Powerplay Disincentivizing the 5th Column in PP

[Corrigendum]

An ongoing discussion on this topic is currently taking place on the /r/EliteDangerous subreddit.


INTRO

If you enjoy Powerplay and have an archaic sense of fair play, this thread is for you. Please provide any input you have, positive, negative, or neutral, in regards to Disincentivizing the 5th Column in Powerplay.

PLEASE NOTE

This thread is not intended for discussing balance changes or anything else that is not directly related to disincentivizing 5th Column activities.

BACKGROUND

To provide context to this discussion, let's clarify what is meant by "5th Column" activity.
Wikipedia definition of "5th Column"
A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group—such as a nation or a besieged city—from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack. This term is also extended to organized actions by military personnel. Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, or espionage executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers with an external force.

In Elite: Dangerous, the "5th Column" ranges from benign to self-interest to malicious.

Definition:

• Benign: AKA "Merit Grinders" - people who don't understand what they are doing is detrimental to their power
• Self-Interest: AKA "Merit Grinders MK II" - people who don't care what they are doing is detrimental to their power
• Malicious: AKA "<Insert expletive>" - people who are fully aware of the damage they are causing, and do it purposefully

Motivation:

• Benign: simple ignorance about how Powerplay works, and no knowledge of communication channels like Reddit and the FD Forums lead to foolish preparation, expansion, and fortification wastage
• Self-Interest: people in this category may know what they are doing is detrimental, but want a system for personal reasons, or just want to generate merits expeditiously so they can collect their salary and move on to other things
• Malicious: deliberately push bad preparation and expansion targets in order to hurt the power to which they are pledged

I personally believe that the vast majority of "5th Column" activity can be categorized as benign or self-interest. For examples of this, look no further than Arissa Lavigny-Duval. The organized player base is hard pressed to prepare favorable systems that surpass the Her combat expansions now regularly generate more merits than nearly all other Powerplay activity combined. Fortification of systems near her capital system, particularly Guathiti, receive merits counts orders of magnitude beyond the triggers. Other powers are in similar situations in various ways.

NOW WHAT?

This is the reason this thread has been opened. I'd like to ask the community if they have any solutions in mind that be proposed to Frontier that will help curb "5th Column" tendencies, regardless of motivation? These solutions need to encourage meaningful allocation of Powerplay efforts while removing the incentives (disincentivizing) activities that bring harm to a power. It only makes sense that the leaders of the powers would not want to throw away millions of credits to minions who do them more harm than good.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

If FD considers "5th Column" tactics to be "fair game," I would strongly encourage them to still raise the bar on the difficulty. Hopefully some of the solutions the community proposes will fit their vision of allowing this misbehavior while making it unappealing for the masses.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

In this section I'd like to highlight the best ideas contributed in the comments. The sky is the limit. Use your imagination. The more useful the ideas, the better the chance the community will get some attention on this issue.

I'd personally like to offer the following potential solutions:
Reduce base salaries and institute a bonus to the base salary that scales based on the effectiveness of merits contributed. If a system being prepared or expanded provides negative CC to the power (before overheads), deduct credits from the base salary, and make it known. If a system is being fortified by commanders who submit merits after the trigger is reached, prompt them that their efforts are wasted and that they should choose another system. Do not add over-fortification merits to the weekly totals contributed by said commanders. I'm sure power leaders are not happy that their resources are being wasted. Let the mechanics reflect that.

Community Ideas:

/u/CMDR_Kahlilbot
Fix for Benign Fortification Dumping :
In the same way that rare commodities scale in profit proportional to the distance from where its was purchased. Make fortifcation merits scale up the further the control system is from the capital. For example a system 20 ly away from the capital might gain 1merit per ton were a system 40 ly from the capital could be 2 merits per ton.

/u/SlightlyPhabulous
This could be along the right lines in the long run. Upon joining/defecting to a new power, you suffer a 2 week 'induction' period, you would have NO access to preparation/expansion resources/merits. During this time you would be able to prove your worth by fortifying/undermining to still rank up. This kind of restriction would make 5 column-ing a time investment and would take many cycles were they to target another power.

