The problem with Powerplay: The two-tiered system

The devs have been clearly attempting to encourage undermining lately, but I believe this has failed because of the two-tiered nature of the game. The problem, in simple terms, is this:

The game has two levels of competition: Power vs Power, and Power vs ALL Powers.

Undermining is Power vs Power, but the broader GAME is Power vs ALL powers. That's what the leaderboard says, and therefore that's what players care about.

Here's a simple example. Let's imagine you can invest a moderate amount, let's say 120k control points(enough to acquire 1 system), to take down a fortified system and make your enemy lose FIVE systems. On the surface, this appears to be a fantastic win, and many might take this option. After all, you're costing your enemy 5 systems for the price of one! What's not to love?

But let's then imagine that all the other powers, including the one attacked, instead spend those same 120k points on acquisition. Therefore, they are all +1, except for the attacked Power, who is -4(-5+1). Meanwhile, you, having sacrificed 120k points to undermine instead of acquire, are at 0.

The mean of 10 1s and -4 is 0.545. So in aggregate, despite having taken a GREAT trade, you have actually fallen behind. On the leaderboard, you are now 0.545 systems further behind than before.

Therein lies the problem. In order for undermining to make sense economically, you must have at least an 11:1 advantage. You must be able to undermine ELEVEN systems away in exchange for the effort needed to acquire ONE. Only at that point does your effort let you keep up with what you would have gained by just using that effort to acquire. But if you have an 11:1 advantage, a strong power could absolutely CRUSH a weaker power!

That's the two-tiered system and the problem with it. It needs to simultaneously achieve two completely disparate things; balanced power vs power conflict, and power vs all powers conflict. And that just can't happen. The two cannot coexist.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the current approach, tweaking undermining numbers, will never achieve it. What they have created his, essentially, something akin to civilization or age of empires, only where you can increase your population, with no strategic or tactical considerations other than building as many units as possible. A straight booming simulator. The surprise shouldn't be that the amount of fighting is minimal, the real surprise should be that anyone is fighting at all.
 
Last edited:
One might think...

There's a simple way to compensate for this disadvantage somewhat. Successfully undermined systems would become exploited systems of the undermining power in the next cycle, rather than unoccupied ones. While this doesn't reduce the effort required when encountering resistance, it does eliminate the expenditure of at least 120,000 CP required to acquire the system that could also have encountered resistance.

But unfortunately, this doesn't work because all undermining is aggregated into a single cluster, giving the powers a chance to jointly undermine an opponent. At most, FDev could allow the most undermining power to be awarded the system, but this would almost rule out any cooperation between the powers.
 
One might think...

There's a simple way to compensate for this disadvantage somewhat. Successfully undermined systems would become exploited systems of the undermining power in the next cycle, rather than unoccupied ones. While this doesn't reduce the effort required when encountering resistance, it does eliminate the expenditure of at least 120,000 CP required to acquire the system that could also have encountered resistance.

But unfortunately, this doesn't work because all undermining is aggregated into a single cluster, giving the powers a chance to jointly undermine an opponent. At most, FDev could allow the most undermining power to be awarded the system, but this would almost rule out any cooperation between the powers.
This would be quite neat, because then its about grabby hands and less about management.
 
One might think...

There's a simple way to compensate for this disadvantage somewhat. Successfully undermined systems would become exploited systems of the undermining power in the next cycle, rather than unoccupied ones. While this doesn't reduce the effort required when encountering resistance, it does eliminate the expenditure of at least 120,000 CP required to acquire the system that could also have encountered resistance.

But unfortunately, this doesn't work because all undermining is aggregated into a single cluster, giving the powers a chance to jointly undermine an opponent. At most, FDev could allow the most undermining power to be awarded the system, but this would almost rule out any cooperation between the powers.
That'd alleviate the problem, by making undermining more valuable, for sure. Essentially, Powers could acquire and undermine at the same time. Alternatively, you could have that 120k the allocated to the closest fortified system, that way you could split it up between attacking powers.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't alleviate the more fundamental problem. If you made it strong enough where it's worth undermining, because there's not really any tactics or strategy in the current iteration of the game, it would become just dominated by undermining everywhere. The expansion of powers would reverse or stagnate. It would become pointless to defend a system, and far better to just counter-attack somewhere else.

Eventually, nobody would bother acquiring any systems in range of enemy strongholds, because that system will just get lost more easily than it was acquired, and you will end up with broad DMZs between powers.
 
But unfortunately, this doesn't work because all undermining is aggregated into a single cluster, giving the powers a chance to jointly undermine an opponent. At most, FDev could allow the most undermining power to be awarded the system, but this would almost rule out any cooperation between the powers.
I suspect the back end data Fdev has is separated by power, and if it isn't it could be.
I think an easy extension to this would not be to skip the acquisition phase but carry the UM values over to Acquisition, this would then tell you who attacked (if they were in acquisition range)
It would then also create more chances of tomfoolery (positive) in my opinion. If two powers team up to UM a system. Say one drops 120k to cross the line in the next cycle, and the other drops 40k during the assist. It would immediately open up conflict zones for all powers including the power that just lost the system. This would create a natural counter to team ups
 
The 120k per acquisition is a huge drain, even though it doesn't decay.

