What if Powerplay Rankings were based on controlled POPULATION, instead of controlled SYSTEMS?

[DemiserofD]

Part of the problem with Powerplay atm is that there's no real difference between one system and another. Why fight over any one system when all systems are interchangeable?

An easy way that could change that would be, what if instead of caring about the number of systems controlled, the powerplay rankings displayed the total population of each Power? That would make big systems extremely valuable, while smaller systems would only matter if they had some sort of strategic or tactical value, like allowing a power to strike at a billion+ population system.

It might not fix everything, but it might help make things more tactical and strategic? Open to input.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Here's what that would do to the current standings (well, a hybrid of those and last week's standings, haven't found all of the new acquisitions yet, but close enough)

+--------+----------+------------------+
| number | billions | power            |
+--------+----------+------------------+
|   1561 |     1104 | Edmund Mahon     |
|   1646 |      858 | Aisling Duval    |
|   1458 |      685 | A. Lavigny-Duval |
|   1101 |      625 | Yuri Grom        |
|    998 |      588 | Li Yong-Rui      |
|    835 |      488 | Jerome Archer    |
|    660 |      453 | Denton Patreus   |
|    584 |      411 | Zemina Torval    |
|    841 |      317 | Pranav Antal     |
|    611 |      296 | Felicia Winters  |
|    675 |      213 | Archon Delaine   |
|    818 |      137 | Nakato Kaine     |
+--------+----------+------------------+

Kaine (and to a lesser extent Antal and Delaine) drop as they're positioned out on the edge of the old bubble where the high population systems aren't.
Patreus and Torval in the Imperial core benefit quite a lot despite their low system counts, and Mahon is a bit less fringy than Duval as well so gets back ahead at the top.

With the distribution of high-population systems strongly focused on the centre of the old bubble I suspect this would mainly make the rankings less fluid rather than more - even allowing for taking the Old Worlds cluster off Mahon, I don't think Kaine can take enough high-population systems to get into 11th place, for example, without a multi-year slog across the bubble to where those systems are.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I think it should form part of the metric but not be 'the' determining factor on its own. For example I'd love a Civ like mechanic where larger pop does count more, but also dissatisfaction grows if these people are subject to 'accidents' from other powers.

 

[SlickPBW]

@Ian Doncaster Amazing calculations, analysis and response; and it took only 20 minutes from the original post.

 

[DemiserofD]

Here's what that would do to the current standings (well, a hybrid of those and last week's standings, haven't found all of the new acquisitions yet, but close enough)

+--------+----------+------------------+
| number | billions | power            |
+--------+----------+------------------+
|   1561 |     1104 | Edmund Mahon     |
|   1646 |      858 | Aisling Duval    |
|   1458 |      685 | A. Lavigny-Duval |
|   1101 |      625 | Yuri Grom        |
|    998 |      588 | Li Yong-Rui      |
|    835 |      488 | Jerome Archer    |
|    660 |      453 | Denton Patreus   |
|    584 |      411 | Zemina Torval    |
|    841 |      317 | Pranav Antal     |
|    611 |      296 | Felicia Winters  |
|    675 |      213 | Archon Delaine   |
|    818 |      137 | Nakato Kaine     |
+--------+----------+------------------+

Kaine (and to a lesser extent Antal and Delaine) drop as they're positioned out on the edge of the old bubble where the high population systems aren't.
Patreus and Torval in the Imperial core benefit quite a lot despite their low system counts, and Mahon is a bit less fringy than Duval as well so gets back ahead at the top.

With the distribution of high-population systems strongly focused on the centre of the old bubble I suspect this would mainly make the rankings less fluid rather than more - even allowing for taking the Old Worlds cluster off Mahon, I don't think Kaine can take enough high-population systems to get into 11th place, for example, without a multi-year slog across the bubble to where those systems are.

Amazing how you're able to pull that data so quickly, that's really cool.

The thing would be, yes it would make things less fluid, but that's kinda by design, no? The goal is to encourage powers to fight over the high-pop systems rather than just endlessly claim new ones. If fighting really isn't an option, they could always focus on colonizing systems to be particularly high population - but of course, that's far more of an effort than just building a few stations!

It seems to me that this would combine mutliple mechanics to make the whole system quite a bit deeper and more complex, focusing effort onto a handful of key systems that would then be battled over.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think focusing the battle on key systems is certainly important - I present the current CG:

+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------------------+
| cg_target | systems | total_r | total_u | ratio | activity_per_sys |
+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------------------+
|         0 |    6562 | 8335081 |  334148 |  24.9 |             1321 |
|         1 |       6 | 2823296 | 3246106 |   0.9 |          1011567 |
+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------------------+

(plus another ~5000 non-CG systems where there's been no EDDN update since before Thursday morning)

Outside the CG systems, there's really not much going on and most of it is Reinforcement.
Inside the CG systems, there's a thousand times as much activity per system, and Undermining and Reinforcement are almost balanced.

