Indeed I had fun undermining with the new rules, but it's not rewarding. I can do it for the glory of Hudson, but for sure not for the paycheck. There are too many other rewarding activities now, and people are already leaving.
Powerplay Undermining difficulty increased after 2.1
- Thread starter CMDR John Casey
- Start date
Indeed I had fun undermining with the new rules, but it's not rewarding. I can do it for the glory of Hudson, but for sure not for the paycheck. There are too many other rewarding activities now, and people are already leaving.
Look on the bright side - merit hauling has never been a rewarding activity. You've had 50+ weeks of rewarding undermining and combat expansions.
My limited test showed that it is about on par with pre-2.1, when using interdiction as a solo player. Which is about 400 merits per hour. Although now one also collects lots of data scans and materials while undermining.
So in some sense, Solo and Open have been equalized: merit rates are comparable now
(ducks and hides)
Power Play ships from other powers, but the same major faction should attack, to pirate the fortification goods they are carrying. They shouldn't kill the players though, and they should leave everyone alone after a scan if they aren't carrying what they want.
They should be doing this around the HQ and control systems station and in supercruise.
Its completely illogical for the AI to do this at res sites or exploited systems, there would never be a fortifier (well I have taken marked slaves to undermine and expand) in these locations to pirate.
As for the undermining being harder, I agree that it should be, and its been funny to see how much was obviously from solo grinders who only did it to get their rank 5 bonus each week.
I don't see a wing of 2 or more players being slowed down much by the new AI difficulty.
The two main bottlenecks of undermining I've always faced are spawn rate and FSD cool down time, to get back into supercruise.
What used to happen is you get a wing of 3 enemies in SC, someone in you wing calls that they see a wing, the wing gets interdicted, then you wait for all your wingmates to arrive, everyone tags all the ships, then its weapons free, AI dies in seconds, everyone jumps back to SC, except the player who did the interdiction, their FSD is still on cool down.
I have only been out undermining by myself so far (I probably got merits at 1/2 to 1/3 of my normal rate because I avoided most wings, except the sidewinder, sidewinder, type 6 gravy-train, and was scooping loot) so we will have to wait and see if wings of players are just as efficient as before.
I think this will disadvantage players who can't / don't wing up for undermining and most players who did undermine by themselves will probably abandon it.
For larger powers, like ALD and Hudson, they probably have wings running 24/7, so when you jump on their TS you can just join one of the wings currently running and get your merits.
For smaller powers (I can only really speak for Delaine, but I suspect Torval, Sirius, Antal, Patreus and maybe Mahon are the same) there aren't wings running all the time for anyone interested to join in.
These undermining (and combat expansion) merits will be lost.
For expansions, ALD and Hudson will continue to automatically win, no change there.
If ALD or Hudson oppose expansion from Delaine, Patreus or Antal, these will be much harder to win.
Mahon, Winters, Sirius, Torval and Aisling expansions all now have a buff, but again, any that aren't specifically opposed by ALD or Hudson will win.
Aisling, Torval and Sirius don't get opposed, so they should just win automatically still, no change for them.
Mahon will win more expansions, and Dhanchu in particular should now be a formality for them to win, Winters will find it easier to put more weaponised expansions into ALD space.
Presuming undermining numbers do decrease, Mahon, Hudson, Winters and Delaine will see the biggest effect, since they are the 4 powers who are undermined all the time.
Less fortification will be needed from them.
Antal, Aisling, Sirius and Torval see no real undermining, so its business as usual for them. Aisling will still need to fortify a massive amount, and Antal will need to fortify a moderate amount, because of their negative starting cc balances.
ALD is undermined in a controlled pattern, but also benefits the most with the high security police response times, I still think this shouldn't be a big issue for wings of players, but it might be.
ALD and Aisling will face less chance of snipes working, and can continue to use collusion piracy to drop their worse systems (I still can't speak lowly enough for this still being in the game)
Patreus should be able to join the collusion piracy party if his players wanted to.
