How much decay?

[DemiserofD]

FDev simply has a knack for doing everything wrong it can to achieve what it wants. Unless the goal is to increasingly alienate the otherwise very patient ED PP players. At first, we only hated the 35% penalty, which at least allowed us to extrapolate the merits to the actual CP. Now we also have a direct deduction from the merits, which makes it impossible for most players to receive anything other than a fantasy amount of merit that no longer aligns with their CP. Then there's the decay, which tells us in even more empathetic, blunt terms that FDev isn't happy with how we're playing the game.

Does the fault lie with us, the players, because we don't want to understand how FDev wants us to play the game, or does it lie with FDev because they apparently don't understand where they should actually apply the lever?

Those who suffer the most from the decay will likely be the smaller powers that don't have many large groups and who can easily turn a fortified system into a SH within a single cycle. Also left behind are the solo players who simply want to create something for their power but are discouraged to find that the waves of decay barely let them leave the shore.

Perhaps FDev should realize that it would be better to rework the undermining options, if that's where the problem lies, instead of using ole methods to hammer the masses of players who just want to make reinforcements.

A game that increasingly punishes players for playing the game. You don't see that very often.

Although, personally, I can see a use for the decay. It could be used for powers that exceed a certain size. A decay that affects all systems within a certain distance of the headquarters. As a kind of balance, so that the smaller powers can catch up with the larger ones, who would then be significantly affected by this decay.

The fact that the undermining in the game isn't working as intended isn't the only problem with the current PP. It's also the extreme overweighting of the player base on two of the imperial powers, which is becoming more and more apparent with each successive cycle. And sooner or later, we'll need a mechanism that balances the larger and smaller powers.

The current CG also clearly demonstrates this with the number of participants. The imperial overweighting allows any tension to escape from the newly created power CGs right from the start.

The real problem is that nobody really WANTS to undermine, and if you think of it as a competition against every other power, that makes perfect sense.

Think about it this way; imagine undermining could let you take away 5 enemy systems for the effort it would take you to earn one. You have essentially given up gaining one system(so you're at -1) and caused 5 other powers to also lose a system, and be at -1. But the other 5 are at +1. So on average, you are actually 1 behind, because all powers are at an average of zero, while you're at -1.

And getting 5 enemy systems for the cost of one system is a very optimistic view. In practice, undermining will usually be resisted, and then both sides are losing, for no particular benefit.

So while yeah, they do totally need better undermining options, but it's far more than that. There would need to be a compelling REASON to undermine in the first place.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Does the fault lie with us, the players, because we don't want to understand how FDev wants us to play the game, or does it lie with FDev because they apparently don't understand where they should actually apply the lever?

Certainly none of the changes they've made so far have made any difference at all to the undermining:reinforcement ratios ... except for the one where for unrelated reasons they disabled the only remaining semi-effective undermining option, of course.

I think the incentives against undermining are so stacked up across every aspect of Powerplay design that it'll take more than one major change to get things moving again, but so far they do seem to be doing everything they can to only do the ineffective stuff, and even that extremely timidly.

The fact that the undermining in the game isn't working as intended isn't the only problem with the current PP. It's also the extreme overweighting of the player base on two of the imperial powers, which is becoming more and more apparent with each successive cycle. And sooner or later, we'll need a mechanism that balances the larger and smaller powers.

I think it's certainly the case that we can either have meaningful undermining options or we can have all twelve existing Powers survive.

The current CG also clearly demonstrates this with the number of participants. The imperial overweighting allows any tension to escape from the newly created power CGs right from the start.

Though the Power participant weighting hasn't changed significantly since the Archer vs Patreus CG which was an easy win for Archer. Kaine and Mahon have similar numbers of pledges but their vs CG was an easy win for Mahon. Grom lost their CG to the smaller Winters by a very substantial margin.

For CGs the preferences of the various unaligned players are often more significant, and this is only the third Fed vs Imp CG in recent years to give an Imperial victory.

