How much decay?

[Rebel Yell]

This is a huge win for underminers. Watch any fortified system with < 10% reinforcement like a hawk, and any strongholds with solo supporters, again within 10% of being fortified. I think this was a desired outcome for FDev, but it will make it even harder for folks trying to reinforce to concentrate on strategically important systems, because now all low fortified and low strongholds become more important to reinforce than any other strategy.

If nothing changes, in the long run we'll have a new stalemate situation where 99% of systems will be at 24.99% slider and reinforcers just focusing on those being undermined actively... the 1% being new ones under reinforcements and the rest is those who are going under upgrade.

 

[Steven G]

Whilst unclear who was responsible for the loss of four Patreus fortified systems, three of them were in a chain. This resulted in the loss of another exploited system, so the chain was broken. This will take weeks for them to recover, and I would imagine will change the way Patreus manages their acquisitions and reinforcement.

The order of operations for undermining is:

1. Do undermining. If successful:
2. Demotion to the next level down
3. Decay - about 50 kCP for fortified systems, and a horrendous 104 kCP for strongholds, making recovery to the next level up even harder
4. If there are no supporting fortified or stronghold systems within range, affected systems will fall to unoccupied, losing all 120 kCP in acquisition + whatever was left from falling from fortified.

This results in a double whammy: not only do systems pop to unoccupied when not supported by a nearby fortified or stronghold, any remaining systems have exceptional decay on top of that.

This is a huge win for underminers. Watch any fortified system with < 10% reinforcement like a hawk, and any strongholds with solo supporters, again within 10% of being fortified. I think this was a desired outcome for FDev, but it will make it even harder for folks trying to reinforce to concentrate on strategically important systems, because now all low fortified and low strongholds become more important to reinforce than any other strategy.

here you are.
this chain of fortified systems were in the goal of reaching a colonised system, it was a personnal achievement.
you didn't annoy Patreus at all, only me.
the stations news are quite clear about who attacked those systems.
thank you very much, you're in the list with some other names I know.

I won't break the rules of this forum, but you can imagine what i would like to say to all of you.

no apologies and no forgiveness.

 

[Fedifensor]

There are 60,000ish neutral systems already forming a shell hundreds of LY wide around the original bubble. There's no need for Powerplayers to approach System Colonisation at all, right now - everyone else is already doing the work for free. Inhabited space is still growing at well over a thousand systems a week; the 12 Powers collectively rarely break a hundred. A group from my Power is running a project to bring Powerplay to one of the nearby nebulae - not for the standing bonus, for which the need to build a reasonably reinforced chain makes this way less efficient than just capturing all the in-fill systems around our existing territory would be, but just because it's a more interesting project than occupying Col 285 Sector BL-H a10-3 would be.

You're proving my point that the standard needs to change from total systems controlled to a different standard where some systems are more valuable than others...and that is one of the things System Colonization can offer.

I do agree with this point - the pre-Colonisation bubble was already too large for Powerplay 2 to be particularly conflict-heavy and it's now much larger, but again I think population is the wrong metric to try to fix that.

It's probably unfixable on any metric, but to give it a try positioning the valuable systems to be fought over needs to be done very deliberately. There isn't a massive battle taking place over Santy right now because it's in any way important in quantifiable metrics but because Frontier have offered additional rewards for fighting there specifically.

Declaring two or three (the thousand or so billion-plus systems are still too many!) systems currently held at Exploited state by each Power to be of major importance, positioning those systems to be on the existing borders those Powers have with their neighbours, and having some sort of reward for holding as many as possible at a particular time ... that might focus Powerplay action on few enough systems to matter. Then once that time is reached, hand out the rewards and designate a new round of high-importance systems based on where the borders have now shifted to.

A thousand billion-plus systems is a fraction of the systems currently involved in Powerplay - Aisling alone controls 1661 systems. I think the standard should be a bit more nuanced than population (which is why I suggested the system values used by System Colonization rewards), but population is a better metric than what we have now.

We can't rely on CGs to drive Powerplay - they're never going to focus on more than a few systems at a time, and even with a much more discerning standard there will be thousands of systems worth pursuing.

Do you really think anyone much is doing pump-and-dump construction of systems to get more Powerplay standing at the moment?

