Powerplay Undermining.

[Mordred115]

That's true, though non-adjacent Powers would be getting the Beyond Frontline Penalty in addition to any System Strength Penalty, which would make them very inefficient.


The problem is that if the game is balanced so that a theoretical 6:1 ratio (allowing for BFP but without SSP) or even 12:1 ratio (assuming the defenders focus their reinforcement around High/Very High SSP systems) is an even-ish fight for undermining versus reinforcement, since that never actually happens in practice all it means is that everything gets hyper-reinforced.

Every week so far has seen a massive surplus of successful reinforcement over successful undermining. Powers losing systems of any sort, but especially Fortified/Stronghold, is generally rare.

Of course, players aren't split nice and evenly between the 12 powers in the first place. If Aisling Duval were to decide to attack Zemina Torval, well, that's just one power versus one power but Inara estimates a 13:1 numeric advantage for Duval. If everyone else gangs up on Torval, that's a roughly 60:1 numeric advantage. Do we need undermining to be 60 times more difficult than reinforcement just in case the YADAJAFNELP coalition goes for her?

At some point an outnumbered side just has to lose.


I haven't specifically tested Reactivation, but they certainly work for Acquisition, and normal donation Support missions work for Undermining, so I'd be surprised if they didn't.

I guess today's task will be to find one and see what happens.


So the friendly-system Power contact taking all the goods and data you also stole doesn't take the regulator? Definitely sounds like a bug, that.

EDIT: are you sure that Power Regulators are allowed? I can see "Energy Regulator" on the hand-in list, but not "Power Regulator".
(It's entirely possible that in a non-English translation they've ended up both being called the same thing, of course...)

What I have noticed is that the top 10 of most of the powers is very similar, with a few players around 1 million and the lower half of the top 10 around 500 thousand. This seems to be independent of Power "size" (except for patreus). It doesn't matter what % of the player base you have, it only matters how much those players play, Like in powerplay 1 there is a small cohort of players who will do the brunt of the strategic work and the rest just get to stumble around and do their thing.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What I have noticed is that the top 10 of most of the powers is very similar, with a few players around 1 million and the lower half of the top 10 around 500 thousand. This seems to be independent of Power "size"

Yes - that matches what I see as well. I wouldn't expect any of the "top X%" thresholds to vary very much between powers.

It doesn't matter what % of the player base you have, it only matters how much those players play

Well, sort of. It still helps a lot to have more players than your opponents, even if you're restricting that calculation to "highly active players" than total ones, because that's how you get those "total hours" adding up once your individual players start hitting the 168 hours/week cap.

Torval's top 10 and Duval's top 10 might be pretty close - but neither is going to win many battles alone. They could reinforce or undermine 2 or 3 systems a week between them
Torval's top 100, on the other hand, is basically all the Power's merits coordinated or otherwise ... while Duval's top 100 is delivering considerably more merits and likely more of them coordinated too.

 

[DonBardon]

After extensively doing settlement data theft over the weekend, I can confidently say:

Uploading malware is a fun activity, but the merit reward for the risk involved is greatly lacking.

Downloaded data is universally less risky, and has a greater reward per unit.

Uploaded malware, dare I say it, ought to earn minimum 500 merits per upload.

It is. But there should be some other UM activities as fun and roughly effective. Some of us (have to) avoid Ody like the plague. (Not only is it lame on VR -- it causes insufferable crashes).

ADDENDUM: I left my ship on the system I'm UMing over the tick. 4/5 missions are Ody (and the "commit crimes" one is easier to do in Ody than on a ship). For some of us, this is a problem.