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My limited test showed that it is about on par with pre-2.1, when using interdiction as a solo player. Which is about 400 merits per hour. Although now one also collects lots of data scans and materials while undermining.
So in some sense, Solo and Open have been equalized: merit rates are comparable now
I'd say 400 merits per hour is a very low rate for pre 2.1, it sounds like you were not killing wings, which is the main real change now.
Was you experiment done in Hudson or ALD systems which have the quick police response time?
My limited test showed that it is about on par with pre-2.1, when using interdiction as a solo player. Which is about 400 merits per hour. Although now one also collects lots of data scans and materials while undermining.
So in some sense, Solo and Open have been equalized: merit rates are comparable now
I never managed to do more than 400 merits per hour pre 2.1, interdicting while playing in solo mode. Even with lucky streaks, I came not even close to 1000 merits per hour I saw claimed for wings in CZ. And yes, police frequently entered the instance while I was scooping up rare materials, or when I was slow to kill a wing. That's a new thing nowadays.
I interdict easy wings, if available: those with at most one ship above eagle (eagles used to melt to my turreted beams). Three Cobras were - and still are - a big no-no to me. But wings are uncommon - at least in my experience, which is 100% solo.
Let's do some math: 1000 merits per hour, is more than 30 ships per hour. That's one ship every 2 minutes. Given spawn times, and the time it takes to get behind them and win the mini-game, I seriously doubt that is possible in solo mode. Especially if one fails to interdict now and then and have to wait out the long FSD cool-down. I don't believe anyone can earn 1000 merits per hour when interdicting in solo mode.
Note that interdicting outside a wing but in Open is different from interdicting in Solo mode. In Solo mode, the SC instance gets destroyed every time you leave SC (read: when interdicting).
If you are now at 1/2 to 1/3 of your normal rate - I frequently saw people talking about 1000 merits per hour - you're now at my usual merit rate. Finally a level playing field!
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If you are now at 1/2 to 1/3 of your normal rate - I frequently saw people talking about 1000 merits per hour - you're now at my usual merit rate. Finally a level playing field!
I'm talking about my rate undermining by myself. I haven't tried undermining in a wing yet.
pre 2.1 I would interdict every single wing of 3 that I saw. Only the fairly rare Anaconda with 2 clippers was an issue for me, unless I bothered to bring my FDL.
800 merits per hour, if I was in a system with the station fairly close to the star was normal.
I frequently undermined in an Asp fully stripped down with an A3 shield (what I use for smuggling) and an Imperial Courier, I normally can't be bothered with the jump range on the FDL.
Now, you probably need a dedicated combat ship to kill at a faster rate, I'm disappointed I will have to shelf my courier, but needing a better combat ship is logical, the old AI was garbage.
Pre 2.1 undermining in a wing could have very different results, some times you just get wing after wing and can smash out 90 merits over and over again. All of this was based on the AI spawn rate being based on per player, so wings of 4 got 4 time more ships to pick from, so 4 time more wings.
Once you know where the nice spawn systems are 1200+ merits per hour was doable in a wing.
I don't agree with you saying undermining and wings are now more equal, I think the opposite will be true, a larger gap between what you can earn per hour.
Our experience with encountering wings must be very different: I see wings-of-three about twice an hour. And even if I see them, it's not always worth catching them as I'm too far behind and they are travelling to a star 300,000 Ls away. "Anaconda with 2 clippers" - never ever have I ever seen anything close to that!
With the spawn rates I experienced in solo mode, it's just not possible to reach 800 merits an hour, even if I would have had one of those legendary "instant kill weapons."
I manage to intercept once every 4-5 minutes, and that's if I intercept the first viable target I see (which usually is not a wing). That's just 12-15 interceptions an hour, so 360-450 merits if all are lone ships. Add the infrequent wing, and it's 500-600 merits, max. Less if any interception fails.
Are you sure you've tried this in Solo mode?
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You can see PP wings any time in a nav beacon in a controlled system. Surviving them alone may be hard, especially if security joins the party.
