Those are major powers again not powerplay. Powerplay is the blue haired waifu Aisling Duval, Archon Delaine and so on they're on their own layer and while nominally aligned with various powers don't impact the major powers in a system or really the minor factions beyond their side effects when they have control. They're entirely optional and people would in some cases like to not have them in the system.
"Unaffiliated" option in powerplay
- Thread starter Cmdr Iron Dave
- Start date
Yes Alliance, Federation, Empire or Independent.
Right.
So what the OP wants is an "unaffiliated" option in Powerplay. So the ability to do Powerplay without joining a power? A nameless Independent power option.
...but isn't that's a "legacy" from pre-powerplay (1.0) and it's tied to the rank progression (Federation/Empire) which was needed for the unlocks?
They want to be able to do half of powerplay undermining without having to deal with any of the consequences for being aligned with a power in hostile space. I don't see it happening. I understand why they'd want to kick a power out but the current mechanics do let them pledge to any hostile power fight off control and leave.
I mean, this is strictly down to design failures in Powerplay and the activities it surfaces.
No action happens in a vacuum, but equally all actions don't need to represent a particular power bloc... "foreign fighters" are a good example (which I'm also not going to get into for obvious reasons, but nonetheless) as they can be detrimental to a target power bloc, and even benefit the power bloc hosting that citizen... and not be endorsed or supported at all.. heck, that bloc may even willingly surrender the individual and say "Yeah we're not protecting them either...".
The Pilot's Federation are meant to be one of the biggest movers and shakers in Elite's space politics... the fact that their actions when not aligned to a Powerplay faction suddenly mean nothing is really, really dumb.
Just like BGS, Powerplay shouldn't be opt-out in terms of the consequence of your actions, while "opt-in" as a representative still makes total sense. But you're 100%, the design of powerplay actions don't support that model... that's the design flaw.
EDIT: In short, if I rip through the cohorts of Mahon, the consequence of that shouldn't be mitigated simply because I wasn't flying the flag of one of their enemies. Their ships still lie in ruin, and the consequence of that is real.
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Or their geographical location and who is around them is such that they are effectively protected by others. In modern times the Swiss made themselves difficult to attack as society was set up to facilitate making an attack costly. Then there is that other place that has a lot of other states in front of them. Of course, a military planner would be able to design a campaign to bypass all that "protection" and they would be conquered rather easily. A well enough funded and equipped mercenary force could do the job most likely.
So, in a cut throat universe, the little fish have to ally with bigger fish to help them survive.
Switzerland is a case of many smaller political entities uniting.
On the other hand, the Rutli Oath was NOT a declaration of independence; those original cantons were part of the Holy Roman Empire and effectively remained so despite the interregnum; they were concerned about the Habsburgs, and specifically, Rudolf I, who was... erm... well... effectively... Swiss. Awkward.
So Switzerland is an example of every position that's come up in the thread so far. Isn't history fun?
On the other hand, the Rutli Oath was NOT a declaration of independence; those original cantons were part of the Holy Roman Empire and effectively remained so despite the interregnum; they were concerned about the Habsburgs, and specifically, Rudolf I, who was... erm... well... effectively... Swiss. Awkward.
So Switzerland is an example of every position that's come up in the thread so far. Isn't history fun?
Sort of "it's not enough to unaffiliated with Powers, I want to be actively anti-Power" option, so you can say "take your politics off my back yard". I can understand is a player or even a squadron wants to take a that sort of stance. I think gaining ranks in this anti-power stance would be a bit too much, but otherwise I think it's a decent idea. Could be a squadron perk: Undermining bonus. If the squadron is affiliated with a power, then the members are good at undermining other powers. If the squadron has no affiliation, then the members can undermine everyone even if they are not in powers.
However, thanks to Trailblazers there are a lot of colonies and the Powers have to work hard to get a decent fraction of them, so I don't think Frontier would want to add more factors to reduce the Powers. They have tried to incentivice undermining a little bit because Powers going against each other is the point, but unaffiliated people also undermining them might make the galaxy too frustratingly hostile towards them.
