Powerplay And the most hated power is...

[fergal]

I'm not saying that this issue doesn't need tweaking or that it's not extreme, but I consider other issues that have been there since Day 1 to be more important and those never got resolved.

I'm not saying the change to AI, thus undermining, is extreme and needs "fixed" yet. But this week has seen all the Hudson undermining merits get moved to their expansion, they are over 1.8 million merits in it right now.
Thats around a million undermining merits that haven't hit anyone, probably most of it would be Mahon.

If this is actually how things will be from now on, I think the undermining/fortification balance is shattered, which is far worse than anything else wrong with PP (excluding not allowing Delaine and Antal to expand)

The AI change certainly buffs the trading expansion powers, maybe even more than after the Cutter was introduced along with unlimited cr from Robigo.

 

[Apos]

I'm not saying the change to AI, thus undermining, is extreme and needs "fixed" yet. But this week has seen all the Hudson undermining merits get moved to their expansion, they are over 1.8 million merits in it right now.
Thats around a million undermining merits that haven't hit anyone, probably most of it would be Mahon.

If this is actually how things will be from now on, I think the undermining/fortification balance is shattered, which is far worse than anything else wrong with PP (excluding not allowing Delaine and Antal to expand)

The AI change certainly buffs the trading expansion powers, maybe even more than after the Cutter was introduced along with unlimited cr from Robigo.

Undermining against the Feds and the Imps has been a joke with collusion piracy being a thing for quite some time now. Turmoils ended up being extremely controlled on their side as long as it wasn't a snipe.

Everyone else except Mahon has been outside of the heavy undermining game for a while.

Now everyone gets to see how being Aisling and Antal feels for a while I guess.

How is this detrimental to the game when undermining was a joke for the majority of powers prior to 2.1 either way? And I don't mean a joke in terms of difficulty alone, I mean in terms of effectiveness. Were the Feds ever afraid of being turmoiled for the past how many cycles? I don't think so.

In order for the lack of undermining to be a serious detriment, you first have to have getting undermined itself a threat for everyone. Currently it doesn't apply to everyone.

The playing field is currently much more even than what it was with the previous easiness of undermining. That's what the sad part is.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Now everyone gets to see how being.....Antal feels for a while I guess.

Bug ridden, forgotten and designed to fail you mean?

 

[fergal]

Bug ridden, forgotten and designed to fail you mean?

Have you guys still got your other PP bonuses working, other than not being able to expand?
Are the goods made illegal that should be and are you getting your bounty hunting bonus?

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Now everyone gets to see how being Aisling and Antal feels for a while I guess.

Aisling, Antal, Torval, Sirius, ALD and Patreus you mean.

There are only 4 powers that are undermined/opposed every single week, I guess it will be 0 now.

 

[Apos]

Bug ridden, forgotten and designed to fail you mean?

Well, some of us have also had some of that flavor since the start, but I can't blame you. The expansion bug is just ridiculous and the fact that instead of fixing collusion piracy they just removed it from the Independents as if that was a higher priority is just...mind boggling to say the least.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Fergal> the bounty bonus is still MIA, and might be fixed in 2.1.1....but I'm not hopeful.

What's annoying is you can't rely on anything the game tells you any more. Text is incorrect, misleading or bugged, so we can't make informed choices any more. Not being able to expand or use preparation nominations is just the icing on the cake.

Part of me wants PP to devolve into big player groups like CI or Mercs, and forget about mechanics that simply don't work. It will be better for players as they can get on and play rather than be chained to a failing system.

 

[CMDR John Casey]

Part of me wants PP to devolve into big player groups like CI or Mercs, and forget about mechanics that simply don't work. It will be better for players as they can get on and play rather than be chained to a failing system.

They're announcing these "rise to power" games, but is there anyone with the ambition of becoming a power in the current conditions? It's a lot easier and rewarding (both from the gameplay and credits point of view) to support a faction through the BGS rather than being "promoted" to this bugged Powerplay (Buggerplay?). I only hope that it means that Powerplay will be reworked, but until I see something more concrete than generic statements, I'm really skeptical.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I think the base problem FD have is they introduce these big ideas and leave them 'as is' once the next update comes along. PP really needs constant evolution to rid it of problems but to also keep it relevant. It should sit above and with the BGS and flow- what we have is oil floating on water. We can't communicate with others in game, we can't find out who is attacking us, it's insane, and anyone who actually wants to get involved in that via RtP is a fool. For PP to survive and be loved, it has to change radically. Sadly FD have relegated it to a side project, so we will get a fudge.

 

[Schlack]

It's a lot easier and rewarding (both from the gameplay and credits point of view) to support a faction through the BGS rather than being "promoted" to this bugged Powerplay (Buggerplay?).

