Opinion: 10 LY range for colonization is ridiculously low.

[Knuttin Atoll]

Gameplay wise I strongly suspect what we have now is a lot better than an "exploration" or "mining" FC variant would be, which would probably have come with a static set of services enabled, including of course some outfitting and shipyard packs of minimal use to most players. The ability to set up your own carrier loadout and only have the bits you actually want is probably far more important than having a nice-looking support ship hanging around it.

Entirely possible that the original design was discarded because it was worse than what we have today.

It's just that when they mentioned support vessels, I was imagining at the time they could be used to refuel carriers, or probe gas giants, or auto-mine rings, or automate hauling to/from a station without having to do it yourself. Or that you, the player, could actually operate them yourself (i.e. them being new ships with bespoke functionality), with potentially new gameplay loops. Back then I used to dream bigger for sure - so the actual FC release was a disappointment (classic case of not tempering expectations), even though I still enjoyed them (and the emergent gameplay, Borann et al) at the time.

 

[kofeyh]

We also need the contact to look like this:

View attachment 409760

I low key both love and hate this. Well done.

 

[kofeyh]

...unless, of course, either colonisation or the coming Thargoid Surprise means that regular NPC stations start needing some sort of upkeep as well, as a way of keeping the total size of inhabited space roughly level.

Ian. Stop that.

 

[kofeyh]

Considerations - I think probably Frontier needs to consider who is colonisation for?

Is it the commander with 10 hours under the belt, 100? 1000? The probable costs are such that wealth is going to be required to fund the initial push into a system, as well as large trade ship access. Certainly potential to work as a group. But somebody has to pay the upfront bill.

Is it for powerplay specifically? I don't see that being a concern as the size a power can get to is governed entirely by how well it can hold territory, let alone gain it. That's a function of player cap vs engagement so it naturally gates how large a faction can actually get before the number of systems that have to be held, far exceeds player count, which would prevent that from spreading everywhere.

The BGS works fine with systems in entirely random places, so that's not really a concern either.

As such, I would think a maximum range of something like 250-500LY, as this aligns with a single jump from a carrier. The timeline to build means a carrier needs to be stocked with provisions prior to heading out. It acts as a hub for deliveries and gives it another reason to exist. Groups or squadrons can work to more effectively build out a system.

Indeed, once a new station is established, there is good reason to stick around to get some outposts in, as that will help kick start bgs trade and help ensure there are the commodities needed to potentially spring for the next system.

I am sure 10 ly was the consideration due to needing to supply, but that's potentially hundreds of jumps of a ship to supply resources, meanwhile you could park a carrier in the target system and have all the ships and resources needed to get the job done.

Commanders took supplies all the way to Jaques back in the day, so I'd encourage Frontier to be brave and be generous with the colonisation range. We are up for it. You know we are. ^.^

 

[Desirsar]

I may have missed a post in here or in one of the other threads, but have any of the ED astronomy / maths boffins guesstimated what a 10 ly actually means for us.

That's a sphere approximately 320 ly in diameter, 10 ly thick.
By my extremely simplistic calculations, (calculating sphere volumes of radius 150 and 160 and subtracting) that gets us very roughly 3 million cubic lightyears of volume. Which is an increase in the volume of space taken up by the bubble by 'very roughly' 20%.

I've seen estimates of 100,000 systems in the bubble, of which roughly 20,000 are inhabited.
Taking that same approximate star density (which won't be uniform, but good enough for my loose numbers) players will gain access to around 20,000 systems on Day 1.
Not all of which will be desirable systems, but the potential is there to double the number of Human-inhabited systems in the Elite Dangerous in one week.

That's with 10 ly.
Some people want 500+ ly.

If the range is 10 or 500, it will take the same amount of time to fill in all your very interesting and definitely very useful calculations, because that's the same number of systems built.

No one taking advantage of a 500 LY range is sticking around anywhere near the bubble.