/u/MartinSchou
5th column tactics (the malicious kind especially) is really only effective in terms of preparations. If you can force a power to get a bad system into their expansion list, they are generally speaking screwed.
Easiest fix to that (to my mind) is to tweak preparations slightly. We're already given preparation nominations as pledge rewards from rank 2 onwards. Just make those nominations the maximum number of preparation cargo you can pick for the cycle.
If you're rank 1 you get no say in preparations, no matter how rich you are. If you're rank 2, you get a little say in it with 10, and if you're rank 5 you get a lot of say with 250.
This will make it exceedingly difficult to do malicious sabotage, but it will still be possible - it just requires a lot more coordination from the people doing it, as it can no longer be done by just one or two people, as that'll get countered really quickly by the organized players.
It will also make prep wars much more interesting, because it no longer becomes a question of who has the richest players and the most Anacondas - it becomes a question of who can properly distribute the limited amount of nominations they have in such a fashion that they will actually end up winning the relevant ones.
In prep races this will favour the larger player bases, but that's already the case as the larger player bases already have the edge in prep wars.

Over fortifying, or over undermining don't really harm the powers. The real problem is the bad preparations and that needs to be fixed.

My idea for how this could work are:
- Initially the preparation should work similar to now, but without the nominations.
- Then at the end of the cycle the top ten systems are listed. You use the nominations to vote for the system(s) you would like to expand into. (So higher ranks get more votes)
- Then the at the end of that cycle the systems with the highest votes move into expansion. This continues down the list until the first system is reached that the power cannot afford to expand into.

So, in summary expansion takes three cycles: prepare, vote, expand.


This is just an off the top of my head idea and I welcome further discussions/alternative ideas.

 

[yul7896]

The most important thread on the Power play discussion right now. Please please lets get something done about this nonsense. Glad to see some good ideas flowing already.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Hard cap on Fortification, may it be at 10%, 20% above required or whatever (to allow a certain amount of waste but not to the point where it reduces a system to a negative value, a reduction on it's potential profit might be more in line) but there needs to be a cap of some sort where a player simply cannot deposit all their Fortification efforts into the closest systems. This is currently endemic in a lot of the more popular Powers as previously mentioned.
It should be damaging to a degree, as in loss of potential profit, but not when done by members of a Powers own membership hence the cap limiting the damage they can potentially do.
They will probably still do it, just have less of an effect on the systems they farm on.
Nuclear solution is cap it at 100% and once reached disallow any further fortification.

Scaling up the rewards to more distant systems might also be a great idea, probably far better than mine. Would give some incentive to travel further and fortification does need some love. It's the most unrewarding part of PP and the current imbalance between Fortification and Undermining and how much you can make regards merits in a hour seems way too much, even at Rank 5 unless you pay for the next load of supplies.
Nice thread.

 

[Trafalgar Law]

One of the issues regarding the benign/self interested parties, is that there is nothing in the game that incentivises good play. There is no difference in reward for fortifying an unfortified system 100ly away or taking those goods to the already overfortified system one jump away. One possible solution to this issue would be to double the merits per tonne for trucking to an unfortified system. People will still get the option to mindlessly truck to the neighbouring system, yet you'll also be able to get twice the merits for going to the 100ly away system.

 

[Jmanis]

One of the issues regarding the benign/self interested parties, is that there is nothing in the game that incentivises good play. There is no difference in reward for fortifying an unfortified system 100ly away or taking those goods to the already overfortified system one jump away. One possible solution to this issue would be to double the merits per tonne for trucking to an unfortified system. People will still get the option to mindlessly truck to the neighbouring system, yet you'll also be able to get twice the merits for going to the 100ly away system.

Honestly, that's not a bad idea, despite the fact I'm not a big fan of incentivising "first in, best dressed" styles of gameplay. Offering a bonus to people whose actions are actually "effective" doesn't strip gameplay mechanics from others who just happened to be in the wrong timezone at the turn of the cycle, unlike other solutions which have suggested "Don't earn merits for over fortification" (although interestingly, over-fortifying a system isn't actually 5th columning...)

It's a bit like the "first discovery" exploration bonus in that regard. Obviously it doesn't work for preparation/expansion though.

