Powerplay Dear Sandro - your analysis will be needed on Thursday morning!

[ever]

One thing that this entire situation reveals is that as long as collusion piracy is an option, the Federation essentially cannot lose this war.

Currently Hudson and Winters can and will avoid any kind of snipe simply by using collusion piracy to make sure that their good systems are cancelled and thus balance their CC. This is something that the Alliance never has and never will be able to do, because we do not have any factions that share our major allegiance.

The game rules that FDev have set up puts a big fat thumb on the Federation side of the scale.

1) Blockading their headquarters only costs their pilots credits, not merits
2) Collusion piracy protects Hudson and Winters from snipes

Now throw in the suggestion that merits made in open will be more effective, and 1) just makes the fight even more unbalanced.

Get rid of collusion piracy altogether by having merits taken from players from another power count for 0 merits. This will allow regular PowerPlay piracy to be an option and make Hudson and Winters vulnerable to sniping again.

The raw data shows that Hudson was subjected to PowerPlay piracy in LPM 229, just like Winters saw LHS 160 and Zeta Trianguli Australis were subjected to PowerPlay piracy. Hudson and Winters would obviously be foolish not to take advantage of the MASSIVELY strategically advantageous tool, but if FDev wants to see this be anything even remotely close to a fair fight, then either PowerPlay piracy has to be removed, or the Alliance has to be given access to the same tool.

We've gone 45 weeks without it, and we would prefer to go without it for another 45 weeks. Not just because it makes sniping a viable option against the powers with default surplus economies, but also because PowerPlay piracy is a credit exploit. If you do a 1:1 swap with a commander from another power, you give him 2,000 merits and he gives you 2,000 merits. That costs 20,000 credits and when it's handed in each of you gain 10,000 merits. Congratulations, you've just summoned 30,000,000 credits into being out of thin air. Next cycle each of you only need 5,334 merits. You now swap 1,067 merits and you've now made 39,330,000 while maintaining rating five and getting its bonuses.

Please close the PowerPlay Piracy Gap and lets make this a far more interesting PowerPlay war.

As a Fed Commander I would agree to this proposal, if and only if "open" actions would benefit the Power more than "solo/PG" actions. And you limit 5C. BALANCE THE FORCE! It's not in the interest of the game to change the rules, in order to help just a Power.

 

[ever]

Hello Commander Insinnergy!



So perhaps the real (and valid) question is, whether the cap on fortification/undermining is desirable. This is the mechanic where fortification and undermining cancel each other out, ensuring that with enough folk helping out on both sides the end result is, in effect, constrained, which is what happened in this case, and what ensured the measured result. This comes down to notions I mentioned in an earlier post: stability/volatility and effort/reward.

It would make the BGS work irrelevant. From my point of view it would unbalance offensive/defensive actions. I would support this mechanic with a new strategy layer. Like prepping some kind of "death star" by delivering certain commodities to a control system. Once the project is completed, it would remove the cap in the following cycle for enemy systems in range. Of course the possibility of a "wall" to counter it, should be given.

 

[GoStu]

I'm not sure about this. I think you know that it needed tremendous efforts on both sides of the war to reach those numbers, and I don't think this is something we could hold onto forever. Even though Mahon has a lot of low triggers due to favourable governments in his systems. You can't just conclude from the last cycle that it's too easy to reach 100 percent. It's nothing close to that.

I think my post was unclear. I'll revise it to clarify. As of today, the triggers & caps are fine. Herculean efforts were required by both sides, which seems right! Undermining the Biggest Power in the Play (TM) shouldn't be easy, and wasn't. My concern is for the future, should the game in general and the PowerPlay community in particular experience a large growth. Imagine the same conflict but with two times as many players on each side. Fortifications and Undermining efforts would have been completed much earlier in the cycle instead of the dramatic race to the finish that it was

Further, it'd far be less taxing to either power to sustain the war. With a commendable effort, the Alliance posted that Fortifications were completed by 15:00 GMT (about 8:00 am where I am). Billions of credits were likely spent to do so. With a hypothetical doubling of the populations, fewer credits would need to be spent overall as the amount of 'freebies' doubles. Instead of five days, it'd be done in under three; each CMDR spending less individually and having more time to go make the money back. At the end of cycle, twice as many players are recouping 50,000,000 CR.

