Hello there. This is yet another in my series of threads where I put together Powerplay activity data for the past Cycle. If you haven't, you might want to check out the previous threads:
* Cycle #2
* Cycle #3
* Cycle #4
* Cycle #5
As always, if you have suggestions (particularly about the formatting or the type of data to be shared in the next post) or corrections to offer, they are very much welcome. My thanks to /u/panterjd42, who helped me format the data for the original post.Special thanks to Zac and Laurence from FD, who got me the Powerplay data for this week. This means the figures are from much closer to the end of the Cycle (5 AM BST) and as such are more accurate than before.
Some big things have been happening lately that have no doubt affected the data. The recent disbanding of the Merchant Marines (a Winters group), EIC withdrawing support for Torval, Imperial offensive against Archon, Lavigny's turmoil and the following change to Overhead mechanics and the establishment of some new player groups. I generally won't focus on those terribly much, as it's hard to tell what impact they have, but I'll mention them where appropriate. As ever, there's a few things to note before you check this week's data.
* The data comes directly from Frontier, but it was collected at 5 AM, so very late pushes after that time might still have affected the numbers. Additionally, while the numbers are solid, I might have made mistakes collating them, so please let me know if you spot something obviously wrong.
* Power Ethos (whether your tasks are Combat, Social, Covert or Finance) largely doesn't matter. No matter what the ethos, you do the same tasks for Fortification and Preparation. However, while Powers with a Finance Expansion ethos (Torval, Mahon, Aisling, Winters, Sirius) also deliver goods to sure their expansions, those with Social or Combat Expansion ethos need to grind Powerplay-specific conflict zones. This is a slower and more difficult way of obtaining merits via Expansion. As a result, the Expansion values for Powers with a Social or Combat ethos are likely relatively lower than they should be. This is relevant when trying to estimate number of pledges per Power.
* Preparation values for this Cycle are going to be higher than before. This is because, as I mentioned before, FD has been kind enough to provide me with their data, allowing me to get the total Preparation values for *all* systems each Power has worked on, and not just their top 10. This is a significant difference, as some Powers have put some Preparation into a couple hundred systems.
* Opposition for each Power refers to the level of opposition *their* Expansions have faced, not what they inflicted upon others. Same with Undermining. In all cases, absolute values are used, not percentages.
* Because of Turmoil issues, Arissa Lavigny-Duval was unable to do Preparation last Cycle, and now can't do Expansion. Keep that in mind when viewing the figures.
POWER RANKING BY ACTIVITY
Power ranking by support (Fortification + Expansion + Preparation)
1. Aisling (1,069,879)
2. Arissa (893,286)
3. Hudson (607,809)
4. Mahon (401,741)
5. Winters (362,367)
6. Sirius (342,162)
7. Torval (234,511)
8. Archon (194,706)
9. Patreus (172,529)
10. Antal (125,051)
Power ranking by opposition (Undermining + Opposition)
1. Winters (571,581)
2. Hudson (480,949)
3. Archon (297,270)
4. Mahon (166,465)
5. Sirius (160,573)
6. Arissa (121,186)
7. Torval (94,149)
8. Patreus (89,265)
9. Aisling (50,779)
10. Antal (23,597)
Major faction ranking by support
1. Empire (2,370,205)
2. Federation (970,176)
3. Independents (661,919)
4. Alliance (401,741)
Major faction ranking by opposition
1. Federation (1,052,530)
2. Independents (481,440)
3. Empire (355,379)
4. Alliance (166,465)
ANALYSIS
* Overall activity, both support and opposition, appears to be roughly stable, with minor increases and decreases across the board. There are some exceptions. The Empire has seen a significant drop in opposition and undermining, dropping them to 3rd most opposed faction, below the Independents. Torval and Patreus both have seen rather substantial drops in activity, especially in the case of the former. Across the board, Powers with a combat or social Expansion ethos continue to see a drop in Expansion activity.
* Aisling Duval broke the 1 million Powerplay actions barrier this Cycle. Congratulations! This Power continues to benefit from very low levels of hostile action in her space, and continuously expands as quickly as possible - with a few exceptions. The Expansion into Ax Yac Baru has been stopped, just like last Cycle, presumably mostly by Winters' pilots. Despite that, Aisling continues to rapidly grow stronger, and has recently gained another player group, the 13th Legion. The surprising drop in rankings this week is certainly only temporary, and she will end up in the top 2 before long.
