They seem to, or at least I haven't seen any cases where they mismatch yet.
(And yes, the rates achievable with different activities are all over the place)
Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 exploration and trade balance changes
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
- Start date
(And yes, the rates achievable with different activities are all over the place)
I am struggling to understand the cargo commodities now in light of that. You can only collect one load of something like 25. Those provide exactly 25 merits. If that is the case I don't even understand the inclusion of the mechanic? There is no possible way that would an activity any rational person would engage in.
I thought maybe it had a multiplier effect on points but if not I'm left scratching my head. It's possible there is something I'm missing.
I do wonder how soon we will get a point update (or server side tweak) because it really is the wild west right now
As exobiology or "science" related things activities, handling of Guardian Relics to Stronghold, handling of Titan's materials, Thargoid samples, pilots federation bonds...
But for now I will be glad that they will restore the Bond bonus we already had from power play 1.0.
True - though colonisation within/near the bubble could be useful sometimes to get an extra system in a convenient place. Almost certainly too fiddly to actually bother with in most cases.
It's more merits per tonne than "flood with low value goods" (and I think more than "sell high value", too) and I think the size of the load you can collect increases with rank (so it might be rather more effective at higher ranks).
Pick up a bunch of those and a bunch of cheap stuff, sell to an undermining system, buy limpets and hack the adverts on the way out, etc. There's probably more effective methods elsewhere but that combines a range of things at once.
From the ivestream around 1:07:30:
Arf: We said this before I think - I was quoted for saying "dovetail", I really need to watch what I'm saying - however I am correct in what I said this time: Powerplay 2.0 dovetails lovely into this doesn't it? So how does this fit with power play 2.0?
Zac: Sure. So players who are sort of really engaging in power play 2.0 can take advantage of this, can colonize the system and then you can push your chosen Power into that system. So if you're not necessarily somebody that wants to fight or do head-to-head combat with other players or other Powers then this might be a really nice way for you to expand your Power's influence within the game. You can just go out there and create new systems and civilizations for them. [...] But unlike Powerplay, [...] you'll have a direct impact on the placement of your starports, planet ports, settlements, that kind of thing, which again we'll go into more specifics on how that works.
A: [...] how does this impact players in Powerplay 2.0?
Z: [...] It impacts the players that are going to engage with this directly. So if you're taking this on as a new challenge within elite that's something you're going to think about quite a lot, but I think it really fits into that goal that we've had to allow players to - this year everything we've added has been to allow players to shape the Galaxy and shape the narrative of Elite Dangerous themselves and really do that now on a galactic scale.
I hope some kind of immunity is possible. It would depend on which systems you have to be close to, and how close exactly, to kick off a colonisation. We have no info on those so far afaik. I hope we can start colonisations from many / all of the populated systems outside the bubble, not just Colonia ones.
(Edited transcript a bit for comprehensibility)
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Objection. I've been playing Elite Dangerous since 2014 and I'm happy that there is a development. Even if not everything works straight away. It will work out. There were certainly moments like the exology bug that worked one weekend. No envy. It's nice that some people were able to use it.
I have all ranks at level five, but that's because I've been playing for a long time without looking at others. I'm certainly not one of the 1% you're talking about.
There's strength in tranquillity and I've seen a lot of players come and go. They have probably seen the game from a different perspective.
I would like see merits for rare trading lowered BUT add new activity for all powers allowing sell of few special commodities that can be gained only by pirating/corsairing NPC trade ships or as mission reward. With such proof of work there is a reason why get a lot of merits as reward.
Or leave rare traiding alone and bring other activities in line with it
As others have mentioned the rates are far to low and goals too high for combat based activities to be a feasible way to climb the powerplay 2 rankings.
Honestly when you put into perspective that FD thinks 2 years worth of exploration data isn't enough to cap your power play level, that is a bit of an unsettling development.
I would like to see Frontier not repeatedly gate mechanics behind a massive time vault, then complain when players attempt to circumvent the locks because (as is usual) the expected amount of hours vs yielded result is, well, asinine (to be kind).
Yet here we are. Again. I am quite sure colonisation will also be the same; massive, massive investment in time and resources and that players will, as might be expect, find efficiencies to speed the game up. The dumbest part of the whole thing, is PP 2.0 actually has a lot of potential. It's just gated behind a truely wild amount of effort.