 

[Trafalgar Law]

(although interestingly, over-fortifying a system isn't actually 5th columning...)

No it isn't 5th columning (as it doesn't hurt the power), but Corrigendum mentioned it so I thought it was relevant, especially as it's the most obvious example of self-interest.
.
I'm not sure how you could incentivise preparation, but I'm also not sure I'm a fan of punishing prepping negative systems as there may come a time when a power might want to prep such a system for strategic reasons (although that would probably be a rare occurrence).

 

[Jmanis]

I'm not sure how you could incentivise preparation, but I'm also not sure I'm a fan of punishing prepping negative systems as there may come a time when a power might want to prep such a system for strategic reasons (although that would probably be a rare occurrence).

100% agree there.

I have no idea if this would be feasible, but perhaps the nomination merits you get based on rank (which i've always found to be rather naff) could create a ranking system for potential preparation,, with the top 10 nominations earning bonus merits when prepared.

The issue with 5th columnists is that they can, basically, sabotage infinitely. But you can only nominate up to the amount of nominations you have once. Assuming most players in a power aren't fifth columnists, this could allow a well-coordinated power to promote preparation of certain (even negative CC) systems thanks to the bonuses they'd offer.

Again, no idea if that would be feasible.

 

[CMDR Alege Kelso]

Hard cap on Fortification, may it be at 10%, 20% above required or whatever (to allow a certain amount of waste but not to the point where it reduces a system to a negative value, a reduction on it's potential profit might be more in line) but there needs to be a cap of some sort where a player simply cannot deposit all their Fortification efforts into the closest systems. This is currently endemic in a lot of the more popular Powers as previously mentioned.
It should be damaging to a degree, as in loss of potential profit, but not when done by members of a Powers own membership hence the cap limiting the damage they can potentially do.
They will probably still do it, just have less of an effect on the systems they farm on.
Nuclear solution is cap it at 100% and once reached disallow any further fortification.

Scaling up the rewards to more distant systems might also be a great idea, probably far better than mine. Would give some incentive to travel further and fortification does need some love. It's the most unrewarding part of PP and the current imbalance between Fortification and Undermining and how much you can make regards merits in a hour seems way too much, even at Rank 5 unless you pay for the next load of supplies.
Nice thread.

Scaling merit rewards seems the best way to handle the fortification issue. possibly, rather then setting a hard cap on fully fortified systems, it could be setup so that there are limited/reduced returns after a system has been fortified past 100%. The overall profitability of fortification could also be re-balanced as well (including the previous changes) to attract more players to even bother. This wouldn't have any effect on stopping players from enacting 5th column activity but it would, through pure self interest, encourage those activities to help rather then hinder.

 

[Phil^]

If a system is being fortified by commanders who submit merits after the trigger is reached, prompt them that their efforts are wasted and that they should choose another system. Do not add over-fortification merits to the weekly totals contributed by said commanders. I'm sure power leaders are not happy that their resources are being wasted. Let the mechanics reflect that.

Regarding this specific part - There will need to be an edge case considered where all available actions to a power have been done. All fortification complete, all expansion complete, no available undermining targets left to do, etc. Its not likely to come up regularly but for when it does - wouldnt this restriction effectively prevent players from getting merits at all?
Perhaps powerplay should create a 'benign' activity goal type which appears when theres not much left to do - but still allows players to gain merits.
Something like a 'charity run' activity? One where it doesnt help or harm a power in any significant way in PP - but gains goodwill from systems, with a potential feedback in the 'background sim' allowing faction players a minor discount/boost on prices for each system where they are helped charitably to a certain threshold?

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Keep it simple.

Regular faction status
0% undermined = 100% merit reward
100% undermined = 0% merit reward

0% Fortified = 100% merit reward
100% Fortified = 0% merit reward

+1% merit reward for each LY from HQ to fortification systems (500LY from HQ = +500% reward)

Faction in turmoil
0% merit reward for non-fortification actions
200% merit reward for fortification actions

 

[Jmanis]

Keep it simple.

