Decay seems like a good change. It makes it easier for people to remove PP from their colonies without having to stay pledged and suffer PP for extended periods of time. If the PP players actually care about the system it'll remain hard to take back. If it's just a random one they bagged you'll get them removed and carry on with life.
Trailblazers | Update 3.4
- Thread starter Phil W
- Start date
Getting rid of merit decay was the BEST change from PP 1.0 to 2.0!
A small group or squadron could actually have a visible impact, but now you want to get rid of that. The last thing we needed is MORE GRIND. "Oh, you've worked hard to fortify this system? Too bad, we are going to decay all of your hard work away!"
It seems some people here like this, but talking with people in the game this morning I've seen nothing but anger. And yes there's people saying they are done with Powerplay thanks to this.
A very BAD IDEA, Frontier.
A small group or squadron could actually have a visible impact, but now you want to get rid of that. The last thing we needed is MORE GRIND. "Oh, you've worked hard to fortify this system? Too bad, we are going to decay all of your hard work away!"
It seems some people here like this, but talking with people in the game this morning I've seen nothing but anger. And yes there's people saying they are done with Powerplay thanks to this.
A very BAD IDEA, Frontier.
Until we know how much decay systems will be experiencing each week we really don't know how much of an impact it'll have. How long will it take a system to go from 100% or near 100% down to the 25% minimum?
Without knowing this, it seems that getting angry about it might be a little bit of a kneejerk reaction.
From the people I've spoken to the general feeling is that these changes seem positive, but we'll have to see how it plays out in practice.
Without knowing this, it seems that getting angry about it might be a little bit of a kneejerk reaction.
From the people I've spoken to the general feeling is that these changes seem positive, but we'll have to see how it plays out in practice.
As soon as it gets hit with a single CP then it is no longer maxed out.
If we are going to be worried about a stronghold being 100%-0%'d in the final hours with no chance of countering, then we don't really have an undermining being too hard problem anymore, do we? And so the discussion would be very, very different.
If a stronghold gets hit by a more realistic 10%-15% and the power under attack doesn't have a timezone-friendly response, then next week it's still a stronghold and can be defended.
Well, I'm not sure the general player will enjoy seeing their impact getting erased to the point it no longer matters what they do because they are not spending their time in the way Frontier wants. Though depending on the way the decay happens it may be obscure enough that they may not even find it out why their system % is actually going down each week instead of up.
This is also valid for undermining by the way - since the decay isn't linear, it may well be either inefficient, or even unproductive to undermine anything above a certain % (or even 25%), as the decay would be doing it for you.
I'm not talking about merit numbers of a top 10 level player, but numbers of the average/casual player, for who even an Exploited 1% weekly decay is a meaningful part of their impact being switched from their active effort into obscure decay mechanics. This isn't the thargoid war, it should be exclusively player vs player efforts on both sides of the tug of war.
This is why I'm suggesting at looking at the root cause - why people aren't attacking, regardless of success.
We're getting all these macro-level changes that make PP2 more complex than PP1 ever was, but with all due respect it still feels they haven't done the foundation work, which would be looking at each activity, checking how fun it is, and how many merits it can do across all "skill" levels. So a hauler does 1 ton trade reinforcing versus an underminer spending 2-3 minutes unreliably searching for a single power ship to kill... which will be worth the merits that player spent reliably trading 10 tons of their 750+ cargo space, and soon 50% bigger cargo hold.
changes seem almost good, except that the development of pp has lately looked a bit like building a coffin for smaller groups and individuals.
blaze your own trail, but only if you are part of a group large enough to outgrind the system?
blaze your own trail, but only if you are part of a group large enough to outgrind the system?
I get that you want us to fight, but...a huge part of the problem is just... how do we actually DO it? what am I supposed to actually do?
