Im new to ED and just want to know what exclusive benefits does PP offer to participants? Does it give content that is only available to PP participants?
you get special items offered depending on who you go with but merit decay means you have to spend the rest of your real life in service to them. Also you will be hostile everywhere else in the galaxy and hunted by everyone.
Tie it to the BGS
Select or add a minor faction aligned with the power which will be the proxy for the power in every system that the power currently owns.
Strengthen the BGS interaction mechanics and add power play missions designed to either strengthen the Proxy in the system, weaken enemy proxies or expand the proxy minor faction into other systems.
If the proxy become the main minor faction in the system then the power aligned to that proxy then owns the system.
This will create fronts between the powers that border one another where players will work towards expanding the power.
Add in faction benefits based on the number of systems owned by that faction (such as automatically becoming allied with the proxy minor faction etc..).
Add in power fleets which are NPC fleets that move around the power's borders attempting to strengthen the power's systems.
Add in the possibility for battles between power fleets in systems where the power ownership is contested.
Allow players to join these battles.
Battle ends when the cap ship is destroyed/forced to flee.
Proxies gain or lose influence based on the outcomes of these battles.
Boosh, powerplay is suddenly a winner.
Select or add a minor faction aligned with the power which will be the proxy for the power in every system that the power currently owns.
Strengthen the BGS interaction mechanics and add power play missions designed to either strengthen the Proxy in the system, weaken enemy proxies or expand the proxy minor faction into other systems.
If the proxy become the main minor faction in the system then the power aligned to that proxy then owns the system.
This will create fronts between the powers that border one another where players will work towards expanding the power.
Add in faction benefits based on the number of systems owned by that faction (such as automatically becoming allied with the proxy minor faction etc..).
Add in power fleets which are NPC fleets that move around the power's borders attempting to strengthen the power's systems.
Add in the possibility for battles between power fleets in systems where the power ownership is contested.
Allow players to join these battles.
Battle ends when the cap ship is destroyed/forced to flee.
Proxies gain or lose influence based on the outcomes of these battles.
Boosh, powerplay is suddenly a winner.
I endorse this message!
X-Terminator
Banned
Add Invites from them as we do Engineers and rid the regress and time constraints. Make the PP Military have a role in BGS to have a presence and if pledged then these Military Roles are what we much need like X-Wing Missions that gain access to the BIG non-player buyable Faragut and Capital.
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Don't aks what your power can do for you - ask what you can do for you power! [hehe]
Exclusive Benefits:
- a game-mode where you can work together and compete with other players also participating in powerplay
- you can join a faction on the political map and help it prosper
- once you have been pledged for 4 weeks and did rank up to rank 3 you get access to the powerspecific module. You can keep this module also when you leave the power. It belongs to you after you acquire it.
- once you rank up to rank 4 you can generate a weekly income of 5.000.000 cr with the modest requirement of gaining 750 merits each week to maintain that rank.
Don't listen to people telling you, you will be hostile everywhere. This is not true anymore. Since 2.2.03 powerplay NPC only attack players when they carry powerplay-specific cargo or merit-vouchers from powerplay combat. You can dock everywher you like in the galaxy without negative consequences and also security ships in RES sites are no longer hostile to you if they are from another power - only if you carry those power-commodities or merit-vouchers, mind you.
It is true that there is a rank-decay. If you don't participate in powerplay for a time your rank will degrade. That's the only drawback I can think of. If your intention is to get to rank5 and keep it, you have to be aware that this is a major deed to undertake and needs some dedication. This is not easy to accomplish in a casual way. But anything else should be no problem.
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Things I have noticed after a few days participating in PP for Winters:
What do you want me to do?
In-game, PP faction goals are unclear at best, and confusing at worst: I don't want to have to check yet another comms app to know how best to help. I want to see what needs to be done from in-game kinda like a CG, as a previous poster suggested. There's a lot of info scatter-gunned on the screen, and lots of upsy-downsy figures. It's your campaign for power, woman, not Discord & Reddit's - just tell me what you want to do next!
What the heck is this thing for?
I'm signed up for Winters: There are three 'commodities' that need shifting around the galaxy. One you take from a planet to your HQ, another one goes the other way and one is between different systems and they all have an almost identical name. Also, they seem a bit expensive, considering they're propaganda or aid packages or whatever. CR100,000 for ten (if you want to hurry production) - they'd better be worth my while. Oh, I get CR1,000 for moving them around? How disappointing.
