Powerplay Powerplay - first impressions and why I understand people complaining about it

[Starman 1966]

Hi there,

eventually I gave PP a chance and pledged to LYR because I would like to try out his fancy rockets. Two PP cycles later and after reading a lot in the forums my preliminary conclusions are as follows:

- I consider rating 5 a tedious grind probably not worth the efforts for gaining the additional bonuses. Rating 4 gives nothing and is useless. Rating 3 is only needed once for getting one's hands on the power specific modules. Rating 2 seems to be the most useful one as it is easy to maintain and already giving reasonable bonuses at least from some powers. Rating 1 again is completely useless.

- Bonuses seem to be utterly unbalanced, making it quite clear why almost everybody and his dog has pledged to Edmund Mahon. 20% bonus on trading profits in rating 2 with the current galactic power standing is too good to be neglected. Zemina Torval in theory could give the same bonuses, but her part of the bubble is way too small to compete against Mahon. Bounty hunters will find their home either with Zachary Hudson or Arissa Lavigny-Duval. Yuri Grom gives a little bit of everything and the other powers give plenty o' nuttin'.

- I tried undermining in several controlled hostile anarchy systems. To facilitate things I even brought 15 tons of political cargo with me. I wasn't interdicted a single time by the other power's ships and the rate of them spawning at nav beacons or RES is around one per hour. I have no idea if things are different in non-anarchy systems, but I don't like to collect a crapload of bounties on my head for a few hundreds of PP merits only.

- To make PP more attractive I would like to suggest to restrict PP to three ratings only. Rating 1 would give the current rating 2 bonuses, rating 2 would unlock the power specific modules and rating 3 the current rating 5 bonuses. Rating 1 could be achieved and maintained with 100 merits, rating 2 with 500 and rating 3 with 1000 merits per week.

- The individual power's bonuses have to be rebalanced, especially there should be a power with attractive bonuses for explorers, e.g. a 20% increase of data payouts in rating 1. The current 200% exploring data bonus in LYR is somewhat counterintuitive as you can either go exploring or maintain PP rating 5.

TL;DR: PP needs some love and reworking if FD really likes more players trying it in the long run rather then unlocking some dubious modules only.

O7 and always fly safe [hotas]

 

[Nero Tacitus]

I agree PP could do with some tweaking, but I think the merit requirements vs benefits is purely subjective. PP (AFAICT) isn't there as a core money-making aspect of the game (in fact most people see as a money hole), and the modules are "dubious" to reflect this. If they were incredibly powerful, PP would be mandatory.
Ranks 2-4 mightn't seem like they offer much (again, monetarily), but you're missing the primary purpose of PP, to support your faction. Many people are happy to make little income for the RP/enjoyment/break from grinding that PP offers, and each successive rank offers increasing influence in the direction and strategy of your power (vote weighting).
Rank 5 itself isn't there for casual players, it's for people who need additional things to do in the game, and the rewards are commensurate with the effort (50m a week, plus double Bounties/Trade income is not a small thing). If you don't want to spend the time to unlock rank 5, fine, most people don't, but that doesn't mean there isn't a demographic who appreciate the upper tier existing.

Lastly, it seems like you tried Undermining without really understanding how to go about it. You'll find a lot more faction ships in Supercruise. You don't wait for them to interdict you, you go after them (you're the aggressor, they're just transporting data). Average systems yield about 12 interdictions an hour, with about 1 in 4 of these being wings (so about 600 merits an hour), with most of your time spent in combat. I've never heard of anyone farming merits at a Nav Beacon or Res Site, but I could be wrong.

I think your suggestion to lower the requirements would largely break the PP system, as 95% of the playerbase could maintain the Rank 5 rewards with minimal effort, and there'd be nothing left for hardcore players.
I agree though that the powers could do with some rebalancing (this is as a Hudson supporter, so maybe I'm biased. Seriously people, Mahon is like 3x our size, and we get the most undermining, really!?),

 

[VampyreGTX]

I can pull about 1800-2100 merits per hour UM'ing in a Nav or Haz Res.

I would recommend finding the Discord server of the power you want to support and joining there. PP is NOT for a lone-wolf. It's a must to be part of the greater organized horde in order to make a difference.

Nero, as a Hudsonite, are you on our Fed Unified Command Discord? If not, come on over! https://discord.gg/YDHTRUM

 

[Villainous Ruffian]

Hi there,

eventually I gave PP a chance and pledged to LYR because I would like to try out his fancy rockets. Two PP cycles later and after reading a lot in the forums my preliminary conclusions are as follows:

- I consider rating 5 a tedious grind probably not worth the efforts for gaining the additional bonuses. Rating 4 gives nothing and is useless. Rating 3 is only needed once for getting one's hands on the power specific modules. Rating 2 seems to be the most useful one as it is easy to maintain and already giving reasonable bonuses at least from some powers. Rating 1 again is completely useless.

- Bonuses seem to be utterly unbalanced, making it quite clear why almost everybody and his dog has pledged to Edmund Mahon. 20% bonus on trading profits in rating 2 with the current galactic power standing is too good to be neglected. Zemina Torval in theory could give the same bonuses, but her part of the bubble is way too small to compete against Mahon. Bounty hunters will find their home either with Zachary Hudson or Arissa Lavigny-Duval. Yuri Grom gives a little bit of everything and the other powers give plenty o' nuttin'.

- I tried undermining in several controlled hostile anarchy systems. To facilitate things I even brought 15 tons of political cargo with me. I wasn't interdicted a single time by the other power's ships and the rate of them spawning at nav beacons or RES is around one per hour. I have no idea if things are different in non-anarchy systems, but I don't like to collect a crapload of bounties on my head for a few hundreds of PP merits only.

