I’d like to suggest some changes that might make participating in Powerplay more fun and encourage more commanders to participate in Powerplay.
The first change is to how new Powerplay powers are created and a widening of what factions players can pledge to. There are many players groups in Elite Dangerous (such as the Hutton Truckers, the Paladin Consortium, and the Canonn Research Group), which have in game factions which share the same name as the player group. Many of these player groups spend time in game working to try to impact the background simulation to expand and protect the minor faction which they identify with.
I think that in addition to pledging to the existing Power Play powers, players should able to pledge to minor faction powers. The minor faction pledges would change the displayed alliance of the player to the name of the minor faction, which I think would be very popular; many, many players identify with player groups and in player minor factions, so being able to display those minor group names for all to see I think would see a lot of use.
The minor faction powers would also have the opportunity to become major power play powers by expanding the minor faction territory. If any minor faction expands to a large number of systems and achieves a significant number of player pledges, then that minor faction power would be able to become a Powerplay power. In the subsequent cycle, the minor faction would be removed from the game, and a new power play power would be created, initially with only the minor factions home system as the only Powerplay control system in the Powerplay power’s control. Perhaps the new power play power would have a few cycles of immunity. But after that, if the Powerplay power fared poorly, it might revert back to being a minor power. Or it could expand to become a force in the galaxy. It's up the players!
The second change I would suggest is altering how much players are paid for pledging and maintaining their Rating with the Powerplay powers. As it currently stands, as of April 2017, the amount that a player is paid is not related to how well the Powerplay power performs. In my opinion, the lack of relation between the salaries paid for handing in merits for a Powerplay power and the Powerplay powers performance leads to indifference on the part of the players as to how well the Powerplay power is performing.
To encourage players to care about how well a power they’ve pledged to is performing, I suggest changing the base salary so that it is set in relation to how well the power play performed overall in the last power play cycle. For example, if Archon Delanie generated only 2,695 command capital income from exploited systems in the last cycle, and Edmund Mahon generated 10,821 command capital income from exploited systems, it is reasonable that the salary paid to players who have pledged to Archon Delanie should be about 25% of the salary that is paid to players who have pledged to Edmund Mahone. So instead of a Rating 5 player being paid 50,000,000 credits regardless of which power they are pledged to, perhaps a Rating 5 player pledged to Archon Delanie would be paid 2,5000,000 credits, and a Rating 5 player pledged to Edmund Mahone would be paid 10,000,000 credits.
Both of these base salary amounts are lower than the 50,000,000 credits that would be paid to a Rating 5 player currently. That is because a second change I would suggest is to create an additional "weekly bonus" component that a player is paid that is varies in relation to the relative change in command capital from week to week. So, if a perhaps a Rating 5 player pledged to Archon Delanie is paid 2,5000,000 credits in base salary, if as a group the Archon Delanie major power does well in the prior Powerplay cycle and gained say 1,000 command capital, a Rating 5 player pledged to Archon Delanie would get a large bonus (say 20,000,000 credits) due to the large command capital increase. Similarly, Rating 5 player pledged to Edmund Mahone might be paid the 10,000,000 credits in base salary, but if the Command Capital for that power dropped that by 1,000 during the prior cycle, that player would get paid no bonus.
A third change I would suggest is to change how the merit thresholds are set. Instead of having fixed thresholds, I'd suggest using percentage based thresholds, similar to how the community goals payouts are calculated. That way, even in Archon Delanie has the lowest base salary and lowest command capital of any power in power play, a player would still have an incentive to join Archon Delanie, because they would have an easier time reaching a 5 Rating, and their incremental efforts for that week more likely to be rewarded due to the week-to-week command capital increase bonus. Similarly, players would have an incentive to join Edmund Mahon to get higher base payouts from joining a more successful power, but they would have a harder time (due to the large number of players who are pledged to the power) getting a 5 Rating.
The fourth change I would suggest, which would align with the changes in payouts, would be to vary how much you have to pay to accelerate the payout of merits to vary on a trailing basis in ratio to the salary adjustment payouts to avoid a situation where the payouts are enough for the merits to accrue in a run-away situation, where the salary is so high a player can spend the salary to buy merits and thereby easily perpetuate their current Rating.
