Powerplay Fifth Column Temporary Patch: Simpler Suggestion

[Insinnergy]

There was a recent thread started on the best temporary patch for Fifth Column activities in PP which had a lot of good ideas in it.
Here's a simpler and more poetic suggestion:

As a TEMPORARY fix:
At the end of every cycle, AFTER the 5c morons have spent all their time and money pushing very bad systems, FDev manually removes any Prep with less than -10 profit from all Powers' Prep Lists.
This would effectively halt all 5c activity until the more permanent solution is ready to roll.

Rationale:
Obviously no-one would want a system that drains more than 10CC from your balance for any reason. Although some with small negative values may be needed for strategic reasons.

Bonus: It supplies a very nice slap in the face to the sad little tools doing the 5c activity. They get to spend their time and credits.... and get nothing to show for it.

Thoughts?

 

[kofeyh]

There was a recent thread started on the best temporary patch for Fifth Column activities in PP which had a lot of good ideas in it.
Here's a simpler and more poetic suggestion:

As a TEMPORARY fix:
At the end of every cycle, AFTER the 5c morons have spent all their time and money pushing very bad systems, FDev manually removes any Prep with less than -10 profit from all Powers' Prep Lists.
This would effectively halt all 5c activity until the more permanent solution is ready to roll.

Rationale:
Obviously no-one would want a system that drains more than 10CC from your balance for any reason. Although some with small negative values may be needed for strategic reasons.

Bonus: It supplies a very nice slap in the face to the sad little tools doing the 5c activity. They get to spend their time and credits.... and get nothing to show for it.

Thoughts?

Because of solo, 5c actions are the only counter (worse, it cannot be countered). So lets remove PP from solo; everyone is then placed in a situation where there is genuine risk and responsibility.

No? Well then. Technically unless frontier state it's against the EULA/ ToS, it's fair game.

 

[Cmdr Basskicker]

I agree something needs to be done yesterday regarding the 5th column problem, but I don't know if this is the answer. Your suggestion is that only systems with a potential CC value of -10 (actually CC value of -72 after overheads for powers with 55 or more control systems) should be removed? Take Barathaona for example -6CC potential value. Winters has been fighting this particular 5th column attack for over 20 weeks. Your temp fix would not help them at all, in fact when the 5th column learns of the fix they would all just move on to slightly lesser negative value targets.

Then there are weaponized preps that certain powers use to negatively affect another powers default CC balance. Most of these are less than -10.

 

[Insinnergy]

I agree something needs to be done yesterday regarding the 5th column problem, but I don't know if this is the answer. Your suggestion is that only systems with a potential CC value of -10 (actually CC value of -72 after overheads for powers with 55 or more control systems) should be removed? Take Barathaona for example -6CC potential value. Winters has been fighting this particular 5th column attack for over 20 weeks. Your temp fix would not help them at all, in fact when the 5th column learns of the fix they would all just move on to slightly lesser negative value targets.

Then there are weaponized preps that certain powers use to negatively affect another powers default CC balance. Most of these are less than -10.

Cheers, but I didn't specifically say it was prior to overheads. I meant when everything has been calculated out at cycle end systems with a net -10 CC or less.
I see where the confusion came in since FDev call their terrible in-game number: "potential profit".
If you translated the -10 Net CC level I'm suggesting into the terrible FDev in-game "Profit" number displayed it would be ~+52.5 or so. (I really wish they'd fix that too)

I suspect this would fix all our bad prep lists, and rid you of Barathaona as well.

It's true that the 5c people could then just push systems between -10 net and 0 as "Bad Preps"... but I think the net benefit to your Galactic Ranking of having a bunch of 5c morons give you expansions for free while you net them out with a couple of good ones would actually be hugely beneficial.
i.e. 5c pushes a -8 net CC system on you one cycle, and you also get 2 other expansions for +10 and +15

Imagine if you could stop fighting the 5c idiots, refocus all that effort on good preps, and let them give you a free expansion every week to boost your rank. I think they'll give up at that point.

Either way, no matter what threshold you choose... +60 'Profit' (-2CC Net) , +52 'Profit' (-10CC Net), +40 'Profit' (-22CC Net) ... it really could be anything... I think the concept holds up.
It's quick, simple and ruins the Fifth Columnists' week... every week.

I hope they do something soon.

 

[Insinnergy]

Because of solo, 5c actions are the only counter (worse, it cannot be countered). So lets remove PP from solo; everyone is then placed in a situation where there is genuine risk and responsibility.

No? Well then. Technically unless frontier state it's against the EULA/ ToS, it's fair game.

Its a nice idea, but has it's own issues. This has been largely covered in Sandro's main thread (see the stickied thread above), however here is a recap of a few reasons why it won't help:
1) You can change your router settings to be in "Open", but never see another player and they can't see you either. How would you get around this? How would you implement it quickly as a temporary fix??
2) Combat-based powers would be at a huge advantage over hauling-based Powers due to various things, including the massive discrepancy of credits on the line.
For example: Your Vulture rebuy is way less than a Cutter Rebuy + the cost of a full hold of fast tracked merits (~20 Million Credits).
Another example: Inbound and Outbound Merit hauling has to go through the Home system of the Power. This creates a PVP bottleneck where a haulage-based Power could be choked off from doing any Powerplay activity.

I suggest you read through Sandro's thread.