Powerplay Merits for Colonization

[Danieros]

With Colonisation we now have a brand new activity, but it currently doesn't award merits. It is now expanding the systems at a far faster pace than powerplay can keep up with (especially since it is far easier to get work done and the activities do not overlap), so there is less reason to fight for territory than before. Adding this overlap of colonising and getting merits should accelerate things a bit.

For the primary station the system is still zero population and still ineligible for powerplay, so this wouldn't change. Also I think it's better to remain this way - I feel that simple daisy chaining giving merits would be too strong.

But for any further construction in the system, it would be interesting to get merits for it if it's within acquisition range of your pledged power. I don't think there needs to be any kind of scaling to the commodity price as it's a specific and limited activity. We already have too much of this credit variation affecting merits in other activities. This will give incentive to developing systems, and reason for players to engage with it even if they are not the system architect.

I believe it should be eligible for acquisition, reinforcing and undermining systems. The undermining merits would be important to allow for some counter-play beyond just "finishing the development faster to stop the merit flow".

Lastly, some powers would have it as a bonus activity for extra merits (and of course as a potential vulnerability for being undermined). It seems relevant for social and finance ethos, but not for combat or covert.

 

[cybort]

Maybe power associated buildings?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It is now expanding the systems at a far faster pace than powerplay can keep up with

The difference in the amount of effort required is pretty substantial, too.

A basic outpost colonisation costs about 22kT of cargo, which is 5-10 player-hours of effort depending on how close the commodity source is.

An unopposed Acquisition costs 120,000 control points, or 480,000 merits. Getting that in even 10 hours would be impressively (impossibly?) fast.

I don't feel that the colonisation timelines are unreasonable for what it does - but perhaps there's a case for taking a zero off all the Powerplay CP requirements to make uncontested actions much quicker (contested actions of course would continue to have their difficulty primarily set by what the other side is doing) now that there's no longer any risk of it running out of space?

 

[3Hoods]

I think the merits for escape pods should be fixed before expanding Trailblazers. Maybe it's just me, but I would rather have one complete feature than ten broken ones.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Honestly: let Powerplay communities not having to track and manage these activities too.

Colonised (completed systems) will be and have to be acquired as any other potential target system.

 

[Kaocraft]

I get the impulse but I don’t think the benefits are worth the headache it introduces, both for the players on the strategic end, and for the devs in implementation and balancing. And bug reports.

I’m already incentivized to build within range of my Power’s acquisition range, which is exactly what I did; because I know it’ll be a convenience for me to have an ongoing project situated close to where I do PowerPlay activities.

 

[Danieros]

Honestly: let Powerplay communities not having to track and manage these activities too.

Colonised (completed systems) will be and have to be acquired as any other potential target system.

PP2's greatness comes from being connected with pretty much all the gameplay loops, even very obscure/outdated ones like rare trading and S&R. Balance still needs work, of course. Nowadays even most CG types will net you merits depending where it is and which activities it counts for.

As new gameplay loops are added, I think those should be considered as merit sources when it makes sense, otherwise the risk over time will be PP2 falling out of place to some level like PP1 did, when the only option was PP cargo/kills and that was disconnected from everything else.

 

[Danieros]

The difference in the amount of effort required is pretty substantial, too.

A basic outpost colonisation costs about 22kT of cargo, which is 5-10 player-hours of effort depending on how close the commodity source is.

An unopposed Acquisition costs 120,000 control points, or 480,000 merits. Getting that in even 10 hours would be impressively (impossibly?) fast.

I don't feel that the colonisation timelines are unreasonable for what it does - but perhaps there's a case for taking a zero off all the Powerplay CP requirements to make uncontested actions much quicker (contested actions of course would continue to have their difficulty primarily set by what the other side is doing) now that there's no longer any risk of it running out of space?

While I do think there is a case for speeding up CP (perhaps at least getting rid of the 6:1/4:1), there is still a need to balance different activities. I'm fairly sure optimal mining with the activity bonus can at least try to compete with outpost building. I've thought of this suggestion before getting to that point, as it would already do a similar thing - people will be colonizing anyway.

The primary outpost does a quick job at getting the system populated to move elsewhere (and made it possible for a decade of BGS to get completely outclassed in a single week), but the proper development of a system takes a lot more, including the occasional 212kt T3 in systems that can fit it. Supposing 6 merits per ton this would be moving the bar a lot. At 1/10 CP requirements you'd be easily getting a stronghold from it.

 

[Rebel Yell]

As new gameplay loops are added, I think those should be considered as merit sources when it makes sense.

Personal merits only is fine, it's just better to leave Powers out of such "colonisation" game loops for what concerns acquisitions and so on... given the additional work required and considering that powerplay is still waiting for fixes and rebalances from several weeks.