Powerplay Just curious, but who else here hates the Alliance and Mahon? :D

[Elementical]

Since I'm technically a 'freelance' PP commander now, I can say that I'm a little disappointed that Mahon never actually used this and pressed for the 100% (unlike how Winters is now revving up again). The sheer amount of violence / persuasion it took to get Utopia utopian makes me jealous of that ethos.

If Mahon went for 100% fort trigger reductions that would mean several Alliance factions would have to be flipped to either independent or Federation control.

Mahon is in a similar position to Aisling Duval in some ways. If Aisling wants to reduce her triggers she needs to flip Empire systems to independent control.

Yes, there are opportunities to increase Alliance corporate control in Mahon space but then you could argue that the Alliance is becoming another version of the Federation.

For those of us who enjoy playing the BGS and working with several factions the question of which factions do we wish to spend our time with needs to be answered. We could work within Mahon space and undo a lot of the fortifcation trigger reduction work by replacing independent and Federation corporate factions with local Alliance factions. Or we could respect the effort of other groups and spend our time outside of Mahon's influence assisting Alliance factions irrespective of government type.

The end result is that the Alliance as a superpower grows and maintains it's diversity while Mahon's triggers remain largely unchanged.

 

[Martin Schou]

Since I'm technically a 'freelance' PP commander now, I can say that I'm a little disappointed that Mahon never actually used this and pressed for the 100% (unlike how Winters is now revving up again). The sheer amount of violence / persuasion it took to get Utopia utopian makes me jealous of that ethos.

Mahon has 82 flipped down triggers - Antal has 55 control systems all told. That's 49% more flipped down triggers than Antal has control systems.

Mahon has 801 exploited systems with favourable government types (not counting contested systems), Antal has 703 (87% of 801) exploited systems in total (including contested systems) and 411 (51.3% of 801) exploited systems with favourable government types (not counting contested systems).

The notion that Mahon is lazy, just because Antal has fewer systems to work with and thus a far easier time hitting a high percentage is beyond laughable, and I quite frankly thought higher of you Rubbernuke.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Mahon has 82 flipped down triggers - Antal has 55 control systems all told. That's 49% more flipped down triggers than Antal has control systems.

Mahon has 801 exploited systems with favourable government types (not counting contested systems), Antal has 703 (87% of 801) exploited systems in total (including contested systems) and 411 (51.3% of 801) exploited systems with favourable government types (not counting contested systems).

The notion that Mahon is lazy, just because Antal has fewer systems to work with and thus a far easier time hitting a high percentage is beyond laughable, and I quite frankly thought higher of you Rubbernuke.

I'm not accusing Alliance groups of being lazy, just I never understood why your flipping values never went above 70%. I can understand why it might never be 100% due to PMFs, but since the vast majority of Utopias flips are down to about 5 people (and the last 10 mainly down to two people over 2 months) I found it odd. Antal is smaller, but I could say with all the Allaince groups that exist why no BGS binge and having a big AOS / AEDC campaign?

 

[Sitoutumaton]

I recently found some old system data I had from the start of Powerplay, and this thread got me thinking about how Mahon’s demographics might have changed in the past couple of years. I expected to see the beautiful rainbow of oddball Alliance systems (Alliance Communism? Alliance Theocracy? Alliance ANARCHY?) smothered by the big grey Federal Corporate blanket, but that hasn’t been the case.

In fact, the proportions of Federation-controlled systems has gone down (approx. 50% to 31%), largely driven by the replacement of Federal and Independent Democracies with Alliance and Independent Corporations. The oddballs are still there, but they haven’t grown with the rest of Mahon’s portfolio. (The number of Alliance Communism systems have gone down, though. Is Communism Interstellar still a thing?)

As for system flipping, Mahon’s accomplishments are great, although I do consider Financial Control Ethos to be System Flipping on Easy Mode Over a third of inhabited systems, regardless of superpower, started out Corporate and it’s a common controller for high-pop systems.

To my understanding, CIU and ICU who had similar goals with us packed up and relocated to fringes of the bubble, as that region of space was quickly turning into a messy proving ground for the first Powerplay + Background Simulation interactions. Hence the lack of promotion for Alliance communists (who are degenerated anyway!).