Regular faction status
0% undermined = 100% merit reward
100% undermined = 0% merit reward

0% Fortified = 100% merit reward
100% Fortified = 0% merit reward

+1% merit reward for each LY from HQ to fortification systems (500LY from HQ = +500% reward)

Faction in turmoil
0% merit reward for non-fortification actions
200% merit reward for fortification actions

Penalising those who aren't the first to contribute when new cycle ticks over is a pretty terrible idea.

 

[CMDRKNac]

Simply don't allow expansions into real negative income systems. Or are the 'powers' (characters) complete idiot?

For starters the net income showed in-game should include the overheads for that cycle, that it doesn't right now it's outright misinformation from FDev to the player.


Second, only allow expansions if the system has positive income. If those systems don't exist powers won't be able to expand and will have to fight each other to 'free' some systems. This would actually create naturally chokepoints which are much needed.


Third, the overhead and upkeep per control system should be proportional to the real exploited systems. What this means is that if you got a control system which overlaps with other of YOUR OWN control systems, the systems exploited by other control systems won't be counter as exploited and the costs will be proportionally deducted from the total.


This will eliminate most if not all of the issues with 5th columns right now.
edit: this is an immediate fix to stop the problem right now, regardless of more deep changes PP may need or redesign, the issue can be fixed in a couple days if FDev wants to, it doesn't require much coding or balancing.

 

[Jmanis]

Simply don't allow expansions into real negative income systems. Or are the 'powers' (characters) complete idiot?

Lots of reasons you might actually do this.
- Denial of an area
- Boxing in an opponent
- Tactical foothold deep in an opponents territory allowing for easier undermining

 

[CMDRKNac]

Lots of reasons you might actually do this.
- Denial of an area
- Boxing in an opponent
- Tactical foothold deep in an opponents territory allowing for easier undermining

No, if you have any sense or knowledge of how overheads work, as in the end it will hurt more your own power than the other power you are trying to hurt. Only the third you listed is somewhat a special case that could justify it, and you could only afford it in one or two systems.

So no, the damage more than outweighs the benefits of expanding into negative income systems and it shouldn't stay like it is in the current iteration. There is no nonsensical strategic element to it.

 

[Corrigendum]

Regarding this specific part - There will need to be an edge case considered where all available actions to a power have been done. All fortification complete, all expansion complete, no available undermining targets left to do, etc. Its not likely to come up regularly but for when it does - wouldnt this restriction effectively prevent players from getting merits at all?
Perhaps powerplay should create a 'benign' activity goal type which appears when theres not much left to do - but still allows players to gain merits.
Something like a 'charity run' activity? One where it doesnt help or harm a power in any significant way in PP - but gains goodwill from systems, with a potential feedback in the 'background sim' allowing faction players a minor discount/boost on prices for each system where they are helped charitably to a certain threshold?

The part you quoted calls for a notification, not a hard-stop on applying merits. I'm personally not in favor of a "cap," and I'm pretty confident FD has stated that they are not either. A simple notification will be a quality of life improvement for people who still want to help, but may not realize for some reason or other that they are wasting their efforts.

I think FD is looking into better integrating Powerplay and the background sim, so who knows? Your second suggestion may be incorporated some day.

 

[JessieColt]

Trying to force users who PP into a narrow set of rules for rewards isn't going to fix the underlying issue.

Not all merit grinders are "detrimental" to the power.

Over-Fortifying positive income systems is not detrimental to the Power.
Over Expanding a positive income system is not detrimental.
Over-Preparing a Positive Income system is not detrimental


I am currently focusing on my combat rank. As such, I have chosen to pledge to a PP Faction that has Combat as an option for Expansions. Limiting my ability to gain merits after XXX percentage over trigger for the system wont "force" me to go Undermine in order to gain Merits. It will just encourage me to go Bounty Hunting instead and give up on earning the merits in that particular Expansion system.

If there are multiple Expansion systems, I *might* switch to another one, if it doesn't take me 2 hours to get there in a Vulture.

Keep in mind though, that alternate Expansion System might be the one that is earning the PP Faction -4 CC income per cycle.

Seems to me that when it comes to someone like me, you would rather have me stay in the Expansion system that has a positive CC income per cycle, instead of one that has a negative CC income per cycle.

