Sadly I think that horse has bolted.
Colonisation - new feature, and I love it!
- Thread starter Michael Ryan
- Start date
I have many immediate thoughts but here's one. If it's not ridiculously difficult for individuals to use colonisation to build a chain of staging posts towards some final destination system (a goal I’m sure many are now thinking about) then I'm picturing straight lines of colonisation starting to spread out from the bubble. So here's the thing … those chains will almost inevitably start from a system which, if not already controlled by a power, will be exploitable by one or two powers. Unless the "architect" of this is already seriously thinking about PowerPlay (and I can imagine many at this point are simply thinking of their favourite systems and how to build a chain out to them), then it's quite likely that powers will start to expand along these lines without the original architects being particularly in control of that. So it seems quite likely that your average independent commander/architect will find that their shiny new independent string of outposts (and final destination colonies) will end up decorated with adverts and banners they didn't anticipate (or want) and can do little to change (since the lines will spread out from a point where likely only one or two powers have a chance to exploit, and since you can’t undermine a power without pledging to another). Potentially worse, if you are pledged to a power when you start building your chain and another power (with more players) decides to spread down that chain, you could potentially find yourself HOSTILE in your own colony?
Thats true. It is all about if Colonisation is designed more as a Bubble expansion. Bubble/Colony Expansion, or distant colonies as well. I am looking forward, all things on the table now
Macroeconomy is quite nice in my opinion. If you use fleet carrier a lot, or multiple fleet carriers it needs a lot of effort.
If you compare this point of view to the ship costs etc, it is like - ok I can buy any ship multiple times easily. But aren't we elite in ED world? Like 1% of richest people there?
And economy for me isn't the core. For some people tritium is real currency, for other - materials etc. It depends of part of a game you are doing ATM. So that doesn't keep me awake at night.
Colonisation could mean that we are going rather to macroeconomy management, because if you establish a colony it can be great point to start extract resources and sell it. I wounder how nic it could work if you can establish deep void colony and produce tritium for carrier flying around. Maybe more gameplay would be go outside the Bubble wth their carriers, what could be good for crowded systems, and even more for servers
Thats the risk you take I suppose- it is a shared BGS after all.
Of course, that's what I am wondering about. But We have Colonia - a far away, and Station near Sagittarius, so, distant colonies would not brake the lore. They're exists.
It is simple solution... Make colonisation distance more than PowerPlay expansion possibilioties.
If colonisation is designed for all kind of players it could work like that. Of course depends of Frontier ideas, but in theory, if you can colonise for an example 1000 Ly away, and Powers influence is like 50 Ly from the system there you can simultaneusly make colonies near the bubble - for PowerPlay, and distant - withour PP.
And what about BGS? You have missions between Colonia and Bubble, so, the distance isn't as much important as it looks at the first look.
It's frontier. So. [Curb your enthusiasm theme starts]
I can see a lot of CMDRs trying to set up "Tritium colonies" to improve the supply as they daisy-chain out to farther targets.Thats true. It is all about if Colonisation is designed more as a Bubble expansion. Bubble/Colony Expansion, or distant colonies as well. I am looking forward, all things on the table now
Macroeconomy is quite nice in my opinion. If you use fleet carrier a lot, or multiple fleet carriers it needs a lot of effort.
If you compare this point of view to the ship costs etc, it is like - ok I can buy any ship multiple times easily. But aren't we elite in ED world? Like 1% of richest people there?
And economy for me isn't the core. For some people tritium is real currency, for other - materials etc. It depends of part of a game you are doing ATM. So that doesn't keep me awake at night.
