Yes. They explained that on the video. You become the system architect after establishing first star port and changing colonization beacon into the regular one. They don't want add mechanics where you loose the right to that (which makes sense). So you can potentially daisy-chain 10 systems by building only initial star ports and come back to adding stuff late on
Colonisation Answers
- Thread starter Ian Doncaster
- Start date
Oh no! There's only 80 billion stars then! That's like... less than one each!80% of the 400 billion stars are worthless brown dwarf systems
I should've been clearer but what I meant was player A has a certain vision of their colonisation project (be that gaming the BGS or something else entirely) but other players coming along and setting up camp next door with all the consequences that may entail. Being able to colonise in much greater distance (without having to daisychain) would minimise that particular scenario greatly at least.
This isn't base-building. FDev could create a base-building game in spaaaaace tomorrow by reskinning Planet Coaster. They have not done that. In fact, in recent years they have gone from "not putting base-building in the game" to "not putting base-building in the game even though it's right there ready to go and would bring in a huge overlap with their success in CMS."
I agree with FDev that it shouldn't be in the game, and if they were going to change their minds, they would have done that now, because they are largely a CMS studio except for this one game. So... they ain't gonna change their minds about this one.
SC is more like SimCity-light. We can place a couple of buildings, but it lacks deep customization and management tools.
No i get that.
The thing is you've accurately described the false expectations these BGS edge cases have created... players will likely have an expectation that they should be able to set up a colony with a certain vision that is entirely dependent on having a certain setup which includes no other colonies within a particular radius in order to generate certain effects.
I don't think players should have that expectation... because the BGS is meant to create dynamism. Regardless of the colonisation range, players should absolutely expect further development around them to impact what occurs in the systems they colonise.
It's just going to get people accused of "griefing" simply for setting up a colony close to another... this is entirely on player expectations not being managed appropriately by addressing the weird but meme-able edge cases the BGS creates.
I don't really buy this notion that FDev are "listening to the players" when it comes to adding content, at least not to the extent you suggest.
The fact that many players had a different idea to what 'space legs' should entail vs what FDev actually implemented suggests they took that idea from elsewhere.
My take is that they concluded that bolting on an FPS shooter = $$$ as other successful games (not necessarily in the space genre) feature something this also, so went ahead with that plus adding some half arxed non-shooty bits (sneaking around settlements, planetary POIs, exobio and the barebones spaceport areas), while leaving out basics like the ability to enter/leave a planetary port on-foot, or space walking, which are more important from an immersion and world building standpoint.
Likewise, Fleet Carriers were the equivalent of "player bases" and social spaces for squadrons, i.e. the closest to base building that Elite players will likely get - I'm still convinced that the addition of the FC bridge wasn't because of player feedback, but because it was always planned for Odyssey's release but wasn't ready at launch. Frontier always takes an age and a half to develop new content and this dropped a bit too quickly post-launch iirc.
And Colonisation to me is a bit more like your city builder (albeit much, much less complex in comparison to say Cities Skylines et al) because those are popular generally (and I'm a big sucker for them myself), but in my view don't really have any place in Elite as it goes counter to the original idea of your average CMDR having very little impact on the galaxy as a whole.
Personally I believe that fleshing out existing game loops, and adding more 'scenery' (not ELWs but stuff like gas giants, asteroids, refurb black holes, etc.) and associated gameplay loops would've been much better, but I get the impression that the lack of these over the past several years means that FDev just doesn't see value in developing them from a player retention/attraction perspective.
Yeah I don't really disagree with that - but you know it'll happen and people might bounce off the new feature as a result, for the right or wrong reasons. Which isn't really what FDev would want, but then I often scratch my head at what FDev really wants for Elite long-term, other than making money with Arx items.
Thing is, a player could in theory have-their-cake-and-eat-it if all they wanted is their own little world several hundred or even thousand LY away from the bubble, because it'd be less likely (though not impossible of course) another player would try to stomp their lonely island sandcastle by building next door, as the sandbox is so huge in this game.