I tried trading in some biowaste and I got a glorious ~2 merits per ton(as my Power's focus activity!). That's about 8000 merits per hour of undermining, in a perfectly efficient cutter. Of course I can add a few holoscreen hacks here and there, but that rapidly loses you local rep which makes that approach self-defeating, AND the range on recon limpets is short enough you can't even hack AND dock to trade at the same time! Plus, you end up burning hundreds of millions on donation missions just to keep your rep up, and you have to sacrifice a lot of cargo space to carry the limpets and controllers, too.
Meanwhile LYR is pulling 144,000 merits per hour rare goods trading. The math just doesn't math there. There's a really good reason why sniping has been the main way systems have been lost thus far. In practice, you could TRIPLE undermining and it STILL wouldn't come CLOSE to the effect it would need in most cases. Stuff like Piracy and Smuggling too, which really should ostensibly be prime ways to attack each other, are completely ignored. Shouldn't Delaine, the Pirate King, be making a lot of his merits, you know, PIRATING?
The problem you're really running into here has nothing to do with the balance of reinforcement vs undermining and everything to do with the fact you're basically making combat the only way to undermine - and combat, even in power conflict zones, is a pretty awful way of earning merits, for a LOT of reasons.
For one, power ships are heavily engineered, so even with a fully engineered ship of your own you're going to be spending a lot of time getting kills. To efficiently get merits that way you kinda need multiple players engaged, so the only way is to get a full wing in one system at the same time! But that means swapping ships and moving around which takes a lot of time, time which COULD be spent solo fortifying or acquiring, activities which work just as well solo, and with all players playing at their convenient times and time zones!
This is compounded by the fact you've also senselessly prohibited multicrew players from getting any merits, stopping up the easiest way to get extra firepower and merit earning. It could be an amazing mechanic to have four players in one ship all earning merits, but that, like smuggling and piracy, is completely off the table right now.
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If you really want to make undermining more popular, just make it easier to actually DO.
- Add Smuggling and Piracy as dedicated activities.
- Allow multicrewmates to get merits as long as they shoot something(fly a fighter/run a turret/etc)
- Boost the range on recon limpet controllers to allow simultaneous hauling and hacking(and fix the limpets getting lost, too, while you're at it)
- Buff the inferior merit-acquisition methods, too. Many of the methods of undermining are completely underwhelming.
Power Malware: Uploading Power Malware, for example, takes a prolonged period of time and caps out at something like 24,000 merits per hour WHILE DOING IT (IE, downloading / uploading). For comparison, downloading Power Industrial Data offers ~96000 merits per hour while doing it. A good way of doing this would be a large merit chunk given if you upload malware in all dataports AND a big bonus if you upload malware without being caught. Right now, stealth is completely disincentivized compared to just killing everyone there. If you could get scaling bonuses for not setting off any alarms, not alerting any guards, and maybe even for going completely undetected, that could really encourage people to get out and be sneaky.
Hacking holoscreens is spammy and almost irrelevant too. What if hacking a holoscreen LASTED, and gave a constant trickle of system points for a few days or until it's unhacked? The player would get a big chunk right at the start, instead.
Scanning megaships is a nice bonus but not nice enough to actually be worth doing.
Spamming low-value goods is a fundamentally problematic approach too. It doesn't make any SENSE, for one. Why should dumping cheap goods hurt another power? Why can't the station just refuse to accept them? If they cause them problems, why can't they just destroy them? And what do they expect the defending Power to actually DO about it? What if instead you changed it to 'eject goods near stations'? That way the debris clogs up the space lanes, which at least feels somewhat justified as an attack. And you could synergize that with other bonuses like committing crimes, if you wanted to do so inside the no fire zone. You could even make DESTROYING debris a merit-gaining activity, and spawn occasional trash about 10-20km out from stations, giving players something to do on the way out from a station.
Sorry Frontier, but decay thing really isn’t my cup of tea. My personal interest to engage with PP2.0 is going into bin. 
