Powerplay SNIPING in Powerplay

Another significant issue here is that because the players that performed this snipe did not step up and claim responsibility, it has been wrongly estimated exactly what happened here. It was not a major co-ordinated strike exploiting a particular mechanic at all. It was a well planned and thought-out strike performed by a rather small and focused group of players. It was performed in open, quite early in the cycle. The systems selected were chosen through analysis to maximise the chance they would not be cancelled by fortification. It was a herculean effort by those involved to meticulously log and accumulate merits efficiently to maximise spread and required many hours of work by those involved, as they were not many. This was not a half-ar*ed operation that was easily achieved due to a weak power play mechanic. Indeed, every power I asked about aiding in this considered me nuts for opposing ALD! This operation was weeks in the making, and the frustrations of those involved are spilling over here because what we achieved was a complete success, but this success appears to have been too significant because everyone is asking for changes. Basically, Winters players are OP and they need a nerf?

That's right Perse. 35 smart players are far OP compared to 1000 mindless grinders. If we get nothing out of this ridiculous nonsense, at least we know were OP.
 
Obviously you have not played much PP. If I have 20K merits on me, and you destroy me, I lose those merits. Understand now?
You collecting your reward is unrelated from the success of the activity that generates that reward in the first place.

If you destroy a hundred pirate ships of the pirate faction, that pirate faction loses influence in the system. If you get destroyed before you cash the bounties in, the influence isn't coming back. Understand now?
 
Oh PLEASE no.

There is already a serious deterrent to doing this, and that is the fact that if you get destroyed, you lose all those merits.

Tonight, I was busy giving my enemy what for, and racked up just over 4000 merits in one system. I've just turned them in. If you decide that I can only earn, say 1000 before I have to turn them in, I'd have to make 4 trips back to controlled space, which means I simply cannot do undermining, it will take twice as long.

MAYBE you could have unclaimed merits expire after 24 hours, but setting a hard limit is a terrible idea.

I am not a member of the power which got notably sniped in the final hours of the last cycle (ALD), although my own power has seen its fair share over the passed few weeks (Mahon); but it is a reminder AGAIN of how Powerplay is unfairly loaded against the fortifier in favour of the underminer.

Allowing underminers to hoard merits, only to drop them at the last minute (which gives fortifiers an extremely limited chance to respond with fortification merits) seems unbalanced.

Surely a more balanced system would be to put a limit on how many merits an underminer can retain before cashing them in? How about 3000?
 
My view is that sniping is a good thing. In most strategic games fog of war is a needed mechanism for players to hide their true intentions. If everything is on the map, there's no surprise effect.

We tested (we the Hudson supporters) different ways to "go tactical" - it's almost impossible sniping a system with powers like ALD. They can fortify everything in matters of hours. Every power that feels overconfident is at risk of sniping. Introducing a limit will decrease chances of succesful undermining.

I have on a side note an idea about fog of war - a power (their supporters) may know only what happens in their borders. To see if an enemy system has been fortified or undermined they have to collect intelligence from that system. It may be a different way to collect merits in PP.
 
Setting a hard cap is a bandaid that barely touches the issue. It just makes it so you need a certain number of CMDR to do this to achieve the exact same thing - shooting a system at 0% undermining to 100% undermining five minutes before the calculation.

The solution I am proposing, making every destroyed ship immediately count towards undermining, would still allow players to make as many merits before turning them in as they please.
 
How about making powerplay only relevant in OPEN PLAY. Then you actually have a chance to intercept CMDR underminers and fortifiers. As long as you can get in the same instance and they don't use some exploit on their router to block other people's IPs that is. At the moment it's all about solo actions. The only positive action you can take in power play is to out grind the other power in delivering leaflets.
 
Sandro, your quickness to shut down any talk of Imperial bias, quicker than recognizing issues with other Powers is exactly what this community has been shouting from the roof for months.

Making a merit cap would only serve to strengthen the perceived bias toward the larger powers. These powers are larger because of design choices you have made. Changing the sniping mechanic to limit held merits serves only to make these larger powers better, and the smaller powers weaker.

The discussion of perceived bias, and changing the sniping mechanic go hand in hand.
 
500-1000 is just insane and is exactly what an unorganized power like ALD or Aisling would benefit from, since their bigger amount of players would have more time to cover their fortifications which they wouldn't do under other circumstances. With or without sniping actually.

Let's stop holding their hands when in distress please.

It's that time of the month again...
 
Hello Commander chagnampra!

Limiting Powerplay voucher capacity.

I think is a *great* idea. I'm going to look into the feasibility of doing it.

Obviously, there is a counter argument that it forces more "busy" work for Commander's undermining, but my personal take is that it could provide a *much* bigger benefit than cost.

Top banana, Commander!

This is OK for a large power, but you should pro rata it for size. If you don't penalise the larger powers somehow, you'll end up with just two large ones and a bunch of Meh inbetween.
 
My view is that sniping is a good thing. In most strategic games fog of war is a needed mechanism for players to hide their true intentions. If everything is on the map, there's no surprise effect.

