Well, Colonisation is out, and with very little documentation about what all this new stuff does (as opposed to how to do it), so it's time for a return to theoretical BGS research!
We're starting to discover things gradually - let us know what you find!
General Advice
Colonisation is currently in a highly-experimental state of understanding, and is also potentially subject to major changes by Frontier. The strongest recommendation is not to engage with it if you are at all concerned with what sort of colony you end up with at the end. On the other hand, if you're happy to experiment, and happy for your colony at least occasionally do something unexpected which might require a change of plans, try stuff and see what happens!
Frontier may make backward-incompatible changes to constructions. So far this has only happened accidentally but use caution if the possibility of deliberate ones concerns you.
Types of Build
- DaftMav's spreadsheet summarises the requirements and stated benefits for each build type
- Commodity requirements can differ from those stated - either higher or at least occasionally lower - with the cause uncertain
- the first system construction always seems to be higher, with a separate 25% "new system" payment
- T2 and T3 orbitals and planetary cities are limited; the cost of these in T2/T3 points will increase after the first two.
- where a build has pre-requisites, these can be placed anywhere in the system
- Installation roles and Installation model entity names are entirely unrelated but confusingly similar (i.e. don't worry if your "Satellite Installation" (role) shows up as a Scientific Installation in-instance)
Construction Properties
The following system-wide variables are modifiable. Their actual values are hidden, and starting values appear to vary from system to system
- Security: affects the system security descriptor (with the usual knock-on effects on supercruise NPCs and sysauth response time). +9 net chevrons appears to be enough to get all the way to High Security in many but not all systems. Appears to affect shape of faction security sliders, spectacularly so at net negative values. Can largely be ignored by Anarchy factions.
- Tech Level: Likely to influence outfitting/shipyard contents but may not be sole influence. Frontier have confirmed that it affects what station services are available.
- Standard of Living: uncertain. Reports that it needs to be kept above a certain threshold or further negative constructions are prevented. Seems to affect shape of faction economy sliders.
- Wealth: not known yet. Seems to affect shape of faction economy sliders. May affect market pricing a bit.
- Development Level: Frontier have confirmed that it affects outfitting/shipyard contents. Also seems to affect the general size of markets strongly for early improvements to it (may have diminishing returns above a threshold)
- some of the above properties (probably not Security or Tech Level) collectively seem to influence market specialisation, but exactly how is not at all clear.
- System Economy Influence: changes the type of primary stations closer to this station. Only works on stations on/around the same body. This seems to be the only way to get large Tourism or Refinery stations. Influence replaces Colony economies, but supplements non-Colony economies; use caution over hybridisation. Exact levels of influence seem unclear at times, especially when exceeding 1.0 total or adding multiple different economies. As of 2 April, planets themselves generated undocumented levels and types of economic influence, which was accidental and reverted. See further notes below inside the spoiler on what happened for a while.
- Initial Population Change: does seem to be roughly proportional to the type of station added (zero does not mean "no population", just "not much")
- Maximum Population Change: so far population has only changed when building new population-adding assets, so this is unknown.
The current values of at least Wealth, Development Level, Security and Standard of Living may be affected by BGS states. If your station owner is not in State: None this may affect what you see.
Economy sizes (relevant to production and consumption caps for commodities at markets) for stations in newly colonised systems seem much lower than would be expected for the station population. A Development Level of around 10 may be necessary to bring them to normal economic levels. This can especially affect settlement markets, which also have tiny populations.
Markets
Odyssey settlements also have the usual limited production range and small market sizes, as well as their economy names not lining up precisely with the non-settlement economies (e.g. an Extraction settlement can produce Nerve Agents, despite this normally being a Refinery export). This is probably not a bug, since the pre-colonisation ones do the same.
There are two new economy types introduced with Colonisation:
- Contraband, which sells various commodities which are often illegal (most useful on stations owned by permissive factions!)
- Trailblazer Megaship, which sells the precise set of commodities used in construction (except those illegal in independent corporate jurisdictions...) and imports nothing
Confusingly, both of these economy types are labelled "Service" in-game, despite having no relation to the imports or exports of the pre-colonisation (and still in use) Service economy.
Hybrid markets (e.g. Refinery/Industrial) have the same effect of each half consuming their own production as in pre-colonisation markets. If productive output is important these should generally be avoided except in special cases.
Conversion efficiency
Market influence appears to vary with influencer type and target economy port size, though this doesn't appear to be entirely reproducible and may also depend on other factors.
At the moment whether an influencer construction applies any influence at all seems to be very inconsistent and even apparently working ones can sometimes be disabled by later builds.
Please let us know if you have other data points (you can get economy factors from the Docked event in the Journal)
[1] Two large + one medium reported = 1.05, three large + one medium reported 1.5
[2] Industrial outposts have also been reported having 1.0 influence on co-orbiting orbital economies, as an undocumented influence.
