Preamble: These suggestions are all based on Felicia Winters (since that’s who I rep) and I apologize if I’m repeating anything that’s been said before, as this is my first time in the Powerplay section of the forum.
A brief introduction, before I start:
I’ve been playing Elite: Dangerous now for about a half a year now and have been allied for about five of those months with Felicia Winters. I joined her faction because I felt her methods and message really connected with the rogue trader/smuggler character I was playing. Unfortunately, after putting in the time and effort to support her for a few months I completely lost interest. I didn’t have much money at the time, so I would often find myself working on projects around my apartment while E: D idled on my computer waiting for the 30 minute timer on deliverables to reset. To me, this seemed like a very silly system and something that needed fixing. To that end, I present the following ideas:
Make Missions Matter (Preparation – Social)
Felicia Winters is all about spreading the good word to prep systems, so why not let our actions speak for themselves? When a CMDR completes a mission in a system that can be prepped, give them the option to forfeit their reward in favor of increasing the prep total for Winters in that system. This would necessitate some credits-to-merits conversion system. Since Propaganda Packages “cost” about 10,000 credits per merit, I suggest a conversion rate somewhere below that, maybe around 12,500 credits per merit, since completing missions can be done fairly easily and quickly in comparison and we don’t want to completely devalue the old method. This should also be limited to missions completed for the current controlling faction, since helping the opposition will likely not endear us much to whoever currently holds power. In addition, make donation missions for the controlling faction automatically award a few merits, since that’s exactly the kind of good works Felicia wants done in her name.
Trading for Fun, Profit, and the Future of the Federation (Expansion and Control – Finance)
Much like my above suggestion for prepping a system, I think CMDRs completing trade missions (of both the “take this here” and “go get this” variety) for a system’s controlling faction should be allowed to forfeit their reward in exchange for merits and increasing the expansion/control total in system. Additionally, I think any trader arriving in system should be allowed to donate their wares in exchange for merits and control. However, due to the essentially infinite nature of trading, a few limitations should be imposed:
While my suggestions are all specific to Ms. Winters, the general principals could easily be expanded to every other faction. And obviously these changes would need some testing time and balancing to find a proper equilibrium with the existing powerplay mechanics. However, I believe that by expanding the options for powerplay achievement, Frontier would greatly increase the number of people participating and enhance the play experience for everyone involved.
A brief introduction, before I start:
I’ve been playing Elite: Dangerous now for about a half a year now and have been allied for about five of those months with Felicia Winters. I joined her faction because I felt her methods and message really connected with the rogue trader/smuggler character I was playing. Unfortunately, after putting in the time and effort to support her for a few months I completely lost interest. I didn’t have much money at the time, so I would often find myself working on projects around my apartment while E: D idled on my computer waiting for the 30 minute timer on deliverables to reset. To me, this seemed like a very silly system and something that needed fixing. To that end, I present the following ideas:
Make Missions Matter (Preparation – Social)
Felicia Winters is all about spreading the good word to prep systems, so why not let our actions speak for themselves? When a CMDR completes a mission in a system that can be prepped, give them the option to forfeit their reward in favor of increasing the prep total for Winters in that system. This would necessitate some credits-to-merits conversion system. Since Propaganda Packages “cost” about 10,000 credits per merit, I suggest a conversion rate somewhere below that, maybe around 12,500 credits per merit, since completing missions can be done fairly easily and quickly in comparison and we don’t want to completely devalue the old method. This should also be limited to missions completed for the current controlling faction, since helping the opposition will likely not endear us much to whoever currently holds power. In addition, make donation missions for the controlling faction automatically award a few merits, since that’s exactly the kind of good works Felicia wants done in her name.
Trading for Fun, Profit, and the Future of the Federation (Expansion and Control – Finance)
Much like my above suggestion for prepping a system, I think CMDRs completing trade missions (of both the “take this here” and “go get this” variety) for a system’s controlling faction should be allowed to forfeit their reward in exchange for merits and increasing the expansion/control total in system. Additionally, I think any trader arriving in system should be allowed to donate their wares in exchange for merits and control. However, due to the essentially infinite nature of trading, a few limitations should be imposed:
- Only legal items can be converted – I find most local governments take a dim view of you selling their people what they don’t want them to have.
- Only items in demand can be converted – If I desperately need a new combine harvester, I’m not going to be very happy when you bring me a pile of cobalt. This would also prevent CMDRs from going straight from rank 1 to rank 5 on the back of 10 tons of rare items from half the galaxy away.
- Conversion will be based on the total sale – In order to keep things fair, we’ll stick to a credits to merit conversion rate, though this rate will be much steeper since trading is so much quicker than a 30 minute timer, perhaps something like 50,000 credits per merit of the total sale.
While my suggestions are all specific to Ms. Winters, the general principals could easily be expanded to every other faction. And obviously these changes would need some testing time and balancing to find a proper equilibrium with the existing powerplay mechanics. However, I believe that by expanding the options for powerplay achievement, Frontier would greatly increase the number of people participating and enhance the play experience for everyone involved.
Last edited: