The idea of powerplay factions within the Superpowers is really good.
But: All I do now is sit in a spacestation and waiting for the 30 min cooldown on preparation commodity until I filled my entire cargo hold with the stuff. And I have to do this for the entire week to keep up my rating.
Solution:
Instead of doing these clearly linear grind waits, let us do extremely dangerous and covert missions for our power factions.
Such as: Take control of a planet from an opposing faction, literally. Go there with your ship and start firing those beam lasers onto fortifications, hangars, warships and turrets and clear the areas one by one on the surface. Each such area cleared and fortified by friendly forces will turn it green, enemy territories could be red. Once the entire planet has been cleared, mission is successful and I can get one thousand powerplay points for that, filling a big part of the weekly quota I need to keep my rating.
Simpler missions for low level players: Go and find enemy hidden bases on our controlled planets, report the locations once scanned. Award: 50 p.
A bit harder: When finding a location, go into the location with your SRV and scout detailed positions and information about that location. Report this information which can result in the above planetary invasion mission as a follow up. Award: 150 p.
Etc etc. you see the missions link onto each other like a story being told:
Search hidden stuff -> investigate hidden stuff you just found -> get support for a massive operation to handle the problem -> monthly showdown.
This way we have something else rather than just sit and wait or just go hunt faction ships all the time.
To maintain the immersion, there should be a weekly story for each faction, which leads to an ultimate showdown each month or so, like a community goal, but on faction level.
I want a real life announcer on the Galnet news reporting on these things every day. FD can find lots of interested fans that can apply to do the voices. Just reading the news statements. OR FD should invest in a really good voice reader application which can simulate a real news reporter, even in the field!
Now that is immersion.