Powerplay How about rewarding players that fortify systems that actually NEED fortifying?

It seems that 75% of all players fortifying is just hauling supplies to nearest system, fortifying it to 3000% or something crazy like that. Why not cut merit earnings in half for systems that don't need it, while perhaps doubling it for systems that does need it? Why would this be so hard or problematic? PP has been around a long time now, isn't it about time it got adjusted? I mean this tiny adjustment would be very very easy to implement, but I believe it would mean a lot to powerplay. I mean, I do feel like helping my PP faction, but I really don't like being punished with farther travel distances when actually helping fortifying, when I can get the same amount of rewards by traveling much shorter without actually doing any good.
 
It seems that 75% of all players fortifying is just hauling supplies to nearest system, fortifying it to 3000% or something crazy like that. Why not cut merit earnings in half for systems that don't need it, while perhaps doubling it for systems that does need it? Why would this be so hard or problematic? PP has been around a long time now, isn't it about time it got adjusted? I mean this tiny adjustment would be very very easy to implement, but I believe it would mean a lot to powerplay. I mean, I do feel like helping my PP faction, but I really don't like being punished with farther travel distances when actually helping fortifying, when I can get the same amount of rewards by traveling much shorter without actually doing any good.

This has been brought up time and time again. If people can't fortify the closest system to 3,000% to get their cheap/easy merits, then they'll simply prepare the closest system to ludicrous amounts, which in turn results in those powers getting flooded with outright crappy and useless expansions every single week. If they're combat powers (and they typically are), then they're guaranteed to see those expansions succeed, because those will attract the combat grinders who'll put in a few thousand percent as well.

PowerPlay is about far more than simply fortifying to get the most CC possible every week. We're at a stage in PowerPlay, where there are almost no profitable systems to expand into, which in turn means you really don't want to take on random expansions unless your goal is to completely tank your power.
 
This has been brought up time and time again. If people can't fortify the closest system to 3,000% to get their cheap/easy merits, then they'll simply prepare the closest system to ludicrous amounts, which in turn results in those powers getting flooded with outright crappy and useless expansions every single week. If they're combat powers (and they typically are), then they're guaranteed to see those expansions succeed, because those will attract the combat grinders who'll put in a few thousand percent as well.

PowerPlay is about far more than simply fortifying to get the most CC possible every week. We're at a stage in PowerPlay, where there are almost no profitable systems to expand into, which in turn means you really don't want to take on random expansions unless your goal is to completely tank your power.

But do you think that pp is "working as intended"...? That people would expand into crappy systems is only a problem because the rewards for expanding into crappy systems gives the exact same rewards as expanding into high value systems; with the exception that the crappy systems could be closer to HQ and thus a lot quicker to reach (but again, still yields the same rewards). Frontier have had ages of opportunity to adjust the pp mechanics so that higher rewards could be given for actually helping your faction best possible. Expansion into crappy systems should give less rewards than expanding into not-so-crappy systems, and once the 100% mark is reached rewards should be diminished. Same with fortification. I am with Zachary Hudson and I just fortify groombridge 1618 (like everyone else) because I don't want to waste my time fortifying something worthwhile. Right now I believe Groombridge 1618 is at 2300% with almost 115.000 garrison supplies. All of which is completely wasted on the new cycle; faction does not benefit one single bit from all those supplies delivered. Actually it would have been better to just dump them into a star, at least then Zachary Hudson wouldn't have to waste 50 mill cr per player on nothing.
 
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But do you think that pp is "working as intended"...?

PowerPlay is a massively multiplayer strategic team game. If you remove any strategic thinking by having the game only reward the best choices, then it's no longer a strategic game but a question of having the most supporters.


That people would expand into crappy systems is only a problem because the rewards for expanding into crappy systems gives the exact same rewards as expanding into high value systems;

If you reward people only for expanding into high value systems, you end up with crappy systems as well. You end up in a situation where one group of a power's pledges tries to expand into a system that will never realistically be fortified because it's too far away from the HQ. This is a problem that combat powers often face - the majority of people doing combat expansions are incapable of thinking beyond their own role, and as such they don't care that it'll take a huge amount of merits to fortify the system they're expanding into. This is one of the reasons you kept seeing Hudson turmoiling away distant systems entirely on purpose, only to pick them up again a few cycles later. The merit haulers weren't interested in wasting their efforts fortifying the systems, but the combat pilots kept wanting it back.

Could PowerPlay be improved? Absolutely, and in lots of ways. But removing the critical thinking element from PowerPlay is not a good solution.
 
PowerPlay is a massively multiplayer strategic team game. If you remove any strategic thinking by having the game only reward the best choices, then it's no longer a strategic game but a question of having the most supporters.