However, thanks to Trailblazers there are a lot of colonies and the Powers have to work hard to get a decent fraction of them, so I don't think Frontier would want to add more factors to reduce the Powers. They have tried to incentivice undermining a little bit because Powers going against each other is the point, but unaffiliated people also undermining them might make the galaxy too frustratingly hostile towards them.
The problem is that this cannot be any more effective than the existing undermining or it'll just be a technique used by groups to progress. So you end up making a special power that's half baked that only lets you do the same thing as just pledging to any power that's not the one you want gone. Game balance nightmare.
In which case they were aligned with a power, ie the country that didn't want to be part of it.
In pretty much every battle/conflict, if you're taking part you have a Dog in the race.
O7
I like the premise of the OP idea, don't agree with tying heavily into squadrons, it should be equal and on a cmdr level. Some of this has been addressed in this decent read of a thread. I really do like this righteous freedom fighter idea that Rubbernuke had stated. It does sound interesting. A rebellion of sorts. I'm all up for a rebellion. Regulators, mount up!
Freedom fighters was the name Sandro gave to them when we first raised this point waaaaaaay back in the ancient history of Powerpants. Yes, the original designer considered the concept and recognized the flaw. Frontier have made zero progress on this front since then.
Thanks for the clarification and insight into the original premise. Powerpants! ahhh hahahahaha.... hahahahaha!
Supposedly factions that are "independent" are self governed. Wiki says:
So obviously they aren't members of the big three powers, and they have autonomy and self governance. I'm no expert so I don't understand the role of Yuri Grom, Pranav Antal and Li Yong Rui. Are they just flag bearers supporting systems that want self governance? Or is it a play of words and they are actually no different than the other leaders associated with the major powers. I don't know.
Superficially it seems that if a system want to remain independent they must align themselves with the major leaders that represent "independence". So I guess in theory if a system want to remain independent they must align themselves with Yuri Grom, Pranav Antal or Li Yong Rui. Independence through pledging allegiance to a leader that represent a union of independent self governing systems I suppose. Edit -> No, I think this is incorrect.
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Edit
Possibly ED is using the word "independent" to mean two different things:
1. Systems that are not aligned with any major power or a powerplay leader. (I think this is what the OP is referring to, and desires)
2. Powerplay leaders that are independent of the major powers. Systems aligned with "independent" powerplay leaders fall under the governance of that leader. These systems aren't actually independent, they are governed by a leader that isn't part of the 3 major powers.
So obviously they aren't members of the big three powers, and they have autonomy and self governance. I'm no expert so I don't understand the role of Yuri Grom, Pranav Antal and Li Yong Rui. Are they just flag bearers supporting systems that want self governance? Or is it a play of words and they are actually no different than the other leaders associated with the major powers. I don't know.
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Edit
Possibly ED is using the word "independent" to mean two different things:
1. Systems that are not aligned with any major power or a powerplay leader. (I think this is what the OP is referring to, and desires)
2. Powerplay leaders that are independent of the major powers. Systems aligned with "independent" powerplay leaders fall under the governance of that leader. These systems aren't actually independent, they are governed by a leader that isn't part of the 3 major powers.
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The Wiki essentially says a bunch of fanfic here, in the absence of any official word on the matter.
It's basically a mess [1].
- both minor factions and Powers can be aligned to superpowers, but don't have to be
- Power alignment to a superpower does absolutely nothing in Powerplay 2 (it decides which modules you unlock at the early ranks, and even that's largely inherited from Powerplay 1 for convenience)
- minor faction alignment to a superpower does very little
- in Powerplay 2 there's even less connection than in Powerplay 1 between minor factions and Powers (and in neither did a superpower mismatch do anything)
Leaving aside Grom (as a player-shaped Power, they're not necessarily going to fit any particular theme), then Antal and Li Yong Rui and Delaine represent particular influential organisations outside the superpower structure (Utopia, Sirius Corporation, the Pegasi Pirates)
- Utopia has no associated minor factions
- Sirius has several associated minor factions
- the Kumo Crew has an associated minor faction now because of a story requirement for it to own a station or two at one point, but got through the first several years of the game quite happily without one
- Yuri Grom was created via the Dangerous Games so there is an associated PMF in their case, which existed first, but of course only the one.
Most independent minor factions aren't in any way associated with any of those initiatives, nor do they need to care about them to retain their independence.
