I can earn between 250+ merits without trying just by doing combat Expansions. If it takes 40 hours to earn 2000 merits you are doing something wrong.
I can earn between 250+ merits without trying just by doing combat Expansions. If it takes 40 hours to earn 2000 merits you are doing something wrong.
Little tip for anyone who has their HQ in either Cubeo or Sol.
In Cubeo buy Marine Equipment at Adelman and fly 400ls (approx) to Chelomey and sell for 1000 cr profit per ton (at least and evey time). Return with an empty hold to Adelman and repeat. In my Python I'm earning 125,000 cr every 5 mins.
In Sol buy Silver at Daedalus and fly 400ls (approx) to Abraham Lincoln and sell for 500- 900 cr per ton. Return to Daedalus with an empty hold and repeat.
Why am I mentioning Trade Routes when the discussion is about earning Merits? Hopefully you've guessed it. No matter which station you happen to be at you can always get Program Materials etc every 29 mins, ie you're earning huge amounts of credits whilst you wait for the Program Materials etc to respawn. In Cubeo you can trade and earn 750,000 cr every 30 mins (more if you've got a ship with more cargo space than a Python). And if your goal is to earn Merits and not credits you could use that money to buy Merits. At Rank 4 you can buy 25 Merits for 250,000 so you could get 125 Merits for your first 30 mins of play then 100 Merits every 30 mins after that - the first 25 Merits you get at zero minutes passed (ie when you first switch the game on for the day), trade for 30 mins, earn 750,000 cr, get another 25 Merits then use that 750,000 cr to instantly buy another 75 Merits.
Hope this tip is useful.
In Cubeo buy Marine Equipment at Adelman and fly 400ls (approx) to Chelomey and sell for 1000 cr profit per ton (at least and evey time). Return with an empty hold to Adelman and repeat. In my Python I'm earning 125,000 cr every 5 mins.
In Sol buy Silver at Daedalus and fly 400ls (approx) to Abraham Lincoln and sell for 500- 900 cr per ton. Return to Daedalus with an empty hold and repeat.
Why am I mentioning Trade Routes when the discussion is about earning Merits? Hopefully you've guessed it. No matter which station you happen to be at you can always get Program Materials etc every 29 mins, ie you're earning huge amounts of credits whilst you wait for the Program Materials etc to respawn. In Cubeo you can trade and earn 750,000 cr every 30 mins (more if you've got a ship with more cargo space than a Python). And if your goal is to earn Merits and not credits you could use that money to buy Merits. At Rank 4 you can buy 25 Merits for 250,000 so you could get 125 Merits for your first 30 mins of play then 100 Merits every 30 mins after that - the first 25 Merits you get at zero minutes passed (ie when you first switch the game on for the day), trade for 30 mins, earn 750,000 cr, get another 25 Merits then use that 750,000 cr to instantly buy another 75 Merits.
Hope this tip is useful.
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Powerplay isn't about the rewards, but if that's all you are after, join ALD and go bounty hunting. Easiest way to make the most cr per hour in the game.
Powerplay - Fail or success?
Powerplays mechanics are a fail in my book. Not much is explained, things are backwards, such as there being no real benefit in expanding to more territory, and its full of bugs untouched after 16 weeks.
The social aspects (maybe you could call it emergent gameplay if you squint) are what PP is all about.
The simple addition of being able to pledge to a Power adds so much more to the game.
You have a "home", allies and enemies.
Thank you for all the replies. I think I see a couple of errors in my thinking. Firstly, I only pointed out the Cr issue to get rid of it, not to imply that I was looking at Powerplay as a way of making money. Secondly, I note that some of you really enjoy the undermining etc., something I'm not really interested in. It's such a big galaxy, I can't get my mind around the idea that people would actually compete for territory. It's not as if we were concentrated in a single world with limited resources, so killing people because you want to take over their stuff, when there is a complete galaxy to be had, just does not do it for me. Different strokes for different folks and all that. Have fun.
I'm hoping that the next iteration will bring more constructive game play ( hopefully in developing the ground side stations). Also in expanding the size of occupied space in entirely new directions.
