If you're not new to powerplay, you can find the current priority list on the overview tab on our spreadsheet.

#Why Fortify?

The bread and butter of any power is Command Capital (aka CC). This is political currency (think favour owed and gained), and it is used to determine if the power can afford to maintain its current political geography, and if it can afford to expand.

Each cycle a power's CC budget is determined by its political geography and their states. Each system generates two parts:

• Income
• Upkeep

The control system grabs CC income from its exploited systems, and its upkeep is in part determined by its distance from the power's headquarters. The upkeep can be changed depending on the powerplay state that it is in at the end of a cycle, which is where two specific terms come into play - fortification and undermining. They each have a specific trigger requirement, and the combination of the two results in these outcomes:

Fortification / Undermining	Trigger Not Reached	Trigger Reached
Trigger Not Reached	Default	Undermined
Trigger Reached	Fortified	Cancelled

• Fortified - the system's upkeep is reduced to 0.
• Default and Cancelled - the system's upkeep is determined entirely by the distance to the headquarters.
• Undermined - the system's upkeep becomes the default upkeep AND its income.

This is evaluated for each individual control system, and this is then added up to give the power its income and upkeep for the cycle.

On top of this there is "Overheads". This can be thought of as inherent losses or corruption, but as a game mechanic it's there to keep powers from becoming too big.

All told these three things make up the entirety of the budget for a power, and the equation is rather simple:

• Budget = Income - overheads - upkeep

If a power has a positive budget everything is good and if it has a negative budget bad things can happen. However, if the power's budget becomes too large, it risks being unable to control what its spent on, which means bad things can happen.

This makes fortifications the most important thing to a power, as balancing the budget can be a bit like dancing on a knife's edge. It's not something that most players have to worry too much about, as the balancing is done by a few volunteers who maintain the spreadsheet. The majority of players simply follow the recommendations, and this has so far mostly resulted in good outcomes for Mahon.

It is worth noting that Mahon's current political ecosystem is such that systems being undermined is not a problem in and of itself. Rather than panicking and running around chasing the "fires", we set out a plan for each cycle, and by following that plan we avoid chasing after other powers' actions against us. In other words - don't worry, just follow the plan.

How to Fortify

Once you've found the control system you want to fortify, you travel to it and dock at any station. Go into Contacts then Power Contact and use "Collect Alliance Legislative Records". Each ALR takes up 1 ton of cargo space. Before you click confirm, be sure to check the screen properly.

You need to check the line I've highlighted with the red square. In this case the system LHS 2936 is already fully fortified (5,719 merits out of 5,239 required), so there's no need to pick up merits here. If it's already fully fortified, go to the spreadsheet and find another destination.

The amount of ALRs you can pick up at a time depends on your pledge rating:

1. 10 every 30 minutes
2. 15 every 30 minutes
3. 20 every 30 minutes
4. 25 every 30 minutes
5. 50 every 30 minutes

If you so desire, you can fast track them at a cost of 10,000 credits per ton, in batches equal to your allowance. If you're rank 1 it'll cost you 100,000 credits to fast track 10 ALRs and if you're rating 5 it'll cost you 500,000 credits to fast track 50 ALRs. Fast tracking also resets the allowance timer.

Once you have the ALRs you want, you head back to Gateway and dock at any station. Go into Contacts then Power Contacts and hand in the merits.

Is it Worth it For Me?

Well, if your main goal in powerplay is to make money for yourself, then no. Also, you've definitely picked the wrong power to back, as there are powers that are far better suited for making money. However, we have put together a list of trade routes that you can run while travelling to the system you plan on fortifying.