Some, yes. It may be a twofer for them - the owning get bragging rights for having a system and help to quickly establish it, while the Power gets an easy add. There are also secondary purposes, such as building a bridge to new areas of the galaxy.

No they won't. There are about 12,000 systems currently at Exploited or stronger. Only about 800 of those are newly colonised systems. Powerplay and colonisation are barely interacting at all right now. Colonisation starts to matter in about five years time when Powerplay would have Acquired and Reinforced the entire original bubble without it.

Building a billion-population system via colonisation may be essentially impossible unless you can grab something ridiculous like a binary ELW system; building even a hundred-million one is extremely expensive and requires a rare suitable system too. Focusing on population focuses the action on the existing bubble systems - which is good! - but it also focuses the action on a bunch of systems which are largely already captured, heavily fortified and unlikely to be successfully attacked.

You keep citing Population in your replies, when the metric I proposed has Population as an element but not the sole factor. Maybe instead of shooting down an idea based on a measurement that doesn't even match what I proposed, you can suggest additional factors to make Population + XYZ worthwhile.

Reduce their CP total, yes. But it's got a floor at 25% strength, so it cannot possibly change their actual state - lots of bad feeling, no actual top line effect. All of those Strongholds will stay Strongholds, and will keep at least a 250kCP buffer against player-led undermining, which puts attacks on them out of range of all but the most active groups.

Devil's advocate - the point of being a Stronghold is that attacks should be out of range of all but the most active groups. If they could come up with a way to base Stronghold penalty on the number of systems under the umbrella of a Stronghold system, it would give incentive to attack those other systems first, then hit the Stronghold once the other systems are mostly gone.

Yes, but population is the wrong metric. Having given people the means to undermine with the first two, the motive has to come from the targets being ones where a strong attack could reasonably succeed. The high-population systems are mostly positioned such - as leftovers from PP1 - that this wouldn't work very well.

I mentioned that not being my proposed metric above. Population is one indicator of a system's overall value. Economic viability is another, and if there was a way to automate measure of military value (so Frontier doesn't have to micromanage it) then that should be included as well. I'd be tempted to include "distance from Sol" just because humanity still has reverence for their origin world. That might give the Federation an advantage, but based on their current standings in Powerplay that could help even things out.

I don't think it's possible to have both:
- Undermining is viable even in the face of opposition and something players are genuinely incentivised to do
and
- all 12 of the existing Powers survive.
The difference in player bases, rank bonus quality, etc. of the various Powers is too great.

Frontier will certainly try to have it both ways, but they'd be better off in that case accepting that "all 12 survive" is more important to them, and removing Undermining from the game entirely as incompatible with that.

If you remove Undermining, you don't have Powerplay. It's bad enough that Undermining is severely disadvantaged compared to Reinforcement. Grabbing new systems simply isn't a sufficient gameplay loop for the long term - there needs to be the prospect of existing systems changing hands.

All 12 Powers don't need to survive...though they should consolidate rather than disappear. When you have too many Powers, there is a natural consolidation that occurs, which is why you have groups like ZYADA. If one of those five goes away, their supporters will likely merge with the remaining four. The only issue is losing the unique gameplay bonuses of that power, and that can be handled with a bit of work.

 

[Weps]

On the topic of Power vs. Superpower, my personal preference would be for the system to simply display the Superpower alignment of the Power, and defer to that of the ruling local faction only if there is no Power present. I think it would be an easy to implement change, and it would make more sense lore-wise than the mix ups we have now.

I also think this would give an additional incentive both to PPers (e.g. expand the Empire!) as well as BGSers (you specifically asked for an independent faction but ended up with a Fed system? join PP and make your wish reality!).

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If you remove Undermining, you don't have Powerplay. It's bad enough that Undermining is severely disadvantaged compared to Reinforcement. Grabbing new systems simply isn't a sufficient gameplay loop for the long term - there needs to be the prospect of existing systems changing hands.

The prospect, but not the actual event? If actual successful Undermining is required, then we haven't within margin of error had Powerplay for the last nine months, and complaints have been fairly muted about that.