The universal truth of Elite; Frontier wants to slow progress down, players want to have progress be meaningful (and thus will speed it up). It's been that way for 11 years. It ain't gonna change now. xD
A major Thargoid raid on a major PP system would do it, break the PP Power hands off policy on Thargoid incursions.
Hopefully, although it's not a really major PP system, it won't be Lave - though that would be a great rallying call for commanders everywhere.
It'd require clearing out the raid if they wanted the system back, certainly. On the other hand, having lost the system's controlled status, it'd be quicker to reinforce a neighbouring system back up to the same sort of strength. Other than the HQ systems (where a Thargoid attack would have to be all 11 at once, and even then some powers would take that a lot worse than others) losing a few systems here or there to Thargoid attacks would just be one of those things in most cases.
Seems to be the case that you really do need to learn the ropes, it's really easy to do the right thing in the wrong place and not get any merits for that. But if you game the game, then you can get a reasonable amount by just playing...
Pretty sure that I earned about 1500 merits in under an hour just patrolling in my home system, fighting the good fight and collecting power wreckage as I went about my business. Sure you can nip out to some far off place to get some distance correlated bonus on your rare commodities trade too, I'm over the moon that this has shown me that the mechanic exists and is there for me to explore whenever the fancy takes me. But there is no need to just repeatedly do this because it is there.
Anyhow, some will grind because the temptation to mindlessly chase merits is to strong, I far prefer kiting out my ship for some more general patrol, having fun and getting a slightly lesser average 1000 merits an hour doing that whilst really having fun. I must say that a jolly out to do a run for rare goods is also fun once in a while, but not as a repeated cycle. I also noticed that some of the really big paying trade runs that I do, now and again, bring in around 400 merits.
I've just accepted a mission that was offered to me by a local faction, because when you get the hang of the way the system works you can see that some missions will bring merits and others will be actively going against your powers requirements and assessing someone else's. So as ever you have to be on your toes, as the game with its very dark patterns will try to trick you! As yet I can't report on merits won for that, as I've not yet done it.
The ship AI is nice, really frustrating at times, but you have to see the funny side, like with many things in elite, as there is a dark irony coded into the game.
Some of the most enjoyable fights, pay you nothing, as if the game is willingly mocking you, whilst you get some sizeable bounties and also decent merits for other ships that are far easier to kill. 120 merits for a ship, or there abouts, I've not made precise notes as yet, but feel confident that it is going to be possible to earn more merits as I get better at discerning which battles to pick.
So some things that I've learned with my trials is that I've really got to learn when to fight and when to run, or, look for a wing to join. To be sure that the fighting is not to frustrating.
I shudder a little at the thought of the AI being raised in difficulty, when you are flying a bi-weave build alone and against two NPC's that are working very closely together to maintain constant damage to your shields and modules, things can very quickly degenerate. Of course, in a fully shielded FDL this would not be an issue, but then there would be no cargo space for collecting the wreckage for intel analysis, or saving your fellows either!
I've had to change back the banner in my station several times, as apparently there are other operatives in system who are looking to undermine, but I've not found nor seen them do it yet. I suspect it is the BGS but can not be certain of this, anyhow 21 merits for switching it back each time I fly home, if it has been changed, and it would seem that the switch back holds longer after a few occurrences.
So it seems to me that there is a lot to learn about gaming the game to really make it fun, but there are several different game play loops that bring in merits reasonably, and you can swap between them depending on what you need to do to better advance your power.
Perhaps it is the need to adapt to the game that can be tricky at first, but it does seem as though before insisting balances be made, that we really spend some time with it in play to fully understand what is there first; Now that it has all been hi lighted is such bright colours for us!
Pretty sure that I earned about 1500 merits in under an hour just patrolling in my home system, fighting the good fight and collecting power wreckage as I went about my business. Sure you can nip out to some far off place to get some distance correlated bonus on your rare commodities trade too, I'm over the moon that this has shown me that the mechanic exists and is there for me to explore whenever the fancy takes me. But there is no need to just repeatedly do this because it is there.
Anyhow, some will grind because the temptation to mindlessly chase merits is to strong, I far prefer kiting out my ship for some more general patrol, having fun and getting a slightly lesser average 1000 merits an hour doing that whilst really having fun. I must say that a jolly out to do a run for rare goods is also fun once in a while, but not as a repeated cycle. I also noticed that some of the really big paying trade runs that I do, now and again, bring in around 400 merits.