What I'm trying to get at is that with significant population growth, the PowerPlay game could stagnate a bit. After some further thought I'm not sure that my proposed "Escalation" mechanic would be the best idea, as there's some systems that are seemingly ALWAYS fully fortified and fully undermined.

 

[Martin Schou]

As a Fed Commander I would agree to this proposal, if and only if "open" actions would benefit the Power more than "solo/PG" actions. And you limit 5C. BALANCE THE FORCE! It's not in the interest of the game to change the rules, in order to help just a Power.

Hang on a moment - the only way you are willing to give up an enormously advantageous exploit that your opponent has no way of using, is if something is done to curb a mechanic that everyone has access to? Are you really that scared of Mahon?

 

[CaptainKirby]

What I'm trying to get at is that with significant population growth, the PowerPlay game could stagnate a bit.

Yah, I got it. But I'm not sure if the game (and Powerplay) will actually grow like this. It may be possible that some new players join while others retire. It's difficult to say at this point. If the amount of active players actually double, you'd probably be right that the game could stagnate due to too low triggers. But that's far in the future.

 

[ever]

Hang on a moment - the only way you are willing to give up an enormously advantageous exploit that your opponent has no way of using, is if something is done to curb a mechanic that everyone has access to? Are you really that scared of Mahon?

I think there was balance in the game when it started. The collusion piracy as well as 5C have not been such a problem until recently. It was well thought when PP came out to make Mahon as they did. From a designer perspective. Of course the game has evolved and the rules must be updated. It would be in the interest of PP to introduce benefits for your Power in open, limit the 5C and some kind of loyalty bonus. Some twitches to the Powers would be great too and I think the new update might change things in PP at a personal level. So we have to wait first for that. The open and 5C changes should be introduced from my poing of view regardless of the changes to Mahon. But if they do make changes to Powers, they definitely should introduce that, to balance it out. It not about scared, nor brave for that matter. For me it's about fun and balance. Give a chance to the little man !

On a side note: to fight Powers that work with diligence against their own interest is boring at some point. I find PP refreshing now and I can only hope the developers would rise the priority of PP when they see how passionate we are about competing against each other. The Empire and the Federation have been fighting each other from the beginning, but only now Sandro has noticed a clash between "several big Powers". LOL

 

[SHEPR0N]

Currently Hudson and Winters can and will avoid any kind of snipe simply by using collusion piracy to make sure that their good systems are cancelled and thus balance their CC. This is something that the Alliance never has and never will be able to do, because we do not have any factions that share our major allegiance.

We have been successfully sniped in the past before a couple times, the collusion piracy mechanic isn't such a good tool to avoid that really. Just look at the SCRAP gone wrong that happened to ALD last cycle. With the high base undermining the Alliance receives in many cycles you'd actually have the means to better protect yourselfes against snipes too if you wanted to.

I'd rather say that powers that extensively use the collusion piracy mechanic make themselves more resistant against regular undermining (given they have enough fortifiers), when their good systems are covered and the opposing undermining helped them to have low CC they can undermine bad system to attempt to lose them in Turmoil.

The raw data shows that Hudson was subjected to PowerPlay piracy in LPM 229

This is actually a bad example, LPM is overundermined every cycle, presumably by ALD grinders. We noticed the apparent recurring presence of collusion piracy in that system too though, not sure where it comes from.

As a Fed Commander I would agree to this proposal, if and only if "open" actions would benefit the Power more than "solo/PG" actions. And you limit 5C. BALANCE THE FORCE! It's not in the interest of the game to change the rules, in order to help just a Power.

Hang on a moment - the only way you are willing to give up an enormously advantageous exploit that your opponent has no way of using, is if something is done to curb a mechanic that everyone has access to? Are you really that scared of Mahon?

