Powerplay Cycle 48 PP Commentary

Ah. I must have just miss read it. Cheers for clearing that up. I'm not the sharpest knife in the draw. More of tea spoon to be honest. As for smugglnig in Antal. Perfect match for me. I like a challenge, the double fines and bounties against me make it more fun. Why else do it?
The 10% black market bonus and just about everything being illegal makes it the ideal to ship stuff in. Wearing the Antal badge and smuggling in weapons to sell on the blackmarket entertains the dissident in me. One I like to see growing (for the greater good). A lovely incentive.

I've never smuggled slaves. It's not my style. I play more Han Solo and Fire Fly than Jaba and human trafficking. It's also nice to be in a bit of space where there's hardly any competition and to get paid handsomely to remove any competition I encounter. I've always like smuggling on hard mode or with a bit of a twist... and guns and bombs.
Depends on what you mean by Han Solo. The cool, Greedo murdering smuggler from the original film worked for Jabba the Hutt, Archon Delaine is the closest thing the galaxy has to Jabba.

At first, the obvious option would have been Archon but heck I play a smuggler not a slaver or a slaver's flunky. And with just about everything being legal there's nothing to smuggle and no police so the obvious choice would have been the most alien to what I look for.
The no police makes it harder to smuggle, not easier. Instead of police scanning you and you getting fined, NPC murderers and pirates try to kill or rob you.
Everything isn't made legal, most things are legal in his control systems, which allows you to purchase the needed items to smuggle.
All of Delaines Exploited systems are unchanged, but they all have black markets, so illegal goods can be sold at all of them.

Ironically Delaine making Slaves legal in his Control systems reduces their price in surrounding systems, thus the slave trade is not as profitable in his area of space.
Antal bans slavery, which means you can always sell them on his black markets for the 10% bonus price, and having slavery illegal, pushes up the price in surrounding systems.

Economically this makes Antal promote the selling of slaves, while their lower price discourages the slave trade in Delaine space.

Narcotics and Battle Weapons are what Delaine actually produces, and narcotics are the best item to smuggle in his space.

I do love flying between the two and hauling guns and narcs back and forth and feeling at risk on both sides of a smuggling run. Life on the edge kind of thing. That's what smuggling means to me. That's why I pledge to the power with perhaps the strongest set of laws and law enforcement ethos.

But you don't need to be pledged to Antal to take advantage of his black market bonus price and get double the fines.
 
Depends on what you mean by Han Solo. The cool, Greedo murdering smuggler from the original film worked for Jabba the Hutt, Archon Delaine is the closest thing the galaxy has to Jabba.


The no police makes it harder to smuggle, not easier. Instead of police scanning you and you getting fined, NPC murderers and pirates try to kill or rob you.
Everything isn't made legal, most things are legal in his control systems, which allows you to purchase the needed items to smuggle.
All of Delaines Exploited systems are unchanged, but they all have black markets, so illegal goods can be sold at all of them.

Ironically Delaine making Slaves legal in his Control systems reduces their price in surrounding systems, thus the slave trade is not as profitable in his area of space.
Antal bans slavery, which means you can always sell them on his black markets for the 10% bonus price, and having slavery illegal, pushes up the price in surrounding systems.

Economically this makes Antal promote the selling of slaves, while their lower price discourages the slave trade in Delaine space.

Narcotics and Battle Weapons are what Delaine actually produces, and narcotics are the best item to smuggle in his space.



But you don't need to be pledged to Antal to take advantage of his black market bonus price and get double the fines.

