@vectron I accept this admission, thank you.
Outrageous as this might sound,
is it at all possible for the actual powers themselves to attempt to at least partially fix this? for example, a power who should have failed a prep but actually got one forgoes the opportunity to take advantage of the error, where a system should have been successfully undermined but post 7am fortifying saved it is left unfortified this week to allow a successful undermine to be repeated?
Okay, probably asking for too much milk of human kindness here, and of course there are a lot of people who don't follow the reddit leaderships, but surely we can arrange for some sort of restoration between us? We've got 5 days still in this tick where we might collude to fix at least part of the problem ourselves - or is it too difficult to coordinate? Is everything so kyboshed that we can't figure out a way back?
Dave
is it at all possible for the actual powers themselves to attempt to at least partially fix this? for example, a power who should have failed a prep but actually got one forgoes the opportunity to take advantage of the error, where a system should have been successfully undermined but post 7am fortifying saved it is left unfortified this week to allow a successful undermine to be repeated?
Okay, probably asking for too much milk of human kindness here, and of course there are a lot of people who don't follow the reddit leaderships, but surely we can arrange for some sort of restoration between us? We've got 5 days still in this tick where we might collude to fix at least part of the problem ourselves - or is it too difficult to coordinate? Is everything so kyboshed that we can't figure out a way back?
Dave
It's not quite that simple. No one ended up with any expansions, and that is part of the problem. Everyone still have the preps they had last cycle with the same merit count in them BUT they have the CC associated with the cycle 52 end. As such Winters and Patreus won prep races, and even if they didn't want to expand the systems they won, they should have gotten them - but now they are guaranteed to lose those prep races, even if there are no other competitors, because being in turmoil means they have a negative amount of CC to spend.
Torval has a similar situation - they prepared three profitable systems, but they cannot win those prep races this cycle, because they only have 103 CC to spend and their cheapest system is 123 CC.
Let's use a fake example.
Power A and Power B were in a prep race for X.
A won with 50,000 merits vs 49,000 for B.
Tick happens and botches.
A is now in turmoil (usually fine) and cannot afford X.
B had a good cycle and lots of CC, and can afford X.
Even if both powers agreed to do nothing with preps, B will win as an expansion.
A and B could of course agree that B won't try to expand X, but by doing that C can then try to prep X in two cycles, and C really wants that system and can outrace both A and B.
So now we're going to have to get A, B AND C to agree to let A win the prep for X in two cycles cycle AND A has to end up with enough CC to prep X again, which would require ...
I think you can see where this is going.
At some point people won't care about the agreement from earlier, because why are they forced to hold back what's best for their power, when they had nothing to do with the cause of the bugs?
I know there is some disagreements within Mahon about not pushing a hostile expansion into Hudson (the one we should have won) in an attempt the calm the waters in this particular cycle, and I don't blame them - we didn't cause the bug. We had a slight set back in terms of expansions, but we also came out with more CC than we should have (but no, not enough to make us lose any of our expansions let alone turmoil us). To a large extent we came out unscathed, and we've been working hard to get Hudson and Winters into deficit or really close to it, and now that we're there ... we agree to not do anything for a cycle?!?
That's not fair to the Mahon pledges who've worked their collective wallets off, nor is it fair for Mahon - but I genuinely believe it is the best for PowerPlay if it is to have a future that I'd like to participate in.
Fair enough, I did rather think that the somewhat convoluted rules of PP, ably assisted by the fact that we all achieve our fort/prep/UM/expand in different ways, would probably make it horrendously difficult to arrive at a negotiated solution....but I thought it was worth asking for all that.
Combining the bodge with the in game changes that have made it almost impossible to play a 'normal' game like non pledged players, and I'm beginning to think PP just isn't worth it any more. There is a greater than 50% chance that when I deliver my last 400 tons for this week's rank 5, it will be the last. I'm fed up of not being able to do the same things as unpledged players without getting 5 times the NPC bother that they do whilst doing the same stuff.
Dave
Combining the bodge with the in game changes that have made it almost impossible to play a 'normal' game like non pledged players, and I'm beginning to think PP just isn't worth it any more. There is a greater than 50% chance that when I deliver my last 400 tons for this week's rank 5, it will be the last. I'm fed up of not being able to do the same things as unpledged players without getting 5 times the NPC bother that they do whilst doing the same stuff.
Dave
Well, not only was it worth asking but I hope to hell that other PP players will agree with you, as I do.
There are currently (day 3 of Cycle 53) some signs that powers are trying not to take advantage of the Birthday Bugs. None seem to be undermining much. No great battles over Preparations. Yet there are still messy areas. Martin is right that it isn't easy for powers to leave things 'as they were'. But as far as possible, I hope we do.
I have no standing in ALD, though I have tried to be a loyal foot-soldier for 45 cycles or more now. We have 2 preparation targets that are iffy given the disaster that was last cycle. Ch'iang Fei we lost to Hudson at the normal 07:00 cycle tick (IIRC). Maybe we should refuse to contest it this cycle? Not sure, since it is closer to our sphere than Hudson's. This is a tough one, and to be fair neither power has put many merits into it since Thursday - almost as though neither of us can decide what to do in the light of the disaster that was this week's cycle non-tick.
Clearer (IMHO) is our ALD 2nd system choice. HIP 47328 was lost to Winters fair and square at the cycle tick and since Winters has been prevented from continuing to contest it by FDev's bizarre (non)solution to the problem, ALD should do what we can to be fair. We cannot give it to Winters but at least we can stop it going to Expansion for our power.
ALD Research hasn't come out (yet) to agree with the above but I hope they will soon. And ALD soldiers themselves have been acting as though they agree with my views above - hardly any extra merits have gone into preparing HIP 47328 since Thursday and I hope that continues. It doesn't put things back to the way they should be but it is the best that can be done (given FDev's failure to do anything substantial).