Powerplay Powers checks and Balances

[Fronsky]

A solution to deal with sabotage by preparing poor expansions:

At end of a Powerplay cycle a power may reject a preparation attempt under the following conditions:

Is the system profitable?



Profitable is defined as: Income - (Overhead + Upkeep).
It would be preferable that the maximum overhead of 62cc is used and not the current overhead if a system is below 55 control systems.


If yes then expand. If no then go to the next condition:


Is the system a weaponized expansion?

A weaponized expansion is defined as: A systems that has a sphere of influence that contests 3 or more systems of (this number can change) of a Hostile power.

If none of these conditions are met then the expansion is rejected and the CC is spent


To prevent abuse of this mechanic to prevent a power from never expanding a power can replace the rejected expansion with the first preparation system that meets the profitable conditionexpansion that has been prepped. The weaponized criteria should not be used as this will lead to unplanned weaponized expansions.

 

[aspiringexpatriate]

Nice thoughts, but FDev has repeatedly said they want players to be able to make bad choices for preparation.

Sandro has also implied that he's not real hot on the idea of weaponized expansions.

When Power Play eventually gets another massive mechanic pass, don't expect it to be the game many of us think it is now.

 

[Martin Schou]

Automated solutions do not work. There can be a large number of reasons for a power to expand into loss makers. It can be defensive, in order to prevent even more damaging weaponized expansions from being inserted. It can be defensive to help out player groups. It can have been picked because it's a great system for the pledges (i.e. bounty hunting or trade).

There are far more reasons for preparing and expanding negative systems than "sabotage" and "idiocy".

 

[dciskey]

Nice thoughts, but FDev has repeatedly said they want players to be able to make bad choices for preparation.

Sandro has also implied that he's not real hot on the idea of weaponized expansions.

When Power Play eventually gets another massive mechanic pass, don't expect it to be the game many of us think it is now.

Are you sure Sandro doesn't like weaponized expansions? In this post he says he's pleased to see them because FDev anticipated players would use them: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=237760&page=3&p=3668615&viewfull=1#post3668615