We tested (we the Hudson supporters) different ways to "go tactical" - it's almost impossible sniping a system with powers like ALD. They can fortify everything in matters of hours. Every power that feels overconfident is at risk of sniping. Introducing a limit will decrease chances of succesful undermining.

I have on a side note an idea about fog of war - a power (their supporters) may know only what happens in their borders. To see if an enemy system has been fortified or undermined they have to collect intelligence from that system. It may be a different way to collect merits in PP.

The thing is that fog of war doesn't actually make any sense in this situation. No one reported all those cargo ships and patrol ships going missing? No ALD agents noticed the hostile combat ships interdicting in their system? It really doesn't make sense from a lore perspective for this to be completely hidden.
 
Hello Commander NRCrosby!

I cannot stop folk believing what they want, but I can respectfully ask them not to derail this thread about the mechanics of sniping.

Which I am doing.

But that is just it I am talking mechanics and your thinking that it needs to be addressed and I say no it doesn't and I am presenting my views as to why it does not. As far as the other stuff where were you when Winters was sniped Mmmmm. Let me guess to busy we didn't notice not enough activity for us to see but now ALD is responding to it and well how can we not notice there is all kinds of activity on this Forum that is a mechanic in and of itself isn't it?
 
Last edited:
500-1000 is just insane and is exactly what an unorganized power like ALD or Aisling would benefit from, since their bigger amount of players would have more time to cover their fortifications which they wouldn't do under other circumstances. With or without sniping actually.

Let's stop holding their hands when in distress please.

It's that time of the month again...

Yes this. How many times and in how many different ways do people have to say this?
 
Last edited:
The thing is that fog of war doesn't actually make any sense in this situation. No one reported all those cargo ships and patrol ships going missing? No ALD agents noticed the hostile combat ships interdicting in their system? It really doesn't make sense from a lore perspective for this to be completely hidden.

You can't report anything if it happens in private/solo. But when it happens in open, there are reports: an example here https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteLavigny/comments/3kf7cz/pancienses_undermining/

My proposal for collecting intel creates a new role, the scout, and solves the solo/open issues. You go to a system, you collect intel, you come back, your power knows what's happening. This is compatible with the proposal by Sandro, I have to say. The fact you know nothing is because you didn't send your scouts out there (so if you get sniped is twice your fault: you didn't fortify and you didn't collect intel).
 
I don't like the sound of this.

Limiting the amount of vouchers per player obviously benefits the powers with more players.

Smaller powers need to use misinformation and guerrilla tactics to fight against those who throw their numbers at everything - it makes for a much more interesting tactical game!
 
You can't report anything if it happens in private/solo. But when it happens in open, there are reports: an example here https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteLavigny/comments/3kf7cz/pancienses_undermining/

My proposal for collecting intel creates a new role, the scout, and solves the solo/open issues. You go to a system, you collect intel, you come back, your power knows what's happening. This is compatible with the proposal by Sandro, I have to say. The fact you know nothing is because you didn't send your scouts out there (so if you get sniped is twice your fault: you didn't fortify and you didn't collect intel).


I really like this idea. That totally makes sense. Just like in Fortification, you have to actually visit the system, and drop some Fort to receive the data. It would be a great idea for Undermining as well. Undermining data is present when you dock in the system, makes sense.
 
My proposal for collecting intel creates a new role, the scout, and solves the solo/open issues. You go to a system, you collect intel, you come back, your power knows what's happening. This is compatible with the proposal by Sandro, I have to say. The fact you know nothing is because you didn't send your scouts out there (so if you get sniped is twice your fault: you didn't fortify and you didn't collect intel).

I'd like that.
 
Really? 375,000 merits should result in the systems crawling with commanders? What should be happening in Mahon's systems then? We saw 1.34 million merits last cycle, and on none of my countless fortification runs did I see a single hostile commander. And yes, I fortify in open.

Either everyone undermining Mahon is doing it in private/solo (and I doubt that very much), or space is really, really big, and you simply do not have any experience with what your systems look like when they're being heavily undermined.

Seriously - ALD had 29 out of 71 systems (not counting HQ) hit their undermining trigger in cycle 14. Mahon had 23 systems that hit 150+% of their undermining trigger and 32 out of 59 systems (not counting HQ) hit their undermining trigger.

What do you mean "what your systems look like when they are bein undermined"

As far as i know they look the same. Not noticed a colour change or any celestial alignments. The only thing that indicates your being undermined is the undermine stat which is usually behind and will certainly not inlude any merits being hoarded by cmdrs to be cashed in at the last minute and thats the point of the argument. And how long does it take the avg commender to get 10k mertis? A week? Maybe less so yes i would say there should be a fair few commanders in system.
 
What do you mean "what your systems look like when they are bein undermined"

As far as i know they look the same. Not noticed a colour change or any celestial alignments. The only thing that indicates your being undermined is the undermine stat which is usually behind and will certainly not inlude any merits being hoarded by cmdrs to be cashed in at the last minute and thats the point of the argument. And how long does it take the avg commender to get 10k mertis? A week? Maybe less so yes i would say there should be a fair few commanders in system.


10K merits can be accumulated through undermining in less than half a day very easily.
 
Back
Top Bottom