Thank you all for the comments
I'm hoping that the next iteration will bring more constructive game play ( hopefully in developing the ground side stations). Also in expanding the size of occupied space in entirely new directions.
Thank you all for the comments
I've been pledged some 11 weeks, about half of them rank 5, to Aisling but I'm now at the point where I'm not really caring any more. I've played most aspects of PP and found them to be boring or buggy and generally not worth the effort. The reason why I still tried for so long was because I wanted it to be fun, despite that it really wasn't. Well, the weekly grind aspect of it...
PP is probably fine if you do it in the background, not going further than rank 3 or 4 which is easily maintainable and probably lucrative with just a few hours of investment. It's broken if you want it as the main part of the game - which is pretty much required you do if you want to reach rank 5.
What I personally found very frustrating was that none of the different activities feel particularly inventive or enriching my gaming experience. Also, the mechanics of some of them are just plain broken. Let's look at them, shall we?
The most basic thing to do in PP is probably playing courier. Shipping a cargohold of McGuffins from special system A to special system B once every 30 minutes. Back and forth, back and forth... You are essentially out of the game for the time it takes for this timer to tick down, log in briefly, get your assets and go right back to do other stuff like watching TV or playing other games while your cargohold slowly fills up. Sure you can do trading in between those timers but you better be back in system A every 30 minutes or you are going to miss out. Reaching and maintaining Rank 5 takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of time this way, requires you to plan your activities around that 30 minutes timer, or forces you to spend a good portion of that paycheck you get each week for doing this.
It would be vastly better if allocations would accumulate over a day, maybe at a slower rate but with a cap, but you get to claim them all at once. Even better still would be to actually design a system that actively encourages the kind of goal the power claims to follow. An economical power might want to bring increased trade to a system so let every ton of traded cargo (better every 1000cr, gives you more incentive to trade valuable goods) count towards your merits. An industrial power might prompt you to mine stuff there. Or combine them with community goals where a social power wants to 'better' a certain station by bumping it up from industrial to high-tech, or from Coriolis- to Orbit-type station.
Also, get rid of overfortification. It's plain ridiculous that some systems get reinforced (or undermined) way past the 1000% threshold when there is absolutely no benefit at all from going beyond 100%. Once a system reaches 100% (or 110% to give some leeway) further fortifications is either not possible or does not give merits any longer. It's a bit more complicated for undermining but it's generally less of a problem in my opinion.
Next up the chain are interdiction assassinations and robberies. Okay-ish in principle, the straight out assassinations become tedious after a while but they still give the highest merits/hr ration from my experience. You can do them with a fairly cheap ship like a Cobra or Vulture and in solo play you can be almost brain-afk since none of the interdicting npc's will be able to catch you. However, once in a while you do get a somewhat intense fight against a Type-9 and two Cobras that can tax your ship's and personal flying ability if you wanna catch'em all. Not entirely good, not entirely bad. It's still a grind but at least you get to see a few ships explode.
Piracy on the other hand, especially against 'allied' powers, is buggy as hell and while it should actually pay better on paper it really doesn't from my experience. First, there are those buggy collector limpets that seem to be suicidal like Marvin from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and guidance software written by cold-war era standards. You can't tell me that advanced drones in the 34th century can't figure out how to account for relatively minor speed adjustments that would prevent them from smashing into your ship. Noooo, you have to come to a complete stop or that drone will just smash into your hull and not your open cargo hatch. But even that wouldn't be so bad if those idiotic haulers all seem to have a death wish and stay on the field with 2% hull left in their Hauler, no shields and only a pesky turret pulse laser while you sit in a frigging Python and have them in their sights! But no, you can't shoot them since that would cut into your merits... (The only one that is not inevitably aligned with your power that you can employ piracy against is the Sirius Corp guy but only when he's expanding into that system).
So how to make that better? First, I would like to see a more varied approach. Use the existing system-faction mechanics. It makes little sense that a social and economic power like Aisling Duval sends out assassins and pirates, but it might make more sense that she sends out underminers that try to play the different factions already present against each other. And please fix those damn collector limpets for the powers where piracy actually makes sense.