* Arissa Lavigny-Duval still holds her #2 spot despite her Turmoil troubles and the lack of Expansions this week. Fortification appears to have filled the gap once more, with Guathiti seeing an amazing 236,013 powerplay cargo delivered. This is not quite as high as last Cycle, but it's still more than the total Powerplay activity for Archon or Patreus. Unless Overhead strikes again, it seems fair to assume that Arissa will return to her #1 spot this Cycle or the next. Same as with Aisling, Arissa hasn't suffered a significant activity drop, suggesting that people leaving the Power after getting their unique module aren't a major issue, and that short-lived turmoil did not affect her strongly.
* Zemina Torval is the single Power with the biggest activity drop this Cycle. With EIC withdrawing their support for her, it was expected that Zemina would drop, however the decrease is greater than I personally expected, suggesting that East India Company accounted for a significant chunk of this Power's support. Two things do work in Torval's favour. "Imperial Lone Wolf Wing", a new player group, has stepped in to attempt to plug the gap left by EIC, and Torval has seen a significant drop in hostile activity at the same time their own activity has dropped. Unless something changes, I would expect Torval to remain around #6, with the possibility of a further drop if serious enemy activity in her space resumes.
* Denton Patreus does not appear to have particularly benefited from the unveiling of unique modules, despite the common consensus being that his Plasma Accelerator is one of the few useful Powerplay weapons. At the same time, while Patreus sees a good deal of Undermining, there's not much Opposition to his Expansions. As such, he'll probably remain one of the lower-ranked Powers, but due to some smart Fortification and the ongoing Imperial efforts in Kumo Crew space, he is no longer in grave danger in the same way he was before the trigger increase a couple of weeks ago.
* Zachary Hudson has done just fine for himself this Cycle. Despite increased Undermining, no system of his was successfully Undermined (as in, reached the Undermining Trigger but not the Fortification trigger). Despite an increase in Opposition, both of his Expansions have succeeded. Now that his supporters no longer allow Undermining to seriously hurt this Power, Hudson is in a good shape and should keep a spot in the top 3 for the foreseeable future. The one danger this Power faces are its low levels of Expansion activity. Should it see serious Opposition in the coming weeks, it may see multiple Expansions failing, and in the wake of Overhead changes that might not necessarily be a good thing any more. Or it might be, I'm not actually sure.
* Felicia Winters holds on to that #1 most Undermined spot, and she's #2 most Opposed, all while having fairly modest levels of support, somewhere around the level of Mahon or Sirius, who face a fraction of the hostile activity she experiences. Still, Winters is doing well, growing at a steady pace and cancelling out all Undermining. This is a Power that has figured out what to do with its limited resources, and at this point its rank will mostly, IMO, be determined by what happens to the other Powers. If Mahon and Sirius start seeing some serious enemy activity, she will keep a spot in the top 3 or 4 Powers. Otherwise, she'll probably hover around the 4 - 6 range. Interesingly, Winters has seen no significant drop in activity in the wake of the disbanding of the Merchant Marines. Either that loss was offset elsewhere, or made up by the forming The Minutemen, a new Winters player group that seems to be recruiting quite actively.
* Edmund Mahon has grown rapidly this Cycle and is Preparing another heavy round of Expansions next Cycle. With its good strategic position and some fine organisation, this Power is making the most of this early period where they still see no serious Undermining or Opposition. As they push closer to the space of several other Powers (Aisling, Lavigny, Hudson, Winters, Sirius and probably a couple of others) they'll certainly see more hostile action, but for the short to medium term, they'll probably continue to expand quickly.
* Li Yong-Rui is really in a quite similar position to Mahon. Good strategic position, little Opposition or Undermining, opportunities to expand towards several other Powers, rapid growth. However, Sirius might find itself stretched thin in the future. A change in mechanics or politics could rapidly expose Sirius to serious enemy action, and unlike Mahon they haven't yet shown they can deal with that. Their attempted expansion into Chounjemait this past Cycle sparked a conflict with Mahon, although it's hard to tell if that's a harbinger of future war - one can't imagine that Sirius' followers fought with particular zeal for a 0 CC system. In any case, Li Yong-Rui had another week of steady expansion and a modest increase in overall activity. For now at least this Power continues to do very well for itself.
