Powerplay A word on 5c, and the state of Powerplay

[DemiserofD]

This right here is what some people in the empire would love to see, the reason Winters was 5C'ed to death in 2019, and the reason Hudson is being 5C'd right now. The thing is our player groups are stablished communities and don't depend on a CC number in game or the unhanded tactics some people might decide to use against us so I'm sorry to break it to you, but we won't quit.

Why keep playing a game that makes you miserable? Seriously, it's like two people having a contest to see how many times they can hit themselves in the head with a baseball bat, ignoring everyone who tells them that maybe they shouldn't be doing that.

People play the game obsessively, have all of their progress effortlessly wiped away by bad game design, come on here to complain about it, get over it, and go back to do exactly the same thing all over again!

Quitting is not surrender, it's victory. You have achieved the superior intelligence necessary to realize that continuing to play the game is actively harming yourself. The only loser is the person who keeps playing a game that they hate, just to beat people who no longer care.

 

[Khan Tannhauser]

Why keep playing a game that makes you miserable? Seriously, it's like two people having a contest to see how many times they can hit themselves in the head with a baseball bat, ignoring everyone who tells them that maybe they shouldn't be doing that.

People play the game obsessively, have all of their progress effortlessly wiped away by bad game design, come on here to complain about it, get over it, and go back to do exactly the same thing all over again!

Quitting is not surrender, it's victory. You have achieved the superior intelligence necessary to realize that continuing to play the game is actively harming yourself. The only loser is the person who keeps playing a game that they hate, just to beat people who no longer care.

Lol, nice try, really.

I'm not sure what makes you think playing Elite makes us miserable. When we see our opponent blatantly using broken mechanics we'll call them out, that's about it. As I said, our player groups will be alive and well and for us it's all about the community we have. Winters was destroyed by 5C during Operation Valentine and here we are, we've had a lot of fun rebuilding since then and I'm sure we'll keep having fun, so I'm afraid the empire will have to keep 5C'ing us until the day the servers are shut down for good.

 

[DemiserofD]

Lol, nice try, really.

I'm not sure what makes you think playing Elite makes us miserable. When we see our opponent blatantly using broken mechanics we'll call them out, that's about it. As I said, our player groups will be alive and well and for us it's all about the community we have. Winters was destroyed by 5C during Operation Valentine and here we are, we've had a lot of fun rebuilding since then and I'm sure we'll keep having fun, so I'm afraid the empire will have to keep 5C'ing us until the day the servers are shut down for good.

Hahaha!

I'm sorry, but the cognitive dissonance is just awe-inspiring. The game is fundamentally designed to render all of your progress and work irrelevant, but when people actually use the game as intended, it's not the game's fault, it's those darn people using it... exactly the way everything about the game tells them to.

All right, there's nothing I can do to stop you. But if you ever have doubts about hitting your head with a baseball bat one more time, think about what I've said.

 

[Alysianne]

Hahaha!

I'm sorry, but the cognitive dissonance is just awe-inspiring. The game is fundamentally designed to render all of your progress and work irrelevant, but when people actually use the game as intended, it's not the game's fault, it's those darn people using it... exactly the way everything about the game tells them to.

All right, there's nothing I can do to stop you. But if you ever have doubts about hitting your head with a baseball bat one more time, think about what I've said.

This is not the point of the OP at all. You are obviously extremely bitter about Powerplay and FDev, which I understand, but coming here to make fun of everyone involved, sitting on some sort of cynical high ground, serves no literally no purpose. We still find ways of having fun with a half-broken game, we still manage to build thriving and vibrant communities, if that's not the case for you then that's just too bad. But please stop trying to ruin everyone else's time just because.

So no we will not quit, yes we will continue to hold our opponents to the same standards as we do for ourselves. And yes we will continue to have fun

 

[CMDR Foursyth]

Khan already linked it, but I thought I'd inline it here for ease of reading.

