I don't think undermining is underpowered as such - sure, any individual system can be killed - but I do think that it needs a little bit more on the incentives side because reinforcement is just plain easier.I see claims undermining is underpowered in general, but I think it's the playerbase that is underpowered, targeted concerted timed attacks could be devastating even in the current state but people just aren't up for it
- System Strength Penalty makes undermining harder but doesn't affect reinforcement, so a SSP of Very High means all else equal the underminers need to do almost twice as much work ... for fairly unclear reasons. There's no equivalent which makes undermining easier than reinforcement for some systems.
- if you're in your own Power's space you get a ton of encouragments: your merit-earning activities are generally legal and supported by your Power, you get full access to your rank bonuses, they're often highly profitable in credits and materials too, they're often things you can do without even trying to Powerplay as such; if you're in enemy space you get almost none of that.
Targeted attacks run by big groups - if the big groups weren't almost all run by diplomats who don't want a giant 12-way brawl for some reason - sure, they can still work fine.
What's missing, I think, is that little bit of background pressure: if I go around not trying for merits and Powerplay success in my own space, I still end up with some merits from trade, bounties, a little bit of exploration data, ship scans, etc. If I do the same in unfriendly space then I probably get no merits at all, and most of the ways I could will cost me credits, or reputation, or other things. So the general disorganised ungroup of Powerplayers (who are the majority of the actual merits per week) are all just very gradually reinforcing everywhere.