Why don't you like me any more?
I've tried doing things for you, and you've thanked me by giving me a few credits (barely enough to cover the fuel) and I've helped you become more influential. You're welcome. Oh, by the way I checked my status and over the last few hours about 30% of the "merit" I have earned has disappeared. I'm afraid I don't have time to check in every half an hour to tickle your ego, so a bit more persistence in your gratitude would be lovely, thanks.
Am I supposed to shoot them?
When I go into a hostile system, do I shoot folk to Undermine their efforts - is that what Undermining is, and if so, why isn't it like a Bounty Hunting mission? What happens if I do shoot opponent's ships? Do I get a bounty, or do they just send some burly cannon fodder in Vipers to try and interdict me a bit more often? If I don't really understand what I'm doing with these expensive but valueless packages of yours, so doing it in "Hostile" systems is even more confusing.
Solve those little riddles, and life would be much easier!
I like your angle, Talia - sorry, Felicia (+1 Rep for spotting the reference). I kept my pledge, but I quickly got bored with the complex vagueness of fortifying, transporting similar-sounding things and undermining; so I've popped over to Rahu (hostile territory!) to do the CG instead. See you next week (if I can be bothered), by which time I'll probably have zero merit again...
As if to really rub in the pointlessness of it all, we're having to wait until 2.3 goes live for the forgotten Winters decal - even FDev don't really care about PP, so how are we supposed to get enthused?
What do you want me to do?
In-game, PP faction goals are unclear at best, and confusing at worst: I don't want to have to check yet another comms app to know how best to help. I want to see what needs to be done from in-game kinda like a CG, as a previous poster suggested. There's a lot of info scatter-gunned on the screen, and lots of upsy-downsy figures. It's your campaign for power, woman, not Discord & Reddit's - just tell me what you want to do next!
What the heck is this thing for?
I'm signed up for Winters: There are three 'commodities' that need shifting around the galaxy. One you take from a planet to your HQ, another one goes the other way and one is between different systems and they all have an almost identical name. Also, they seem a bit expensive, considering they're propaganda or aid packages or whatever. CR100,000 for ten (if you want to hurry production) - they'd better be worth my while. Oh, I get CR1,000 for moving them around? How disappointing.
Why don't you like me any more?
I've tried doing things for you, and you've thanked me by giving me a few credits (barely enough to cover the fuel) and I've helped you become more influential. You're welcome. Oh, by the way I checked my status and over the last few hours about 30% of the "merit" I have earned has disappeared. I'm afraid I don't have time to check in every half an hour to tickle your ego, so a bit more persistence in your gratitude would be lovely, thanks.
Am I supposed to shoot them?
When I go into a hostile system, do I shoot folk to Undermine their efforts - is that what Undermining is, and if so, why isn't it like a Bounty Hunting mission? What happens if I do shoot opponent's ships? Do I get a bounty, or do they just send some burly cannon fodder in Vipers to try and interdict me a bit more often? If I don't really understand what I'm doing with these expensive but valueless packages of yours, so doing it in "Hostile" systems is even more confusing.
Solve those little riddles, and life would be much easier!
I like your angle, Talia - sorry, Felicia (+1 Rep for spotting the reference). I kept my pledge, but I quickly got bored with the complex vagueness of fortifying, transporting similar-sounding things and undermining; so I've popped over to Rahu (hostile territory!) to do the CG instead. See you next week (if I can be bothered), by which time I'll probably have zero merit again...
As if to really rub in the pointlessness of it all, we're having to wait until 2.3 goes live for the forgotten Winters decal - even FDev don't really care about PP, so how are we supposed to get enthused?
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You're absolutely right. PowerPlay would be far more interesting, if Frontier put someone in charge of each PowerPlay character and their strategies. In lieu of that, it would be far better if we were allowed to submit news stories in game that talked about it - we're not, because in order to do that, we have to ascribe actions, designs and desires to the characters. Instead we have to describe it as past events (good luck coaching a team, when you're only allowed to see the score after a match), which is completely useless for organizing anything.