There was a concerted effort between the powers to figure out a series of relatively simple proposals to help improve PowerPlay and specifically 5C. I would like to highlight these three, which are relatively small rule changes that should not affect anybody not involved in PowerPlay. They will not magically solve the problem, but together they would make 5C significantly more difficult, less effective, and less destructive when it does happen:

Overhead scales with number of (control+exploited+contested) systems, rather than number of control systems
Make it treason to prep loss-making systems
Turmoil ordering of systems is decided by difference between fort and UM levels, ignoring 100% cap

I believe these three alone would massively reduce the problems associated with 5C.

The full list of proposals is here. Each one is independent, each helps in small ways, and addresses different aspects of PowerPower (and yes, OpenOnly is in that list): https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...out-incrementally-improving-powerplay.551571/

 

[Mo Mo]

@Ian Phillips I don't understand why this thread has been resurrected.

Hudson accuses the Empire of 5c.
The Empire denies it.
Hudson wants proof.
How does one proof NOT having done something? In fact, isn't the "prosecution" supposed to prove that a "crime" has been committed? So far, all Hudson has provided has been wild accusations and speculations.
All evidence suggest no 5c method was used, but Hudson refuses to accept the fact.
The argument then repeats.

What is the point of this thread?

The OP started this thread in order to gain sympathy from those not familiar with the situation, nothing more.

And wrt someone's suggestion of a cease fire - not a chance. Why should we? We have done nothing wrong; everything the Empire has done, every single merits, was legitimately earned.

I respectfully request that this thread be closed.

 

[DemiserofD]

This is not the point of the OP at all. You are obviously extremely bitter about Powerplay and FDev, which I understand, but coming here to make fun of everyone involved, sitting on some sort of cynical high ground, serves no literally no purpose. We still find ways of having fun with a half-broken game, we still manage to build thriving and vibrant communities, if that's not the case for you then that's just too bad. But please stop trying to ruin everyone else's time just because.

So no we will not quit, yes we will continue to hold our opponents to the same standards as we do for ourselves. And yes we will continue to have fun

The game is literally broken. It exists in a state which is unplayable without full cooperation from all sides, which will never be achieved. Is it really making fun to tell people to stop wasting their time with an impossible task?

By all means, keep playing. But who says you need to keep playing using their rule set or system? Players have developed better versions of virtually everything that this game has to offer. The game has the Galaxy map and the Codex; players created eddb. The game has a buggy trade menu; players created inara.

And last but not least, the game tried to create power play, but players made it actually functional with the use of Discord.

It's only one tiny step to go from where the game is now, to a version entirely controlled by players who actually know how to make a game that is winnable.

Given that F Dev have repeatedly shown a complete disinclination towards any form of progress, this is the only way forward I can see actually working.

Otherwise we'll just be right back here in another month, players complaining that all their hard work has been erased, but never actually doing anything about it.

 

[Fezix93]

@Ian Phillips I don't understand why this thread has been resurrected.

Hudson accuses the Empire of 5c.
The Empire denies it.
Hudson wants proof.
How does one proof NOT having done something? In fact, isn't the "prosecution" supposed to prove that a "crime" has been committed? So far, all Hudson has provided has been wild accusations and speculations.
All evidence suggest no 5c method was used, but Hudson refuses to accept the fact.
The argument then repeats.

What is the point of this thread?

The OP started this thread in order to gain sympathy from those not familiar with the situation, nothing more.

And wrt someone's suggestion of a cease fire - not a chance. Why should we? We have done nothing wrong; everything the Empire has done, every single merits, was legitimately earned.

I respectfully request that this thread be closed.

The purpose of this thread is to have a civil discussion about 5C, and to bring awareness that 5C is a plague to us (and every power), rather than to deny it's existence. The Federation is not asking the Empire to "prove they haven't done something", because like you said, that is impossible. Rather, we'd like to discuss the ways in which 5C affects us, and has been affecting us during the recent Hudson Turmoil, and to discuss potential ways it can be stopped.