 

[Shurimal]

Think about it this way; imagine undermining could let you take away 5 enemy systems for the effort it would take you to earn one. You have essentially given up gaining one system(so you're at -1) and caused 5 other powers to also lose a system, and be at -1. But the other 5 are at +1. So on average, you are actually 1 behind, because all powers are at an average of zero, while you're at -1.

And getting 5 enemy systems for the cost of one system is a very optimistic view. In practice, undermining will usually be resisted, and then both sides are losing, for no particular benefit.

"No country in history has benefitted from prolonged warfare" —Sun Tzu

For CGs the preferences of the various unaligned players are often more significant, and this is only the third Fed vs Imp CG in recent years to give an Imperial victory.

I wonder if it would be better if PP CG-s were exclusive to pledges of the particular powers in conflict? Of course, that would also have balance problems—imagine Aisling vs. Torval CG

 

[sakata_baba]

Kaine and Mahon have similar numbers of pledges but their vs CG was an easy win for Mahon. Grom lost their CG to the smaller Winters by a very substantial margin.

alliance coordination server is de facto mahon server and they are orders of magnitude more organized then kane new base. and grom was dealing with those bombs in fong wang area during the CG.

I think the incentives against undermining are so stacked up across every aspect of Powerplay design

i would correlate it more to basic human psychology where group loyalty with unknown entities is very important for an individual to promote cohesion and the easiest way to do that is preservation of territory. ie, everyone is more eager to err on the side of "protect our space" then "lets get theirs".

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I wonder if it would be better if PP CG-s were exclusive to pledges of the particular powers in conflict? Of course, that would also have balance problems—imagine Aisling vs. Torval CG

At that point - and admittedly we're not far off that already - we have the question of why use a CG at all when there's a technically better progress bar mechanism in Powerplay itself.

alliance coordination server is de facto mahon server and they are orders of magnitude more organized then kane new base. and grom was dealing with those bombs in fong wang area during the CG.

Yes, but none of that is really relevant to the CG results. The Kaine/Mahon CGs had combined participation of around 19,000 players, whereas Kaine has about 500-1000 active players in a normal week and that includes (obviously) the ones below top 25% who are contributing minimally to any Powerplay outcomes. 90% of the participants were neither Mahon nor Kaine supporters, the relative sizes of the specific Power player bases are irrelevant to the CG outcomes.

Just as the CG outcomes are completely irrelevant to Powerplay, of course, except by accident.

Last week's CG saw about 22 million CP of reinforcement for Duval - 15 million in the six CG systems, 7 million outside of them.
In a normal week ... Duval gets about 7 million CP of reinforcement.

That extra 15 million represents players who don't normally participate much in Powerplay, almost certainly aren't under any organised Duval command ... and also collectively outnumber organised Duval Powerplay by at least 2-3x on activity and probably considerably more than that on raw numbers. That's obviously a hard hit for the egos of the Offiical Unofficial Official Power Command Communities but it's also a big opportunity for a more dynamic Powerplay if Frontier can fix their long list of mistakes around Undermining and get that wider groups of players actually contributing to the slider movements. If...

i would correlate it more to basic human psychology where group loyalty with unknown entities is very important for an individual to promote cohesion and the easiest way to do that is preservation of territory. ie, everyone is more eager to err on the side of "protect our space" then "lets get theirs".

Yes. As we saw in the Thargoid War, the vast majority of players viewed a 1-for-1 swap of territory with the Thargoids as a bad deal. Most groups didn't even consider going on the attack until the defensive side was completely locked down and won. Powerplay 1 opened with a de facto 10-way truce, not much attacking, and therefore ALD and Hudson rapidly running into the fatal end of the overheads curve at top speed. Major conflicts between BGS groups of comparable sizes are rare enough to be newsworthy events.

Any competitive environment in Elite Dangerous needs to some extent to try to overcome that tendency to turtle, to never start fights you're unsure of winning, sign 12-way peace treaties, and so on. Absolutely. Frontier should very definitely know this, but...