* Archon Delaine continues to see quite massive amounts of enemy activity compared to Archon's own support. The combined Imperial offensive into the Pegasi sector has continued this week, with several systems seeing heavy Opposition and especially Undermining. It's some surprise, then, that Archon has not particularly suffered this week. He was able to secure three Expansions, and none of his systems were successfully Undermined. Partially that's thanks to focused efforts of Archon's supporters, who fortified those systems most at risk, and mostly Expanded systems with good triggers, a crucial tactic for Powers with a combat Expansion ethos. However, the slow progress of the Imperial offensive is in no small part due to the Imperials themselves. While the tactic of focusing on Undermining rather than Opposing is arguably sound, Undermining was focused on just a handful of the Kumo Crew systems, mostly those bordering Imperial space. Many of Archon's systems were completely untouched even though they were not Fortified, while already Fortified systems were heavily Over-Undermined by the Imperial Attackers. This is not a mistake unique to this particular offensive, but it's one that has helped Archon immensely.
* Pranav Antal just chills out in Utopia. I mean, why wouldn't he, it's Utopia, it's great by definition. After securing 2 systems the previous cycle, Utopians now Expanded into just one, continuing the post-trigger-increase trend of slow and steady growth for this Power. With very low levels of support and enemy activity alike, Antal remains fairly safe as long as his supporters continue to focus on 'safe' expansions with good triggers and to do smart Fortifications, as they have done in the last few weeks. At the same time, this is the Power most at risk if Undermining mechanics change so that Independents can fight each other effectively.
GUESSES AND ASSUMPTIONS
This is the section I just use for ranting about whatever I feel like. It's the thing that keeps me same after a few hours of compiling this stuff. Also I get to tell you my opinions and you can't stop me, so that's nice. You can safely skip this section and do something useful with your time instead.
* The Powerplay balance between the Empire and other factions continues be very skewed, but less so than in the previous cycles. This is likely at least partially because of the drop in support for Patreus and Torval, as well as the turmoil issues for Lavigny which meant she had no Expansions this Cycle. This is a pretty minor change, though, and unless we see some changes to the mechanics, Aisling and Arissa will most likely remain the two biggest Powers in the game by some considerable margin.
* We've seen another drop in Undermining and Opposition in Empire space, to the point that now Independents see more of both than the Imperials. That's another symptom of the current Undermining and Opposition mechanics and the way they dis-incentive fighting Powers in the same major faction as yours. While rebalancing those mechanics might seem an obvious change, I've been thinking about it, and FD are in a tricky situation. Balance things a bit too much, and several Powers will probably disappear quite quickly - Patreus and Antal being most at risk. This is not necessarily an entire bad thing, but an argument could be made that any such change should only come after perks and bonuses across Powers are balanced first, with the hope that population is a bit more spread out across all Powers.
* Not one system in the entire inhabited galaxy was succesfully Undermined this Cycle. To re-iterate, when I say "successfully Undermine", I mean that Undermining trigger would be reached, but not the Fortification one. Especially seeing the absolutely massive amount of Undermining Hudson and Winters are experiencing this is quite a shock. Personally, I don't think this is a fault of mechanics (at least not entirely), but rather player behaviour. Just with Fortification, Undermining is simply farmed. Hudson, for example, had many systems undermined several hundred percent, while others were completely untouched, despite the fact that they weren't Fortified, and Undermining them would hurt that Power severely. Hudson, Aisling, Torval, Arissa, Winters - those big Powers are very vulnerable to Undermining as a method of forcing Turmoil, yet what Undermining is being is, is very, very inefficient. I was very surprised to see the same pattern during the Imperial offensive against Archon Delaine, as I presumed that would be a more organised affair. Unless this changes, we'll have a slightly stagnant situation in Powerplay.
* The expected shift of support as the more mercenary-minded players got their rewards and left hasn't materialised yet. That's not to say that it will not come soon, but I know some amongst us expected, for example, Aisling to drop like a stone once people got their shields. Well, it ain't so, and I have to profess I'm slightly surprised.
* Adding a point I forgot about. IMO, Combat and Social Expansion ethos is the biggest issue with Powerplay right now. You can see the Expansion values for Combat and Social Powers drop every week, and it will be a huge issue as time goes. Either rebalancing is needed, or every ethos should work the same as Finance for the purposes of Expansion, at least until a better solution is found.
