Have Powerplay Power Benefits crippled the Federation?

[Danieros]

It was flawed in PP1 because of the CC mechanic, but in PP2 it would just translate in making the border territories much more dynamic, with particular advantage to combat, given that PP2 offensive (effective) activities are now limited to settlement data raiding. If one power X builds a SH at 300ly from home and 50ly from power Y capital, it should be quite easy for Y to kick X notwithstanding the system resources.

I don't think it'd be more dynamic since you can't do anything about HQ distance. CC was at least good in giving a reason to overcome the terrible odds that distance created for the powers not in the middle of the bubble, and some competent powers were very successful in taking and holding.

If HQ distance happens again in PP2 all it will do is set an "further than X ly" no-go zone that just won't make sense to try taking/holding. With the "beyond frontline" mechanic, it also sets another limit - how far from HQ you can realistically surprise others with a 1000 settlement data limit. I prefer not calling it undermining since you can lose systems without the full threat ever showing in the undermining score... but nothing else feels viable.

 

[Fedifensor]

It seems like if you're going to make any adjustment to keep things from becoming too unbalanced, you'd adjust based on size. The Power with 1500 worlds should have a harder time defending them than the power with 500 worlds. The sheer scale of bureaucracy and non-instant communication between worlds should be a factor.

 

[Novarek]

I could correct you on your colourful view of the Federation player base on all those points (e.g. we have active diplomatic initiatives ongoing with the majority force in Kaine, and with Mahon, currently) but let's stick to the facts that Mahon has good trade benefits (as I understand it) and Kaine has excellent benefits in mining, widely considered the most powerful tool in reinforcement and especially, acquisition. AD has faltered since the Sol drubbing and some diplomatic fails since. But at the end of the day player numbers count more than any of these things.

Kaine merit bonus on mining work only for acquisition, it's actualy Mahon which have a mining bonus for reinforcement AND acquisition therefore much more flexible to use.
Winters also have a reinforcement bonus on mining.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It seems like if you're going to make any adjustment to keep things from becoming too unbalanced, you'd adjust based on size. The Power with 1500 worlds should have a harder time defending them than the power with 500 worlds. The sheer scale of bureaucracy and non-instant communication between worlds should be a factor.

Then you get right back into Powerplay 1's "harming your Power accidentally by doing exactly what the in-game interface tells you to do", and then probably "weaponising that by signing up to enemy Powers" too.

There are over 50,000 inhabited systems in the bubble, continuing to rise rapidly. That's a "fair" allocation of over 4000 per Power, maybe already over 5000. So it'd be hard to argue that any "overheads" should start applying before that point, which no-one is anywhere near.

 

[professor hex]

You would have to ask the Federation whether, if they had their time again in Powerplay v1.0, they would upset all their neighbours (bar Delaine) as they did in that iteration of the game.

 

[Fedifensor]

Then you get right back into Powerplay 1's "harming your Power accidentally by doing exactly what the in-game interface tells you to do", and then probably "weaponising that by signing up to enemy Powers" too.

Bigger Powers having more trouble holding territory and smaller Powers having an advantage maintaining their (small) footprint is a good design goal. Otherwise, there's very little reason to join Powers at the bottom of the rankings.

Being a Large Power is its own reward.

There are over 50,000 inhabited systems in the bubble, continuing to rise rapidly. That's a "fair" allocation of over 4000 per Power, maybe already over 5000. So it'd be hard to argue that any "overheads" should start applying before that point, which no-one is anywhere near.

You would set the number at the median of the number of systems controlled by each power, updated weekly.

 

[Sumurai8]

Yeah, the game has been rigged against them from the start. They sit in the middle surrounded on all sides, providing an easy enemy for all the others.

Other soft factors were that the Alliance were the "good guys", Aisling has her feet pix admirers and ALD is a straight up better version of Hudson/Archer (130% bounty bonus instead of 100%). The only thing the Feds have going for them is Sol.