Frontier show no sign via the changes they've made to date of understanding why successful Undermining is anomalously rare and even unsuccessful Undermining is largely irrelevant, and nor have their changes apparently done anything to fix that. Undermining itself is poorly incentivised at every level. Meanwhile on the player side, the possibility for successful Undermining is often discussed almost as if it would be a bug - with even the mildest Frontier changes causing a wave of panic until it becomes clear that they're not doing anything - and there are multiple large Powerplay player groups who essentially have "ceasefires with everyone" as their diplomatic stance.

There is a question as to whether:
- Frontier stagger on, perhaps for years, repeatedly changing irrelevant things in a continued failure to encourage Undermining, everyone grows without end in a de facto 12-way ceasefire
or
- Frontier just turn Powerplay into a designed cooperative venture, which they might actually be good at doing
is the better outcome

(Yes, yes, Frontier making Undermining in some sense balanced with Reinforcement would be better than either. I'm not hopeful of that ever happening, and I'm not sure it would be very popular if it did given player attitudes to successful Undermining events.)

 

[Rebel Yell]

Frontier show no sign via the changes they've made to date of understanding why successful Undermining is anomalously rare and even unsuccessful Undermining is largely irrelevant, and nor have their changes apparently done anything to fix that. Undermining itself is poorly incentivised at every level. Meanwhile on the player side, the possibility for successful Undermining is often discussed almost as if it would be a bug - with even the mildest Frontier changes causing a wave of panic until it becomes clear that they're not doing anything - and there are multiple large Powerplay player groups who essentially have "ceasefires with everyone" as their diplomatic stance.

That's the main weakness, the core point, of the whole framework.

It is not that power are not willing to undermine: powerplayers will defo go for that if properly rewarded.

Before the suspension, we had only settlement data as a valid tool for undermining... and that was a sniping tool, so particularly effective indeed.

What is left is more or less grindy as reinforcements, acquisitions at least have PCZs which can offer some fun time and random (very rare) organic encounters.

But if we exclude the contested systems, the bulk of CPs (= merits) produced in the PP2 scheme are coming from grindy hauling/mining/trading.

Powerplay combat has gone down in the ladder... first because the shape of PP2 doesn't allow to have relevant "choke points", considering that severe bugs affects it (PCZs I mean), SH had "issues" with SLF farming (so they nerfed that), NPCs have poor spawns and have been implanted with lemmings' AI. The solution for all that is to create in systems some choke points in POIs/scenarios, where powerplay undermining actions become relevant (these can be ground bases, or megaships, for example), with specific merits/rewards and with real time alerts in game (on the power UI, like "this system is being undermined" etc). Without such, underminers will just have to wander around and hang up on the first thing they see as barely useful.

 

[Shurimal]

I'm not too familiar with EVE Online, but what I've heard is that players vs. players conflicts are very common there. I wonder what makes conflicts more desirable there and, whatever it is, if that could work in E: D?

NPCs have poor spawns and have been implanted with lemmings' AI

Spawns are OK-ish in Power signal sources, but the signal sources themselves have poor spawn rates. You won't be able to fill even a 64 ton cargo rack with black boxes and wreckage components. The highest I've got is 20 black boxes before the spawns fizzled out; 8...12 is most common. Also the power NPC AI is so inconsistent--ones in convoy signals are total pushovers, but ones in power weapons fire and wreckage signals are pretty tough CZ-level ships (they all seem to have 2 or 3 MRP-s, often prismatic shields and decent hulls) and can give a would-be CSAR pilot a real hard time. Inconsistent threat levels are also a problem: just today I had a single Viper spawn at Threat 4 weapons fire signal but got half a dozen Vipers and Pythons plus a 'Conda (all Dangerous or Deadly) at a Threat 2 wreckage. Combat needs overall buff, for both reinforcement and especially undermining (it should be one of the best UM method).

The solution for all that is to create in systems some choke points in POIs/scenarios, where powerplay undermining actions become relevant (these can be ground bases, or megaships, for example), with specific merits/rewards and with real time alerts in game (on the power UI, like "this system is being undermined" etc).

Why is it that the illegal surface scan, black box retrieval, smuggling, wetwork, settlement raids, espionage and sabotage missions don't count for undermining? That would be an obvious thing to do considering certain mission types work for reinforcing for certain powers.

What would be cool was if certain level of undermining of Fortified and Stronghold systems would trigger an incursion with a megaship/capital ship of the UM power arriving at the system and CZ-s appearing. There's so much that could be done with PP to make it more dynamic and interesting...