If you reward people only for expanding into high value systems, you end up with crappy systems as well. You end up in a situation where one group of a power's pledges tries to expand into a system that will never realistically be fortified because it's too far away from the HQ. This is a problem that combat powers often face - the majority of people doing combat expansions are incapable of thinking beyond their own role, and as such they don't care that it'll take a huge amount of merits to fortify the system they're expanding into. This is one of the reasons you kept seeing Hudson turmoiling away distant systems entirely on purpose, only to pick them up again a few cycles later. The merit haulers weren't interested in wasting their efforts fortifying the systems, but the combat pilots kept wanting it back.

Could PowerPlay be improved? Absolutely, and in lots of ways. But removing the critical thinking element from PowerPlay is not a good solution.

ok then. pp is more flawed than I thought...
 
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ok then. pp is more flawed than I thought...

PowerPlay has plenty of flaws, but the only way to remove greed and laziness from it is to remove any actual human player influence on how to do things. The fact that we can do things that seem to make no sense from a pure CC surplus point of view is a strength, not a weakness. It allows us to attack other powers by contesting their income. It allows us to move to protect player groups from unwanted exploitation by establishing loss making control systems. It allows us to choose to turmoil away bad systems even though you could avoid it.

What you're suggesting would ultimately lead to the equivalent of a game of paint by numbers, where you're not allowed to deviate from the "correct" colours, and ultimately that would be a far, far more bland and boring game.
 
... ultimately that would be a far, far more bland and boring game.

You mean it can actually get even more boring?! Sorry, couldn't help myself. I just don't understand your reasoning when you say "The fact that we can do things that seem to make no sense from a pure CC surplus point of view is a strength, not a weakness.". I proposed that actually doing something that helps our faction should get better rewards, while less helpful actions should give less reward. How that would conflict with "It allows us to attack other powers by contesting their income." I really can't see. You can attack other powers by contesting their income whether we implement better rewards for more helpful pp actions or not.

To be clear I don't suggest anything remotely to not letting players deviate from the "correct" colors! Quite the contrary. In fact what we see now is indeed players being punished from deviating from the "correct" colors, that is, in the case of fortifying for Zachary, the colors of Groombridge 1618!
 
You mean it can actually get even more boring?! Sorry, couldn't help myself. I just don't understand your reasoning when you say "The fact that we can do things that seem to make no sense from a pure CC surplus point of view is a strength, not a weakness.". I proposed that actually doing something that helps our faction should get better rewards, while less helpful actions should give less reward. How that would conflict with "It allows us to attack other powers by contesting their income." I really can't see. You can attack other powers by contesting their income whether we implement better rewards for more helpful pp actions or not.

To be clear I don't suggest anything remotely to not letting players deviate from the "correct" colors! Quite the contrary. In fact what we see now is indeed players being punished from deviating from the "correct" colors, that is, in the case of fortifying for Zachary, the colors of Groombridge 1618!

If you automate the rewards, such that we only reward people for preparing and expanding profitable systems, then you cannot attack by contesting systems, and you cannot bring systems into the exploited bubble for reasons OTHER than CC. For example, Mahon gets trade dividends. Suppose we found a trade route that would give us 4,000 credits/ton each way, but they are the only two systems in that entire bubble. That'd be a massively unprofitable system in terms of CC, but the 800 credits/ton extra we could get for grabbing it would be well worth it. Under your rules, it becomes prohibitively expensive or even impossible to try to grab that control bubble.

Similarly, if a player group comes to us and asks us to protect them from a Federation power's incursion into their space by exploiting them, that also becomes prohibitively expensive or even impossible to try to help them out.

Or suppose that we're in an economical war with the Federation (which we are), and we notice that there's a particularly good set of systems that they could expand into (but haven't yet), but are loss makers for us. Currently we could choose to expand into them to deny the income to the Feds, but again under your rules, this is not allowed, because it's not profitable.

This is why it is a strength that we are allowed to do things that doesn't make sense in the purest terms of PowerPlay. There are lots of reasons that CC profit is not the end all and be all of PowerPlay expansions, and these are but a few.
 
If you automate the rewards, such that we only reward people for preparing and expanding profitable systems, then you cannot attack by contesting systems, and you cannot bring systems into the exploited bubble for reasons OTHER than CC. For example, Mahon gets trade dividends. Suppose we found a trade route that would give us 4,000 credits/ton each way, but they are the only two systems in that entire bubble. That'd be a massively unprofitable system in terms of CC, but the 800 credits/ton extra we could get for grabbing it would be well worth it. Under your rules, it becomes prohibitively expensive or even impossible to try to grab that control bubble.

