Powerplay Power Play Proposition

[Figgy878]

Hello everyone,

I've noticed a lot of systems being over-undermined and over-fortified. Additionally, the grind gets kind of repetitive after some time.. My suggestion is simple (or at least I think it is):

If there is a way to implement PP bonuses (in merits or credits) for all players who participate in PP activities on a system but limited proportionally to the percentage of change the specific player contributed to a system, whether it be undermining or fortifying. The catch is that the bonuses would be received by the player(s) ONLY after the system reaches 100% (and no more bonuses after the system reaches 100%). I think bonuses should also still be given to the opposing players IF they, too, reach 100% as well to bring the system to a "cancelled" state.

I think this will persuade players to go to other systems that haven't been completely fortified or completely undermined to attain more than just the normal merits we are used to. This will also motivate players to ensure a system gets undermined and/or fortified until it reaches the trigger.

I think that the higher the trigger, the higher the the higher the bonuses for the system whether it be in fortification or undermining.

Maybe this will motivate players to not go 300% above the trigger, What do you guys think? This is my first post on here.. Let me know what you think about the idea =]
Fly safe CMDRs!

 

[CMDRMesaana]

I like it. Those are some tasty carrots. There are lots of sticks in Elite, adding incentives to change behaviour is more fun.

 

[Darkminded]

I Like the Idea, seams sound and doable, kind of like the CG mechanics of tier bonus until 100% done [yesnod]

 

[Martin Schou]

There are multiple things to keep in mind when making these kinds of suggestions.

1) Not all powers fortify in the same manner. Some have inbound fortifications, which pretty much guarantees that you end up with accidental overfortification - something that only happens to outbound fortification when the players don't care about PowerPlay but are simply in it for the rewards.
2) Any time you automate these kinds of things, you end up ruining the organized player groups actively trying to steer the progress. For example, fortifying too many systems means you'll end up with far more CC than most powers can handle, which then results in crappy systems being prepared and expanded into.
3) A system being undermined is not a reason to fortify it. For example, it is a complete and utter waste of time and merits to fortify MCC 686 no matter how much it's been undermined. Rewarding people through automation of these things just results in making PowerPlay even less organized than it already is.

 

[Darkminded]

There are multiple things to keep in mind when making these kinds of suggestions.

1) Not all powers fortify in the same manner. Some have inbound fortifications, which pretty much guarantees that you end up with accidental overfortification - something that only happens to outbound fortification when the players don't care about PowerPlay but are simply in it for the rewards.
2) Any time you automate these kinds of things, you end up ruining the organized player groups actively trying to steer the progress. For example, fortifying too many systems means you'll end up with far more CC than most powers can handle, which then results in crappy systems being prepared and expanded into.
3) A system being undermined is not a reason to fortify it. For example, it is a complete and utter waste of time and merits to fortify MCC 686 no matter how much it's been undermined. Rewarding people through automation of these things just results in making PowerPlay even less organized than it already is.

You have a point there but something has to be done, we can't just let pp continue to be like this, if you play PP you know people are just waiting for some new thing in the game to stop playing PP for good, and then it will be a unused game mechanics !

 

[r4pt012]

There are multiple things to keep in mind when making these kinds of suggestions.

1) Not all powers fortify in the same manner. Some have inbound fortifications, which pretty much guarantees that you end up with accidental overfortification - something that only happens to outbound fortification when the players don't care about PowerPlay but are simply in it for the rewards.
2) Any time you automate these kinds of things, you end up ruining the organized player groups actively trying to steer the progress. For example, fortifying too many systems means you'll end up with far more CC than most powers can handle, which then results in crappy systems being prepared and expanded into.
3) A system being undermined is not a reason to fortify it. For example, it is a complete and utter waste of time and merits to fortify MCC 686 no matter how much it's been undermined. Rewarding people through automation of these things just results in making PowerPlay even less organized than it already is.

I have to agree with Vectron.

Until PP is setup in such a manner that fortification ALWAYS postie and undermining is ALWAYS negative, blind incentives for those activities is a bad idea.

In the current game state, some actions that may look like they are helping and actually hindering a situation.

 

[Martin Schou]

You have a point there but something has to be done, we can't just let pp continue to be like this, if you play PP you know people are just waiting for some new thing in the game to stop playing PP for good, and then it will be a unused game mechanics !

Possibly, but as long as CC remains a one trick pony that can only be used for preparing new systems, automating these rewards is going to wreak havoc on the powers.

 

[bigity]

Dead against it. You give an overwhelming advantage to powers with numbers and little to no organization (overall) instead of rewarding smaller, organized powers or sub-groups that are organized within other powers.

 

[Quantis Trap]

I think you shouldn't get your merits if you over fortify. I also think you should get merit bonuses for fortifying farther away from the capital. That would help make sure a system doesn't get fortified to 2700% because it's the closest system to the capital like is happening in ALD this cycle.

 

[Martin Schou]

I think you shouldn't get your merits if you over fortify.

Congratulations - you've just screwed over the pledges for the four powers that have inbound fortifications.

I also think you should get merit bonuses for fortifying farther away from the capital.

