Right now, by far the most effective way to do Odyssey stuff for Powerplay is to just kill everyone. This strikes me as bad gameplay; it's needlessly limiting. Being stealthy and sneaking around is fun! It should be rewarded!
Odyssey powerplay activities should have multipliers based on the tags that you can see on missions. For example, don't get detected, don't set off the alarms, don't kill anyone. If you can get in, upload a power malware without anyone dying, and get back out, you should get way more merits than doing so by running in, guns blazing.
Logically, this also makes sense; if everyone in the settlement is dead, they're probably going to send in a full tech team to make sure nobody put any nasty software in when nobody could stop them. By contrast, if there's nothing apparently wrong, malware or stolen data would be far more valuable.
Ideally it wouldn't ALWAYS be the best way, but it would sometimes be a good way.
Settlement raids [and the possibility to store data/goods] is already unbalanced (on both risk/reward and time/effort basis) when they are considered in competing activities (undermine vs. reinforce) and even vs. certain different merit sources (i.e. only mining can compete).
We hope that FDEV gives a look at the current state of PP2, before putting more stuff in the framework which might result in even more unbalance.
Settlement raids [and the possibility to store data/goods] is already unbalanced (on both risk/reward and time/effort basis) when they are considered in competing activities (undermine vs. reinforce) and even vs. certain different merit sources (i.e. only mining can compete).
We hope that FDEV gives a look at the current state of PP2, before putting more stuff in the framework which might result in even more unbalance.
With the exception of anarchy settlements, repeatedly raiding tanks your reputation with the local faction and gives you notoriety, which can be problematic especially as other levers that require good relationship with the faction are better for reinforcement. So in that sense there already is a reward to stealth. The problem is crime and notoriety in ED is already a bit of a joke so that's kind of the real problem imo, pp impacts are just a side effect.
Odyssey powerplay activities should have multipliers based on the tags that you can see on missions. For example, don't get detected, don't set off the alarms, don't kill anyone. If you can get in, upload a power malware without anyone dying, and get back out, you should get way more merits than doing so by running in, guns blazing.
- Because many (all?) of the on-foot PP2 assignments are illegal, it’s normally always preferred to do them in anarchy settlements. But for various reasons, many of the targeted systems don’t have any. BGS management by player factions being a big contributor of this, and also there are many systems with no anarchy factions.
- in the absence of anarchy settlements, players will either skip that assignment, do it by stealth which is very time consuming, or go in with guns blazing and will probably get to notoriety 10 before completing the assignment due to the number of things to be obtained and the associated RNG drop rate. For me, it’s not worth the time to do the stealth nor the hassle of high notoriety, so I skip those assignments.
- So it comes down to addressing players with that “completionist” factor in their blood. The OP subject would reward completionists for the time spent on a PP2 assignment, where they choose the stealth method, because of dislike of notoriety, and they would like higher merit rewards, and their justification is that it should be commensurate with the time spent in other PP2 activities which can yield much higher merits per hour.
- Importantly, FD never said or even implied that most/all PP2 activities should yield similar merits per hour. Yes they have reduced or eliminated very high merit/hr activities but it was in the interest of making PP2 rank progression a little slower since there’s really nothing significant to be gained my achieving levels >100. Engineering materials flow like water these days and there are more efficient ways to get them than grinding PP2 ranks, and getting the mini care packages is hopelessly broken right now anyway.
Now, given the above, there are 2 schools of thought. 1) sure why not, and 2) no, because it’s a self-imposed decision to choose to compete a non-mandatory assessment which has no preferred method to accomplish.
- Because many (all?) of the on-foot PP2 assignments are illegal, it’s normally always preferred to do them in anarchy settlements. But for various reasons, many of the targeted systems don’t have any. BGS management by player factions being a big contributor of this, and also there are many systems with no anarchy factions.
Agreed. The time it takes is well beyond most space based missions that offer higher rewards and often the risk is higher. Stealth based missions especially can take a long time to do.
For example, a mission to steal or insert a container in one of those thingys without being detected, and even harder, without killing anyone, can take an hour to do while you carefully scout the base, check out patrol routes, and then execute the mission, and its so easy for things to go south. Reward is then like 1 million. In the same time you could earn many millions doing zero risk stuff in space.
- Because many (all?) of the on-foot PP2 assignments are illegal, it’s normally always preferred to do them in anarchy settlements. But for various reasons, many of the targeted systems don’t have any. BGS management by player factions being a big contributor of this, and also there are many systems with no anarchy factions.
