has any), ignoring everything else, at a quick pace, and only mining those. Asteroids with fissures are very rare, and among them the ones having monazite are rarer still, so you may well prospect 50 asteroids and not find a single one, but eventually you'll encounter one. After about an hour and a half I had this:
(I did succumb to mining one asteroid with a rhodplumsite core in the end, because why not...)
It did give a slightly better merits/h ratio:
Still nowhere even close to millions (at this rate I would need to mine in this manner non-stop for 45 hours straight in order to get a million merits), but I suppose better than nothing.
(I did succumb to mining one asteroid with a rhodplumsite core in the end, because why not...)
It did give a slightly better merits/h ratio:
Still nowhere even close to millions (at this rate I would need to mine in this manner non-stop for 45 hours straight in order to get a million merits), but I suppose better than nothing.
They probably were… before a Thargoid Titan decided to park itself in Earth orbit and also took after Sirius in that same motion. I guess the resulting damage is still being taken care of.
If it's painfully boring for a group five or fifty times your size, what suddenly makes it interesting for you taking months or years to do the same?
Over level 50 in 3 weeks would be over 125,000 merits a week, which would put you comfortably in the "top 10%" tier of your power.
Sure, there might be people putting in 5-10 times that on the "top 10" leaderboards, but you're still putting in more than nine-tenths of your power, and enough to do things like single-handedly Acquire a new system, or make a substantial contribution to the strength of an existing one.
The average (median) Powerplayer active in a week gets about an eighth of your weekly merits - though, of course, probably doesn't particularly care about how fast they gain rank either - which is fewer merits than simply completing their five weekly assignments would do. For the genuinely casual players, the assignment bonuses can easily be 90%+ of their merits for the week.
I agree the progression rates are basically fine [1]; you can fast-track rank 100 in a week if you play Elite Dangerous full time and do at least moderately efficient things to earn merits; the median player will get there in a year or so which is still quite a bit faster than many people get Combat Elite and quite possible to do by logging in once a week, completing only the easy assignments, and ignoring Powerplay entirely the rest of the time.
[1] Ranks being a constant spacing rather than 99-100 being as much as 1-99 in the more usual Elite Dangerous style does make it so much easier to balance!
I achieved my objective;
in 10 days, so averaging 25k merits per day. I was in the 25% bracket last Thursday placed 65th for Delaine over the week. Probably be 25% again this Thursday.
indeed i WAS in the top 10% and comfortably so as well for the 2 weeks i have been in the running.
this week i wont be as i have not played barely at all however i may be in the top 50% despite only playing for maybe 2 hours at most. i guess the vast majority who are signed up do not really do anything for their power as such it is pitifully easy to get high up the rank (for LYR i have no idea if others are different)
top 10 however is a totally different beast.
but my point is, if you are even remotely interested in PP it is so easy to climb through the ranks, laughably so, the progression is easier than in almost any game i can think of..... the only way i think you wouldnt climb up quickly is if you do not try to support your power at all....... but then, in that case, that is likely working as intended no?
surely we should make some effort to help the power if we want to progress?
This really depends on the activity you do, how much time you have to play, and how you want to help your Power.
Undermining actions tend to give fewer merits at higher difficulty than the equivalent Reinforcement action; if your undermining is against a system with an above-Standard System Strength Penalty you get a further merit penalty on top of that, for no particularly obvious reason.
Trade actions are generally quite a bit weaker than either combat or mining, Odyssey actions and mining vary considerably in effectiveness depending on system.
Regardless, while I'll certainly admit to not being the most efficient player, even in the weeks where I had time and inclination to play >1 hour/day I only scraped a top 10% finish once, and wouldn't have done that if I hadn't had ten easy and profitable weekly assignments to get me half of the way there on the first day.
So i think there are 2 things at play here.
