Powerplay: Merit Retention

[Xariann]

UPDATE: 18 June 2015 - the merits from two weeks ago have now been halved properly, the merits from last week have not, so decay is confirmed to be 50% after the first week of earning the merits

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So Powerplay hit and even though I was excited, my enthusiasm got quickly deflated by the fact that you lose your rating with your power after a week and that your reputation with major faction decays while offline. Being a casual player who can only play after work, this is daunting.

Then I looked at what it takes to get to rating 5 in a power. Someone calculated that, based on trading, it would take 28.57 hours per day to achieve 10000 merits in one week. But it isn't the whole story because you do keep half your merits for the week after.

I found this post where calculations for what it actually takes were made.

To cut a long story short, if you are a casual player, you could farm 1300 merits a week and get to rating 5 in 39 weeks. Which is still quite a bit, but you can still achieve it. That is about 12,5 hours a week if you do it by trading. Once you reach the max number of 10000 merits, you will only need 1250 merits a week to keep your rating. When you look at that everything becomes a little more doable. Getting to max rank is quite the slog, but maintaining the rank may not be as bad as it first sounded, although the game still demands a certain amount of time from you each week. Providing you play little of anything else and always put that minimum amount of time in, if you are a worker like me you can probably maintain this.

There is a really good table that shows you the different levels of weekly merit income and how many weeks it would take you to achieve max rating. First number is the amount of merits you gain, second number is the amount of weeks it will take you to achieve rating 5 with that amount of income.

1300 = 39
1400 = 27
1500 = 22
1600 = 18
1700 = 16
1800 = 14
1900 = 13
2000 = 12
2100 = 11
2200 = 10
2300 = 9
2400 = 9
2500 = 8
2600 = 8
2700 = 7
2800 = 7
2900 = 7
3000 = 6
3100 = 6
3200 = 6
3300 = 6
3400 = 6
3500 = 5
3600 = 5
3700 = 5
3800 = 5
3900 = 5
4000 = 4
4100 = 4
4200 = 4
4300 = 4
4400 = 4
4500 = 4
4600 = 4
4700 = 4
4800 = 4
4900 = 4
5000 = 3

All the calculations are shown in the link I provided. I highlighted the thresholds of merits in yellow. They show you the most efficient number of merits/time, e.g., if you make 4000 merits a week, it will take you 4 weeks to get to rating 5. If you make 4900 merits a week, it will still take you 4 weeks, so don't bother making more than 4000 merits a week if you cannot make 5000. Same goes for making 3500 merits VS 3900 and so on.

[clivewil]

yeah, there's been a lot of teeth gnashed over this very issue

the only thing about PP that interests me is the perks - specifically, Aisling's prismatic shields.
any idea what rating you need to have to qualify for perks, or are they available for all her members after the 4 weeks has elapsed?

[Flip]

Good info! Moved the thread to the Tips and Tricks sub-forum where it will be easier to find.

[Xariann]

yeah, there's been a lot of teeth gnashed over this very issue

the only thing about PP that interests me is the perks - specifically, Aisling's prismatic shields.
any idea what rating you need to have to qualify for perks, or are they available for all her members after the 4 weeks has elapsed?

It's at rating 3, and since the shields are under that rating in the power screen, I would say it works like this:

- If you have been in the power for 4 weeks but are lower than rating 3, you don't get the shields

- If you have been in the power for less than 4 weeks and you are rating 3 or above, you still don't get the shields

- If you have been in the power for 4 weeks and are at least rating 3, you can get the shields

But the above needs to be verified. For example if you reached rating 3 once and you have been in the power for 4 weeks or more, do you keep the unlock? "Knowing" Braben probably not, but I am not 100% sure.

On that note, rating 3 is only 750 merits. Rating 4 is only 1500. That means that it can be feasible for casual players to reach rating 3/4, it's only rating 5 that is an absolute b*****.

