Your best bet will be to look up the Reddit page of your power, and find the Discord link. The Reddits are generally bulletin boards, as the communities largely exist on Discord. They'll know the particulars of your power, as a few of them are a little different and the terminology can be obtuse. If you're interested in working for the power's benefit, you'll need to coordinate with others, as its easy to waste your effort or even cause trouble. If you're just after ranking up and the modules, then that part is easy.
Powerplay bonds are called merits, and the control system in the centre of a control sphere is where most of the action happens. You can see these in the galaxy map on the fourth tab, Powerplay button. The info card that comes up when selecting a system will show either controlled, or exploited, the latter being the systems around a control system. The main types of Powerplay activities are preparation, expansion, fortification and undermining. The game itself is about the collective management of Command Capital, or CC.
Undermining is going into an enemy control system, and killing ships with generic Powerplay names, like Imperial Supply. They differ for each power. They can be found most easily in supercruise, or res sites. Each control system costs CC to maintain. Undermining increases that cost, potentially leading to 'Turmoil' and the loss of control systems. You get 30 merits for each kill. You then take those merits to one of your own control systems, and submit through the station contacts page.
Fortification is increasing a control system's defence against undermining. You do this by going to your powers HQ, not just any control system, and picking up 'forts', a type of commodity, from the contacts station menu. The name differs for each power, and you can see this when you select a system in your right panel, Galactic Powers, Control tab. I'm ALD, so I'd pick up Lavigny Garrison Supplies from Kamadhenu, then take them to any system whose fortification progress was less than 100%. Anything over 100% is no benefit to the power, though you still get the merits for your effort. You get to pick up a certain amount every hour, depending on rank, though you can pay credits to speed it up. Each thing you deliver is 1 merit.
Preparation is what a power does in the cycle before an expansion. Same process as fortifying, but with a different commodity obtained from the same menu, and you can do it from the any control system, rather than only the HQ. The power that puts the most 'preps' into a system gets to attempt an expansion next cycle.
Expansion is different for different powers. Some powers are trade focused, like Felicia Winters, others are combat, like Hudson. If Winters wants to expand, she has to take Liberal Federal Aid commodities to the expansion system, similarly to fortification and preparation. For combat powers, they expand by fighting in special conflict zones with different names. For ALD its called a Crime Sweep, for Hudson it's a Military Strike, etc. These conflict zones award 10 merits per kill, and have to be taken to a friendly control system and submit through the station contacts menu. You're most likely to find enemy players here, as they can oppose the expansion.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, Powerplay gets pretty deep, and it can be a lot of fun. I strongly recommend getting in touch with the community, if you're interested in more than the rank bonuses. It's one of the few ways in Elite you can truly be part of something bigger. Edit: I just remembered squadrons exist now
Powerplay bonds are called merits, and the control system in the centre of a control sphere is where most of the action happens. You can see these in the galaxy map on the fourth tab, Powerplay button. The info card that comes up when selecting a system will show either controlled, or exploited, the latter being the systems around a control system. The main types of Powerplay activities are preparation, expansion, fortification and undermining. The game itself is about the collective management of Command Capital, or CC.
Undermining is going into an enemy control system, and killing ships with generic Powerplay names, like Imperial Supply. They differ for each power. They can be found most easily in supercruise, or res sites. Each control system costs CC to maintain. Undermining increases that cost, potentially leading to 'Turmoil' and the loss of control systems. You get 30 merits for each kill. You then take those merits to one of your own control systems, and submit through the station contacts page.
Fortification is increasing a control system's defence against undermining. You do this by going to your powers HQ, not just any control system, and picking up 'forts', a type of commodity, from the contacts station menu. The name differs for each power, and you can see this when you select a system in your right panel, Galactic Powers, Control tab. I'm ALD, so I'd pick up Lavigny Garrison Supplies from Kamadhenu, then take them to any system whose fortification progress was less than 100%. Anything over 100% is no benefit to the power, though you still get the merits for your effort. You get to pick up a certain amount every hour, depending on rank, though you can pay credits to speed it up. Each thing you deliver is 1 merit.
