Not for long. With the new population update we have been rising .5 billion a week and we have tons of earthlikes now.
Powerplay Weekly Statistics
- Thread starter Ian Doncaster
- Start date
Nevermind.... already passed it.
Oddly, most have no bgs faction added. It seems most players are not in a squadron pledged to one.
The Political leaderboard gets about a quarter of the participation of the "big 3", which probably isn't a terrible proxy for how many people are in faction-aligned squadrons.
Out of curiosity. How many are you counting for largest faction when you only include systems with population.
Currently I have you with 1247 populated systems (117 of which were pre-colonisation) and 1416 total systems.
Week 28 keeps up the same rules as last week, and a similar outcome, in aggregate at least.
Of course, without over half the week's net Acquisitions coming from just two powers, it'd have looked a lot slower. Torval's gain is in some ways more significant here, as it keeps her ahead of the 6th-placed minor faction on system count.
Net reinforcment and total CP increase is relatively low, compared with many previous weeks. As a result, the "time to fortify" estimates continue to increase rapidly - though for now, do manage to still project a finite timescale.
Overall, the impact of the balance changes so far have been fairly small
- reducing reinforcement merits without reducing CP impact has seen little overall change to the ratio
- re-enabling rares (and therefore providing an alternative fast convenient acquisition method) has given a new outlet for peaceful tendencies, though the increase isn't huge
Much more significant changes will be needed if Frontier want a fight.
| Current value | Change from last cycle | |
| Week | 29 | +1 |
| Total System Count | 10,960 | +128 |
| Stronghold Count | 785 | +12 |
| Fortified Count | 1,806 | +23 |
| Exploited Count | 8,369 | +93 |
| Total Estimated CP Value (approximate cost to build the current structure from nothing) | 3,138,425,000 | +41,075,000 |
| Cheapest Destruction Cost (i.e. cost to demote all current systems to Exploited) | 2,092,300,000 | +29,450,000 |
| Stronghold Completion Percentage (current systems, by CP value) | 20.45% | +0.03% |
| Number of Powers gaining systems | 11 | -1 |
| Projected weeks until all occupied systems are Fortified or better (using last four weeks to extrapolate, system count model) | 449 | +129 |
| Projected weeks until all occupied systems are Fortified or better (using last four weeks to extrapolate, control point model) | 127 | +34 |
| Reinforcement : Undermining ratio (CP) | 6.1 | +0.1 |
| Acquistion target estimate | 19,416 | +402 |
| Total net reinforcement estimate (CP) | 36,577,488 | -3,043,384 |
| Minor Factions larger than smallest Power | 5 | == |
| Powers smaller than largest Minor Faction | 9 | == |
Net reinforcment and total CP increase is relatively low, compared with many previous weeks. As a result, the "time to fortify" estimates continue to increase rapidly - though for now, do manage to still project a finite timescale.
Overall, the impact of the balance changes so far have been fairly small
- reducing reinforcement merits without reducing CP impact has seen little overall change to the ratio
- re-enabling rares (and therefore providing an alternative fast convenient acquisition method) has given a new outlet for peaceful tendencies, though the increase isn't huge
Much more significant changes will be needed if Frontier want a fight.
FD will have to ask- what are they fighting over? Right now PP2 is essentially BGS expansion module V2. In PP1 (at a design level) you had a life cycle of a power- expand, defend and stave off collapse (the latter never really coming in) any way you could. Space is finite, gains and losses potentially rapid.
PP2 while more robust has moved away from that urgency into a more sedentiary loop- there is no reason to expand just as there is no real reason to attack other than for player volition. While this is great for player agency at the same time that also strips away any urgency or higher goal.
FD really have to put more value on holding certain systems and make actual fighting more effective.
For example, powers that lose say, 10 systems in a cycle lose personal perks (and that the game communicates this to players) and the attacker gains (say) +50% more credits. This hypothetical attack would incentivise powers to attack and defend.
What do we really need is "choke points"... maybe it's not a shared need with others, but we'd like to have some higher level of convergence allowing players to compete on a more restricted list of tasks/activities/systems instead of having to deal with a broad fragmentation.
I.e. we have currently 3 system powerplay statuses (exploited/fortified/stronghold) and just an example it would be cool to have the "most reinforced system" for the Cycle X belonging to each status to become subject to a defensive malus on the following (i.e. like -25% CPs) whilst opposition gathers an offensive bonus (i.e. +25% CPs).
That will promote some kind of dynamics and bring on the table a variety of strategies as well as providing a meaningful number of choke points where players can engage directly.
Indeed. Here is a more fleshed out thread with what I was thinking - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...g-reward-power-activity.637676/#post-10631332
In Switzerland we have a saying while competing "all the spears are to be of equal length". PP has many mechanics that fail in that regard, just like BGS, too. I see the use of last minute settlement data-bombs, I see being out-hauled by orders of magnitude. It's not the loss of a system that concerns me, it's the feeling of dumping my playtime into something that has merit (lol) for neither my pledged power, nor myself (from Lvl 100 onwards, apart from the TOP10 agent ranking). It's a long-term motivational issue, especially for the smaller factions as they will be targeted more due to the lack of being able to mount a sustainable defense. I am late to the PP party, but that concerns me seeing the numbers each week.