Archer being an enemy of most other powers has nothing to do with its position, and everything to do with how they have been managed over the last years. Relations from Powerplay 1 obviously persist through Powerplay 2. Hudson has made an enemy of everyone in Powerplay 1 and the solution of the Federation during Powerplay 2 in this regard is not to make friends, but rather to try to invent discontent between powers in the hopes that Winters and Archer can play a 2v10 where every other power plays a 1v11. Unsurprisingly, no powers really take the bait.

As far as expansion opportunities are concerned, Archer is within the top 3 of systems gained consistently every cycle. From cycle 22 to 23 they gained 10 systems, the most of everyone. I believe that is largely on the back of the current meta favouring combat powers. They have ample room to expand still. They held themselves just fine in the battle for Sol, showing that they have a decent sized player base. Given enough time, he will start rising in the rankings. The main reason he has so little systems right now is because he drove his economy into the ground during Powerplay 1 and lost 41 out of 92 of his control spheres during Operation: Hudgement Day. Position-wise the Federation gets a boost from new players starting in or near their systems at the start of the game. In Powerplay 1 their position actually meant that Powerplay 1 was rigged for them, not against them. In PP1 they could get more profitable expansions than about anyone else due to population and thus CC being distributed more towards Sol. That advantage from PP1 has luckily been largely diminished with systems being mostly equal to one another in powerplay 2.

Winters too managed their CC economy badly and found themselves caged during part of Powerplay 1. When people are talking about Torval here, realise that Torval's economy was fine up until and including the last cycle of Powerplay 1, even when having a second bubble of systems around Winters' HQ. Systems that Winters arguably should not have allowed to be dropped. Most of the rest of the last few years of Powerplay 1, Winters spend relentlessly slinging weapons into about anyone they could. They too have made enemies left right and center. When they had an opportunity to engage with Kaine, they were the one that chose war with them instead. Their main PR channel outputs tons and tons of salt and defeatist language and tends to make up stuff about the Empire rather than talking about the Federation or their own community, even during times where they have something to celebrate, to the point where I am actively surprised that they get new recruits at all. Honestly, if I were involved with the power I would suggest replacing their PR department with people that can and want to put their own community in a positive light. That, more than any power bonus or mechanic within Powerplay, might allow that community to grow.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Archer being an enemy of most other powers has nothing to do with its position, and everything to do with how they have been managed over the last years. Relations from Powerplay 1 obviously persist through Powerplay 2. Hudson has made an enemy of everyone in Powerplay 1 and the solution of the Federation during Powerplay 2 in this regard is not to make friends, but rather to try to invent discontent between powers in the hopes that Winters and Archer can play a 2v10 where every other power plays a 1v11. Unsurprisingly, no powers really take the bait.

As far as expansion opportunities are concerned, Archer is within the top 3 of systems gained consistently every cycle. From cycle 22 to 23 they gained 10 systems, the most of everyone. I believe that is largely on the back of the current meta favouring combat powers. They have ample room to expand still. They held themselves just fine in the battle for Sol, showing that they have a decent sized player base. Given enough time, he will start rising in the rankings. The main reason he has so little systems right now is because he drove his economy into the ground during Powerplay 1 and lost 41 out of 92 of his control spheres during Operation: Hudgement Day. Position-wise the Federation gets a boost from new players starting in or near their systems at the start of the game. In Powerplay 1 their position actually meant that Powerplay 1 was rigged for them, not against them. In PP1 they could get more profitable expansions than about anyone else due to population and thus CC being distributed more towards Sol. That advantage from PP1 has luckily been largely diminished with systems being mostly equal to one another in powerplay 2.

Winters too managed their CC economy badly and found themselves caged during part of Powerplay 1. When people are talking about Torval here, realise that Torval's economy was fine up until and including the last cycle of Powerplay 1, even when having a second bubble of systems around Winters' HQ. Systems that Winters arguably should not have allowed to be dropped. Most of the rest of the last few years of Powerplay 1, Winters spend relentlessly slinging weapons into about anyone they could. They too have made enemies left right and center. When they had an opportunity to engage with Kaine, they were the one that chose war with them instead. Their main PR channel outputs tons and tons of salt and defeatist language and tends to make up stuff about the Empire rather than talking about the Federation or their own community, even during times where they have something to celebrate, to the point where I am actively surprised that they get new recruits at all. Honestly, if I were involved with the power I would suggest replacing their PR department with people that can and want to put their own community in a positive light. That, more than any power bonus or mechanic within Powerplay, might allow that community to grow.