...but Powerplay 2 goes a lot further than that to disincentivise Undermining. Some of these incentives don't matter to the Organised Power Communities. But those do matter a lot to the much greater group of casual Powerplayers who could really be shaking things up (though not in any particular direction) if Frontier actually designed the game that way.

• You only get to use most of your Power bonuses when in your own Power's space, so you're incentivised to stay within it and/or pick a power which already covers your existing home system.
• Reinforcement actions are profitable other than in merits, mostly legal, and often use existing gameplay: that is, they're something that someone pledged and playing the game might do anyway and therefore reinforce systems just by hanging around. Undermining actions are generally only paid in merits, often actively costly in non-Powerplay currencies, often illegal and even without notoriety (and some of them still give notoriety too...) therefore interact badly with the Punishment system.
• Even where Undermining actions are identical in form to the equivalent Reinforcement action, System Strength Penalty makes them less effective on a 1-for-1 basis. Where they're not identical in form, the Undermining equivalent often also has a worse CP/hour rate, and in some cases there isn't an Undermining equivalent at all.
• As DemiserofD notes above, you don't actually benefit in any way from another Power having fewer systems than it previously did. There were before and now are indefinitely more with Colonisation more than enough uncontested and largely uncontestable empty systems which Powers can cheaply expand into forever without the need for a fight. The only reason to attack is pure bloodlust and ED players don't tend to have that.
• A lot of powers also barely benefit from having more systems than they currently do. There's no actual reward for being #1 on the leaderboard, most personal Power bonuses don't get more effective just because your Power is larger. So using those bonuses (and therefore reinforcing the systems you use them in) looks more attractive than even uncontested Acquisitions.

This is a long list of problems, and really not ones that should have come as a surprise.

I think Frontier ultimately have three effective choices.

1. Take bold and wide-reaching action to rebalance Undermining and Reinforcement not just on merits/hour but also on the deliberate vs accidental axis. Add ship scans, bounty hunting, exploration/exobio, rares and profitable trade to the list of Undermining actions, then multiply the control point awards for all the existing Undermining actions by at least 5x (it might need more). Make Undermining directly and massively beneficial to the power doing the Undermining, not just to the individuals involved (e.g. by making successfully undermined systems defect to their attacker without needing to be acquired). Stop messing around with +15% this and -10% that when facing a near-2000% ratio in favour of reinforcement.
2. Give up. Accept that what Frontier can be comfortable developing and what a lot of players secretly want is a 12-way cooperative mechanism. Remove player Undermining and inter-power hostility states entirely, expand Decay so that it can change system states, recast the whole thing as a battle between the followers of humanity's greatest leaders (we're doomed, aren't we...) and some external threat.
3. Give up and save the rethink for Powerplay 3 in 2035. Revert the recent changes including Decay, let Powerplay 2 be a mostly-non-competitive contest to see who can sprawl into the new colonies faster. Focus on some other features which are more suited to the things they can do well.

 

[Rebel Yell]

FDev simply has a knack for doing everything wrong it can to achieve what it wants. Unless the goal is to increasingly alienate the otherwise very patient ED PP players. At first, we only hated the 35% penalty, which at least allowed us to extrapolate the merits to the actual CP. Now we also have a direct deduction from the merits, which makes it impossible for most players to receive anything other than a fantasy amount of merit that no longer aligns with their CP. Then there's the decay, which tells us in even more empathetic, blunt terms that FDev isn't happy with how we're playing the game.

Does the fault lie with us, the players, because we don't want to understand how FDev wants us to play the game, or does it lie with FDev because they apparently don't understand where they should actually apply the lever?

Those who suffer the most from the decay will likely be the smaller powers that don't have many large groups and who can easily turn a fortified system into a SH within a single cycle. Also left behind are the solo players who simply want to create something for their power but are discouraged to find that the waves of decay barely let them leave the shore.

Perhaps FDev should realize that it would be better to rework the undermining options, if that's where the problem lies, instead of using ole methods to hammer the masses of players who just want to make reinforcements.

A game that increasingly punishes players for playing the game. You don't see that very often.

