Powerplay Powerplay: played by the powerless

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Powerplay, I enjoy it a great deal. But I just realised- why on earth should I be a power at all?

It seems out of all the tiers in ED, Powerplay Powers have the worst of all worlds.

Powers are like giant, evolved player groups. Between Powers we can hurt each other, eventually collapse them. But outside that group, we are powerless.

The real powers are player groups. Why so? Because they are invincible. Nothing can hurt them as they are immutable. Powers cannot fight back against groups, while groups can harm powers. Soon this is going to get worse with Freedom Fighters, further tipping the scales.

Will we ever see a balance to this? I'm not out to get groups, but its only fair Powers can fight back somehow.
 

ever

ever
would be nice to see in the future only player based Powers. Changing some PP mechanics as to better reflect the way we play PP is due. And since I'm at it I would also like to make some suggestion to improve the PP experience:

1. Let us have multiple ways of undermining. Like gathering data from planetary outposts, or destroying modules on planetary outposts, that have lots of defenses, thus making this task only doable in wings.
2. Improving the narrative would go a long way towards attracting more players to PP and selling more copies of the game.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
What we need is equality.

I bet there are player groups bigger than most established powers. In a typical weeks play, compare experiences:

The PMF gets total freedom to play Elite and can actually do things.

A Power player has to spend a great deal of time and money grinding either prep, fortification or expansion.

PMF does.not have to deal with 5c at all, and if there is an influence change its easy to fight constructively without spending hundreds of millions of credits.

Diplomacy is the same. You fight, you win or not. In essence for a PMF prep, fortification and undermining are the same mechanism and are 'free'.

PMFs have no ranks. Your rank is your ability to do work (ie your ship), and not an arbitrary period of time. PMFs have no incentives, which is good and bad, but it means the incentive to join is your rank, ship and rep, i.e. you want to help rather than wanting stuff back.

Let me stress I'm not in this to make money; but for it to be accessible to all pilots it needs to pay for itself.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Tataboj said:
Because it's like they aren't there. The game doesn't even recognize that you belong to a PMF.
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This is my point- death has no visible consequence in ED at all. The only visible part is Powerplay itself. PMFs are seemingly indestructible, they don't have to fortify anything, expansion is semi-random and you can't fight them as they fight you.
 

Tataboj

T
Because you can't play as a Minor Faction at all! There are no dangers, there are no rewards. You can't be a member of one. That's like saying "when you play without doing PowerPlay, you don't have to deal with silly PP people, so not doing PP is a better mechanism."
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
The problem is you have one system that has immense cost and consequences being influenced by another system that has no consequences at all.

PMFs can attack a power with impunity and the power can never fight back, as they have nothing to attack- PMFs cannot be undermined like powers can. Thus, if a PMF targets you, you are toast.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Tataboj said:
How? The worst thing that could happen is that you have higher fortification trigger.
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I wish it was just this. PMFs backed by large groups can just as easily pledge to a random power and attack you- and in this case you can't fight back. Even with freedom fighters, you can't displace them, or damage anything unlike undermining.

The pain goes only goes one way.
 

Tataboj

T
But that doesn't have anything to do with PMF. Hell, if you wanted, your power could screw them up pretty bad, you have probably more people than any PMF.
 

theEmohawk

T
So... For a player faction to attack a Power they need the members of that player faction to join an opposition Power. Thus the player faction is now participating in Powerplay.

As a member of a player faction that has spent the last couple of months fighting to keep Federation and Imperial Powers out of our little bubble I see this from the other perspective. If a Power decides to roll into a PMF' system there is nothing that the faction can do to stop it. In fact the only tools a PMF has is the BGS, which doesn't stop a Power. To oppose the push by Powers into our bubble a number of us who previously had no interest in PP had to pledge to a Power.

Now the effort and expense we needed to put in to oppose expansions is far more than players in a Power would need to screw with our factions BGS work. Any group of players can hit a faction influence, it has nothing to do with being inside or outside PP - in fact, a single dedicated player can seriously screw with a faction fairly easily. Could a single player undermine a Power?
So to say that PMF can screw with powers with no consequences is tosh.
Mentioning freedom fighters is tosh too, it's a feature that doesn't exist yet and with no ETA.

But the bottom line remains - for any group of players to affect a Power they have to be playing PP.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
The most effective fighting force in the whole of ED would be a group of large PMFs who pledge to a random power to attack (or use the fabled Freedom Fighting mechanic sometime Soon). The target power could do nothing to fight back, as the rules are unequal.

Attacking the BGS is not death and collapse to a PMF- its reversible given time. Collapse in powerplay though equals removal. Can a PMF get removed? Not as easily as a Power could- and some PMFs rival the size of smaller powers.

A PMF that wants to hurt any power they dislike can join any other Power to oppose (and eventually via Freedom Fighters). But the defending Power can't attack the PMF directly- what do they hit? The host Power? That results in nothing as the host power does not represent the PMF.

If Freedom Fighters are to be a thing, PMF removal needs to be a thing too. If a PMF drops below 1% why should it remain in play, effectively immortal?
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Tataboj said:
But that!s not a matter of a PMF. It's a matter of a large group of people.
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See it this way:

You have two groups of people, one in a power, the other backing a PMF. The PMF attacks the power by pledging to another power.

The attackers can undermine, 5c, attack the BGS.

The defending power can do nothing. Attacking the BGS is not going to hurt the PMF. They can drive the PMF to 1% but that's it. The defender can't attack the other power as it's not really them attacking.

So, one group can seriously affect the Power, but the defending power can only symbolically fight back. One attack is crippling, the other meaningless.

Its all about victory conditions of in game organisations, a PMF can drive a power to collapse, but a Power can't remove a PMF.
 
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Tataboj

T
No, but he can via wars and manipulation of influence make them, say, lose their stations. PMF can't remove a power either, just lower its CC.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Tataboj said:
No, but he can via wars and manipulation of influence make them, say, lose their stations. PMF can't remove a power either, just lower its CC.
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But a big enough group backing a PMF (in an overrun system) can turmoil a power. With enough time and shooting / delivering the right things stations can be won back quite easily, depending on population.
 
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fergal

fergal
Tataboj said:
No, but he can via wars and manipulation of influence make them, say, lose their stations. PMF can't remove a power either, just lower its CC.
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Powers can be removed from controlling systems.
PMFs can't be removed from being in systems.

The main difference is the visibility, everyone in the game can easily see where each power is planning on trying to expand to the next week.

There is no easy way to see what PMFs are going into an expansion mode soon.
 

Apos

Apos
fergal said:
PMFs can't be removed from being in systems.
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They can ever since 1.4. It's just quite hard to do it in a targeted way, but it is possible.

And 2.1 is supposed to being forth another mechanic of removing a faction from systems they have expanded into.
 
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