The Powerplay discussion thread.

[sorcer3r]

Starting to enjoy PP now ive worked out the point of it. The game for me is not about earning credits, i have enough money and ships as it is. Fun for me fitting it in with trading routes and the two current CGs. And working with others to expand the influence of our chosen power and make it work to our advantage

Its only boring if you dont know what you are doing or why you are doing it...

Yes, the idea of PP is not so bad. But just the idea is not enough for me to fly into boring conflict zones trying not to fall asleep.
So at the moment I will continue undermining and get a lot of merits to stay in rank 4 so that I earn 5mio credits per week. Everything else PP related doesn't matter for now.

ps: and it seems that there are a lot of other players undermining. A hostile controlled system was full of underminer yesterday.
I really recommend that Hudson should give his agents/logistics better shields and vulture escorts otherwise they are dying like flies.

 

[CMDR Beltane]

Would it not be possible to have the station itself target and destroy cargo dropped in its vicinity? And perhaps even direct local security ships to locate and destroy cargo dropped that is out of range of the station weapons?

But as is mentioned, a cheap fix for a problem that has created a much greater problem. I'm not a pirate, but I understand how this has effected the game so badly for those who do play as pirates.

I would go even farther. As i have a hard time imagining any other reason as station bombing for releasing cargo in the immediate vicinity of a station, let them simply shoot the ships. And after that, the cleanup you mentioned. Maybe the Mining Drones could be reconfigured to get rid of fright in front of the station, dunno.

 

[Firebeard]

Is 20t that small? I'd never drop that much anyway. For me pirates should fly small fast vessels so won't have hundreds of tons of space anyway.

 

[kazana]

I think I finally got the point of this thread. The title is a tad misleading, though. It should read "If you want to be a kewl kid, post PP sux here!"

I'm just a wee bit surprised that with PP sucking oh-so-darn-badly how it has so many players actively participating. But then again, the "kewl kids"™ have always been in the minority. To be looked up to and admired; making your only goal in life to join that elite group.

 

[Malfahri]

This really does need a fix. I had intended to try cargo reclamation as a career choice with the introduction of drones, but the 20 ton limit doesn't pay the bills. The time it takes to find a trader who doesn't 1) run, 2) combat log, 3) have an empty hold isn't worth the 20 tons you finally get.

 

[Jukelo]

Is 20t that small? I'd never drop that much anyway. For me pirates should fly small fast vessels so won't have hundreds of tons of space anyway.

For me it basically halves the profit. And the profit was already pitiful compared to what I can make per hour in the clipper in spacetruck configuration instead.
You'd never drop that much and that's fine, we always had the option of forcing you to drop as much as we wanted by judicious tinkering with your cargo hatch. Asking nicely was simply the best solution for both parties. With that 'fix' in place, we don't really have an option to fall back to when the prey is being unreasonable. We might still blow out your cargo hatch, but all the extra cargo will be wasted. That's bad for us, that's bad for you.
And since we're temperamental people, we might decide to resort to outright killing you instead since FD decided we can no longer make a living out of a profession that was advertised on the store page. We've hardly got anything left to lose, might as well have some fun while it lasts.

 

[Drelthar]

Is 20t that small? I'd never drop that much anyway. For me pirates should fly small fast vessels so won't have hundreds of tons of space anyway.

Yeah, but piracy does scale up like other professions. You start out solo pirating haulers, and move onto pirating anacondas, in wings of pythons.

 

[FuzzySpider]

Is 20t that small? I'd never drop that much anyway. For me pirates should fly small fast vessels so won't have hundreds of tons of space anyway.

Some traders use Anacondas, Pythons, or Imperial Clippers. They can only be pirated really by ships of the same class. A skilled player might well be able to take one on and destroy it in something like a Diamondback if it isn't mil-specced, but they won't be able to effectively pirate it.

In an organic universe we'd get pirates in Cobras, sure. But we'd also have a wing of Vultures with accompanied by a Type 7 to grab the goodies, or a pair of Pythons as pirates, or a couple of Clippers. What FDev have done is to basically limit piracy to small ships in a very arbitrary way, because 20t of cargo wouldn't cover the costs for doing things this way.

 

[Luponator]

Wow, much flame, OK. So this 20 cargo limit is - in my opinion - clearly a quick and dirty fix that someone quickly put in the release to stop the station bombing exploit.

Pretty much this. Knee-jerk reaction to a problem that requires a deeper look into. Limiting the 20 cargo drop to free-fire zones or a radius around a station would solve both issues, and making hatch breakers work would do the rest. IMHO.

Edit: Typo

 

[Mexicola]

But doing this would make piracy a fun and valid way of making money, we cant have that!
If you aren't trading you aren't doing it right.

 

[HurstLlama]

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

So given what you're enjoying about it, could that have been achieved without all the merit points, and grind bar vs grind bar win/lose mechanic? Could you envisage it happening in a more subtle/seemless way such that you still do the same activities but within a mission system, and your effort contribution more "loosely" to an outcome, rather than to increasing a bar graph?

