The State of PowerPlay in 3304
PowerPlay launched with 1.3 in June of 2015 to much fanfare and a highly underestimated user base. Communities formed around the original 10 Powers overnight, and we have always strived to spend our time making our communities fun for those involved. PowerPlay communities have always had a high rate of turnover, not least because PowerPlay modules encourage CMDRs to spend a year unlocking each unique Power module.
The other reason for PowerPlay’s high turnover is due to the repetitive nature of the mechanics. The original concept for PowerPlay measured contributions in the hundreds, but within several cycles, that ballooned into the tens of thousands due to the overwhelming support of the community. As the years have worn on, many of these communities have shrunk, but not all, so the targets remain in the tens of thousands while the pledged pilots contribute in the hundreds of thousands.
In short, every Power community will welcome new commanders into the fold and do their best to ensure those commanders enjoy their time with the community-run turn-based 4X meta-game that is PowerPlay. Most commanders participating in these communities enjoy PowerPlay despite its flaws, exploits, and abuses.
Links to PowerPlay Communities
Frontier Developments have provided a sub-forum for PowerPlay and one for each Power community. Users created subreddits for their Power communities the day their Powers were available to be pledged.
The Proposed Beyond
Near the end of 3303, as Frontier Developments announced Chapter 3 of Elite: Dangerous, organizers of the communities built around PowerPlay were advised to refrain from recruiting new members. This was during a time when the primary organizer of the #1 Power was calling for PowerPlay to be frozen or removed from the game due to its neglected state and numerous persistent issues.
The belief was that PowerPlay could be re-visited during the development of the Beyond expansion and then we would all be in a wonderful place to recruit new users to share in our three year old communities to which we have devoted so much of our galactic time. The future of PowerPlay was widely discussed and hotly contested on Beyond’s Focused Feedback, but sadly, neither time nor resources are infinite, and PowerPlay will not be revisited for Chapter 3.
The recent recruitment posts from /u/Grey_Seattleite/ and /u/Pfluegge89/ has made this open letter to the community a necessity. PowerPlay organizers have kept the vast majority of PowerPlay events, news, and drama away from the primary /r/EliteDangerous/ subreddit because we did not want to mislead and encourage people who would later become sorely disappointed.
PowerPlay: An Exercise in Competitive Mathematics
The lifeblood of any Power is its Command Capital Surplus at the start and end of any Cycle. Command Capital is an abstraction of the population in Controlled and Exploited Systems.
The death knell of most Powers is in the Overhead calculation. Since Season 2, Overhead is no longer a hidden value, and has become included in a Preparation target’s Upkeep, but remains separate from Upkeep in a Control System.
Powers that have under 55 Control Systems will have low Overhead costs, so they will have a strong surplus of Command Capital. This should give them free reign to Expand, and every Power can grow until they cannot afford to grow anymore.
Unfortunately, this is where Preparation Sabotage exacts its toll. By forcing a Power to Prepare and Expand into a deficit-causing Control System near Power HQ, the saboteurs decrease the Power’s Command Capital Surplus while increasing the Power’s Overhead costs.
A Brief History of Preparation Sabotage
Every Power has seen valueless preparations on their ‘Top 10 Preparations List’, and every Power has Expanded into a deficit-causing Control System despite their best efforts. There have been a handful of times since June of 3301 where a Power has seen overwhelming numbers of merits contributed to deficit-causing Preparations in a clearly organized effort to sabotage the Power’s standing balance of Command Capital. This increases the amount of Fortification required to maintain a surplus at the close of the Cycle and that Power’s vulnerability to Undermining.
This is what has happened to Senator Zemina Torval over the past six months. Torval used to hold many profitable Control Systems distant from Synteini, their Power HQ. They lost control of their Consolidation Vote, and in the last hour of every Cycle, an organized fifth column of saboteurs would prepare a deficit-causing Preparation in close proximity to Power HQ. The Expansion triggers would be realistically unopposable. No one has claimed responsibility for these acts of sabotage.
A Brief Word on Weaponized Expansions
A weaponized Expansion will decrease the Expanding Power’s Command Capital while also removing Command Capital from a hostile Power.
