Mahon turmoil?
- Thread starter enkidu136
- Start date
The folks that keep Mahon consistently on the top of the PowerPlay rankings are almost exclusively on Discord these days. There will be no news here on the forum.
I checked the Reddit, but it's quiet, too.
Alliance Office of Statistics are the main PowerPlay organisers and they've put the call out to Alliance Groups.
I stopped playing Elite Dangerous a bit over a year ago, but it's occasions like these when the Alliance groups all join forces and go hard, that make me miss the game.
You can be sure that the people who care - care a lot and are working hard right now.
This is from the last time Mahon went into Turmoil back in cycle 44:
This time the loss is MUCH deeper.
My understanding of what happened is that a particular Fed group organised a Merit Snipe. You hold onto your undermining merits, and then cash them all in at the eleventh hour just before the Thursday cycle. A merit snipe of this scale takes a lot of coordination, and usually there are leaks and premature cash-ins, but they pulled it off. The main Fed group is known; but FDEV simply HATE inter-group drama and strictly enforce the no name and shame policy on these forums. So yeah - hundreds of players are co-ordinating a huge player driven event right now and FDEV won't even be aware of it.
Last time this happened I got hugely involved and even took a day off work (cycle drops at 4 pm local time here in Darwin). It was one of those inspiring moments of computer gaming in a community.
This was my rig at the end of Cycle 45 after an allnighter, waiting for the server to reset with the results.
If I still had that rig set up, I'd join in. But after Odyssey, I'm pretty much gone. I won't rebuild a cockpit until Ship Interiors.
DNA-Decay - OUT.
I checked the Reddit, but it's quiet, too.
Alliance Office of Statistics are the main PowerPlay organisers and they've put the call out to Alliance Groups.
I stopped playing Elite Dangerous a bit over a year ago, but it's occasions like these when the Alliance groups all join forces and go hard, that make me miss the game.
You can be sure that the people who care - care a lot and are working hard right now.
This is from the last time Mahon went into Turmoil back in cycle 44:
This time the loss is MUCH deeper.
My understanding of what happened is that a particular Fed group organised a Merit Snipe. You hold onto your undermining merits, and then cash them all in at the eleventh hour just before the Thursday cycle. A merit snipe of this scale takes a lot of coordination, and usually there are leaks and premature cash-ins, but they pulled it off. The main Fed group is known; but FDEV simply HATE inter-group drama and strictly enforce the no name and shame policy on these forums. So yeah - hundreds of players are co-ordinating a huge player driven event right now and FDEV won't even be aware of it.
Last time this happened I got hugely involved and even took a day off work (cycle drops at 4 pm local time here in Darwin). It was one of those inspiring moments of computer gaming in a community.
This was my rig at the end of Cycle 45 after an allnighter, waiting for the server to reset with the results.
If I still had that rig set up, I'd join in. But after Odyssey, I'm pretty much gone. I won't rebuild a cockpit until Ship Interiors.
DNA-Decay - OUT.
This was a record snipe made possible by a bug reported by the powerplay community [https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/36931]. Unfortunately for PowerPlay the we'll address it later approach does not work for those who love this game. There is an amazing response underway and the global teamwork of the dedicated core Power Play community will be just as impressive. With the EDO effort still in turmoil of its own, I would not expect any effort fix this bug, but would also not be surprised if it shows itself to be a double-edged sword. o7 to Mahon.
No drama tho, we take responsabilities of this and we didn't hide at all, we're just asking not to blame FUC for action we (indy squad loyal to Hudson) made.The folks that keep Mahon consistently on the top of the PowerPlay rankings are almost exclusively on Discord these days. There will be no news here on the forum.
I checked the Reddit, but it's quiet, too.
Alliance Office of Statistics are the main PowerPlay organisers and they've put the call out to Alliance Groups.
I stopped playing Elite Dangerous a bit over a year ago, but it's occasions like these when the Alliance groups all join forces and go hard, that make me miss the game.
You can be sure that the people who care - care a lot and are working hard right now.
This is from the last time Mahon went into Turmoil back in cycle 44:
This time the loss is MUCH deeper.
My understanding of what happened is that a particular Fed group organised a Merit Snipe. You hold onto your undermining merits, and then cash them all in at the eleventh hour just before the Thursday cycle. A merit snipe of this scale takes a lot of coordination, and usually there are leaks and premature cash-ins, but they pulled it off. The main Fed group is known; but FDEV simply HATE inter-group drama and strictly enforce the no name and shame policy on these forums. So yeah - hundreds of players are co-ordinating a huge player driven event right now and FDEV won't even be aware of it.
Last time this happened I got hugely involved and even took a day off work (cycle drops at 4 pm local time here in Darwin). It was one of those inspiring moments of computer gaming in a community.
This was my rig at the end of Cycle 45 after an allnighter, waiting for the server to reset with the results.
If I still had that rig set up, I'd join in. But after Odyssey, I'm pretty much gone. I won't rebuild a cockpit until Ship Interiors.
