Encouraging and rewarding Powerplay offensive actions

[Ian Doncaster]

Thinking about this quote

This is the first in a number of planned changes which are intended encourage and reward offensive actions within Powerplay. We will continue to monitor feedback and impact and adjust accordingly.

Obviously that initial change hasn't had any noticeable effect at all, so some suggestions for things which might be more effective. I'm focusing on Undermining, as with the massive neutral territories opened up by Trailblazers, Acquisition barely counts as an offensive action and meaningfully contested Acquisitions are extremely rare.

Individual incentives: make some personally profitable ways to undermine, like reinforcing has - some or all of scans, bounty hunting, profitable trade, rares, or exploration should be enabled for undermining as a start.

Strategic incentives: successfully undermined systems (including those lost through lack of supporting systems) should switch to the undermining power (if they have supporting systems in range, of course) without needing to be acquired separately.

Global effects: rebalance and document the passive effects of control so that there are disputes about which one is best but they're all worth having, rather than LYR giving amazing discounts and no-one remembering or caring much what the other 11 do.

Underdog recruitment bonus: allow people to keep some of their rank if they defect to a Power lower in the standings than their own (further lower, more rank kept?) as a way to encourage balancing out of Power benefits take effect quicker.

Global rewards: give bonus payouts, rank benefits and other rewards to the powers that do the most successful undermining (or undermining+acquisition?) each week.

Speed things up: Reduce all the thresholds by 10x - it'll make no difference to anywhere seriously contested where "more than the opponent" is the goal, but get things being much more dynamic elsewhere and allow smaller groups to achieve more. At the moment barely 1% of systems change status each week.

 

[PilotB]

Strategic incentives: successfully undermined systems (including those lost through lack of supporting systems) should switch to the undermining power (if they have supporting systems in range, of course) without needing to be acquired separately.

On one hand it's an incentive. On the other hand it makes it harder for us to remove powers if we don't want powerplay in our systems.

A lot of my issues with powerplay come down to the crime system is obnoxious by design. Reinforcement doesn't deal with it. Undermining deals with it. I'm not entirely sure you can find sufficient reward for players without a crime rebuild. Credits have limited value. Engineering mats are now handed out like candy. My only suggestion would be that players who undermine get given partial access to perks from the faction they're undermining. If you're at home you get the basics if you're working hard in hostile space a shipment of their modules might fall off a truck and you could buy something earlier or maybe you intercept a care package.

More activities and better rewards are certainly a step in the right direction. I know I basically could only hack holoboards to undermine which is a crappy activity when I was testing powerplay but it's the crime system that made me just give up. More mixed reinforcement activities would maybe help. Don't buy the materials from a stronghold. Raid them from an enemy power. Weave the systems together more so it's less black and white and more shades of red.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Thinking about this quote

Obviously that initial change hasn't had any noticeable effect at all, so some suggestions for things which might be more effective. I'm focusing on Undermining, as with the massive neutral territories opened up by Trailblazers, Acquisition barely counts as an offensive action and meaningfully contested Acquisitions are extremely rare.

Individual incentives: make some personally profitable ways to undermine, like reinforcing has - some or all of scans, bounty hunting, profitable trade, rares, or exploration should be enabled for undermining as a start.

Strategic incentives: successfully undermined systems (including those lost through lack of supporting systems) should switch to the undermining power (if they have supporting systems in range, of course) without needing to be acquired separately.

Global effects: rebalance and document the passive effects of control so that there are disputes about which one is best but they're all worth having, rather than LYR giving amazing discounts and no-one remembering or caring much what the other 11 do.

Underdog recruitment bonus: allow people to keep some of their rank if they defect to a Power lower in the standings than their own (further lower, more rank kept?) as a way to encourage balancing out of Power benefits take effect quicker.

Global rewards: give bonus payouts, rank benefits and other rewards to the powers that do the most successful undermining (or undermining+acquisition?) each week.

Speed things up: Reduce all the thresholds by 10x - it'll make no difference to anywhere seriously contested where "more than the opponent" is the goal, but get things being much more dynamic elsewhere and allow smaller groups to achieve more. At the moment barely 1% of systems change status each week.

Some interesting ideas! Powerplay is in dire need of making attack actually rewarding.

