Sol Powerplay Update

Phil W

Community Manager
Frontier
Greetings commanders,

We have been closely monitoring the Powerplay situation in Sol and a number of other affected systems. We are aware of a recent increase in undermining scores impacting the powerplay status of those systems, and have taken action to address the situation.

To prevent further impact, we have temporarily disabled system score and merit gain from the on foot transfer power data activity until a permanent fix is in place. On the next Thursday maintenance (19th June), we will return the systems to their appropriate state. Please note that the galaxy map panel for the affected systems will also return to normal at this time.
 

Novarek

Novarek
This is the second time that major exploit involving Odyssey settlement data is happening, and it was supposedly fixed after the first wave of exploit involving them.
Maybe it is time that you move powerplay related activity to server side instead of client side and kill from the root the possibility for such exploit, like really.
 
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Danieros

D
This is an incredible statement for the Powerplay community, not only commitment to fixing exploits but also to reverting damage done. Thank you.

It may be worth looking at the potency of held power data - I think it's a problem that while bombing a system from potentially Stronghold down to Exploited range it turned out to be an exploit, people could still see some plausability to those merits if a sufficiently large number of players were involved, and that's due to how you can hold hundreds of thousands merits worth of data which never expire.
 

BelExandor

B
Danieros said:
This is an incredible statement for the Powerplay community, not only commitment to fixing exploits but also to reverting damage done. Thank you.

It may be worth looking at the potency of held power data - I think it's a problem that while bombing a system from potentially Stronghold down to Exploited range it turned out to be an exploit, people could still see some plausability to those merits if a sufficiently large number of players were involved, and that's due to how you can hold hundreds of thousands merits worth of data which never expi
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Let's hope that whatever solution is reached leaves merits and control points from settlement data intact as a viable game play loop. Powerplay lacks depth as is and removing the ability to drop bombs exacerbates that problem. We are already moving towards a state of stagnation whereby every vector of attack against an enemy power can be recognized and countered from solo or PG mode with armies of alts. The open/solo part of that is of course a different discussion and I don't intend to beat a dead horse but the fact remains that power players need more options for moving the needle, not less.
 

Steven G

S
with PP 2.0, you can switch Power as many time as you want, without any consequences. you just lose the advantages.
I believe some cmdrs leave their initial power and switch to another one just for undermining, and depending of the power, data haven't the same value...
that's a good technic to optimize the value of the collected data, a technic which wouldn't happened with the PP 1.0 rules, and the impossibility to pledge a new power for some days after leaving the actual one
 

KKomrade Sylas

KKomrade Sylas
I think it would be useful for the community if Frontier confirmed if this was some in-game exploit achievable by just playing the game, botting/multiboxing or just straight up cheating through third party software.

One of the frustrating parts about powerplay/BGS cheating is that if it's done in Solo or PG, you can never tell exactly what people are doing and who's doing it. There's always plausible deniability in some way or another. The reason this became a big deal is basically just because they targeted Sol itself which is always gonna draw attention even at the frontpage of the subreddit, but it could've gone on for a lot longer if they used the supposed exploit more sparingly in less important/publicly known systems. Even people who don't do any powerplay and have no idea about it know it's a big deal if Archer loses Sol.

I hope the people that did it get permanent bans from the game though and not just a weeklong or a month-long ban. The whole thing was malicious and disruptive
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Danieros said:
This is an incredible statement for the Powerplay community, not only commitment to fixing exploits but also to reverting damage done. Thank you.

It may be worth looking at the potency of held power data - I think it's a problem that while bombing a system from potentially Stronghold down to Exploited range it turned out to be an exploit, people could still see some plausability to those merits if a sufficiently large number of players were involved, and that's due to how you can hold hundreds of thousands merits worth of data which never expire.
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Maybe it'd be no bad thing to have everything wiped as if it had been through a carrier on a Thursday, post weekly tick. Stuff could still exist so you could sell it, but it becomes useless for merit/CP purposes.

Obviously this wouldn't fix the issue we've seen here where the same systems are being hit with the same volumes of CPs week after week, but turning the powerplay into a competition to see who can horde the most Odyssey data doesn't seem like a direction we want to go.
 

KKomrade Sylas

KKomrade Sylas
Dillon Fallon said:
Maybe it'd be no bad thing to have everything wiped as if it had been through a carrier on a Thursday, post weekly tick. Stuff could still exist so you could sell it, but it becomes useless for merit/CP purposes.

Obviously this wouldn't fix the issue we've seen here where the same systems are being hit with the same volumes of CPs week after week, but turning the powerplay into a competition to see who can horde the most Odyssey data doesn't seem like a direction we want to go.
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The 'real' solution is to give this sort of thing more server-side checks. The client is entrusted way too much for a multiplayer game with competitive aspects like BGS and Powerplay.
 

Angus McSix

Angus McSix
KKomrade Sylas said:
The reason this became a big deal is basically just because they targeted Sol itself
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I actually don't think that's true. In fact, I think that this investigation was coming to a head just as Sol was getting undermined.

I fully believe it was at the point that FDev would have stepped in, regardless of Sol being the target focus.
 

Screemonster

Screemonster
Angus McSix said:
I actually don't think that's true. In fact, I think that this investigation was coming to a head just as Sol was getting undermined.

I fully believe it was at the point that FDev would have stepped in, regardless of Sol being the target focus.
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Yeah, people had noticed and raised tickets with FDev weeks ago about other systems - like the massive undermining bombs that hit Hip 97950 weeks ago which shouldn't be possible given the permit lock that's in place.
 

sakata_baba

S
Angus McSix said:
I actually don't think that's true. In fact, I think that this investigation was coming to a head just as Sol was getting undermined.

I fully believe it was at the point that FDev would have stepped in, regardless of Sol being the target focus.
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it wasn't
investigation was done by playerbase and a group of representatives from all powers and major groups collected, talked over, compiled data, send it to f-dev and then they reacted.

all of april and may, some systems were hit with increasing merit bombs. nobody moved until sol was starting to get hit.
i understand how it happened, f-dev has a lot on it's plate.
 

Rebel Yell

Rebel Yell
Screemonster said:
Yeah, people had noticed and raised tickets with FDev weeks ago about other systems - like the massive undermining bombs that hit Hip 97950 weeks ago which shouldn't be possible given the permit lock that's in place.
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I hope that gets sorted as well, unless something else happened (but I doubt that, at this point).
 
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