CD-49 3617, HIP 44811, and Amuzgo is probably the best (and first) example of a weaponized Expansion between hostile Powers. Those three Control Systems share 15 Contested Systems at a value of 106cc. That means neither Power receives any Command Capital from those 15 systems. All three Control Systems are deficit-causing for their Power, but they decrease the available Command Capital from the opponent.
During the Expansion phase, and for every Cycle that follows, each Power can Oppose and Undermine those weaponized Control Systems to their heart’s content. These actions may be cancelled and may not result in Turmoil for the Power, but it is available via standard PowerPlay mechanics. Since these systems are on usually near the Powers’ borders, it is possible for them to fall into Turmoil without being in an Undermined state.
Preparation Sabotage Compared to Weaponized Expansions
Both Preparation sabotage and weaponized Expansions will decrease a Power’s surplus of Command Capital and increase the Power’s Overhead costs.
Sabotage of a Power via deficit-causing Preparation leads to a situation where loyal members of the Power have to defect to a hostile Power in order to Oppose the Expansion. Since the Consolidation Vote requires 4 months continuous pledge for the best influence, any defections further risk the Power’s ability to prevent future Preparation sabotage.
Additionally, when saboteurs are well organized, they can effectively use the Power they have infiltrated as a weapon against neutral Powers. (Elite: Dangerous labels the Power to which you are pledged as ‘allied’, any Power sharing your Power’s superpower as ‘neutral’, and any other Power as ‘hostile’.) Neutral Powers cannot Oppose an Expansion with ease, as they earn de-merits, not merits, when neutral Power NPCs are destroyed. Neutral Powers have to use piracy to steal Expansion cargo and exchange those for merits at a 1:1 rate.
While Senator Zemina Torval’s fifth column used Preparation sabotage to decrease their surplus of Command Capital by over 500cc, it also Contested systems Exploited by Senator Denton Patreus, Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval, and Aisling Duval at a cost exceeding over 200cc, and most of those deficit-causing Expansions are still contesting the Control Systems of neutral Powers. When the Emperor suffered from similar Preparation sabotage, her surplus decreased by 789cc and cost our Imperial allies over 100cc.
Due to their spatial placement and ease of Opposition, a weaponized Expansion against a hostile Power is not sabotage, but gameplay. The hostile Power can Oppose these Expansions earning 30 Merits per NPC ship destroyed, while the Expanding Power usually has to travel further to deliver their cargo.
Weaponizing to Fight Sabotage
One reason a Power will launch a weaponized Expansion is because the Power cannot control its Consolidation Vote and has to prevent a deficit-causing Preparation from reaching the Expansion stage. CMDR Justinian Octavius of the Torval Strategy Team explains the current straits in which the community that supports Senator Zemina Torval has drowned. Now that Torval is out of Turmoil, there were no more Torval loyalists present to combat the fifth column. Her allies have stepped forward in an effort to ensure that Torval’s low Overheads and strong surplus of Command Capital will not be used against them in the future as they have been previously. By using weaponized Expansions against the Federation, they are ensuring that Torval’s Expansions will be Opposed by a dedicated combat force who will not have to defect from their own Power to fight them.
The Future of PowerPlay: Beyond ‘Beyond’
PowerPlay was never intended to be fair.
The past year has clearly shown that the Power or fifth column with the most active users between 0400 and 0700 GMT will most likely win any direct competition.
It has also shown that the band-aid that is the Consolidation Vote is not a solution to the unbalanced nature of Preparation sabotage.
The scenarios announced for 3.3 give many players hope for the future of Elite: Dangerous, but there is no indication that these changes will be felt in any aspect of PowerPlay.
Everyone who participates in PowerPlay knows that the mechanics need to change to improve the experience for all participants. How those changes occur are of great debate within the community.
If there is an effort to preserve some of the past three years of community-driven changes, then those communities will fight hard to ensure that what they want will be preserved. If there is no effort made to preserve this living history, then much of the community will crumble. Yet if no changes come from on high, there may not be a community left when FDev has the resources and time available.
Thank you for your time and fly safe, commanders.