And you've just made sure that Antal pledges (who have inbound fortifications) are going to be massively overfortifying Maia.

 

[Darkminded]

And you've just made sure that Antal pledges (who have inbound fortifications) are going to be massively overfortifying Maia.

Well no if all bonus stop a 200% fortification or undermining, but then again i think that the best way is to have negative bonus (subtract merits from each action) when the system is done, so if you fortify over 200 % you get a 20% cut in merist per ton and in undermining the same for each kill, if the system gets achieved over 500% it stops giving merits !!!!

 

[Figgy878]

Thank you all very much for your input and feedback. Many of you raise very good points! The proposition has helped me identify other changes that need to occur before this change is implemented. Furthermore, I've also realized this is more complex than I previously thought. I based my proposition based off the ALD point of view.Perhaps we should get some sort of voting system in game to prioritize systems for undermining/fortification. Maybe that will help guide players (or unorganized factions) that don't exactly know where to go to make a good effect along with the proposition as a reward or incentive to do so. Or maybe the incentive should only be applied based on the votes for prioritized systems?
Maybe there will still be 5th column activities but I think the number of legitimate faction players would outweigh the number of those with nefarious intent. But that's just a guess. What do you guys think about that?
In any case, thanks again for the feedback =]

 

[Martin Schou]

Well no if all bonus stop a 200% fortification or undermining

Maia is 316 light years from Antal's HQ. It doesn't matter if Antal has inbound (which he does) or outbound fortifications - that takes so long to get to that it cannot avoid getting overfortified, especially if their players suddenly panic about possibly losing it.

The problem for inbound fortifications is that the merits cannot be used elsewhere. If you're an outbound power, and you bring 700 tons of forts to a system that's already been fortified, you've wasted 1 merit at most (unless you're stupid), because you can simply go elsewhere with them. If you're inbound you've just wasted 700 merits, because those merits have only one possible destination - your HQ.

This is brought up every single time these suggestions are made, and every single time people seem to forget that different powers have different mechanics.

 

[Darth Ender]

this is a duplicate of the lazy fdev thread basically.

but my solution if they were going to actually ever address this and didn't want to put a limit on player earned merits for over fortifciation or undermining would be this:


Cycle's remove the previous trigger amount of merits at end of that cycle for both fortification and undermining. Any left-over is carried over to the new cycle.

Done. Now it's not completely useless anymore.

And I dont think anyone has to worry about Maia getting overfortified. Even if there was a nice big fat bonus, there is no way more than a handful of players would spend the time and there is no way you'd have time to do anything else that needs to get done. Utopia doesn't have that many players and the lazy grinders go after the fastest (physical time) means to rank 5 and bail to do other stuff.

 

[GoStu]

Dead against it. You give an overwhelming advantage to powers with numbers and little to no organization (overall) instead of rewarding smaller, organized powers or sub-groups that are organized within other powers.

There are multiple things to keep in mind when making these kinds of suggestions.

1) Not all powers fortify in the same manner. Some have inbound fortifications, which pretty much guarantees that you end up with accidental overfortification - something that only happens to outbound fortification when the players don't care about PowerPlay but are simply in it for the rewards.
2) Any time you automate these kinds of things, you end up ruining the organized player groups actively trying to steer the progress. For example, fortifying too many systems means you'll end up with far more CC than most powers can handle, which then results in crappy systems being prepared and expanded into.
3) A system being undermined is not a reason to fortify it. For example, it is a complete and utter waste of time and merits to fortify MCC 686 no matter how much it's been undermined. Rewarding people through automation of these things just results in making PowerPlay even less organized than it already is.

Point 2 is very good. I'd hate to be in Hudson or ALD's shoes when their grinders simply routinely fortify every system. Their CC economy would be hideously large and a coordinated enemy could simply ignore them and let bad systems get expanded to like crazy. Also, it'd stink to oppose those powers simply because they'd end up fortified every week. Grinders routinely put hundreds of percentages of merits into systems next to the capital; that many merits could easily do an extra 8 to 9 systems if distributed.

Point 3 is pretty valid too. Not familiar with that system as an example but there's definitely a good case to leave systems undermined and not fortified. Having merit-hungry grinders charging off to cap a system that a power's leadership wants left undermined could ruin a lot of things.

 

[Hribek]

All this actually rests on the two worst mechanics in powerplay (or even in the entire game):

1. The preparation mechanism: Inability to deal with bad/sabotage preparations in a reasonable way (requires a power to limit CC per cycle even if it could expand faster). If you don't do that, either you must out-prepare a sabotage system with many more systems, or intentionally enter turmoil the next cycle to preven the bad expansion from succeeding.
2. The combat merit snipe mechanism: If enough CMDRs gather a undermining/opposition merits against one power in an organized way, the power you are targeting always loses - it is impossible to defend against this: If the targeted power doesn't fortify enough, you hand in your merits a few minutes or even seconds before end of cycle, making it impossible to react and causing a deep turmoil. If the targeted power does fortify a lot, you do not hand in your combat merits, causing a large excess of CC, then defect to the targeted power and sabotage it - see (1).