Powerplay How many players are actually participating in Power Play?

[Martin Schou]

Yeah almost every one I see in open is pledged. It is a rare thing that I find some one unpledged.

I've noticed a similar thing, but then again I spend the majority of my time in powerplay control systems, and there are only about 500 of those. The vast majority of powerplay space is made up of exploited systems, and for all I know this is where the majority of unpledged players spend their time.

In other words, it's entirely possible that I'm just seeing the results of selection bias.

 

[Adeptus Kaze]

I'm on the Xbox Side Pledged to Prenav Antal, and I consider myself to be a Powerplay Focused Player; most of my available time goes into Preperation, Expansion, and Fortification efforts. I rarely undermine because 1) I'm lazy, and 2) I hate getting a price on my head... In fact, I actively discourage Undermining in a Utopian Diplomat and Peacekeeper role.

I maintain Rank 5 for the 50 Million/Week payout, use a 'Lazy Method' to Fortify Control Worlds so I don't have to spend a bundle on Fortification Cargo, and enjoy supporting other Power Players (regardless of faction) in a spirit of enlightened cooperation.

So yeah, I'm pretty active...
I cannot wait till the Xbox and PC Powerplay merge so that we can participate in the larger pool.
Ambassador Kaze

 

[Kazacy]

If there were Defensive Combat Merits, there would also be PP based PVP. Until then, power play will remain a soul sucking PVE Grind.

Right on spot. This is the main reason i hover over 1500 merits per week from undermine. Also being pledged with one of the most hated powers from the galaxy means a lot of pvp go in my general direction.
And to the OP: i don't know any numbers and i think only FD can say a precise number, but in open most of the commanders i encounter are pledged to one of the powers.

 

[Richard Bentley]

If there were Defensive Combat Merits, there would also be PP based PVP. Until then, power play will remain a soul sucking PVE Grind.

It doesn't make sense that taking out enemy agents in your own PP systems doesn't reward you with Merits, just 400 cr.
This needs looking at promptly.
That and being able to load PP material allocations via the mobile app.

 

[Jmanis]

"Within Character" so to speak (I'm not an avid roleplayer, but I have an agenda that doesn't tie in to "optimal game mechanics") I participate in Powerplay, though at the moment that extends to trying to undermine one system. Beyond that, I'm spending a lot of time trying to stabilise my home system/neighbouring systems' Imperial minor faction influence.

Ben Ryder posted something in another thread somewhere, but tl;dr it would be much better if Powerplay were tied into influence mechanics and (imo) missions somehow.

 

[Martin Schou]

Let's assume for a moment, that all merits generated in powerplay are generated by rating 5 pledges, who are only making merits until they have enough to maintain rating 5. Let's assume that this means they'll do 6,000 merits each per week. This will give us a reasonable lower bound for the number of players in powerplay. For support (preparations, expansions and fortifications) you can even break it down into the number of pledges per power.

This gives us the following distribution for cycle 14:

Support

Edmund Mahon - 60
Arissa Lavigny-Duval - 510
Aisling Duval - 85
Denton Patreus - 50
Zemina Torval - 28
Felicia Winters - 45
Zachary Hudson - 208
Li Yong-Rui - 35
Pranav Antal - 44
Archon Delaine - 47

Major Power Allegiance:

Alliance - 60
Empire - 673
Federation - 254
Independents - 125

In terms of offence (opposition and undermining) it isn't possible to do a reasonable distribution assumption, as the only reference point (support) will change dramatically as powers cycle in and out of turmoil.

But for cycle 14, the number of rating 5 offensive players supported is 1,201

Combined this means that we can reasonably assume that there were an absolute minimum of 2,302 active powerplay participants for cycle 14.

 

[Darth Ender]

I think it's safe to say that a lot of players are involved in powerplay mechanics. The real issue that people have is in what game mode are they contributing their involvement in.

 

[vermu]

I would like to participate doing combat runs but I am not sure how. There is talk about crime sweeps but how do you find them? I have traveled to the system that has gun sight in pp map. There are a few conflicts going on but they are just some independent factions fighting with each other. I am with avril the empire lady. So how can I participate if I want to do combat runs? I have shot down ships that are labeled enemy but I don't get any money by shooting them down. I can admit I haven't read the pp manuals but the concept is not opening that easily by itself.