Similarly, if a player group comes to us and asks us to protect them from a Federation power's incursion into their space by exploiting them, that also becomes prohibitively expensive or even impossible to try to help them out.

Or suppose that we're in an economical war with the Federation (which we are), and we notice that there's a particularly good set of systems that they could expand into (but haven't yet), but are loss makers for us. Currently we could choose to expand into them to deny the income to the Feds, but again under your rules, this is not allowed, because it's not profitable.

This is why it is a strength that we are allowed to do things that doesn't make sense in the purest terms of PowerPlay. There are lots of reasons that CC profit is not the end all and be all of PowerPlay expansions, and these are but a few.

My rules does not prohibit expanding into anything just because it's not profitable. I merely suggest lower rewards for less helpful actions, not disallowing them? Vice versa for helpful actions.
 
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My rules does not prohibit expanding into anything just because it's not profitable. I merely suggest lower rewards for less helpful actions, not disallowing them? Vice versa for helpful actions.

Again "helpful" isn't something you can automate, because it depends on a huge amount of factors that you can't tell in an automated fashion. For example - Mahon expanded into Aranbarahun, a loss making system. That was an extremely helpful action, because that brought NULL under Mahon's protection, and that made a huge amount of NULL players willing to support Mahon.
 
how about doing anything to make powerplay better at all? 52 weeks and the system basically hasn't had any major improvements at all.
 
The OP is suggesting reduced merits for people fortifying CCs that are already over 100% fortified. That's not about making decisions for people or removing their free will, it's about making sure that a power's resources aren't        down the nearest toilet by 5th columnists who just want to grind for a big gun or a fancy shield and do nothing useful for the power.

I say give people zero merits for any wasted PP resources delivered. They would still have a free choice from all the other unfortified CCs and there would be nothing within the game to concentrate their efforts any more than there is now. But at least the power would be getting some useful return on all the wages that they pay out.

If people join a power because they are interested in PP then this would just be a gentle nudge to help them not waste their own time. If people join a power purely for the special upgrades then who cares if they are made to travel a bit further to get their reward? Even flowers don't give away nectar for free.
 
The OP is suggesting reduced merits for people fortifying CCs that are already over 100% fortified. That's not about making decisions for people or removing their free will, it's about making sure that a power's resources aren't        down the nearest toilet by 5th columnists who just want to grind for a big gun or a fancy shield and do nothing useful for the power.

I say give people zero merits for any wasted PP resources delivered. They would still have a free choice from all the other unfortified CCs and there would be nothing within the game to concentrate their efforts any more than there is now. But at least the power would be getting some useful return on all the wages that they pay out.

If people join a power because they are interested in PP then this would just be a gentle nudge to help them not waste their own time. If people join a power purely for the special upgrades then who cares if they are made to travel a bit further to get their reward? Even flowers don't give away nectar for free.

I don't know how to explain this any better. All this will do is make the very same people who are currently dumping hundreds of thousands of merits into fortifying the closest control system dump the same merits into preparing systems that are as close to a control system as possible without being exploited. You think it's bad when those players are fortifying, wait until they prepare crap week after week.

For Hudson they'd probably prepare something like Luyten 145-141. That's 15.02 light years from Sol, will cost Hudson 31 CC every cycle and contest systems inside Winters - their only ally. That's only the first one though. There are literally hundreds of systems just like that inside Hudson space less than 20 light years from a Hudson control system.

For ALD they would probably go for something like Adan. That's 15.42 light years from Khamadhenu and would cost ALD 65 CC every single cycle. Just like with Hudson, this would only be the first of such systems. While ALD has fewer of them in her space, there are still quite literally hundreds of them.

Now, maybe that is what you want to see in PowerPlay - complete and utter chaos because preparations cannot be wasted. Sure, you and I may think they're being wasted, but to PowerPlay there's no waste in it because it's a competition with ten participants. The game simply looks at it and concludes that ALD/Hudson won the preparation game with 100,000+ merits more than any other participant.

Personally, that's not the kind of game I want to see PowerPlay devolve into.
 
I say give people zero merits for any wasted PP resources delivered. They would still have a free choice from all the other unfortified CCs and there would be nothing within the game to concentrate their efforts any more than there is now. But at least the power would be getting some useful return on all the wages that they pay out.

What Martin said above. And another example: imagine my power wants to end in turmoil this cycle, or else doesn't want too large a CC surplus. We fortify just a percentage of systems (probably the profitable ones) and then stop. Any CMDRs who still need to shift materials for their weekly ranking can just over-fortify a system already at 100%. If those don't count, many will move to unfortified ones and screw up our strategy. This is already a potential problem - well intentioned CMDRs who don't read or don't know about the player groups for their power - but it would get worse under your system.