* Good god this took a long goddamn time. I think I'm going slightly crazy by now. Pls send help. Or beer. Beer would be better.
* Cycle #2
* Cycle #3
* Cycle #4
* Cycle #5
As always, if you have suggestions (particularly about the formatting or the type of data to be shared in the next post) or corrections to offer, they are very much welcome. My thanks to /u/panterjd42, who helped me format the data for the original post.Special thanks to Zac and Laurence from FD, who got me the Powerplay data for this week. This means the figures are from much closer to the end of the Cycle (5 AM BST) and as such are more accurate than before.
Some big things have been happening lately that have no doubt affected the data. The recent disbanding of the Merchant Marines (a Winters group), EIC withdrawing support for Torval, Imperial offensive against Archon, Lavigny's turmoil and the following change to Overhead mechanics and the establishment of some new player groups. I generally won't focus on those terribly much, as it's hard to tell what impact they have, but I'll mention them where appropriate. As ever, there's a few things to note before you check this week's data.
* The data comes directly from Frontier, but it was collected at 5 AM, so very late pushes after that time might still have affected the numbers. Additionally, while the numbers are solid, I might have made mistakes collating them, so please let me know if you spot something obviously wrong.
* Power Ethos (whether your tasks are Combat, Social, Covert or Finance) largely doesn't matter. No matter what the ethos, you do the same tasks for Fortification and Preparation. However, while Powers with a Finance Expansion ethos (Torval, Mahon, Aisling, Winters, Sirius) also deliver goods to sure their expansions, those with Social or Combat Expansion ethos need to grind Powerplay-specific conflict zones. This is a slower and more difficult way of obtaining merits via Expansion. As a result, the Expansion values for Powers with a Social or Combat ethos are likely relatively lower than they should be. This is relevant when trying to estimate number of pledges per Power.
* Preparation values for this Cycle are going to be higher than before. This is because, as I mentioned before, FD has been kind enough to provide me with their data, allowing me to get the total Preparation values for *all* systems each Power has worked on, and not just their top 10. This is a significant difference, as some Powers have put some Preparation into a couple hundred systems.
* Opposition for each Power refers to the level of opposition *their* Expansions have faced, not what they inflicted upon others. Same with Undermining. In all cases, absolute values are used, not percentages.
* Because of Turmoil issues, Arissa Lavigny-Duval was unable to do Preparation last Cycle, and now can't do Expansion. Keep that in mind when viewing the figures.
POWER RANKING BY ACTIVITY
Power ranking by support (Fortification + Expansion + Preparation)
1. Aisling (1,069,879)
2. Arissa (893,286)
3. Hudson (607,809)
4. Mahon (401,741)
5. Winters (362,367)
6. Sirius (342,162)
7. Torval (234,511)
8. Archon (194,706)
9. Patreus (172,529)
10. Antal (125,051)
Power ranking by opposition (Undermining + Opposition)
1. Winters (571,581)
2. Hudson (480,949)
3. Archon (297,270)
4. Mahon (166,465)
5. Sirius (160,573)
6. Arissa (121,186)
7. Torval (94,149)
8. Patreus (89,265)
9. Aisling (50,779)
10. Antal (23,597)
Major faction ranking by support
1. Empire (2,370,205)
2. Federation (970,176)
3. Independents (661,919)
4. Alliance (401,741)
Major faction ranking by opposition
1. Federation (1,052,530)
2. Independents (481,440)
3. Empire (355,379)
4. Alliance (166,465)
ANALYSIS
* Overall activity, both support and opposition, appears to be roughly stable, with minor increases and decreases across the board. There are some exceptions. The Empire has seen a significant drop in opposition and undermining, dropping them to 3rd most opposed faction, below the Independents. Torval and Patreus both have seen rather substantial drops in activity, especially in the case of the former. Across the board, Powers with a combat or social Expansion ethos continue to see a drop in Expansion activity.
* Aisling Duval broke the 1 million Powerplay actions barrier this Cycle. Congratulations! This Power continues to benefit from very low levels of hostile action in her space, and continuously expands as quickly as possible - with a few exceptions. The Expansion into Ax Yac Baru has been stopped, just like last Cycle, presumably mostly by Winters' pilots. Despite that, Aisling continues to rapidly grow stronger, and has recently gained another player group, the 13th Legion. The surprising drop in rankings this week is certainly only temporary, and she will end up in the top 2 before long.