I think population is probably the wrong thing to use to give systems value because it's poorly distributed with respect to where the Powers are and where they might be able to get to in a reasonable timescale. It doesn't concentrate Power attention on a system unless they can reasonably fight over it.

Manually designating a bunch of "high-value" systems along the existing Power borders so that each Power currently has an equal number, all of them are in currently-weak Exploited systems, and there'll be some reward for Powers which manage to make net gains in their holdings of them by a particular date? That could get some action going. Probably mainly "Stronghold all the ones we currently have and then give up because everyone else has done the same" action, given the other issues, but it's worth a shot.

 

[Rubbernuke]

What about population change? Related to my idea about rank based on activity what about % change that cycle? It would make sense in some ways as its how your power has grown (or shrunk).

 

[DemiserofD]

I think focusing the battle on key systems is certainly important - I present the current CG:

+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------------------+
| cg_target | systems | total_r | total_u | ratio | activity_per_sys |
+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------------------+
|         0 |    6562 | 8335081 |  334148 |  24.9 |             1321 |
|         1 |       6 | 2823296 | 3246106 |   0.9 |          1011567 |
+-----------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------------------+

(plus another ~5000 non-CG systems where there's been no EDDN update since before Thursday morning)

Outside the CG systems, there's really not much going on and most of it is Reinforcement.
Inside the CG systems, there's a thousand times as much activity per system, and Undermining and Reinforcement are almost balanced.

I think population is probably the wrong thing to use to give systems value because it's poorly distributed with respect to where the Powers are and where they might be able to get to in a reasonable timescale. It doesn't concentrate Power attention on a system unless they can reasonably fight over it.

Manually designating a bunch of "high-value" systems along the existing Power borders so that each Power currently has an equal number, all of them are in currently-weak Exploited systems, and there'll be some reward for Powers which manage to make net gains in their holdings of them by a particular date? That could get some action going. Probably mainly "Stronghold all the ones we currently have and then give up because everyone else has done the same" action, given the other issues, but it's worth a shot.

Yeah, I kinda thought about something like that, I just couldn't figure out a good way to actually DO it. How do you apportion focus systems fairly, for example? How do you avoid invalidating all OTHER systems? While the population method is unfair in certain ways, it at least has the advantage of being impartial and using existing systems, and it keeps all systems at least somewhat relevant.

More than that, it allows multiple avenues of success; you could fight over them, OR you could build new ones, integrating colonization effectively. And atop that, it has advantages from a BGS standpoint, as well, as it makes things inherently resistant to large numbers of players active there at a time.

It might not be perfect, but it's got some definite advantages.

 

[Nidoboros]

With the distribution of high-population systems strongly focused on the centre of the old bubble I suspect this would mainly make the rankings less fluid rather than more - even allowing for taking the Old Worlds cluster off Mahon, I don't think Kaine can take enough high-population systems to get into 11th place, for example, without a multi-year slog across the bubble to where those systems are.

I don't know what systems are down that way, but is there a way for the BGS to entice people to migrate? Siphon off some numbers from other systems/powers, run passenger missions, etc. And if not, should there be?

 

[Danieros]

I like the idea. In theory colonization will eventually add a few hundred billion systems for acquisition.

I don't know how high the population of player-colonized systems can go, but at least it's a growth that takes way more effort than just placing an outpost. And if they can't individually challenge the highest population numbers of existing systems, then we have some real exclusivity here. Like how we will run out of systems with names instead of prodedural sector numbers/star catalogues.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

How do you avoid invalidating all OTHER systems?

Population does that anyway, since the distribution is on a log scale.

There are 1400 systems with >1 billion population, any of which has more population individually than the bottom 25,000 systems combined.
Lave alone, at 25 billion, has more population than every system with a population of 4.4 million or less combined, and there are almost 60,000 of those systems (and Lave isn't the biggest single system, either)
Roughly half of the population in the entire game is in the 354 systems with a population of at least 6 billion each.

If you want to make almost every system completely irrelevant to the Powerplay score, population is the easiest way to do it. It's just got a terrible distribution relative to existing Power territories in terms of encouraging actual attacks.

 

[ebbrell]

I think PP needs more dangerous lole it was before they turned down the threat level

 

[DemiserofD]

Population does that anyway, since the distribution is on a log scale.

