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.
Reduce ballot-stuffing by tying consolidation votes to activity
Proposed change: Currently 1 consolidation vote is awarded after 4 weeks pledged, and 5 votes after 16 weeks pledged, as long as the player maintains rating 2. This proposal adds another ceiling to the number of votes available, based on the commander’s current rating:
Rating 1 = 0 votes
Rating 2 = 0 votes
Rating 3 = 1 vote.
Rating 4 = 2 votes.
Rating 5 = 5 votes.
Discussion:
There is a problem with 5C commanders using ballot-stuffing to manipulate the consolidation votes of powers. At least one instance of 200 last-minute votes being cast has been observed, or 40 commanders. It is very unlikely that there were 40 humans doing this, and suspicion has moved to a few humans each with lots of accounts. These accounts do not do anything but pledge to a power, maintain rating 2 each week, and wait 16 weeks. The problem is that maintaining rating 2 is very low-effort, so one human can maintain many accounts at once. They can’t really do much with them that you can’t do with a single account, but they CAN cast far more votes than a normal human commander.
This proposal limits the number of votes available proportional to the current rating. Although a 5C commander can of course maintain rating 5 with effort, the effort required to maintain rating 5 every week with more than a few accounts is considerable, and would limit the havoc they can cause.
This proposal would have almost no effect on most “legitimate” members of Powers, since most keen PowerPlayers easily maintain rating 5 on their one and only commander.
Open question: if the number of votes is based on rating, does there still need to be a time-based limit as well? The reason for the time limit was to prevent people who were just module-shoppers from having significant voting power, but it is not clear whether or not the effect of module shoppers was or is significant. However there does not seem to be a compelling reason to remove the time-based limit, other than potential code simplicity.
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.
Reduce ballot-stuffing by tying consolidation votes to activity
Proposed change: Currently 1 consolidation vote is awarded after 4 weeks pledged, and 5 votes after 16 weeks pledged, as long as the player maintains rating 2. This proposal adds another ceiling to the number of votes available, based on the commander’s current rating:
Rating 1 = 0 votes
Rating 2 = 0 votes
Rating 3 = 1 vote.
Rating 4 = 2 votes.
Rating 5 = 5 votes.
Discussion:
There is a problem with 5C commanders using ballot-stuffing to manipulate the consolidation votes of powers. At least one instance of 200 last-minute votes being cast has been observed, or 40 commanders. It is very unlikely that there were 40 humans doing this, and suspicion has moved to a few humans each with lots of accounts. These accounts do not do anything but pledge to a power, maintain rating 2 each week, and wait 16 weeks. The problem is that maintaining rating 2 is very low-effort, so one human can maintain many accounts at once. They can’t really do much with them that you can’t do with a single account, but they CAN cast far more votes than a normal human commander.
This proposal limits the number of votes available proportional to the current rating. Although a 5C commander can of course maintain rating 5 with effort, the effort required to maintain rating 5 every week with more than a few accounts is considerable, and would limit the havoc they can cause.
This proposal would have almost no effect on most “legitimate” members of Powers, since most keen PowerPlayers easily maintain rating 5 on their one and only commander.
Open question: if the number of votes is based on rating, does there still need to be a time-based limit as well? The reason for the time limit was to prevent people who were just module-shoppers from having significant voting power, but it is not clear whether or not the effect of module shoppers was or is significant. However there does not seem to be a compelling reason to remove the time-based limit, other than potential code simplicity.
