To do that I need to be a good little drone and do weekly tasks (impractical as I'm a casual player) then grind merits.
As others have said, you don't need to do the weekly tasks other than the first set (which are pretty easy) - though if you're playing casually
some of them can be a very efficient way to get a few thousand merits. (e.g. 2000 bonus merits for a couple of mid-size bounty collections which would normally give about 100 merits ... easy money!)
Other tasks are an extremely inefficient way to get a few thousand merits - but any you're not interested in can be ignored.
You don't even need to complete the first set of weekly tasks in a single week - and you keep earning merits in the background before they're done - so you only even need to do those five
eventually. Do one a week, do one a month, that's fine too. No hurry.
All the while with other powers ships getting to paint a target on my hull and NOT get bounties for it,
The interruption of this is (for now) really not that high - you only get significant attention in Stronghold systems, or if you choose to enter a Power-specific signal source. The last week or two I've been playing around a couple of non-Stronghold Grom systems (doing non-Powerplay things, so barely any merits involved) as a Kaine pledge:
- I was never interdicted by a Grom ship
- I'm not sure I ever saw any non-freigher types pledged to Grom at the stations: at least, they never tried to scan me and attack
- obviously I left the power signal sources alone because that wasn't what I was there for
Similarly, the bounties aren't all that inconvenient if you do get them:
- obtaining a bounty for attacking a Powerplay enemy does not summon system security (though if any are already about, they will go for you)
- murdering a Powerplay enemy does not grant notoriety
- the Powerplay enemies are in their own faction so you won't lose rep with anyone for killing them
So if you want to, you can murder a bunch of Powerplay enemies for merits, head over to a nearby system to clear the bounties (cheaply) at an Interstellar Factor, and then carry on as if it had never happened.
unless I restrict my gameplay to my own power's bubble.
You'll certainly get more merits "casually" in your own power's space, and that's where the benefits mostly are, so it makes sense to pick a power whose space you're likely to want to be in anyway. But it doesn't restrict you to only being there.
Convince me that's anything even close to a good idea for a genuinely independent and casual pilot.
It's a trade-off (which, yes, is rare in Elite Dangerous)
- if you pledge, then you get access to some extra modules, a few free engineering materials (of variable usefulness, but there'll probably be something you can use), and in your own power's space you also get access to a bunch of bonuses (free rebuys, higher credit payouts on particular activities, some give faster rep gain with minor factions)
- if you don't pledge, then you get a marginally easier time in Stronghold systems
"Casual" doesn't matter and PP2 is in some ways better for that - it means you'll take more time to get the reward, but it's not a race and you'll get there eventually. The median Powerplayer gets 10-15 thousand merits a week - or one or two ranks a week, so a whole year or more to get access to everything. That's basically "do the easy weekly tasks for the bonus merits and ignore the rest of it" levels of commitment, and that's where most people are at.
(Yes, there are people grinding out a hundred ranks in a week, or whatever. They're prominent but not at all representative of how most people are playing it, you can ignore them)
"Genuinely independent" ... well, if it's important to your CMDR's persona that they don't work exclusively for anyone, sure, you've got to stick to that. Equally, it can just be a "regular employer" for your mercenary activities - a lot of the Powerplay activities (at least in your own Power's space) are things you'd be doing anyway, so it's pretty much "get paid twice"
That there's a reason for a player that rejected PP1 to jump in and pledge in PP2.
That's very much a description of me (including the "independent with slight Alliance leaning"). My reasons for pledging - none of which need convince you!
1) Almost all Powerplay activities are either "things you'd do anyway" (e.g. bounty hunting, scanning ships) or easy to do alongside them (e.g. if you're raiding an Odyssey base for the loot, you might as well pick up the Powerplay loot as well) - rather than PP1's very narrow range of activities which you do in complete isolation from the rest of the game. A single well-fitted multirole ship can do almost
every Powerplay activity without needing to refit (though obviously if you like the "building new ships" part of the game, a fleet of twenty specialist ships can do it slightly more efficiently)
2) PP1 had major strategic-layer problems which meant that you could easily harm your own power unless you coordinated very closely with everyone else. In PP2 that's impossible; if you play casually you won't be helping as much as someone who plays 50 hours a week doing optimal merit-gaining activities but you'll still be helping. Not having to care what the self-appointed Power Leadership think was a big plus.
3) There's no minimum activity requirement. In PP1 you lost most of the bonuses if you didn't do things in a particular week. In PP2 you can disappear (on an exploration trip, or playing another game) for months on end and pick up right where you left off.
4) Kaine's backstory (wanting a more independent and loose Alliance without pretensions of competing with the other two as a superpower) suits my own CMDR's persona in a way that the previously-available 11 Powers didn't.
And one more which I didn't care about but you might find important:
5) You can unpledge at any time without penalty - obviously, you lose access to any rank and bonuses you'd accumulated, though you keep any modules you've already purchased and credit/material rewards already claimed - but unlike Powerplay 1, there are no agents sent to punish deserters or defectors. So rather than reading arguments from other players why Powerplay is good/bad/indifferent/whatever ... just pick a Power you vaguely like the look of, see how it goes, and if you decide you hate it (or decide you like it but really should have chosen a different Power) then you're no worse off than you were before.
