My Crumby Understanding Of Powerplay

Greasetrap42

Greasetrap42
Okay, I might suck at this. If someone could correct me on my understanding that would be great.

I am currently rank 92 with Nakato Kane and this is what I think I have learned:
  • For best merits and ranking up, it is best to focus on roughly half the weekly assignments you are good at. And mining. And more mining.
  • One hour of mining with a well outfitted cutter reliably gets me enough for almost 2 levels of rank.
  • Mining in an Aquisition System yields much more than Undermining System. (Equivalent metallic ring and hotspot)
  • No other method for merits seems reliable or vaguely worth the time in comparison.

My Ultimate Questions:

1) From a personal Cmdr POV, is any effort to undermine other systems (beyond any easy weekly assignment) basically a poor use of time?

2) Does merits obtained equate to effort in increasing my PP Faction's system progress?

3) If the answer to (2) is yes, does this mean the whole game is heavily weighted towards
a) Efforts in Reinforcement Systems, rather than expanding through undermining?
b) Systems with hotspots on metallic rings will get 90% of player attention?
 

Cmdr. Numa

Cmdr. Numa
Remember that a lot of merit earning options are still disabled. And if Colonization launches without full enablement of Powerplay in the patchnotes as well, all I can say is: Shame, shame, shame. But the patchontes are not known yet, so final judgement is still out.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Greasetrap42 said:
My Ultimate Questions:
1) From a personal Cmdr POV, is any effort to undermine other systems (beyond any easy weekly assignment) basically a poor use of time?
Click to expand...
Mining is an Undermining action and works roughly equivalently to Reinforcement mining. Provided you have the right sort of system, and the System Strength and Beyond Frontline penalties are both Standard, that at least will be as good a use of time as any other mining.

Odyssey base raiding is generally most merit-effective as an Undermining action and can get you a good amount of merits (for a non-mining action...)

Greasetrap42 said:
2) Does merits obtained equate to effort in increasing my PP Faction's system progress?
Click to expand...
4 merits (usually) equals one point of control score progress. A few activities may have different exchange rates.

The bonus from weekly assignments doesn't count towards system progress, though the activities to complete the assignments do.

Greasetrap42 said:
3) If the answer to (2) is yes, does this mean the whole game is heavily weighted towards
a) Efforts in Reinforcement Systems, rather than expanding through undermining?
b) Systems with hotspots on metallic rings will get 90% of player attention?
Click to expand...
There is a roughly 75 million control point (i.e. 300 million merit) weekly surplus of Reinforcement over Undermining at the moment.
There are a lot of different reasons for that, but in summary, yes, the game is designed to encourage and reward Reinforcement (and to an extent Acquisition) and discourage Undermining - on both the personal and strategic levels.

b) is probably false at least in terms of where Powerplay merits are directed in total as the organised groups probably manage the majority of merits and may have plans other than gaining personal rank which aren't compatible with "all mining all the time".
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
Wake scanning (using a fast wake scanner) combined with picking up 750 cps every half hour if you factor in 2 care packages gives about 20k of merits give or take. But it's boring !
 

Patz

P
Greasetrap42 said:
1) From a personal Cmdr POV, is any effort to undermine other systems (beyond any easy weekly assignment) basically a poor use of time?
Click to expand...

From my personal POV : the game has not enough clarity on how it works, so yes it's a too often waste of time. Ex: the game does not tell you that collecting wreckage components and blackboxes in an enemy system will earn zero merits if you bring them to your power contact in the enemy system. You have to go to a friendly system first. But for mining you have to sell in the SAME enemy system (if i understand https://heatmap.sotl.org.uk/powers/refcard correctly)

/rant
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
I refer mining to :
 

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