Did Han work for Jaba? I thought he just owed him money or some such. My mind is old. The Han that is more hero and Fire Fly like than the one that was a git and turned hero. I'm more interested in smuggling not avoiding pirates but heck I do that anyway even when trading tea. Okay most things are legal in Archon control systems. That's kind of my point. It ain't smuggling much if most things are legal. I like to find my source not just pop down to the local 'has it all' shop and grind. That's just my take on it. The worst thing for smuggling FD ever did was put blackmarkets on the map. With most stuff being legal then the only thing you are likely to sell on the black market is either stolen or found. I'm not playing a thief or galactic scavenger. That ain't my idea of smuggling and nor is slave trading. Every where has a black market. No challenge. Slave trade. Never been in to it. You point about Antal economically promoting the selling of slaves is a bit strange seeing as fines and bounties are doubled and there are no slaves for sale and demand levels are mostly low. But you miss the rest of the stuff about being a smuggler in the toughest area and surviving with the greatet risks of punishment and removing competition. Playing both sides - crook and cop. I've been at smuggling since alpha 0.1 and know what works for me. It's the perfect combination for what I enjoy.
 
Did Han work for Jaba? I thought he just owed him money or some such. My mind is old. The Han that is more hero and Fire Fly like than the one that was a git and turned hero. I'm more interested in smuggling not avoiding pirates but heck I do that anyway even when trading tea.
Han owed Jabba money because he failed his smuggling mission for Jabba.
Jabba fined him, Han didn't pay it off, and 1 week later it turned into a bounty :)
Okay most things are legal in Archon control systems. That's kind of my point. It ain't smuggling much if most things are legal. I like to find my source not just pop down to the local 'has it all' shop and grind. That's just my take on it.
Yes most things are legal in Delaines Control systems, so you can only smuggle stolen goods into there, but Antal bans all black markets in his control systems, so its impossible to do any smuggling in his control systems at all.
So neither of their Control Systems are good for smuggling.

The worst thing for smuggling FD ever did was put blackmarkets on the map. With most stuff being legal then the only thing you are likely to sell on the black market is either stolen or found. I'm not playing a thief or galactic scavenger. That ain't my idea of smuggling and nor is slave trading. Every where has a black market. No challenge. Slave trade. Never been in to it. You point about Antal economically promoting the selling of slaves is a bit strange seeing as fines and bounties are doubled and there are no slaves for sale and demand levels are mostly low. But you miss the rest of the stuff about being a smuggler in the toughest area and surviving with the greatet risks of punishment and removing competition. Playing both sides - crook and cop. I've been at smuggling since alpha 0.1 and know what works for me. It's the perfect combination for what I enjoy.

Slaves got about 500 cr/t cheaper in Delaines exploited systems, when slavery was made legal in his control systems a few months ago.
Legalizing a product makes its price cheaper in the surrounding systems. Thats just the way the BGS works.
Banning a product makes its price go up in surrounding systems.

So when Antal takes over an Anarchy system, he bans slavery there, which increases the price in the surrounding systems, depending on what the supply of the slaves was.
If the anarchy system is exploited by Antal, and has a black market, you now get the 10% bonus price for selling them there too.

Antal himself is against slavery, and drugs and medicine, but his banning actions make his exploited systems a haven for smugglers, as you know.

As for there being no slaves to buy, there aren't any illegal goods to buy from Antal, you need to go into another Powers systems to buy the goods Antal bans.

Delaines Control Systems are a good place to go to buy narcotics and battle weapons, Torvals Control Systems are a good place to buy Imperial Slaves.
I'm not aware of anyone making good money from normal slaves, buying from Delaine and selling to Antal is probably the only way to make it worth your while.
 
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you are trying to break Obsidian Orbital?
Didn't it just get fixed?

You make it sound like that's all I have in mind :p To contextualise, I did submit a CG to collect UAs once, it got rejected, but not because I wanted to collect UAs.

RE: Smuggling, i guess in this case it's just a shame that black markets get shut down in antal control systems :(
 
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Han owed Jabba money because he failed his smuggling mission for Jabba.
Jabba fined him, Han didn't pay it off, and 1 week later it turned into a bounty :)

Yes most things are legal in Delaines Control systems, so you can only smuggle stolen goods into there, but Antal bans all black markets in his control systems, so its impossible to do any smuggling in his control systems at all.
So neither of their Control Systems are good for smuggling.