As for evidence, I have attached a PDF of (an incredibly simplified) one of our trackers that we use to track UMing merits. This data was taken on May 13th, towards the beginning of the cycle. The UMing merits column shows merits that have been redeemed, not merits held, and the numbers are updated manually by looking at the numbers given in GalPow. You can see several systems already have UMing merits redeemed against them. This destroys the argument that the Empire is waiting to drop merits before a system is Fortified. Give me 5 minutes, and I will post another screenie with updated numbers taken today.

While this is an obviously simplified version of the sheets we keep, we do track these numbers daily, and it is clear to us that during this turmoil, the Undermining merits have generally come in before the Fortification merits. Obviously not for every system, but work with me here. So while you or your particular squadron/group is likely not responsible for the 5C actions, there are undeniably 5C actions taking place against Hudson.

edited for clarity

 

[Mo Mo]

The purpose of this thread is to have a civil discussion about 5C, and to bring awareness that 5C is a plague to us (and every power), rather than to deny it's existence. The Federation is not asking the Empire to "prove they haven't done something", because like you said, that is impossible. Rather, we'd like to discuss the ways in which 5C affects us, and has been affecting us during the recent Hudson Turmoil, and to discuss potential ways it can be stopped.

As for evidence, I have attached a PDF of (an incredibly simplified) one of our trackers that we use to track UMing merits. This data was taken on May 13th, towards the beginning of the cycle. The UMing merits column shows merits that have been redeemed, not merits held, and the numbers are updated manually by looking at the numbers given in GalPow. You can see several systems already have UMing merits redeemed against them. This destroys the argument that the Empire is waiting to drop merits before a system is Fortified. Give me 5 minutes, and I will post another screenie with updated numbers taken today.

While this is an obviously simplified version of the sheets we keep, we do track these numbers daily, and it is clear to us that during this turmoil, the Undermining merits have generally come in before the Fortification merits. Obviously not for every system, but work with me here. So while you or your particular squadron/group is likely not responsible for the 5C actions, there are undeniably 5C actions taking place against Hudson.

edited for clarity

Thank you for the pdf; it is late for me now but I will take a look tomorrow.

In answer to your question about some systems having been undermined before they were fortified - this has already been explained by another CMDR in your last cycle's Reddit post; To recap; we undermined some of your systems a little, they show up as "under threat" in the game UI, randoms see it...you know the rest. This is strategy. At no time did any of our CMDRs pledged to Hudson for the purpose of actually fortifing your systems - that would be 5c, and we would absolutely condemn such action.

 

[QueensPawn]

The purpose of this thread is to have a civil discussion about 5C, and to bring awareness that 5C is a plague to us (and every power), rather than to deny it's existence. The Federation is not asking the Empire to "prove they haven't done something", because like you said, that is impossible. Rather, we'd like to discuss the ways in which 5C affects us, and has been affecting us during the recent Hudson Turmoil, and to discuss potential ways it can be stopped.

We do not deny the existence of 5C in general as a problem, however we do not believe that what was done to Hudson was 5C in that we believe it to have been done by well-meaning random CMDRs genuinely pledged to Hudson and we know for certain that if it was 5C that it was not us. The data you've given us to look at only shows one system fully undermined. We were not completing systems until they were fortified, we never said that we didn't start them before they were fortified. A large part of our strategy involved using the UI so that randoms would see the system listed as under threat and think that it needed fortification, so those first few undermining merits were important to getting the system started, but the only systems that were completely undermined before being fortified were ones that we definitely wanted undermined whether they were fortified or not.

