"Unaffiliated" option in powerplay

[Cmdr Iron Dave]

There is a place for people joining in in powerplay without wanting to be connected to a power.
Talking to others, there are people who don't want to be aligned with a power but also don't want a power to be present in their homw systems and to remain independant.
This option would be useful for people to undermine Powers encroaching on "their" systems.

You could have a link to squadron-faction and even home system for a distance factor for underming efforts. You would have no ability to gain "merits" from reinforcement but could get levels still that could give similar bonuses for trade etc.

I believe this would gain traction as many commanders would enjoy this option.

 

[DemiserofD]

How would you justify if, in the broader political context?

Imagine if someone IRL said they didn't want to be affiliated with anyone? The problem is it only works by the recognition of those other powers, and to be recognized you must be a power.

 

[Cmdr Iron Dave]

I think there are many times in history that groups of people have fought NOT to be aligned with bigger powers.

If you think of the powers as like the Empires of the British, Ottoman, Roman, Ghengis Khan's...
The list goes on. Many countries have fought to not be assimilated into those empires. Most unsuccessfully but people have the right to fight for freedom even if the Powers and their subjects don;t believe they do.

 

[metatheurgist]

Just like how many real world countries consider themselves neutral, they don't need anyone's permission to do that.

 

[DemiserofD]

Almost universally, smaller nations have affiliated themselves with larger ones to protect themselves from invasion. There are a rare few exceptions, but almost always by establishing themselves as powers in and of themselves. Switzerland, for example, largely attained its neutrality by virtue of having such OP mercenaries everyone else banded together to ban hiring them because it was cheating.

So in practice, either you affiliate yourself with a power, or you ARE a power. The rare exceptions mostly happen by virtue of being of no value/where nobody cares about them - which is already the case.

 

[Nidoboros]

Honestly missed opportunity for pirates to not have systems, just go around undermining everywhere and you get access to stuff via legendary pirate chicanery.

I know Grom exists, but this is the unaffiliated kind of idea. Alternatively a natural trade something or other? I dunno.

 

[PilotB]

I believe this would gain traction as many commanders would enjoy this option.

I contemplated this for a while and since there's no lock in. It more or less exists. Just pledge to a power do the work remove your pledge join another one as it pleases you. unaffiliated shouldn't be getting ranks so it works out the same. You get paid for your efforts but aren't locked in between efforts. The only unfortunate thing is doing the sign up stuff regularly to full activate the powerplay stuff.

 

[AgtPA]

Hard disagree. The whole point of powerplay is to simulate the influence that large power blocs associated with incredibly rich and influential sponsors have over the galaxy. A group without one of these political sponsors simply does not have the ability to do anything.

Also,

Honestly missed opportunity for pirates to not have systems, just go around undermining everywhere and you get access to stuff via legendary pirate chicanery.

This is what Archon Delaine is.

 

[PilotB]

This is what Archon Delaine is.

On paper not in game effect.

 

[Nidoboros]

This is what Archon Delaine is.

Sure, one of them. Whichever one.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Talking to others, there are people who don't want to be aligned with a power but also don't want a power to be present in their homw systems and to remain independant.
This option would be useful for people to undermine Powers encroaching on "their" systems.

I think there's two major related problems in practice.

1) Undermining, of any sort, is not a usable Powerplay action in the current design. People might want to kick the Power out of their system, but they'd mostly just get frustrated at how impossibly difficult it was to do so if facing even token opposition. An unaligned group would further be lacking ethos bonuses and probably couldn't have a better frontline penalty than any other Power had.
2) With no systems held by a friendly Power, multiple undermining routes (all of those requiring "deliver/collect from a Power contact in a friendly system) would be unavailable. And a lot of those are the better ones in terms of control/hour.

So unaligned underminers would be strictly less efficient than Power-aligned ones (and possibly worse than the worst possible choice for Power-aligned ones)

The overlap between:
- sufficiently large and coordinated group to actually kick a Power out (the various Pleiades AX groups did succeed in clearing the relatively low-support Antal out of Maia, at a time when some more effective undermining options were available, but it was a fairly close fight even then)
- completely unwilling for RP reasons to pledge to one of the other 11 Powers as a flag of convenience for a single week to generate those undermining points
is probably about zero

So I like the principle - anything which gets more (non-cheating) undermining into Powerplay is a good thing at this point - but I can see why Frontier didn't bother to spend time implementing it.