Lastly we have combat zones. I frankly quite like them, although in principle it's exactly the same as normal combat zones where you support a faction for straight up money. Could they be tweaked? Probably. Currently they aren't really giving out the merits/hr like assassinations do, are inherently more dangerous and have a higher bar of entrance. I've never tried one in anything less than a Python and six shield boosters, but I suspect in lower-end ships you are in for a rough ride.
What I would generally like to see done better is the social aspect of Power Play. Currently there is no real reason to interact with anyone at all, except role playing and that you personally want to. The game does not make you feel like you are part of a cohesive, bigger whole and it does - in my opinion - a bad job inspiring you to want to be. First off, give the community a more direct means to interact. Local chat in the headquarters system is all well and good but seriously, most PP related social stuff happens outside the game. What you could do for example is have those nominations count for something more than system preparation. Give us an in-game elective council that is able to steer the power's direction somewhat by pointing us at preferred systems to prepare or veto bad ones that some selfish grinders found convenient for their trade route but are absolutely horrible for the power itself. Let them designate fortification targets that might give you a merit bonus if you do indeed fortify them or undermining targets that do the same. Let them begin a process that allows the power to get rid of bad systems they would rather not have or give them options to make them better.
Make it easier and more desirable for individual players to interact with others in their power, perhaps by giving us incentives to form strike teams that go out and accomplish specific goals.
With CQC coming it would be great if we would see 'power-sponsored' teams that can gain merits if they do well.
For now I personally will put PP on the backburner. I might come back again in a future iteration.
PP is probably fine if you do it in the background, not going further than rank 3 or 4 which is easily maintainable and probably lucrative with just a few hours of investment. It's broken if you want it as the main part of the game - which is pretty much required you do if you want to reach rank 5.
What I personally found very frustrating was that none of the different activities feel particularly inventive or enriching my gaming experience. Also, the mechanics of some of them are just plain broken. Let's look at them, shall we?
The most basic thing to do in PP is probably playing courier. Shipping a cargohold of McGuffins from special system A to special system B once every 30 minutes. Back and forth, back and forth... You are essentially out of the game for the time it takes for this timer to tick down, log in briefly, get your assets and go right back to do other stuff like watching TV or playing other games while your cargohold slowly fills up. Sure you can do trading in between those timers but you better be back in system A every 30 minutes or you are going to miss out. Reaching and maintaining Rank 5 takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of time this way, requires you to plan your activities around that 30 minutes timer, or forces you to spend a good portion of that paycheck you get each week for doing this.
It would be vastly better if allocations would accumulate over a day, maybe at a slower rate but with a cap, but you get to claim them all at once. Even better still would be to actually design a system that actively encourages the kind of goal the power claims to follow. An economical power might want to bring increased trade to a system so let every ton of traded cargo (better every 1000cr, gives you more incentive to trade valuable goods) count towards your merits. An industrial power might prompt you to mine stuff there. Or combine them with community goals where a social power wants to 'better' a certain station by bumping it up from industrial to high-tech, or from Coriolis- to Orbit-type station.
Also, get rid of overfortification. It's plain ridiculous that some systems get reinforced (or undermined) way past the 1000% threshold when there is absolutely no benefit at all from going beyond 100%. Once a system reaches 100% (or 110% to give some leeway) further fortifications is either not possible or does not give merits any longer. It's a bit more complicated for undermining but it's generally less of a problem in my opinion.
Next up the chain are interdiction assassinations and robberies. Okay-ish in principle, the straight out assassinations become tedious after a while but they still give the highest merits/hr ration from my experience. You can do them with a fairly cheap ship like a Cobra or Vulture and in solo play you can be almost brain-afk since none of the interdicting npc's will be able to catch you. However, once in a while you do get a somewhat intense fight against a Type-9 and two Cobras that can tax your ship's and personal flying ability if you wanna catch'em all. Not entirely good, not entirely bad. It's still a grind but at least you get to see a few ships explode.
