Powerplay Cycle 103 Charts 'n' Stuff

[fergal]

Cycle-102-Charts-n-Stuff

All charts are based on the official data provided in the stickied thread in this subforum.

Known Merits

Aisling topped out the most merits again, with another large amount in her preparations. ALD was 2nd and Hudson 3rd, Sirius and Winters were again in the "2nd tier" of merits, and Antal returned to the "little 6" powers.

On the effective chart Aisling had another preparation get through consolidation, and was clearly first, followed by Hudson who did a large number of effective fortification, fortifying all systems except LTT 15574 (according to these stats).
ALD was 3rd, followed by Winters then Sirius, with Antal not too far behind in 6th.
Grom and Mahon continued their slide down in effective merits.

Unknown Merits

Hudson received the most undermining, followed by Sirius (probably for the first time). ALD has the most opposition to her expansion, followed by Delaine.

On the effective chart, Sirius had the most undermining, vastly increased from the usual 0-2 systems undermined. The undermining on Hudson was only slightly less than what Sirius received.
Grom got the 3rd most effective undermining, with only 3 systems hit, Aisling, Antal and Torval had 0 systems undermined.

Fortification / Undermining Imbalance
I have another post here with more information, but the short version is, fortifications are around 2 million per week, undermining around 1 million, and you need 3.5 times more undermining than fortification to cancel a system.

Fortification is far too strong/easy.
There is an argument to be had that you could "ask Sirius and Hudson" if they think undermining should have a buff, since they both were/are in Turmoil.
The Sirius Turmoil is a bit different from the normal PP goings on, but lets look at the Hudson Turmoil.

Hudson was put into Turmoil, and hit heavily over several weeks, which made them lose a number of systems, but the systems lost were collectively loss makers and Hudson is now in a far better CC position than they were, while still maintaining the same galactic standing rank.

What did it take for all this undermining on Hudson, 5 separate powers calling themselves ZYADA (or less affectionately called AAYDZ) which comprise over 50% (maybe as high as 70%) of the PP playerbase.

When it takes over 50% of the players to attack one power, and all they can do is make loss making system go into Turmoil, something is drastically broken.

Not only is fortification too strong, which allowed Hudson to withstand this barrage, but (more importantly in my opinion) undermining is too weak, so if you aren't in their "grand coalition" you don't get to Turmoil anyone.

Unless there are a lot of secret deals going on, players pledged to Mahon, Sirius and Antal aren't able to turmoil anyone, and most of the members of ZYADA couldn't turmoil another power individually either.

There are 11 separate powers, and I think all of them (well, maybe not the absolute smallest one, whichever that is) should be able to Turmoil several of the other powers.

And here are the weekly fortification and undermining levels:

 

[Rubbernuke]

First up, great post! +1 rep!

I think the easiest change would be to have undermining merits based on ship killed, and that player ships need to be more than 1 merit (maybe? Solo issues I suppose).

So killing a PP Anaconda is worth, say, 200 merits, while an Eagle is worth less (say, 10 merits) based on difficulty. I'd also like to see PP combat ships be 'special' and have engineered weapons to a degree and not be the generic meatheads.

I will say behind armour plating that players should be worth a lot more dead too (say, 500 merits) that counts towards players personal merits, or that on death you get the equivalent of what the killed cmdr was carrying- E.G. someone kills a cmdr carrying 2000 merits you get 2000 merits.

 

[Sixteen-String Jack]

While there should be increased merits based on the difficulty of the opponent killed I'd keep the minimum merits of thirty as it is, otherwise there might not be much of an increase?

What would make a difference is to increase the ship spawns. PowerPlay is supposed to be the highest level of wing combat, the spawns should be appropriate, with isolated ships far less frequent than at present. Four transports with four escorts might make a good standard target?

 

[SHEPR0N]

Yup it's nice the charts are back indeed!

The reason why ZYADA didn't manage to turmoil any Hudson profitable systems in their recent campaign was that they were all fortified. Consolidation allows every power that has the manpower and/or triggers to do that to make themselves very unattractive to hit. Every single cycle. Add to that the consolidation bonus that makes things even worse for the attacking power. Before consolidation fortifying that much could cause significant cycles in following cycles, lots of CC to spend and grinders happy to prep crappy bubbles but nowhere actually attractive to go. This threat has been mostly removed, the only powers that are still consistently struggling with full consolidation seem to be AD, ALD, Hudson, LYR and maybe Kumo. But even those powers can still limit themselves to one expansion per cycle and throw that somewhere they know it will be opposed (AD has still to go through a lot of trouble to do that though).

