Colonisation Answers

[Ian Doncaster]

Some answers on Colonisation from Frontier's stream today at

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XopKY1VWyA
(Q&A starts about 25 minutes in)
(I've shifted a few bits around in the summary here where there were related questions and answers, but I think I've caught all the key points made somewhere)


Initial costs of colonisation?
Still to be decided, but way cheaper than a FC. Aimed at established but not necessarily ultra-rich players who have a bit of spare credit.
4-weeks to build initial starport, using commodities, not as a credit sink

Upkeep
No upkeep costs at all

Inactive architects
Just how it is, the system is the system. Some systems might just be small ones. System Architect claims are permanent once the initial claim is completed correctly.

Popular systems claim
First-come first-served gold-rush. You can be architect for multiple systems, but only in initial claim for one at once, which will slow down individuals from collecting too many good ones personally.
Failing initial claim twice in a row locks you out temporarily.

Colonise with specific faction
Get a faction out there through normal BGS expansion so you can

Limit on systems you can be architect for
No, except for initial claims not being parallel

BGS rules apply?
Yes, as normal in the colonised systems

Permit locks, decide trade routes?
No. Trade routes indirectly depending on your economy choices, of course.

Benefits for solo CMDR
Personalise system for trade needs, missions, etc. to create what you want there

Colonisation possible from anywhere?
For now, must start from the bubble or any previously player-colonised system.

System Architect displayed?
Yes

Affect existing systems?
No

In-game tools to pick good options?
Architect view in systems explored would give information on how it could be colonised.

Economy type advantages/disadvantages?
Same as it would be with a normal system

Blockading colonisation?
Not intended as a PvP feature. Focused on traders/explorers rather than on combat.

Beta period
This might be more of a early-access/prototype rather than an actual separate-servers Beta?
"All players will be able to engage with it. What you do will be final. So if you colonise systems during Beta they'll be yours, you'll be able to keep them, we're not going to take them away from you."

What's next?
Information on the 2025 plans for Elite Dangerous in the January livestream

 

[Freyar]

Initial costs of colonisation?
Still to be decided, but way cheaper than a FC. Aimed at established but not necessarily ultra-rich players who have a bit of spare credit.
4-weeks to build initial starport, using commodities, not as a credit sink

This suggests to me that you'll sell cargo at the dropoff. I wonder if there's a possibility to earn a bit on top, recouping the costs of the initial claim. Now I'm just curious how much material they'll want to have it built.

 

[UberDuper]

If it takes 4 weeks to build the initial starport for a 10ly away system, then they don't understand what their players want from colonization and they're going to squander all the enthusiasm they've built up for it.
Nobody wants to colonize the next system over.

 

[AuxFive]

To be clear; they didn't say "Way cheaper than an FC". The answer wording was "Not way higher than a fleet carrier".

 

[rootsrat]

Benefits for solo CMDR

Personalise system for trade needs, missions, etc. to create what you want there

So colonisation just for the sake of it.

Disappointing, if I'm honest.

 

[Cosmo]

I posted this thread: System Colonization: Pessimistic View.

Overall there's too few benefits to make it worthwhile.

1. 1 player becomes the System Architect per system. The Architect's only reward is the privilege to custom place facilities / buildings in a few slots.
2. The buildings determine the economy type.
3. The options to customize a group of buildings is very limited.
4. Planets are huge 1:1 scale so why can't we place 100-1000 buildings together?
5. What is the actual limit of buildings per planet?
6. Can the Architect name a star system and planets?

How do players not get a burnout from grinding for weeks, months 100x to reach 1 desired far-off star system?

So colonisation just for the sake of it.

Disappointing, if I'm honest.

What do you want for system colonization?

 

[Weps]

There was a stream?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Indeed there was - this is the bit you want:

Source: https://youtu.be/8XopKY1VWyA?t=1285

 

[rootsrat]

What do you want for system colonization?

I would have hoped that as a person that shelled out couple billion Credits and committed many hours to hauling stuff to build an ENTIRE SYSTEM, I would reap some rewards from it.

As an example - if I place a small mining settlement, I would expect to get some raw materials and ore commodities from it, say on a weekly basis.

If I put a Listening Post up in space, I'd expect some Data in return.

And so on.

 

[Freyar]

Admittedly, I find myself a bit weirded out that there is no direct benefit outside of generating a new economy (but in the end that could lead to interesting trade options). However, I think it might be best if the narrative is shifted a bit to say you're sponsoring expansion and not buying claim rights to a system.

 

[Cosmo]

I would have hoped that as a person that shelled out couple billion Credits and committed many hours to hauling stuff to build an ENTIRE SYSTEM, I would reap some rewards from it.

As an example - if I place a small mining settlement, I would expect to get some raw materials and ore commodities from it, say on a weekly basis.

If I put a Listening Post up in space, I'd expect some Data in return.

And so on.

Seconded. If Fdev is worried that it would enrich architects with passive income then it could be limited to only spend on colonisation development.

For example: if you have a profitable colony, you could spend those profits on the next colony. This reduces the required goods / materials and lowers the grind.

However, I think it might be best if the narrative is shifted a bit to say you're sponsoring expansion and not buying claim rights to a system.

You do buy a claim from a Colonisation Contact to start the colonisation process. Only 1 player becomes the Architect per system. The Architect is essentially the system owner. That's a cool reward. However, what is the incentive for all the other players to grind for weeks, months, years?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If it takes 4 weeks to build the initial starport for a 10ly away system, then they don't understand what their players want from colonization and they're going to squander all the enthusiasm they've built up for it.
Nobody wants to colonize the next system over.

