With ALD at Rank 2 the bounty bonus is 400% if you're rating 5. If she was Rank 1 it would be 500% bonus. Been like this for months and months, since the beginning of PP IIRC.
Nope nope and nope. I did the grind. I got rank 5. I hunted in ALD space. I was severely disappointed because the amount of time required to maintain a rank 5 doesn't pay out compared to simply getting rank 2. Nor, in fact, does it pay out compared to simply bounty hunting without any PP bonus. I did the PP grind using an Imperial Clipper. I found that I could average 55-70 kills per hour depending on luck and spawns. I always targeted easy kills first because an Imperial Fighter is worth just as many powerplay points as an Anaconda. I think 60 kills per hour is pretty achievable, so let's use that as our baseline. Once you've gotten rank 5 AND maintained it for 4 weeks, the maintenance required is 5600 (or so) points per week. Simple math time:
60*10 = 600 merits/hour ; 5600/600 = 9.33 hours
(ships/hour x merits/ship) (merits required/merits per hour)
Next, I did some bounty hunting. I've found that with the a Vulture or better, you can make roughly 7,000,000/hour bounty hunting with NO BONUS WHATSOEVER. At least in ALD space, but I think that holds elsewhere too (which is why I don't think her 20% system control boost exists). It's mostly limited by spawn rate. You kill the ships pretty quick and spend a while waiting/searching for the next wave. So, let's use that baseline in some calculations:
Amount earned per hour hunting at different bonus rates MINUS 50 million return for rank (below defined as C):
NO BONUS: (7,000,000 x 9.33) - 50,000,000 = 15,310,000
MIN Rank 2 BONUS (20%): 1.2(7,000,000 x 9.33) - 50,000,000 = 28,372,000
MAX Rank 2 BONUS (50%): 1.5(7,000,000 x 9.33) - 50,000,000 = 45,372,000
So then the question is, how long of hunting is necessary at rank 5 to make up the difference? Keep in mind, this is after a MANDATORY maintenance of 9.33 hours. And this is slightly complicated because you have to compare it to not simply the difference above, but also include the profit of continuing to hunt at the lower rate. Let R5 be the rate per hour of profit at rank 5, R2 be the rate per hour of profit at rank 2, and C be the constant amount we found above for each given rank that we're trying to make up for, and t be time spent hunting. To find the break-even point: C + R2t = R5t --> t = C/(R5-R2)
Our R2s are all listed on the left-hand side of the above calculation for amounts earned per hour (the part before subtracting 50,000,000). Our R5 is easy:
Rank 5 BONUS (100%) profit per hour: 7,000,000*2 = 14,000,000
Now I'm not going to type out the plugging in of numbers, you have the formulas above if you care to confirm these results:
Time to make up the difference VS. different bonuses:
NO BONUS: 2.19 hours
20% BONUS: 5.07 hours
50% BONUS: 13.0 hours (significant digits limited to 3 here)
In other words you have to BE IN COMBAT (as this includes no travel times) for 11.52, 14.40, or 22.33 hours respectively to maintain rank AND break even against simply bounty hunting. And no, undermining and getting 30 merits per kill ISN'T faster than grinding in a crime sweep because it takes time to get targets to spawn, line up, interdict, kill, then wait for your FSD cooldown and repeat when undermining. Though, it may be faster if you're in anything below a Vulture because the ships you have to kill are MUCH softer and easier to take out. Anyway, dem's the math. It did feel pretty good to turn in a couple hour's bounties for 35 million, though. But, it's just not worth maintaining...unless you're unemployed, have LOADS of free time to dump into the game, and want to do NOTHING but make money via combat grind.