Piracy on the other hand, especially against 'allied' powers, is buggy as hell and while it should actually pay better on paper it really doesn't from my experience. First, there are those buggy collector limpets that seem to be suicidal like Marvin from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and guidance software written by cold-war era standards. You can't tell me that advanced drones in the 34th century can't figure out how to account for relatively minor speed adjustments that would prevent them from smashing into your ship. Noooo, you have to come to a complete stop or that drone will just smash into your hull and not your open cargo hatch. But even that wouldn't be so bad if those idiotic haulers all seem to have a death wish and stay on the field with 2% hull left in their Hauler, no shields and only a pesky turret pulse laser while you sit in a frigging Python and have them in their sights! But no, you can't shoot them since that would cut into your merits... (The only one that is not inevitably aligned with your power that you can employ piracy against is the Sirius Corp guy but only when he's expanding into that system).
So how to make that better? First, I would like to see a more varied approach. Use the existing system-faction mechanics. It makes little sense that a social and economic power like Aisling Duval sends out assassins and pirates, but it might make more sense that she sends out underminers that try to play the different factions already present against each other. And please fix those damn collector limpets for the powers where piracy actually makes sense.
Lastly we have combat zones. I frankly quite like them, although in principle it's exactly the same as normal combat zones where you support a faction for straight up money. Could they be tweaked? Probably. Currently they aren't really giving out the merits/hr like assassinations do, are inherently more dangerous and have a higher bar of entrance. I've never tried one in anything less than a Python and six shield boosters, but I suspect in lower-end ships you are in for a rough ride.
What I would generally like to see done better is the social aspect of Power Play. Currently there is no real reason to interact with anyone at all, except role playing and that you personally want to. The game does not make you feel like you are part of a cohesive, bigger whole and it does - in my opinion - a bad job inspiring you to want to be. First off, give the community a more direct means to interact. Local chat in the headquarters system is all well and good but seriously, most PP related social stuff happens outside the game. What you could do for example is have those nominations count for something more than system preparation. Give us an in-game elective council that is able to steer the power's direction somewhat by pointing us at preferred systems to prepare or veto bad ones that some selfish grinders found convenient for their trade route but are absolutely horrible for the power itself. Let them designate fortification targets that might give you a merit bonus if you do indeed fortify them or undermining targets that do the same. Let them begin a process that allows the power to get rid of bad systems they would rather not have or give them options to make them better.
Make it easier and more desirable for individual players to interact with others in their power, perhaps by giving us incentives to form strike teams that go out and accomplish specific goals.
With CQC coming it would be great if we would see 'power-sponsored' teams that can gain merits if they do well.
For now I personally will put PP on the backburner. I might come back again in a future iteration.
P.s.: Reputation decay. Generally, not really a fan but I agree that you shouldn't get something for nothing and you shouldn't get continual payouts for past deeds. So, let's move away from rank based payouts. Let our rank be persistent (or at least with a much longer half-life than a week but taking longer to achieve) but don't give out any money, just the other benefits like access to better modules and various boni. Make the payout dependent on our direct actions (but only after those exploits that give you merits without helping your power are removed) and maybe how well your faction did in the last cycle.
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I think it has been a success! I enjoy power play but that is not all I do, I mix it up. But Undermining is a blast to do, and very fun! You get a bounty in the system and the more kills of federal logistics ships (I am an Imperial faction) the more and more crazy it gets in that sector, also the fact you get 30 power play per kill you can rank up pretty quickly. I agree Power Play is not the best way to make credits and I think I know the reason behind this.
When you pledge to a power you are like a solider in their military, like real life they do not get paid well, (which I think they should get more that is not where I am going with this one), when you are in the private sector like black-water and you are a bounty hunter in game is like a mercenary solider in the private sector, they get paid vastly more.
With power play, you feel like you are part of something bigger and can have a small effect on the galaxy. Before Power Play you are taking missions and getting paid that affects your personal rank but did nothing in the universe.
Like all things it is not perfect, but a huge step in the right direction IMO.