Some of mine:

Powerplay community goals (similar to weekly missions but power wide)

A quick and crazy idea.... Why not have per Power community goals? A community goal is essentially one shared task, so why not have each power have a set task each cycle? For example: Expand 10 systems Gain stronghold for 5 systems Undermine 10 systems until the become unoccupied ...and so...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Powerplay: rewarding hostility and making the Galactic Standing reward power activity

Builds on ideas from this previous thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/powerplay-community-goals-similar-to-weekly-missions-but-power-wide.636156/ Powerplay 1 had a (not fully implemented) turmoil and collapse mechanism that gave powers something to avoid. In PP2 we don't really have...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Powerplay 2: scale undermining merits based on target powers Galactic Standing

Powerplay has a (in my view) problem in that fighting / undermining is not seen as lucrative, and that large powers stay large through inertia. In Powerplay 2 things have changed slightly in that the system is not group driven but at a player level- i.e. PP2 is heavily decentralised. But how...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Add to that I'd love to see murder of non PP NPCs used as a 'turbo button' for UM- its already balanced by its punishments but has no real purpose in ED any more.

The other aspect is ensuring powers actually want to win for themselves and not be pawns in larger blocs.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

On one hand it's an incentive. On the other hand it makes it harder for us to remove powers if we don't want powerplay in our systems.

Only marginally - you'd need to pick a Power to do the undermining which didn't have a supporting system in range, but you'd probably want to do that anyway.

A lot of my issues with powerplay come down to the crime system is obnoxious by design.

Certainly my suggestions to provide legal+profitable ways to undermine are a workaround for that, rather than handling the underlying problem, but if the Powerplay fix requires sorting out one of the most tangled-up systems in the game it's not as likely to happen.

More mixed reinforcement activities would maybe help.

Yes, though it would also need to be accompanied by making the legal+profitable reinforcement options much less effective, or everyone would just keep doing those.

The other aspect is ensuring powers actually want to win for themselves and not be pawns in larger blocs.

Definitely, since again that also seems to be how Frontier want to run it. From my suggestions, I think the key bit for that is making "undermining by presence" effective in the same way that one can accidentally reinforce a system will massively amplify the undermining effect of the majority of players outside of the big-name squadrons and coalitions, combined with speeding up uncontested movements in general, so that it matters less if groups A and B have made an agreement if there are 90%+ of the players in the game not party to that agreement who can mess it up simply by existing.

Equally, it may be that 12 separate Powers is either too many, or these are the wrong 12 Powers with insufficient distinction. A mutually-aggressive set of 3 Powers (e.g. Fed, Imp, Ind+All) might work better than trying to find 12 sufficiently distinctive things where players don't go "shouldn't A and B be friends?" so much.

 

[PilotB]

Certainly my suggestions to provide legal+profitable

One issue with this is that under the current system you're existance is illegal. They will spawn a system or power defence force into basically any instance you enter which is my issue. What you're doing could be nominally legal like mining their rings and it doesn't matter you're wanted and they will spawn cops to hunt you down. You might not need to untangle the whole crime system but some tweaks would go a very long way if you want legal undermining.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

One issue with this is that under the current system you're existance is illegal.

That's true, though in practice I've never found the Power enemies to be any sort of problem while doing legal activities in "Hostile" systems.
- scanning is a default activity that doesn't affect much
- trade is a quick enough turnaround with SCO that they don't tend to get chance to interfere
- bounty hunting you might need to watch for some present at the start, yes (though on the other hand with a HazRES or a lot of other common bounty-hunting spots, getting a non-notorious bounty isn't all that big a problem)
- mining, again, they might show up at the start but if you boost away from them you've then got the usual peaceful hour or two without them

Disconnecting Power hostility entirely from minor faction hostility I certainly agree would be beneficial (as it's one of the many discouragements to undermine right now) but there's a sufficiently small volume of complaints about the impact of the existing Hostile status on non-Powerplay activities that I don't think it's a major component of the problem.

 

[PilotB]

That's true, though in practice I've never found the Power enemies to be any sort of problem while doing legal activities in "Hostile" systems.

The current activities are very limited, very little requires you to spend much time. If you do any activity in normal space you've got a fairly small window before you're scanned and attacked. Currently any time you drop to normal space they will spawn in a powerplay NPC. You can hit the exclusion zone and a power defence force will join you. That's seriously limiting when you can't even gather a few black boxes from a deep space signal without having to run from an anaconda that spawning in as soon as you did. Ironically the stations are the safest places but if you want to expand activities the quirks need to be taken into account and many of these missions that could be used don't give you space to run like a ring does.

 

[aRJay]

…

Add to that I'd love to see murder of non NPCs used as a 'turbo button' for UM- its already balanced by its punishments but has no real purpose in ED any more.

…

But to focus this the murder of non NPCs that aren’t signed up to any power should have a negative effect on the murder’s power.
Redacted now I know @Rubbernuke wasn't advocating the murder of players in this instance.