As for how to stop 5C in general, I don't think there is a way to do that tbh. As long as it is a thing that is available in the game without consequences, people will ignore community guidelines and do the dishonorable thing. It sucks, but it is what it is. What you can do is change your strategy to compensate for 5C like we have done. For starters, driving your economy hundreds of CC into the negative to support all manner of weaponized expansions against your enemy without regard to your own economy is unsustainable as a strategic method while 5C is a consideration. If we didn't have to worry about 5C immediately fortifying all of our lossmakers as soon as the feds started UMing us, we wouldn't have been nearly as worried about the situation we found ourselves in a few weeks ago where our balance went just a few dozen CC into the negatives. But Hudson has lived hundreds in the negatives for months. If we had full control to scrap without 5C, Shattered Prism could never work as a strategy, but it is a constant fear for us. (or was until this Hudson turmoil) We consolidate each week to avoid having to run hundreds of thousands of prep merits to avoid having to eat a 5C expansion, something Winters has never seemed to care about with her regular 4 weaponized expansion cycles with minimal prep hauling required.

Stop playing like 5C isn't a thing. It is absolutely counterable, otherwise we would not be nearly as successful as we are. We have been the most consistently and persistently 5Ced power for the entire year I've been with Aisling Duval, and from what I hear, much longer than that. But we continue to dominate the space of powerplay because our planners don't let things like 5C get in our way. When people break the rules against us, we report anything terms of service breaking, and we plan around the rest instead of coming to the forums to complain.

 

[CMDR Foursyth]

something Winters has never seemed to care about with her regular 4 weaponized expansion cycles with minimal prep hauling required.

You should check your logs. We have a long and brutal history of having to out-haul our 5C preps and votes. Literally years. Mostly we succeed, every now and then we fail. The only reason it is not currently a big problem is because we have consistently fought off our 5C prep haulers for over three years, and they have finally decided it's not worth their effort and have mostly moved elsewhere. They do return when they see an opportunity for sticking a knife in us though.

5C preps are a plague that affects us all. But as you say, it CAN (with great effort!) be managed and controlled. It slows down everything in PowerPlay and makes it less interesting, but it CAN be done at great effort.

However 5C fortifications during turmoils are so much harder to control. The 100% cap means there is a fixed amount of work required, and because it only happens during turmoils it's not an endless boring grind for 5C. They get to come in, make the game awful for everybody else, stroke their rancid little egos, and then sit back and watch as we argue with each other about who did it. We need a solution, and it has to be implemented by FDev - but that doesn't mean we can't suggest what those solutions might be.

 

[Fezix93]

Attached here is the PDF from today. Again, it shows several systems that are Undermined 100% before the Forts have come in. Now to be fair, there are also several systems that are Forted before being Undermined, but then one would also expect that the Empire would have dropped the merits they were presumably holding for those systems if it was the Empire's plan to blanket Undermine and then hope the Forts come in. This is also mutually exclusive to the plan of Undermining a little bit to hopefully trigger enough Forting to cause a Fortification of that system; if the Empire was waiting until a system was forted before continuing to Undermine it, they wouldn't have time in the cycle to blanket Undermine (unless they had so many CMDRs that they could rapidly generate enough merits, but if this were the case, they would have massacred the Federation quite some time ago). Additionally, it has been cycle after cycle with no blunders or mistakes or holes and a general lack of over-forting that is always present in the random forts that is further suspect. Look at Groombridge 1618, which is consistently Forted by randos and notice that it is at 629%. Conversely, the vast majority of systems which we believe to have been 5C forted almost always end up at 100-105%, and generally don't have a history of being forted much at all by randos.

If this was an isolated one time thing, then I would agree to call it random Forting or 'baited' Forting instead of 5C. However, looking at this data nearly every day during the Hudson Turmoil and consistently seeing instances where the Undermining comes in to 100% before the Forts, cycle after cycle, with no blunders or opportunity for the Federation to scrap (as is consisent when dealing with the randomness of random forting), and it is obvious that 5C is playing a role here. There may be instances where some systems get baited and fortified by randoms, but the empire wouldn't be dropping Undermining merits to 100% unless the Forts were first at 100%, otherwise they risk us taking control and being able to shed our loss makers.