We could take issue with that statement!

AEDC, and other groups have been banging our heads against the BGS bug wall since day 1. We've have good updated (2.0) and really bad updates (1.4 in particular nearly killed the BGS- ironically this patch introduced many changes to deal with the unintended consequences of PP on the BGS).

PP was a great disappointment to us on release, as it is almost an entirely separate layer of the game. One would have thought powerplay should have been built on the BGS foundation but alas it was not.

Don't expect too much change with the rise to power either. We don't think that there will be too many changes to the mechanics from this process other than the introduction of a new power (that probably wont relate directly to the BGS faction that spawned it).

If AEDC win the competition, our power would have to be far enough removed from Mahon so as not to harm him. This would mean that our chosen faction would not be in our powers space and would have no relation to the power mechanics.

 

[CMDR John Casey]

I know that the BGS has its problems, but it seems that they've been working on it. I cannot say the same about PP.

 

[fergal]

I know that the BGS has its problems, but it seems that they've been working on it. I cannot say the same about PP.

Yeah, the BGS seems to be running very well right now, and I've seen the new states of Investment, and Retreat, which were added in 2.1.

All that PP had got in the past 52 weeks is a doubling of undermining merits from 15 to 30, a 5 times increase to fortification, and that was in cycle 9, over 40 weeks ago.

 

[CMDR John Casey]

To be fair they changed the overhead formula, too...

 

[Apos]

To be fair they changed the overhead formula, too...

And fixed a few bonuses, albeit not completely in their case either. Also fixed the BH stacking a bit too much, although BH is still the strongest bonus and I still don't know whether they truly fixed increased bounties from affecting CGs or not. They said they did, then saw another post that said they didn't, then gave up on it.

And they also did take action on powers expanding through combat having problems on systems without planetary bodies.

But it's been a bit on the slow side indeed. If it's any worth though, the BGS has been on the slow side for a looooong time as well. It wasn't until Player Factions got introduced and a bigger amount of people started having expectations from it that things started moving forward.

Maybe after 2-3 ascension games?

 

[Apos]

Winters having 5 systems undermined at the end of the cycle and a bad system in turmoil is why I call bull     on anyone who thinks that undermining was such a crucial part of PP.

Sure, it was, if you weren't Imperial or Federal. Aka, for 4 out of 10 powers.

 

[SHEPR0N]

Winters having 5 systems undermined at the end of the cycle and a bad system in turmoil is why I call bull on anyone who thinks that undermining was such a crucial part of PP.

Sure, it was, if you weren't Imperial or Federal. Aka, for 4 out of 10 powers.

Don't really see your point in any cycle with "normal" UM mechanics Winters would have just ended up with good systems getting sniped and having a horrible turmoil list now. Not that PP wouldn't have bigger problems right now [uhh]

 

[Apos]

Don't really see your point in any cycle with "normal" UM mechanics Winters would have just ended up with good systems getting sniped and having a horrible turmoil list now. Not that PP wouldn't have bigger problems right now [uhh]

No, no she wouldn't. This isn't the first time the Feds (or Imps) get to shed bad systems due to collusion piracy.

Not that I don't agree that there's bigger fish at stake right now, but anyone from the Feds or the Imps who claims that undermining was a threat to them is a big fat hypocrite. Snipes were, normal undermining wasn't.

 

[SHEPR0N]

Oh great. So because she would be screwed over and be losing bad systems now anyway, it's all fine that she gets to keep the good systems and lose bad systems already. Right...makes sense.

Not that I don't agree that there's bigger fish at stake right now.

The bad systems would have never entered a turmoil list in such a case, only or at least mostly good systems would have been on the block (depending on how hard the hit). To get rid of bad systems with turmoil used to be nearly impossible as long as not pretty much all profitable ones were fortified.

 

[Apos]

The bad systems would have never entered a turmoil list in such a case, only or at least mostly good systems would have been on the block (depending on how hard the hit). To get rid of bad systems with turmoil used to be nearly impossible as long as not pretty much all profitable ones were fortified.

Oh ye, good thing that it is indeed impossible to get rid of bad systems for 4 out of 10 powers.


But I forgot. It was fair that the federal and imperial powers didn't have to be afraid of normal undermining but only snipes. How didn't I realize that?

 

[SHEPR0N]

Oh ye, good thing that it is indeed impossible to get rid of bad systems for 4 out of 10 powers.

Never said that was a good thing. Just that the current way of things is even worse imo.

 

[Apos]

Never said that was a good thing. Just that the current way of things is even worse imo.

I know right? You can't shed bad systems and easily snipe some other power so that you snatch systems from them without them being able to retaliate the same way you would. Absolutely horrible.