DNA-Decay - OUT.
We were 15 cmdrs, in open doing this the complete week. Simply flying in one of those systems and you could've saw us.
We've seen some cmdr from the Flat Galaxy Society but they never reported us to Alliance "leadership". So well, enjoy the eminent PP content in the next few weeks.
Also some of your leaders should've listen to me, I've been warning them for about a year now ....
Yep. Imagine if hundreds of cars were destroyed on each of dozens of streets (tens of thousands of cars!) in a country over the course of one week, by a small group of people sitting on the sides of said roads with AK-47s or bazookas. Do you think the leader of that country wouldn't hear about it?
Mahon was chilling then he discovered an unexpected problem to the tune of -8500 command capital thanks to some glorious autists who undermined all his control systems, which is proving rather entertaining.
Sounds like some people want an actual explanation. PowerPlay is a game-within-a-game in Elite: Dangerous. You are free to completely ignore it, as one of the other respondents said; but for many of us it is the one thing that provides a unifying principal for what otherwise can be a fairly aimless sandbox. In PowerPlay, you pledge to one of 11 possible powers and try to help that Power control as many star systems as possible. There are ways of preparing systems for your expansion and expanding to them that between them tie together all the activities of Elite - trading, exploration, and missions to increase the influence of particular minor factions (whose government type influences how easy or hard it is for different Powers to control their systems); combat versus NPCs to help minor factions control a system or to undermine the efforts of other Players, combat versus other players who are trying to stop you doing all the above; and so on.
Of the 11 Powers 4 are associated with the Empire; 2 with the Federation; 1 with the Alliance; and the rest are independent. Most of the struggle each week these days is between the Empire powers versus the Federation powers. In the meantime, the one Alliance faction led by Mahon has by far the biggest collection of systems within his control. Players who support the Alliance have been able to sit back on the spoils of past efforts, fairly inactive, while the Federation and Empire slug it out.
So "what is going on" is that last week a small group of commanders (see the post here by Prozer who was one of them), mostly Federation-aligned but working independently of the leadership of the Federation Powers, took it on themselves to put aside the long war with the Empire and "undermine" Mahon which basically means killing tens of thousands (at least) of Mahon-aligned NPCs in many of his control systems. Even though they did this in the Open and were spotted at least once (8 FDLs in a Control system at a time furiously killing NPCs), Mahon-aligned players didn't click what was going on (hence the red herring / distraction, I think, of the pointing towards a bug in one of the systems that should have given them some kind of alert they were being undermined). When the PowerPlay cycle ticked over last Thursday morning, Mahon's part of the galaxy fell into unexpected turmoil - the largest in the history of PowerPlay - 34 systems that had been "undermined" so effectively by this killing of NPCs that they are theoretically in line to throw off the Mahon yoke altogether.
This is one of the biggest things that has ever happened in PowerPlay because if the turmoil continues and Mahon sheds systems it could shake up the entire balance of power - in terms of which Powers control systems. For example, if systems currently in turmoil go to the next step and throw off Mahon altogether, then they become available for other Powers to expand to in a couple of weeks time. So right now there is a massive effort going on with players pledged to Mahon trying to "fortify" their systems (which basically involves hauling large amounts of special PowerPlay goods around) and others frantically killing Mahon-aligned NPCs in Mahon control systems to "undermine" him further, while PvPers cruise the skies looking to disrupt the fortification effort. This collective struggle is over a hundred of Elite's most experienced commanders coordinating their efforts for best effect.
As I said, you can play and enjoy Elite without knowing this is going on at all, but it adds a lot of meaning and fun to your play if you pledge to a Power, play in the open, join your Power's coordinating mechanism (most use Discord) and try to take sides in all this. It doesn't have to be in combat - there are ways to help the Power by trading, exploration, mining, and hauling stuff around as well - because PowerPlay is total war and about mobilising of all resources to help the struggle. Me, I support Felicia Winters, the liberal shadow-President of the Federation and fly as part of the Federal Liberal Command squadron and it would be awesome to have more people join us in the struggle against Imperial slavery (and just now, against the pompous and self-righteous splitters in the Alliance). But frankly, the more Power-pledged Elite commanders the better, whichever side you are on. Just please fly in open when you do it (as otherwise where's the fun in it all).
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Yeah, what Quasipoisson said; couldn't sumarize it better myself. For me personally, I've been playing Elite for over a year now, and the overwhelming majority of time I've spent flying for Winters. Has given a direction to my actions in this sandbox, rather good community we have there. And this is a rather exciting time to be in powerplay, some craziness is going to go down soon.
I've seen this characterisation before, and it needs to be challenged. All the powers have suffered shrinking playerbases, the main Grom group even formally gave up at one point.
What the Alliance actually does is understand the arcane and often borked mechanics of PowerPlay and efficiently direct their efforts. Understanding PowerPlay is a deep and dark art, and actually beyond most people. And then you have to be the sort of person that can both grapple with the arcana and inspire and lead a group. It's a job for just a few people. The actual game loops and mechanics of PowerPlay are kinda boring and there's a high burnout rate among rank and file players, so efficiency is paramount. Alliance players represent a very small proprtion of players but we have always punched above our weight.
