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 weaponised systems easier to undermine
Proposal: The more contested systems in a control system’s 15Ly bubble, the lower the UM trigger is, proportional to the percentage of contested systems as a fraction of the total number. This attempts to make weaponised attacks more effective (by weakening the attacked system’s UM), but also more vulnerable (because the weapon also has low UM triggers). This change is designed to make PowerPlay a more dynamic environment, with more attacks being made, and then either repulsed or pushed forwards. In addition, attacks are easier to withdraw from, making them less risky to perform.
Discussion:
For illustration, this could be done by changing the UM trigger calculation:
UM Trigger = UM Neutral Trigger + Defence Bonus -
((Neutral Trigger / 2) * (Number of Contested Systems / Total Potential Systems))
(the bolded second line is the new proposal).
Thus, if a system had a total of 10 systems inside its 15Ly bubble, and then 8 of them were contested by an enemy power, its UM trigger would be reduced to (100 - ((100/2)*(8/10)) = 60% of its standard neutral trigger, making it almost half as difficult (i.e twice as easy) to undermine.
Combined with the proposal elsewhere of “Turmoil ordering of systems is decided by difference between fort and UM levels”, this makes the systems involved in an attack (both attacker and defender) much easier to turmoil+revolt off a power than other systems at similar distances from HQ.
Currently, launching an “attack” on an enemy power is more about removing income from the power as a whole - it barely has any effect on the specific system being attacked. Although the loss of income is nominally shown as part of that system’s income, that has very little effect on the likelihood of the system being turmoiled and revolted (in fact low-income systems that have been attacked are usually harder to remove from a power). Similarly, the weaponised system is not any more vulnerable to being removed again than any other system (except that weapons are usually done further from HQ). This proposal changes that and encourages more dynamic changes in power boundaries, as it is easier to counter-attack a weaponised push than to push elsewhere in the power.
Open question: Is removing 50% of the UM trigger the right amount? Should it be more or less?
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 weaponised systems easier to undermine
Proposal: The more contested systems in a control system’s 15Ly bubble, the lower the UM trigger is, proportional to the percentage of contested systems as a fraction of the total number. This attempts to make weaponised attacks more effective (by weakening the attacked system’s UM), but also more vulnerable (because the weapon also has low UM triggers). This change is designed to make PowerPlay a more dynamic environment, with more attacks being made, and then either repulsed or pushed forwards. In addition, attacks are easier to withdraw from, making them less risky to perform.
Discussion:
For illustration, this could be done by changing the UM trigger calculation:
UM Trigger = UM Neutral Trigger + Defence Bonus -
((Neutral Trigger / 2) * (Number of Contested Systems / Total Potential Systems))
(the bolded second line is the new proposal).
Thus, if a system had a total of 10 systems inside its 15Ly bubble, and then 8 of them were contested by an enemy power, its UM trigger would be reduced to (100 - ((100/2)*(8/10)) = 60% of its standard neutral trigger, making it almost half as difficult (i.e twice as easy) to undermine.
Combined with the proposal elsewhere of “Turmoil ordering of systems is decided by difference between fort and UM levels”, this makes the systems involved in an attack (both attacker and defender) much easier to turmoil+revolt off a power than other systems at similar distances from HQ.
Currently, launching an “attack” on an enemy power is more about removing income from the power as a whole - it barely has any effect on the specific system being attacked. Although the loss of income is nominally shown as part of that system’s income, that has very little effect on the likelihood of the system being turmoiled and revolted (in fact low-income systems that have been attacked are usually harder to remove from a power). Similarly, the weaponised system is not any more vulnerable to being removed again than any other system (except that weapons are usually done further from HQ). This proposal changes that and encourages more dynamic changes in power boundaries, as it is easier to counter-attack a weaponised push than to push elsewhere in the power.
Open question: Is removing 50% of the UM trigger the right amount? Should it be more or less?
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