When you pledge to a power you are like a solider in their military, like real life they do not get paid well, (which I think they should get more that is not where I am going with this one), when you are in the private sector like black-water and you are a bounty hunter in game is like a mercenary solider in the private sector, they get paid vastly more.
With power play, you feel like you are part of something bigger and can have a small effect on the galaxy. Before Power Play you are taking missions and getting paid that affects your personal rank but did nothing in the universe.
Like all things it is not perfect, but a huge step in the right direction IMO.
That was a pretty good write up. I'd certainly agree with your sentiment that you didn't feel as though your deeds were part of anything.
My thoughts were exactly the same until I got onto the Reddit page with my power faction. It's transformed the whole thing, a cohesive strategy each week is great.
Go Hudson.
DUB aka CMDR_Ramones
Thanks for the praise, but that's more or less what I was getting at. Unless you go outside the game it doesn't feel as if you are part of a group. I considered joining Aisling's Angels and I still have their google docs file open with the weekly strategy but quite honestly I don't see why I have to join a reddit page for this. At least not for a general feeling of belonging to something. There are single player games that do this better.
There is no real incentive to play in a group (alright, it's probably easier to do combat zones). There are no real tools to even find a group in the game. As far as communication options go we are pretty limited.
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PowerPlay is a failure for me because it does nothing to make playing Elite more enjoyable. I love the idea behind it and was way excited about it before release. I thought we'd have ten different "super factions" competing for power based on their political ideologies or power-hungriness, offering missions that reflected their personalities, and their goals would be to flip ownership of systems to their faction through the background simulation, meaning that missions would come from the Bulletin Board for credits, influence and reputation gain.
Zachary Hudson's stations would offer covert military missions to destabilize the Empire, for example. Aisling Duvall would be on an anti-slave crusade. Archon Delaine would have missions to flip systems from governments to anarchy, and wherever he or other pirate lords had power, there would be no such thing as "stolen" cargo. The Alliance powers (I was hoping there would be more than one ) would be more diplomatic, and instead of actively invading systems to take control, they might listen to appeals for systems looking for help. If an independent system, say, were about to be overtaken by a Federation or Empire faction, that system would send an automatically generated plea to the Alliance for military, financial or humanitarian aid, again carried out by BB missions. If the Alliance succeeded in driving the enemy faction from the system, that system would then join the Alliance and contribute to their bottom line.
Stuff like that is what I was expecting to see. I wanted to choose a faction based on the type of pilot I liked to play in Elite, essentially to make a roleplaying choice.
When PP started I signed up with the Alliance and found I could haul... I forget what it was, Corruption reports or propaganda, something like that, from arbitrary system A to arbitrary system B, 10 tons at a time to earn "merits." on a 30 minute clock. If I didn't want to wait 30 minutes I could effectively buy more materials to up the spread of propaganda or corruption investigation or something. And the entire time I was doing it, I was trying to imagine what 10, or 20, or 50 tons of "corruption reports" would look like in my hold. Were they printed pages? USB Thumb sticks? Stenographers? Whatever it was, the docks at the target stations were consuming thousands of tons of them that I and the other commanders were delivering.
So right then my suspension of disbelief or immersion or whatever was broken. I wasn't a space pilot performing special missions for a government power, I was making an invisible counter go up somewhere.
So I decided to see what the more active options were. Combat missions. I could go into "enemy" territory and blow ships up. Again I forgot what the label was. Crime sweeps or military strikes or whatever, I could go into a re-labeled Conflict Zone and blow up ships for merits, and make another invisible counter go up again. Or, in an extremely un-Alliance fashion, I could interdict civilian traffic in their systems, murder them, gain bounties on myself... to make an invisible counter go up somewhere.
So I switched to Hudson because he at least offered bounty bonuses. I figured that meant he would be offering bounty hunting missions. But no. He offered the same exact hauling missions from Arbitrary Point A to Point B with different labels, on the same 30 minute clock. Or I could blow up ships in the same Conflict Zones with a different name. Or slaughter innocents.
