Powerplay Can FDev Finally do a proper balance/fix patch... it's getting silly now...

[Mordred115]

1. Rares Trading and other methods are still disabled with no update on whether any progress has been made to bring them back.
2. Only 2 activities are worth doing in terms of merits per hour, Mining and TOS-breaking trade, and occasionally some niche combat scenarios.
3. Trade itself is garbage in the way it is implemented and penalizes you for actively playing the game.
4. Player numbers in terms of powerplay are down due to colonization, which has basically brought everything to a standstill. To remedy this, I would suggest parity between the leaderboard and system merits.
5. We should be able to able to colonize as a power (this would be based on the power that the colonization contact is in). Since the Colonization update 8000 systems have been colonized, Since PP 2.0 launched only 1000-2000 (idk exactly) systems have been acquired...
6. FIX THE CARE PACKAGES I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO OPEN ONE SINCE RANK 200.

 

[Agrippa]

Undermining is also worth it, especially as Torval pledge . But yeah, you're right.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

4. Player numbers in terms of powerplay are down due to colonization, which has basically brought everything to a standstill. To remedy this, I would suggest parity between the leaderboard and system merits.

Or possibly faster than that, even. But speeding things up 4x would make the hauling-based acquisition of a system take about as much cargo as a basic new colony (assuming you're hauling at 1.5CP/tonne with powerplay commodities or non-exploit but very high profit trade)

5. We should be able to able to colonize as a power (this would be based on the power that the colonization contact is in). Since the Colonization update 8000 systems have been colonized, Since PP 2.0 launched only 1000-2000 (idk exactly) systems have been acquired...

Very much depends on what sort of balance Frontier want Powerplay to have, I think.

If they want a (mostly) twelve-way truce and "first come first served" on systems then making Acquisition and Reinforcement quicker (10x, at least) is needed to even slightly keep up with the pace of addition of new systems. (Simply re-enabling rares and escape pods, which were mainly overpowered Acquisition/Reinforcement, then becomes mostly harmless)

If they want an actual fight then keeping it difficult to acquire new systems makes some sense - but they should make an Undermined system instantly switch to its largest attacker, if they have a suitable control in range ... and an Undermined Fortified flip its entire bubble to the new allegiance rather than dropping them, if it can't be supported by something else. Otherwise it's always obviously going to be more efficient to acquire systems no-one else is after to start with, if you have to also acquire anything you undermine anyway.

 

[Niamh Kaminari]

Yeah, rares and escape pods are still off, last we heard from FDev it was "under investigation." Are you guys still actually investigating, or did y'all just decide "eh leave it broken we have colonization to release!"

And yeah holy gross the care packages menu. Seriously like just make it a single list of what you've been allotted and a redeem button and it redeems what there is room for. Why in the everloving mustard is it broken down into separated packages in the first place!? Like the single list and button is not only technically simpler, but more user friendly as well.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Combat as NPC powerplay kills, in general, needs a big improvement... except for the Strongholds and certain scenarios (or when one is plarticularly lucky and finds a good Powerplay SS), there's no point in wasting time for poor random spawns and lobotomized AI behaviour. That activity should offer some challenge and better return for sure.

 

[professor hex]

1. Rares Trading and other methods are still disabled with no update on whether any progress has been made to bring them back.

The most ridiculous aspect is that in game UIs still advise Cmdrs to trade in rare goods and collect escape pods.

 

[Danieros]

Powerplay 2 did a good job of including most gameplay loops, so it's a simple matter of keeping it updated whenever a new gameplay loop is added (if it makes sense). Colonization-hauling to the primary port doesn't make sense to give merits as the system doesn't have population yet - but for additional structures being built it would help a lot to keep up with the bubble growth if they reward acquisition/reinforcement/undermining merits when hauling for those.

That said, it's weird to add Colonization merits or think about post-colonization state when they haven't even finished the "core" PP2 yet - it's been 4 months without further balancing when some activities are still clearly not worth it, escape pods/rare goods remain disabled and the trade formula needs to stop rewarding 1-ton spam.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

I would add that powerplay was clearly intended to create player contest and open battles. And yet the system as it is favours covert operations with no telegraphing of intent until it's too late to counter, to get a result while expending the least possible merits, and focuses on a narrow set of repetitive activities to do that. Meanwhile the "star" content of carrier groups, which should be the site of regular battles, is one of the least efficient ways of earning merits and is almost totally neglected except when players bloody-mindedly decide "we will have some fun this week, merits be damned!", which my group did last cycle. That has to be balanced of course against the fact that they ought to be "strongholds" - they should be hard to take down. But somehow there needs to be better reward for stronghold attacks. Even if there was a larger multiplier on personal merits, that might be something.