Although, personally, I can see a use for the decay. It could be used for powers that exceed a certain size. A decay that affects all systems within a certain distance of the headquarters. As a kind of balance, so that the smaller powers can catch up with the larger ones, who would then be significantly affected by this decay.

The fact that the undermining in the game isn't working as intended isn't the only problem with the current PP. It's also the extreme overweighting of the player base on two of the imperial powers, which is becoming more and more apparent with each successive cycle. And sooner or later, we'll need a mechanism that balances the larger and smaller powers.

The current CG also clearly demonstrates this with the number of participants. The imperial overweighting allows any tension to escape from the newly created power CGs right from the start.

I agree with some (almost all) the above points... as we have written, rewritten and written again in our "reports", PP2 requires still some hard work on the balance side and the current combination of powerplay ethos + pledge R100 perks + system specific situations it is not definitively smoothing it (there are just too many "outliers"). Undermining (combat related) is totally unefficient, not going into specific situations concerning our power, but this is not definitively the "PP2 we were expecting to see"... CGs offer some "choke points" that's true, but we can't rely on CGs for the "flow" fun.

 

[Rebel Yell]

1. Take bold and wide-reaching action to rebalance Undermining and Reinforcement not just on merits/hour but also on the deliberate vs accidental axis. Add ship scans, bounty hunting, exploration/exobio, rares and profitable trade to the list of Undermining actions, then multiply the control point awards for all the existing Undermining actions by at least 5x (it might need more). Make Undermining directly and massively beneficial to the power doing the Undermining, not just to the individuals involved (e.g. by making successfully undermined systems defect to their attacker without needing to be acquired). Stop messing around with +15% this and -10% that when facing a near-2000% ratio in favour of reinforcement.

This!

 

[PilotB]

I think Frontier ultimately have three effective choices.

I don't think any of these really fix the issue. There's reasons why undermining is less popular and if they don't get adressed then it'll still be hard. Boosting undermining 2000% is a bandaid.

They need a rework of the crime system but that's a huge task it's not going to happen so I suggest that they need to use the mission system.

Add your powerplay contact to the mission board. Ensure all missions reward CP and merits all the time but the powerplay contact has better powerplay rewards. Add more chain missions with scaling rewards. If someone starts out reinforcing they'll then get offered a mission to go do some undermining. Impact BOTH systems with the missions so that it's not undermining OR reinforcement. Bias the long range mission targets towards a smaller set of systems per week to passively encourage the players to congregate so that even uncoordinated work isn't just lost to decay and people in open have more chance of encoutering people. You can give out powerplay materials as mission rewards so people can just get into a flow of activity not have to break out go shopping for restricted items and come back.

People need more things of value to do and they need to overcome the natural instinct to turtle. Allowing activities to affect both 1 defensive system and 1 offensive system could possibly help with that.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Boosting undermining 2000% is a bandaid.

Yes. I didn't suggest doing that. I pointed out that since undermining is currently 20:1 (i.e. 2000%) behind, bolder action is needed.

(5x was my multiplier for existing undermining actions, but I think "putting some undermining actions players might want to do" in the mix would be a lot more significant)

They need a rework of the crime system but that's a huge task it's not going to happen so I suggest that they need to use the mission system.

They do, though allowing more legal+profitable undermining activities bypasses the need for that a fair bit.

Add your powerplay contact to the mission board. Ensure all missions reward CP and merits all the time but the powerplay contact has better powerplay rewards. Add more chain missions with scaling rewards. If someone starts out reinforcing they'll then get offered a mission to go do some undermining. Impact BOTH systems with the missions so that it's not undermining OR reinforcement. Bias the long range mission targets towards a smaller set of systems per week to passively encourage the players to congregate so that even uncoordinated work isn't just lost to decay and people in open have more chance of encoutering people. You can give out powerplay materials as mission rewards so people can just get into a flow of activity not have to break out go shopping for restricted items and come back.

Yes, putting more missions and more Powerplay-specific missions into the rotation would be good - if potentially also quite a large change, given how conservative Frontier usually is with changes to the mission system and how long it's taken them to get it to some vague level of balance as it is.