But I made the tests in ALD space, so security was very effective.
Vectron: of course I like the undermining challenge, but look at the map: no opposition, no undermining. Being pledged passed from being a dull experience to an annoyance for most players. Very few people want to spend 2 hours playing hide and seek with local authorities if all they get are some merits worth a rank 3 at best. They can do a lot of other things in the game and a more remunerative ones, too.
If it continues this way, we'll be 6 playing this game, at that point we may all meet somewhere and play powergrid/funkenschlag.
But I made the tests in ALD space, so security was very effective.
Vectron: of course I like the undermining challenge, but look at the map: no opposition, no undermining. Being pledged passed from being a dull experience to an annoyance for most players. Very few people want to spend 2 hours playing hide and seek with local authorities if all they get are some merits worth a rank 3 at best. They can do a lot of other things in the game and a more remunerative ones, too.
If it continues this way, we'll be 6 playing this game, at that point we may all meet somewhere and play powergrid/funkenschlag.
Perhaps if it gets that bad, we should all agree a truce.
That would send a fun message to FD.
That would send a fun message to FD.
I've had a wing of 5 PP Pythons before
You say "solo mode" I play in open, but when I am the only player in a system, its basically the same thing.
In pre 2.1 NPCs spawn mostly at stars and stations, so if you are in a system with stations more than 2000 ls away, you won't see all the NPCs on your scanner.
There can be a massive difference in spawn rate depending on where is undermined, and you can also see this, well not this week
, on the galaxy map.The same systems get undermined over an over, this is where players have learned the good spawns are.
Systems with the closest station 1000s of ls away were much harder to undermine.
12-15 interdiction per hour sounds very low, I think I could remain stationary at a star and get the NPCs to interdict me at a faster rate.
I agree - PP has become significantly harder for combat oriented powers now. Where it would be 500-700 merits/hr undermining by combat previously, its now 200. I was rank 5 with Hudson, but won't be now, as I can't commit that amount of time (yes, I could buy the merits, but then whats the point of trading 50M to buy 50M and have the 3 hours of trucking merits - may as well just trade!)... Also, the 100% bounty bonus is fairly moot now, as you spend all your time killing PP npcs in Hazes for 200 merits each...
My suggestions to fix this:
1. Make all other powers ships ENEMY (i.e. diplomats, bureaucrats, enforcers if Mahon) - no matter what the system. This way you won't become wanted and have bounty hunter NPCs every 5 minutes.
2. Give merits for killing ENEMY even outside their own control systems. (keep HQ as it is) - this way if an enemy NPC attacks you outside a station, in RES etc, at least you'll get some merits, not just 200Cr. (to make this work, I guess these merits could add to fortification of your own powers control system if you kill enemy within that system?)
I think this would level it up a bit. Currently, I'd say it would take 25 hours/wk to get 5000 merits through undermining in the "traditional" way. Maybe Military strikes aren't effected - not tried that yet, but I Bet Elite FDL Bounty hunter would turn up and distract you for 10 mins every 20..
As it is, I have resigned myself to let my PP rank drop and start doing more enjoyable things. Its a shame, as its an immersive part of the game, but its just full of frustration currently.
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Its great, isn't it? Violence actually has consequences
Agreed, +1
You just know they got it wrong when a good number of PP primemovers come together and start agreeing.
It seems little consideration has gone into the knock on effects on PP. There are going to be casualties.
Genuinely very sad for the PP community.
It seems little consideration has gone into the knock on effects on PP. There are going to be casualties.
Genuinely very sad for the PP community.
Everywhere I go, commanders are taking breaks from PP, from all powers and levels.
If Sandro is mothballing PP, hopefully when the changes come in they will give powers time to get back up to speed, rather than slap collapse mechanics on top right away.
If Sandro is mothballing PP, hopefully when the changes come in they will give powers time to get back up to speed, rather than slap collapse mechanics on top right away.
Is that why Hudson's expansion is at 12.000% and ALD's at 8000%?