Similarly in the superpowers, the various Powers represent major internal power blocs, but none of them have associated minor factions added by Frontier (some have one or two thematically associated PMFs). In theory each superpower minor faction also is probably sympathetic to or part of one of those power blocs ... but there's no indication in-game of which ones are for which, nor does it affect Powerplay in any way.
So for example, the current CG is taking place between Arissa Lavigny-Duval and Archon Delaine.
- ALD is represented by the miscellaneous Imperial faction which happens to control the system (but if Torval had led the attack, they'd have worked for her instead)
- Delaine is represented by their associated minor faction (as one of the few Powers to have one) which has been Frontier-inserted into the system for the CG
- but the system itself started the game as Federal, and still has The Sarge, a Federal-aligned engineer who requires Federal rank to unlock, working perfectly happily there
- and the system contains 2 other Federal and 4 other Independent minor factions, any of which could take control of the system without affecting Powerplay at all.
There's not really a way for Frontier to sort this out without making extremely major changes to all three of superpowers, powers and minor factions (probably involving abolishing at least one of them entirely!) so in practice they need to be treated as three entirely unrelated things.
[1] And colonisation makes it even more confusing. With the hyper-expansion allowed by colonisation, the largest individual minor faction now controls more systems than the largest power, and also more systems than the entire Alliance controlled pre-colonisation. Yet their status is still "minor faction", not Power or Superpower.
As I was looking into it further, yes.
There's a world where Powerplay was never about territory... instead the territorial games were an inter-superpower affair, indirectly affected by Powers.
Minor Faction interactions = Tier 1 NPCs[1]
Powers = Tier 2 NPCs[2]
Superpowers = Tier 3 NPCs
Very spitballed, repeated successful, short term interactions at Tier 1 for the same factions curries favour with a Power, based on the type of actions and the superpower it supports. That introduces you to more rewarding, longer-term objectives offered by the Power representatives which drive their particular agenda within the superpower, and equally allow them to exert influence against the other powers by-proxy through Superpower-level conflict (generally, grey-zone conflict, but can just become outright warfare). Eventually, this turns into offers direct from representatives of a superpower which are much longer term, and open the door to more direct and rewarding activities that pursue more direct outcomes against a superpower.
Critically... the superpowers themselves are represented by a power generally... so in practice this means the Independent powers are in fact mini-superpowers in their own right.
Towards that end, minor factions are your day to day BGS effects, Powers represent major influence effect operations couched around the main playstyles, while Superpowers represent the conflicts played out by those influence effects.
So, let's say you were working with the Empire, specifically favouring activities in giving strength to ALD as the current head, this would look like:
Tier 1 - Various imperial factions, Tier 2 - The Imperial Court, Tier 3 - Office of the Emperor (ALD)
But if you favoured Patreus, your interactions would be with:
Tier 1 - Various imperial factions, Tier 2 - The Imperial Fleet, Tier 3 - Office of the Emperor (ALD)... noting this could change if Patreus (Office of the Fleet Admiral?) became the main source of influence for Imperial activity.
Meanwhile, for an Independent, if you were supporting independents with Antal-style activities, you'd go:
Tier 1 - Various independents, Tier 2 - The Utopia Movement, Tier 3 - Representatives of the Simguru (Antal)
And then, because territory is owned by the Superpower, not the Power, you can introduce or remove powers as they curry favour (or don't) without disrupting the current state of play... it's simply a new vector to shape your activities around for influence effects.
Ofc, before anyone goes "yes but XYZ", obviously this isn't a fully fleshed out suggestion, and there's a lot of gaps in this which, while the solutions might not be presented here, do have solutions that are much more tenable than trying to resolve some of the same issues currently facing PP2.
Tying it all back to this proposal... it's no longer about "which flag you fly"... it's about who you support with your actions, whether you intended to or not.
[1] Actually, the mission boards would be Tier 0, and Tier 1 the on-foot contacts in Odyssey
[2] This would also be Engineers and perhaps other notable individuals.
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Its a shame really FD had not a clearer idea of the layers in Elite Dangerous. If a sequel ever becomes reality I certainly hope a much closer synergy is planned and achieved because the potential is crazy.