I (being one of the reddit organizers for Mahon) tried submitting local news articles to Gateway only, describing what we were wanting people to do. Not "fortify Ao Kond", but things like "we are predicting heavy traffic in X as Mahon's diplomats are engaged in trade negotiations with Y, and local governments have asked independent contractors to help with transport" Take a wild guess at how many times those were accepted.
Frontier have dropped the ball on PowerPlay in a lot of ways, and organization is just one of them.
I don't know the precise workings of PP but it does appear a bit confused between what it is trying to do and how people are seeing it play out.
A few suggestions on what I think might help re-align PP to be a political overlay of the galaxy.
1) Have everyone consciously choose a starting faction that will influence their starting position in the galaxy. This would both make factions personal to commanders, hopefully resulting in more buy-in to the concept of PP. If a player so chooses, they can also include 'no faction' which would result excusing themselves from PP.
2) Have a dedicated / separate PP mission board, akin to your PP handler in the station that you are docked in.
3) Reduce / stop the faction merit depreciation. As has been said, it is demoralising that your hardwork dissipates so quickly. You have put x hours into a particular faction so this should be recognised.
4) On the subject of ranks, I would turn this on it's head and have ranking instead have the rank dependent on how many merits you have accumulated as a percentage of the total dedicated to a faction. i.e. if your total merits is in the bottom 0-40% of faction merits, you are rank 1, 41-55%, you are rank 2, etc. The top 5% are rank 5 to signify that they are the biggest contributors. This would cover people who have to spend time away from the game for whatever reason not losing out completely.
5) I would have each faction controlled by a real life Frontier Human being. I would give them two main roles.
- 5a) I would give them the ability to set Faction PP community goals specific to the faction
- 5b) I would give them the ability to denote which factions they were openly allied with, neutral against or in conflict with.
6) I would introduce somewhere on the HUD, some form of visual indicator whether a target ship, Player or NPC was Allied, Neutral or Enemy and positively reward players PP merits for killing players in Enemy factions. (Nothing for neutral players and negative connotations for killing allied players)
7) I would include in GAL-NET, a regular feature on any significant PP moves carried out (Community goals achieved etc. ) - i.e. remind people why PP matters
8) I would make PP merits for Open play only. (but that is a personal take on the whole Solo / Open thing)
I think that changes such as this would potentially breath a political heartbeat
A few suggestions on what I think might help re-align PP to be a political overlay of the galaxy.
1) Have everyone consciously choose a starting faction that will influence their starting position in the galaxy. This would both make factions personal to commanders, hopefully resulting in more buy-in to the concept of PP. If a player so chooses, they can also include 'no faction' which would result excusing themselves from PP.
2) Have a dedicated / separate PP mission board, akin to your PP handler in the station that you are docked in.
3) Reduce / stop the faction merit depreciation. As has been said, it is demoralising that your hardwork dissipates so quickly. You have put x hours into a particular faction so this should be recognised.
4) On the subject of ranks, I would turn this on it's head and have ranking instead have the rank dependent on how many merits you have accumulated as a percentage of the total dedicated to a faction. i.e. if your total merits is in the bottom 0-40% of faction merits, you are rank 1, 41-55%, you are rank 2, etc. The top 5% are rank 5 to signify that they are the biggest contributors. This would cover people who have to spend time away from the game for whatever reason not losing out completely.
5) I would have each faction controlled by a real life Frontier Human being. I would give them two main roles.
- 5a) I would give them the ability to set Faction PP community goals specific to the faction
- 5b) I would give them the ability to denote which factions they were openly allied with, neutral against or in conflict with.
6) I would introduce somewhere on the HUD, some form of visual indicator whether a target ship, Player or NPC was Allied, Neutral or Enemy and positively reward players PP merits for killing players in Enemy factions. (Nothing for neutral players and negative connotations for killing allied players)
7) I would include in GAL-NET, a regular feature on any significant PP moves carried out (Community goals achieved etc. ) - i.e. remind people why PP matters
8) I would make PP merits for Open play only. (but that is a personal take on the whole Solo / Open thing)
I think that changes such as this would potentially breath a political heartbeat
All great ideas, Snowy - this would really help PP make more sense.
