The other easy/fun/decent PP activity with ALD is to do restore missions at reinforcement systems -- each pays out about 1800 I believe, plus when you add in any PP data that you scan during the mission you can easily do 8000 - 10000 merits an hour, and more if you find a good system with multiple missions.
Prismatics must be taken out of the PP ranking system modules and become a standard module
- Thread starter CMDR 1936
- Start date
400...600 per scanned megaship.
or literally anyone
merits don't decay, you don't have to unpledge or change sides when you've unlocked them, you can just stay pledged and buy more whenever you need them.
Unlocking a stockpile of every module in the old system would literally take a year, making rank 100 took me, like, six weeks and that got me every module unlocked. Not imperial, by the way.
Honestly, PP modules shouldn't be PP modules... they should be Tech Broker unlocks.
If this hurts incentives for PP, that's a good reason to think more about the reasons people do PP; it shouldn't be just for equipment. Taking a page out of colonisation... people doing colonisation are more than likely doing it for the sake of colonisation rather than any associated rewards.
I’ve singularly failed to find any megaships that count for my current weekly.
Are you scanning the uplink? Additionally, you need to check whether tasks are for reinforcement (your territory) acquisition (nearby neutral territory) or undermining (nearby enemy territory).
Inara is very good for finding megaships.
Reinforcement systems this week.
Found a mega ship in a reinforcement system (it had 3 in total) and scanned the ship itself followed by the uplink.
Didn’t count.
I’ll maybe try an Inara search later to see if other ships work.
Well, I gave it another go. Took me the best part of 2 hours to scan 11 ships. I feel like that's slow but there it is. TBH, I was kinda done after about 6. 11 felt too many.
Once I figured out the correct Inara search (wasn't obvious but made sense once I had it) I jumped in the Mandalay to start my trek. Thought about taking all the weapons off for more jump range but glad I didn't as I got jumped a couple of times by hostile ships (both PP and standard NPC) so was useful to be able to take them out. Other than a Python with a seemingly limitless supply of Heat Sinks, Shield Cells and Chaff, nothing was remotely an issue - even for the Mandy's C1 and C2 weapons.
I think I checked 20 or so megaships indicated by Inara in total. Of those: about 6 simply didn't actually exist in game; 2 couldn't be scanned for the initial scan; and 1 took the initial scan but then didn't have a Ship Log Uplink to complete the process. The ships that didn't exist seemed to be in systems that were now under colonisation ...
Honestly, I'm in two minds:
- On the one hand I've made 30k merits this week which is the most I've ever managed
- On the other hand, it's taken me 8.6 hours and has been woefully boring at times
I remain unconvinced by PP - at least with regard to the module aquisition.
i got the prismatics from the old pp now they are sat in storage,i bought one of each incase,they are stronger yes but the slow recharge rate kills them,so i keep what ive got as a just cause i can. also engineered as well.never use them now.
ps why remove them some players want them .
I think the suggestion was to put them in tech brokers as a one-off unlock and let PP be PP.
If they did that, I would unlock what I wanted via the Tech Brokers (like I did with Guardian and other modules) and then pledge to a Power whose ethos I actually agree with for RP reasons, and happily knock out whatever weeklies were my sort of thing each week without worrying about the grind for the module unlocks.
And I get the impression I’m far from the only player who feels that way!
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sry but sounds you are.but youre point is valid in a way,but can you imagine the out cry if you have to head of to guardian sites to collect the bits and bobs just for pris shields that were once a reward for partcipatng in pp, i can.i can see youre point but,but no not going to happen. no harm done.07 cmdr.
Not suggesting Guardian materials would be needed to unlock. Just other mats - bit like unlocking the pre-engineered FSDs, although I think it should be a one-off unlock and then you can just buy them for credits,
Cant see why there would be an outcry. Anyone who’s already unlocked them via PP could simply be given a perm unlock instead.
Cant see why there would be an outcry. Anyone who’s already unlocked them via PP could simply be given a perm unlock instead.
Just some thoughts...
Doing the missions is actually pretty ineffective per hour. And doing the best meta powerplay stuff is not intuitive. My estimate is that "peak meta" should be in the 40-60k range and varies by power. For example, Archer can probably make 40k merits/hour bounty hunting, especially if you do it with friends, in the right circumstances, someone made a youtube video about it. Mining and 1ton trading can also give in that range or more, but needs a Power with financial alignment for best results. For AD, which I have more experience with, the top ten typically has several people making more than 1million merits, usually from plat mining in Yan Musu or Paesia. Iirc those places give us over 60k merits/hour with the right economy state, with less ideal circumstances in other systems it can go down to 8k/hour.