 

[DaveC]

but I could say with all the Allaince groups that exist why no BGS binge and having a big AOS / AEDC campaign?

Like Elementical said above, AEDC is more interested in expanding the Alliance super power - that's what we do. Flipping Mahon exploited zones to Indie or Fed corporates just isn't our thing. Saying that, we did binge on it royally in the very early days.

 

[Martin Schou]

If Mahon went for 100% fort trigger reductions that would mean several Alliance factions would have to be flipped to either independent or Federation control.

Mahon is in a similar position to Aisling Duval in some ways. If Aisling wants to reduce her triggers she needs to flip Empire systems to independent control.

Very true.

We've actually spent quite a bit of our time in the last year or so aiming far more to reduce the amount of Federation systems and increasing the amount of Alliance and Independent systems in the Mahon sphere than we have on trying to get to 120 flipped down triggers. At this point we have 82, and I think ALD is the only power that's even been close to that number of control systems all told.

If we can change a Fed Corporate into an Alliance Cooperative/Communism/Feudal/Patronage, and it doesn't affect the trigger of an important system, we'll do it.

We work for more than just PowerPlay, and have done so for more than a year - we work in an effort to further the Alliance and independents. From a gameplay perspective, it's really not unfair to say that Mahon has won PowerPlay. Mahon's been ranked 1 for 73% of PowerPlay's existence for a variety of reasons. We've not gotten into constant wars for one thing, and by being the only Alliance power we've been the most visible flagship for the underdog super power* and that brings in players wanting to support Mahon for that reason alone. And even if some of the player groups don't find PowerPlay interesting in the slightest, when the mud hits the fan, that's put aside to help right the ship.

*: with ~6% of the galactic population vs 27 for Empire and 39 for Federation, and ~3% of populated systems vs 25 for Empire and 30 for Federation we are the underdog

 

[Rubbernuke]

Like Elementical said above, AEDC is more interested in expanding the Alliance super power - that's what we do. Flipping Mahon exploited zones to Indie or Fed corporates just isn't our thing. Saying that, we did binge on it royally in the very early days.

I just find it strange that such a useful defensive measure is not acted on- but each to their own.

edit: Interesting stuff Vectron BGS RP?

 

[Martin Schou]

Antal is smaller, but I could say with all the Allaince groups that exist why no BGS binge and having a big AOS / AEDC campaign?

Because there's no point in it for us. Why bother flipping an 18 CC (MCC 686 representing!) income system that never gets hit for example? It's far more important to ensure that we have solid buffers in place in our border systems and high income system. We are seeing constant pushback against our BGS efforts in those systems, and in particular in systems where Federation factions get into wars as those tend to bring the Federation grinders to fight against us.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Because there's no point in it for us. Why bother flipping an 18 CC (MCC 686 representing!) income system that never gets hit for example? It's far more important to ensure that we have solid buffers in place in our border systems and high income system. We are seeing constant pushback against our BGS efforts in those systems, and in particular in systems where Federation factions get into wars as those tend to bring the Federation grinders to fight against us.

Thats a shame, as for a while I thought it was going to be a race between Winters, Utopia and Mahon. Going by the league table it looks as if Winters is ramping up flipping, which would be an excellent tactical choice for them. And when that big attack happens, every little helps!

The 100% was an object for fun with us, and it tests our mettle as we got BGS grinders too along our borders.

 

[Elementical]

I just find it strange that such a useful defensive measure is not acted on- but each to their own.

edit: Interesting stuff Vectron BGS RP?

BGS RP, as a matter of fact, yes!
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...y-Initiative?p=5528439&viewfull=1#post5528439

Flipping random systems can become a bit dull, so why not add some fun and imagination to the game?
In the end it has no practical impact on the game exept for the fact that you can say, "I was part of this!", and "Do you remember the time when we did x? That was fun."

 

[Rubbernuke]

BGS RP, as a matter of fact, yes!
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...y-Initiative?p=5528439&viewfull=1#post5528439

Flipping random systems can become a bit dull, so why not at some fun and imagination to the game?
In the end it has no practical impact on the game exept for the fact that you can say, "I was part of this!", and "Do you remember the time when we did x? That was fun."

Utopia is now doing something similar, but making all its space independent (bar PMFs and 1 'embassy' system for each power).