I know your concerns about the BGS and I don't share those myself, but given that FDev are determined to have full BGS/PP compatibility it's just a theoretical scenario anyways. But it could have engaged those players who don't care about the BGS in the new feature - I'd be one of them honestly, and while I will still give Colonisation a decent tyre-kick when it releases, I very much doubt I'll engage much beyond that as it won't do what I would like it to do and I'm not a natural space trucker either, so will likely burn out quickly.
During the FU streams they said that they do listen to player feedback and check the forums. How much they apply to ED is up for debate. Braben mentioned space legs years before Odyssey. It's his vision that we're people in the galaxy, not just ships / vehicles.
Bolting on is an understatement. The implementation of the first person gameplay required massive changes to the Cobra engine and networking. I think we'll get EVA eventually. Fans want a lot of things, but they can only develop a few things at a time.
Since we're getting system colonization they should go all the way with the city-building features. Fdev are experts in creative management simulation (CMS). So if they deliver a bare-bones iteration that would be unfortunate. Fdev usually adds / improves stuff later though.
The difference between ED in 2014 vs 2024 is like day and night. Mining, exploration, powerplay, mission rewards, ship variety, planet types were basic in the early years. Initially there were no Thargoids, SRVs nor planetary landing. Horizons, Beyond, Odyssey improved and added a megaton of stuff.
Last edited:
The architect will, however, be able to guide the system in certain direction, like mining, agriculture, primary industry etc depending on what type of stations and outposts they put in the game. Yes but once that's done the BGS will determine what happens with the system, we will be Architects, or the ones who decide to take part will be, not Dictators.
I think it would depend on the surrounding bodies, planets, rings, etc. What's the point of having a mining base in a system with no rings?
FDEV have stated that the architect will be able to determine the economy type of the system, but that's a good point, also to my thinking that will also determine some of the value of the system before you start colonising. Setting up an agricultural economy in a metal rich system will still be possible I expect, just only putting agri settlements on planets could force it that way, but it might not be a very successful system as far as population and income is concerned.
I'd say the majority of posters in this forum understand this (a handful of individual eternal dreamers notwithstanding). I would say the bigger risk of salt will be players who don't frequent this or other forums and only have a very basic grasp of game mechanics - i.e. those casuals (and I don't mean that in any disparaging way) that Frontier appears to be increasingly aiming for
Honestly, I've learned to take everything that Frontier say with a huge truckload of salt. They tend to regularly oversell and underdeliver when it comes to features being added, and the key moment for me to only ever judge them for their actions and not their words was how they sold the Odyssey "Alpha" and the state it was in vs the state of the release version. They also use a ton of marketing speech - I still remember when Arf said during a stream "some players feel the skybox is too dark" making it sound like it was a question of artistic licence, when in reality the skybox's gamma was very obviously broken. Gaslighting par excellence.
As for Braben's statement... I never bothered to watch decade old brainstorming type descriptions of what he could imagine being in the game. If I'd be extra cynical I'd even reckon that his vision of 'space legs' is just as different to what they ended up implementing. But he's no longer in charge these days (operationally speaking) so moot to refer to whatever he said a long time ago. Someone else is now calling the shots and it'll be their vision that matters. And I don't think they align all that much either but that's just a hunch based on no hard evidence apart from what content got released over the past several years.
Conversely, I'm convinced that Frontier consider Odyssey and its content as finished/delivered. Otherwise they would've added little QoL features such as picking up Horizons mats while on-foot ages ago, that would be much easier and quicker to implement as opposed to EVA (which doesn't necessarily require but would benefit from ship interiors, or at least megaship interiors). Or the fact they moved on to a completely different type of content altogether (Colonisation) while generally only patching bugs and issues that relate to the most recent content update.