This response and the one from Martin Schou above may seem unduly negative. I don't blame you (and many other posters) for trying to come up with ways to make PP better - lord knows I've been through that stage myself. It's just that the groups based around the sub-reddits have discovered, or developed, lots of quirks that mean PP isn't as straightforward as it first seems. Controlled Turmoil, self-Undermining, trying to provoke enemies to do what you want, merit bombs, weaponised expansions and so on.
 
From all your replies I can see that the mechanics are just basically horribly flawed and doomed to forever linger in this pointless cycle of grindy meaninglessness. It's bad to the bone so to speak.... Unless that is if Frontier some day chooses to do a complete thorough PP overhaul. I'll return to PP in a few years to see if it happened....
 
What Martin said above. And another example: imagine my power wants to end in turmoil this cycle, or else doesn't want too large a CC surplus. We fortify just a percentage of systems (probably the profitable ones) and then stop. Any CMDRs who still need to shift materials for their weekly ranking can just over-fortify a system already at 100%. If those don't count, many will move to unfortified ones and screw up our strategy. This is already a potential problem - well intentioned CMDRs who don't read or don't know about the player groups for their power - but it would get worse under your system.

This response and the one from Martin Schou above may seem unduly negative. I don't blame you (and many other posters) for trying to come up with ways to make PP better - lord knows I've been through that stage myself. It's just that the groups based around the sub-reddits have discovered, or developed, lots of quirks that mean PP isn't as straightforward as it first seems. Controlled Turmoil, self-Undermining, trying to provoke enemies to do what you want, merit bombs, weaponised expansions and so on.

Agree.
Forcing players to play the way you want through game mechanics and rules is not productive. Instead of getting thoughtful players to your cause, you get robots.
Communicating to players privately and in public using valid and persuasive arguments that certain actions at the right time will produce the result your player group desires is preferable to authoritarian rule.

-Pv-
 
I fear the day that over-fortifying a system stops (or slows) giving merits. Those people fortifying to thousands of % over the triggers are simply looking for the fastest, laziest way to make their 50,000,000 salary and go. If fortification supplies stop being the easiest way, then it'll be preparation merits, or if preparations stop being easy it'll be fortifying more systems than is good for a power and driving CC up too high.

If mechanics are added which limit player actions based on what's "bad" or "good" then the Powers lose a lot of freedom of action. Powers prepare "bad" loss-making expansions in hostile territory all the time. They also prepare "bad" systems in the interests of player groups, or to close holes that other powers could choose to weaponize against them.

With freedom of choice comes freedom to fail. It's important to give players a chance to make bad strategies, because then the good ones may shine through.
 
It seems that this is one of the first things that everyone which plays PowerPlay says when they first star playing. I did too. There really should be incentives for playing more correctly.

It's really common sense. If I was a power, I wouldn't want my agents miss-allocating resources. If they did it, I'd fire them or if others of my people were dying because their behavior, I'd call them the enemy.

For that reason, there should probably also be penalties for resource miss-allocation.

This is probably one of the very first (but definitely not the only) reasons PowerPlay needs work.

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Here's an idea: You should earn the materials required for drive enhancements when you fly longer distances to deliver NEEDED garrison supplies!
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I fear the day that over-fortifying a system stops (or slows) giving merits. Those people fortifying to thousands of % over the triggers are simply looking for the fastest, laziest way to make their 50,000,000 salary and go. If fortification supplies stop being the easiest way, then it'll be preparation merits, or if preparations stop being easy it'll be fortifying more systems than is good for a power and driving CC up too high.

If mechanics are added which limit player actions based on what's "bad" or "good" then the Powers lose a lot of freedom of action. Powers prepare "bad" loss-making expansions in hostile territory all the time. They also prepare "bad" systems in the interests of player groups, or to close holes that other powers could choose to weaponize against them.

With freedom of choice comes freedom to fail. It's important to give players a chance to make bad strategies, because then the good ones may shine through.

I understand what you're saying, but the is defeatist thinking. I believe if the right, common sense, incentives are put in the right places, it can work well.
 
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If mechanics are added which limit player actions based on what's "bad" or "good" then the Powers lose a lot of freedom of action. Powers prepare "bad" loss-making expansions in hostile territory all the time. They also prepare "bad" systems in the interests of player groups, or to close holes that other powers could choose to weaponize against them.
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With freedom of choice comes freedom to fail. It's important to give players a chance to make bad strategies, because then the good ones may shine through.

I see. And what is the purpose applying bad strategies?
 
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