(Making the existing weekly missions mainly be undermining rather than mainly reinforcement, too)

 

[PilotB]

given how conservative Frontier usually is with changes to the mission system and how long it's taken them to get it to some vague level of balance as it is.

Powerplay has already completely ruined any concept of mission balance. Between that the distance increases from the thargoid war and the straight up broken mission instances. They need to do something with them. There is no vague level of balance when you can now expect the game to drop a hostile power defence force elite anaconda into the instance when you drop in to do your threat level 1 harmless recovery mission or decide to make an extra 50k taking out the hostile NPCs from a threat 2 courier run and surprise wing of elite power defence force.

Can you do the missions sure. Are you rewarded at all for the rather large increase in difficulty or warned about it. Not in the slightest. It's one reason to stay in your own territory there missions are easy that anaconda is on your side.

 

[Purrfect]

Yes. I didn't suggest doing that. I pointed out that since undermining is currently 20:1 (i.e. 2000%) behind, bolder action is needed.

(5x was my multiplier for existing undermining actions, but I think "putting some undermining actions players might want to do" in the mix would be a lot more significant)


They do, though allowing more legal+profitable undermining activities bypasses the need for that a fair bit.


Yes, putting more missions and more Powerplay-specific missions into the rotation would be good - if potentially also quite a large change, given how conservative Frontier usually is with changes to the mission system and how long it's taken them to get it to some vague level of balance as it is.

(Making the existing weekly missions mainly be undermining rather than mainly reinforcement, too)

For those of us that have covert and social undermining, it would be good if we could do some of the things that are in the Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944), which has things like:

• go slow
• do "accidental" mix ups
• Clone the identity of a guard, do a crime, and force that cloned identity onto another guard and guide them to a Power NPC to start a ground war between NPCs
• blow up electrical grids (so finally make those boxes on roofs interesting to attack, say do 5 of them without being deaded.
• convince others to do your bidding
• simple acts that inject malicious compounds or substances into mechanisms and operations - they even have this mission type today!

These lend themselves magnificently to ground operations. They already have a basic talking mechanism in the game with mission providers, if they could extend that to foment discord, missions that require NPCs to follow you, or open up areas forbidden to you, etc.

These are well within what the game could already do. It just requires additional missions and a bit of extra mission programming. Make sabotage missions worthwhile as a UM activity, and you'll have a lot of folks doing them.

 

[Purrfect]

And obviously, those could be extended to ground and space combat scenarios:

• Lead a dropship of scavengers to take over a settlement within a time limit
• Eliminate a LOT of scavengers (say 20 or so) from a settlement as a Power raid
• Be the attacking forces on a "attack cargo" raid mission (instead of a defend hostiles raid)
• Attack a low security system into generating Power CZs when in lockdown / civil unrest, so instead of terrorist / pirate USS, there are power CZs as well
• Really up the merits for attacking - in particular - wedding barges, and piracy of private couriers
• Reward piracy and smuggling to black markets with huge merits
• Reward attacking megaships and installations

 

[Rubbernuke]

The core problem is FD using the BGS (a passive, agregated system) and trying to make it overtly confrontational.

I fully understand why they went that way, but on that axis they went waaaaaaaaaaay too far into passive territory.

While you can almost simulate UM at some point you will have to make PP2 explicitly confrontational and that UM becomes non-optional.

Winning must be more than anyone who can cheese rares and expand. Its why I say that expansion /improvement is weighted half as well as UMing a rivals systems and that a power is scored each cycle on what they did. Once a powers standing is based on that, then add rewards scaled on your powers position- is this unfair? Yes. But it should have been this way and not fixed. After that you then add 'mega' UM methods that are drastic (like murder of non PP NPCs) but rapidly break down systems.

Either PP2 is about action and dynamism, or its not. Right now its slowly becoming a collection sim with hobby UM.

 

[Schielman]

I think the reason for a lack of undermining is the existence of colonization and the absence of scarcity in Powerplay.