There are 1400 systems with >1 billion population, any of which has more population individually than the bottom 25,000 systems combined.
Lave alone, at 25 billion, has more population than every system with a population of 4.4 million or less combined, and there are almost 60,000 of those systems (and Lave isn't the biggest single system, either)
Roughly half of the population in the entire game is in the 354 systems with a population of at least 6 billion each.

If you want to make almost every system completely irrelevant to the Powerplay score, population is the easiest way to do it. It's just got a terrible distribution relative to existing Power territories in terms of encouraging actual attacks.

True...but many of those bottom 25000 are colonization junction systems and such. Should such systems, empty but for a star and an outpost, really matter in the first place? Perhaps as a strategic jump off point.

My point, I guess, is that if you make it a handful of manually set systems, then the others have ZERO value. With population, yeah there will be a fair few systems with little value, but there will also be a significant number with SOME value. Any system in the tens of millions is worth having in aggregate. Not typically worth fighting over, perhaps, but that's just fine for the casual sort of player who isn't yet terribly invested in the overarching power dynamics. Get a few dozen systems like that and you're looking to equal a system with a billion or two billion population, and that can be worthwhile.

And, of course, it also drives Powers to focus on colonization, where right now they only really care about finishing the first station.

I'll concede that it would dramatically shift the current apparent order, but to be frank, is that such a bad thing? The current system is essentially just there for lack of anything better. While there would be some degree of pain in the short term, in the long term, I can't help but feel it would make things actually MATTER to a degree that the current system simply can't match.

 

[Vardaugas]

Maybe give every system equal value to the decimal of its population. So 1 billion = 10^9 => 9 points worth. Colony with 1,000 people 10^3 => 3 points. That makes population significant without being overpowering.

 

[Cosmo]

With the distribution of high-population systems strongly focused on the centre of the old bubble I suspect this would mainly make the rankings less fluid rather than more - even allowing for taking the Old Worlds cluster off Mahon, I don't think Kaine can take enough high-population systems to get into 11th place, for example, without a multi-year slog across the bubble to where those systems are.

It could also include the economic value (economy score) of a star system. A bigger economy = more valuable system.

 

[Uthael]

This seems like a good suggestion. There should be a "system value", calculated from various factors like population, development, happiness, etc.

Maybe different powers could even value the systems differently depending on factions and their governments. For example, Aisling doesn't like slavery so would value Anarchy-controlled systems less. Also could prefer Imperial and Independent over Federation and Alliance factions.

All these factors could contribute to how much power a Power has. So an Alliance faction Anarchy system would contribute little to Aisling's power despite it being high population.

 

[Nidoboros]

All these factors could contribute to how much power a Power has. So an Alliance faction Anarchy system would contribute little to Aisling's power despite it being high population.

Clearly a problem with the BGS actually, need a way to power play the systems to abandon the Alliance/join the Empire.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Maybe give every system equal value to the decimal of its population. So 1 billion = 10^9 => 9 points worth. Colony with 1,000 people 10^3 => 3 points. That makes population significant without being overpowering.

That's roughly equivalent to the old command capital calculation from Powerplay 1.

Calculating the current map based on score = log10(population)

+---------+----------+---------+------------------+
| systems | billions | cc      | power            |
+---------+----------+---------+------------------+
|    1561 |     1104 | 10161.1 | Edmund Mahon     |
|    1646 |      858 | 10125.0 | Aisling Duval    |
|    1461 |      685 |  9060.4 | A. Lavigny-Duval |
|    1106 |      627 |  6927.0 | Yuri Grom        |
|    1001 |      588 |  6414.2 | Li Yong-Rui      |
|     838 |      488 |  5381.5 | Jerome Archer    |
|     841 |      317 |  5265.2 | Pranav Antal     |
|     819 |      137 |  4695.4 | Nakato Kaine     |
|     663 |      454 |  4281.5 | Denton Patreus   |
|     676 |      213 |  4085.5 | Archon Delaine   |
|     587 |      412 |  3880.7 | Zemina Torval    |
|     611 |      296 |  3880.1 | Felicia Winters  |
+---------+----------+---------+------------------+

Winters drops behind Torval (by less than a single system...), Mahon stays narrowly ahead of Duval for now, Antal and Delaine fall marginally back behind Archer and Patreus.

This is certainly a possibility for making larger systems more important without making it mostly "this one matters and these thousand don't".


(As far as other measures of "importance" go, there is whatever algorithm currently generates System Strength Penalty values. That seems to be partly correlated to population ... but not entirely, there are plenty of exceptions in both directions. Of course, System Strength Penalty is very much a "thou shalt never attack an important system of another Power" mechanism, so is doubly pointless if the high-SSP systems aren't worth any more.)