I like the idea of conditional CP (control point, system point NOT merits) effects to funnel players to the same system. "Most Reinforced" is probably not a good attribute as for most powers it will be some stupidly fortified mining stronghold but it'd be cool if there were some kind of way of triggering it. Say most undermined, or massive security drop or something. I mean, funnelling does happen at the strategic level but the current balance biases too much against undermining to make it "worth it" to be on the attack, even if a large power is targetting a small one.
I know, it's just an idea to have a simple on/off button to trigger it... I was thinking about CPs "most fortified" because it seems to me that FDEV is looking to limit the resilience of defense lines, but anything else could work as well; as you said it has to help to funnel players to specific system and that is what we do need in the current framework.
On that suggestion thread I linked choke points have kind of evolved as a side effect too- in short:
Based on the victim powers rank, all pledges of a power gain a bounty for each system UMed
If a power manages to fully UM 10 victim power systems they affect the victims perks
The fastest way to do that is to target fortified systems and try and drop dependent systems (a bit like what Tortuga did a few weeks back).
We have about 75 systems that are completed, have population in game, but the market connector sends out 0 population.
Like this one:
inara.cz
What is causing this? I was trying to reconcile our count vs your population one and found this repeating issue.
Like this one:
Snake Sector HX-K b8-4 - star system | Elite:Dangerous | INARA
The companion site for Elite:Dangerous with the game database, market data, trade routes, outfitting, engineers, blueprints, crafting, Thargoid war, squadrons, logbooks, galleries, galaxy information and much more...
inara.cz
What is causing this? I was trying to reconcile our count vs your population one and found this repeating issue.
Consistently so, or just for some people passing through?
Inara doesn't have an update on that particular one since 5 April so it'll probably get fixed the next time anyone running a connector goes through - though unless you go and do that yourself, that might well take another 7-8 weeks, of course.
The reason there is a station uploaded there, is because I went through and landed on it with the market connector. It added the station but no population.
Interesting.
I do wonder how consistent it is long-term, since I do occasionally get EDDN data suggesting that previously inhabited systems now have zero population, and it must have had a non-zero update at some point for that to be noteworthy.
I do wonder how consistent it is long-term, since I do occasionally get EDDN data suggesting that previously inhabited systems now have zero population, and it must have had a non-zero update at some point for that to be noteworthy.
Week 29 sees a return to quieter times, with total Acqusitions falling back to a more normal level
We're back to all powers making some sort of net gain, as while the total reinforcement remained fairly stable, undermining dropped quite a bit, sending the ratio back up towards the older 10:1 level. The 12-way truce may have been shaken gently by Frontier's recent rebalance, but it remains intact.
Torval drops below the 6th-largest minor faction, though Winters stays narrowly clear of both 5th and 6th for now. At the top end, the Dukes may or may not be overtaking the biggest powers, but confirmed populated systems still remain a bit short of ALD's 1412 this week. It won't be long, though. On the other side, the pace at which new colonisation is directly putting new Acquisition targets into range seems to be slowing down, though it will likely still exceed 20,000 before long.
| Current value | Change from last cycle | |
| Week | 30 | +1 |
| Total System Count | 11,021 | +61 |
| Stronghold Count | 796 | +11 |
| Fortified Count | 1,831 | +25 |
| Exploited Count | 8,407 | +38 |
| Total Estimated CP Value (approximate cost to build the current structure from nothing) | 3,172,325,000 | +33,900,000 |
| Cheapest Destruction Cost (i.e. cost to demote all current systems to Exploited) | 2,121,450,000 | +29,150,000 |
| Stronghold Completion Percentage (current systems, by CP value) | 20.54% | +0.09% |
| Number of Powers gaining systems | 12 | +1 |
| Projected weeks until all occupied systems are Fortified or better (using last four weeks to extrapolate, system count model) | 517 | +68 |
| Projected weeks until all occupied systems are Fortified or better (using last four weeks to extrapolate, control point model) | 159 | +32 |
| Reinforcement : Undermining ratio (CP) | 9.6 | +3.5 |
| Acquistion target estimate | 19,693 | +277 |
| Total net reinforcement estimate (CP) | 41,175,048 | +4,597,560 |
| Minor Factions larger than smallest Power | 6 | +1 |
| Powers smaller than largest Minor Faction | 9 | == |
Torval drops below the 6th-largest minor faction, though Winters stays narrowly clear of both 5th and 6th for now. At the top end, the Dukes may or may not be overtaking the biggest powers, but confirmed populated systems still remain a bit short of ALD's 1412 this week. It won't be long, though. On the other side, the pace at which new colonisation is directly putting new Acquisition targets into range seems to be slowing down, though it will likely still exceed 20,000 before long.