I never checked with the Empire powers or independents. At that point I just read up on them. Every single one has the same mechanics. The only difference between them are the pictures, their descriptions, and the labels on the same PowerPlay activities. Even their ranks are the same and the benefits are the same, outside of some tangential stuff tied to bonuses to non-PP activities that don't affect PP itself.
There is no difference being "good guy" Alliance pilot winning hearts and minds of systems to join Mahon than there is to pledging to Archon Delaine and being a terror to civilized space. There's no difference in methodology, other than text, to differentiate militant Federalist Zachary Hudson to Utopian Idealist Antal.
To make matters worse, in order to participate in supporting a power that I really don't care about, I discovered I had to stop doing the things I liked to most when playing Elite: Bounty hunting, trading, and exploring. None of that matters at all in the galactic struggle. What I do as a pilot makes no difference in PowerPlay, and vice versa. Ranking up in a power also does nothing to help ranking up with the Empire or Alliance or Federation, either, and vice versa.
In short, I found PowerPlay to be completely disconnected from the game I want to play, which is Elite: Dangerous... It actually made me want to stop playing ED altogether because even unpledged, there was the PowerPlay button on the left nav. GalNet is filled with PowerPlay news. I can't get away from it. And every time I sit down to play Elite, it just makes the things that are still missing in the core game stand out that much more, things like improved missions, more exploration content, more in-game assets... "It's coming, it's coming," is what we've all heard. But with all the development efforts put into PowerPlay and now 1.4's CQC, it's hard to believe that.
Zachary Hudson's stations would offer covert military missions to destabilize the Empire, for example. Aisling Duvall would be on an anti-slave crusade. Archon Delaine would have missions to flip systems from governments to anarchy, and wherever he or other pirate lords had power, there would be no such thing as "stolen" cargo. The Alliance powers (I was hoping there would be more than one
) would be more diplomatic, and instead of actively invading systems to take control, they might listen to appeals for systems looking for help. If an independent system, say, were about to be overtaken by a Federation or Empire faction, that system would send an automatically generated plea to the Alliance for military, financial or humanitarian aid, again carried out by BB missions. If the Alliance succeeded in driving the enemy faction from the system, that system would then join the Alliance and contribute to their bottom line.Stuff like that is what I was expecting to see. I wanted to choose a faction based on the type of pilot I liked to play in Elite, essentially to make a roleplaying choice.
When PP started I signed up with the Alliance and found I could haul... I forget what it was, Corruption reports or propaganda, something like that, from arbitrary system A to arbitrary system B, 10 tons at a time to earn "merits." on a 30 minute clock. If I didn't want to wait 30 minutes I could effectively buy more materials to up the spread of propaganda or corruption investigation or something. And the entire time I was doing it, I was trying to imagine what 10, or 20, or 50 tons of "corruption reports" would look like in my hold. Were they printed pages? USB Thumb sticks? Stenographers? Whatever it was, the docks at the target stations were consuming thousands of tons of them that I and the other commanders were delivering.
So right then my suspension of disbelief or immersion or whatever was broken. I wasn't a space pilot performing special missions for a government power, I was making an invisible counter go up somewhere.
So I decided to see what the more active options were. Combat missions. I could go into "enemy" territory and blow ships up. Again I forgot what the label was. Crime sweeps or military strikes or whatever, I could go into a re-labeled Conflict Zone and blow up ships for merits, and make another invisible counter go up again. Or, in an extremely un-Alliance fashion, I could interdict civilian traffic in their systems, murder them, gain bounties on myself... to make an invisible counter go up somewhere.
So I switched to Hudson because he at least offered bounty bonuses. I figured that meant he would be offering bounty hunting missions. But no. He offered the same exact hauling missions from Arbitrary Point A to Point B with different labels, on the same 30 minute clock. Or I could blow up ships in the same Conflict Zones with a different name. Or slaughter innocents.
I never checked with the Empire powers or independents. At that point I just read up on them. Every single one has the same mechanics. The only difference between them are the pictures, their descriptions, and the labels on the same PowerPlay activities. Even their ranks are the same and the benefits are the same, outside of some tangential stuff tied to bonuses to non-PP activities that don't affect PP itself.
