Six years ago, Powerplay was on the verge of imploding.
Things were different, back then: Grom didn’t exist, Patreus was still the right arm of the Empire, and Torval still a power of her own. Winters was still reeling from a massive defection of her members, disgruntled by a broken cycle tick that thwarted what would then have been the Federation’s crowning achievement.
Those members went and did the unforgivable: they pledged to the emperor, working cycle after cycle to feed fifth-column preps and damaging expansions to a power already struggling from the bloat of its lossmakers. In a show of solidarity, powers across the galaxy rushed to declare ALD off-limits, hoping to stymie the 5c tide, but it was too late. One fateful cycle, ALD was thrown into deep turmoil, her hauling sabotaged and lossmakers fortified so that her systems would drop, week after week, the community at large powerless to stop it. For all of us, those were dark times.
Not too long after, I myself would leave Elite. I was not the only one: at the time, the discussion surrounding Powerplay had grown so bitter, the outlook on the game so bleak that many of us simply quit. For all we could tell, Powerplay was on the decline, left abandoned by its players and its developers for too long.
But die it did not. When I returned, years later, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw: a community still vibrant, still kicking, one that had taken every punch, but learned to roll with them, too. The road until then hadn’t been all sunshine and roses – but despite it all, Powerplay had lived on. Back at the wheel, I allowed myself to dream: I dreamed of Powerplay as it was in its golden days, driven by rivalry and not contempt, I dreamed of that spark in so many of your eyes back when we first met.
Even now, I believe that we were almost there. But tonight, we have to talk.
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For the past three cycles, in the midst of an imperial attack on Hudson systems, Hudson has been relentlessly and blatantly 5c fortified.
For those past few weeks, every metric - the amount of merits hauled, the order and speed with which our systems were fortified - has been far, far off everything we knew to expect of our random pledges, no matter the cycle. We’ve been caretakers of Hudson for years – we know this better than anyone. This campaign that flies in the face of everything our communities have built for years.
Hudson was heavily and openly undermined from the very beginning, a plan that defies logic unless our opposition could guarantee Hudson would not be able to control their turmoil. This isn't even the matter of hoping for random pilots to fort a few systems - should even a couple systems be missing from the blanket fifth-column fortification we saw, Hudson would be allowed to scrap, ending the imperial operation in unmitigated disaster.
There is no hidden recourse, no backup plan for open undermining at this scale. Imperial coordinators needed to know without fail that Hudson would see a blanket fort, against the wishes of his own leadership. From there, it doesn’t take much to put two and two together.
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I’d like to remind all of you why we fight against 5c, why our agreement on the matter was vocal, unanimous.
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.
Tonight, all I can express is my profound disappointment. Years have passed – years to learn, years to grow, years to put 5c behind us for good. I believed in us, I believed in you, and there’s still time to reconsider, to do what’s right.
Consider this: a game is only as good as the people you choose to play it with, and the rules you build for yourselves to follow. If you convince yourself that you can’t stand the people around you, and that the very rules you built are no longer worth following – what, then, is there left to enjoy?