To drive this point home further, look at the Winters data (also attached). Also please note, Winters is not in Turmoil at this time. However, the Empire is still targeting Winters in order to CC control her out of her current expansion (valid). But the Empire must also be careful not to give Winters an opportunity to scrap either, and must be particularly careful about it because the randos won't be as Fort happy because their power is not in Turmoil. Nonetheless, all the Winters systems which are currently Undermined, save one, are at 100% before the Forts are in. Currently there is nothing stopping Winters from Red Teaming and scraping other than the absolute "hope" that those systems which are undermined get forted by "randoms". It doesn't make sense to have dropped these merits for CC Control, unless there was confidence that those same systems would then be Forted. Additionally, looking back further into our archive, Winters never gets blanket forted except for when she is in turmoil, or we intentionally fort ourselves, even when some systems are partially undermined and thus labelled 'under threat'.

The idea of 'hoping' that randos follow through after 'baiting' them with partial undermines becomes weaker as time goes on. This is because randos are never consistent (otherwise they wouldn't be called randos, but that's semantics). It might be reasonable to suggest that randos get baited for one system, or even for one cycle, but to suggest that randos are able to consistently Fort to 100% with rarely any overfort, without ever making one mistake, or leaving any opportunity for a scrap, between not one, but two powers, becomes ridiculous after it consistently happens cycle after cycle, for well over a month.

Again, I am not accusing the others on this forum of actively participating in or orchestrating the 5C, but 5C is without a doubt playing a part in the current turmoil and attack on the Federation.

Edited for clarity because I'm dumb

 

[Agony_Aunt]

What should we as players do while Frontier refuses to address these game-breaking issues?

I'd say stop playing, but i'm sure many of us remember multicrew where FD said if it wasn't popular they wouldn't improve it.....

And now... oh... right

 

[DemiserofD]

I'd say stop playing, but i'm sure many of us remember multicrew where FD said if it wasn't popular they wouldn't improve it.....

And now... oh... right

That's the great thing! If people stop using it, then it's not worth development effort and they don't have to do anything. If people keep using it, it must be fine and they don't need to do anything. Either way, they win!

 

[QueensPawn]

Attached here is the PDF from today. .... etc. etc. etc.

I don't see anything on here that's fully UMed that's on our do not UM until fortified list. Some systems we want UMed regardless of whether they're fortified.

As for groombridge, take a look at Lambda-1 Tucanae in our powerplay view. It's normal for each power to have a fortification system near their HQ that is a dumping ground for fort mats for module shoppers. Now compare that to the other systems near Cubeo that are fortified to 100-105%. Those are lossmakers for us, but we don't consider those intentional 5C. Randoms will fortify everything starting from the inside out, which incidentally also hits the lossmakers the worst, because lossmakers tend to be close to the core. Randoms that are trying to be helpful will fortify systems to 100% and stop, even if they're fortifying the wrong systems.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

That's the great thing! If people stop using it, then it's not worth development effort and they don't have to do anything. If people keep using it, it must be fine and they don't need to do anything. Either way, they win!

The problem with that is there are a number of players out there (as there always are) who want to be part of something bigger than just grind influence for a single faction with no real point or purpose. Powerplay is as close as we're going to get to conflict between superpowers. It's the difference between "faction no-one cares about A" versus "faction no-one cares about B" and an actual Federation v Empire war.

It's not perfect, not even close and they know that, but it's as close as it's going to get. You could say other games would scratch the same itch but people seem quite happy with this one.

You can certainly understand that for players who want a proper multiplayer bubble wide conflict type of gameplay as seems to have been intended, it doesn't seem much to ask that it gets turned into that kind of experience with some thoughts on how to prevent cheese tactics.

 

[Intersection]

Here's a little tidbit I'd like to share: during these past three weeks, our supposed randoms have beelined to fortify our most inconvienient lossmakers, ignoring fully undermined profitables for days on end, even when at similar distances and similar station arrangements.