 

[Rebel Yell]

I'm not too familiar with EVE Online, but what I've heard is that players vs. players conflicts are very common there. I wonder what makes conflicts more desirable there and, whatever it is, if that could work in E: D?

Unless something is being arranged, most that happens in ED is Feds/Imps with some pop up of Kaine... but independent powers, or even the Imperial "secondaries" (Patreus/Torval) are totally left on the sideline, may be for the numbers of course, which is also reflected in how much time one can spare to play PvP which has little relevancy in PP2 even.

Spawns are OK-ish in Power signal sources, but the signal sources themselves have poor spawn rates. You won't be able to fill even a 64 ton cargo rack with black boxes and wreckage components. The highest I've got is 20 black boxes before the spawns fizzled out; 8...12 is most common. Also the power NPC AI is so inconsistent--ones in convoy signals are total pushovers, but ones in power weapons fire and wreckage signals are pretty tough CZ-level ships (they all seem to have 2 or 3 MRP-s, often prismatic shields and decent hulls) and can give a would-be CSAR pilot a real hard time. Inconsistent threat levels are also a problem: just today I had a single Viper spawn at Threat 4 weapons fire signal but got half a dozen Vipers and Pythons plus a 'Conda (all Dangerous or Deadly) at a Threat 2 wreckage. Combat needs overall buff, for both reinforcement and especially undermining (it should be one of the best UM method).

You used the right word: "consistency"... there's some need of it

Why is it that the illegal surface scan, black box retrieval, smuggling, wetwork, settlement raids, espionage and sabotage missions don't count for undermining? That would be an obvious thing to do considering certain mission types work for reinforcing for certain powers.

What would be cool was if certain level of undermining of Fortified and Stronghold systems would trigger an incursion with a megaship/capital ship of the UM power arriving at the system and CZ-s appearing. There's so much that could be done with PP to make it more dynamic and interesting...

Missed opportunites, I see them everywhere.

 

[Mordred115]

but independent powers, or even the Imperial "secondaries" (Patreus/Torval) are totally left on the sideline

Unless of course LTT 198 is involved

 

[Mordred115]

That's the main weakness, the core point, of the whole framework.

It is not that power are not willing to undermine: powerplayers will defo go for that if properly rewarded.

Before the suspension, we had only settlement data as a valid tool for undermining... and that was a sniping tool, so particularly effective indeed.

What is left is more or less grindy as reinforcements, acquisitions at least have PCZs which can offer some fun time and random (very rare) organic encounters.

But if we exclude the contested systems, the bulk of CPs (= merits) produced in the PP2 scheme are coming from grindy hauling/mining/trading.

Powerplay combat has gone down in the ladder... first because the shape of PP2 doesn't allow to have relevant "choke points", considering that severe bugs affects it (PCZs I mean), SH had "issues" with SLF farming (so they nerfed that), NPCs have poor spawns and have been implanted with lemmings' AI. The solution for all that is to create in systems some choke points in POIs/scenarios, where powerplay undermining actions become relevant (these can be ground bases, or megaships, for example), with specific merits/rewards and with real time alerts in game (on the power UI, like "this system is being undermined" etc). Without such, underminers will just have to wander around and hang up on the first thing they see as barely useful.

Only thing that I would add is that if they want people to fight they need to add more value to taking "good systems". in many ways the CC system was good in that regard as it rewarded powers for having smart and valuable acquisitions, if they just changed the name to score or something it would be good. Also they need to reward powers for moving up and down the leaderboards so people are fighting for more than just pride. These changes would actually cause powers to fight over systems rather than give up fighting eachother as it is "inefficient", at the moment whether its a 25 billion pop or a 750 pop systems the game treats it as just 1 system regardless.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Only thing that I would add is that if they want people to fight they need to add more value to taking "good systems". in many ways the CC system was good in that regard as it rewarded powers for having smart and valuable acquisitions, if they just changed the name to score or something it would be good. Also they need to reward powers for moving up and down the leaderboards so people are fighting for more than just pride. These changes would actually cause powers to fight over systems rather than give up fighting eachother as it is "inefficient", at the moment whether its a 25 billion pop or a 750 pop systems the game treats it as just 1 system regardless.

...and with colonies, population and assets have gained different dynamics... which we can't use.