Powerplay Profit Misconception!

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RingoD123

R
You CANNOT, I repeat, CANNOT profit in the long run buy buying all of your merits every week to hit the 50M credit bonus.

This is how it works:


week 1: buy 10k merits for 100M. week 2 starts and you are awarded 1000c for being at rank 1 when week 1 started and you now have 5k merits and are rank 5. (half of credits from week 1 = 10k/2 =5k)
week 2: buy 5k merits to get back to 10k costing 50M. week 3 starts and you are awarded 50M credits for working week 2 as rank 5 and you now have 5k merits. (quarter of credits earned in week 1 = 10k/4 = 2.5k) + (half the credits you put in in week 2 = 5k/2 = 2.5k) = 5K
week 3: you buy 5k merits to get back to 10k costing 50M. week 4 starts and you are awarded 50M for working week 3 as a rank 5 and you now have 5k merits. (eighth of week 1 = 10k/8= 1.25k) + (quarter of week 2 = 5k/4 = 1.25k) + (half of what you put in last week = 5k/2 = 2.5k) which adds to 5k.
week 4: same as previous weeks except all merits that have been carried from week 1 til now are deleted (12.5% of 10k =1250), you now have to buy 6.25k merits this week (that's a cost of 62.5M), maths bro!
week 5: same as previous weeks except all merits that were carried over from week 2 now get deleted (12.5% of 5k = 625), assuming you never go above 10k, you will need to purchase 5625 merits per week from this point on to retain rank 5.

Im posting this here as ive seen numerous people thinking powerplay is broken, or can be exploited, as if you have more than 100M credits you can just buy them all and start turning a profit after 4 or 5 weeks, but its not possible.
You will actually end up 112.5M credits down by end of week 4, after that you have to start paying an extra 6.25M per week to keep your rank 5 (56.25M in merits to receive 50M back as a bonus).
So when you all come on to the forums and start shouting and screaming that the merits decayed too much and you have basically wasted 100M because you wrongly thought you could exploit the system, remember this thread.
 
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RingoD123

R
HeimdallofHavn said:
I am sort of with you on the maths, though I do not understand what happens in week 5 according to you?
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they have stated that the merits only decay by 50% for 3 weeks, the fourth week they just drop off the end, why? I have no idea, but its in the documentation.
 
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RingoD123

R
bumping so more people can see this as I'm still seeing a lot of people talking like they're expecting to make a profit from this after a few weeks.
 

CaptainBinky

C
FWIW I think you've got it right, Ringo - especially given that if it were possible to turn a profit from merely buying your way to merits... that would indicate to me a broken system.

But what I don't get is why they didn't go with something much more straight-forward like:

Each cycle you carry forward 50% of your previous total, the end. It works out basically the same as the current system as you've descibed it (Week 1 merits count for 100%, then 50%, then 25%, then 12.5% etc each successive week) except without any of the convoluted mess which has yielded nothing but utter confusion from everybody :D
 

Innigo

I
Where's this 50% decay coming from? I read it was more like 1/7th. Basically, source please.

Information release on this front has been fairly abysmal :(
 

RingoD123

R
Innigo said:
Where's this 50% decay coming from? I read it was more like 1/7th. Basically, source please.

Information release on this front has been fairly abysmal :(
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well the source is the powerplay manual, the powerplay videos, I suggest you read/watch them, we only had 6/7ths (of 50%, so 43% total decay) decay this cycle because the cycle ticked over a day early, also the decay was actually bugged and ended up giving people more merits rather than decaying them.
 

Skillet

S
CaptainBinky said:
FWIW I think you've got it right, Ringo - especially given that if it were possible to turn a profit from merely buying your way to merits... that would indicate to me a broken system.

But what I don't get is why they didn't go with something much more straight-forward like:

Each cycle you carry forward 50% of your previous total, the end. It works out basically the same as the current system as you've descibed it (Week 1 merits count for 100%, then 50%, then 25%, then 12.5% etc each successive week) except without any of the convoluted mess which has yielded nothing but utter confusion from everybody :D
Click to expand...


