Rank 5 not worth it for PP

[Aleksej]

I have read the PP guide as well and see where you are coming from, but I just cannot imagine that FD will inflate the economy even more by making PP _so_ profitable. After the initial investment, 1250 merits / cycle à 10000cr would yield 50mln cr., i.e. 30000cr / merit. On the status screen in-game, "merit total" seems to be used with a different meaning.

Just imagine how piracy would change... "What are you hauling? Palladium? Arrr, keep it and move on, real money is made with merit goods!"

Would be great to get a clarification from FD before the next cycle ends.

What's profitable? Where is PP profitable? ~40M Cr per cycle starting from the 7th Cycle? :O Sorry, but when I can make 40M Cr per day without breaking a sweat if I was going for the profit.

 

[Kuehler]

at your 5th week, you're getting
1250 which is 1/8 of 10k from c1
1250 which is 1/4 of 5k from c2
2500 which is 1/2 of 5k from c3
and 1250 from your last cycle c4
so you will need 3750 to get 10k, and since the 10k you payed from c1 is why your past cycle's have been so cheap and its not going to factor into your future cycles, you're going to have to average 5.33-5.34k per cycle to maintain 10k, which would cost 50million, maybe 40 million per cycle if you spend a lot of time, and at that point you're pretty much just wasting a lot of time and haven't really made much, grinding.

The problem with this is, no one knows for sure if the TOTAL merits or just the earned merits are taken over to the new cycle. The answer makes the difference between 5334 and 1251 merits per week to keep rank 5. And not only that, it also decides wether there is an return on Investment or a loss.

Kuehler

 

[Aleksej]

The problem with this is, no one knows for sure if the TOTAL merits or just the earned merits are taken over to the new cycle. The answer makes the difference between 5334 and 1251 merits per week to keep rank 5. And not only that, it also decides wether there is an return on Investment or a loss.

Kuehler

It is stated pretty clearly in the manual that these are total merits per cycle.

 

[Skeloton]

It is stated pretty clearly in the manual that these are total merits per cycle.

If people still question it then it must not be clear enough.

 

[Arksun]

My only complaint is that the additional Rating rewards for Edmond/Alliance are a bit weak compared to what you get following some of the other leaders.

 

[jay88]

It is stated pretty clearly in the manual that these are total merits per cycle.

numbers from beta testing show that only earned merits are halved/carried over, leading to the 5334 merits to achieve/maintain 10k a week.

It's this exact same problem that FD apparently has everywhere, which is treating their playerbase like mouth breathers by not releasing actual numbers and such.

i don't know how to link posts, because i'm lazy, but here:

So, I was curious if anyone kept track during the beta process, and found this post
Ill not do any more work on merits today. Currently my values stand at 88 carried over from the previous week, 210 earned this week, so 298 total.

So, we had a tick, and i had 143 merits carried over


Now rather obviously 298 / 2 != 143.

But also obviously 88/4 + 210/2 = 127 != 143.

However, if you assume that Agony_Aunt's 88 was already 2 ticks in then you can quickly work out[0]:

102 / 2 + 100 / 4 + 99/8 = 88 (as reported as carry over in the cycle they then earned 210 more in)
210 / 2 + 102 / 4 + 100 / 8 = 143 (as reported as carry over in the next cycle).

Thus I conclude it likely that "merits total" should be interpreted as "total number of merits earned from all sources during this cycle". You're going to need 5334 merits/cycle to maintain 10k, not 1250 merits/cycle.

[0] - OK, it's a bit of arithmetic and simple algebra. If the 88 was from only 2 cycles then we'd have 88 = x/2 + y/4. And as 1/2 and 1/4 are in a 2:1 ratio then we know that x/2 = 88 * 2/3, and y/4 = 88 * 1/3. Re-arranging we have x = 88 * 2/3 * 2 = 117.33332 and y = 88 * 1/3 * 4 = 117.33332. Call them both 117 for now.

But doing this then gives us (a bit of fudging as the 88 was possibly anything up to just under 88.5 and rounded down, and merits are always whole numbers) x = 117, y = 117 for 117 / 4 + 117 / 2 = 87.75. As we don't know for sure how the rounding works let's bump x to 118, so we get 118/2 + 117/2 = 88.25. But then ticking again we have 210 / 2 + 118 /4 + 117 / 8 = 149.125 != 143.

So assume we need to have all 3 prior cycles in there. 88 = x/2 + y/4 + z/8. Now we have ratios 4:2:1, so 1/7ths. x/2 = 88 * 4/7, y/4 = 88 * 2/7, z/8 = 88 * 1/7. This gets us 100.57136 all around, so let's try 100, 101 and 101. 101 / 2 + 101 / 4 + 100 / 8 = 88.25, good!. Now 210 / 2 + 101 / 4 + 101 / 8 = 142.875. So let's tweak things a little 102 / 2 + 100 / 4 + 99 / 8 = 88.375, still good, and 210 / 2 + 102 / 4 + 100 / 8 = 143.00000

As clarification for further confusion, from the manual itself: "Merits earned from previous cycles still count towards your rating at diminishing rates." "Your merit total from the previous cycle is halved then added to your current cycle value."

There's an erroneous "earned" in the first sentence or an absent 'earned' in the second. You didn't 'earn' the carryover in the previous cycle's timeframe, which is where the confusion stems from, as well as the numbers quoted seem to represent.

Again, just a case for FD to be upfront and give us the numbers like any responsible developer in this day an age...can't think of any other MMO that simply compares things in blips and a-e ratings....

Furthermore, now that I'm in game, I carried over 100% of what I earned last week, did not see that coming. Also, apparently all vouchers and powerplay points pending were deleted? where does it say that in the manual? That's absolute garbage.

 

[NavyBee]

What's profitable? Where is PP profitable? ~40M Cr per cycle starting from the 7th Cycle? :O Sorry, but when I can make 40M Cr per day without breaking a sweat if I was going for the profit.

This might be just a matter of perspective, depending on your faction, play style and skill/experience. ;-)
For me, as of today, an average of 36mln cr per cycle during the next three months for earning/purchasing 1250 merits each cycle would be a significant profit. Following your assumptions, if I had to purchase only 1250 merit commodities to retain rank 5 after the initial rank buildup, each merit comm. would have a bonus value of 30000cr. I have not yet seen another commodity yielding 30000cr/unit just for hauling it from one system to another, except maybe in very small amounts in special missions.