Slaves got about 500 cr/t cheaper in Delaines exploited systems, when slavery was made legal in his control systems a few months ago.
Legalizing a product makes its price cheaper in the surrounding systems. Thats just the way the BGS works.
Banning a product makes its price go up in surrounding systems.

So when Antal takes over an Anarchy system, he bans slavery there, which increases the price in the surrounding systems, depending on what the supply of the slaves was.
If the anarchy system is exploited by Antal, and has a black market, you now get the 10% bonus price for selling them there too.

Antal himself is against slavery, and drugs and medicine, but his banning actions make his exploited systems a haven for smugglers, as you know.

As for there being no slaves to buy, there aren't any illegal goods to buy from Antal, you need to go into another Powers systems to buy the goods Antal bans.

Delaines Control Systems are a good place to go to buy narcotics and battle weapons, Torvals Control Systems are a good place to buy Imperial Slaves.
I'm not aware of anyone making good money from normal slaves, buying from Delaine and selling to Antal is probably the only way to make it worth your while.

Oh I meant any kind of slaves. Not my thing. Nice tip on the BGS. I tend to run battle weapons around Antal space. Plenty of places to buy them and plenty of places to sell them on the black market but I prefer to sell to seeking x traders.
 
ALD 62
The Emperors players were a little bit lazy with their fortifications and was just put into Turmoil, with one profitable system on the line.
As I have stated before, Turmoil has little to no effect on a powers score in the week it happens (which is just crazy) so ALD is only 2% behind Winters, and if she did actually expand, would have moved back up into the top 3.

There hasn't been a general increase in the undermining that the Federal Powers have faced since the start of their war with Mahon, which means either ALD has had a drastic reduction in their number of players, or Mahon has no underminers in his Power.

This week ALD has 5 expansions, one is winning easily, while the other 4 are currently closely contested.

If ALD fortifies out of Turmoil she may drop down a position or 2, if she loses a system to Turmoil, she will probably be back in the bottom 5.

I am sure it is an oversight, but ALD has two profitable systems in turmoil.
 
The federation certainly seems to be winning their war with the Alliance, but a large part of this is due to the 5th column preparations and expansions that Mahon has been getting.

Well maybe, but can this really be considered winning? I mean, their actual actions have done little to nothing to us aside from the initial turmoil. It has been nearly entirely 5C, which is out of their control....

Unless they are the ones who are doing 5C operations (weren't they accusing us of that part of their whole argument against us?). I honestly don't know who is responsible for it.

But it seems like either they are giant hypocrites for decrying 5C and then using it as their primary form of attack (because they know we have to over-fortify. It certainly makes sense to use it as a tactic as Frontier doesn't seem to be in any hurry to prevent people from doing it) or they're essentially "winning" by letting someone else do the work for them.

I guess it would be too much to hope for these mysterious 5C people to actually do something against the Federation rather than against the Empire and us...
 
Well maybe, but can this really be considered winning? I mean, their actual actions have done little to nothing to us aside from the initial turmoil. It has been nearly entirely 5C, which is out of their control....

Unless they are the ones who are doing 5C operations (weren't they accusing us of that part of their whole argument against us?). I honestly don't know who is responsible for it.

But it seems like either they are giant hypocrites for decrying 5C and then using it as their primary form of attack (because they know we have to over-fortify. It certainly makes sense to use it as a tactic as Frontier doesn't seem to be in any hurry to prevent people from doing it) or they're essentially "winning" by letting someone else do the work for them.

I guess it would be too much to hope for these mysterious 5C people to actually do something against the Federation rather than against the Empire and us...

The Alliance is more worse off than the Federation from when this started, is maybe more accurate than saying the Federation is winning.

Nothing has been done in the beta to change how preparations work unfortunately.
 
The Alliance is more worse off than the Federation from when this started, is maybe more accurate than saying the Federation is winning.

True, but again - unless the Feds are the ones doing the sabotage preps, they can't exactly claim victory, and anyone declaring the Federation a victor is clearly not paying attention to the actual match going on.