Maybe different powers could even value the systems differently depending on factions and their governments. For example, Aisling doesn't like slavery so would value Anarchy-controlled systems less. Also could prefer Imperial and Independent over Federation and Alliance factions.

This is also a throwback to the Powerplay 1 system, specifically to one of the most hated bits of the Powerplay 1 system.

Powerplayers generally weren't fond of it because they had to stop doing Powerplay and start doing BGS stuff to optimise their space for their Power.
BGS players without an interest in Powerplay absolutely despised it because the organised Power groups were a lot bigger than they were and there wasn't a lot they could do if they were suddenly the "wrong" type of faction.

Quite a lot of the Powerplay 2 design seems to have been done to try to separate out Powerplay and direct BGS effects


If the aim is to encourage inter-power competition then "this system is great for power A but no use to power B" and "this system is great for power B and no use to power A" just encourages them to peacefully take the systems they each like and not to try to rob each other.

 

[DemiserofD]

That's roughly equivalent to the old command capital calculation from Powerplay 1.

Calculating the current map based on score = log10(population)

+---------+----------+---------+------------------+
| systems | billions | cc      | power            |
+---------+----------+---------+------------------+
|    1561 |     1104 | 10161.1 | Edmund Mahon     |
|    1646 |      858 | 10125.0 | Aisling Duval    |
|    1461 |      685 |  9060.4 | A. Lavigny-Duval |
|    1106 |      627 |  6927.0 | Yuri Grom        |
|    1001 |      588 |  6414.2 | Li Yong-Rui      |
|     838 |      488 |  5381.5 | Jerome Archer    |
|     841 |      317 |  5265.2 | Pranav Antal     |
|     819 |      137 |  4695.4 | Nakato Kaine     |
|     663 |      454 |  4281.5 | Denton Patreus   |
|     676 |      213 |  4085.5 | Archon Delaine   |
|     587 |      412 |  3880.7 | Zemina Torval    |
|     611 |      296 |  3880.1 | Felicia Winters  |
+---------+----------+---------+------------------+

Winters drops behind Torval (by less than a single system...), Mahon stays narrowly ahead of Duval for now, Antal and Delaine fall marginally back behind Archer and Patreus.

This is certainly a possibility for making larger systems more important without making it mostly "this one matters and these thousand don't".


(As far as other measures of "importance" go, there is whatever algorithm currently generates System Strength Penalty values. That seems to be partly correlated to population ... but not entirely, there are plenty of exceptions in both directions. Of course, System Strength Penalty is very much a "thou shalt never attack an important system of another Power" mechanism, so is doubly pointless if the high-SSP systems aren't worth any more.)


This is also a throwback to the Powerplay 1 system, specifically to one of the most hated bits of the Powerplay 1 system.

Powerplayers generally weren't fond of it because they had to stop doing Powerplay and start doing BGS stuff to optimise their space for their Power.
BGS players without an interest in Powerplay absolutely despised it because the organised Power groups were a lot bigger than they were and there wasn't a lot they could do if they were suddenly the "wrong" type of faction.

Quite a lot of the Powerplay 2 design seems to have been done to try to separate out Powerplay and direct BGS effects


If the aim is to encourage inter-power competition then "this system is great for power A but no use to power B" and "this system is great for power B and no use to power A" just encourages them to peacefully take the systems they each like and not to try to rob each other.

Honestly, having thought about it, I'm against the idea of this sort of modified system in principle. Making things complicated and convoluted is just a bad idea from a casual participation standpoint. While using system numbers has its problems, the straightforwardness of it also has clear benefits in terms of people understanding what they should DO.

Straight population has its issues as well, but as far as I can tell, it does solve many of the problems of straight numbers, and remains similarly simple to understand. I personally don't really see a conceptual issue with having all those little systems not really matter. If anything, having them not matter would be a good thing, because it leaves them as viable options for tactics and strategy; if powers are mindlessly reinforcing every single system like right now, eventually everything just becomes unassailable. But if small systems don't really matter, that leaves them available for other powers to use if they want to, say, have a jumping off point to attack a deep high-pop system.

If it's absolutely necessary(which it might be, to avoid undue player outcry), what I'd do is actually just tweak the POPULATION numbers. We are, after all, in an age of colonization; it'd be quite justifiable to have significant numbers of people move around and bring the end values more in line with the current numbers, while retaining the long-term benefits.

Just add a few billion to some systems under their control to roughly even things out.

 

[Nidoboros]

tweak the POPULATION numbers

I've been saying this, even before colonization, but especially after. Populations need to Flux as people emigrate to new systems and whatnot. Also as you murder crews in CZs.