In PP 1.0, there were a limited number of profitable systems for each power, and having more CC would let powers expand more, so undermining its enemies allowed a power to both deprive and enemy of its resources and freed up valuable systems that the power could then take for itself. Also, because of how CC worked, powers had another offensive action available to them, that being the weaponized expansion. It's not directly related to undermining, but it is a competitive activity that was previously available that no longer is.

In PP 2.0, the removal of CC meant that powers could expand as much as they wanted, but they only expand to systems that already had human populations. This did lead to a significant reduction in undermining, though it did still happen. Most disputes were related to borders between powers and preventing an opposing power's expansion.

Now, not only is there a lack of CC forcing powers to compete over a few valuable systems and limiting how big a power can get, any star system can have a human population, so powers are not even limited by Fdev's previously established limits on the size of the bubble. Of course no one is contesting each other for systems: the number of available systems to be taken is functionally limitless.

Add to this the idea that conflict is actively bad, not on a gameplay level but in opposition to the values of most humans who play the game, and it's not surprising that so little of it happens. Most people support a power because they like it and want to see it prosper. Undermining a power they don't like doesn't help their power grow and thrive. Additionally, there a living, breathing, and thinking humans behind that other power who probably won't like it if their power gets undermined, and may decide to return the favor if they do get undermined. If that happens, then undermining another party has indirectly lead to harm against your own.

Until there is an actual reason for the humans behind each power to undermine each other, it's not going to happen, and I don't think tweaking merit ratios is a sufficient incentive for powers to potentially start wars over. Merits are not, and have never really been, a scarce resource.

 

[Weps]

I think the reason for a lack of undermining is the existence of colonization and the absence of scarcity in Powerplay.

Thank you for this post - I have the exact same thoughts but haven't been able to formulate them so well.

 

[Fedifensor]

I think there are two core issues that should be rethought.

First, the measurement of success needs to change. Grabbing a system with a non-scoopable star and a single ice planet in far orbit is worth as much in the standings as an economic powerhouse system with several Earth-like planets and a population rivaling the capitals. Of course people are going to focus on expansion if quality means nothing and only quantity matters. Totaling up systems controlled without regard to the content of the systems is easy, but shouldn't determine the overall standing of a power. Use population, or some of the new mechanics for payouts to system architects to determine the 'worth' of a system.

Second, there needs to be some sort of link between Superpower (system government) and Power (individual aligned with a government or independent faction). There should be a negative modifier for a Power trying to influence a system under the control of a different Superpower, and a positive modifier when the two are aligned. For example, there are a lot of systems where you have one of the Duvals the controlling Power but the system is Federation, Alliance, or Independent. Give a reason for both Powerplay and the BGS to exist by letting one influence the other. It should be significantly easier for a Power to undermine or reinforce a system with their own type of government. It makes sense that Winters or Archer would get a bonus to undermine a Federation system under control of a non-Federation power. Likewise, it should be easier for Grom to reinforce an Independent system.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

First, the measurement of success needs to change. Grabbing a system with a non-scoopable star and a single ice planet in far orbit is worth as much in the standings as an economic powerhouse system with several Earth-like planets and a population rivaling the capitals. Of course people are going to focus on expansion if quality means nothing and only quantity matters. Totaling up systems controlled without regard to the content of the systems is easy, but shouldn't determine the overall standing of a power. Use population, or some of the new mechanics for payouts to system architects to determine the 'worth' of a system.

If you use population itself, this mainly just gives powers points based on where in the bubble they are (core powers like the Feds and Imps benefit, Kaine and Antal and Delaine out on the fringes drop massively). If you use log(population) - approximately the old Powerplay 1 CC measure - then barely anything changes from just the normal system count, and it's not worth making massive efforts to acquire a billion-pop system if you can grab two million-pop systems elsewhere without a fight. Some sort of "you get a big benefit from controlling this system" award might encourage competition over that system - see also the CG last week being responsible for six times the normal amount of undermining - but even then doesn't encourage fighting in general.