Instead introducing more ways for do things… you are doing it more difficult and pointless for maximizing defense for defenders. And for small goals with single supporter in ‘low importance’ systems is decay system imo one of the worst decisions, it kills any fun to participate…
Instead introducing more ways for do things… you are doing it more difficult and pointless for maximizing defense for defenders. And for small goals with single supporter in ‘low importance’ systems is decay system imo one of the worst decisions, it kills any fun to participate…
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In Powerplay as it stands, yes. But ultimately it should be possible to attack a Stronghold from 100%-0% in less than a full week (the opposite direction of reinforcement has occurred on similar timescales on many occasions), so someone on Thursday giving it a bit of a pre-emptive boost because they think that sort of attack is coming should be able to do so.
Fully agreed on all of that - if decay is part of a long-term solution it's basically an acceptance that Powerplay isn't a (indirect) PvP system, it's 12 separate PvE systems.
It's not at all the route I'd have gone for - I'd have scanning, bounty hunting, exploration, rares and profitable trade (i.e. things people might casually do) into the "works for Undermining" bucket and let the mere existence of players in other Powers' systems start to put a general pressure on them - but maybe that sort of thing requires some significant work and a client patch and this is something Frontier can do now more easily and purely server-side to at least try to hold back the existing trend to hyper-reinforcement while they prepare something bigger.
Fully agreed here too - and that needs to cover both the personal incentives to undermine as a casual player who's not paying massive attention to the big picture (currently non-existent and a marginally better CP->merits conversion rate is nowhere near enough to matter) and also the incentives for the bigger groups within Powers to actually attack each other rather than spreading out into uncontested space (currently also non-existent). I posted a few ideas on how both personal and strategic incentives might be improved at https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/encouraging-and-rewarding-powerplay-offensive-actions.638571/ a couple of weeks back.
I'm far more hopeful about these changes as a statement of intent than I am about them having any visible big picture effects in and of itself.
Yep. And then add on to all of that for insult to injury, the System Strength Penalty (aka the Undermining Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad Penalty) on most of the higher-population systems.
It's all very well Frontier sticking a 50% penalty on reinforcement merits (but not control points), but if you're in a Very High SSP system, you get a ~50% penalty on undermining merits and control points just for daring to attack another Power, so you still end up behind even if you hypothetically had an undermining method with the same base speed as their reinforcement method.
The real problem is that powers aren't competing just with each other, in practice they're competing with EVERY OTHER POWER AT ONCE.
So even if you invest 120k points into costing another power 10 systems, you still end up losing, because all the other powers have gained 1 with those 120k points they didn't spend undermining, and so relative to all the other powers, you're now 1 behind.
And in practice, even a lucky attack will struggle to get, say, 3x value. The WORST case scenario is when two powers get into a fight; if we both spend a million merits fighting over one system, we're BOTH now behind by 10 systems while everyone who has AVOIDED fighting has won.
Fdev have amazingly managed to create a perfect inverted prisoners dilemma, where basically everyone is encouraged to cooperate. Because attacking their enemy is ultimately self-defeating.
Second that. The decay thing was what made me quit PP1 basically as soon as I've touched it. If PP2 is now having the same mechanics, and the power data thing also being nullified (they play the escape pod game already), I don't see me doing much power-play in the future. That's really unfortunate, it started out as an interesting game-loop, especially with colonization, but apparently it is intended just for huge groups, not for casual players. So be it.Sorry Frontier, but decay thing really isn’t my cup of tea. My personal interest to engage with PP2.0 is going into bin.
The root cause is that PP in general is pitched wrong- initially it was a spicy alternative to the BGS but has been watered down PvE wise. People are afraid to risk anything and view gain as permanent, rather than being transitory. Its the same issue that happened with PP1, the gardening.
An easy test would be to simply x5 all UM merits (or even x10), and x20 murder merits, and make acquiring systems easy- so then PP2 is about the activity level of a power and not the sum territory its held onto. So in this context fortification is slowing inevitable change and is not the end goal in itself.
