Powerplay reputation decay

[Nitrogue]

havent used powerplay before, wanted to check something before I do.

I am aware that once you are aligned and have made progress with a particular character you need to keep at it as your reputation with them decays.

Was wondering if this stops at a particular level or does it go all the way to 0.

an example would be if I'm half way through the third tier, and I cant play due to work or computer meltdown for a month. when I get back will I be at the start of tier 3 or at the start of tier 1 like a complete newbie.

any responses from experienced powerplayers would be useful

 

[SHEPR0N]

If you do nothing for too long you'll eventually always end up back in rank 1. Merits get halved every cycle and merits older than a month are discarded completely. Look at this FDev post for more clarification, it has a nice graph table.

So in your example of doing no merits for a month you'd be indeed back in rank 1 again. You could still cash in the salaries of the previous weeks though according to the ranks you had in them.

I wouldn't let that discourage you from trying out PP though. If you know what you are doing combat wise and/or have one of the big 3 cargo ships you can get/sustain any rank up to 4 in about one to two hours max per week. If you do cargo merits it helps to have a higher rank so you'll get bigger allocations (if you buy them the allocation size doesn't matter money wise but it's unnerving filling your hold with 10 ton allotments.