Undermining is not property of the combat powers. Sorry to break it to you. Everyone undermines through combat.
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I need to correct myself a bit. Undermining and especially combat expansions didn't really start to pay off in terms of merits until week 9 (I think it was week 9), when they upped the merit payout for those activities.
Is there something wrong with the current state of PowerPlay combat (outside of the obvious bugs)? Maybe. The question is - do we want people to participate in PowerPlay if they are only in it for the money/items?
If the answer to that question is "no", then this is a step in the right direction. It might be a step too far, but think about it - people aren't going to be hauling 5,500 merits across space every week to get 50 million credits (especially because it takes 55 hours to collect 5,500 merits for free), but killing ships? Sure - that can be done in far less time.
If the answer to the question is "yes", then this is a step in the wrong direction, and some things need to be tuned down.
And now it gets a bit incoherent. It's a lot of minor points I've contemplated over the last year or so of PowerPlay.
Should you still get wanted for murdering a PowerPlay ship? Yes - you murdered someone and took the original offensive action. Should you still get wanted for killing a PowerPlay ship in self-defence? Yes, if it's a ship that belongs to the host's super power - think home defence. And think about what you're doing for a moment - undermining is a terrorist activity. Of course that should get you wanted.
Should foreign PowerPlay ships be hounding you outside of control systems? I honestly don't think that's a good idea. It ruins the ability to travel peacefully between systems for one thing.
Should you get merits for killing ships that do not belong to the host (or possibly host's super power)? This is debatable. I'd say no, but I'm certainly willing to change my stance.
Should you get interdicted willy nilly by foreign PowerPlay ships while in a foreign control system yourself? I'd say no to this as well. After all, you're both there for the same reason, and if we change the rules such that players don't get merits for killing foreign PowerPlay ships, then the NPCs shouldn't be trying to get them either. Only exception is if for some odd reason you're hauling defensive merits (preparation, expansion, fortification) through that control system.
Which brings me to another point - the cargo scanner reveals if you're hauling physical merits. Can we get the kill warrant scanner to reveal if you're carrying combat merits? Think about it for a moment - if you get interdicted by a PowerPlay pirate, and you're hauling physical merits, it'll attack you and try to kill you. How about we change the host (and it's accompanying superpower sides) PowerPlay combat ships to the bounty hunter role? If you're interdicted by them, they'll scan you. If you've done nothing wrong in their jurisdiction (i.e. you have no bounties and you aren't carrying combat merits), they'll leave you alone. You can still get interdicted and attacked by the foreign PowerPlay ships where it makes sense of course.
Combining some of these, you end up in a situation where undermining/combat expansion is still difficult due to the new AI, but now you can resume your regular activities outside of the control systems without getting hounded all the time.
As for knock on effects - there's been a ton of knock on effects to the mechanics of PowerPlay for the last year - it's just that a lot of them have been to the boring non-combat stuff, which just tends to get ignored because it's boring.
And as an aside I'll just point out that a lot of these things likely could have been avoided, if Frontier had followed my suggestion and either hired a senior PowerPlay producer or a dedicated PowerPlay community manager. Instead of having these bugs and issues just pile up and gather dust along with all the other bugs, they could have been addressed to and discussed with that producer or community manager before the ships hit the fan so to speak. It's not that PowerPlay is special in this regard though. Similar things need to be addressed for the background simulation, combat, trade, CQC, exploration and player groups (I'm probably forgetting some areas). By specializing the producers or community managers it becomes easier to ensure that the person in charge or we're communicating with actively understands the issues at hand or at least is in a situation where they get to take the time to understand it.
Is there something wrong with the current state of PowerPlay combat (outside of the obvious bugs)? Maybe. The question is - do we want people to participate in PowerPlay if they are only in it for the money/items?
If the answer to that question is "no", then this is a step in the right direction. It might be a step too far, but think about it - people aren't going to be hauling 5,500 merits across space every week to get 50 million credits (especially because it takes 55 hours to collect 5,500 merits for free), but killing ships? Sure - that can be done in far less time.