Colonisation has the effect of creating a situation where there is always more space for all powers to expand into than they could ever possibly acquire. Colonised systems are generally not attractive for acquisition, fair enough, but the over-ample availability of acquisition arguably directs the powers away from the contest that powerplay is supposed to be driving.

 

[Rebel Yell]

I would add that powerplay was clearly intended to create player contest and open battles. And yet the system as it is favours covert operations with no telegraphing of intent until it's too late to counter, to get a result while expending the least possible merits, and focuses on a narrow set of repetitive activities to do that. Meanwhile the "star" content of carrier groups, which should be the site of regular battles, is one of the least efficient ways of earning merits and is almost totally neglected except when players bloody-mindedly decide "we will have some fun this week, merits be damned!", which my group did last cycle. That has to be balanced of course against the fact that they ought to be "strongholds" - they should be hard to take down. But somehow there needs to be better reward for stronghold attacks. Even if there was a larger multiplier on personal merits, that might be something.

Choke points, by PP2 design, are too much spreaded and not consistent... RIP.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That has to be balanced of course against the fact that they ought to be "strongholds" - they should be hard to take down

Should they?

The Power gets substantial benefits for having them - wider support radius providing over three times the supported volume of a Fortified; Stronghold Carrier for easy access to outfitting; local production of reinforcement and undermining commodities rather than having to go back to HQ; potential to pad them out to +1M CP to make sneak attacks impractical (plus the ability to drop even more onto them during the week as a temporary boost above 1M)).

If the aim is for Powerplay to be a fight between powers - and I remain uncertain - then "hard to maintain, easy to lose" has to be the set up on Strongholds as payment for those benefits, or "reinforce all your systems to Stronghold, then realise that everyone else has done the same and there's nothing practical left to attack" is the almost certain long-term outcome.

 

[Mordred115]

Should they?

The Power gets substantial benefits for having them - wider support radius providing over three times the supported volume of a Fortified; Stronghold Carrier for easy access to outfitting; local production of reinforcement and undermining commodities rather than having to go back to HQ; potential to pad them out to +1M CP to make sneak attacks impractical (plus the ability to drop even more onto them during the week as a temporary boost above 1M)).

If the aim is for Powerplay to be a fight between powers - and I remain uncertain - then "hard to maintain, easy to lose" has to be the set up on Strongholds as payment for those benefits, or "reinforce all your systems to Stronghold, then realise that everyone else has done the same and there's nothing practical left to attack" is the almost certain long-term outcome.

If they make things easier to lose they need to make things easy to gain... and there lies the problem... each system requires a minimum of 1 million leaderboard merits to be considered "safe" which includes 480k actually getting the system and almost the same again pushing it up in the first week..., you get double penalized for the expansion, whilst attackers only have to hit it once.
Also considering the way snipes work at the moment, smart undermining is already impossible to deal with as it is undetectable.
The only way I see things becoming less stagnant is if they open the flood gates.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Also considering the way snipes work at the moment, smart undermining is already impossible to deal with as it is undetectable.

Sure, and there is the ultimate question: would the players supporting the Powers prefer to play a game where they can't do much to undermine other Powers (but are mostly invincible themselves), or do they want to play a game where other Powers can be easily attacked (but they're equally highly vulnerable)?

I think Frontier know the answer to this one too...

 

[Darth Ender]

Sure, and there is the ultimate question: would the players supporting the Powers prefer to play a game where they can't do much to undermine other Powers (but are mostly invincible themselves), or do they want to play a game where other Powers can be easily attacked (but they're equally highly vulnerable)?