Nice try

 

[zimms]

[...] in the hopes that Winters and Archer can play a 2v10 where every other power plays a 1v11.
[...]

Pretty sure ZYADA is still a thing.

 

[Sumurai8]

Pretty sure ZYADA is still a thing.

Indeed. Which is why despite Federal propaganda hallucinating the Empire breaking up for several cycles now, I wrote in the next sentence...

Unsurprisingly, no powers really take the bait.

It does pay to read the whole post before commenting on it.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Indeed. Which is why despite Federal propaganda hallucinating the Empire breaking up for several cycles now, I wrote in the next sentence...



It does pay to read the whole post before commenting on it.

Your whole post is a hallucination, imo.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

If anyone wants to read the latest defeatist Federal literature then please check out the Winters cycle post here, and mrmausten's hilarious work on the Archer subreddit here! (Hint - it's not deadly serious).

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Actually, I've got to stand up for my guys as well. I get that people are hurt when I point out the faults of their collective conduct over the years, as I see it (and keep reminding them of it because the consequences persist, and calling out new instances ), but the community team at Federal Liberal Command (Winters powerplay hub) work really very hard to support our players internally in all sorts of ways, and publicise our group positively. You can see us on numerous platforms, but cool posts like this, the video collabs with AuraxisAnimus and all the work we do across various allied, community and other servers and outside of discord give the lie to everything this guy is saying in that respect. If you ask anyone who's actually active in the community outside their own bubble they'll let you know. I'm really grateful to have a fantastic team at the moment, who've been really solid and ready to muck in, sometimes to the point they burn out a little tbh. But as our "rule 0" states, real life and personal wellbeing come first - I'd rather we had a quiet week than someone being overloaded. All the salty stuff in public media is fine but the people being implicated as failing in their role do nothing but good work and it's not fair for me to not emphasise it x1000 .

 

[Mordred115]

That ignores the simple advantage of the separate factions not attacking each other. Yes, you can technically undermine another Empire faction, but that's not what seems to be happening.

Easy to say when you are not the one running strategy in one of these powers

 

[Fedifensor]

Easy to say when you are not the one running strategy in one of these powers

Elite Dangerous is estimated to have slightly less than 20 million players overall, and server counts show around 17k players per day. If we're generous and say that 4 players are sharing the responsibilities of running strategy for each of 12 factions, that's roughly 0.3% of the number of daily players, or 0.00025% (roughly 1 in 400,000) of the total player base. Seems a waste to set up a thread for less than 50 total players given those numbers.

I'm going to guess that if someone here is running strategy for one of the Powers, they a) aren't going to give away their secrets, and b) aren't so full of themselves to believe only they can comprehend how Powerplay works.

A glib statement as a response does nothing to address the issues that several others have brought up, including statements from those heavily involved with the leadership of the various Powers.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Elite Dangerous is estimated to have slightly less than 20 million players overall, and server counts show around 17k players per day. If we're generous and say that 4 players are sharing the responsibilities of running strategy for each of 12 factions, that's roughly 0.3% of the number of daily players, or 0.00025% (roughly 1 in 400,000) of the total player base. Seems a waste to set up a thread for less than 50 total players given those numbers.

I'm going to guess that if someone here is running strategy for one of the Powers, they a) aren't going to give away their secrets, and b) aren't so full of themselves to believe only they can comprehend how Powerplay works.

A glib statement as a response does nothing to address the issues that several others have brought up, including statements from those heavily involved with the leadership of the various Powers.

??? 50 players?

"4 players are sharing the responsibilities of running strategy for each of 12 factions"

I believe there's a huge underestimation of current PP numbers.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Elite Dangerous is estimated to have slightly less than 20 million players overall,

Have you been reading the site which admits it just makes up its numbers out of thin air? (If not, you presumably got the numbers from something which copied it)

Frontier's official figures showed a bit over 13 million copies sold a couple of years ago, of which a little under 8 million were the Epic giveaway ones in 2020. They certainly haven't sold another 7 million since. (The made-up daily player number, by comparison, is almost certainly a significant *under*estimate, though Frontier has never published that data directly)

In the Powerplay context, the more useful figure is probably "weekly active players with a Powerplay allegiance", which based on the ranking positions in the "you got this tier reward" messages and the total weekly control point changes is probably somewhere in the 5,000-10,000 range at the moment.