If you think about it, it's bigger than even the maximum Fortified decay. And like decay, it really is just effort going in a battle against a system mechanic. Contested acquisitions are very rare.
 
But unfortunately, this doesn't work because all undermining is aggregated into a single cluster, giving the powers a chance to jointly undermine an opponent. At most, FDev could allow the most undermining power to be awarded the system, but this would almost rule out any cooperation between the powers.
I think giving it to the power in range which put the highest contribution in during the final week would be fair. Would need some sort of interface improvement to see who was contributing the undermining, of course.

That also gives interesting options for third-parties:
- power A is undermining power B's fortified system heavily and is likely to drop it
- so power C launches a bunch of minor attacks on a few exploited systems in the area
- power A gets the fortified system ... but power C grabs a bunch of the exploited ones as they drop from lack of support.

(Ruling out cooperation I think is fine. It's supposed to be set up as a 12-way fight, and doing anything to encourage cooperation just turns that into a very specific 2-way fight with a few neutral parties not doing much on the edges)

It would become pointless to defend a system, and far better to just counter-attack somewhere else.
That's true now, though. If someone somehow attacks one of your systems, you're almost always better off in a purely numeric sense ignoring it and acquiring several others instead (or maybe throwing in just enough reinforcement to make them worried you're going to push it harder later, so they really overspend on it)

That's not what anyone actually does, though, when attacked. Archer's forces spent a huge amount of effort defending Sol against the exploit-attack which could have got them twenty or thirty new systems elsewhere over the multiple weeks that went on for. Player loss-aversion is a really powerful effect.

Eventually, nobody would bother acquiring any systems in range of enemy strongholds, because that system will just get lost more easily than it was acquired, and you will end up with broad DMZs between powers.
I'm not sure about that - the stronger power on a border has plenty of incentive to try to push further into it, and even the weaker power can generally expand fairly safely so long as their expansions are backed up by multiple supporting systems (unless they're so much weaker that in any "undermining is possible" scenario they get crushed, in which case we should probably just get the crushing over with)
 
That's not what anyone actually does, though, when attacked. Archer's forces spent a huge amount of effort defending Sol against the exploit-attack which could have got them twenty or thirty new systems elsewhere over the multiple weeks that went on for. Player loss-aversion is a really powerful effect.
True, but that's typically not because of the actual gameplay mechanics, and moreso because of the roleplay impact it has. Torval, for example, had a similar conflict over LTT 198 early on, because that's the Torval Mining LTD home system. Ideally roleplay and gameplay would be intertwined, so such conflicts are encouraged both ideologically and strategically.

I'm not sure about that - the stronger power on a border has plenty of incentive to try to push further into it, and even the weaker power can generally expand fairly safely so long as their expansions are backed up by multiple supporting systems (unless they're so much weaker that in any "undermining is possible" scenario they get crushed, in which case we should probably just get the crushing over with)

That depends on the extent to which undermining is incentivized. If it's strong enough to compete with the rest of Powerplay, then even the smallest power could effectively attack a much larger power. In terms of comparative numbers, only real exclusion right now would be Torval attacking Aisling, but that presumes that all of the Aisling players are as effective as all the Torval players, which seems unlikely.

That's true now, though. If someone somehow attacks one of your systems, you're almost always better off in a purely numeric sense ignoring it and acquiring several others instead (or maybe throwing in just enough reinforcement to make them worried you're going to push it harder later, so they really overspend on it)

I don't know that I directly agree with your assessment that it's better to expand than to defend, however. While having to defend AT ALL is sub-optimal, because it makes you both lose out relative to other powers, my instinct is that defense is still worthwhile. After all, the defender gets the same multiplier as the attacker. Obviously if you can convince an enemy to waste many hundreds of thousands of system points on attack without any defender response, then you'd be ahead to ignore it and focus elsewhere, but if they're getting the "5 systems for 120k points" I mentioned, defending those systems IS the best option for the defender, it's just inferior to not having been attacked at all.

Though...the more I think about it, the more it seems like there really SHOULD be isolated circumstances where attack DOES make sense. Like, Mahon might not care so much about raw systems total since he's already near the top, and could conceivably instead care about overtaking Aisling, and that would justify them fighting even if it costs them in terms of systems totals relative to the whole.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that a huge portion of this comes down to the unavailability of productive undermining methods combined with the way information is conveyed. There is an intuitive allure and drive towards 'make number bigger', and not so much towards 'make enemy number smaller'. Maybe THAT is the true problem.

This is why I like talking to you. You make me think.
 
Back
Top Bottom