I know in my case, the only thing I'm enjoying is the co-ordinated CMDR vs CMDR combat zones (Strike Zones), and those could have been achieved in any number of ways, and designed such that I'm not bleeding/losing thousands of CR to take part in them too!

Good Morning, Mr.F.,

Could I imagine how PowerPlay could have been implemented differently? Probably I could if I put my mind to it, though I am certain that a different implementation would still be unpopular with just as many, albeit different, people and some will never want to get involved in anything that doesn't give them a reward in a very short period of time. The difficulties of implementing a political layer in a game such as ED should not be underestimated especially fi one wants to do so in a way that is not scripted and not reliant on command and control (at least one of which would be necessary for a mission based system).

The factor that stops the best game being produced is, of course, money (which is really only a first order derivative of time). If gamers were prepared to pay an order of magnitude more for their entertainment we would get much better games. However, as a group we are not so prepared so we must make do with second or third best. ED is for me and means of entertainment, it's just a game. When it stops being fun I'll stop playing it, just like I did with Skyrim, and Fallout and God knows how many other games over the last thirty years.

 

[archeolog108]

After 3 days of power play, it does look like most of our club is about to throw in the towel for this one.

A total grind, where you have to get tickets, even buy them like most of us have, costing millions, to get nothing in return. Bounties have been slashed, why I do not know, with Res sites now dry and small bounties that are not worth fighting for... It has put most of us in the mind of, get the top tier to get our credits back, then quit. Go do normal stuff that we like doing.

A complete lack of game play, is now what power play is all about! Sitting in docks waiting for a timer, or go shoot a ship to get one merit!!! ONE MERIT!!! Boy this sounds depressing already.

I have a new slogan for Elite, Play Elite, we give you a long piece of rope! YOU WILL NEED IT!!!

Total boredom has taken control of this game, Elite used to be great, but now power play has ruined it for most of our club commanders.

If any of you have not taken part in power play yet, here is a tip for you, do not bother!!!! You will lose credits, not make them... When other faction NPC's attack you get 400 credits for the kill, considering most of us put 30 million into the first part of the system, as you can clearly see it really is not worth it.

One of our founders is so bored of it, he has gone mining!!!! That is how bored he has become. The second stage I thought would be great, but the rewards for doing it, its just not worth doing at all!

This will be tough to get to the 50 million, that I am now owed. But once I do, that will be it. Then I will go off exploring, because this is not the game I signed up for in Beta... Not at all. Such a shame.

You can get 15 merits per kill. Opposing expansion.

 

[Rubellen]

I tried it. For two hours. Couldn't be bothered less and certainly not impressed. Unpledged and minding my own business again.

 

[Iskariot]

If bicycles left you with a negative cash balance - whilst cars left you with a positive cash balance, I would agree with your point entirely!

Not everything in life is about cash balance, although I have come to understand that for modern society this seems to be all that counts.

 

[titan_uk]

I totally agree with the OP. Me and my mates should be able to flip a system in minutes (ignoring the fact that it is probably linked to (possibly) hundreds of others and other players/NPCs are opposing us), then we should be able to go on and flip another then another and another....I'm sure if we were able to do that we wouldn't get bored and QQ moah

Also, I want to make money dammit! so I go backwards and forwards trading from one port to the next over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over......and it's boring!! fix this game because this repetitive grind sucks..why can't I be a multi-millionaire in 3 days? If there was only some other way to enjoy the game....

 

[woodhouse]

Indeed. The bonus you get for ratings is called a bonus for a reason. It's only a bonus, not meant to be a living. The real rewards are the trade,legal,bounty hunting %s, security changes etc etc.

Computer programmers reading this post are now hanging in a loop waiting for an argument.

 

[Zarunoi]

I don't think that boring is the problem at all.

The real problem is that it's very unbalanced. Different powers have different ways to fortify,expand,prepare, some of which are a lot more convenient. Why couldn't all powers have both combat and trading ways to do those things and leave it up to individual pilots how they choose to help their chosen power.
And opposing is also unbalanced, some you can oppose by just pulling npc's out of supercruise and shoot them down (without much resistance) for 15 merits while others you have to go to special zones where you get a measly 1 merit for a much harder fight. Which of course means that the first will be opposed a lot more then the 2e.

 

[Cosmo]

Not everything in life is about cash balance, although I have come to understand that for modern society this seems to be all that counts.

People want to be properly rewarded for their work. Now the merits, lack of credits and limited missions types makes Powerplay not worth doing.

 

[Snowdog]

I think I will wait until Power Play is more balanced and worked out (future updates). It seems PP may be to early in development to be worth the time (for me). I bought a space sim, maybe Dev can re-focus their effort back into that? Star ports that we can walk around , planets we can land on.. more points of interest that we can go visit, more reasons to play and grind away. I understand that PP may be a part of it but maybe it should have been left until the game was more "done", more baked. I am hoping it will all work out over time and am willing to give them some time to do it. But not forever.

 

[kreuzbichler]

someone should make a meme out of this

Yo dawg I heard you like grind, have some grind with your grind making your grind grindier