E:D Powerplay: What makes a system profitable?

Question

I'm outside my Power's bubble on the map, and not in anyone else's bubble either, just a free system that is up for expansion.

Even though it has 2 pristine metallic rings, multiple Resource Extraction Sites of every intensity level, and a big population (shown below), it's labeled as a low-profit system on the galactic map. The only thing I can see that might make it less than awesome is that it only has one station, but it is a full-size decent station and located at a planet with a pristine metallic ring. It's awesome.

As a miner, I want this to be a controlled system of my Power, but I don't think anyone will help if it's labeled as low-profit.

• What makes a system profitable?
• Can I make it more profitable somehow?

Yes, I'm conspicuously hiding the name and location. Pirates are everywhere, even SE.

Answer 1

Command Capital is based on the number of exploited systems that a control system has, as well as the population of these systems. The more people there are to exploit, the more Command Capital the control system will receive per cycle. It's probably impossible to increase this number, in that sense. (Source)

Additional factors may include contested and overlapping income. Contested income is not counted for either power, and overlapping income is only counted once.

You will be doing your power a disservice by preparing this system. Another thing that this number does not take into consideration is overhead, which increases as more systems are added. It's calculated by MIN((.2738 * numSystems)^3,(62.1 * numSystems))/numSystems, which means that overhead increases as a cubic function of the number of control systems until a power has 55 of them, at which point, it's a constant 62.1. This means that a system needs to be at least this profitable to turn a profit at all. So by all means, speaking as a patron of the Empire, I encourage you to support this system.