Preparation is what a power does in the cycle before an expansion. Same process as fortifying, but with a different commodity obtained from the same menu, and you can do it from the any control system, rather than only the HQ. The power that puts the most 'preps' into a system gets to attempt an expansion next cycle.
Expansion is different for different powers. Some powers are trade focused, like Felicia Winters, others are combat, like Hudson. If Winters wants to expand, she has to take Liberal Federal Aid commodities to the expansion system, similarly to fortification and preparation. For combat powers, they expand by fighting in special conflict zones with different names. For ALD its called a Crime Sweep, for Hudson it's a Military Strike, etc. These conflict zones award 10 merits per kill, and have to be taken to a friendly control system and submit through the station contacts menu. You're most likely to find enemy players here, as they can oppose the expansion.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, Powerplay gets pretty deep, and it can be a lot of fun. I strongly recommend getting in touch with the community, if you're interested in more than the rank bonuses. It's one of the few ways in Elite you can truly be part of something bigger. Edit: I just remembered squadrons exist now
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After writing all that, I found something better, haha.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/175324-A-Lazy-Commander-s-Guide-to-Powerplay
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/175324-A-Lazy-Commander-s-Guide-to-Powerplay
Powerplay is a bit of a complex animal right now, and there’s a lot of internal debate right now on a variety of topics (such as open mode Powerplay when attacking other players work)
Generally you’ll want to hop around the different player discords and feel out which community fits best as a guest though if you are completely new.
Generally you’ll want to hop around the different player discords and feel out which community fits best as a guest though if you are completely new.
Well.. some player minor factions´re currently transforming all systems around me home system to corporate rule due to PP preferences, which i find booring as a player and inconsistent in lore terms. I´m kind of stuck between an alliance and fed player group and they all make corporate govs the majority faction of a system due to fortification bonuses. From that perspective i regard the current system as broken. I´ve suggested a blockade runner ship for PP purposes in another sub forum prehaps some ppl might find it interesting in terms of making PP available in open mode only (which is the only reasonable choice for me). PP is generic a mulit player effort so why on flat earth do they allow solo mode players to mingle with it? I´m just back after a long time out from the game...
Preaching to the choir on that one, the vast majority of the Powerplay Community are not happy with Powerplay being exploited in solo/private. Usually it’s those that never Powerplay who keep insisting on not letting Powerplay have an Open only exemption, on the grounds they fear any positive feedback on the subject will encourage more Open mode interactions.
Powerplay has never been a way to make cash, its about supporting the right leader and who you identify with. In reality PP was a very early stab at Squadrons mixed with BGS style territorial acquisition. The BGS has evolved more now, but lacks the rank bonuses of PP.
Are you doing it for the role-play or for the modules? If trying to earn credits via Power Play, forget it. Power play is not really about earning lots of credits. If doing it for the modules and have a decently high credit balance, "Down To Earth Astronomy" has a good YouTube video on "how to spend credits and easily earn Power Play modules".
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From what I am seeing, we have a bunch of people that don't understand power play. Especially in the empire and federation. I don't get all of it, i.e. with Aisling Duval you get Aisling's Media Materials and Aisling's Programme Materials. Programme Materials is easy. Collect them from Cubeo and take them to areas that need fortification. Media materials is a mystery. How do you find the hub where you are supposed to take the Media? What I do understand is that you don't go into the powers tab and select your power then grab the first system in the control tab and make it 12000/4300. 4300/4300 is the goal.
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Media materials are for preparing systems. Don't ever choose your own preparation target as this will cause more harm than good. We don't always have preparation targets, but we're ailed by folks who don't know what they're doing or seek to harm us by preparing bad systems.
Meanwhile, don't just fortify anything either. There are some systems we don't want fortified because we need them to be on the chopping block should we come under attack. The Aisling Duval trello is a good source to stay up to date on helpful hauling objectives.
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Funny you should mention that because pretty much every system on the control tab marked as fortify is on the trello page. That is the other thing that blares when I look at power play as seeming wrong to me. The powers that be are looking to fortify and consolidate yet there are many systems being undermined or prepared. People are just running off and doing their own thing. Putting too many points into a system or jumping into other systems because they would rather pew pew than haulOf course this big negative down cycle we are seeing could be because of this event that is taking over 7k players out of power play to go hop to the edge of the universe.
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