Colonisation could mean that we are going rather to macroeconomy management, because if you establish a colony it can be great point to start extract resources and sell it. I wounder how nic it could work if you can establish deep void colony and produce tritium for carrier flying around. Maybe more gameplay would be go outside the Bubble wth their carriers, what could be good for crowded systems, and even more for servers
"Too long have we stood by and watched as our brothers and sisters struggle in the tawdry mess that is Colonia, where poverty, suffering and hunger are a daily occurance for its denzins. I implore all Commanders loyal to the Imperial vision of security, prosperity and unity to henceforth direct their efforts to establishing a logistics network to enable the spread of the Imperial enlightenment to these future Imperial citizens."
Or powers- once the 'recipe' for high value systems is cracked its going to be a great way to bump up the numbers in the galactic standing.
LYR will leverage synergistic effects too- explo bonus while you go all Weyland Yutani
Good lord i look forward to the salt on that.
I guess my main problem is that it's likely this will be an investment larger than an fc, and likely to also have an ongoing cost.
Only a small fraction of each category of activity is "balanced" for that... and that "balance" is hardly intentional on FDs part. It's just railroading gameplay down very specific paths and removing any sense of discovery to earning credits.
That's probably it for my 40c on this though... colonisation would've been better as environment and bgs driven, not player led, but that horse is a rotting corpse too.
Oh well.
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I think Frontier would be unwise to invest in gameplay that specifically excludes a group of players.
Time to build lots of Extraction and Refinery Colonies with only planetary outposts and the odd 'medium pad' outpost?Or powers- once the 'recipe' for high value systems is cracked its going to be a great way to bump up the numbers in the galactic standing.
LYR will leverage synergistic effects too- explo bonus while you go all Weyland Yutani
Am I tempted to post that as a thread on its own, see if the Empire playerbase still have the chops to mount such an operation?Somehow, that sounds like a threat
Maybe.....
Of course it can't be too easy (in the meaning of effort), because it can cause similar issues to the fleet carriers, but I hope still possible. You know. Hydra is kind of group activity too
PowerPlay is created for both - groups and lone wolves.Build distant colony, as my idea of Arcadia, could need like 1000 hrs of gameplay for an example. And more, there can be difference between "just colonisation" and building more stations and making systems valuable. A lot of possibilities to balance here. I feel like Frontier wants to make things very acciesible to all kind of players, so I hope they will do it here again
Just idea: if you want colonisation as a part of spread influnece of your Faction or PowerPlay - it needs a group activity, but if you want to use colonisation as an exploration booster - it needs small grop or motivated one player effort. Definitely possible to create this way in my opinion. My favourite question: How to do something, not why or if...I hope we will talk more about that at the stream today!
I can burn probably more than 100k tonnes of tritium in a half year
You vill eat ze bugsSomehow, that sounds like a threat
Geographically I'm less sure about that.
The Powerplay 1 situation had Powers generally avoiding the edge of the bubble, because there wasn't enough CC there to sustain an expansion.
Powerplay 2 should mean that there's nothing wrong with taking fringe systems, but the Powers will initially need to chain out there within the bubble, and that's going to take time while they may be distracted elsewhere.
Frontier have said that system strength will be based somewhat on distance from HQ, so it might be a lot easier to undermine than to fortify this sort of thing. A single sparse chain would be incredibly vulnerable to being cut up.
(And if you can separate your colonies by more than 30LY, it's not chainable by Powerplay at all without the Power adding intermediate systems, at which point they might as well just build their own route going where they want)
BGS driven is essentially "player led but you need a spreadsheet to figure out how", though. Keeping it more direct and transparent lets people get on with the actual interesting bit and is probably easier for Frontier to balance the resource requirements for expansion with a desired pace for it.
But there's still plenty of room for environmental effects - at a first glance, the idea of allowing "unlimited" extra inhabited systems seems quite a mismatch with Powerplay (after all, why bother getting into a giant brawl with another Power for space if you can just found another 100 systems and fortify those up instead) - but that's only true if "The Bubble is no longer static!" only allows for additions...
I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and reveal why we need to colonise all these extra systems in a hurry.
Lot of time in the black, lot of time for...accidents.....