Trailblazers | Update 3.4

[Phil W]

Greetings Commanders,

A new update has been released for Elite Dangerous featuring Powerplay improvements.

Features of Note

• New Community Goal type. Future Community goals may require Commanders to destroy specific power-aligned ships within Power Conflict Zones, these will take place across multiple systems and may help to shape the galaxy.
• Further changes have been made to Powerplay, in order to encourage more aggressive play and create more vulnerability and therefore fluidity in Power territory.
  • Control Scores will now decay on each weekly turn.
    • Decay will not affect, or take a system to, below 25% of the current system state.  
      • For example, a system at 100% Stronghold would decay over time, until settling at 25% of the purple Stronghold status bar. 
      • Therefore, Systems cannot change their state via decay alone.
    • The actual amount systems decay is non linear and is dependent on the current control score of the system.
      • Systems closer to the maximum score threshold of their current state will decay more each week than those closer to the 25% decay limit.
  • Merits gained for reinforcing a system will now operate on a sliding scale, in addition to the recently introduced flat defensive multiplier.
    • Depending on how much undermining effort a system has been subjected to in the past 24 hours, merits gained for reinforcement actions will adjust in a range between -20% and +30%.
      • For example, reinforcing a system which has not been undermined at all in the past 24 hours would result in -20% merits gained.
  • Merit gain bonuses have been adjusted as follows:
    • Offensive activity - undermining another power's system: +15% (up from +5%)
    • Offensive activity - acquiring an unoccupied system: 0% (down from +5%)
    • Defensive activity - unchanged

Fixes

• Fix for Power Conflict Zones not starting due to missing faction information.
• Colonisation - Fixed additional causes of systems not displaying flags for initial port locations and not being claimable via System Colonisation.
• Fixed additional causes of console accounts failing to transfer from Legacy to Live.

Please note that system score and merit gain from the on-foot transfer power data activity remains disabled at this time. The team is actively working on a general solution to prevent future exploitation of mechanics such as this to the state of Powerplay. Once implemented, the intent remains to re-enable this activity.

 

[zimms]

At first glance, this looks like a lot of great changes.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Any fix for zero spawns/timezone dependency of powerplay CZs? That's the big killer.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Thanks Phil, some interesting changes here.

Depending on how much undermining effort a system has been subjected to in the past 24 hours, merits gained for reinforcement actions will adjust in a range between -20% and +30%.

So this is on top of the current -35% general reinforcement change, giving a total range of -55% to -5%?
Or is it multiplicative on the general one so it goes between -48% and -15.5% total?

Stop the war against ghosts.

The strength decay changes now give most systems their own automatic ghosts, for when other players can't be bothered to be the ghost. Ghosts for everyone!

 

[Rubbernuke]

rubs hands

Good to see PP2 being adjusted and PP CZs being fixed.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Further changes have been made to Powerplay, in order to encourage more aggressive play and create more vulnerability and therefore fluidity in Power territory.

Can this be clarified? Sounds good though.

EDIT: ah, I see. Thanks for the formatting!

 

[rootsrat]

Greetings Commanders,

A new update has been released for Elite Dangerous featuring Powerplay improvements.

Features of Note

• New Community Goal type. Future Community goals may require Commanders to destroy specific power-aligned ships within Power Conflict Zones, these will take place across multiple systems and may help to shape the galaxy.
• Further changes have been made to Powerplay, in order to encourage more aggressive play and create more vulnerability and therefore fluidity in Power territory.
• Control Scores will now decay on each weekly turn.
• Decay will not affect, or take a system to, below 25% of the current system state.  
• For example, a system at 100% Stronghold would decay over time, until settling at 25% of the purple Stronghold status bar. 
• Therefore, Systems cannot change their state via decay alone.
• The actual amount systems decay is non linear and is dependent on the current control score of the system.
• Systems closer to the maximum score threshold of their current state will decay more each week than those closer to the 25% decay limit.
• Merits gained for reinforcing a system will now operate on a sliding scale, in addition to the recently introduced flat defensive multiplier.
• Depending on how much undermining effort a system has been subjected to in the past 24 hours, merits gained for reinforcement actions will adjust in a range between -20% and +30%.
• For example, reinforcing a system which has not been undermined at all in the past 24 hours would result in -20% merits gained.
• Merit gain bonuses have been adjusted as follows:
• Offensive activity - undermining another power's system: +15% (up from +5%)
• Offensive activity - acquiring an unoccupied system: 0% (down from +5%)
• Defensive activity - unchanged

Fixes

• Fix for Power Conflict Zones not starting due to missing faction information.
• Colonisation - Fixed additional causes of systems not displaying flags for initial port locations and not being claimable via System Colonisation.
• Fixed additional causes of console accounts failing to transfer from Legacy to Live.

Please note that system score and merit gain from the on-foot transfer power data activity remains disabled at this time. The team is actively working on a general solution to prevent future exploitation of mechanics such as this to the state of Powerplay. Once implemented, the intent remains to re-enable this activity.

Some great changes there! Kudos for sneaky colonisation fixes too <3

Thanks Philn and the team! o7

 

[Melanthes]

Oh, that looks good. Let's hope we also get a fix for the unbalanced merits (hauling vs. combat).