This means that to reach and maintain rating 3 in 4 weeks you need to earn 750 on the first week, 375 on the second week, 188 in the third week, and 94 in the fourth week and every subsequent week you want to keep it. Basically take the total number of merits and divide it by 8, that will tell you how many merits you need earn to keep a rank.

How I arrived to that conclusion can be seen in this spreadsheet.

[clivewil]

do you keep the unlock?

my understanding is that you keep whatever modules you've earned, even if you leave or defect later.

i'm unsure if it's just a single module that i get to choose, or if i will be able to re-fit my entire fleet with prismatic shields. i hope it's the latter

[Xariann]

Sorry what I mean is: you are in a power, and have been there for 20 weeks. You have been rating 3 at some point during these 20 weeks. Now you are rating 1 but still in the power. Can you still buy it?

[Sendraks]

I don't get how these numbers are achievable. I've tried doing the fortifying and prep stuff for my faction, but there is a timer that limits the number of tasks I can perform. At best I can manage maybe 20merits every 30mins, some of which will be spent waiting for the timer to expire before I can accept new tasks for my faction.

Unless I'm prepared to pay 100,000cr to clear the timer. Which feels all too reminiscent of a "free to pay" smart phone game.

Am I missing something? Is there something else I can be doing for my faction outside of fortify/prep/control tasks?

[Thanewright]

I've posted this on a few other forums too... did my own calculations, for all ranks 2-5.

Rank 2: Easy to achieve (just 100 merits!) and easy to maintain: just 30 merits a week maintains you at rank 2.
Rank 3: Can be maintained with 100 merits/week.
Rank 4: Maintained with 200 merits/week.
Rank 5: Maintained, as said above, with 1250 merits/week.

How long does it take to get to each rank? Depends on how many merits/week you're putting in. If you do say, 10 of those fortify/prep/expand trade runs a week, that will net you 100 merits/week at rank 1, 150 at rank 2, 200 at rank 3, 250 at rank 4, 500 at rank 5.

With 10 runs a week, you're never going to get to rank 5, but you will (eventually) get and stay at rank 4.
Rank 2 in 1 week
Rank 3 in 12 weeks
Rank 4 in 39 weeks

Once at rank 3 you can maintain it with 5 trade missions a week. Once at rank 4 you can maintain it with 8 trade missions a week.

Now 39 weeks is a long time. To speed this up (if you restrict yourself to trade missions) you'll have to do more than 10 missions a week.

I've already done my 10 for this week, so I'm on 100 merits. I'm not going to do more until the next cycle and I'm on rank 2, when I can do 15 tons per mission. Then I might try and rush rank 3 to get up to 20 tons per mission. Rushing rank 4 seems like too much hard work... maybe :p But just chipping away you'll get there eventually.

If you do 20 missions a week, those numbers look like:
Rank 2 in 1 week, Rank 3 in 5 weeks, Rank 4 in 9 weeks.

30 missions a week (!) looks like:
Rank 2 in 1 week, Rank 3 in 3 weeks, Rank 4 in 6 weeks.

The alternative... if you've already got enough tripped out A class 'condas, is yeah to buy more tons of propaganda/trade agreements/whatever at 100k a pop.

Mind you at rank 4, that's paying 5 million a week. For doing (once you get there) 8 missions a week, 625k a mission, 25k a ton. And you can fill the rest of the cargo bay with whatever you want, and it's empty on the return journey. You can do other trade routes, random missions, while waiting for the timer to expire so you can load up on more Things to ship.

[Thanewright]

Just to add: 50 missions as above will put you on Rank 3 end of week 2, Rank 4 end of week 3. You wont' be able to ramp it back down to the 8 required to maintain rank 4 just yet, because you won't have enough merits stored up to be added yet.

[Jebediah_White]

I am new to this forum so please a little lattitude. I have been playing elite for a month or so and was excited for the update, however I like a lot of other players work full time and don't have hours and hours to play everyday. It seems this powerplay update will be impossible for me to reach a high rank in any faction. I feel I will not join any and just continue hunting on my own. Unless any of you have any other suggestions?

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