O7
PowerPlay launched with 1.3 in June of 2015 to much fanfare and a highly underestimated user base. Communities formed around the original 10 Powers overnight, and we have always strived to spend our time making our communities fun for those involved. PowerPlay communities have always had a high rate of turnover, not least because PowerPlay modules encourage CMDRs to spend a year unlocking each unique Power module.
The other reason for PowerPlay’s high turnover is due to the repetitive nature of the mechanics. The original concept for PowerPlay measured contributions in the hundreds, but within several cycles, that ballooned into the tens of thousands due to the overwhelming support of the community. As the years have worn on, many of these communities have shrunk, but not all, so the targets remain in the tens of thousands while the pledged pilots contribute in the hundreds of thousands.
In short, every Power community will welcome new commanders into the fold and do their best to ensure those commanders enjoy their time with the community-run turn-based 4X meta-game that is PowerPlay. Most commanders participating in these communities enjoy PowerPlay despite its flaws, exploits, and abuses.
Links to PowerPlay Communities
Frontier Developments have provided a sub-forum for PowerPlay and one for each Power community. Users created subreddits for their Power communities the day their Powers were available to be pledged.
The Proposed Beyond
Near the end of 3303, as Frontier Developments announced Chapter 3 of Elite: Dangerous, organizers of the communities built around PowerPlay were advised to refrain from recruiting new members. This was during a time when the primary organizer of the #1 Power was calling for PowerPlay to be frozen or removed from the game due to its neglected state and numerous persistent issues.
The belief was that PowerPlay could be re-visited during the development of the Beyond expansion and then we would all be in a wonderful place to recruit new users to share in our three year old communities to which we have devoted so much of our galactic time. The future of PowerPlay was widely discussed and hotly contested on Beyond’s Focused Feedback, but sadly, neither time nor resources are infinite, and PowerPlay will not be revisited for Chapter 3.
The recent recruitment posts from /u/Grey_Seattleite/ and /u/Pfluegge89/ has made this open letter to the community a necessity. PowerPlay organizers have kept the vast majority of PowerPlay events, news, and drama away from the primary /r/EliteDangerous/ subreddit because we did not want to mislead and encourage people who would later become sorely disappointed.
PowerPlay: An Exercise in Competitive Mathematics
The lifeblood of any Power is its Command Capital Surplus at the start and end of any Cycle. Command Capital is an abstraction of the population in Controlled and Exploited Systems.
The death knell of most Powers is in the Overhead calculation. Since Season 2, Overhead is no longer a hidden value, and has become included in a Preparation target’s Upkeep, but remains separate from Upkeep in a Control System.
Powers that have under 55 Control Systems will have low Overhead costs, so they will have a strong surplus of Command Capital. This should give them free reign to Expand, and every Power can grow until they cannot afford to grow anymore.
Unfortunately, this is where Preparation Sabotage exacts its toll. By forcing a Power to Prepare and Expand into a deficit-causing Control System near Power HQ, the saboteurs decrease the Power’s Command Capital Surplus while increasing the Power’s Overhead costs.
A Brief History of Preparation Sabotage
Every Power has seen valueless preparations on their ‘Top 10 Preparations List’, and every Power has Expanded into a deficit-causing Control System despite their best efforts. There have been a handful of times since June of 3301 where a Power has seen overwhelming numbers of merits contributed to deficit-causing Preparations in a clearly organized effort to sabotage the Power’s standing balance of Command Capital. This increases the amount of Fortification required to maintain a surplus at the close of the Cycle and that Power’s vulnerability to Undermining.
This is what has happened to Senator Zemina Torval over the past six months. Torval used to hold many profitable Control Systems distant from Synteini, their Power HQ. They lost control of their Consolidation Vote, and in the last hour of every Cycle, an organized fifth column of saboteurs would prepare a deficit-causing Preparation in close proximity to Power HQ. The Expansion triggers would be realistically unopposable. No one has claimed responsibility for these acts of sabotage.
A Brief Word on Weaponized Expansions
A weaponized Expansion will decrease the Expanding Power’s Command Capital while also removing Command Capital from a hostile Power.