It doesn't necessarily take 4 weeks - that's just the maximum time you have before your claim lapses. They didn't state a minimum and presumably if they think a "normal" player might reasonably need four weeks there'll be some individuals colonising a new system every day (and groups going considerably faster than that)

I think - with the surprising news that we get to keep anything we colonise in "beta" - that the 10 LY limit (and tying it to the bubble) is so that they can shake out any weird issues with systems and ranges which don't matter too much, and if that works out, then loosen things up. How much they then loosen it up after that ... well, who knows. Probably depends how many 1000s of LYs people have already got with the 10 LY range by that point.

Whereas if they start with a massive range and then it turns out there's some crucial loophole they missed - which there will be! - taking that back is impossible.

To be clear; they didn't say "Way cheaper than an FC". The answer wording was "Not way higher than a fleet carrier".

That's true for that sentence, which was a reply to the people guessing that they might need tens of billions, but the rest of the answer I was summarising I think made clear that the "cost" was primarily intended to be in time hauling the commodities [1], not in paying even single billions of credits per system.

[1] I think with their talk elsewhere about building up so that you could get those commodities closer they're really underestimating just how much more efficient a FC is compared with any other ship in the game at long-range hauling, so FC owners are going to have a big speed advantage here.

As an example - if I place a small mining settlement, I would expect to get some raw materials and ore commodities from it, say on a weekly basis.

This probably ties in to the "no upkeep" / "permanent" part of it - if you had to fund the operations of the mining settlement on an ongoing basis, getting to skim the profits would make sense.

But that would require a complete rewrite of the economy so that it was actually possible for an NPC market to make a profit, which would I think be impossible at this stage, and would at least conflict with a bunch of popular game design requirements if not.

Still, the likely rapid permanent expansion of inhabited space doesn't seem like it'll be good for any part of the game except colonisation itself.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Colonise with specific faction
Get a faction out there through normal BGS expansion so you can

Will be interesting to do stats on how many PMFs have colonization potential out of the gate.

BGS rules apply?
Yes, as normal in the colonised systems

What are the normal BGS rules for expanding factions out of low-faction-count systems?

Economy type advantages/disadvantages?
Same as it would be with a normal system

Benefits for solo CMDR
Personalise system for trade needs, missions, etc. to create what you want there

The economy types question was more about going tall or wide and ties in with the benefits - if you can build stations where you can get everything you need to satisfy all potential missions/demands in say an industrial economy that could be a decent boon for your BGS.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Popular systems claim
First-come first-served gold-rush. You can be architect for multiple systems, but only in initial claim for one at once, which will slow down individuals from collecting too many good ones personally.

Imo an architect should have the power to veto any colonization from their system for the first 2-4 weeks except for their own claims.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What are the normal BGS rules for expanding factions out of low-faction-count systems?

Well, it's generally easier to get to 75%+, especially if you're the only faction in the system. Normal rules apply otherwise

The "normal rule" which might catch some people out is that if you exhaust the extended expansion cube, you permanently deny that system as an expansion source for all factions. So either doing that when they didn't mean to, or not realising that someone has already (deliberately?) done it to a system, will probably get a few not-a-bug reports once the chains start getting some distance from the bubble.

 

[Freyar]

Imo an architect should have the power to veto any colonization from their system for the first 2-4 weeks except for their own claims.

The whole point is to not allow people to ****block.

 

[rootsrat]

This probably ties in to the "no upkeep" / "permanent" part of it - if you had to fund the operations of the mining settlement on an ongoing basis, getting to skim the profits would make sense.

But that would require a complete rewrite of the economy so that it was actually possible for an NPC market to make a profit, which would I think be impossible at this stage, and would at least conflict with a bunch of popular game design requirements if not.

Still, the likely rapid permanent expansion of inhabited space doesn't seem like it'll be good for any part of the game except colonisation itself.

How about this:

• No upkeep required
• Player aligns themselves with a faction (akin to Squadrons, so functionality is there).
• Player can only purchase colonisation claims from that faction.
• Colonisation mechanics as is.
• Colonisation Beacon becomes Nav Beacon - at which point BGS kicks in, if I understood the provided info correctly
• Now, as long as the player's aligned faction controls an asset, the player gets the benefits from this asset: a weekly package of ship materials, Odyssey materials, commodities, credits etc. - all based on the type of asset.
• If the aligned faction loses control of an asset, the player gets zilch from it.
• It is only the System Architect that gets the benefits from his aligned faction in the system they colonised.
• The rest of the factions works as normal, they have nothing to do with the profit packages. In other words it only affects the given System Architect and their aligned faction.

This is all within BGS and uses pretty much only already existing features: faction align (per Squadrons), colonisation mechanics (no changes required), Profit Packages (per Care Packages or AX war profit packages), faction control (per existing BGS).

It adds the risk of losing the benefits (so no changes to the current plans if that happens), but it doesn't mean player can lose the benefits forever AND it would require bit of an effort to bring another faction in, and then make that new faction gain control of ALL the assets. Quite an effort, depending on system size, which is another great motivator for the Architect to keep investing in the system.

And if worst comes to worst, player can help their aligned faction to regain control of an asset to start getting benefits from it again.

 

[Valije]

Bubble as the only starting point, totally ignoring Colonia, is a big bummer for me.

 

[Freyar]

Bubble as the only starting point, totally ignoring Colonia, is a big bummer for me.

Did they say they were not offering the contacts from Colonia? I've not lived the Colonia life so, I'm not sure how that feels out there.

 

[Weps]

Bit disappointed about the lack of architect decommissioning... we're gonna get a lot of garbage in the galaxy...

Zac says you'll want to trace systems daisy chained by a player and discover their "journey" - well I've already done that and I don't like the big hairy journey I'm seeing

Spoiler

Indeed there was - this is the bit you want:

Arthur mentioned "Christmas Day" more than once - this was supposed to go live next week!