There is no difference being "good guy" Alliance pilot winning hearts and minds of systems to join Mahon than there is to pledging to Archon Delaine and being a terror to civilized space. There's no difference in methodology, other than text, to differentiate militant Federalist Zachary Hudson to Utopian Idealist Antal.
To make matters worse, in order to participate in supporting a power that I really don't care about, I discovered I had to stop doing the things I liked to most when playing Elite: Bounty hunting, trading, and exploring. None of that matters at all in the galactic struggle. What I do as a pilot makes no difference in PowerPlay, and vice versa. Ranking up in a power also does nothing to help ranking up with the Empire or Alliance or Federation, either, and vice versa.
In short, I found PowerPlay to be completely disconnected from the game I want to play, which is Elite: Dangerous... It actually made me want to stop playing ED altogether because even unpledged, there was the PowerPlay button on the left nav. GalNet is filled with PowerPlay news. I can't get away from it. And every time I sit down to play Elite, it just makes the things that are still missing in the core game stand out that much more, things like improved missions, more exploration content, more in-game assets... "It's coming, it's coming," is what we've all heard. But with all the development efforts put into PowerPlay and now 1.4's CQC, it's hard to believe that.
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my anaconda 4h = 10k merits eazy!!!! very easy to make merits! I do not know why people talk so bad!
Overall it is a success.
It adds an interesting additional layer above the minor faction, gives opportuinities and goals, is often fun, brings credits and spends purpose to the usual actions.
It can be improved, no doubt about it. But overall it is a success. Especially the biggdr impact of undermining was a good first step in the right direction.
Some more balancing be4ween the powers for bonusses is needed, and ways to attack systems and get rid of bad ones.
If the OP needs 25 hours for 750 merits... he is doing it wrong. I get 300 / hour for undermining.
It adds an interesting additional layer above the minor faction, gives opportuinities and goals, is often fun, brings credits and spends purpose to the usual actions.
It can be improved, no doubt about it. But overall it is a success. Especially the biggdr impact of undermining was a good first step in the right direction.
Some more balancing be4ween the powers for bonusses is needed, and ways to attack systems and get rid of bad ones.
If the OP needs 25 hours for 750 merits... he is doing it wrong. I get 300 / hour for undermining.
That's not really the point. Interdicting I can make 800 merits an hour in a Vulture so it takes about 5h to keep Rank 5. Although with your merits/hr rate you probably have the best ship money can buy anyway, so I don't really see the point anyway? Maybe I did them wrong, but doing combat sites for merits in a ~150M Python I didn't make as much merits as with interdicting. Did you just turretspam right through to get maximum engagements/merits? Play tank basically and let everyone else do the damage? How did you survive if you found yourself focused by several big ships?
Anyway, ElectricZ has summed it up pretty well. Immersion is horrible and the mechanics are lacklustre. It's not really about being hard or time consuming. It feels like the first iteration of daily quests in World of Warcraft back in Burning Crusade but probably worse...
I guess, you are running from Capital to nearest Control system...all the time - A to B route grind..
This is super boring/repetitive grinding for a lot of people (including me
) and this also does not help your power in any way..... but sure you can do this, if you enjoy doing this, I do not blame you..
But if you want to get merits and also to help your power you need to play much more time.
For fortification you need to go to distant systems from your capital even 80-120ly sometimes
1) For me is the same result, undermining (interdicting Haulers
) with 150m Pyton or FDL is better then combat in Crime sweeps with 400m Conda..Hauler = 30 merits -> wing of 3 = 90 merits...2) I hope, FD will improve PP missions and add more ways to get merits e.g. by missions, more ways to fortify add somthing for combat pilots, currently Fortify is basically only for traders..
1) For me is the same result, undermining (interdicting Haulers
2) I hope, FD will improve PP missions and add more ways to get merits e.g. by missions, more ways to fortify add somthing for combat pilots, currently Fortify is basically only for traders..
How often do you come across wings? It seems like I hardly ever find any. Do you wait for them, or do you just interdict them when they appear?