Because utter confusion is apparently what they wanted.
 
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Innigo

I
RingoD123 said:
well the source is the powerplay manual, the powerplay videos, I suggest you read/watch them, we only had 6/7ths (of 50%, so 43% total decay) decay this cycle because the cycle ticked over a day early, also the decay was actually bugged and ended up giving people more merits rather than decaying them.
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There's a manual?

...

OK, found it. I support your maths from the OP.
 
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Skillet

S
So participating in Power Play is no more profitable than donating to your favorite faction charity. Who thinks up these things?
 

RingoD123

R
Skillet said:
So participating in Power Play is no more profitable than donating to your favorite faction charity. Who thinks up these things?
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well no, its profitable if you actually do work for your power, however its not possible for people with 100M+ to exploit this system for mega profit/minimum effort.
 

jay88

J
Innigo said:
Where's this 50% decay coming from? I read it was more like 1/7th. Basically, source please.

Information release on this front has been fairly abysmal :(
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there's isn't a good source, because FD sucks at communicating actual numbers, and even the moderators on the forums don't know (as ringo knows)

Here's my interpretation, based on some numbers we saw in beta as well as my interpretation of the manual

"the weeks add up.

this week, you keep 100% of what you earn.
the next week, you keep 50% of that.
the week after, you keep 25% of that
the next week, you keep 12.5% of that.
the next week, you don't keep any.
the weeks are cumulative, meaning that what you earn will stay around for 4 weeks.

so, imagine you earn 100 per week.
first week: 100
second week: 100 + (100 from first week, x 50%) : 150 total
third week: 100 + (100 from second week x 50%) + (100 from first week, x 25%) = 175 total
fourth week" 100 + (100 from 3rd week x 50%) + (100 from 2nd week x 25%) + (100 from 1st week x 12.5%) = 187.5 total

essentially, multiply what you average every week by 1.875 to see what your total will approach and stay at if you want to hold everything steady. or divide the rank you want by 1.875 to get merits per week to get and maintain it.

The confusion arises whether the amount halved is what you earned that week, or the total merits you had for that week. numbers from people from beta making posts on the forums suggest mathematically the number you earn is halved, not the total amount.
This makes the grind much, much harder as well as maintenance of that rank...which, TBH, is what we should expect by now."


The thing that makes me so sure of this is the high level of maintenance required for the 'earned' decay model (the one i present) rather than the total decay model (the one where you only need 1250 or so merits a week to maintain rank 5) is the reward vs effort.

Once you reach rating 5 on the 'total merit decay/carryover', you only need 1250 merits a week, which is a mere 84 undermining kills, which is almost nothing, for a 50 million cr reward, which is an insane 595,238 credits per interdiction kill. With the 'earned decay', you need 5334 merits a week to maintain rating 5, or 356 interdiction kills, for about 140k credits per kill.

We all know how quick FD is to nerf insane earnings rates (luxury goods, the most recent slave/smuggling routes, etc etc), we also know they didn't intend powerplay to be the most profitable time investment (by far, at rating 5).

So what's more likely? I'm willing to be 500 tons of imperial slaves on 'earned merits carryover/decay', and will happily take all comers.
 

stevesideas

stevesideas
I'm not sure if this has been discussed but what happens if you don't have enough money to fast track your merits. You can only take a max of 30 powerplay cargo and have to wait 29 mins until the next allotment is available. Surely it would take ages to get anywhere near the higher ranks especially as you lose 50% of your merits at the start of the new week.
 
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TargetLost

T
Skillet said:
So participating in Power Play is no more profitable than donating to your favorite faction charity. Who thinks up these things?
Click to expand...

It's non profitable if you buy merits.
But it's an interesting source of money if you have the time to shoot your merits. Although very boring.