As for the end of the collusion piracy mechanic, I'm all for it if the game gives us tools to combat 5C activity effectively. Both combined will make the game more interesting and return PowerPlay on the path it was actually meant to be played. If you just take away collusion piracy mechanic you'll effectively take powers like Hudson out of the game, the only way for us to fight 5C activities is at the preparation stage as our 5c expansions are carried by armies of grinders and de facto unopposable. Powers with cargo expansions / fewer grinders simply don't have this problem at this magnitude (the exception being AD which were forced to take Chnumar with massive efforts I guess). If we drown in starting CC we just have no way of keeping our prep list controlled, potentially forcing us into loops of turmoiling to fail expansions and to high starting CC balances in following cycles. The only times we used the collusion piracy mechanic in the past were attempts to avoid those situations, it's not our fault your power can't do that (although some would say you have friendly underminers in other powers to achieve similar results).

 

[Martin Schou]

I think there was balance in the game when it started. The collusion piracy as well as 5C have not been such a problem until recently. It was well thought when PP came out to make Mahon as they did. From a designer perspective. Of course the game has evolved and the rules must be updated. It would be in the interest of PP to introduce benefits for your Power in open, limit the 5C and some kind of loyalty bonus. Some twitches to the Powers would be great too and I think the new update might change things in PP at a personal level. So we have to wait first for that. The open and 5C changes should be introduced from my poing of view regardless of the changes to Mahon. But if they do make changes to Powers, they definitely should introduce that, to balance it out. It not about scared, nor brave for that matter. For me it's about fun and balance. Give a chance to the little man !

On a side note: to fight Powers that work with diligence against their own interest is boring at some point. I find PP refreshing now and I can only hope the developers would rise the priority of PP when they see how passionate we are about competing against each other. The Empire and the Federation have been fighting each other from the beginning, but only now Sandro has noticed a clash between "several big Powers". LOL

Then why the protest against removing player to player PowerPlay piracy if you didn't get something in return? In terms of the Federation vs Alliance conflict, a bonus to playing in open is yet another thing that is massively advantageous to the Federation, because blockading your headquarters does not put any merits at stake.

Player to player PowerPlay piracy is more than just a strategic tool - it is a credit making exploit. Sure, it's not as profitable as Robigo runs etc., but it's an exploit with no risk attached to it, and an exploit that can be used to make it far easier to attain and maintain ones PowerPlay rating.

 

[ever]

You have to re-consider the terms: Federation vs Alliance & Empire. It's not just about one Power, I hope the changes will be balanced to allow conflict with results and bring this way more dynamism into Power Play.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

Looking into Aisling expanding and running a deficit at the same time: I believe this was a bug, reported on the 4th of February, which was then fixed (I think the fix was committed around the 18th February).

The details read something like: overheads from expansions were being checked too late, allowing powers to fortify out of a deficit then gain an expansion which had an overhead that would plunge them back into deficit.

The fix ensures that when calculating whether an expansion should succeed, overhead is directly in the mix at that point.

This bug would likely be the cause of any other instances of expansions whilst in deficit that occurred prior or close to these dates.

Of course, Horizons was a significant code update, so I'm not going to completely rule out other reasons (especially if this has happened much more recently!)

Hope this information helps a little, anyway. Hopefully I can find some time in the coming days to discuss the ramifications of this significant event.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Sandro:

An unrelated question- if a bug like this affects a power who is in danger of collapse and removal, does FD have the final say in the collapse process (i.e. the process is automated)?

Utopia once had two expansions fail due to CC being reported incorrectly, and it was quite annoying as it cost us rank.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander Rubbernuke!

Preparation, expansion, turmoil and revolt are automated processes.

Of course, any bug also annoys us intensely too, which is why we try to crush them all.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Hello Commander Rubbernuke!

Preparation, expansion, turmoil and revolt are automated processes.

Of course, any bug also annoys us intensely too, which is why we try to crush them all.

I mean, if one of these bugs forces a power into a 'collapse' state, would you intervene if the process is automated?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I mean, if one of these bugs forces a power into a 'collapse' state, would you intervene if the process is automated?

AFAIK, they already did, multiple times in the past.

Didn't every time they do it spark a wave of outrage?

 

[Rubbernuke]

AFAIK, they already did, multiple times in the past.

Didn't every time they do it spark a wave of outrage?

Aisling has never been in a state where the power was in danger of elimination though, only Patreus (almost) and Archon (once).