I think Frontier know the answer to this one too...

neither. because players know that without power collapse and players promoting factions into new powers, pp is completely and utterly pointless. just an endless futile repetition loop of the same basic grind activities.

pp is a social game mechanic that was supposed to give players agency in this bgs background aspect of the game that really doesn't care if the players do anything. and 2.0 didn't even bring in a better way to socialize and organise common player driven activity and goals. it all still happens off site and out of game.

the question is not what anyone thinks some players want. it's really what does fdev actually want. they should be able to articulate what they want from features, show it doing that and players should be able to (and want to) replicate that.

the discrepancy between their vision ( which we must assume exists and involves things not breaking, players being happy engaging in it and coming back for more) and how players seem to be actually playing the game is the problem. and it's not a player problem. why does that always seem to happen? what does fdev seem to not get about their playerbase? why can't they not design features that lend themselves to this? i think much of the problem comes back to the game relying on extremely simple activities being all you can do, which limits how a feature can be balanced to just repetition and time sinks.

 

[Mordred115]

neither. because players know that without power collapse and players promoting factions into new powers, pp is completely and utterly pointless. just an endless futile repetition loop of the same basic grind activities.

An Idea I had for powerplay to give it a bit more value and meaning beyond number get bigger, is scaling the rewards based on the number of systems/amount of population your power has, which would encourage fighting over high value systems. This then gets divided up using the same sort of reward ratios that the current leaderboard uses.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Should they?

The Power gets substantial benefits for having them - wider support radius providing over three times the supported volume of a Fortified; Stronghold Carrier for easy access to outfitting; local production of reinforcement and undermining commodities rather than having to go back to HQ; potential to pad them out to +1M CP to make sneak attacks impractical (plus the ability to drop even more onto them during the week as a temporary boost above 1M)).

If the aim is for Powerplay to be a fight between powers - and I remain uncertain - then "hard to maintain, easy to lose" has to be the set up on Strongholds as payment for those benefits, or "reinforce all your systems to Stronghold, then realise that everyone else has done the same and there's nothing practical left to attack" is the almost certain long-term outcome.

Something like designating tasks that could be done to re-enable some of the undermining activities that are disabled for strongholds, or reduce their system strength, might go some way toward "unlocking" strongholds as targets. E.g. designate three exploited systems that if lost unlock the stronghold. So yes you have a strong system, but you have to manage it to keep it strong.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Sure, and there is the ultimate question: would the players supporting the Powers prefer to play a game where they can't do much to undermine other Powers (but are mostly invincible themselves), or do they want to play a game where other Powers can be easily attacked (but they're equally highly vulnerable)?

I think Frontier know the answer to this one too...

I think FD tried to do both- after all you had the rebuy perk added. The issue is FD folded faster than origami day when you had early streamer feedback (mistake one) and not dialled up the difficulty / tuned Power NPC responses (mistake two) to make PP seem alive and dangerous enough to make failiure actually possible. The third problem is that for some reason Powerplay should have (at times) Thargoid level NPC retaliation for those high rollers, but doesn't.

Sadly just as with PP1 failiure is really collective failiure where its positive pure effort rather than people being intercepted / slowed by other powers / power NPCs.

What we have is passive expansion closer to the BGS (just better defined) but with the added overhead of PP tugs of war.

To solve it FD need to really go back to PP1 and have / tune (if it exists in PP2 somehow) costs for infrastructure so that large powers are penalised (the dreaded overhead curve) while also amping up collective rewards for being in the top powers. Ages ago I had the idea that smaller powers might also place bounties on larger powers (to drive merc tendencies).

Ultimately Powers have to be attackable, and have reasons to attack beyond old scores- but also powers must want to risk expansion too. I feel PP2 is almost there, but suffers from reducing a high level conflict (PP1) down to system level.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

6. FIX THE CARE PACKAGES I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO OPEN ONE SINCE RANK 200.

LOL, you've got a number of issues, but this is the one you chose to put in ALL CAPS, as though its the most important one?

 

[Rebel Yell]

LOL, you've got a number of issues, but this is the one you chose to put in ALL CAPS, as though its the most important one?

I've resolved by unpledging and repledging.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I've resolved by unpledging and repledging.

Extreme. I'm over 100 and i'd simply wait for FD to fix it... however long that might take. Not that i'm having the problem... maybe its a level 200 thing?

EDIT: Or level 255.... please dear gods, don't let FD have stored rank as a byte!

 

[Rebel Yell]

Extreme. I'm over 100 and i'd simply wait for FD to fix it... however long that might take. Not that i'm having the problem... maybe its a level 200 thing?

EDIT: Or level 255.... please dear gods, don't let FD have stored rank as a byte!

It depends on how many packages are stacked, now I'm keeping around 15-20 max, selling all materials for legs and trading down (or consuming) the others.