Edit - Is the concern that someone on one end of the bubble will be able to jump across and take over BGS stuff on the other side? That someone trapped away from the edge of the bubble will be able to escape and continue expanding? Otherwise I'm not getting the concern over a large jump range, not that I would be concerned myself about either of those things anyway.

 

[kofeyh]

If the range is 10 or 500, it will take the same amount of time to fill in all your very interesting and definitely very useful calculations, because that's the same number of systems built.

No one taking advantage of a 500 LY range is sticking around anywhere near the bubble.

Edit - Is the concern that someone on one end of the bubble will be able to jump across and take over BGS stuff on the other side? That someone trapped away from the edge of the bubble will be able to escape and continue expanding? Otherwise I'm not getting the concern over a large jump range, not that I would be concerned myself about either of those things anyway.

This forum does have a niche fixation on less range is better. I've never understood that given how absolutely gargantuan the galaxy is.

Also, 10ly is pragmatically a bit pointless as this only works for a tight cluster of stars, move out a bit and the gaps between stars quickly starts to exceed that, making them unavailable. There are stars much further apart than this that are already occupied. So it's a bit illogical.

Frontier could keep it to 100ly if they want to not have cmdrs spread democracy too quick, but actually open up at least some of the galaxy.

 

[aRJay]

I think limits should ideally be based on how much pain logistically you can stand carting stuff out that far.

So if you want to go to the Edge™, you better have a high jump range, a lot of tea and a good grip on your sanity.

Perhaps, but with distance comes another cost, one more valuable to us all. Time.

A 10 LY range could be made with a simple Type 9 build in one jump, but 1000 LY is going to take something like at least 20 jumps, probably more, for a ship with decent cargo capacity and a full load. Quick check, around 35 LY for a Cutter, engineered, with a guardian booster, and plenty of cargo space (600+).

That already would balance it quite well, and i presume these things are going to take thousands of tons of cargo to build.

Remember how many tens of thousands of tons that had to be hauled to the Witch Head just to repair one mostly intact station, this time we orrather that monster machine have to build one.

The low range might be down to the size of the first machine to show up with all its large pads so the deliveries don’t get grid locked.

 

[kofeyh]

Remember how many tens of thousands of tons that had to be hauled to the Witch Head just to repair one mostly intact station, this time we orrather that monster machine have to build one.

The low range might be down to the size of the first machine to show up with all its large pads so the deliveries don’t get grid locked.

NPC carriers are not limited on range as ours are. Our carriers could jump from one side of the galaxy to the other if Frontier desired, it's just a metadata and databases updates and some very snazzy visuals.

To be at least somewhat consistent with commander carriers, we can assume a range of at least 500ly. Other NPC faction carriers jump around the bubble for Thargoid events and they cover well more than 10ly in the process at times.

It's just Frontier being very conservative and trying to (once again) slow cmdrs down. 10 ly locks out much of the galaxy due to distances between stars, irrespective of how many one might try to chain, so I don't really see that lasting too long.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I've seen estimates of 100,000 systems in the bubble, of which roughly 20,000 are inhabited.
Taking that same approximate star density (which won't be uniform, but good enough for my loose numbers) players will gain access to around 20,000 systems on Day 1.
Not all of which will be desirable systems, but the potential is there to double the number of Human-inhabited systems in the Elite Dangerous in one week.

~23k total systems, ~5k "good" systems that have potential to be more than just a Y star with a few icy planets.

Overall grim numbers and in my opinion with the 10Ly range the best thing to do would be to build out from Sag A* instead of the bubble.

 

[aRJay]

One thing I heard that might affect how much we own the new system is that it will have the faction of the system you get your colonisation permit from.

For those who care about such things it might lead to some compromise on location.

 

[kofeyh]

One thing I heard that might affect how much we own the new system is that it will have the faction of the system you get your colonisation permit from.

For those who care about such things it might lead to some compromise on location.

