Powerplay Please explain merits to the pp newcomer

[maboleth]

It went like this.

- I joined Aisling duval
- Bought many of her propaganda papers
- Got 130 merits by spreading her power
- After one week got 1000cp and 65merits left
- After another week god 50000cp and 33merits left.

The question is - why are those merits still there after a week and are subtracting by 2? 130 -> 65 -> 33

 

[SHEPR0N]

Merits are halved every PP cycle (cycles end/begin each Thursday morning) and merits older than 4 cycles are discarded completely. So if you do nothing next cycle you'll have 16 merits (it displays them rounded, but counts actual numbers, so 99.9 merits are not 100 merits even if it says 100 ingame). The cycle after that there'll be all gone.

Have a look at this FDev explanation post, it was done with considerable more effort and colours!

The payments you got were wages for your PP rank. Those are paid one cycle after you achieved a certain rank. Or if you want to word it differently wages are paid at the end of a cycle for the rank you held that cycle. So in cycle 1 you had ranking 1 and got 1000 bucks for that at the beginning of cycle 2. Since you did 130 merits in cycle 1 your ranking increased to 2 in cycle 2 and you got 50k credits for that. Decay made you drop that ranking 2 for the next cycle again.

 

[maboleth]

Got it! Thanks a lot!