CD-49 3617, HIP 44811, and Amuzgo is probably the best (and first) example of a weaponized Expansion between hostile Powers. Those three Control Systems share 15 Contested Systems at a value of 106cc. That means neither Power receives any Command Capital from those 15 systems. All three Control Systems are deficit-causing for their Power, but they decrease the available Command Capital from the opponent.
During the Expansion phase, and for every Cycle that follows, each Power can Oppose and Undermine those weaponized Control Systems to their heart’s content. These actions may be cancelled and may not result in Turmoil for the Power, but it is available via standard PowerPlay mechanics. Since these systems are on usually near the Powers’ borders, it is possible for them to fall into Turmoil without being in an Undermined state.
Preparation Sabotage Compared to Weaponized Expansions
Both Preparation sabotage and weaponized Expansions will decrease a Power’s surplus of Command Capital and increase the Power’s Overhead costs.
Sabotage of a Power via deficit-causing Preparation leads to a situation where loyal members of the Power have to defect to a hostile Power in order to Oppose the Expansion. Since the Consolidation Vote requires 4 months continuous pledge for the best influence, any defections further risk the Power’s ability to prevent future Preparation sabotage.
Additionally, when saboteurs are well organized, they can effectively use the Power they have infiltrated as a weapon against neutral Powers. (Elite: Dangerous labels the Power to which you are pledged as ‘allied’, any Power sharing your Power’s superpower as ‘neutral’, and any other Power as ‘hostile’.) Neutral Powers cannot Oppose an Expansion with ease, as they earn de-merits, not merits, when neutral Power NPCs are destroyed. Neutral Powers have to use piracy to steal Expansion cargo and exchange those for merits at a 1:1 rate.
While Senator Zemina Torval’s fifth column used Preparation sabotage to decrease their surplus of Command Capital by over 500cc, it also Contested systems Exploited by Senator Denton Patreus, Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval, and Aisling Duval at a cost exceeding over 200cc, and most of those deficit-causing Expansions are still contesting the Control Systems of neutral Powers. When the Emperor suffered from similar Preparation sabotage, her surplus decreased by 789cc and cost our Imperial allies over 100cc.
Due to their spatial placement and ease of Opposition, a weaponized Expansion against a hostile Power is not sabotage, but gameplay. The hostile Power can Oppose these Expansions earning 30 Merits per NPC ship destroyed, while the Expanding Power usually has to travel further to deliver their cargo.
Weaponizing to Fight Sabotage
One reason a Power will launch a weaponized Expansion is because the Power cannot control its Consolidation Vote and has to prevent a deficit-causing Preparation from reaching the Expansion stage. CMDR Justinian Octavius of the Torval Strategy Team explains the current straits in which the community that supports Senator Zemina Torval has drowned. Now that Torval is out of Turmoil, there were no more Torval loyalists present to combat the fifth column. Her allies have stepped forward in an effort to ensure that Torval’s low Overheads and strong surplus of Command Capital will not be used against them in the future as they have been previously. By using weaponized Expansions against the Federation, they are ensuring that Torval’s Expansions will be Opposed by a dedicated combat force who will not have to defect from their own Power to fight them.
The Future of PowerPlay: Beyond ‘Beyond’
PowerPlay was never intended to be fair.
The past year has clearly shown that the Power or fifth column with the most active users between 0400 and 0700 GMT will most likely win any direct competition.
It has also shown that the band-aid that is the Consolidation Vote is not a solution to the unbalanced nature of Preparation sabotage.
The scenarios announced for 3.3 give many players hope for the future of Elite: Dangerous, but there is no indication that these changes will be felt in any aspect of PowerPlay.
Everyone who participates in PowerPlay knows that the mechanics need to change to improve the experience for all participants. How those changes occur are of great debate within the community.
If there is an effort to preserve some of the past three years of community-driven changes, then those communities will fight hard to ensure that what they want will be preserved. If there is no effort made to preserve this living history, then much of the community will crumble. Yet if no changes come from on high, there may not be a community left when FDev has the resources and time available.
Thank you for your time and fly safe, commanders.
O7
