Power Play and why is it so unengaging?

Nav beacon manipulation to force spawn ships is an exploit & you shouldn't be doing it as you are not playing the game as intended and the NPC's that spawn also aren't more challenging than those in Strike Zones unless you find Sidewinders & T9 tricky which I doubt. Also you can't use AFK turret boats with the new CZs afaik as the CZ times out & you have to re-select the faction. And, finally, one would hope that new Powerplay CZ's would have a balance pass to provide a suitable challenge or FDev uses feedback to tune it.

You refer to nav beacon manipulation as farming which I think pretty much gives the game away to why you want to keep it.

CMDR Justinian Octavius

So what is the right way? Nobody has yet explained this to me (unless the only way is to grab these ships out of supercruise one +/- at a time).
 
It's totally unengaging, but I'd personally rather they spent the dev time fleshing out other stuff. We didn't really need Power Play in the first place IMO, if they'd put that effort into fleshing the background sim early on, that would have served the game a lot better than this bolted-on thing few players understand or care about.
 
Nav beacon manipulation to force spawn ships is an exploit & you shouldn't be doing it as you are not playing the game as intended and the NPC's that spawn also aren't more challenging than those in Strike Zones unless you find Sidewinders & T9 tricky which I doubt. Also you can't use AFK turret boats with the new CZs afaik as the CZ times out & you have to re-select the faction.

Nav beacon manipulation? What's that, I never heard of it. PP NPCs spawning the way they do is definitely intended by FD and I couldn't imagine any way to "manipulate" this. And while you are in a PP CZ your side is automatically selected at least as long as we are talking about supporting an expansion and NPCs are spawning continously. And these PP CZ NPCs are as tough as those in (civil) war zones. PP NPCs spawning around nav beacons and ressource extraction sites are much weaker. Either you don't want to understand me for certain reasons or we are not playing the same game.
 
It's totally unengaging, but I'd personally rather they spent the dev time fleshing out other stuff. We didn't really need Power Play in the first place IMO, if they'd put that effort into fleshing the background sim early on, that would have served the game a lot better than this bolted-on thing few players understand or care about.
There are those of us who play Powerplay who would beg to differ.

There are some who have quit the Powerplay out of frustration with Fdev for doing nothing to improve it in at least 2-3 years (so you needn't worry about Frontier spending too much development time on Powerplay... the problem (in the view of dedicated PP'ers) is they've spent far too few development time on it - next to nothing actually).

There are also others of us out here who would almost completely quit playing ED if it was removed from the game.


Note: Powerplay is much more engaging in open play when you're directly in contact with opposing players and trying to prevent them from fortifying or undermining (or trying to avoid them!)

If Powerplay was made open only and Powers and their players would have to play in open and have to deal with other players trying to stop them.. rather then hide in solo play or private group, you'd find that the complaint of not being engaging would go away, I predict.
 
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So what is the right way? Nobody has yet explained this to me (unless the only way is to grab these ships out of supercruise one +/- at a time).

The best way / efficient way is to do it at the nav beacon.

Justinian can complain all he wants about the nav beacon being an "exploit" , but most of us believe Frontier deliberately put it in there to address the too few ships spawning in SC to be able to stop mass fleets of hauling cutters.

Also.. when Winters got turmoiled last winter by mostly AD.. you can darn well bet all of that undermining wasnt by interdicting ships in supercruise - not when they needed a million + merits to put us in turmoil - and you can also bet Justinian wasn't begging his fellow Empire players to stop using the nav beacon to undermine us.

EVERY Power uses that method to undermine other powers. So don't feel guilty using it.
 
The best way / efficient way is to do it at the nav beacon.
Let me ask this a different way. If I'm undermining Arissa Lavigny-Duval, can I go to one of her control systems and shoot any "Shield Of Justice" ship, or does it have to be one of these 'special' ships? Also, why does this only work in certain systems and not all of the systems under her influence?

Disclaimer - I'm a PP noob.
 