It's coming and I'm not against it, but I think Frontier are wrong trying to make Elite a game that appeals to different play types (only very few devs achieve this, such as Rockstar). I boot it up because I want to fly a spaceship in the galaxy, not because of first person on-foot gameplay (and traversing on planets is already covered by having the SRV), and certainly not because I want to engage in city/system building (I will still engage because it'll be there, but it won't be as satisfying as dedicated games). As for it becoming barebones... that's what the previews so far are indeed suggesting, unfortunately. Par for the course - and they may or may not improve it later on. May I remind ourselves of the exobio scanning minigame - instead of improving it (even after launch), they just removed it entirely. Easy-peasy job done as far as they were concerned.
Not denying that they added things, and I'm not saying I would prefer 1.0 over what we have now, content wise (but perhaps not on a technical level - 4.0 feels more like Early Access still after 4 years, while 3.8 feels stable and polished in comparison), but the game started with a very barebones state at launch, and ten years/a decade is a long time and I still feel that a different developer would've done more with their IP in the same time frame, while perhaps not wasting dev time on half-cooked features (CQC, PP1.0) that they could've spent on something better instead. I'm trying to remain cautiously hopeful for Colonisation in that I will enjoy it - within its limitations - but the initial details are more of the same of what we can realistically expect from Frontier.
Last edited:
Many systems have double economy types, so agricultural/extraction could work.
Possible, but whether it will be done depends on how much work the architect and friends want to put in, would probably take a lot of goods shipping to make a double economy, but then as with everything colonisation we will have to wait until 2025 to find out, oh hang on that's only 4 days away!
Hi All
I'm presuming though that systems with / containing, for example, earth like worlds or terrestrial water worlds, would start out on a better footing as regards an agricultural economy. Same sort of thing for a system that had predominately gas giants (with rings) with various metals or minerals in their asteroid belts. I would also guess that systems that had both types would probably be the most sort after for colonisation.
Depends though what scope an architect has with the tools provided for that mechanic I would imagine.
Jack
I'm presuming though that systems with / containing, for example, earth like worlds or terrestrial water worlds, would start out on a better footing as regards an agricultural economy. Same sort of thing for a system that had predominately gas giants (with rings) with various metals or minerals in their asteroid belts. I would also guess that systems that had both types would probably be the most sort after for colonisation.
Depends though what scope an architect has with the tools provided for that mechanic I would imagine.
Jack
The way it works (as explained on some stream with Dav iirc) was that it picks a bunch of zones for the potential target systems for every board which rotate every now and then. This is why you see stuff like multiple deliver X cargo to the same 1-2 random systems 200-300ly away on a board.
So maybe to actually ruin Robigo you might need to colonize stuff in every single zone* Robigo has or the boards would still have a reasonable chance of working for most of the day and for the alternate sets of missions to not be too good you would need to colonize even more systems there.
Even if we're assuming you can just start colonizing from Robigo (uncertain if it's considered to be in the bubble) it would take hundreds of colonies that require carrier logistics or building up material sources from the get go to get that done.
IMO it's 50/50 of it being pretty resilient like this vs it just breaking from the mission board being able to operate in some different mode entirely.
* Which we don't know anything about besides what was said in the stream, which won't be useful.
Except we know what zone is missing, which is the zone where those short-range missions generate. You can determine this from current state-of-the-art. It's literally missing the ability to generate any local-area missions.
If (when) colonizing becomes available outside the Bubble that might help some of the nebula colonies as well - having messed with the BGS in the Coalsack and California nebula on two separate occasions for lore reasons (one - California - narrative by Frontier, the other mostly inspired by stuff from before the Titan incursion), the mission offerings out there are... dodgy, let's say. Most of the Coalsack boards just offer credit/commodity donations or deliveries back to the Bubble, with Fort Xeno in HIP 62154 also offering mining missions, and literally zero passenger runs to anywhere.
California boards do at least offer passenger runs to two (relatively) local tourist beacons, plus those donations and, I think, maybe they also got the mining ones in one of the local ports. But it's been nearly two years since that narrative event - Delaine attempting a takeover that was averted - so not 100% sure.