Is it? I get the feeling it isn't.
After interdicting, when you enter SC again, what do you see on your scanner? When does the first PP spawn appear?
It works the same way in open, and also when you have a wing. All wingmates enter the local space region, this deletes all their ships from SC.
Then the first person from the wing goes back into SC, it is empty with no ships.
The way it works is the NPCs spawn client side for every player, and if you are in the same island chain as another player, the NPCs are shared.
When a Player leaves SC, their NPCs should transfer to one of the other Players who were overlapping their island.
This is why wings get more spawns, because NPC spawns are based on the number of players, 4 players in a system will make more NPCs appear.
I need to correct myself a bit. Undermining and especially combat expansions didn't really start to pay off in terms of merits until week 9 (I think it was week 9), when they upped the merit payout for those activities.
Week 9 shows how a small change can have massive knock on effects.
Doubling the merits from 15 to 30 for undermining caused undermining merits to more than double, to more than 3 times what they were.
I'm sure there are many complicated macro economical formulas that can be used to describe why this happened, but a simple solution like doubling merits wont double the total.
Is there something wrong with the current state of PowerPlay combat (outside of the obvious bugs)? Maybe. The question is - do we want people to participate in PowerPlay if they are only in it for the money/items?
If the answer to that question is "no", then this is a step in the right direction. It might be a step too far, but think about it - people aren't going to be hauling 5,500 merits across space every week to get 50 million credits (especially because it takes 55 hours to collect 5,500 merits for free), but killing ships? Sure - that can be done in far less time.
If the answer to the question is "yes", then this is a step in the wrong direction, and some things need to be tuned down.
I'm firmly in the NO category, but I believe this is the minority position.
50 million cr from PP per week doesn't cover my usual fortification or prep costs.
I like getting the 50 million, but it is lop sided when you can either spend 50 million cr to help your power fortify, or go undermining and kill 170 ship for free to maintain rating 5.
One activity pays 0cr, one pays 50 million.
And now it gets a bit incoherent. It's a lot of minor points I've contemplated over the last year or so of PowerPlay.
Should you still get wanted for murdering a PowerPlay ship? Yes - you murdered someone and took the original offensive action. Should you still get wanted for killing a PowerPlay ship in self-defence? Yes, if it's a ship that belongs to the host's super power - think home defence. And think about what you're doing for a moment - undermining is a terrorist activity. Of course that should get you wanted.
I agree.
Should foreign PowerPlay ships be hounding you outside of control systems? I honestly don't think that's a good idea. It ruins the ability to travel peacefully between systems for one thing.
I wouldn't mind them being removed from all systems except control systems, you have to ask the question as to what they are doing.
If an NPC PP ship is at a res site in an enemies exploited system, whats their goal? They can't undermine that system, so it makes no sense for them to be murdering random ships there.
I have no problem with NPC PP ships being seen all through the galaxy, if their behaviour reflects where they are, if they are in a res, they should be bounty hunting wanted ships, not killing rival PP ships for no reason.
Should you get merits for killing ships that do not belong to the host (or possibly host's super power)? This is debatable. I'd say no, but I'm certainly willing to change my stance.
Not only should this not happen, you shouldn't get undermining merits from killing any PP ship, except the fortification ones. This is what the in game instructions tell us to do.
This bug was acknowledged early on, but hasn't been addressed, because fixing it means 9 out of the 10 ships that currently give merits wouldn't, so undermining merits would plunge without a rework of spawn rates, or how many merits you get per kill. And 1 year on and nothing has been reworked except fortification levels were increased 5x and undermining merits increased 2x
Should you get interdicted willy nilly by foreign PowerPlay ships while in a foreign control system yourself? I'd say no to this as well. After all, you're both there for the same reason, and if we change the rules such that players don't get merits for killing foreign PowerPlay ships, then the NPCs shouldn't be trying to get them either. Only exception is if for some odd reason you're hauling defensive merits (preparation, expansion, fortification) through that control system.
I agree, they are helping you to undermine, and shouldn't try to kill you, destroying your unhanded in merits, making their goal more difficult.
Which brings me to another point - the cargo scanner reveals if you're hauling physical merits. Can we get the kill warrant scanner to reveal if you're carrying combat merits? Think about it for a moment - if you get interdicted by a PowerPlay pirate, and you're hauling physical merits, it'll attack you and try to kill you. How about we change the host (and it's accompanying superpower sides) PowerPlay combat ships to the bounty hunter role? If you're interdicted by them, they'll scan you. If you've done nothing wrong in their jurisdiction (i.e. you have no bounties and you aren't carrying combat merits), they'll leave you alone. You can still get interdicted and attacked by the foreign PowerPlay ships where it makes sense of course.
Combining some of these, you end up in a situation where undermining/combat expansion is still difficult due to the new AI, but now you can resume your regular activities outside of the control systems without getting hounded all the time.
As for knock on effects - there's been a ton of knock on effects to the mechanics of PowerPlay for the last year - it's just that a lot of them have been to the boring non-combat stuff, which just tends to get ignored because it's boring.
And as an aside I'll just point out that a lot of these things likely could have been avoided, if Frontier had followed my suggestion and either hired a senior PowerPlay producer or a dedicated PowerPlay community manager. Instead of having these bugs and issues just pile up and gather dust along with all the other bugs, they could have been addressed to and discussed with that producer or community manager before the ships hit the fan so to speak. It's not that PowerPlay is special in this regard though. Similar things need to be addressed for the background simulation, combat, trade, CQC, exploration and player groups (I'm probably forgetting some areas). By specializing the producers or community managers it becomes easier to ensure that the person in charge or we're communicating with actively understands the issues at hand or at least is in a situation where they get to take the time to understand it.
Time will tell if undermining merits are reduced for good, or if mew strategies need some time to be figured out.