About the stop gap measures you proposed on the other thread: I think the consolidation bonus needs to go away. If you mess with fortification triggers or effectiveness per ton the effect could be quite disproportionate between powers. Buffing the undermining side of things would probably more sensible but comes with problems as well. Expansion vs. direct opposition effectiveness would be affected too and snipes would become even more powerful. But it could open up new paths that are not realistic right now like cancellation snips to turmoil profitables even a power covered those, but could likely be a lot more dangerous for powers running a deficit again.

 

[fergal]

This threat has been mostly removed, the only powers that are still consistently struggling with full consolidation seem to be AD, ALD, Hudson, LYR and maybe Kumo. But even those powers can still limit themselves to one expansion per cycle and throw that somewhere they know it will be opposed (AD has still to go through a lot of trouble to do that though).

Kumo hasn't been trying to get consolidation, we've been trying to put out expansions each week, just depends if we can get them all above the 5c prep for that week.
Our preparation into Yaque failed for this week because the Aisling current expansion is in the same bubble.

But I agree, the consolidation mechanic should go, it seems designed to encourage players to not play PP.
There are 4 tasks that can be done, preparation, expansion, fortification and undermining, doing a full consolidation each week is removing half of the activities for that power, and when many powers don't promote undermining, that just leaves fortification as the only task for many players.

Power play without fortification, sounds good to me, power play with only fortification ... hmm I wonder why the player numbers have dropped.

 

[Rubbernuke]

You also need a third way to invest prep into: you have expansion and consolidation, but I would like to see an option for combat too.

So, if you voted for this 'conquest' state, your power does not expand or get high defences but instead all PP merits from undermining are tripled so your attacks are fierce and cut through consolidation.

So, prep between powers would be rock paper scissors between expansion, attacking or defending.

 

[Martin Schou]

You also need a third way to invest prep into: you have expansion and consolidation, but I would like to see an option for combat too.

So, if you voted for this 'conquest' state, your power does not expand or get high defences but instead all PP merits from undermining are tripled so your attacks are fierce and cut through consolidation.

So, prep between powers would be rock paper scissors between expansion, attacking or defending.

Interesting idea. Though, if your power is getting 3x merits on undermining, and consolidation "only" gives a 50% defensive increase, I think choosing conquest should have a downside as well. Otherwise Consolidation gets beaten by Conquest and expansion at the same time, and nothing hurts conquest.

I do like the rock-paper-scissors idea though.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I suppose it comes down to PP and what development pathway will happen: i.e. with collapse, or without.

With collapse, consolidation has a downside in that you are not expanding, and that (if by the last set of rules) is pretty serious.

Without collapse, consolidation is too overpowered for sure. I think the issue is that the consolidation changes have two game mechanics that should be separate. What I mean is the main job of consolidation is stopping unwanted preps, and it also has a bonus for defence. If these were separate and voted for separately, there would be no problem.

Thinking things out more:

CC is like currency, it can 'buy' your power 3 options in the next cycle. CC generation should be seen as a good thing as allow you to 'buy' more / achieve a higher %. This means participation leads to something, and that simply voting consolidate is less powerful.

Expansion is an offensive / defensively neutral state so you get no bonus either way and acts normally.

Consolidation prevents expansion, and builds defences

Conquest prevents expansion and supercharges your attacks

UI wise, you have two bars (one for consolidate, one for conquest) in the prep window UI, and an extra vote option for conquest.

Both conquest and consolidation cancel things below them so you could have for example have mixed bonuses for next cycle (20% attack, 30% consolidate etc), or have really focussed bonuses like 90% attack etc. I can't know without testing what having high bonuses would do- would a 90% bonus on attacks be enough with a 90% consolidation bonus etc.

What I hope this would do is allow pledges to customise the attack / defence / expansion profile of a power. For example, the Kumo could go all out attack because they can with a big CC shield, while Patreus might want a more balanced 50% / 50% split to hedge bets.

 

[Danieros]

Lots of interesting stuff into this thread.

Consolidation is indeed too powerful. Even without the defense bonus it remains very useful, because it stops or at least limits preparation into bad systems which would weaken the CC reserves to possible turmoil, and well, we already reached a point in PP that only bad systems remain uncaptured while undermining is extremely hard and many powers have become virtually immune to turmoil.