 

[Rubbernuke]

But to focus this the murder of non NPCs that aren’t signed up to any power should have a negative effect on the murder’s power.

Why? In the end its demonstrating that the power in charge can't protect the locals, making the controlling power look weak.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Why? In the end its demonstrating that the power in charge can't protect the locals, making the controlling power look weak.

Did you mean "NPCs" rather than "non NPCs" in your earlier post?

 

[Rubbernuke]

Did you mean "NPCs" rather than "non NPCs" in your earlier post?

I meant non PP NPCs- I forgot to type PP!

 

[Jmanis]

Global effects: rebalance and document the passive effects of control so that there are disputes about which one is best but they're all worth having, rather than LYR giving amazing discounts and no-one remembering or caring much what the other 11 do.

Fundamentally, Powerplay lacks any motivating factors to do Powerplay.

There's plenty of hygeine factors like merits, care packages and all those other bonuses. But "earning credits" isn't a motivator; if that's my motivation, I'll do the thing that earns me the best credits. If that's Powerplay, I'm not going to play Powerplay to win Powerplay. I'm going to play in a way that best gets me credits.

If Powerplay had it's own intrinsic motivational factors, people would do it regardless of the care packages, merits, credits and what-not. They would do it because they want to do Powerplay.

The key to that is ensuring that the Power in control of an area matters to your day to day play.

 

[PilotB]

If Powerplay had it's own intrinsic motivational factors

That's what the powerplay modules are. A powerplay only reward it's just that most players have been here long enough that if they wanted them they have them

 

[Jmanis]

That's what the powerplay modules are. A powerplay only reward it's just that most players have been here long enough that if they wanted them they have them

No, that's a hygeine factor.

Once I have the modules, I'd be done and would stop playing if that were my motivation. That's what many players do too.

 

[PilotB]

Once I have the modules, I'd be done and would stop playing if that were my motivation. That's what many players do too.

Which is perfectly OK you either remain pledged so you can keep them then your activities passively count or you unpledge and have to redo the effort. It doesn't have to take over the game it just has to have some draw that's unique to it and those are it. They might not be good in their current form but they're an intrinsic powerplay bonus not that they haven't drowned people in passive bonuses as well.

 

[Jmanis]

Which is perfectly OK you either remain pledged so you can keep them then your activities passively count or you unpledge and have to redo the effort. It doesn't have to take over the game it just has to have some draw that's unique to it and those are it. They might not be good in their current form but they're an intrinsic powerplay bonus not that they haven't drowned people in passive bonuses as well.

Yes; it's a hygeine factor, not a motivator. That's the whole problem.

Quoting myself...

Fundamentally, Powerplay lacks any motivating factors to do Powerplay.

All FD have done with PP2 (and with PP modules which are a legacy of PP1) is attempt to fix a problem of motivation, with Hygeine factors.

As a supporter of a faction, I could trade, bounty hunt, fight, explore, pretty much anything... none of those I did for credits, instead I did them all to support the faction... and it worked because those activities were fun. Moreover, I would actively ignore those activities offered by other factions, even if they were more rewarding... because my motivation was to grow my faction. No unique rewards, no "faction modules"... credits were the only hygeine factor, and they were irrelevant, because my motivation was to support the faction.

Why do people stay in jobs they hate? It's not because they're motivated; it's because they need the money to buy food and not starve. It's because they get access to the company car to take the kids to football on the weekend. Or in this case, they get access to some modules.

A lot of people attribute PP2 being "better" to these new hygeine factors like care packages and such, but I maintain; Powerplay 2 is totally uninspiring and unmotivating. Why? Because how many of those people would do PP2 if there were no credits, care packages and such. How many would do it purely to put their Power out there, at their own expense? I would wager not many.

PP2 is just a thin veneer of rewards on top of otherwise standard activities that can be done elsewhere in the game. Why would I go do PP2, when I can see and engage with more tangible, impactful mechanisms in the BGS in my current area.

Towards that end.... why would I want to install Patreus in a given system under PP2? What's my motivation to do that? As far as I can tell, there is none. Maybe for some, it's literally just "turn green system red" and that's it. But this really does continue to be the core problem of PP2.

There's no reason to establish strongholds for your power or to overthrow other powers. Earning Power modules is not contingent on achieving any of those outcomes.

 

[Nidoboros]

'We want you to do more offensive Powerplay/undermine other powers.'

Sol downgrades

'Not like that!'

I, for one, hope that when they finally plug the merit bomb exploit that is being used, Archer finally gets dethroned because oopsy, turns out that's how he's stayed on top for so long.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yes; it's a hygeine factor, not a motivator. That's the whole problem.