The thing is though, as everything with this game, knowledge and experience is rewarded. I am not a normal player by any means, but I can easily make 30-50k merits on useful objectives per hour, and probably more if I just wanted to max merits per hour. That means I could go from level 0 to 100 in about 15-25 hours, with the lower end being merits earned "selfishly" and higher time being merits earned on "strategy".
I suspect if you don't know what you're doing you'll be getting closer to 5-8k per hour, which puts maxing out the ladder at the 150hour range which is admittedly a lot. IMO this is a side effect of Fdev's poor explanations of how the feature works fragmenting the player base into "high information" and "low information" players, with Fdev having to balance against the high info players running circles around everyone else and the low info complaining because they are making no progress. Ideally the system needs to be better explained (and especially rebalanced for the parts "temporarily disabled" for the majority of the lifetime of the feature, THAT THE GAME STILL DIRECTS NEWBIES TO DO, WASTING COUNTLESS PLAYER HOURS!)
Doing the missions is actually pretty ineffective per hour. And doing the best meta powerplay stuff is not intuitive. My estimate is that "peak meta" should be in the 40-60k range and varies by power. For example, Archer can probably make 40k merits/hour bounty hunting, especially if you do it with friends, in the right circumstances, someone made a youtube video about it. Mining and 1ton trading can also give in that range or more, but needs a Power with financial alignment for best results. For AD, which I have more experience with, the top ten typically has several people making more than 1million merits, usually from plat mining in Yan Musu or Paesia. Iirc those places give us over 60k merits/hour with the right economy state, with less ideal circumstances in other systems it can go down to 8k/hour.
The thing is though, as everything with this game, knowledge and experience is rewarded. I am not a normal player by any means, but I can easily make 30-50k merits on useful objectives per hour, and probably more if I just wanted to max merits per hour. That means I could go from level 0 to 100 in about 15-25 hours, with the lower end being merits earned "selfishly" and higher time being merits earned on "strategy".
I suspect if you don't know what you're doing you'll be getting closer to 5-8k per hour, which puts maxing out the ladder at the 150hour range which is admittedly a lot. IMO this is a side effect of Fdev's poor explanations of how the feature works fragmenting the player base into "high information" and "low information" players, with Fdev having to balance against the high info players running circles around everyone else and the low info complaining because they are making no progress. Ideally the system needs to be better explained (and especially rebalanced for the parts "temporarily disabled" for the majority of the lifetime of the feature, THAT THE GAME STILL DIRECTS NEWBIES TO DO, WASTING COUNTLESS PLAYER HOURS!)
As a casual player and LYR pledge (I just want Pack Hounds ...) I have only just managed to make 30k merits this week, never mind per hour!!
Given my preferred play is a mix of different missions but largely bounty-hunting, I should probably pledge to Archer or Grom but that's where things get daft: I don't want to pledge to a power I don't agree with just because they give the bonuses that support my playstyle!
Add in the fact that FDev have disabled the actions that gain the best results for some powers (i.e. Escape Pods, Rares, Exploration nerf) it feels like giving all powers all bonuses would be fairer to players. Then CMDRs could pick powers based on ethos rather than gamification reasons.
Given my preferred play is a mix of different missions but largely bounty-hunting, I should probably pledge to Archer or Grom but that's where things get daft: I don't want to pledge to a power I don't agree with just because they give the bonuses that support my playstyle!
Add in the fact that FDev have disabled the actions that gain the best results for some powers (i.e. Escape Pods, Rares, Exploration nerf) it feels like giving all powers all bonuses would be fairer to players. Then CMDRs could pick powers based on ethos rather than gamification reasons.
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But that still has gamification reasons for choosing PP, but then removing all PP bonuses from the game probably wouldn’t go down well.
Powers rewarding pledges for maintaining justice, trading, etc feels “in universe” to me.
If you haven't ranked up in PP, you can always swap your prismatics from an old ship to your new ship.
We knew for roughly a year the new Powerplay was coming. We didn't know what was going to happen to the powerplay modules so you could have done what cmdrs like me did.... stockpile our favorites.