 

[Alexander the Grape]

As someone enjoying the fireworks from the other end of the galaxy, i think the turmoil mechanics held up solidly. After the herculean effort to save and the incredible effort to undermine mahon (over two cycles and with awesome communication I might add), losing ~1/2 of the turmoiling systems seems "fair".

In terms of the "snipe" mechanic, I think it worked out fine. The Kumo Crew came under smaller but proportionally no less massive snipe attack (~25 systems undermined last minute iirc) but were able to forsee and evade this with the help of the fixed bounty boards.

I was previously pretty skeptical of turmoil being a way to keep large powers with huge starting balances who have "won" power play in check, but the success of the mahon attack has made me reconsider.

The thing that would make this even more interesting would be Open play mechanics: sniping becomes far more risky if you want to chance Open for the unnamed bonus to merits! Could lead to some intense PvP situations, as well as allowing defending commanders a chance to preemptively fortify if they see enemy commanders flying about

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Aisling has never been in a state where the power was in danger of elimination though, only Patreus (almost) and Archon (once).

I would like to remind people that archon was under threat of removal partly due to repeated bugged expansions

 

[Martin Schou]

As someone enjoying the fireworks from the other end of the galaxy, i think the turmoil mechanics held up solidly. After the herculean effort to save and the incredible effort to undermine mahon (over two cycles and with awesome communication I might add), losing ~1/2 of the turmoiling systems seems "fair".

In terms of the "snipe" mechanic, I think it worked out fine. The Kumo Crew came under smaller but proportionally no less massive snipe attack (~25 systems undermined last minute iirc) but were able to forsee and evade this with the help of the fixed bounty boards.

I was previously pretty skeptical of turmoil being a way to keep large powers with huge starting balances who have "won" power play in check, but the success of the mahon attack has made me reconsider.

The thing that would make this even more interesting would be Open play mechanics: sniping becomes far more risky if you want to chance Open for the unnamed bonus to merits! Could lead to some intense PvP situations, as well as allowing defending commanders a chance to preemptively fortify if they see enemy commanders flying about

Just in case you were wondering (I doubt you were), my issue has never been that we were sniped or that we would lose systems. My issue was that it seemed like every single power and their PowerPlay experts (myself being one) were quite unsure of what exactly would happen. Given that PowerPlay is a turn based strategy game, the inability to properly predict an outcome due to obtuse rules is enormously problematic.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Just in case you were wondering (I doubt you were), my issue has never been that we were sniped or that we would lose systems. My issue was that it seemed like every single power and their PowerPlay experts (myself being one) were quite unsure of what exactly would happen. Given that PowerPlay is a turn based strategy game, the inability to properly predict an outcome due to obtuse rules is enormously problematic.

Oh I agree. It's exactly what the smaller powers have been dealing with vis a vis collapse mechanics for 40 weeks now

 

[Rubbernuke]

I would like to remind people that archon was under threat of removal partly due to repeated bugged expansions

This is what I mean: in the end, if a bug pushes you over the edge, will we get arbitration? The record is a bit patchy when it comes to sorting out problems that have far reaching effects.

 

[Horsma]

Hello Commanders!

Looking into Aisling expanding and running a deficit at the same time: I believe this was a bug, reported on the 4th of February, which was then fixed (I think the fix was committed around the 18th February).

The details read something like: overheads from expansions were being checked too late, allowing powers to fortify out of a deficit then gain an expansion which had an overhead that would plunge them back into deficit.

The fix ensures that when calculating whether an expansion should succeed, overhead is directly in the mix at that point.

This bug would likely be the cause of any other instances of expansions whilst in deficit that occurred prior or close to these dates.

Of course, Horizons was a significant code update, so I'm not going to completely rule out other reasons (especially if this has happened much more recently!)

Hope this information helps a little, anyway. Hopefully I can find some time in the coming days to discuss the ramifications of this significant event.

So if this was bug, why haven't you remove Kuki An from Aisling? Sorry but AD community has been plagued with many issues from 5C and grinders and for that our starting CC is so terrible -this one system makes things even worse. We would if we could drop it by our own but we can't since its way too close to Cubeo. I really hope that you could fix this issue for us.