Every time I look into the Power Play forums, there is whining about how players are hurting their Power. How exactly is that happening? The so-called 5th Column methods? Sure, but what other options are there. You can set up a government type that the Power doesn't like, but it is almost impossible to tell if that matters even in the slightest. For some bizarre reason our devs simply cannot imagine that there are players who want nothing to do with Power Play or the Powers therein - or treat them, as I do, as tyrannies to be kept out.
So, the Power Play players sound to me like people who want to auto-win with no work at all and no chance of losing. Meanwhile, I'm just an independent democrat trying to Empire-proof my home and surrounding systems. I don't want miscellaneous anonymous lawless goons and mercs "policing" corruption where I live. That's not law and order and that method only leads to more corruption as criminals get legitimacy and influence.
But, if the 5th Column actions are the only thing we can do, expect it to be done. Or else add some mechanic that allows us to fight the Powers without being a member of another Power. Why the hell wasn't that thought of to begin with?
It's...complicated.
-Yes, there are rather a ton of people who whine...about everything, really. No way around that. The most common general feeling that has instigated Powerplayers over these two years has been a feeling of abandonment. Patches went by for over a year with little change, and when they came those changes were to make Powerplay more stagnant, ostensibly so as to grant more time for them to properly...do whatever they're going to do with it.
-5C (the deliberate harm of an organization you ostensibly belong to) is an overused term. Most often people are simply referring to people who either don't know, or don't care, that expansion into
just any system can be harmful. There are static costs to each Control System, and if the population isn't high enough those costs outweigh the base income, creating a deficit. Deficits make Powers more vulnerable to undermining in a general sense. Until
actual 5C became a heavily used thing (it's much less effective now), Powers were being damaged left and right by people simply in it for their own credit balance, or not understanding how to help. That the information ingame was not sufficient to tell people what helped and what didn't...well, that's a valid and ongoing complaint. We understand Powerplay now because of a few industrious e.g. software engineers and generally smart folks who could monitor everything and figure it out, not because of FDev.
-Vis a vis non-Powerplay player groups, this has quite the checkered history. If someone preps a system that exploits your home, that need only be a few individuals belonging to a Power, not the organized mass of the Power itself.
For instance ALD had issues repeatedly with TIIQ as people would prep Brestla, their home. We explained over and over that a) we have no control over what gets prepped, and have to work extremely hard to prevent preps we don't want, and b) we absolutely never wanted Brestla (it's worthless as a control system - causes a deficit). Countless hours were spent by industrious individuals working to prevent that from happening as it was prepped over and over. That they chose to repeatedly RP-spin that into a sort of attack...how to respond? I think we did well to remove the Control System exploiting Brestla as soon as we did. It required an enormous expenditure of effort to put it on the list to be removed, while our enemies would rather us lose valuable control systems.
A method by which non-Powers could fight Powers was suggested by FDev less than 2 months after Powerplay started, along with a list of other suggestions. Close to none of the suggestions has ever been implemented, so I can tell you that as angry as the lack of those mechanics might make you, it angers Powerplayers even more so.