These past three weeks, the usual targets for our randoms - Groombridge, LHS 2088 - saw similar amounts of overfortification, indicating most of our randoms were not, in fact, swayed by "under threat" indicators.

These past few weeks, systems that had not been fortified for several years, some with prohibitively inconvenient station arrangements, were fortified early, and with impressive speed.

For years, Hudson would perhaps see 5 systems fortified by random commanders. These past three weeks, eight times as many systems were fortified by supposed randoms.

Like I said before: we've been monitoring Hudson for a long, long time. We know what intentional 5c looks like.

Stop playing like 5C isn't a thing. It is absolutely counterable, otherwise we would not be nearly as successful as we are. We have been the most consistently and persistently 5Ced power for the entire year I've been with Aisling Duval, and from what I hear, much longer than that. But we continue to dominate the space of powerplay because our planners don't let things like 5C get in our way. When people break the rules against us, we report anything terms of service breaking, and we plan around the rest instead of coming to the forums to complain.

Just because 5c exists, just because it is hard to eradicate, doesn't mean we should stop fighting against it...! That's betraying our values, that's giving up on the same principles of fair play we've been trying to uphold for years.

I'll quote myself, if it helps to remind you of why 5c needs to remain out of Powerplay:

5c is both near-impossible to counter, and entirely consequence-free. 5c allows harmful interaction in a way that bypasses the intended framework of Powerplay, at no cost whatsoever to the power engaging in it. 5c kills meaningful decision making, making fortification strategy and turmoil planning moot.

5c has come close to killing Powerplay far more times than it had any right to. We don’t condemn it just because we can: we condemn it because we know the game cannot survive it.

I'd like to remind you that 5c doesn't get in your way because we believe in not putting it in your way. For years, you've been using Torval to throw weapons at the Federation with no concern as to her own economy - a tactic we find distasteful - but we've always allowed you to do so in the utter absence of 5c. Recently, Grom and Patreus successfully scrapped in the same utter absence of 5c. Mahon was turmoiled in the utter absence of 5c. The Federation has proven time and again we're willing to help whenever 5c threatens Powerplay.

You actively benefit from our commitment to fair play - so don't go boasting about learning to act as if fair play was dead. Thanks to us, and others in this community, it isn't.

 

[QueensPawn]

Here's a little tidbit I'd like to share: during these past three weeks, our supposed randoms have beelined to fortify our most inconvienient lossmakers, ignoring fully undermined profitables for days on end, even when at similar distances and similar station arrangements.

These past three weeks, the usual targets for our randoms - Groombridge, LHS 2088 - saw similar amounts of overfortification, indicating most of our randoms were not, in fact, swayed by "under threat" indicators.

These past few weeks, systems that had not been fortified for several years, some with prohibitively inconvenient station arrangements, were fortified early, and with impressive speed.

For years, Hudson would perhaps see 5 systems fortified by random commanders - and we'd consider that a good week. These past three weeks, eight times as many systems were fortified by supposed randoms.

Like I said before: we've been monitoring Hudson for a long, long time. We know what intentional 5c looks like.

You've monitored a peaceful Hudson bubble for years. When was the last time Hudson faced an undermining campaign on this scale? How did they respond then? You can't use behavior under a normal cycle as indication of how they will act when the powerplay screen is telling them that their power is under attack in every system simultaneously. When ALD did a small undermining campaign against Hudson this last December, we saw a blanket fortification of Hudson systems. That's what we based our strategy on. We saw behavior that indicated your randoms would over-react and we took advantage of it. And we only did this because we were desperate due to the looming threat of shattered prism, which your side was hinting would come soon and can only be achieved through 5C forts (or well-meaning randoms).

Just because 5c exists, just because it is hard to eradicate, doesn't mean we should stop fighting against it...! That's betraying our values, that's giving up on the same principles of fair play we've been trying to uphold for years.

