Well, I just handed in about 2 million worth of exploration data I had just gathered this evening, and got zero merits. Am I supposed to redeem them anywhere special? Or is it just redeem them normally at UC? I am in an Exploited system for my Power, and it does say under the PP info I can hand in cartographic data here to help reinforce. Could this be a(nother) bug?
No merits for Cartographic data?
- Thread starter Darkcyde
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Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 exploration and trade balance changes
Greetings Commanders, Following a review of the use of exploration data and trading on Powerplay 2.0 we will be making the following changes: We will be temporarily disabling the merit and system score gains for Exploration and Genetic Samples data for Powerplay 2.0 You can continue to...
No bug. Just a complete lack of understanding of how their game has been played for 10 years.
I did see that it had been disabled, but it had apparently been re-enabled on the Thursday server tick, but only counts for data gathered after the 7th. At least that's what some YouTubers have said, and the in-game PP notes say you can hand it in for merits now too. But I've handed in two sets of data gathered today and got no merits, so I was just wondering if it's a bug, or I'm not handing it in in the right place?Elite Dangerous | Powerplay 2.0 exploration and trade balance changes
Greetings Commanders, Following a review of the use of exploration data and trading on Powerplay 2.0 we will be making the following changes: We will be temporarily disabling the merit and system score gains for Exploration and Genetic Samples data for Powerplay 2.0 You can continue to...forums.frontier.co.uk
No bug. Just a complete lack of understanding of how their game has been played for 10 years.
Maybe 2mil is not enough for even one merit.
That's a scary thought
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-its-been-nerfed-into-the-ground-hard.629627/ was reporting 20 merits for 2 million in data, but I likewise have seen nothing at all for similar sizes of drop-off.
The main difference I can see is that their data was first discoveries, and mine was just scans I'd picked up hopping around systems in the bubble. I wonder if there's an undocumented requirement for the exploration/exobio data to be a first discovery to get merits for it?
The main difference I can see is that their data was first discoveries, and mine was just scans I'd picked up hopping around systems in the bubble. I wonder if there's an undocumented requirement for the exploration/exobio data to be a first discovery to get merits for it?
I dropped off 4.6 billion worth of Exobiology data. About 2 billion was before the before the changes on the 7th. I made just over 1000 merits.
Oooh that would be mean.I would like that
.aproximately 2.6 billion in data is only 1k or so merits when only a few million in trade is over 10k :/
Just play the game they said.
Rare goods. You can make around 10k+ merits per hour.
This is what's considered the best for merit grinding currently. I'm just avoiding pp2.0 entirely until this grind is balanced to actually make the whole 'just play the game' thing actually make sense instead of being 'just grind rares for dozens of hours'.
And it still provides more merits than any other activity according to every guide i've looked into.
Fdev just nerfs things into oblivion instead of bringing other activities up to par as usual.
PP2.0 is grindier than Korean MMOs.
Not all supplies.
I've done some testing over the last few days, and the best merits per hour seem to come from volume of rare sales, not profit of rare sales. Consequently, Alterian Skin at 95t supply is the best merits p/h, around 14k by my calculations (using a carrier). This is because Altair is currently in a Boom state, which increases the number of produced goods, including rares. In comparison, Soontil Relics, last week, were around 23k p/h. This week, they are about 5k p/h. I'm not sure if the system was in Boom last week though. I imagine Altair will be out of Boom next week, and so the best rare to trade will be something different.
Edit: The above was calculated based on the furthest exploited system I could find from the source system. For me, that is 174LY for Altarian Skin, and 252LY for Soontil Relics. Depending on your power, you may not be able to get a good enough distance from a source system, and so your merits may be less.
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The beatings will continue until the morale improves.
Negatory, systems states change, which can affect rare allocation (people keep arguing it doesn't, despite a clear correlation that it apparently does; that may be new(ish) but does seem to be a thing). If a system with rares sees a state change to boom (or potentially expansion) then the rares can spike in allocation count.
Rough numbers look to be about a trillion and a half worth of credits (give or take, depending on faction) in discovery/ exobio to hit rank 100. So in other words, Frontier reacted to the (fractional) number of players who haven't turned in expo/ bio data for 2+ years, set the return based on that, then invalidated any meaning by setting a 'from' date which solved the original issue, without really needing to offset the payout (since everyone would be starting from scratch).
Frontier has made a good start with Ascendency and some of the improvements, but the exploration merit thing is just nonsensical. It's like a few different people implemented 'fixes' without talking to each other (and didn't use a calculator).
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Yes - this has been complicated, I think, by almost all rare allocation changes being the normal BGS state-affected ones which people will just get used to after a few weeks of it, but Orrere having for some historical reason ended up with an utterly ridiculous triple-figures "State: None" allocation which Frontier specifically cut back to more normal "rare goods" double-figures by changing the baseline directly.
No need for anyone to argue, here's a direct quote from the Elite Dangerous Wiki regarding rare availability:
"The state of the factions in a system can now affect the allocation total of rare goods. Conflict states (War, Civil War, Election) will reduce production. Other states may also lower production: Bust, Civil Unrest, Lockdown, Outbreak, Expansion, and Retreat. Boom temporarily increases production."
Looks like Boom state is probably to only one to increase availability, but lots of others decrease it.
Expansion may in fact increase production rather than reduce it. So I would always caution third-party sources over what the the game actually does. The behaviour indicates there may be a hidden modifier or other component to how the allotments change. System state is part, but not necessarily the only input. Which doesn't surprise me at all. The BGS has gained certain eccentricities over the years.
The wiki is only as good as the available data. Which if is not actually documented outside of being pulled from journal entries is very much not authoritative and purely observational.
Sounds like a massive overreaction by Frontier to me. I've got to do the 5000ly for Palin soon (once my broadband gets reconnected), and was hoping to use that trip to top up the funds to get my carrier, and make a half decent dent in the PP rankings (first module maybe). I was quite looking forward to taking the Mandalay out for a shakedown run and seeing some good return from exploring. Now, not so much.