If the answer to the question is "yes", then this is a step in the wrong direction, and some things need to be tuned down.
And now it gets a bit incoherent. It's a lot of minor points I've contemplated over the last year or so of PowerPlay.
Should you still get wanted for murdering a PowerPlay ship? Yes - you murdered someone and took the original offensive action. Should you still get wanted for killing a PowerPlay ship in self-defence? Yes, if it's a ship that belongs to the host's super power - think home defence. And think about what you're doing for a moment - undermining is a terrorist activity. Of course that should get you wanted.
Should foreign PowerPlay ships be hounding you outside of control systems? I honestly don't think that's a good idea. It ruins the ability to travel peacefully between systems for one thing.
Should you get merits for killing ships that do not belong to the host (or possibly host's super power)? This is debatable. I'd say no, but I'm certainly willing to change my stance.
Should you get interdicted willy nilly by foreign PowerPlay ships while in a foreign control system yourself? I'd say no to this as well. After all, you're both there for the same reason, and if we change the rules such that players don't get merits for killing foreign PowerPlay ships, then the NPCs shouldn't be trying to get them either. Only exception is if for some odd reason you're hauling defensive merits (preparation, expansion, fortification) through that control system.
Which brings me to another point - the cargo scanner reveals if you're hauling physical merits. Can we get the kill warrant scanner to reveal if you're carrying combat merits? Think about it for a moment - if you get interdicted by a PowerPlay pirate, and you're hauling physical merits, it'll attack you and try to kill you. How about we change the host (and it's accompanying superpower sides) PowerPlay combat ships to the bounty hunter role? If you're interdicted by them, they'll scan you. If you've done nothing wrong in their jurisdiction (i.e. you have no bounties and you aren't carrying combat merits), they'll leave you alone. You can still get interdicted and attacked by the foreign PowerPlay ships where it makes sense of course.
Combining some of these, you end up in a situation where undermining/combat expansion is still difficult due to the new AI, but now you can resume your regular activities outside of the control systems without getting hounded all the time.
As for knock on effects - there's been a ton of knock on effects to the mechanics of PowerPlay for the last year - it's just that a lot of them have been to the boring non-combat stuff, which just tends to get ignored because it's boring.
And as an aside I'll just point out that a lot of these things likely could have been avoided, if Frontier had followed my suggestion and either hired a senior PowerPlay producer or a dedicated PowerPlay community manager. Instead of having these bugs and issues just pile up and gather dust along with all the other bugs, they could have been addressed to and discussed with that producer or community manager before the ships hit the fan so to speak. It's not that PowerPlay is special in this regard though. Similar things need to be addressed for the background simulation, combat, trade, CQC, exploration and player groups (I'm probably forgetting some areas). By specializing the producers or community managers it becomes easier to ensure that the person in charge or we're communicating with actively understands the issues at hand or at least is in a situation where they get to take the time to understand it.
Hard to say. One could also argue that cops in a control system shouldn't care too much if members of two different gangs outside their own jurisdiction are fighting each other as long as no unaffiliated player/NPC is involved. They don't appear right now already when two wanted individuals fight each other and killing PP ships doesn't have any effect on the BGS of a minor faction (I'm aware this was a fix to avoid factions being tanked from undermining). It's not that systems chose by themselves to get under the "protection" of a PP faction, they were occupied either with direct force or monetary means at some point. I think this is especially true for expansion systems, why would the cops be automatically on the side of the PP faction that tries to "invade" it.
Honestly for me it doesn't really matter if they keep the system or change it, atm the hyper active cops in combination with very aggressive bounty hunter NPCs (that have the annoying feat of teleporting in low wakes of ships you just interdicted) significantly decrease the ability to earn UM merits, especially for solo pilots.
I agree with that. They overdid it especially with PP NPCs plagueing RES sites and besieging pledged players in stations, I wonder how many players already left PP because of those issues.
