The Elite: Dangerous development teams want to make some changes to their Powerplay feature. The latter was implemented in-game on June 5, 2015, for the 1.3 update. This is the opportunity for me this year to finally update my own old guides!

Sandro Sammarco brought the news recently, on Tuesday, via the official forums, thus delivering quite a surprise to the community.

Originally, ten Powers among the most influential characters in the galaxy, had been implemented to bring a whole new dimension to the game. We observed a fragmentation of what we call « The bubble », bringing together all the known systems inhabited by human race. This update teared apart the borders and created new frictions between the Superpowers. It was thereafter, and thanks to the support of the different communities, that these new « Powers bubbles » extended to foster their influences on the human worlds. By the way, there are Free decals to apply to your ships if you want to proudly support your coats of arms 😉

Over the years, the community raised many feedback and criticisms to the developers in order to tweak the Powerplay content. Unfortunately, because of lack of time and especially resources, no additions were made to Powerplay… until this week! Let’s discuss the future changes.

On another point, we had the excellent but very controversial Rise to Power initiative that brought an eleventh Power in-game, 100% created by the players. I will not go back on this point or make myself Judge, but it is the EG Pilots group that easily won. They added Yuri Grom; A dictator, former member of the Federation with fair values ​​about anti-corruption.

Here is a summary of the major changes proposed by Sandy. Discussions are ongoing on the forums so that the community has a say on the development again. Frontier seems however to lead the proposals with a iron hand thanks to our previous feedback.

• The Preparation cycle could be split in two parts:
  • The first half of the cycle is available for preparation
  • The second half of the cycle locks the current preparation values and enables voting
• Each player can Vote to Veto or Support each preparation. If a preparation ends the cycle with more veto votes than support votes it is removed from preparation. Voting requires minimum, rolling time spent pledged and active for a power.
• Each cycle players can Vote on the 5 least profitable systems, to Withdraw or Support. At the end of a cycle if a system has more withdraw votes than support votes it is removed from the power’s control. Same as the veto, players would need a minimum pledge time.
• A Control system that is undermined by 100% more than the fortification value will be undermined even if the fortification trigger has been successfully met.
• Overhead upkeep costs are removed making a system’s base profitability static. Distance modifier to upkeep is increased to maintain some sense of expansion “gravity”.
• Powerplay Missions for factions in a system that share a power’s superpower award a number of Powerplay successes when completed. The mission type determines how many successes are given. Then, these Successes can be applied to expansion, opposition, fortification and undermining.
• And finally the very important point: The Open game mode would be mandatory to play Powerplay! Merits, Successes, Contacts, and other Powerplay commodities will be destroyed if you are not in Open Mode.

What do you think of these changes? It is time for you to leave your feedback here and/or in the forums.
Also, check out our discussion on the Squadron Feature, for Chapter 4.