* Arissa Lavigny-Duval still holds her #2 spot despite her Turmoil troubles and the lack of Expansions this week. Fortification appears to have filled the gap once more, with Guathiti seeing an amazing 236,013 powerplay cargo delivered. This is not quite as high as last Cycle, but it's still more than the total Powerplay activity for Archon or Patreus. Unless Overhead strikes again, it seems fair to assume that Arissa will return to her #1 spot this Cycle or the next. Same as with Aisling, Arissa hasn't suffered a significant activity drop, suggesting that people leaving the Power after getting their unique module aren't a major issue, and that short-lived turmoil did not affect her strongly.
* Zemina Torval is the single Power with the biggest activity drop this Cycle. With EIC withdrawing their support for her, it was expected that Zemina would drop, however the decrease is greater than I personally expected, suggesting that East India Company accounted for a significant chunk of this Power's support. Two things do work in Torval's favour. "Imperial Lone Wolf Wing", a new player group, has stepped in to attempt to plug the gap left by EIC, and Torval has seen a significant drop in hostile activity at the same time their own activity has dropped. Unless something changes, I would expect Torval to remain around #6, with the possibility of a further drop if serious enemy activity in her space resumes.
* Denton Patreus does not appear to have particularly benefited from the unveiling of unique modules, despite the common consensus being that his Plasma Accelerator is one of the few useful Powerplay weapons. At the same time, while Patreus sees a good deal of Undermining, there's not much Opposition to his Expansions. As such, he'll probably remain one of the lower-ranked Powers, but due to some smart Fortification and the ongoing Imperial efforts in Kumo Crew space, he is no longer in grave danger in the same way he was before the trigger increase a couple of weeks ago.
* Zachary Hudson has done just fine for himself this Cycle. Despite increased Undermining, no system of his was successfully Undermined (as in, reached the Undermining Trigger but not the Fortification trigger). Despite an increase in Opposition, both of his Expansions have succeeded. Now that his supporters no longer allow Undermining to seriously hurt this Power, Hudson is in a good shape and should keep a spot in the top 3 for the foreseeable future. The one danger this Power faces are its low levels of Expansion activity. Should it see serious Opposition in the coming weeks, it may see multiple Expansions failing, and in the wake of Overhead changes that might not necessarily be a good thing any more. Or it might be, I'm not actually sure.
* Felicia Winters holds on to that #1 most Undermined spot, and she's #2 most Opposed, all while having fairly modest levels of support, somewhere around the level of Mahon or Sirius, who face a fraction of the hostile activity she experiences. Still, Winters is doing well, growing at a steady pace and cancelling out all Undermining. This is a Power that has figured out what to do with its limited resources, and at this point its rank will mostly, IMO, be determined by what happens to the other Powers. If Mahon and Sirius start seeing some serious enemy activity, she will keep a spot in the top 3 or 4 Powers. Otherwise, she'll probably hover around the 4 - 6 range. Interesingly, Winters has seen no significant drop in activity in the wake of the disbanding of the Merchant Marines. Either that loss was offset elsewhere, or made up by the forming The Minutemen, a new Winters player group that seems to be recruiting quite actively.
* Edmund Mahon has grown rapidly this Cycle and is Preparing another heavy round of Expansions next Cycle. With its good strategic position and some fine organisation, this Power is making the most of this early period where they still see no serious Undermining or Opposition. As they push closer to the space of several other Powers (Aisling, Lavigny, Hudson, Winters, Sirius and probably a couple of others) they'll certainly see more hostile action, but for the short to medium term, they'll probably continue to expand quickly.
* Li Yong-Rui is really in a quite similar position to Mahon. Good strategic position, little Opposition or Undermining, opportunities to expand towards several other Powers, rapid growth. However, Sirius might find itself stretched thin in the future. A change in mechanics or politics could rapidly expose Sirius to serious enemy action, and unlike Mahon they haven't yet shown they can deal with that. Their attempted expansion into Chounjemait this past Cycle sparked a conflict with Mahon, although it's hard to tell if that's a harbinger of future war - one can't imagine that Sirius' followers fought with particular zeal for a 0 CC system. In any case, Li Yong-Rui had another week of steady expansion and a modest increase in overall activity. For now at least this Power continues to do very well for itself.
