I've been getting into the powerplay a little lately and i also saw a new expansion attempt in Polecteri too, although I can't understand why there has been little effort to fortify Opala which is only 46 Ly from Gateway whereas Polecteri is 147 Ly. I'd try to help on my own if I had a bigger ship with more cargo space, but that would be more than what I can afford atm. At the current rate, Opala will be undermined well before it's fortified. Feel free to explain anything I may need to know as I am new to the game (4 weeks)
For reference, when I speak of "the organized Mahon players", I am speaking of those who organize through the
/r/EliteMahon subreddit. There's no need to register to reddit to work with us - we publish a list of
fortification priorities which we try to keep updated at least once a day. If you want to get more involved we also have a
discord server for PowerPlay and bgs efforts in Mahon space.
In terms of fortification and undermining, the end result is the only thing that matters - fortifying before or after undermining is irrelevant.
It is also worth noting that while Opala is a valuable system (default surplus of 64), it is far easier to fortify than some of our more distant and equally valuable systems, simply because it is closer to Gateway. As such, fortifying Opala on cycle night is much easier to accomplish than, for example, fortifying Ao Kond.
As for Polecteri - we pushed Polecteri into expansion to avoid Soholia. Polecteri has a default surplus of 12 CC every week, whereas Soholia has a default deficit of 77 CC. We've kept ourselves from expanding for as long as possible, because there are almost no profitable places left in the galaxy - in fact CMDR Steven and I (the two primary organizers) had deliberately kept Polecteri a bit of a secret, because we wanted to be able to counter Soholia with something profitable if the constant sabotage push for expansion (to get Soholia) was to succeed, which is what happened last cycle (we did not get enough consolidation votes to keep from expanding). As a result the organized Mahon supporters poured 996 million credits into pushing a profitable system (Polecteri) ahead of the ~820 million credits that the saboteurs poured into pushing a horrible loss making system (Soholia).
If we succeed in expanding Polecteri this cycle, we'll have to find different systems to counter Soholia, and preferably ones that are easier to push than Soholia is (the jump distances gives Soholia a massive advantage).
I hope this answers your questions, and if not please feel free to ask. Either here, via PM, on the subreddit or on the discord server.
Kind regards
Vectron
Alliance Office of Statistics
Mahon PowerPlay Organizer.