I'll quote myself, if it helps to remind you of why 5c needs to remain out of Powerplay:

5c is both near-impossible to counter, and entirely consequence-free. 5c allows harmful interaction in a way that bypasses the intended framework of Powerplay, at no cost whatsoever to the power engaging in it. 5c kills meaningful decision making, making fortification strategy and turmoil planning moot.

5c has come close to killing Powerplay far more times than it had any right to. We don’t condemn it just because we can: we condemn it because we know the game cannot survive it.

I'd like to remind you that 5c doesn't get in your way because we believe in not putting it in your way. For years, you've been using Torval to throw weapons at the Federation with no concern as to her own economy - a tactic we find distasteful - but we've always allowed you to do so in the utter absence of 5c. Recently, Grom and Patreus successfully scrapped in the same utter absence of 5c. Mahon was turmoiled in the utter absence of 5c. The Federation has proven time and again we're willing to help whenever 5c threatens Powerplay.

You actively benefit from our commitment to fair play - so don't go boasting about learning to act as if fair play was dead. Thanks to us, and others in this community, it isn't.

You misrepresent my position once again. I'm not saying we should stop suggesting ways to stop 5C from happening, but blindly throwing out accusations based on poorly interpreted data isn't trying to systematically stop 5C. What I am suggesting is that until 5C is eradicated, don't build your strategy around the assumption that 5C will not target you. By all means, let's eliminate 5C. I'm in for that if that's the course we choose to take. I don't see how whining about it on the forums helps stop 5C. I see no tangible effort in any of this conversation on how to systematically stop 5C. All I see is accusations. Accusations are not productive and never will be.

 

[Intersection]

When ALD did a small undermining campaign against Hudson this last December, we saw a blanket fortification of Hudson systems. That's what we based our strategy on. We saw behavior that indicated your randoms would over-react and we took advantage of it.

This is an incredibly disingenuous argument to make. The blanket fortification that occurred last December was achieved entirely through the considerable efforts of our own commanders - something you were collectively well aware of.

You've monitored a peaceful Hudson bubble for years. When was the last time Hudson faced an undermining campaign on this scale? How did they respond then? You can't use behavior under a normal cycle as indication of how they will act when the powerplay screen is telling them that their power is under attack in every system simultaneously.

Hudson systems have seen undermining several times in the past, each time without the frantic fortification that these past cycles would seem to suggest.

Of course, attacks at this scale are rare, and we naturally expect a surge in fortification when pilots see their power under threat. There is, however, only so much that these pilots can reasonably do. As I've repeated several times here, the amount of merits hauled these past few cycles has been far in excess of this - and the order and speed with which our systems were fortified utterly inconsistent with the way random commanders think and operate.

Regardless, I'd like to respectfully suggest that Hudson's hauling directors, with years of experience overseeing the fortification of Hudson's systems, know better than you what our randoms are (and aren't) capable of.

I see no tangible effort in any of this conversation on how to systematically stop 5C.

I assume you've somehow missed the myriad of posts offering constructive feedback as to how to best improve Powerplay and its 5c predicament... believe it or not, there's quite a bit of constructive discussion that can be had from a thread like this.

 

[Khan Tannhauser]

To recap; we undermined some of your systems a little, they show up as "under threat" in the game UI, randoms see it...you know the rest. This is strategy.

All right, for the sake of the argument let's say Hudson randos who typically fort like 4 or 5 systems per cycle fortified 35 systems the first week of your attack. Let's assume that, with no turmoil yet and no one receiving "your power needs your help" notifications, they decided to keep an eye on GalMap and start forting every system that showed "under threat", even those that hadn't been forted in many months, and to exactly 100% in most cases.

Now my question is the following:

Was your "strategy" to do 2 million UM merits, without sniping, handing in your merits from the first day of the cycle, and hoping randos would fort 35 systems to stop Hudson from scrapping?

I'm asking this because if those randos would have forted only 20 or even 30 systems instead of 35 all this would have ended with Hudson taking advantage of your hard UM work. This is why your plan makes no sense from the very beginning without the 5C forts, and yet you went ahead with it. Why?