1) the ranking.... whether top 10% or not does not really matter that much WRT being promoted in your power. that said i wont like the 50mil credits as a player who doesnt usually earn that many credits is nice
but top 10% is in normal times really high up right? I mean, other than elite i dont think i ever finish in the top 10% in any games i play. i would normally expect to be either really really good at a game of skill to finish in the top 10%, or like in elite i would expect to have to be really really dedicated to put the time in.
2) for going up the ranks i guess the discussion should be how long do we think it should take an average player dipping into and out of elite and power play every now and then to get to level 100. it is possible to get to level 100 without ever getting even close to top 10% in the rankings (which is fine, i think everyone should be able to get to 100 sooner or later not just the top few, and i always hated rank degredation)
i would be fine with it taking a player like that who only dabbles (which these days is not so far from myself for the most part) a number of years to get there. From what you are saying i think you believe it should be much quicker?
neither opinion is right or wrong but it would explain why i think its unbalanced and should be dialed back for actions like mining, rather than boosted to make other actions work as fast as mining if you catch my drift.
but my main point is, in the OP they literally complained that mining was too slow at earning merits, where as i would say mining is the area where it chucks merits at you like confetti.
Last edited:
I find Powerplay 2 to be incredibly perplexing. In a game of:
... that PP2's value add seems to be, for most player's lived experience, a glorified TODO list.
I genuinely don't know if that's an artefact of players, or the game itself. Probably both.
For me, the fact there's rewarded weekly task lists suggests that there's not enough to PP2 to stand on it's own.
- 400b Star Systems
- ~22,000 populated systems
- ~77,000 factions across the 4 superpower blocs
- ~350,000 stations (I don't believe this figure includes the non-dockable installations and ports, so double that I guess?)
- 200+ missions available at any time in (almost) any station
- The multitude of bio/geo/anomaly signatures to discover
- a multitude of USS and other dynamic events
- the BGS and it's conditional effects across the populated regions
- Thargoids and Guardian stuff
- Probably heaps more
... that PP2's value add seems to be, for most player's lived experience, a glorified TODO list.
I genuinely don't know if that's an artefact of players, or the game itself. Probably both.
For me, the fact there's rewarded weekly task lists suggests that there's not enough to PP2 to stand on it's own.
The issue for PP2 is that it has to bring something new at both the strategic as well as flying about level. It does the former but not the latter, which is essentially rebadged BGS tasks. Its why the Goids were so popular, because you had the tactical part but also the aliens to fight against. PP2 pits you against floppy NPCs with brains dialed back to drooling imbeciles.
People called me a crazed fool for pointing out PP2 has to offer something new, compared to the rest of the game to make it stand out- while the mechanics of PP2 are good, what it essentially done is (PP2) becoming a more rewarding and responsive BGS layer and not done something adjacent.
No, I think it's basically fine in terms of personal progression
- if you want rank 100 in a week and you have lots of spare time and a high tolerance for doing the same task for twenty hours, it's possible
- someone who is putting a lot of time in (probably to Reinforcement) gets there in a couple of months
- an "average" player still gets there in a year or so, and sees significant benefits long before that point
My problem is the balance between activities - Reinforcement is generally so much more effective than Undermining (and encouraged in other ways too) that the "big picture" only really has one possible outcome. Admittedly, an outcome which most people playing Powerplay for the strategic layer seem to want, so maybe Frontier are right there too.
Wait… you’re disappointed with an earned merit rate of over 20 kilo-merits per hour? With Aisling Duval, who doesn’t have a bonus to mining? Were you honestly expecting to earn a million an hour, rather than a million a week full time?
The issue is that its degenerated into mindless monolithic grinding, rather than at least trying to make higher risk but more rewarding tasks.
A while ago people suggested that all of PP should be mission based- after all we already have the weekly missions- which would then equalize Powers and tasks. Essentially Powers ask for job seekers like factions do, and that UM is a mix of current attacking but also 'super' UM from murder (which is already balanced).
Whats happening is FD have done a HAL 9000 and 'cured' PP2 by switching off parts rather than fix the underlying problems.