Trailblazers | Update 3.4

[DemiserofD]

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.

That would seemingly behoove the addition of things TO fight over.

Imagine if you could only benefit from Rare Goods if your power had control over the source system in question? And, of course, you'd also need to garden the requisite BGS states.

 

[photomankc]

There needs to be a down-pressure on giant powers just ever-expanding. As it is described it is rather weak. If there is no undermining pressure anyway the system is not going to fall through the levels. If you are a small group then there would be little reason in that case to continue pushing to 100% fortified or stronghold unless you were planning a push to the next level quickly. Not sure what the decay rate is but I think its got a solid basis in reality. You don't conquere something and just walk away without maintence and hold onto it.

Personal merit decay was however an abomination in my view, and I would be rather upset by that.

 

[Shadowsnog]

i just hope that if nothing else, then the final version of powerplay will at least have remade descriptions of effects, if not revamped the whole look of this system. this is starting to look weird. do an action that causes an effect, but the effect has this multiplier for your progress and this multiplier for system progress, and this multiplier under this condition and this multiplier under that condition and here are 5 kind of penalties that you can get under these conditions. here are missions that invite you to do activities that progress your power but this actions are actually useless and this mission is not possible to complete and this mission again calls for resources that dont give merits...
i very much understand that we are in beta and we are testing and still tweaking here and there, but this is starting to look like its already falling apart. balancing has been one of my favourite things to do, i understand its complicated and demanding and sensitive, you have all my thoughts and prayers and crossed fingers. but these changes seem to me like forcing the cats to the herd. omitting some effects this could have on smaller scale to serve the purpose on larger scale. giving advantages where advantages arent needed and strengthening whats already strong while taking the wind from the sails of the smaller and weaker. incentivizing questionable things while putting barriers on regular play.

eg: if i have an alt in opposing power, can i now use it to do just the smallest amount of undermining in the system im trying to reinforce, just enough to prevent the decay there and 'comfortably' continue reinforcing?

 

[photomankc]

That would seemingly behoove the addition of things TO fight over.

Imagine if you could only benefit from Rare Goods if your power had control over the source system in question? And, of course, you'd also need to garden the requisite BGS states.

I'd like that if they smoothed out the value a bit so that there isn't exactly 1 rare worth bothering with. Having only 1 just means that the biggest power wins, period. Having a few more competative examples around would lead to more regional fights that might be more dynamic.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

eg: if i have an alt in opposing power, can i now use it to do just the smallest amount of undermining in the system im trying to reinforce, just enough to prevent the decay there and 'comfortably' continue reinforcing?

To what end though? If your goal is just slowly reinforcing one system and that's your one goal, you're probably not who this is aimed at anyway.

Solo players don't seem to be of any interest here, the aim is motivating groups. There won't need to be any messing around with alts as there will already be systems under attack that need defending. That's what's meant to be the focus- getting groups to fight each other.

 

[Rubbernuke]

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.

Decay is allowing attacks to be more effective on fallow systems- given that the solo / small group + PP2 being decentalized means those who have a patch will take care of it, and is little different to a system faction (just you know the UM values).

In an ideal world I'd prefer everything player driven too, thats why I suggest making UM very effective to see. Its why I also suggest linking powers attacking outcomes to galactic standing, so that weak acquisitions (such as from colonization) that are taken back to unoccupied count score wise (and is not restricted to front lines).

 

[Rubbernuke]

i just hope that if nothing else, then the final version of powerplay will at least have remade descriptions of effects, if not revamped the whole look of this system. this is starting to look weird. do an action that causes an effect, but the effect has this multiplier for your progress and this multiplier for system progress, and this multiplier under this condition and this multiplier under that condition and here are 5 kind of penalties that you can get under these conditions. here are missions that invite you to do activities that progress your power but this actions are actually useless and this mission is not possible to complete and this mission again calls for resources that dont give merits...
i very much understand that we are in beta and we are testing and still tweaking here and there, but this is starting to look like its already falling apart. balancing has been one of my favourite things to do, i understand its complicated and demanding and sensitive, you have all my thoughts and prayers and crossed fingers. but these changes seem to me like forcing the cats to the herd. omitting some effects this could have on smaller scale to serve the purpose on larger scale. giving advantages where advantages arent needed and strengthening whats already strong while taking the wind from the sails of the smaller and weaker. incentivizing questionable things while putting barriers on regular play.

eg: if i have an alt in opposing power, can i now use it to do just the smallest amount of undermining in the system im trying to reinforce, just enough to prevent the decay there and 'comfortably' continue reinforcing?

As long as the multipliers are on screen in the UI, I don't mind them. What FD need to avoid at all costs is having them hidden and players having to guess.