The first change is to how new Powerplay powers are created and a widening of what factions players can pledge to. There are many players groups in Elite Dangerous (such as the Hutton Truckers, the Paladin Consortium, and the Canonn Research Group), which have in game factions which share the same name as the player group. Many of these player groups spend time in game working to try to impact the background simulation to expand and protect the minor faction which they identify with.
I think that in addition to pledging to the existing Power Play powers, players should able to pledge to minor faction powers. The minor faction pledges would change the displayed alliance of the player to the name of the minor faction, which I think would be very popular; many, many players identify with player groups and in player minor factions, so being able to display those minor group names for all to see I think would see a lot of use.
The minor faction powers would also have the opportunity to become major power play powers by expanding the minor faction territory. If any minor faction expands to a large number of systems and achieves a significant number of player pledges, then that minor faction power would be able to become a Powerplay power. In the subsequent cycle, the minor faction would be removed from the game, and a new power play power would be created, initially with only the minor factions home system as the only Powerplay control system in the Powerplay power’s control. Perhaps the new power play power would have a few cycles of immunity. But after that, if the Powerplay power fared poorly, it might revert back to being a minor power. Or it could expand to become a force in the galaxy. It's up the players!
The second change I would suggest is altering how much players are paid for pledging and maintaining their Rating with the Powerplay powers. As it currently stands, as of April 2017, the amount that a player is paid is not related to how well the Powerplay power performs. In my opinion, the lack of relation between the salaries paid for handing in merits for a Powerplay power and the Powerplay powers performance leads to indifference on the part of the players as to how well the Powerplay power is performing.
To encourage players to care about how well a power they’ve pledged to is performing, I suggest changing the base salary so that it is set in relation to how well the power play performed overall in the last power play cycle. For example, if Archon Delanie generated only 2,695 command capital income from exploited systems in the last cycle, and Edmund Mahon generated 10,821 command capital income from exploited systems, it is reasonable that the salary paid to players who have pledged to Archon Delanie should be about 25% of the salary that is paid to players who have pledged to Edmund Mahone. So instead of a Rating 5 player being paid 50,000,000 credits regardless of which power they are pledged to, perhaps a Rating 5 player pledged to Archon Delanie would be paid 2,5000,000 credits, and a Rating 5 player pledged to Edmund Mahone would be paid 10,000,000 credits.
Both of these base salary amounts are lower than the 50,000,000 credits that would be paid to a Rating 5 player currently. That is because a second change I would suggest is to create an additional "weekly bonus" component that a player is paid that is varies in relation to the relative change in command capital from week to week. So, if a perhaps a Rating 5 player pledged to Archon Delanie is paid 2,5000,000 credits in base salary, if as a group the Archon Delanie major power does well in the prior Powerplay cycle and gained say 1,000 command capital, a Rating 5 player pledged to Archon Delanie would get a large bonus (say 20,000,000 credits) due to the large command capital increase. Similarly, Rating 5 player pledged to Edmund Mahone might be paid the 10,000,000 credits in base salary, but if the Command Capital for that power dropped that by 1,000 during the prior cycle, that player would get paid no bonus.
A third change I would suggest is to change how the merit thresholds are set. Instead of having fixed thresholds, I'd suggest using percentage based thresholds, similar to how the community goals payouts are calculated. That way, even in Archon Delanie has the lowest base salary and lowest command capital of any power in power play, a player would still have an incentive to join Archon Delanie, because they would have an easier time reaching a 5 Rating, and their incremental efforts for that week more likely to be rewarded due to the week-to-week command capital increase bonus. Similarly, players would have an incentive to join Edmund Mahon to get higher base payouts from joining a more successful power, but they would have a harder time (due to the large number of players who are pledged to the power) getting a 5 Rating.
The fourth change I would suggest, which would align with the changes in payouts, would be to vary how much you have to pay to accelerate the payout of merits to vary on a trailing basis in ratio to the salary adjustment payouts to avoid a situation where the payouts are enough for the merits to accrue in a run-away situation, where the salary is so high a player can spend the salary to buy merits and thereby easily perpetuate their current Rating.