This is part of a series of proposals to improve PowerPlay in various ways. The goal is to make PowerPlay a more interesting, dynamic, and rewarding experience, without needing to scrap the whole thing and rebuild from the ground up - evolution rather than revolution. Each proposal is intended to be relatively straightforward to implement (though of course we have no special insight into the specifics of the Elite codebase), and most of them (except where mentioned) stand alone and do not need a lot of other changes to make them work.
Please limit discussions to the specific topic at hand - pros, cons, tweaks, etc. If you have alternative proposals, by all means make a separate topic! The parent thread for this series is here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...out-incrementally-improving-powerplay.551571/ Although the authors are Winters/FLC commanders, these proposals have been made and discussed by pilots from many Powers.
Make it treason to prep loss-making systems
Delivering preparations to a system where (income-upkeep-overhead) is negative does not reward merits, it removes them. This makes 5th-Column preparation very difficult, but still allows weaponised expansions with considerable coordinated effort.
Discussion:
5th-Column preparation of loss-making systems is a blight on all Powers in PowerPlay, and it is fueled by a few Commanders using unfair in-game multipliers to attack powers from within. This proposal makes it far more costly for them to prepare loss-making systems every cycle, by forcing them to earn back the merits in other ways, slowing them down considerably. This proposal will also deter the many "merit farmers" who do not care if a prep target is good for the Power or not - they simply want to earn 5000 merits a cycle to collect their salary, and will do so by preparing the nearest open system, even if it it s terrible one.
This change does not actually make it impossible to prepare loss-making systems, such as weaponised systems, which are a valid and important part of PowerPlay. If a large and determined force (i.e. the main body of Commanders flying for the Power) wishes to prepare a weaponised loss-making system, they can still do so, since the merit damage of the preparation is spread out amongst many of them, and typically they will earn the merits back very quickly by doing other PowerPlay activities. In practice this should have a relatively minor effect on true PowerPlay activities.
This is not a perfect solution to the 5C and merit-farmer problem, but it is still relatively simple to implement and should help considerably.
Open question: Rather than count simple (income-upkeep-overhead), it could also include “income” from systems contested with enemy powers, i.e. removing income from another Power counts as a good thing (which is after all the point of a weapon). If this higher number is positive, treason does not apply. For example, if the system would cost -20 CC for the Power, but would also cost an enemy Power -35 CC, then the net "weapon cost" is calculated as +15 CC and preparing the system does NOT incur the treason penalty. This allows weaponised attacks, but still penalizes the current 5C favourite choice of systems that are heavily self-contested and do not attack another Power.
Open question: One possible variant is to say it is not treason - it is simply impossible - the prep cargo simply cannot be delivered (in the same way that you simply cannot prepare a system which would cost more CC than the power currently has, e.g. trying to prepare Colonia or Maia). However, this would remove the valid and interesting gameplay options of weaponised systems that Powers use to attack each other, and would make the game considerably less interesting.
Open question: Another variant of it is that if (income-upkeep-overhead) is within a range such as -20 CC to +20 CC, then rather than declaring treason, no merits are awarded or removed for delivery of preps. This makes "mild weapon" attacks more viable, but again avoids attracting merit-farmers (since they get no benefit from preparing these systems), and mitigates the damage that 5th Column can do. If the system has net income lower than -20 CC then treason would apply, and merits would be deducted for preparation, as above.
Open question: Another variant - preparation earns no merits for any system. This fixes the "merit farmer" problem, although not the 5C one, but on the other hand has almost no real problems associated with it. This would be a small fix, but a safe one.
Please limit discussions to the specific topic at hand - pros, cons, tweaks, etc. If you have alternative proposals, by all means make a separate topic! The parent thread for this series is here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...out-incrementally-improving-powerplay.551571/ Although the authors are Winters/FLC commanders, these proposals have been made and discussed by pilots from many Powers.
Make it treason to prep loss-making systems
Delivering preparations to a system where (income-upkeep-overhead) is negative does not reward merits, it removes them. This makes 5th-Column preparation very difficult, but still allows weaponised expansions with considerable coordinated effort.
Discussion:
5th-Column preparation of loss-making systems is a blight on all Powers in PowerPlay, and it is fueled by a few Commanders using unfair in-game multipliers to attack powers from within. This proposal makes it far more costly for them to prepare loss-making systems every cycle, by forcing them to earn back the merits in other ways, slowing them down considerably. This proposal will also deter the many "merit farmers" who do not care if a prep target is good for the Power or not - they simply want to earn 5000 merits a cycle to collect their salary, and will do so by preparing the nearest open system, even if it it s terrible one.
This change does not actually make it impossible to prepare loss-making systems, such as weaponised systems, which are a valid and important part of PowerPlay. If a large and determined force (i.e. the main body of Commanders flying for the Power) wishes to prepare a weaponised loss-making system, they can still do so, since the merit damage of the preparation is spread out amongst many of them, and typically they will earn the merits back very quickly by doing other PowerPlay activities. In practice this should have a relatively minor effect on true PowerPlay activities.
This is not a perfect solution to the 5C and merit-farmer problem, but it is still relatively simple to implement and should help considerably.
Open question: Rather than count simple (income-upkeep-overhead), it could also include “income” from systems contested with enemy powers, i.e. removing income from another Power counts as a good thing (which is after all the point of a weapon). If this higher number is positive, treason does not apply. For example, if the system would cost -20 CC for the Power, but would also cost an enemy Power -35 CC, then the net "weapon cost" is calculated as +15 CC and preparing the system does NOT incur the treason penalty. This allows weaponised attacks, but still penalizes the current 5C favourite choice of systems that are heavily self-contested and do not attack another Power.
Open question: One possible variant is to say it is not treason - it is simply impossible - the prep cargo simply cannot be delivered (in the same way that you simply cannot prepare a system which would cost more CC than the power currently has, e.g. trying to prepare Colonia or Maia). However, this would remove the valid and interesting gameplay options of weaponised systems that Powers use to attack each other, and would make the game considerably less interesting.
Open question: Another variant of it is that if (income-upkeep-overhead) is within a range such as -20 CC to +20 CC, then rather than declaring treason, no merits are awarded or removed for delivery of preps. This makes "mild weapon" attacks more viable, but again avoids attracting merit-farmers (since they get no benefit from preparing these systems), and mitigates the damage that 5th Column can do. If the system has net income lower than -20 CC then treason would apply, and merits would be deducted for preparation, as above.
Open question: Another variant - preparation earns no merits for any system. This fixes the "merit farmer" problem, although not the 5C one, but on the other hand has almost no real problems associated with it. This would be a small fix, but a safe one.
