I posted this on Reddit but I wanted to get opinions from people here as well so here we go
Power is about political power. At the moment once you discover a planet your name gets attached to it. Now Frontier will probably release a system where you also become the landlord if you are able to drop a beacon in orbit or on the planet which takes cargo space so you can t do that to every planet you visit without resupplying. Now if you do this on the other side of the galaxy, the beacon may get destroyed by another player which would then give that other player ownership.
in order to keep the ownership you need to get back to that planet regularly to inspect it. Think of the landlord analogy. If the landlord is never there then nobody pays rent and the building changes owner.
Powerplay will be about making sure people stay online and go back to the planets they really want to keep. Then I can see events where the more times you get back to the planet the more materials you can drop on the surface to create an outpost (using drones to launch/drop materials on the surface)...which can also be destroyed by other players/bandits. Over time if you protect your planet from space you can get the police to help you as the outpost grows
There are tons of mechanics that could be added to this making it a game of fighting for planets...which would give you income from orbiting stations and land outposts commerce cuts
I think powerplay is going about all this...not pvp, just the ability to own planets and start supplying it with materials doing runs back and forth so you can build stations and outpost at your name and expend the galaxy for mankind.
Can t wait to play that