Indy: 87.42%
Empire: 6.33%
Feds: 5.13%
Alliance: 1.13%
(source: https://inara.cz/galaxy-statistics/)
There is a quote from one of our auto-reply bots at AEDC headquarters: :grind: :: "Never underestimate the capacity of Alliance CMDRs to grind - it's about double what you think is even possible"
So yeah - while the Alliance does benefit from past efforts, there is also continuous and ongoing strategic management that incrementally makes things better.
There's a lot of insistence that OPEN is some holy and righteous ground. And personally, I think the game would improve from the removal of the modes; but let's not check into Hotel California.
My point is that seeing a wing doing some PP work is probably not enough evidence to "light the beacons of Minas Tirith" and call in all the non-PowerPlay Alliance teams. What counts is the in-game system news reporting of undermining. Is this just some Hudson goons having pew pew fun on a Saturday night - or is this a widespread coordinated effort?
Frontier in their wisdom have closed that bug-report as "fixed" because they do not have the wit and resources to reproduce the problem. PP is seen as a legacy sub-game and attracts no interest from development, repair, or narrative. (Talk to Rubbernuke or Vectron for some good ideas about how to develop PowerPlay).
This is from the Winters / FLC groups during the last turmoil:
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Frontier seems not to understand what gem they have created. PowerPlay (PP) gives you "missions" every week and it involves pretty much anything you can do in the game:
So let's imagine all this done in open where with some tactics you could actually oppose the other faction. This way it will not be a grind but much tactical and skill based..... But yeah we are stuck now with gazillion sub-modes and blocking lists so the chance to instance with somebody is close to 0 outside CGs.
- BGS work spanning from CZs, bounty hunting to missions, trade and exploration data;
- the PP fortification or combat merits gathering;
- it could even involve pvp when done in open as the undermining/fortiying ships would need protection if a pvp wing is in the system.
So let's imagine all this done in open where with some tactics you could actually oppose the other faction. This way it will not be a grind but much tactical and skill based..... But yeah we are stuck now with gazillion sub-modes and blocking lists so the chance to instance with somebody is close to 0 outside CGs.
Why are you still meme-ing about this? You and one of your squadron mates are literally part of FUC (Hudson namely) leadership. You are not independent, you are part of the federal machine.
So, everyone in Gateway tonight for some pews?
Does this lost tonnage UM news bug extend to the Powerplay bounty board too?
I think the point Quasipoisson was trying to make was that if folks were hauling forts (or doing anything else) in open, they would have seen wings at nav beacons many times, not once. Since FDev is unwilling to fix the (yes, broken) reporting mechanism, flying in open seems like the only option.
Because they didn't invite the rest of FUC? Yes, they are not wholly independent, but they did undertake last cycle's effort completely independently of FUC.Why are you still meme-ing about this? You and one of your squadron mates are literally part of FUC (Hudson namely) leadership. You are not independent, you are part of the federal machine.
Don't think so, but you can remove yourself from that bounty board very easily by just going to an Interstellar Factors and paying off the bounty. If you were to check while UMers are near the end of their UM session, you'd maybe see the activity, but it could easily disappear an hour after that while they still have all of the merits still held on them.
The lost tonnage news is important to show that merits are being held against specific systems that haven't been turned in yet. Without that, you can't actively tell what's going on. Someone could be holding all of those merits in one system for all you know, or in systems that honestly don't matter. It's important information for when the planners need to ask folks to haul more fortification so that they don't just burn out their players with wasted time and credits spent. But when that information doesn't show up at all like what happens now, then you get this type of situation where folks didn't realize they needed to fortify more. The important sign that they were being attacked just wasn't there.
I'm fully aware of the differences- however one important job in Powerplay is being vigilant each week and checking all data not just the obvious reports. Ship patterns, bounties, unusual movements, the lot. For core systems this is not easy, but for backwaters you can tell unusual activity.
The UM reports are really flawed in that they just add to the huge advantages defensive powers have- BGS triggers, consolidation, credit inflation, ship efficiency- in some ways not having them actually makes powers vulnerable because they have to defend what they run. I also get the need for having a red flag for activity too, but as it stands attacks like this never happen because its stacked against the attacker.
Hauling in open doesn't guarantee you'll see other folks. Just that there will be more of a chance. FLC claims to haul exclusively in open, but many times they're nowhere to be seen. You just watch as merits get turned in in a system where there's no one but your own wing to be seen. Instancing is a very important factor here. If you could always instance with everyone in the same system, this would be a valid argument, but you often won't. Heck, sometimes I can't instance with an Australian in my wing despite our best efforts. We'd like to play together, but we can't.
Not arguing for or against open-only, just that it's currently not the magical solution to this problem. The CMDRs could have easily continued to have gone unseen despite honest intentions while there's already a much better tool specific in the game to show that UM work is happening instead.