Let me ask this a different way. If I'm undermining Arissa Lavigny-Duval, can I go to one of her control systems and shoot any "Shield Of Justice" ship, or does it have to be one of these 'special' ships? Also, why does this only work in certain systems and not all of the systems under her influence?

Disclaimer - I'm a PP noob.

We need to find you a Powerplay guide! :)

Yes.. you can go to any of her control systems and shoot any of her ships that are pledged to ALD and you'll make undermine merits that way - be that in supercruise or at the nav beacon.

As for the 2nd question.. the undermine method only works in control systems of Powers. if you want to undermine a Power or gain powerplay merits through undermining... those control systems are where you do it.
 
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Let me ask this a different way. If I'm undermining Arissa Lavigny-Duval, can I go to one of her control systems and shoot any "Shield Of Justice" ship, or does it have to be one of these 'special' ships? Also, why does this only work in certain systems and not all of the systems under her influence?

Disclaimer - I'm a PP noob.


My sincere advice: seek out one of the player group discords that the organized groups use for each power .. When you get into a discord like that with like minded players.. they'll be able to help direct you where to undermine (or fortify, or BGS for PP, or lots of other things). Some of them may even have player guides (as an example, Federal Liberal Command, the chief player faction that does Powerplay for Felicia Winters, has such a guide. A verty detailed one. Others may not have such long guides.. but they'd at least have a FAQ section at their Discord for new players, I'd suspect).
 
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My sincere advice: seek out one of the player group discords that the organized groups use for each power .. When you get into a discord like that with like minded players.. they'll be able to help direct you where to undermine (or fortify, or BGS for PP, or lots of other things). Some of them may even have player guides (Federal Liberal Command, the chief player faction that does Powerplay for Felicia Winters, has such a guide).
Dude, can't you just answer a simple question? I have no interest in Discord or joining a PP league.
 
Dude, can't you just answer a simple question? I have no interest in Discord or joining a PP league.

I answered it in the previous message of mine to you.. I was just giving you some advice and trying to help you. If you want to know how to (properly) do PP, that's the best way to go about doing it and learning what you need to do. Anyhow.. good luck.
 
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I answered it the previous time.. I was just giving you some advice and trying to help you. If you want to know how to (properly) do PP, that's the best way to go about doing it and learning what you need to do. Anyhow.. good luck.
Apologies. You replied to me in two separate posts and I only saw the second post, not the first with the answer. I scrolled back up and found the post where you answered my question. That's exactly what I wanted to know! Thank you.
 
There are also others of us out here who would almost completely quit playing ED if it was removed from the game.

Same goes for any feature. Once the player base have it, Devs need to tread very carefully when tweaking it.
But they could overhaul it and simplify it as they did with Engineers.
That could help make it more engaging for newer players and for those who like Power Play.

It would also be nice if it was tied into the BGS properly.
Because I feel that is one of the main flaws, there is no real knock-on effect for everyone else when PP wars break out.
People can still take a nice Sunday drive and do a bit of trading, a bit of mining etc.. all in the middle of a PP war zone.
So PP doesn't even exist for some players. It's like a completely separate game.

If Powerplay was made open only and Powers and their players would have to play in open and have to deal with other players trying to stop them.. rather then hide in solo play or private group, you'd find that the complaint of not being engaging would go away, I predict.

Love how this old lie is still being thrown about.
No one is "hiding" at all, Solo and PG are legitimate parts of the game which was known long before you could buy it.
Also, removing content from 2 out of 3 modes would have the same effect you said above, those who play for PP would quit Elite if they couldn't play it in their chosen mode.

And as has been discussed for years on end; there are too many ways in and out of the game to filter who you play with, for any form of content locking to work properly.
Which makes it a huge waste of time and completely pointless.
 
Navbeacon is an exploit but every power uses it. If you don't do it, you would be seriously disadvanteged....

And Powerplay in solo is indeed unengaging. It's the worst kind of grind one could do in Elite. Mindless transport of packages or mindless shooting down NPCs. Powerplay makes sense only in Open, because at that stage transporting packages requires escort, superiority, scouting, etc., in one world - cooperation. Completely different level of gameplay.
 
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