Power Play is pretty worthless. Unless you spend several weeks (months?) earning merits, the salary is meager and the equipment rewards are mediocre.
I had been spending my time shooting down wanted ships at resource extraction sites for the bounty rewards, but I recently did some testing and found that commodity trading yields almost double the credits for the time invested (
this site is invaluable). I even sold my shield generator for more cargo room. I imagine the relative profitability is due to my available cargo; the Asp has the most available cargo until you can buy the Type-7. If I still had a smaller ship (Cobra Mk II) I'd probably still be hunting pirates.
I'm saving up for an Anaconda, but it's a looooooong journey to 56 million credits. I may grab a Federal Dropship along the way for increased cargo capacity, but that means I'm fully committed to commodity trading, and can't jump into Open Play with friends and shoot stuff.
How do you like it, Shaowstrike?