* Archon Delaine continues to see quite massive amounts of enemy activity compared to Archon's own support. The combined Imperial offensive into the Pegasi sector has continued this week, with several systems seeing heavy Opposition and especially Undermining. It's some surprise, then, that Archon has not particularly suffered this week. He was able to secure three Expansions, and none of his systems were successfully Undermined. Partially that's thanks to focused efforts of Archon's supporters, who fortified those systems most at risk, and mostly Expanded systems with good triggers, a crucial tactic for Powers with a combat Expansion ethos. However, the slow progress of the Imperial offensive is in no small part due to the Imperials themselves. While the tactic of focusing on Undermining rather than Opposing is arguably sound, Undermining was focused on just a handful of the Kumo Crew systems, mostly those bordering Imperial space. Many of Archon's systems were completely untouched even though they were not Fortified, while already Fortified systems were heavily Over-Undermined by the Imperial Attackers. This is not a mistake unique to this particular offensive, but it's one that has helped Archon immensely.
* Pranav Antal just chills out in Utopia. I mean, why wouldn't he, it's Utopia, it's great by definition. After securing 2 systems the previous cycle, Utopians now Expanded into just one, continuing the post-trigger-increase trend of slow and steady growth for this Power. With very low levels of support and enemy activity alike, Antal remains fairly safe as long as his supporters continue to focus on 'safe' expansions with good triggers and to do smart Fortifications, as they have done in the last few weeks. At the same time, this is the Power most at risk if Undermining mechanics change so that Independents can fight each other effectively.
GUESSES AND ASSUMPTIONS
This is the section I just use for ranting about whatever I feel like. It's the thing that keeps me same after a few hours of compiling this stuff. Also I get to tell you my opinions and you can't stop me, so that's nice. You can safely skip this section and do something useful with your time instead.
* The Powerplay balance between the Empire and other factions continues be very skewed, but less so than in the previous cycles. This is likely at least partially because of the drop in support for Patreus and Torval, as well as the turmoil issues for Lavigny which meant she had no Expansions this Cycle. This is a pretty minor change, though, and unless we see some changes to the mechanics, Aisling and Arissa will most likely remain the two biggest Powers in the game by some considerable margin.
* We've seen another drop in Undermining and Opposition in Empire space, to the point that now Independents see more of both than the Imperials. That's another symptom of the current Undermining and Opposition mechanics and the way they dis-incentive fighting Powers in the same major faction as yours. While rebalancing those mechanics might seem an obvious change, I've been thinking about it, and FD are in a tricky situation. Balance things a bit too much, and several Powers will probably disappear quite quickly - Patreus and Antal being most at risk. This is not necessarily an entire bad thing, but an argument could be made that any such change should only come after perks and bonuses across Powers are balanced first, with the hope that population is a bit more spread out across all Powers.
* Not one system in the entire inhabited galaxy was succesfully Undermined this Cycle. To re-iterate, when I say "successfully Undermine", I mean that Undermining trigger would be reached, but not the Fortification one. Especially seeing the absolutely massive amount of Undermining Hudson and Winters are experiencing this is quite a shock. Personally, I don't think this is a fault of mechanics (at least not entirely), but rather player behaviour. Just with Fortification, Undermining is simply farmed. Hudson, for example, had many systems undermined several hundred percent, while others were completely untouched, despite the fact that they weren't Fortified, and Undermining them would hurt that Power severely. Hudson, Aisling, Torval, Arissa, Winters - those big Powers are very vulnerable to Undermining as a method of forcing Turmoil, yet what Undermining is being is, is very, very inefficient. I was very surprised to see the same pattern during the Imperial offensive against Archon Delaine, as I presumed that would be a more organised affair. Unless this changes, we'll have a slightly stagnant situation in Powerplay.
* The expected shift of support as the more mercenary-minded players got their rewards and left hasn't materialised yet. That's not to say that it will not come soon, but I know some amongst us expected, for example, Aisling to drop like a stone once people got their shields. Well, it ain't so, and I have to profess I'm slightly surprised.
* Adding a point I forgot about. IMO, Combat and Social Expansion ethos is the biggest issue with Powerplay right now. You can see the Expansion values for Combat and Social Powers drop every week, and it will be a huge issue as time goes. Either rebalancing is needed, or every ethos should work the same as Finance for the purposes of Expansion, at least until a better solution is found.
* Good god this took a long goddamn time. I think I'm going slightly crazy by now. Pls send help. Or beer. Beer would be better.