It doesn't make too much sense indeed, removing merits for foreign PP NPCs without compensation would just further decrease the merit/hour rate though.
I think the latest patch made it pretty obvious that no one on FDev's side considered the impacts of wanted or unwanted changes on PP, I liked your suggestion back then and do it now, but I fear nothing will come out of it unfortunately
More general, aside from the unacceptable bug that prevents Kumo & Antal from expanding I fear the UM changes could be a critical breaking point for PowerPlay. Right now I somewhat doubt think it's feasible for any power to put another faction into turmoil with undermining as long as they don't run a massive deficit. It's not a lack of total manpower I'd say, with the current UM merit gain rates everyone but core PP players just shouldn't bother at all with undermining and the remaining bodies left can't cope with a decent enough fortification force (judging by the fact that cargo merits are pretty much unaffected for people that didn't use unshielded T-9's before and money making is still comparably easy). Even though more unfortified systems would encourage snipes, those have become more difficult to pull off too imo as staying alive a full week while being hounded by bounty hunting NPCs isn't exactly trivial anymore. My personal fear is that without the only truly offensive element to go after other powers being of any use we'll just end up throwing guaranteed winning expansions at each other (in case of the cargo powers with sufficient players, or ALD/Hudson as long as enough grinders stick around to make easy merits in broken expansion zones or keep the bounty bonus). I can't see the point how that would be fun for any party involved honestly.
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I agree. As I said, I enjoy the new undermining. It's challenging but funny.
I agree. PP ships in the exploited bubbles make sense, however. They protect the traffic lanes.
The state of Powerplay is painful. It could have been a lot better. I hope that "rise to power" will fix something. They say they are doing something about it, I hope it's a major rework and not only adding/removing powers.
Is it? I get the feeling it isn't.
After interdicting, when you enter SC again, what do you see on your scanner? When does the first PP spawn appear?
In Solo Mode, the instance is empty. Post-2.1, there might be a single wing of police, but otherwise: no contacts at all. After 15 seconds, the first spawn appear, at one of the spawn points; frequently, it's just a clean trader and not a PP ship. Some time later, a second spawn: let's say it's a PP ship, but it appeared at the other spawn point. By the time I'm behind that PP ship - if I'm at the wrong spawn point, it will be traveling towards me so it will take some time to get behind it - a second and third PP ship might have appeared, which is all for naught as they will have disappeared as soon as I engage the first PP ship.
And pre-2.1, sometimes the first 10 ships were not PP, or my own power. So I was frequently sitting in SC for minutes, without a single correct spawn. Although it seems that the PP spawn rate has been increased post-2.1.
Try it out! I'm sure nobody will object to your taking a short detour to Solo mode for testing purposes.
In pre 2.1 NPCs spawn mostly at stars and stations, so if you are in a system with stations more than 2000 ls away, you won't see all the NPCs on your scanner.
There can be a massive difference in spawn rate depending on where is undermined, and you can also see this, well not this week
The same systems get undermined over an over, this is where players have learned the good spawns are.
Systems with the closest station 1000s of ls away were much harder to undermine.
12-15 interdiction per hour sounds very low, I think I could remain stationary at a star and get the NPCs to interdict me at a faster rate.
That rate was established over several undermining actions in different weeks, over many hours, in different systems. 400 merits/hour was the average, and it was never above 500 merits/hour.
If they're the host's own bounty hunter variants (which doesn't exist yet), I agree.
Other minor changes that could make things like PowerPlay far more interesting is arriving in systems in the nav beacons instead of super cruise. I'm not sure if this has been tested yet, but I feel like it'd be far more interesting/challenging for all players. Add in a traffic log feature in the nav beacon (as in "CMDR Vectron, Edmund Mahon, Imperial Cutter, 3302/05/31 13:27" and list the last ten or twenty commanders seen in the system regardless of modes or even a complete 24 hour list) as well, and you could start to actively figure out who's doing what rather than having to rely on guess work and instinct. It's not going to remove the ability to snipe, because it won't tell you everything, it just adds more information to the mix.