Funny enough, this sentence could be administred to many aspects of many games, but especially to many aspects of this game
Powerplay List of desired powerplay features.
- Thread starter DemiserofD
- Start date
Yeah, not bad at all. Both, never ending game of risk and the ability to create and destroy. Both very good things to have. Let's have it.
I know some people view the BGS as a competitive thing. I just see it as having a home system. Of course i want my faction to be in charge, but its not the end of the world if it isn't. I can still take missions for it and help it out. We've had the odd bit of competitiveness with other player factions and players, but my only real concern was for the home system. And because you can't lose your home system, its not much to sweat about.
And because of this, its optionally competitive.
Whereas PP was meant to be competitive from the ground up. But what's the point of a competitive game element where there is no win/lose state?
If you view the BGS as competitive, then you might also want to see the ability for factions to lose their home system as well i suppose. That would be an interesting debate to have (in another thread of course).
I was always one of those players who if i got Australia the rest of the players would usually just quit. They knew i'd just sit there for the rest of the game building up a massive army, and even if someone else technically won most of the world, they'd then be faced with hundreds of dice rolls trying to get me out of there.
Worst thing from my limited experience is the commodity system. I wish that could be replaced with something more varied and engaging. Like doing powerplay missions from the power contact in control systems to achieve fortification or undermining or even influence. Mission types depend on the style of the power and what you are trying to achieve. And looking at the thread, this would still only scratch the surface of what could (needs to) be improved with PP.
PP is only as competitive as the mechanics allow it to be. The BGS will be far more competitive, it will just take longer to reach that point due to how long expansions take and how many systems there are, but there will be no mechanical limits - conflict will eventually be the only way to expand a minor faction. In PP you could technically go all the way out and shrink a power to just its HQ. I really wonder what Frontier would do if that happened (it would not have enough CC to pay a preparation cost to ever try expanding again - a final state that is far more definite than a native faction that doesn't control its home system), but overhead costs and triggers for the attackers versus the no-overheads of the attacked make it virtually impossible to reach this point.
Those two things - overheads and trigger insane scaling at very short/long HQ distances make it so powers aren't really able to interact enough to make the true death of a power possible. Some powers are so far away from each other that they can barely interact. I don't believe a power should die as long as they have options.
I don't see a problem with a never-ending game of risk as long as there's action happening. But currently it is too stalematey - you can be succesful in every expansion, but eventually there are no more profitable systems to acquire. There are still thousands of systems uncontrolled, but they are all negative to you.
You still have the power standings to compete, but the way it is calculated is completely out of touch with the criteria for a succesful power nowadays.
Then you have the point of rewards - what do you, as a player get out of all this? The module rewards only require you to idle for 3 weeks and then do one haul, then you buy all modules you need after 4 weeks and leave the power. The rating bonuses should be far more important, since those are the things that require active playing.
This brings to my last point - bad actions. So much doesn't make sense right now - hauling to prepare a system that is negative and shouldn't ever happen but folks will do it anyway since it's the closest HQ -> somewhere trip. Bad systems that a power can't really get rid of. Fortifying/undermining a system beyond 100% and getting merits for it - it doesn't do anything for PP, yet you get rewarded.
As someone mainly invested in Powerplay, these are the things I hope they look at. Not this open play thing... in a P2P, pan-modal game.
I think a lot of people are resigned to the probability that the more that is asked for PP the less likely it is to happen, so they look for simple compromise changes that might improve it enough to enjoy it more without requiring much effort from FD.
Which is a damn shame, because PP needs a lot of effort for it to appeal to a wider audience and make it better for more people. Otherwise its just token effort to appease a small demographic.
Its the problem with a lot of stuff in ED. Half baked solutions. The galaxy generation is great (accepting the current issues and changes to terrain generation), the sound is great, the flight model, those things they nailed. Mining even, especially after the rework is good. But things like multicrew,CQC, PP, and others, are at best half-baked solutions.
I'm sure its been said before, but FD really need to focus on delivering complete well fleshed out gameplay systems, even if it means less of them.
And this is why i'm more or less against FD doing anything with PP unless they are willing to go all in. Ok, even if they did, it might still not be interesting for me, but at least they would give it a good shot and it could be viewed as something that was developed well.
I am not a great risk player, but what I did was going to try to expand every round to get cards to get those triple artillery bonus. I didn't win often though.
edit: if I remember right, our group didn't finsh a game of risk all to often at all
Anyway, i've derailed this thread enough.
Back to the dreamcrafting boys.
Back to the dreamcrafting boys.
