So how do I trade in Powerplay?

[Staarlord]

I never was a huge Powerplayer. During Xbox era, I got my hammies (back when rails/ rail Cutters were popular, prior to being nerfed to near oblivion), Packies (also before a much greater "paperweight nerf" era) and Prismatic shields. After that? I just had it with the game mechanic and let the more recent current meta modules slide; advanced PAs, Pacifiers, Enforcers... Between defecting, waiting two weeks, grinding merits, waiting another week and the activity just genuinely not being fun? I lost interest.

Because of the above, I held off on 2.0 for some time, thinking there's no possible way they made this a more pleasing activity and so rolled with a lawless status...boy was I wrong! Nowadays? PowerPlay is fun! So much fun that I want to (for once) do something besides kill things...

At first? I did my weekly and had a blast, and had wished that there were dailies even. After that? I did my go-to/ default bounty hunting thing and that was rewarding. I then did some platinum mining but was faced with flashbacks and unpleasant memories of void opal/ low temperature diamond/ painite booms (come tritium mining? I was so spent on the activity that I skipped out all together ). So? I began looking to and embarking on the trading of rare commodities...only to find it's been banned from the activity, outside of weeklies. So, if trading of rare commodities in a 'space trading' game is a "no-no?" Can we trade anything for merits?

I have to get my triple Elite status back in trade anyway (for PC), so? Figured that was the next one that I was pretty close to accomplishing (currently Tycoon). Back in the day, I hit Elite trade rank during the Quint passenger run/ boom era in a matter of days (between that and my extensive cartographic data prior to that).

The closest thing I can see that I am able to do is simply power commodity deliveries, in the form of garrison supplies and strategic/ corruption reports (not proper trading). What are others doing to work trading into their power play?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Trading options:

"High profit trading": Acquisition or Reinforcement systems
- so long as you get +40% relative profit on the trade you'll get some merits for this. Not all that many per tonne [1], but with a large enough cargo hold it's not terrible since you're unlikely to be able to fill up on the actual Powerplay commodities every time

"Bulk cargo flooding": Undermining or Contested Acquisition systems
- sell cargo worth <500 credits, the cheaper the better
- utterly terrible returns so really only worth it if you don't have anything else to do with the space, but nevertheless synergises very nicely with other professions which use limpets: every time you dock, sell your limpets and rebuy them. So long as you bought them originally in a different system, you'll get a few undermining merits for free.

"Rares": Acquisition or Reinforcement systems
- excellent per-tonne rates if you got a decent distance
- sometimes still better than a lot of other cargo-based options even if you were just dropping them off one jump away
- really overpowered, especially in some edge cases, which is why it got disabled entirely
- hopefully will be back after next week's patch with slightly better balancing?

Other cargo hold options:

"Powerplay Commodities": three types, one for each system type
- pretty decent per-tonne rate, the catch is that you only get a limited allocation (less so at high ranks, but even then you're not going to fill a large freighter) and in a lot of cases it limits your choice of route

Salvage / Search and Rescue: works in all system types but where you hand them in varies (Salvage doesn't work in Acquisition)
- S&R is also disabled due to a silly edge-case exploit or two, which doesn't help, again, maybe it'll be back next week
- pretty decent per-tonne returns on these and most systems have a lot of Powerplay signal sources to collect them in
- you do need to be set up to either win combats (better for combined merit earning) or at least absorbing a decent amount of incoming fire while your limpets do their job

Support Missions: Reinforcement, Undermining or Contested Acquisition
- not trading as such, but the same basic pattern of "collect goods in demand, transport them to the other station"
- the higher-end goods like Silver or Gold have really good rates of merit return
- by far the best trading-ish option per tonne for Undermining however you look at it
- works very well in any Industrial/High-Tech economy, less effective if the system doesn't have any of those or is limited to just Odyssey settlements for it
- they're donations, so you're not going to make actual credits at the same time, but you do get the minor faction rep instead.



[1] There is at the moment what is hopefully a calculation bug where if you sell 1t at a time you get considerably more merits in exchange for being bored out of your mind with the clicking. Really hoping this gets fixed next week too.

 

[Staarlord]

Thank you for this! Very insightful. This gives me a few extra ideas to try out!

 

[Jmanis]

"Bulk cargo flooding": Undermining or Contested Acquisition systems
- sell cargo worth <500 credits, the cheaper the better
- utterly terrible returns so really only worth it if you don't have anything else to do with the space, but nevertheless synergises very nicely with other professions which use limpets: every time you dock, sell your limpets and rebuy them. So long as you bought them originally in a different system, you'll get a few undermining merits for free.

I don't understand the logic of this one.... maybe there's a powerplay context i don't understand though?

Things like polymers, fruit and veg, fish, biowaste, food cartridges... among other things... are all in demand in many markets.... and because of the way demand works, substantially so.

So... why does selling a substantially needed commodity on the market, which happens to sell for a low raw value, undermine a power?

Sounds like numberwang to me...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

So... why does selling a substantially needed commodity on the market, which happens to sell for a low raw value, undermine a power?

Finding a commodity with demand and also a sale price below 500 credits is surprisingly difficult (though it does count for a very low merit rate if you can)

Generally the more effective way is to find something they're already supplying cheaply (Hydrogen Fuel, Biowaste, Limpets) and dump even more of it onto them.

(Commodities neither supplied nor demanded don't work)

 

[Jmanis]

Finding a commodity with demand and also a sale price below 500 credits is surprisingly difficult (though it does count for a very low merit rate if you can)

Generally the more effective way is to find something they're already supplying cheaply (Hydrogen Fuel, Biowaste, Limpets) and dump even more of it onto them.

(Commodities neither supplied nor demanded don't work)

Oh, right, i mean, i get the mechanic... but I don't get how that makes sense as an undermine mechanic? Like, you're literally supplying needed goods right? I don't see how that's a bad thing?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Oh, right, i mean, i get the mechanic... but I don't get how that makes sense as an undermine mechanic? Like, you're literally supplying needed goods right? I don't see how that's a bad thing?

I assume the idea is that you're clogging up the market with a bunch of H-Fuel or similar which they don't really need and so slowing down transactions for more valuable trades. You're generally selling back things they already produce to minimise the per-tonne credit value, which wouldn't normally count as "supply of needed goods".

In a more general sense:
- it's pretty ineffective (in the general case about 1/6th as good per tonne as Power Commodities, and a lot worse per tonne than any of the Reinforcement trading methods)
- as with most Undermining activities it's actively unprofitable (well, neutral if you use limpets, but still) and doesn't give you any other benefits