Quoting myself...

All FD have done with PP2 (and with PP modules which are a legacy of PP1) is attempt to fix a problem of motivation, with Hygeine factors.

As a supporter of a faction, I could trade, bounty hunt, fight, explore, pretty much anything... none of those I did for credits, instead I did them all to support the faction... and it worked because those activities were fun. Moreover, I would actively ignore those activities offered by other factions, even if they were more rewarding... because my motivation was to grow my faction. No unique rewards, no "faction modules"... credits were the only hygeine factor, and they were irrelevant, because my motivation was to support the faction.

Why do people stay in jobs they hate? It's not because they're motivated; it's because they need the money to buy food and not starve. It's because they get access to the company car to take the kids to football on the weekend. Or in this case, they get access to some modules.

A lot of people attribute PP2 being "better" to these new hygeine factors like care packages and such, but I maintain; Powerplay 2 is totally uninspiring and unmotivating. Why? Because how many of those people would do PP2 if there were no credits, care packages and such. How many would do it purely to put their Power out there, at their own expense? I would wager not many.

PP2 is just a thin veneer of rewards on top of otherwise standard activities that can be done elsewhere in the game. Why would I go do PP2, when I can see and engage with more tangible, impactful mechanisms in the BGS in my current area.

Towards that end.... why would I want to install Patreus in a given system under PP2? What's my motivation to do that? As far as I can tell, there is none. Maybe for some, it's literally just "turn green system red" and that's it. But this really does continue to be the core problem of PP2.

There's no reason to establish strongholds for your power or to overthrow other powers. Earning Power modules is not contingent on achieving any of those outcomes.

I'd argue that PP2 is the BGS, just with extras and a better focus. Its just that focus (territorial domination) is at odds with the mostly passive BGS expansion foundation. Because people can do passive things aside from attack you have the situation now which is close to gardening stasis. Powers should be about striving and sometimes failing, rather than simply growing and never facing hardship.

In the end its a conflict of vision- is PP2 about beating each other senseless, or is it about semi automatic expansion? FD clearly want PP2 to be the conflict layer of the BGS but are afraid of really committing to that. Without that foundational reason people kind of get confused and then fall back on 'whats in it for me?' which then makes PP2 compete with the BGS since they rely on the same things.

What is missing too is proper use of the Galactic Standing, and that being number one means something- I think I suggested this too but the galactic standing needs to take into account more than sheer numbers of systems but also activity (like PP1). That way you could weight what a power does and its impact- for example:

pure expansion +1
UM exploited to unoccupied +2
UM fortified to exploited +3
UM stronghold to fortified +4
fortify exploited to fortified+1
fortify fortified to stronghold +2

In this way large powers simply expanding is not going to outpace a power knocking another down- by this metric powers that do things beyond acquiring systems score better (much like PP1, ironically). The next issue is consequences for loss (to motivate avoiding them) as well as rewards (which we already have). In one of my suggestions I talk about reducing a victims bonuses temporarily as a 'sting', while the victor power has a multiplier bounty for each system UMed.

 

[Martind Forlon]

Fundamentally, Powerplay lacks any motivating factors to do Powerplay.

Sorry, but imo this is not fundamental, it is just yours personal opinion. And it for sure do not apply for all players. The question is whether a player, or a group of players is able find RP reason for support chosen power. And PP2 is for me personally much more enjoyable as it ever was PP1. The problem which I see is, that there should be better balance of which PP activities can player do for having similar effect vs needed time.

If you as a single player do not see reason why to put some power in control of some system, it do not automatically mean that do not exists players which do not have such goal.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Sorry, but imo this is not fundamental, it is just yours personal opinion. And it for sure do not apply for all players.

While PP2.0 might tie into the BGS, and people can role play, and blah blah blah. Fundamentally from a typical player POV it is just another ranking system to get some modules, and once a cmdr has them, its done. That's it. Done. Same as Imperial rank. Same as Federal Rank. For players such as myself there is no compelling reason to continue these activities after the rewards are achieved. I have absolutely no sentimental attachment to the power I pledged to. I could apply self-created roleplay with no significant gameplay rewards[1]. Play pretend and maybe make up some stories.


[1] By rewards I don't mean trophies, fortune, and fame. I just mean something that is 'rewarding'. For players like myself spending 5 hours to move a slidey bar of a system that I am helping to reinforce just isn't rewarding. At best after many many many hours the system gets 'Fortified' status. Big whoopee. Rewards are whatever makes me feel good after 5 hours of gameplay.