The damage done to our ecosystem from the snipe was quite significant. It resulted in us losing 12 high profit systems, and it dropped our default surplus from 1,325 CC to 941 CC. A change of 384 CC, which is quite significant.

Since then Mahon has expanded into three systems that contest Winters and Hudson: Gendalla, Bingui and Monghatha. All told those three cost us 272 CC. Without sabotage, we'd be down to 669 CC rather than the 525 CC we are. Anyway, we're down 272 CC since we engaged in this conflict. The three systems we've expanded, however, contests quite a bit more. 322 CC in fact. And we're still at a point where our default surplus is bigger than Hudsons and Winters combined. From when it started, sure, but Winters is about to enter into a default deficit state, and when that happens, I'm fairly certain we'll see just how well organized the Federation (especially Winters) really is. After all - they probably don't want to lose systems that will give Mahon any income.

What we're in is a long game of chess, and currently the main reason the Feds seem to be ahead is that some random psycho walked by and attacked us with a baseball bat, and the judges wouldn't allow the clock to be stopped while we were being attacked.
 
Well maybe, but can this really be considered winning? I mean, their actual actions have done little to nothing to us aside from the initial turmoil. It has been nearly entirely 5C, which is out of their control....

Unless they are the ones who are doing 5C operations (weren't they accusing us of that part of their whole argument against us?). I honestly don't know who is responsible for it.

But it seems like either they are giant hypocrites for decrying 5C and then using it as their primary form of attack (because they know we have to over-fortify. It certainly makes sense to use it as a tactic as Frontier doesn't seem to be in any hurry to prevent people from doing it) or they're essentially "winning" by letting someone else do the work for them.

I guess it would be too much to hope for these mysterious 5C people to actually do something against the Federation rather than against the Empire and us...

We deal with 5c activity just like every other power. You know that as well as we do. This is at least the second time I've seen the Alliance request the 5c attack us. You want to tell me again who the hypocrite is?

Also, I think it's ridiculous to say we're winning by doing nothing. You over-fortify because of your fear of what we could do. We created that fear. ;)
 
We deal with 5c activity just like every other power. You know that as well as we do. This is at least the second time I've seen the Alliance request the 5c attack us. You want to tell me again who the hypocrite is?

Also, I think it's ridiculous to say we're winning by doing nothing. You over-fortify because of your fear of what we could do. We created that fear. ;)

True. Although it isn't that much more work and we're mostly a Trading power who is still busy moving most of our organised players into Cutters... We can truck Forts with cargo and not notice that much.

Of course, with all our lovely spare CC we now put several weaponised expansions into your space every cycle...
Then we amuse ourselves by watching you desperately pump tens of thousands of merits into every single one throughout every cycle in fear that in the last few hours we'll decide to push and take it, and further detract from your rather insipid economy.

Sometimes we take one despite your best efforts.
Often we don't even touch them... just to underline the fact that you wasted 100K merits or so for nothing. (Don't worry... whenever you get lazy we'll just snap them up)

In case you're wondering: We're all finding this game highly entertaining. ;)

In terms of 5C activity you're avoiding the fact that the obvious strategy for the Feds to use to capitalise on our over-fortification and excess CC, and to win this war by trashing our economy quicker, is to 5C us.
You may not be aware or who is doing it (internally), but don't bother pretending it's not Fed players. They curiously seem to avoid anything near the Fed border.

On the plus side: It gives us 1-2 free Control Systems every week for nothing, on top of our 1-2 planned ones, so don't expect to ever get back to number 1.
Thanks 5C!

Personally I can't wait until Frontier takes away 5C and Collusion Piracy (Which Winters and Hudson are currently using to ensure turmoiling them is basically impossible). I wonder what you'll do then?
I know what we'll be doing.
 
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True. Although it isn't that much more work and we're mostly a Trading power who is still busy moving most of our organised players into Cutters... We can truck Forts with cargo and not notice that much.

Of course, with all our lovely spare CC we now put several weaponised expansions into your space every cycle...
Then we amuse ourselves by watching you desperately pump tens of thousands of merits into every single one throughout every cycle in fear that in the last few hours we'll decide to push and take it, and further detract from your rather insipid economy.

