This makes so much sense. Let's pump this suggestion!
Opinion: 10 LY range for colonization is ridiculously low.
- Thread starter Agony_Aunt
- Start date
I suppose that depends on how we define "the important places". I can't imagine that anybody will ever be allowed to claim a system that already has Guardian ruins or something other in it. Yes, settle inside nebulas and in systems including NSP, but anything major like Sag A*, I can't see that ever being allowed.
The only requirement is the beacon is owned by a faction. So any system that has that faction present, would be a valid starting point.
However, if the chosen faction, is in the middle of the bubble and has not expanded, that does mean slowly crawling out of the bubble, 10 ly at a time. Might only take a year or so to make it to the edge of the bubble...
No, you are not missing anything. The range is a boat anchor and Frontier know it. It's illogical even for what is already present in the bubble. It's the same '"we want cmdrs to take decades" thinking that has had to be unwound time and time again.
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I'm not talking about PowerPlay. BGS states like Expansions, Wars, etc will happen regardless regardless of Power presence. But they don't happen in uninhabited systems, the BGS is explicitly a thing that only happens in relation to assets owned by minor factions. INRA bases are devoid of any activities that could influence the BGS, and they are not owned or contested by any minor faction. They are places where players can immerse themselves in the lore, which has no impact on BGS.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. If you genuinely believe that the BGS and the story narrative are mutually exclusive, then you'll have a hard time justifying to me how all the INRA base stuff didn't eventually feed directly into players attacking Thargoid titans.
Frontier can potentially treat it like the existing permit lock system. No permit, no access. Only the permit in this case is whether or not it's a valid system to colonise, which does seem to align with what has been said.
I for sure expect there will be places you can't claim. The range kills me tho, 10 ly. Jump into a ship with cargo, plonk in an E rated FSD, set it to mimic 10ly range and try seeing where you can go.
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I think the reason Frontier said 10LY is they want to slow down the expansion. They want it to take time to colonise the galaxy. Even increasing it to 100LY will multiply how fast players spread out. I think there is also practical reasons for 10LY as opposed to 100LY or 500LY. If the range is too high, you'd put a station out somewhere and almost no-one will visit it. If you keep the range low, more people will visit your station compared to a higher range.
By all means campaign for higher than 10LY, I don't disagree with that, but don't push for too high, or I think Frontier will just dig their heels in, stop listening and keep it at 10LY.
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I think you just answered your own point there
10ly sounds fine to you because you don't want to do colonisation anyway. I'm the opposite, I won't want to do colonisation if it is just 10ly or around that figure. I don't care about PowerPlay 2 myself, it's not my thing, but I am very aware that it's proving hugely popular with many other players so I choose not to comment on it.I did not say they were mutually exclusive, I said that the BGS and the narrative content are different features that operate accordingly. There is overlap, in that narrative events added by the developers can impact the BGS. For example, when the Titans invaded the bubble, that was not something that was going to happen without the developer actively intervening to make it happen, as part of their planned narrative. The Stargoids had to have their routes manually entered by staff. But when they landed, and devastated entire star systems in the process, that would have impacted the BGS without FDev needing to do anything specific to make it happen.
As for the INRA bases, maybe the stories the players found there influenced their decision to get involved with attacking the Titans. But if so, that would have been a choice made by players, which seems more like foreground than background to me.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
A possible way to remove the need for a centre-bubble Faction to fight its way out to the edge to be able to start colonising might be to allow a system to be selected if it is up to 10LY from any populated system and up to <longer distance (100LY?)> from the system from which the colonisation is initiated.
Hmm, Frontier start with a figure than is very low so the ‘community’ can negotiate them up to the figure that they wanted in the first place. That way it’s not Frontier’s decision, it’s our’s. It’s better PR to increase the range than subsequently having to cut it.
I’m guessing here of course.
How about a dynamic range based on how many stars are nearby? Plotting a route takes a lot longer if you're near Sag A* than if you're out by Beagle Point. So from the Bubble it might be 20LY but at Sag A* it would be 10LY and at Beagle Point it could be 50LY.
They did say on-stream that "start strict then relax" is their balancing strategy.
I wondered why Arf was swishing that cane around
The scale of the galaxy is absolutely massive. I gave an example of trying to get to Colonia and it's somewhere between half to a full century of real world time, at 10 ly per diem.
Never mind that that range actually puts an invisible barrier up that locks out large chunks of the galaxy due to distances between stars. So that only means high density.
There may well be populated systems out in the galaxy that can't be chained from because there is no other system with 10 ly. And that also means the cmdr has to live with whatever the faction sponsor is, including if (due to powerplay) it's an enemy.
It's not as though everybody here didn't see this coming from a mile away. It's exactly what happened with the purchase cost and upkeep for fleet carriers, just the other way round.
Why even start at 10ly if pragmatically it's essentially unworkable outside of starting at Colonia.
On the contrary, I think Frontier just threw out a number, 10 is a nice round one, and they probably haven't actually got to the point in the development cycle where that range starts to have a bearing on the mechanics.
As soon as they do, 10 ly will expose some issues around where people can start from, and potentially exclude any number of existing factions based on relative distances between stars, and we will hopefully see some more reasonable numbers quoted.
They did say there would be a beta test phase, so we'll be able to see then if 10LY (or whatever Frontier set it at) is too low. That will be the time to really push for a higher range.
I think a dynamic range based on how many systems are nearby is the best solution. A one-size-fits-all approach won't work. Imagine a 500LY range which is good for the Bubble and Beagle point, but unworkable for Sag A*.
Thankfully I'm not a purist explorer type, so for me coming across random player systems in far flung areas would actually be a draw to go out there. Though it all depends on whether players have enough freedom to make systems look and feel unique enough and not cookie cutter.