 

[Kazacy]

Let's assume for a moment, that all merits generated in powerplay are generated by rating 5 pledges, who are only making merits until they have enough to maintain rating 5. Let's assume that this means they'll do 6,000 merits each per week. This will give us a reasonable lower bound for the number of players in powerplay. For support (preparations, expansions and fortifications) you can even break it down into the number of pledges per power.

But for cycle 14, the number of rating 5 offensive players supported is 1,201

Combined this means that we can reasonably assume that there were an absolute minimum of 2,302 active powerplay participants for cycle 14.

Rank 5 you say? In my opinion most of the players try to go to rank 4; it's the best combination of work/reward.

 

[Martin Schou]

Rank 5 you say? In my opinion most of the players try to go to rank 4; it's the best combination of work/reward.

Sure, but if you go with rank 4, you can't guess at a minimum, because there's no indication of the distribution of ranks amongst players. For all we know it's 50% rank 5, 40% rank 4 and 10% ranks 1 through 3.

 

[Jmanis]

Sure, but if you go with rank 4, you can't guess at a minimum, because there's no indication of the distribution of ranks amongst players. For all we know it's 50% rank 5, 40% rank 4 and 10% ranks 1 through 3.

Conversely, assuming everyone is rank 2 at 100 merits, this means there's possibly 230,200 people playing powerplay! So there's our answer, 2,303-230,200 people playing powerplay! Woo!

More constructively, I rekon there's a few players who may even earn over 20,000 merits per week, which would skew things more. Gut tells me an average of 2500 merits per player isn't an unreasonable estimate though (80/20ing)

 

[Mercy Killing]

God knows I tried... but grinding. Nope.

This right here. Too much grind, not enough play. I "grind" twelve hour shifts four days a week. Don't want to do the same in my video games.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

I just farm my weekly 10k merits for my weekly 50 million credits reward.

 

[kvisr]

I'm playing and trying to get involved although from all the noise on the forums it seems a little broken at the moment.

 

[Gelbrock]

Whats this 'Power Play'?

 

[PhanttoM]

*(Disclaimer: Contains sarcasm)*
I do the so called grind to maintain rating 2 for the bounty hunting bonuses.
The 10 minutes per week that it takes to earn the 50 merits to maintain it, is way too much! Too much I tell ya!

______

On a more serious note - I do find it annoying that I joined a Police & Bounty Hunting Power, only to find that the best way of helping said power, is to ferry paperwork back and fourth.
There is the occasional crime sweep that might be benefitial for the power.

In short, too few options in Power Play. But since it takes minimal effort to maintain rating 2 which comes with bonuses, I stay "involved".

 

[Martin Schou]

On a more serious note - I do find it annoying that I joined a Police & Bounty Hunting Power, only to find that the best way of helping said power, is to ferry paperwork back and fourth.

You have an odd definition of paperwork. ALD and Hudson both ferry garrison supplies, which means you're hauling weapons.

 

[PhanttoM]

You have an odd definition of paperwork. ALD and Hudson both ferry garrison supplies, which means you're hauling weapons.

I'm with ALD myself - I used corruption reports for the example.




My point was that there is a disconnect between each of the individual Power's ethos and the actual gameplay options to help that Power. In my case as an Arissa Lavigny-Duval player I joined a police, law & order faction and my options are;
• Garrison supplies
• Corruption reports
• Crime Sweep
• Undermine enemy factions


Half of those are nothing more than transport missions. The cargo is irrelevant.
We could be carrying donuts for the local cops for all I care.


Undermining by attacking is another disconnect from the ethos of a police faction. ("Welcome to the Police, now go stir up trouble in other systems")


Which leaves only Crime Sweeps. Half the time I would be doing a disservice by doing those sweeps, due to them sometimes being in systems that we don't want to expand into.




TL;DR (why is anyone with this mentality on a discussion forum? Off to Twitter with you!)
We need more/different things to do, in order to help our faction.

 

[Martin Schou]

We need more/different things to do, in order to help our faction.

I agree. One thing I'd like to see is defending your control systems to either fortify the system or increase the undermining trigger for that system. It'd be nice to earn merits through missions as well.

There are lots of ways to improve it, but to start with I'd much prefer to fix the bugs and get the documentation fixed to be correct.

Once that's done, let's revisit mechanic changes, because some things would still be nice to have, while others might not be needed simply because bugs were fixed and the documentation accurately reflects what should happen.