Sometimes we take one despite your best efforts.
Often we don't even touch them... just to underline the fact that you wasted 100K merits or so for nothing. (Don't worry... whenever you get lazy we'll just snap them up)

In case you're wondering: We're all finding this game highly entertaining. ;)

In terms of 5C activity you're avoiding the fact that the obvious strategy for the Feds to use to capitalise on our over-fortification and excess CC, and to win this war by trashing our economy quicker, is to 5C us.
You may not be aware or who is doing it (internally), but don't bother pretending it's not Fed players. They curiously seem to avoid anything near the Fed border.

On the plus side: It gives us 1-2 free Control Systems every week for nothing, on top of our 1-2 planned ones, so don't expect to ever get back to number 1.
Thanks 5C!

Personally I can't wait until Frontier takes away 5C and Collusion Piracy (Which Winters and Hudson are currently using to ensure turmoiling them is basically impossible). I wonder what you'll do then?
I know what we'll be doing.

Glad you're finding it entertaining, it is a game after all (except for Cutter grinding, that's just annoying).
 
What we're in is a long game of chess, and currently the main reason the Feds seem to be ahead is that some random psycho walked by and attacked us with a baseball bat, and the judges wouldn't allow the clock to be stopped while we were being attacked.

I'm obviously as big a fan of the 5C preparation as everyone (well nearly) else involved with PP, but hopefully it continuing to happen to Mahon pushes FDev into action to stop it sooner rather than later.
 
You over-fortify because of your fear of what we could do. We created that fear. ;)

No. We overfortify because it gives us a ton of CC to use on expansions into Federation territory, which we then use to decimate your ecosystems. The only reason we're worse off than the Feds (ignoring the turmoil effect) is that we've been saddled with four massive loss makers. But despite those four loss makers, we still have an ecosystem with a better default surplus than Hudson and Winters combined. We're not afraid that you'll attack or try to snipe us. In fact, if it wasn't for the prep sabotage, we'd have had even more systems inside your space, and Winters would likely have been at a default deficit already. If it wasn't for the prep sabotage, the Federation would very quickly find itself in a situation where it had to try to completely undermine us every single cycle, just to reduce the amount of damage we could do to your ecosystem.

Don't believe me? Look at the systems we've prepped inside your space. Every single one of them contests more CC on your side than it costs us to have it. This is not an accident or lucky coincidence. So far we've contested 322 CC by paying 272 CC every cycle. We changed Sol from being the single most profitable control system in the game (248 CC) to sharing the 10th place at 171 CC. All told that one system contests 119 CC in both Hudson and Winters space.

You want to talk about "fear"? Notice the difference in treatment Hudson gave Gendalla (300,000 merits) and Ross 860 (440,000 merits). It's almost as if Hudson suddenly realised that their ecosystem would be thrashed right quick if they didn't start to put some serious opposition into our expansions, and he did it at the cost of Winters' ecosystem. Hell, the only reason we didn't put Winters into a default deficit is that someone seems to have accidentally opposed Gitse.

To make a long story short, no - we're not worried about what you can do to us. The only thing that really worries us is how long the preparation saboteurs will keep bothering us, because they're the reason we have to balance our CC rather than going for a huge surplus every cycle. Well, in fairness, if you're behind the saboteurs, then yes - we do worry about what you are cable of doing to us.

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I'm obviously as big a fan of the 5C preparation as everyone (well nearly) else involved with PP, but hopefully it continuing to happen to Mahon pushes FDev into action to stop it sooner rather than later.

It took them almost a year to bother doing anything about the cooking laser ... I'm not expecting them to fix something, just because it has a negative impact on Mahon any time soon. Sadly I don't have high hopes for them making the Cytoscrambler have a usable range any time soon either.
 
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Thanks for the writeup. Is it possible you can give us some efficiency percentages? It's hard to appreciate the amount of opposition compared to the size of that power's economy as well as how effective they are.
 
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