Powerplay Suggestion: Improving fortification & power loyalty

[Neuromaster]

It bugs me that fortification is so tedious/expensive. It bugs me that the most cost-effective way to support my Power is to AFK in HQ for 2-4 hours, checking in every 30min to get the next quota drip until my hold is full. It bugs me (a little) that the only recognition I get for sticking with my Power for the long-term is a single module that in many cases is too situational (or downright worthless) to use.

The idea of allowing us to cache some amount of unclaimed quota can't be new but I think it's good. It'd be nice to have more than a single quota waiting for me at my first login of the day, and it'd be nice to be able to take a bounty-hunting/mission running/trading break in between PP hauling without missing/delaying the quota drip. For variety, if nothing else.

This would be pretty much a straight buff to fortification, as written. If that's too strong, what about tying the cache size to your tenure with a Power, and/or your rank? You might start with 0 cache and earn 10T/week, maxing out after some number of weeks? You could also tie it to performance, something like 2*Rank Tons/week, up to some maximum amount?

It'd be nice to have some acknowledgement of my tenure, especially to have something to come back to if I have to be away from the game for a couple of weeks and lose my rank/salary. It'd make me feel just a tiny bit more connected to my Power, and just make the whole system more pleasant to participate in. The current system encourages me to run the game without playing it. Surely we can do better than that.

 

[Iracundus]

You realize that often it is more cost effective to just go earn credits and then fast-track your foritification? Your quota can be viewed as a per hourly income. At rank 5, you are getting basically 1 million credits/hour worth of fortification supplies, and so on for the other ranks. If you can earn more than that equivalent in 1 hour, then you are better off fast tracking it all. In fact, the cost will likely be less than that as you will probably spend more than 30 minutes so you will get at least 1 quota's worth in that time. So that rank 5 might only need to earn 500k/hour (and collect 1 quota's worth of free supplies) in order to break even compared to just sitting there the full hour.

If you are busy doing other stuff IRL anyway, then it becomes worthwhile to just sit there and collect. It is some value for your time even when you are not actively flying around.

I think they should do something like the preparation pledges but for fortification, and scale it based on rank. If players can already affect star systems light years away remotely with preparation nominations (and this is supposedly swaying or pressuring local populations into following a power), I do not see why some fortification pledges would be overpowered. It could easily be handwaved away RP-wise as a spike in local support reducing garrison supply expenditure, or spontaneous social media stuff increasing popularity, or dissident activity decreasing for whatever reason. If there is worry about over powering, it could also be made a choice to either use the same amount (i.e. 250) for preparation or fortification, but not both in a cycle.

 

[bigity]

You realize that often it is more cost effective to just go earn credits and then fast-track your foritification? Your quota can be viewed as a per hourly income. At rank 5, you are getting basically 1 million credits/hour worth of fortification supplies, and so on for the other ranks. If you can earn more than that equivalent in 1 hour, then you are better off fast tracking it all. In fact, the cost will likely be less than that as you will probably spend more than 30 minutes so you will get at least 1 quota's worth in that time. So that rank 5 might only need to earn 500k/hour (and collect 1 quota's worth of free supplies) in order to break even compared to just sitting there the full hour.

I know I, at least, had not looked at it this way.