I believe that is the point though that Sandro is wanting to deal with. Making people support in open by giving the bonus. As noted earlier though, he will need to find a way to make sure that bonus applies to only those who stay in Open from source to destination, otherwise its easy to get around with mode switching.
However, you raise a good point about those being in Open are doing undermining. We don't have stats, and Sandro says many thousands of people participate in PP. But how many of those are simply merit farming? How many of those actually care about the support side? How many people are actually taking part in powerplay and actually doing the (to my mind) boring grind of A to B deliveries and actually supporting their power?
...
I'm not even convinced this proposed bonus will have the desired effect.
Hell, i'm beginning to think Sandro might as well go and do this (although i really dislike this idea of favouring any activities in Open just because of the potential for PvP and i'd really rather see development effort regarding powerplay to go into actually improving the mini-game itself to make it interesting enough to participate in). Because now i'm really curious to see if it will have the intended effect.
I understand completely, and I want Sandro's idea to be implemented as well, because I support the spirit of it 100%. I would also like for Sandro to succeed, and the only way I see that happening is if players actually meet each other in sensible opposition (in the more wild border territories) rather than just getting a better bonus for NPC farming in which ever system they feel like Undermining. If we want this to be interesting, then we need there to be some sanity and balance to the degree of risk/reward involved.
For instance, currently there is ZERO reason to seek out and destroy Underminers. Searching for Underminers slows down your own Merit farming far more than it disrupts any potential targets, since they can simply highwake to another control system. Honestly, I never quite understood how the soft power of postal workers was supposed to be more effective than Railguns at stopping domestic terrorism... [heart][up] + [down][alien] = [knocked out] + [alien][up] ???
So underminers, even in Sandro's suggestion will experience no new risk, but more reward. In addition Underminers will also gain the chance to actively oppose Fortification by attacking player Cargo ships that venture into the system they are currently Undermining. Hence, Undermining in Open will be the place to be.
However, in order for Fortifiers to gain the same bonus there is serious increased risk of being shot at by combat spec Underminers. So the balance of play will still dramatically favor undermining, even, and perhaps especially, if Fortifiers venture into Open. Since the Fortification can now be heavily disrupted, which will probably more than offset any bonus.
In short, Fortifiers need a way to oppose Underminers more directly. Either with Fortification Packets increasing local security levels, and/or by dramatically increasing rewards for actually driving off enemy agents who are undermining their systems. This should include NPC PP agents as well, just to give the defenders of a System some way of gaining Merits during the long wait between undermining the Underminers. Combat defense merits should be roughly half of what you'd get for Undermining. And the NPC agents spawn rate should be directly tied to the amount of Undermining going on there. This will dissuade people from simply camping a core control system and defending it with no personal risk and little personal gain. This will make the core systems feel more secure, as they should, and also create an air of wildness and unrest in border territories, where the action is really happening.