The idea for a specific PP "mission board" and CGs would really help current PP-agnostics into the 'deeper' game. There's always complaints that ED is pretty shallow (hands up - I'm guilty of that complaint, too) and PP seems like a great opportunity to make the backstory come alive.
PP CGs might be anything from fortifying control systems to trucking in supplies so that a station started stocking a particular ship or module.
Clarity is essential in getting people involved, and faffing about with valueless mystery commodities is a real stumbling block - especially when there's plenty of extant commodities that could make or break political influence (just look at how oil and/or gold affects our world). Instead of moving "Political Influence Token No. 3" from Point A to Point B, why not say "Our campaigners on Lave need some extra cash for bribes and material for posters - take gold and polymers to Chern Terminal". Easy - people understand what's going on then!
Choosing a faction when starting a 'character' is also a great idea. Perhaps factions could have minor but tangible benefits for the PP-aligned players? Better trade margins for certain commodities, cheaper modules of a specific type, navigation data shared (without having to buy from UC)... there are lots of minor benefits that could influence a decision - they would need careful balancing (or pseudo-random allocation) so that there isn't too much bias towards one particular faction.
The only thing I don't agree with, as an exclusively Solo player, is point 8... Elite's always been a single player game for me over the last 30 years: I've got a busy work, social and wife-life, and I really don't need any more social interaction when I'm pretending to be a spaceman, thanks!
All great ideas, Snowy - this would really help PP make more sense.
The only thing I don't agree with, as an exclusively Solo player, is point 8... Elite's always been a single player game for me over the last 30 years: I've got a busy work, social and wife-life, and I really don't need any more social interaction when I'm pretending to be a spaceman, thanks!
Yeah, that was a cheeky one that I threw in. I am not precious either way on it.
I did think of another one...
9) Have PP merit rewards reverse scale in line the number of members of each faction. If there are a lot of commanders aligned with one particular faction, then rewards per mission taken go down proportionately. This should help counter the 'steam roller' effect whereby certain factions could sweep up the player base as they became dominant. Factions with proportionately low numbers will be potentially more attractive as the same mission / mission type will reward more merits.
Did the consolidation changes not make it more fun?
Really jazzed it it up eh!
Whose stupid idea was it to remove any sort of chance of inter-power conflict anyway?
Really jazzed it it up eh!
Whose stupid idea was it to remove any sort of chance of inter-power conflict anyway?
Did the consolidation changes not make it more fun?
Really jazzed it it up eh!
Whose stupid idea was it to remove any sort of chance of inter-power conflict anyway?
yes Consolidation has killed alot of the strategy.. unfortunately..
Its now more predictable, and over fortifying is the new strategy...
Removal of systems remains the same..
No sabotaging Powers..
The game is simply a Land Grab now!! who has the most CC and fortifies extra every week remains on the top
Panticus
Banned
How would I revive PowerPants - do you mean in the same way that one might attempt to revive a corpse?
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The game is not what it was... and in Truth has Taken a Step backwards
Imagine playing Red Alert Command and Conquer, without seeing a opponents forces , and never being able to destroy any Structure once it was built
That is in essence what powerplay has become!!
Until you are able to either see your opponent and take preventative measures to stop advancement...
.. It might as well be called Paperplay or better still Waterplay
"Lets see who can fill the most buckets with Water"
Theres no skill factor in this game!! and next to no Strategy now the Buckets are nearly all FULL
Lets Add a CG into POWERPLAY.. yea a Bigger Bucket to fill!!
NO SKILL INVOLVED!! NOT ENOUGH STRATEGY ELEMENTS
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Did the consolidation changes not make it more fun?
Really jazzed it it up eh!
Whose stupid idea was it to remove any sort of chance of inter-power conflict anyway?
Consolidation got rid of massively organized sabotage. It wasn't about making things more fun, it was about getting rid of a flat out stupid situation where powers will bankrupt themselves through sabotage.
Oh, I know the answer. Just waiting for you to swallow the bait.
Forget the sabotage. What it really did was expose the futility of Powerplay. It was the bullet that made the dead horse jerk. Right now, without those flaws, without opposition, it has even less appeal. 0 drama. Now I'm guessing, but proactive players must be at an all time low.
PP reddits are pretty telling. Post counts and activity seems to have hit the deck.
I'm slow clapping you Vectron. Slow clapping.