 

[Shadowsnog]

As long as the multipliers are on screen in the UI, I don't mind them. What FD need to avoid at all costs is having them hidden and players having to guess.

 

[bilowik]

I don’t think significantly multiplying UM merits is a better alternative, bc that ends just as badly for the “smaller groups” that can get their work wiped out by an even smaller group or even singular commanders. I guess maybe that’s what some players want, but don’t think it would be any less frustrating for the smaller groups.

I think the primary issue is that decay coexisting with sniping methods makes it easy to lose a bunch of work bc it makes that 25% decay threshold very susceptible. I think either lessening the strength of sniping methods or increasing the decay threshold would alleviate that to an extent, but wouldn’t eliminate it entirely obviously.

I think most would agree the system as it stands is at least better in some ways than the conflict-less stale perpetual expansion that Colonization has created.

 

[Rubbernuke]

View attachment 434060

To this day the PP1 galactic standing is still some Necron level technology.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I don’t think significantly multiplying UM merits is a better alternative, bc that ends just as badly for the “smaller groups” that can get their work wiped out by an even smaller group or even singular commanders. I guess maybe that’s what some players want, but don’t think it would be any less frustrating for the smaller groups.

I think the primary issue is that decay coexisting with sniping methods makes it easy to lose a bunch of work bc it makes that 25% decay threshold very susceptible. I think either lessening the strength of sniping methods or increasing the decay threshold would alleviate that to an extent, but wouldn’t eliminate it entirely obviously.

I think most would agree the system as it stands is at least better in some ways than the conflict-less stale perpetual expansion that Colonization has created.

If you kept UM multiplication to non NPC murder you'd have a fast track UM method that (for most people) can't be sustained for long.

 

[Cheese Helmet]

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.

I think this is a good change. Systems reinforced to stronghold are still going to remain stronghold with a comfortable cushion or 25%. The effort reward is still there, but with 0 maintenance, a concentrated UM effort (and UM as an activity is still pretty anemic) can actually challenge ownership of a system that has been otherwise ignored.

Great change imo. PP 2.0 needs more adjustments, but this is a good one. Personal merit/rank decay would be bad, but this isn't that.

 

[Agrippa]

This is great and a great change, especially for the underminers.

 

[Cheese Helmet]

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.

Spot on. The biggest reason UMing is so less favorable is that the activities you can do to UM are extremely uneconomical compared to time spent reinforcing. If I can haul rares to reinforce and get 10x or more merits per hour vs anything I can do UM, which activity do you think players are going to gravitate to so they have an impact?

 

[Steven G]

adding multipliers is adding complexity, which make ppl run away - i would have rather upgrade or downgrade activities, such as merits and CP for killing a PP ship which are different if you are in undermining or reinforcement system.

 

[Cheese Helmet]

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.

Doubtful. The state of a system won't change from this. It'll take things down to 25% and no lower. No strongholds or anything else will lose their system status due to decay.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

This is compounded by the fact you've also senselessly prohibited multicrew players from getting any merits,

When did this happen?

 

[DemiserofD]

When did this happen?

I tested it myself, and didn't get any merits for it, at any rate. If that's incorrect, please let me know, but to the best of my knowledge, multicrewmates don't get any merits.

I tested with bounty hunting.

 

[DemiserofD]

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.

Yeah, having thought about this further, the main thing this'll do is drive powers to fortify everything they have. 25% fortified is well enough defended as to be virtually unbreakable in current rules unless you have a CG there or something, so the net effect may actually end up being LESS fighting. And it will also drive away the more casual players who gain meaning from slowly fortifying their little piece of the galaxy. And THAT is VERY bad; these little powerplayers need to be cultivated to turn into BIG powerplayers, and if you reject them like this, the playerbase WILL dwindle. I get what you were going for, but I can't really speak harshly enough about how bad an idea I think it might turn out to be.

The key problem isn't really that players don't fight, the problem is that they don't have a REASON to fight. Why should they bother? What is the benefit? As long as the primary measurement is net systems, ANYTHING which detracts from that goal is going to be ignored.

It's perhaps notable that the main fights thus far have been over LORE systems. For example, Delaine and Torval had a heck of a fight over the Torval Mining LTD home system, with Delaine briefly taking the system before being repelled. And of course the battles over Sol.

When it comes to powerplay-inspired combat(rather than lore-based), things are kinda broken because all you REALLY want to do is force your enemy to expend as much effort as possible while you expend as little as possible. It never really matters if you get the system being fought over, because it's only ever just one system. Instead, you want to distract your enemy from the real goal: Acquisition.

 

[Fyrgun_IceC]

So are you guys gonna fix the apostrophe issue with custom naming? A lot of people still have station names to fix.