This said..
I am missing a step inbetween 1500 and 10000 merits

something like:

rank X 5000 merits
- a one time dinner with Aisling
 

RingoD123

R
stevesideas said:
I'm not sure if this has been discussed but what happens if you don't have enough money to fast track your merits. You can only take a max of 30 powerplay cargo and have to wait 29 mins until the next allotment is available. Surely it would take ages to get anywhere near the higher ranks especially as you lose 50% of your merits at the start of the new week.
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you can (I have) make 400-500 merits per hour just by undermining opposing powers, add that to your 30 merit cargo every 30 mins and its not that hard to acheieve in only a few weeks. And once you have received that first 50M you would be making 37.5M per week for 4 or 5 cargo runs of merits (if the decay worked the way some people believe), where as it makes much more sense that if you want to throw credits at it to get your rank that you would need to actually pay out a total of 6.25M (after reaching rank 5) credits per week to keep your rank 5 perk.
 
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jay88

J
RingoD123 said:
well no, its profitable if you actually do work for your power, however its not possible for people with 100M+ to exploit this system for mega profit/minimum effort.
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Just for my own edification, I whipped up some napkin math. Using a type 9 with 500 cargo, hauling 50 free merits every half hour, and buying the 450 (and then 500) merits goods, then hauling back a 1400 cr / t cargo (not all too difficult, i found one on my first try) and factoring in a 16-17 minute round trip (reasonable from my experience) you wind up with an 8.1 million deficit per trip. Maintaining rank is 5334 merits, but we'll assume you just need 5k, because what's a little bit of combat anyway? So that means 5 round trips at 16 minutes each, 80 minutes, or 1.33 hours. (BTW, merits still scale with level- it's not 100k to fast track your current order, it's still 10k credits to fast track 1 commodity, so half a mil to fast track 50 commodities).

Anyway, what that gives is a net deficit of 40.5 million credits, and then a gain of 50 mil at the end of the week, for a net profit of 9.5 million. (The 1400 cr/t profit was rolled into the cycle cost) for a time investment of 1.333 hours, or just over 7.14 million per hour. The profit goes up if you take a bit longer of a route or don't grind it all at once- in my model, every other trip is buying 1 set of commodities rather than waiting 14 minutes for it to be free (for a net gain of a mere 2.5 million credits, but that bumps it up to 9 million per hour, PROVIDING you do things in the mean time- you'd have to go out and do some BH'ing in the system for 14 minutes or so every other time).

Point is, this is a bunch of work for next to no real reward compared to what is normally easily achievable, and the only real benefit to having rating 5 is the rating 5 specific bonus (since rating 4 doesn't give anything either).

That's really the lynchpin of whether you should maintain rating 5 or not, not the profit. (oh, and i guess RP or whatever too, if you're invested in the storyline).


(anyway, the worked-out profit per hour is just my main reason why the 'merit earned' decay is the proper model).
 

jgm

jgm
The confusion is due to the powerplay manual stating that you retain a percentage of your merits. Some have taken this to mean merits earned in that cycle, others to mean merit total in that cycle.

Let's look at the difference. Say you are earning 1000 merits per cycle. With the former reasoning your merits will be:

Cycle 1: 1000 merits earned
Cycle 2: 1000 merits + 500 carried over from cycle 1 = 1500 merits
Cycle 3: 1000 merits + 250 carried over from cycle 1 + 500 carried over from cycle 2 = 1750 merits
Cycle 4: 1000 merits + 125 carried over from cycle 1 + 250 carried over from cycle 2 + 500 carried over form cycle 3 = 1875 merits

With the latter reasoning your merits will be:

Cycle 1: 1000 merits earned
Cycle 2: 1000 merits + 500 carried over from cycle 1 = 1500 merits
Cycle 3: 1000 merits + 250 carried over from cycle 1 + 750 carried over from cycle 2 = 2000 merits
Cycle 4: 1000 merits + 125 carried over from cycle 1 + 375 carried over from cycle 2 + 1000 carried over from cycle 3 = 2500 merits

Obviously there's a big difference. Which one is right? We'll find out in a couple of weeks, unless someone from FD wishes to clarify.
 
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