Elite Dangerous | Update 19.02 - 28 November 2024

I'm personally finding myself having gone from 0 to 100 hype on powerplay to being back at 0 due to the fact that system control points assigned for the power activities we can still do being insultingly low impact for the time investment.
Tricky one this. Certainly there's not much as an individual player I can hope to do to influence most systems - though there are a few borderline ones which can be flipped over a line with a couple of weeks' solo effort, if no-one else notices.

But current collective player activity is adding a new 300 systems a week, reinforcing 100 Exploited systems to Fortified, and reinforcing 50 Fortified systems to Stronghold.
(And that's net, so after the attempts, successful or otherwise, of various underminers to remove systems)

Multiply that rate by four to match the new progression of personal merits, and that's enough net collective merits that the entire bubble could consist of Strongholds - many of them heavily reinforced - within a year.

They can't take the brakes off that until after they've got the Reinforcement-Undermining balance of collective activity a lot more equal than it is.
 
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Tricky one this. Certainly there's not much as an individual player I can hope to do to influence most systems - though there are a few borderline ones which can be flipped over a line with a couple of weeks' solo effort, if no-one else notices.

But current collective player activity is adding a new 300 systems a week, reinforcing 100 Exploited systems to Fortified, and reinforcing 50 Fortified systems to Stronghold.
(And that's net, so after the attempts, successful or otherwise, of various underminers to remove systems)

Multiply that rate by four to match the new progression of personal merits, and that's enough net collective merits that the entire bubble could consist of Strongholds - many of them heavily reinforced - within a year.

They can't take the brakes of that until after they've got the Reinforcement-Undermining balance of collective activity a lot more equal than it is.
Lack of undermining is simply strategic choice. Why would you spend merits against opposition reinforcing it, if there are still thousands of free systems? Even if you win that system, you could have taken more unopposed. PP1 mechanics only rewarded decently-populated spheres, so there are lots of uncontrolled voids between powers.
 
Lack of undermining is simply strategic choice.
Absolutely. But if ten thousand people each making individually rational choices leads to the overall consequence that in two or three years time the entire bubble is made entirely of effectively unassailable Strongholds, that's going to lead to a fairly boring "big picture" for Powerplay long before it gets to that ultimate end point.

Frontier have (at least at a high level!) control of the incentives and if "not undermining" is the strategically smart choice right now, they need to adjust those incentives to make it more attractive.
 
The problem is, how do you encourage undermining without causing big powers to bully little ones?

The bigger powers will always "bully" the little ones. Short of reintroducing Command Capital, there's not much that can be done about that.

What can be done is to raise the results of undermining to that of reinforcement. Right now, the sheer number of penalties to undermining, both legal and illegal, means that the more mercenary Commanders aren't going to bother with doing undermining, leaving fortification as the preferred way to engage with PowerPlay.
 
The bigger powers will always "bully" the little ones. Short of reintroducing Command Capital, there's not much that can be done about that.

What can be done is to raise the results of undermining to that of reinforcement. Right now, the sheer number of penalties to undermining, both legal and illegal, means that the more mercenary Commanders aren't going to bother with doing undermining, leaving fortification as the preferred way to engage with PowerPlay.
I don't think it's an intractable problem, it's just one that would take some thought.

There are plenty of games which favor the little guy over the big guy. The trick is keeping things dynamic rather than stagnant.
 
The bigger powers will always "bully" the little ones. Short of reintroducing Command Capital, there's not much that can be done about that.

What can be done is to raise the results of undermining to that of reinforcement. Right now, the sheer number of penalties to undermining, both legal and illegal, means that the more mercenary Commanders aren't going to bother with doing undermining, leaving fortification as the preferred way to engage with PowerPlay.
Maybe, that's the point. This way there has to be a conscious concerted effort to undermine rather than wild west undermining everywhere.
 
Greetings Commanders,

We will be releasing a small update for Elite Dangerous on Thursday 28th November.

Release Schedule (All times in UTC)
  • 07:00AM - Servers Offline for maintenance
  • 10:30AM - Servers Back Online
Please note these are approximate times and are subject to change.

Update Notes​

Cosmetics
  • Mandalay cosmetics for Midnight Black and Void are going in alongside other metallic colourations
Misc
  • Ram Tah has made further technical advances and the Tactical Core Chip is no longer required as part of the recipe for Anti-Guardian Zone Resistance
  • inbox message reminders to complete the Powerplay 2.0 Initial assignments in order to enable ranking will no longer be sent if one of these messages is already in the inbox
Any chance the underperforming Powerplay modules will get a once over?

Most notably the Retributor and Mining Lance, both of which are currently virtually entirely unused.

The Retributor would benefit from the Enforcer Cannon treatment, just being a slightly better version of the normal weapon, plus the experimental added effect.

The Mining Lance would need a bit more work, but if it could mine without taking away from the normal pool of minerals, and also have enhanced module damage and penetration depth, it could be a really nice powerplant killer AND be somewhat decent at mining for once.

A few tweaks to these modules could inspire a bit more excitement for gaining access to them again!
 
I hate to tell you guys but FDev has always wanted players to have very limited control over the galaxy and I suspect when the dust settles around PP 2.0 it will also be an equal illusion. Not that I am complaining personally. I do think it is better and more interesting than 1.0.
 
Any chance the underperforming Powerplay modules will get a once over?

Most notably the Retributor and Mining Lance, both of which are currently virtually entirely unused.

The Retributor would benefit from the Enforcer Cannon treatment, just being a slightly better version of the normal weapon, plus the experimental added effect.

The Mining Lance would need a bit more work, but if it could mine without taking away from the normal pool of minerals, and also have enhanced module damage and penetration depth, it could be a really nice powerplant killer AND be somewhat decent at mining for once.

A few tweaks to these modules could inspire a bit more excitement for gaining access to them again!
In fact, the Lance is now broken. There no used to be a separation of combat and research modes. We mined with the spear and in case of enemy appearance we added other weapons to the fireteam.
Now, despite the fact that the additional feature of the spear to deal damage in combat we can not combine it with conventional weapons.

 
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