 

[PilotB]

They either need to fix the crime system so being aligned but not in an area you control isn't so violently obnoxious or make it so that less of powerplay leaks. It's all well and good that you're aligned but you've also shut black markets across large portions of the bubble. I think the desire to undermine and be unaligned comes from those where the benefits of being aligned don't outweight the downsides in many situations and powerplay isn't self contained. So you've got a system that's invasive and impacting your fun. I get the global effects but some go too far and as noted it's a righteous pain to fight so you're going to be working on the maximum cheese approach to undermining. I have to check if I can gather powerplay items while unaligned and then just sign up before the end of the week and bomb a system before removing pledge.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I have to check if I can gather powerplay items while unaligned and then just sign up before the end of the week and bomb a system before removing pledge.

Certainly not right now, since Odyssey data transport has been disabled temporarily.

 

[Rubbernuke]

There is a place for people joining in in powerplay without wanting to be connected to a power.
Talking to others, there are people who don't want to be aligned with a power but also don't want a power to be present in their homw systems and to remain independant.
This option would be useful for people to undermine Powers encroaching on "their" systems.

You could have a link to squadron-faction and even home system for a distance factor for underming efforts. You would have no ability to gain "merits" from reinforcement but could get levels still that could give similar bonuses for trade etc.

I believe this would gain traction as many commanders would enjoy this option.

Back when PP2 launched I had a similar thought:

Powerplay 2 addition: 13th null power for 'freedom fighters'

Some deluded players feel the warm embrace of Powers is not for them. Now, you could pledge to a power and kick them out, but for some thats like selling your soul even more. So could you have a 'null' 13th power- a sort of 'none of the above' which allows you to tap into PP2 but from a filthy...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Rebel Yell]

This is what Archon Delaine is.

More or less... yeah, the King of Pirates (if we ever needed one ).

 

[Cosmo]

There is a place for people joining in in powerplay without wanting to be connected to a power.
Talking to others, there are people who don't want to be aligned with a power but also don't want a power to be present in their homw systems and to remain independant.
This option would be useful for people to undermine Powers encroaching on "their" systems.

You could have a link to squadron-faction and even home system for a distance factor for underming efforts. You would have no ability to gain "merits" from reinforcement but could get levels still that could give similar bonuses for trade etc.

I believe this would gain traction as many commanders would enjoy this option.

Every colonized system needs a few minor factions which are part of a major faction. A factionless colonized system would break PP.

There could be "neutral" factions that do not participate in war, but a pacifist minor faction is a faction in.

It would be cool to have an easy method to create a Squadron-Faction in a newly colonized system. This faction would have the same (or similar) name as your Squadron.

*Corrected.

 

[PilotB]

Every colonized system needs a few factions which are part of Powerplay. A factionless colonized system would break PP.

Powerplay will work just fine and has worked just fine with huge numbers of systems without any PP presence. You're going to have to explain your logic far better. It won't impact PP at all even if there's massive stretches of colonies locked out from powerplay all the powers have enough systems around them and already involved to keep them busy forever.

 

[Cosmo]

Powerplay will work just fine and has worked just fine with huge numbers of systems without any PP presence.

I mean each colonized system will have Powerplay minor factions, because the colonizers and Architect bring the factions. Afaik Powerplay cannot function in a system if there are no factions.

It won't impact PP at all even if there's massive stretches of colonies locked out from powerplay all the powers have enough systems around them and already involved to keep them busy forever.

Do you want colonized systems without factions? Any colonized system with people would have factions too.

If you want a factionless star system then don't colonize the system.

 

[PilotB]

I mean each colonized system will have Powerplay factions, because the colonizers and Architect bring the factions. Afaik Powerplay cannot function in a system if there are no factions.

Those are minor factions not powerplay factions. Completely different gameplay layer BGS isn't Powerplay but powerplay activities can impact BGS

 

[Cosmo]

Those are minor factions not powerplay factions. Completely different gameplay layer BGS isn't Powerplay but powerplay activities can impact BGS

Those minor factions are affiliated with a major faction (Alliance, Empire, Federation) or independent.