 

[Shurimal]

• Control Scores will now decay on each weekly turn.
• Decay will not affect, or take a system to, below 25% of the current system state.  
• For example, a system at 100% Stronghold would decay over time, until settling at 25% of the purple Stronghold status bar. 
• Therefore, Systems cannot change their state via decay alone.
• The actual amount systems decay is non linear and is dependent on the current control score of the system.
• Systems closer to the maximum score threshold of their current state will decay more each week than those closer to the 25% decay limit.

Hi!

Does the decay happen when there's reinforcing going on in a system? Say, if a lone commander is trying to fortify a system, their efforts are diminished by the control point decay making it harder to get an Exploited system to Fortified or Stronghold state? For example, if the commander reinforces a system for 10000 points over the week, but the decay is 5000 points, they need to effectively reinforce for 15000 points for the same end result, and it will be even harder the next week?

 

[WillFrog]

Ah, that explains why none of the Powerplay stuff seemed to be working when I was trying to figure out where to sell my exploration data right before weekly maintenance happened. I'm still a noob at this stuff, but those seem like some very positive changes.

 

[rootsrat]

Moderator notice: Please note this mega thread for any open/solo etc. discussions:

The Open v Solo v Groups thread

I guess they were right, it seems you can never leave. The topic of open vs solo vs groups continues to be a popular discussion. Rather than see new threads being created and closed when duplicate topics alreadys exist, we have chosen to combine these into one easily affordable single...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Hmm. More powerplay changes. Upshot. STOP BEING SO DEFENSIVE!

I do like the encouragement that the best defence is attack!

 

[bilowik]

There are a lot of players out there that really appreciate the additional work you guys are doing for powerplay, thank you for giving it some extra attention, very excited to see how these changes affect the overall strategy and landscape!

 

[Melanthes]

Merit gain bonuses have been adjusted as follows:

• Offensive activity - undermining another power's system: +15% (up from +5%)
• Offensive activity - acquiring an unoccupied system: 0% (down from +5%)
• Defensive activity - unchanged

Now there is one important question: does this affect CS gain or loss at all? Because the 5% we had before didn't.

 

[Phil W]

Any fix for zero spawns/timezone dependency of powerplay CZs? That's the big killer.

This should be fixed as part of today's update, but please let me know if you are still seeing it.

 

[serakfalcon]

• Depending on how much undermining effort a system has been subjected to in the past 24 hours, merits gained for reinforcement actions will adjust in a range between -20% and +30%.
• For example, reinforcing a system which has not been undermined at all in the past 24 hours would result in -20% merits gained.
• Merit gain bonuses have been adjusted as follows:
• Offensive activity - undermining another power's system: +15% (up from +5%

Can the % merit impact be added to PP logs to better help us track system score movement, to help plan how much work we have to do to change states? Or is it actually a control score modifier and not just personal merits modifier?

Please note that system score and merit gain from the on-foot transfer power data activity remains disabled at this time. The team is actively working on a general solution to prevent future exploitation of mechanics such as this to the state of Powerplay. Once implemented, the intent remains to re-enable this activity.

Could we get a similar explicit statement for pods, are they still being looked into or is the intent for S&R PP to be restricted to wreckage.

Otherwise I do think the changes are likely to make PP more dynamic, but I would have liked to see that more led by making UM activities more rewarding in terms of system control score rather than a decay mechanic. As decay mechanics encourage constant defensive maintenance for reinforcement which could otherwise have been used for offense.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Hi!

Does the decay happen when there's reinforcing going on in a system? Say, if a lone commander is trying to fortify a system, their efforts are diminished by the control point decay making it harder to get an Exploited system to Fortified or Stronghold state? For example, if the commander reinforces a system for 10000 points over the week, but the decay is 5000 points, they need to effectively reinforce for 15000 points for the same end result, and it will be even harder the next week?

I'm afraid it's worse than that, the closer to 100% enforcement you get, the more it will decay.

It's going to make it more difficult for factions with lots of strongholds (I.e. the one I fly for), but to be honest, there does need to be more fluidity

 

[Rubbernuke]

I'm afraid it's worse than that, the closer to 100% enforcement you get, the more it will decay.

It's going to make it more difficult for factions with lots of strongholds (I.e. the one I fly for), but to be honest, there does need to be more fluidity

To be honest, something had to give otherwise large powers could coast until acted on, with no penalty for size.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Please note that system score and merit gain from the on-foot transfer power data activity remains disabled at this time. The team is actively working on a general solution to prevent future exploitation of mechanics such as this to the state of Powerplay. Once implemented, the intent remains to re-enable this activity.

In the meantime PLEASE remove the related missions from the weekly assignments. It is really stupid that players are being given impossible-to-complete tasks.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I'd also like the PP 2 devs to consider something like this, for when powers really want to hurt someone:

Powerplay: rewarding hostility and making the Galactic Standing reward power activity

Builds on ideas from this previous thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/powerplay-community-goals-similar-to-weekly-missions-but-power-wide.636156/ Powerplay 1 had a (not fully implemented) turmoil and collapse mechanism that gave powers something to avoid. In PP2 we don't really have...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Powerplay 2 balance: murder rewards far too low (committing crimes task)

In the past murdering NPCs has been nerfed several times, and this has leaked into Powerplay 2 where it is a stated goal for some powers (and I assume a general one for others). This frankly is a bit silly, because murder should be the best way to undermine and yet the rewards are not balanced...

forums.frontier.co.uk