- To make PP more attractive I would like to suggest to restrict PP to three ratings only. Rating 1 would give the current rating 2 bonuses, rating 2 would unlock the power specific modules and rating 3 the current rating 5 bonuses. Rating 1 could be achieved and maintained with 100 merits, rating 2 with 500 and rating 3 with 1000 merits per week.

- The individual power's bonuses have to be rebalanced, especially there should be a power with attractive bonuses for explorers, e.g. a 20% increase of data payouts in rating 1. The current 200% exploring data bonus in LYR is somewhat counterintuitive as you can either go exploring or maintain PP rating 5.

TL;DR: PP needs some love and reworking if FD really likes more players trying it in the long run rather then unlocking some dubious modules only.

O7 and always fly safe [hotas]

Rating 5 takes about 3 or 4 hours per week.

Bonuses are unbalanced by design to drive more players in certain directions, like to the Emperor or President. There's no reason that a fringe technocult like Utopia would have resources matching the Empire.

Most people are not pledged to Mahon, he is in first place because everyone else is busy Playing at Power. The galactic standings are almost meaningless, since they can measure objectively positive actions as bad and vice versa.

CMDR's with practice routinely put in 10's of thousands of merits every week. My own record is bit over 22k, iirc. I wouldn't mind a rating 6.

We had an attempted creation of an exploration Power during the Dangerous Games, SEPP. They didn't get enough support to become a Power, despite multiple famous explorers (and many more common players, like myself) promoting SEPP as a message to Fdev to allocate more development time to exploration. Turned out no one really cared. Sad, but I guess explorers like exploring more than grinding at a nav beacon.

I do agree PowerPlay needs a heavy rework, but I think you may have misunderstood some things (its so easy to misunderstand that I think that alone is a good reason for reworking it). Like the others say, join Discord.

 

[Martin Schou]

- Bonuses seem to be utterly unbalanced, making it quite clear why almost everybody and his dog has pledged to Edmund Mahon. 20% bonus on trading profits in rating 2 with the current galactic power standing is too good to be neglected.

You're either overestimating the value of trade in Mahon space or you've misunderstood how that bonus works. It ONLY works in Mahon's controlled and exploited systems, and outside of mining there is nothing trade related in Mahon space that cannot be found at better values elsewhere.

 

[krylite]

Well, OP,you said these were your "first impressions" and you hadn't reached rank 5 so I'd say you're still missing out on some aspects of pp. And your post seems to forget the other side of PP, roleplaying (and the "board"gaming). Hundreds of rank 5 pledgers do their undermining, fortification, opposition,etc. efforts for the rp ideals and lore of their power with their power's prosperity in mind over the secondary motivators of bonuses and modules. (The salary also helps with the costs of undermining in enemy territory constantly being hunted and the costs of insurance rebuys and dormant bounties turned into legacy fines) The totality of PP is not just about the modules or bonuses. Mahon doesn't really always have the largest pp pledged base or activity. Look at Ferghal's pp merit count stats. Mahon also had an advantage over the empire and federation not having to be composed of system competing subdivided powers. You also don't have to reach rank 5 solely with undermining, where you could also having reached it, maintain the rank with a few hours of big hauling.

 

[richard_uk]

Hi there,

eventually I gave PP a chance and pledged to LYR because I would like to try out his fancy rockets. Two PP cycles later and after reading a lot in the forums my preliminary conclusions are as follows:

- I consider rating 5 a tedious grind probably not worth the efforts for gaining the additional bonuses. Rating 4 gives nothing and is useless. Rating 3 is only needed once for getting one's hands on the power specific modules. Rating 2 seems to be the most useful one as it is easy to maintain and already giving reasonable bonuses at least from some powers. Rating 1 again is completely useless.

- Bonuses seem to be utterly unbalanced, making it quite clear why almost everybody and his dog has pledged to Edmund Mahon. 20% bonus on trading profits in rating 2 with the current galactic power standing is too good to be neglected. Zemina Torval in theory could give the same bonuses, but her part of the bubble is way too small to compete against Mahon. Bounty hunters will find their home either with Zachary Hudson or Arissa Lavigny-Duval. Yuri Grom gives a little bit of everything and the other powers give plenty o' nuttin'.

- I tried undermining in several controlled hostile anarchy systems. To facilitate things I even brought 15 tons of political cargo with me. I wasn't interdicted a single time by the other power's ships and the rate of them spawning at nav beacons or RES is around one per hour. I have no idea if things are different in non-anarchy systems, but I don't like to collect a crapload of bounties on my head for a few hundreds of PP merits only.

- To make PP more attractive I would like to suggest to restrict PP to three ratings only. Rating 1 would give the current rating 2 bonuses, rating 2 would unlock the power specific modules and rating 3 the current rating 5 bonuses. Rating 1 could be achieved and maintained with 100 merits, rating 2 with 500 and rating 3 with 1000 merits per week.

- The individual power's bonuses have to be rebalanced, especially there should be a power with attractive bonuses for explorers, e.g. a 20% increase of data payouts in rating 1. The current 200% exploring data bonus in LYR is somewhat counterintuitive as you can either go exploring or maintain PP rating 5.

TL;DR: PP needs some love and reworking if FD really likes more players trying it in the long run rather then unlocking some dubious modules only.

O7 and always fly safe [hotas]

Come and join us at Sirius Gov on our Discord. PowerPlay is much more fun when done as part of a group. https://discord.gg/6VE8e5

CMDR Buck Richard
Sirius Gov