How did the dozens of remote systems spring into being, then? Since that would surely have been a factor. Unless it wasn't. And isn't. But now is. Or something.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

For those who care about such things it might lead to some compromise on location.

That's something that upends the status quo either way.

Option A (limited range choosing factions): your faction is trapped in the middle of the bubble and can't get out unless they fight their way to the edge
Option B (unlimited range for choosing factions): if you colonize a good system some rando faction can colonize a meh system next to yours and expand to your system and try to take over

I don't think there's any good or interesting reason for the colonized systems to have the usual BGS/Powerplay mechanics that leads to anything but more misery.

 

[Rock Hunter]

I’m not going to get too hung up on the, initially set, 10 Ly range. It was said on the stream they’ll be looking at tweaking as things go on, though it would appear that the hopes of many will be dashed if they wanted to be able to set up 1000s of light years away from the very start.

So many wanted Base building and this simply isn’t that. I think its more a slow expansion of humanity as a whole, albeit probably split across Powers and some of the remaining player factions. Like the Space Race but joining the USA and Russia you now have China, India and the Prismatic Princess.

One thing I think most will agree on, FDev acknowledging a Beta is probably required.

 

[Pville_Piper]

Jump range does seem low, but FD want to control how much the bubble can expand, and how quickly. The range could double or triple, but the 500ly range that might be good for single CMDRs probably is not coming. Pretty much killed my interest, since I just wanted to plonk down a single system about 6kly from the bubble, that didn't have a trail of breadcrumbs leading to it.

But it does sound like solo players that value their time may as well not bother.

I hope not... 30Ly seems to be more in line for BGS/Power Play, I would love too 250ly myself...

 

[DawnTreader777]

Why not add a module for fleet carriers? Make it possible for our carriers to become a way for us to colonize far reaches of the galaxy. The amount of time it would take a colonization carrier to get there can be really long due to distance. Claiming a system should cost credits. The amount of credits should be by distance from the system where the claim is being made.

 

[LCU No Fool Like One]

10ly is simply not reasonable to get any distance away from the bubble. I remember it was frustrating to get the Gnosis anywhere with a 500ly range with only one jump per week.

But I think it makes sense to give it the same limit as BGS to allow for expansion. Even 20 to 30ly limit will be horribly slow.

Still, its a lot faster than not at all!

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Ok wow!
Definitely wasn't what I was thinking.
10 Ly, so daisy chain 50 to equal a single carrier jump?
My T9 can do 30 fully laden...
Certainly not replacing the DSSA with that.
As for traffic around the periphery of the Bubble. When I'm doing random trade in the region I encounter a hollow square about every 3 days.
We'd have to deal with the logistics of getting stuff out there? Remind me how the Coalsack was colonised...
Yes the Bubble has felt cramped at times but wow...
I'm going to hope the scope on that expands rather dramatically...

 

[drakkster2025]

At first i thought i had misheard or Piers had misspoken.

Yes, they said the numbers can change, but starting from a base of 10LY and possibly making it bigger? I'm pretty sure many of us (most of us?) had images of spreading out into the dark at a rate much faster than 10LY... even 100LY would be low in my opinion. 1000 LY, yeah, i could go with that.

I agree I don't see going to areas where stars are sparse and you need at least 80 or more jump range to reach the next system. People are going to want to form micro-bubbles in the weirdest most isolated places

 

[drakkster2025]

I think it should be 500LY. Jump range for a FC to haul material. No more than that. 10LY concentrates activity too close to the bubble. I thought part of the idea is to get outside the bubble.

wurd

 

[Tifu]

Also, the commodity grind will indeed have to be epic because it needs to be balanced for MMO player numbers. Solo efforts will be hard work, and that's just for the very first station (which you can't even place by the sound of it). Getting Operation IDA vibes.

With the set time limits for the early stages of colonization plus the huge amounts of material that need to be space trucked over to make it all work, I think it will be impossible for a solo commander to do it all. As in all things in life, you need friends