I've just accepted a mission that was offered to me by a local faction, because when you get the hang of the way the system works you can see that some missions will bring merits and others will be actively going against your powers requirements and assessing someone else's. So as ever you have to be on your toes, as the game with its very dark patterns will try to trick you! As yet I can't report on merits won for that, as I've not yet done it.
The ship AI is nice, really frustrating at times, but you have to see the funny side, like with many things in elite, as there is a dark irony coded into the game.
Some of the most enjoyable fights, pay you nothing, as if the game is willingly mocking you, whilst you get some sizeable bounties and also decent merits for other ships that are far easier to kill. 120 merits for a ship, or there abouts, I've not made precise notes as yet, but feel confident that it is going to be possible to earn more merits as I get better at discerning which battles to pick.
So some things that I've learned with my trials is that I've really got to learn when to fight and when to run, or, look for a wing to join. To be sure that the fighting is not to frustrating.
I shudder a little at the thought of the AI being raised in difficulty, when you are flying a bi-weave build alone and against two NPC's that are working very closely together to maintain constant damage to your shields and modules, things can very quickly degenerate. Of course, in a fully shielded FDL this would not be an issue, but then there would be no cargo space for collecting the wreckage for intel analysis, or saving your fellows either!
I've had to change back the banner in my station several times, as apparently there are other operatives in system who are looking to undermine, but I've not found nor seen them do it yet. I suspect it is the BGS but can not be certain of this, anyhow 21 merits for switching it back each time I fly home, if it has been changed, and it would seem that the switch back holds longer after a few occurrences.
So it seems to me that there is a lot to learn about gaming the game to really make it fun, but there are several different game play loops that bring in merits reasonably, and you can swap between them depending on what you need to do to better advance your power.
Perhaps it is the need to adapt to the game that can be tricky at first, but it does seem as though before insisting balances be made, that we really spend some time with it in play to fully understand what is there first; Now that it has all been hi lighted is such bright colours for us!
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I think from what I've seen that the banner switches at the stations are representative of the current tug-of-war in the system, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the undermining was done by hacking the banners directly.
Right yes, I was thinking this likely the case that it be the game, I'm keeping an eye on it to see if it's possible to work out how to stabilise it, it is always the same faction, so it could well be an indication as to who best to look to undermine locally. Thanks for hi lighting that it could be related to the tug of war, and attacks, I'd not considered that.
A lot to learn, but a lot of fun learning it; So it would seem that the game is on!
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The AI is hopeless. When I was scooting about I had a job to get them to even fire at me. And this was in a rubbish thrown together bi weave ship.
What the problem is with PP NPCs is they lack any sort of context outside of USS's and those that do appear are worse than PP 1. There should be much harder NPCs in places like strongholds, and roving engineered NPCs going after high ranked commanders or those who are raking in merits. After all, why would a rival not go after 'the best'?
Otherwise, combat in PP2 is dull farming and territory meaningless for flying about gameplay (in essence just serving the meta strategy layer above it).
Have you seen that some of the power ships and pirates give bigger merit rewards then? Some are easy to fight, but others are really not, depending on some random dice roll at the start of the encounter I would imagine.
Addendum: I think that power ships with bounties are likely the bets merit earners.
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In general play outside of USS yes they do. Ranging from 11 to 65. Ironically for me the latter did not shoot back. This was in an exploited system where every drop from SC resulted in an NPC wing.
In fact its this aspect which FD need to remove because its pleasing no-one. Its broken for a start, too easy to farm and seems to appear regardless of context.
Only 65? I've had some well over 100, not sure of the details as I wasn't really looking for it at the time. I would be great to get a better understanding of which ships give which merits, the where why's and how's. Also fighting some of them really is fun, I had a combat with a viper which turned into an all out turn fight for quite some time, the power play ships having better gear really makes the difference; So he was able to do damage and had shields too, was also I think using the ships boost.
I'm sure there are ships to suit all levels, but you knowing how to pick the fights seems to really be key. Then gaming the game to suit, so that it is fun and brings merits. It's not going to be much of a list of who's who on the power's leaderboard if it is list of the games most dedicated rare commodity runners, at the end of the day. That said, it will then become a hit list of folk to take down in PvP by hanging in wait on those trade routes. Who knows what the devs have done with the system, how it will react once folk start to become targeted as 'persons of interest' by opposing factions, so they may well also find that running those routes in basic haulers is no longer feasible. It is going to take time for the game to settle, that's for sure, and at this point we don't really have any notion of the dynamics.
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