I have no intention of trucking Preparation Materials, so I have no impact on which systems are chosen on the list. I have neither a positive, nor negative, impact on the PP Faction.

I have no intention of trucking Fortification Materials, so I have no impact, positive or negative, on the PP Faction.

Unless you consider a lack of participation as a detriment, most merit grinders do not have a negative impact on the PP Faction each cycle.

Offering greater rewards for Fortifying systems further from HQ is a good idea anyway, as it will encourage those who DO want to contribute to the actual PP Metrics to truck materials further away, by compensating them more for the cost of traveling further away and back again.

As with all things, be careful what you wish for, it could come back to bite you.

Removing the "incentives" to merit grind may result in a mass exodus from PP and not a change in participation.

 

[Qubit]

The part you quoted calls for a notification, not a hard-stop on applying merits. I'm personally not in favor of a "cap," and I'm pretty confident FD has stated that they are not either. A simple notification will be a quality of life improvement for people who still want to help, but may not realize for some reason or other that they are wasting their efforts.

I think FD is looking into better integrating Powerplay and the background sim, so who knows? Your second suggestion may be incorporated some day.

Well, if you try to fortify a system that has already reached 100% you should be shown a message box:

"This system has already been fortified. You should find another control system that still needs supplies."

[Find another system] [Fortify anyway]

Or something along those lines. This will make it obvious to people that the system does not need to be fortified. This is useful for those that are ignorant about how power play works, but still allows those who just don't care to still over fortify; It also saves that lost tonne during the 1 tonne test.

Over fortifying, or over undermining don't really harm the powers. The real problem is the bad preparations and that needs to be fixed.

My idea for how this could work are:
- Initially the preparation should work similar to now, but without the nominations.
- Then at the end of the cycle the top ten systems are listed. You use the nominations to vote for the system(s) you would like to expand into. (So higher ranks get more votes)
- Then the at the end of that cycle the systems with the highest votes move into expansion. This continues down the list until the first system is reached that the power cannot afford to expand into.

So, in summary expansion takes three cycles: prepare, vote, expand.


This is just an off the top of my head idea and I welcome further discussions/alternative ideas.

 

[Bacalao]

I am a PP outsider, due to issues with PP, like this, that need hammering out before I pour time into it, but I follow it more than casually (though not expertly) to keep up with what is going on.
-
I think the key isn't "deincentivising" anything (with PP or any game mechanic), negative consequences are counter productive. For instance, in WoW beta (I think), if you didn't rest, you took a 50% xp penalty, players hated it, so Blizzard halved everyones XP gain and said "if you rest, you get double XP", everyone loved it. It achieved the same exact goal, but providing an incentive was much more effective to player morale and enjoyment than deincentivising the same activity (play without rest). The key then, is incentivizing good decisions.
-
Now being as PP is a player controlled affair and the mechanic given is "voting" I'd propose that systems that are high on the vote list for preparation/expansion/fortification yield more merits than those that aren't. How much is up to the devs, they could double it (or halve the merits for those that aren't, same thing but prone to initial outrage), or whatever they wanted. Then the key is very clearly indicating which systems are going to be better to fortify/prepare/expand, notifying players in cockpit that they are fortifying a system that has reached 100%. It wouldn't even have to be just the voted systems, you could do it on a supply/demand method as well, profitable systems fortified yield more merits (10%, 20%, 50%, whatever). Upon reaching its trigger it no longer receives the bonus, but still yields the "base" reward of merits for the activity (as now). The system isn't punitive to anyone for playing late in the cycle or sending supplies to poor systems, but it incentivizes active participation and smart decisions.
-
By keeping it reliant (at least to some extent) on the voting mechanic you allow players to set up systems for "strategic losses" and gaining the incentive bonus, I believe the Antal players recently pulled off something like this if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, the 2 cents of an outsider, hope to join you soon when the system is slightly more polished.

 

[Jmanis]

There is no nonsensical strategic element to it.

No strategic element to you perhaps, and this is my point.

In the early days, Patreus forces got boxed in. Maybe people didn't fully understand Powerplay mechanics at the time sure. But those systems are still held today, and still cause problems for Patreus.

 

[Terry Bruge-Hiplo]

Glad to see this is being discussed here!