(Note also of course that Power standing itself does nothing, though it's arguable as to whether that's better or worse than "Duval players get another bonus to encourage people to snowball to their Power")

Second, there needs to be some sort of link between Superpower (system government) and Power (individual aligned with a government or independent faction). There should be a negative modifier for a Power trying to influence a system under the control of a different Superpower, and a positive modifier when the two are aligned. For example, there are a lot of systems where you have one of the Duvals the controlling Power but the system is Federation, Alliance, or Independent. Give a reason for both Powerplay and the BGS to exist by letting one influence the other. It should be significantly easier for a Power to undermine or reinforce a system with their own type of government. It makes sense that Winters or Archer would get a bonus to undermine a Federation system under control of a non-Federation power. Likewise, it should be easier for Grom to reinforce an Independent system.

Giving Powers different values for systems is potentially very counter-productive to competition, since it further encourages agreements to split the systems up between groups. It might lead to a bit of shuffling things around but that's all. Sure, you could flip a system, or you could just use one which is already there.
(It does potentially create competition between the Powers and largely unrelated BGS-playing groups, but those groups really hated that last time round)

Also, again very definitely not equal between the Powers. Looking at current control within 200 LY of Sol (the region where inter-power competition might occur anyway)
- Alliance: ~2500 systems
- Federation: ~6500 systems
- Empire: ~6000 systems
- Independent: ~23000 systems (getting on for twice as many as all superpowers put together)
Good for LYR and Grom, terrible for Mahon and Kaine, not as bad as it looks for the Empire because the Empire's BGS space and Power space were fairly well-aligned by Frontier to start with

 

[Rebel Yell]

Second, there needs to be some sort of link between Superpower (system government) and Power (individual aligned with a government or independent faction). There should be a negative modifier for a Power trying to influence a system under the control of a different Superpower, and a positive modifier when the two are aligned. For example, there are a lot of systems where you have one of the Duvals the controlling Power but the system is Federation, Alliance, or Independent. Give a reason for both Powerplay and the BGS to exist by letting one influence the other. It should be significantly easier for a Power to undermine or reinforce a system with their own type of government. It makes sense that Winters or Archer would get a bonus to undermine a Federation system under control of a non-Federation power. Likewise, it should be easier for Grom to reinforce an Independent system.

Superpowers are a legacy from pre-powerplay introduction, and they used to be linked to the ranks / ship unlocks.

The "superpower" framework is totally outdated and it should be completely ripped off from the game.

 

[PilotB]

Superpowers are a legacy from pre-powerplay introduction, and they used to be linked to the ranks / ship unlocks.

Superpowers are still linked to ship unlocks and they absolutely should not be removed. Lots of people really enjoy having the narrative they provide and are fundamental to the world building. Powerplay does not replace that and powerplay should never replace that. Fix powerplay but don't ruin the game further trying to make powerplay work it's already done enough damage even if people opt out.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Superpowers are still linked to ship unlocks and they absolutely should not be removed. Lots of people really enjoy having the narrative they provide and are fundamental to the world building. Powerplay does not replace that and powerplay should never replace that. Fix powerplay but don't ruin the game further trying to make powerplay work it's already done enough damage even if people opt out.

Ship unlocks can be easily moved to powerplay ranks (I wonder why they didn't do that for instance) instead of keeping them linked the legacy superpower ranks (which are clearly redundant). Not considering the annoyance of superpowers "reputation" with is affected by local conflicts (we used to play years with hostile rep with Federation because the bulk of the factions in the BGS wars for PP1 were Fed-aligned), worsened by the current C&P which is again dampening poweplay activities with local factions bounties.

PP2 removed [almost] all connections with BGS, and that decision was a big time saver for poweplayers and some very good news for BGSers... win/win.

Factions can still keep the narrative side (the alignment, etc), that's not an issue, but it is pretty clear that the gameplay side of the framework is obsolete [and somewhat misleading for new players] and truncated by the fact that alliance and independents have no relevance/ranks and/or ship unlocks ofc.