Did you sort the Bear out?

 

[Apos]

Thats a shame, as for a while I thought it was going to be a race between Winters, Utopia and Mahon. Going by the league table it looks as if Winters is ramping up flipping, which would be an excellent tactical choice for them. And when that big attack happens, every little helps!

The 100% was an object for fun with us, and it tests our mettle as we got BGS grinders too along our borders.

Well...depends on who you ask. It's quite funny that even like this the corporate stigma will only apply to Mahon and not Winters who you claim is ramping up flipping.

But whatever suits anyone's biases I guess. I mean, if the motivation behind some people's action is as simple as "Mahon shouldn't be #1 because my mom forced me to eat my veggies and I hate green.", then obviously it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Either way, Alliance players care about RP as much as they care about efficiency. If these players didn't care about RP, they wouldn't have joined the Alliance to begin with because even to this day, we still have nothing given to us that is useful. (the retributor was nerfed before it even made it live, then heat was nerfed as well. Now it's once again a useless weapon.)

And we only had ~300 starting systems to work with, with a total of 814 Alliance factions spread across all gov types, including the latest PMFs. In contrast, just Independent co-operatives ALONE are 3230, another 2300 communists, etc. In fact, we are reaching close to the point where the Alliance will have more systems controlled than actual factions. Imagine the cross-system problems something like that creates without management.

So the bgs work of the alliance involves a lot more expansion work than anyone else's. It's anything but "laziness", but the inherent limitations that everyone likes to ignore.

 

[Rubbernuke]

The most recent table: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteAntal/comments/6hf0so/system_flipping_league_table_cycle_106/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteAntal/comments/6hds26/system_flipping_league_table_cycle_105_sic/

In the last two weeks Mahon has had 6 bubbles go neutral, while Winters has jumped 5% up. I don't know what systems they are but thats got to count for potential merits.

 

[Elementical]

Did you sort the Bear out?

I'm sorry you lost me on that one. Is it some reference to Mahon? Or some system or constellation?

 

[Rubbernuke]

I'm sorry you lost me on that one. Is it some reference to Mahon? Or some system or constellation?

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteMahon/comments/55vzhy/aos_presents_project_ursa_major/

 

[Jendrassik]

The Alliance is doing ok as a mini-superpower. About half of that progress is driven by Mahon's pushing of Alliance Corporations, half from other factors.

It seems that both of the big two superpowers have been losing people and systems to Independents, whether they're in the AIS or not.

2 YEARS AGO	Number of Systems	Population
Alliance	1%	3%
Empire	29%	28%
Federation	36%	42%
Independent	34%	28%

TODAY	Number of Systems	Population
Alliance	3%	6%
Empire	25%	27%
Federation	31%	39%
Independent	41%	28%

 

[Jendrassik]

So, to try put the bed the issue of who's done the most flipping work, I looked everyone's current favourable exploited/control systems and checked how many were not favourable two years ago. It's a big oversimplification, but it should give some idea of how many systems each power actively flipped. I found the results pretty surprising:

Power	Est Systems Flipped
Edmund Mahon	527
Pranav Antal	343
Felicia Winters	270
Arissa Lavigny-Duval	232
Yuri Grom	217
Aisling Duval	193
Li Yong-Rui	167
Zemina Torval	109
Denton Patreus	106
Archon Delaine	59
Zachary Hudson	56

 

[Rubbernuke]

Interesting stuff! With an average bubble flip every 6.7 systems.

 

[aspiringexpatriate]

Those are some interesting numbers. I hadn't realised Winters had picked up their efforts. Though nearly every system has a corporate faction and they get an influence bonus, it was bound to happen.

As for ALD's efforts, sometimes we work as quickly as possible, sometimes we spend extra time expanding a single faction, let alone faction type, across 19 systems and have a sphere's entire trigger reduction based around one specific faction. It basically depends on whoever was pushing the faction, and what they decided to do.

 

[Calrissian]

Well, in the years of PP the Alliance and other neutrals bar Delaine have gained due to exactly this fact, and that most warring is between these groups.

Occasionally they get a slap but its never followed up, and hence they recover. Consolidation only entrenches this further.

Yes, and admittedly, I take issue with this and don't see it as any player factions fault but it is a catalyst I use to work against certain factions.