- in the absence of anarchy settlements, players will either skip that assignment, do it by stealth which is very time consuming, or go in with guns blazing and will probably get to notoriety 10 before completing the assignment due to the number of things to be obtained and the associated RNG drop rate. For me, it’s not worth the time to do the stealth nor the hassle of high notoriety, so I skip those assignments.
- So it comes down to addressing players with that “completionist” factor in their blood. The OP subject would reward completionists for the time spent on a PP2 assignment, where they choose the stealth method, because of dislike of notoriety, and they would like higher merit rewards, and their justification is that it should be commensurate with the time spent in other PP2 activities which can yield much higher merits per hour.
- Importantly, FD never said or even implied that most/all PP2 activities should yield similar merits per hour. Yes they have reduced or eliminated very high merit/hr activities but it was in the interest of making PP2 rank progression a little slower since there’s really nothing significant to be gained my achieving levels >100. Engineering materials flow like water these days and there are more efficient ways to get them than grinding PP2 ranks, and getting the mini care packages is hopelessly broken right now anyway.
Now, given the above, there are 2 schools of thought. 1) sure why not, and 2) no, because it’s a self-imposed decision to choose to compete a non-mandatory assessment which has no preferred method to accomplish.
It's more about the competitive aspect. I personally don't care much about the assignments because they only give a tiny fraction in system points.
I'm already rank 600 or something. Personal merits are pretty minor overall. But just running in and killing everyone is just too easy. I want the competitive aspect to reward skill, not just hardcore grind.
I'd suggest the problem here isn't that "Stealth" should reward more than "Running in and killing"... rather, the game doesn't do enough to distinguish the two, for which both should be relevant, meaningful and rewarding.
A massive bugbear of mine over the years is that games like Commandos 2 and other "tactics" style games, generally, only reward stealth. For instance, this was the victory screen from most Commandos 2 missions:
... so you can't get full merit if you kill people or are detected. That would all be well and good, except there are a lot of mechanics, tools, and level design, that support killing and being "detected" but not "spotted". Which, in my opinion, feels like a massive waste of effort. As the only thing that looks like a "score" in that game... rewarding you by not using creative tactics which the game surfaces to get through the mission seems a bit of a misfire..... not only that, some of these missions required janky mechanic exploitation or simply pure luck in order to succeed.
Fortunately, Commandos 2 made up for this somewhat by having "Bonus Missions" which didn't have this sort of constraint, and the whole point of those short ones was to go through them using all tools at your disposal. And doing that was a lot of fun.
This is, in my opinion, a trap many games fall down; it rewards you by not playing it's more interesting parts.
Towards that end, I'd suggest there should be activities that are best achieved with stealth, and others that are best achieved with overt action, but in particular are not just "kill everyone" affairs.... noting I think the right term here is "overt" action, as an opposite of "covert".
Stealth/covert activity is best employed when time is not necessarily a constraint, when there is a severe overmatch in favour of your opposition and your ability to avoid decisive engagement is unrealistic (getting decisively engaged when overmatched is bad news), or if being detected would result in a failure to complete your objective.
Overt activity is best when there's time constraints needing decisive action, when you have overmatch or can avoid decisive engagement by breaking contact, or if being detected or noticed is important or even preferable for the situation.
In Elite's case, it's important to pick the best tool for the job. For a low security agri facility, overt action is always possible, and covert action is almost overkill. But for a High Security Military outpost... covert is almost mandatory, unless you want to go toe-to-toe with a Goliath on foot.
Incidentally, we have Covert/Non-lethal missions... but I don't see any missions which require an overt approach, whether due to time sensitivity or other concerns.... although there's missions without covert/non-lethal requirements, just because you don't have to, doesn't mean you shouldn't. Again, best tool for the job. Unfortunately, I think the bigger issue is, like what @SlickPBW said, it's too easy to just gank anarchy bases without care in the context of PP.... the slightest criminal blemish seems to put a lot of people off and there's no restrictions to whatever you want to do in those locations.
So yeah... I don't think Covert actions should be better rewarding than overt... rather, there needs to be sufficient reason and times to do both, and that distinction doesn't exist.
I personally always employ a hybrid approach... discreet, rather than covert action with rapid deployment of e-breaches, until the objective is achieved, then I either leave, or shoot my way out, whichever is needed at that point.... and criminal blemishes definitely aren't a problem for me.