I really LOVE the idea of a third way to invest preparation into. It should be offensive and probably give an undermining bonus. Fortification penetration would be too powerful, I think, and should be only implemented if the undermining bonus failed to stir things up. Right now there is so much spare CC, we really need a new way to spend it.

Additionally, I really think there's wasted potential with the fixed CC values. I believe constant fortification should give some kind of increasing CC bonus per cycle of consecutive fortification in that system. That would create new opportunities as all the negative CC systems could eventually get worked into positive income. Undermining such systems would also become more valuable, as canceling that fortification would reset (or at least reduce) the consecutive bonus. The opposite should also be true - consecutive undermining would give increasing CC costs.

 

[Misaniovent]

Cycle-102-Charts-n-Stuff

When it takes over 50% of the players to attack one power, and all they can do is make loss making system go into Turmoil, something is drastically broken.

http://i.imgur.com/DbRJh5p.png

Yup it's nice the charts are back indeed!

The reason why ZYADA didn't manage to turmoil any Hudson profitable systems in their recent campaign was that they were all fortified. Consolidation allows every power that has the manpower and/or triggers to do that to make themselves very unattractive to hit. Every single cycle. Add to that the consolidation bonus that makes things even worse for the attacking power. Before consolidation fortifying that much could cause significant cycles in following cycles, lots of CC to spend and grinders happy to prep crappy bubbles but nowhere actually attractive to go. This threat has been mostly removed, the only powers that are still consistently struggling with full consolidation seem to be AD, ALD, Hudson, LYR and maybe Kumo. But even those powers can still limit themselves to one expansion per cycle and throw that somewhere they know it will be opposed (AD has still to go through a lot of trouble to do that though).

About the stop gap measures you proposed on the other thread: I think the consolidation bonus needs to go away. If you mess with fortification triggers or effectiveness per ton the effect could be quite disproportionate between powers. Buffing the undermining side of things would probably more sensible but comes with problems as well. Expansion vs. direct opposition effectiveness would be affected too and snipes would become even more powerful. But it could open up new paths that are not realistic right now like cancellation snips to turmoil profitables even a power covered those, but could likely be a lot more dangerous for powers running a deficit again.

Shepron's view reflects what I've said in the past. Consolidation itself is not the problem. The defense bonus is. It induces powers to end with as close to 500 CC as possible, which requires powers running serious deficits (Hudson, ALD, and Winters) to fortify every profitable system just to reach that point. By removing the fine balance that powers used to work toward weekly (ending a week with either 200 CC or less than 30 for Patreus), the fortification/undermining imbalance has become completely skewed.

With snipes of profitable systems effectively off the table, the only way to claim new profitable systems is to carve them out of someone else's territory with weaponized expansions. This is mechanically far more complicated than simply hitting profitable systems that aren't fortified, and there are far more strategic considerations at play. I rather like it.

 

[Sixteen-String Jack]

Won't PowerPlay stay stalled as long as the populations and upkeep calculations stay the same, and as long as none of the Powers has any special motive to acquire any particular systems?

While Horizons boosted PowerPlay with the extra populated systems, there has been no change since and no opportunity to increase CC from a control zone without the introduction of demographics. If there was a CC bonus for supportive minor faction governments it might help, though a real change would be to abandon the control zones and control minor factions directly. It is odd that a minor faction can control systems far easier than a Power?

The overheads for leading Powers detract from fluidity somewhat, however the far worse offender seems to be the upkeep, a flat rate dependent on distance from headquarters. If this was negatively modified by control systems of the same Power within a given radius, then there might be a mobile 'front,' rather than a hard limit to expansion?

Population and upkeep only keep PowerPlay static, what keeps it dull is the lack of rivalry for any objective systems. Instead of the bland rank system and bland Powerplay galaxy, bonuses could depend on the possession of particular systems, and should include better Power ships, tiers of modules and access to engineers.

 

[fergal]

Won't PowerPlay stay stalled as long as the populations and upkeep calculations stay the same, and as long as none of the Powers has any special motive to acquire any particular systems?

This cycle just ended shows there are still many players interested in trying to get more systems.
Sirius was in turmoil and couldn't prepare anything, and Hudsons CC was too low, but out of the other 9 powers, ALD, Aisling, Mahon, Grom, Delaine, Antal and Winters tried to prepare systems, only Torval and Patreus players voted for a full consolidation.

What still seems to be lacking is a desire to try to make powers other than Hudson and Winters lose systems.