Soz not soz
Just voting out bad systems I think it's too easy to keep doing nothing. Changing the turmoil order could achieve this result in a more organic way. Powers would have to be active and expand to make it happen, and stop opponent's. It'd also create more of a chess game around attacking other powers.
1. Lowest base income, considering self-contests only. This would first remove the 5C near-HQ self-overlapping garbage that powers have accumulated years ago.
2. Lowest base income, considering enemy contests. This gives the depth of attacking profitables, because damaging it enough would make it more likely to be dropped.
To be honest I'd hate making the turmoil order any more complex, because its these arcane rules that put a lot of people off. You also still have to turmoil to shed them, which is a lot of work and counter intuitive.
I'd rather copy the BGS and make each system a control system and that the 'value' of a system is the total number held. When its decentralised it means a) no 5C b) its easy to work out (no crazy maths) c) anyone can support a faction anywhere (so big groups are not required).
It's a change that makes it simpler... just by order of worst base income, with priority to self-contested CC so the true garbage goes off first. Having to turmoil means you can go ahead and keep expanding rather than being afraid of sinister turmoil math making you lose good systems and keeping bad ones.
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Indeed, but you still have to bring your power down to get rid of them, which is to me silly.
As long as there are anti 5c measures in place (such as weighting), voting away crap systems seems more sane, and involves much less work against your own power to further it.
Why make features more complex if you can achieve even more results simplifying another one? You're saying to make preparation and voting more complex with the weighing and voting stuff off, I'm saying to make turmoil logic simpler. The bad systems aren't holding you back anymore if you and everyone knows they're the first ones that would go.
Because weighting systems works. Bad systems are much, much harder to prep and expand. Do the same (but in reverse) for bad system voting (i.e. low cost of votes to shed bad systems) and you have to work much harder to screw it up.
I'm fed up of having to self turmoil. Its stupid. Its like saying the EU needed to descend into anarchy just so the UK could leave. Voting at least allows you to shed systems you don't like without having to bring your power to its knees to do so, meaning you are not having to spend two weeks attacking yourself (having to pledge to someone else), or getting other powers to attack you. You may love it, but for me I'd rather be attacking someone else and not shooting my own legs.
Frankly I'd rather remove the possibility of having negative systems in the first place. NO system should actively hurt the power to own it. Punishment should come via hostile powers taking the system away, not via 5c agents nuking them from the inside.
What if you removed upkeep entirely, and replaced it with, just off the top of my head, a bonus when you caused an enemy system to be lost? This would combine with the higher fortification requirements for more distant systems to create constant inward pressure on the power from other powers seeking the bonuses from taking systems.
You'd need something besides taking systems to actually spend your CC on, of course. Something worth fighting for. That way powers are also constantly pushing outwards, too. The conflict between inwards and outwards pressure would create the limit on power size on the large end, while the inverse would become true on very close systems, which would be nearly impossible to lose
In an ideal world, you'd even have adjacent systems supporting each other in a vaguely dominoes manner. Like, if you have a coherent front, your system is easier to fortify. If you have a gap in your lines, you create a point of weakness that might be exploited to take another system that might cause weakness in another, creating a sort of cascade failure. Kinda like checkers in 3d. Jump, Jump, Jump.
Unfortunately this is veering towards a total rework quite rapidly...
What if you removed upkeep entirely, and replaced it with, just off the top of my head, a bonus when you caused an enemy system to be lost? This would combine with the higher fortification requirements for more distant systems to create constant inward pressure on the power from other powers seeking the bonuses from taking systems.
You'd need something besides taking systems to actually spend your CC on, of course. Something worth fighting for. That way powers are also constantly pushing outwards, too. The conflict between inwards and outwards pressure would create the limit on power size on the large end, while the inverse would become true on very close systems, which would be nearly impossible to lose
In an ideal world, you'd even have adjacent systems supporting each other in a vaguely dominoes manner. Like, if you have a coherent front, your system is easier to fortify. If you have a gap in your lines, you create a point of weakness that might be exploited to take another system that might cause weakness in another, creating a sort of cascade failure. Kinda like checkers in 3d. Jump, Jump, Jump.
Unfortunately this is veering towards a total rework quite rapidly...
1. Killit mit Fueur.
To be honest I'd rather do away with the complex maths and simply borrow from the BGS in that expansions do not have an attached value other than the expansion making that power bigger. If everywhere was a control system you can then expand how you feel rather than being tied to maths, and powers could be crushed back to one system. It would also make introducing new powers easier (if that ever happened).