Powerplay: Merit Retention

[Xariann]

Okay so, 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

[Xariann]

How to rush rank 4 by spending money to make money:

(snip)

Doing that, great tip.

[Thanewright]

How to rush rank 4 by spending money to make money:

(snip)

Doing that, great tip.

It seems that the formula I was using is not accurate. Reverse engineering after this cycle, it seems to be:

Merits retained = Merits earned last week + 1/2 merits earned week before + (I presume) 1/4 merits earned week before that.

So if you earn say... 550 merits a week, at start of new cycle you have:
550 (earned last week)
+ 275 (half earned week before)
+ 137 (quarter earned week before that)
= 962
With the 550 you earn this week, that puts you on:
1512

So this is what is required to maintain rank 4. 550 a week, or 22 trade missions a week.
This makes it not very viable to just "buy" merits and rake in a profit, which I guess is fair enough :p

Plugging in my own numbers I had:
100 earned week 1
116 carried over to week 2 (there was a glitch week 1)
1530 earned week 2 for 1646 in total.
1588 (1530 + 116/2) carried over to week 3.

So right now I can do nothing and stay rank 4, but then I'll be at a loss next week. So planning on trying for 550 this week (but this time, without buying extra loads to ship).

One way to gain "extra" free stuff to ship:
Get your 30 minute allocation. Then go vacuum the flat/cook dinner/shampoo the dog/whatever, come back and get another 30 minute allocation, etc. You can keep doing this 'till you fill your cargo hold, then ship them all in one go.

[Sendraks]

One way to gain "extra" free stuff to ship:
Get your 30 minute allocation. Then go vacuum the flat/cook dinner/shampoo the dog/whatever, come back and get another 30 minute allocation, etc. You can keep doing this 'till you fill your cargo hold, then ship them all in one go.

Yup. This is what I do.

My typical routine is.

1. Get my freebie allocation.
2. Buy up 3 more allocations so my cargo hold is full.
3. Fly to destination and unload.
4. Do missions at destination to recoup cost of buying additional allocations.
5. Fly back to HQ - rinse repeat unti.......
6. Do something real life for a bit, at which point popping back to the PC to grab another freebie allocation every 30mins is what I do until my real life tasks are done.

7. Always log out at a location where you can get a freebie allocation just by logging back in. Even if you've only got a few mins to play, this will save you cash and time in the long run.

[Sendraks]

Also - I use an asp for my PP missions, which at Rank 4 will mean shifting 75 tonnes (3 lots of 25) around to different locations.

550/75 = 7.3 trips with a full load of whatever.
550/25 = 22 individual free allocations - which is 11hrs total to acquire all of those.

Which isn't a huge amount of effort to hold onto a 5mill a week income.

[PillDoc98]

Thks for the info, it will help me a lot in getting and keeping merits. Also, I don't know about the other powers, but with Hudson, you can get 15 merits a kill by destabilizing a system.

[stevthunt]

Needed 1310 merits to maintain level 4

[holex]

I'm not sure about the calculation procedure which is at the beginning of this long post, but that looks incorrect to me entirely.

in the game the calculation is different, I'm not sure about how that calculation derailed; the manual might have been misunderstood – but the halving procedure is not happening like that in that post, for instance if someone delivers e.g. 1,400 merits per cycle, they will never go beyond e.g 3,850 merits, therefore they will never achieve the 10,000 merits and rank 5.

achieving or maintaining certain ranks, the player needs to deliver the following merits on each week:

• rank 1: 0 merit;
• rank 2: 37 merits;
• rank 3: 273 merits;
• rank 4: 546 merits;
• rank 5: 3,637 merits;

those numbers and the calculation are based on gaming experience (v1.3).

[stevthunt]

All I know is that it cost me 1310 merits to maintain level 4 in the first week and 1598 the second week!

[holex]

All I know is that it cost me 1310 merits to maintain level 4 in the first week and 1598 the second week!

I'm still not sure about these numbers and where are they coming from, especially the 1,598 is a quite irregular number here as rank 4 requires 1,500 merits, if you need to deliver 1,598 merits in a cycle to achieve 1,500 that means your merit level was at -98 (minus 98?!), which is pretty much impossible as the merit level won't go below 0....

the math of how the merits are carried from previous cycles is much more simple:

CARRIED = the last cycle's TOTAL merits + HALF of the second last cycle's merits + QUARTER of the third last cycle's merits

THIS CYCLE'S TOTAL = how much merits you will be delivering in the current cycle + CARRIED

please see this example:

1st cycle

you start this cycle with 0 merits, and you deliver 240 merits; by the end of the cycle you will have 240 and
you achieved RANK 2.

2nd cycle

(240 = 240 (from last cycle) = 240)
you start this cycle with 240 merits, and you deliver 510 merits; by the end of the cycle you will have 750 and
you achieved RANK 3.

3rd cycle

(630 = 510 (from last cycle) + 240 / 2 (from second last cycle) = 510 + 120)
you start this cycle with 630 merits, and you deliver 900 merits; by the end of the cycle you will have 1,530 and
you achieved RANK 4.

4th cycle

(1,215 = 900 (from last cycle) + 510 / 2 (from second last cycle) + 240 / 4 (from third last cycle) = 900 + 255 + 60)
you start this cycle with 1,215 merits, and... etc, etc...

it is not a rocket science eventually, and that is pretty much the magic.