Fdev loves the federation, unfairly and biasedly treats the empire. Each update concerning the pp increases the coefficients favorable for the federation forces (+ to offensive and combat actions and nothing for the defense on which the empire is based). Today FDev surpassed themselves and under the fresh strengthening of the federation they introduced CG. I don't know about you, but for me as a fan of the empire the pp is dead, exactly until FDev changes its attitude and introduces a fair balance.
The problem is, systems held is the only metric of success. If it becomes much easier to lose systems than to gain them, then powers will just shrink infinitely until there's nothing left - and most players will become demoralized in the process.
You could potentially have some sort of system whereby the higher up the rankings a power gets, the weaker they become to undermining? A core issue right now is that having a bigger power/more systems doesn't actually make you any more vulnerable to attack. All you need is more players than the opposition and any time you might come under attack you can focus all forces on that one spot, then re-diversify when the attack abates.
Alternatively, you could focus more attention into a few key systems. LYR's use of Soontil Relics could actually be a good system in retrospect, because it places the entire strength of their power on a single system which can be attacked. Rather than prevent infinite expansion, you make it a matter of accelerating or slowing expansion relative to each other. So you wouldn't so much fight over individual systems as key systems with special effects or benefits for that particular Power.
Its one metric. Others could be- (outcome / value in the Galactic Standing):
Systems acquired +1
System fortified + 1
System fort > stronghold + 2
plus UM tallies:
Systems exploited > unoccupied +2
Fortified > exploited +1
Stronghold > fortified +2
driving this you'd have:
Powerplay community goals (similar to weekly missions but power wide)
A quick and crazy idea.... Why not have per Power community goals? A community goal is essentially one shared task, so why not have each power have a set task each cycle? For example: Expand 10 systems Gain stronghold for 5 systems Undermine 10 systems until the become unoccupied ...and so...
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...
So PP goes from simple who is bigger to counting what actually happened- a power that is really good at attack and defence will then be more successful than one that just eats systems and does little else. Attack in this context is then globally rewarded.
In an ideal world large powers would have some sort of size penalty where maybe the % of strongholds (acting as C+C hubs) compared to exploited systems feeds into a ratio that determines how easy it is to UM (as lore wise the fewer strongholds the more strained command and comms get).
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Yes. Attacking your enemy (if somehow successful!) decreases their numbers of systems held, but doesn't actually help you directly.
And there's not even the indirect benefit of "you can take that system next week", because you can take thousands of other systems this week without needing to mess around making enemies.
(It's very arguable as to whether increasing the number of systems your Power holds is actually beneficial either for most Powers, except for leaderboard bragging rights, but maybe those are enough)
This has nothing to do with the decay of PP1.0
What I meant was that in PP 1.0 your control decayed. PP 2.0 fixed that, and it was a welcome change. A system should NOT drift downwards if nobody is purposefully undermining it, ever.
The biggest problem here is the number of people getting demoralized due to this change. Elite Dangerous will lose players over this.
The goal of the decay seems to be punishing surface area of systems, but in a way that feels cheap since these aren't players doing it but turning it into a grind against the decay mechanic. But really this is just going to punish the uncoordinated player and small group much harder than the big group/coalition. It would feel much better if there was a big buff to UM CP (not just merits, I don't see the point of doing all these personal merit changes) on a system until a certain amount is reached. Make players do the decaying and make it shiny on the UI so it becomes the first idea of players looking what to do. But again I don't see the point of doing this extra layer of complication when the activity balancing itself still need polishing.
PP1's gardening was due to whole turmoil mechanic that meant needing to undermine the entire power and hoping they're asleep and the one valuable system you want wasn't fortified. Then running out of profitable systems meant no more expanding.
PP2's peacefulness comes from Colonization, since it's adding new systems for acquisition at much faster pace than powers can acquire them and undermining to then acquire a system is less efficient than acquiring a different system that is unoccupied to begin with, so there will never be a scarcity for players to really fight for.