If we're generous and say that 4 players are sharing the responsibilities of running strategy for each of 12 factions

This is still Powerplay 1 thinking, though. There's no longer a requirement to have a single strategy per power. Kaine and Delaine both openly have multiple active groups focused on Powerplay as a primary goal; there'll be quite a few smaller groups in every power who support a particular Power and are just trying to get their minor faction's territory to all be within it so they can use their rank rewards better.
(And in this particular context, it's those smaller groups who are unlikely to care about another group's "but we believe that Patreus shouldn't be attacking Winters" RP, which is what makes having multiple Powers a general disadvantage for those who do.)

 

[Rubbernuke]

??? 50 players?

"4 players are sharing the responsibilities of running strategy for each of 12 factions"

I believe there's a huge underestimation of current PP numbers.

To be fair for a while some powers did run on a handful of players, especially the smaller powers. PP2 kind of blew that all apart though and now everyone is PP by default (except for some lunatic crazies).

As an illustration, two guys undermined all of Utopia 'for a laugh' (I was told later). In PP2 thats impossible but in the 'old' PP a few people could move mountains (especially 5C).

 

[Rubbernuke]

Have you been reading the site which admits it just makes up its numbers out of thin air? (If not, you presumably got the numbers from something which copied it)

Frontier's official figures showed a bit over 13 million copies sold a couple of years ago, of which a little under 8 million were the Epic giveaway ones in 2020. They certainly haven't sold another 7 million since. (The made-up daily player number, by comparison, is almost certainly a significant *under*estimate, though Frontier has never published that data directly)

In the Powerplay context, the more useful figure is probably "weekly active players with a Powerplay allegiance", which based on the ranking positions in the "you got this tier reward" messages and the total weekly control point changes is probably somewhere in the 5,000-10,000 range at the moment.


This is still Powerplay 1 thinking, though. There's no longer a requirement to have a single strategy per power. Kaine and Delaine both openly have multiple active groups focused on Powerplay as a primary goal; there'll be quite a few smaller groups in every power who support a particular Power and are just trying to get their minor faction's territory to all be within it so they can use their rank rewards better.
(And in this particular context, it's those smaller groups who are unlikely to care about another group's "but we believe that Patreus shouldn't be attacking Winters" RP, which is what makes having multiple Powers a general disadvantage for those who do.)

PP2 has made everyone thier own boss because nothing is truly wrong. I get PTSD from PP1 where you were surrounded by bad choices.

 

[Fedifensor]

In the Powerplay context, the more useful figure is probably "weekly active players with a Powerplay allegiance", which based on the ranking positions in the "you got this tier reward" messages and the total weekly control point changes is probably somewhere in the 5,000-10,000 range at the moment.

The difference between 13 and 20 million, or even 5-10k versus 17k, doesn't change the overall point. My own Power has no more than a few people running strategy, and any Power who has more than 4-5 people handling strategy decisions is likely sabotaging themselves. Discussing the mechanics isn't something that should be restricted to a privileged few.

This is still Powerplay 1 thinking, though. There's no longer a requirement to have a single strategy per power. Kaine and Delaine both openly have multiple active groups focused on Powerplay as a primary goal; there'll be quite a few smaller groups in every power who support a particular Power and are just trying to get their minor faction's territory to all be within it so they can use their rank rewards better.
(And in this particular context, it's those smaller groups who are unlikely to care about another group's "but we believe that Patreus shouldn't be attacking Winters" RP, which is what makes having multiple Powers a general disadvantage for those who do.)

I was responding to a person who was discounting my opinion because I was "not the one running strategy" for a Power.

Considering I spent the last two weeks acquiring a system on my own (took the system from 0 to 120k with no visible help from others), maybe I am one of the many running strategy after all.