This is very true.
Frontier gave us a great character (Archon Delaine) and then lumped us with a rubbish weapon and poor bonuses, so we have few players and do not have resources to RP or develop a decent story for our power.
The dedicated players require quick cash in order to fortify and prep. After a while you come to the realisation that very little about the mechanics of Powerplay have little in relation to what a power would actually be doing. At that point the RP drops away and it becomes a numbers game.
Personally, I'm hoping that if the Border Coalition wins, Frontier gives it some unique mechanics to make it make sense on a thematic and geographic level. Specifically I'd be thrilled if we could get lower than normal fortification cost in low-income systems and higher than normal costs for high-income systems. This'd both fit the Coalition's lore as a populist movement among the underdeveloped, neglected outer colonies and allow it to fulfill it's primary function (to keep other PP factions out of space where player groups are trying to play the BGS without interference). Also, seeing as the three main groups in the Coalition exist in a vast desert of low-income systems, it'd make sense if their model was balanced towards the idea of having abnormally large amounts of low-income systems exploited/controlled with the trade-off being that it's much less efficient for them to expand into more competitive systems.