Influence levels can exceed 1.0 - "Proportion" is best read not "of the station's total economy" but "of a standard-sized station economy".
If an influencer has two markets in range, it gives its full influence to both - the effect is not split but copied.
We're starting to discover things gradually - let us know what you find!
General Advice
Colonisation is currently in a highly-experimental state of understanding, and is also potentially subject to major changes by Frontier. The strongest recommendation is not to engage with it if you are at all concerned with what sort of colony you end up with at the end. On the other hand, if you're happy to experiment, and happy for your colony at least occasionally do something unexpected which might require a change of plans, try stuff and see what happens!
Frontier may make backward-incompatible changes to constructions. So far this has only happened accidentally but use caution if the possibility of deliberate ones concerns you.
Types of Build
- DaftMav's spreadsheet summarises the requirements and stated benefits for each build type
- Commodity requirements can differ from those stated - either higher or at least occasionally lower - with the cause uncertain
- the first system construction always seems to be higher, with a separate 25% "new system" payment
- T2 and T3 orbitals and planetary cities are limited; the cost of these in T2/T3 points will increase after the first two.
- where a build has pre-requisites, these can be placed anywhere in the system
- Installation roles and Installation model entity names are entirely unrelated but confusingly similar (i.e. don't worry if your "Satellite Installation" (role) shows up as a Scientific Installation in-instance)
Construction Properties
The following system-wide variables are modifiable. Their actual values are hidden, and starting values appear to vary from system to system
- Security: affects the system security descriptor (with the usual knock-on effects on supercruise NPCs and sysauth response time). +9 net chevrons appears to be enough to get all the way to High Security in many but not all systems. Appears to affect shape of faction security sliders, spectacularly so at net negative values. Can largely be ignored by Anarchy factions.
- Tech Level: Likely to influence outfitting/shipyard contents but may not be sole influence. Frontier have confirmed that it affects what station services are available.
- Standard of Living: uncertain. Reports that it needs to be kept above a certain threshold or further negative constructions are prevented. Seems to affect shape of faction economy sliders.
- Wealth: not known yet. Seems to affect shape of faction economy sliders. May affect market pricing a bit.
- Development Level: Frontier have confirmed that it affects outfitting/shipyard contents. Also seems to affect the general size of markets strongly for early improvements to it (may have diminishing returns above a threshold)
- some of the above properties (probably not Security or Tech Level) collectively seem to influence market specialisation, but exactly how is not at all clear.
- System Economy Influence: changes the type of primary stations closer to this station. Only works on stations on/around the same body. This seems to be the only way to get large Tourism or Refinery stations. Influence replaces Colony economies, but supplements non-Colony economies; use caution over hybridisation. Exact levels of influence seem unclear at times, especially when exceeding 1.0 total or adding multiple different economies. As of 2 April, planets themselves generated undocumented levels and types of economic influence, which was accidental and reverted. See further notes below inside the spoiler on what happened for a while.
- Initial Population Change: does seem to be roughly proportional to the type of station added (zero does not mean "no population", just "not much")
- Maximum Population Change: so far population has only changed when building new population-adding assets, so this is unknown.
The current values of at least Wealth, Development Level, Security and Standard of Living may be affected by BGS states. If your station owner is not in State: None this may affect what you see.
Economy sizes (relevant to production and consumption caps for commodities at markets) for stations in newly colonised systems seem much lower than would be expected for the station population. A Development Level of around 10 may be necessary to bring them to normal economic levels. This can especially affect settlement markets, which also have tiny populations.
Markets
Odyssey settlements also have the usual limited production range and small market sizes, as well as their economy names not lining up precisely with the non-settlement economies (e.g. an Extraction settlement can produce Nerve Agents, despite this normally being a Refinery export). This is probably not a bug, since the pre-colonisation ones do the same.
There are two new economy types introduced with Colonisation:
- Contraband, which sells various commodities which are often illegal (most useful on stations owned by permissive factions!)
- Trailblazer Megaship, which sells the precise set of commodities used in construction (except those illegal in independent corporate jurisdictions...) and imports nothing
Confusingly, both of these economy types are labelled "Service" in-game, despite having no relation to the imports or exports of the pre-colonisation (and still in use) Service economy.
Hybrid markets (e.g. Refinery/Industrial) have the same effect of each half consuming their own production as in pre-colonisation markets. If productive output is important these should generally be avoided except in special cases.
Conversion efficiency
Market influence appears to vary with influencer type and target economy port size, though this doesn't appear to be entirely reproducible and may also depend on other factors.
At the moment whether an influencer construction applies any influence at all seems to be very inconsistent and even apparently working ones can sometimes be disabled by later builds.
Please let us know if you have other data points (you can get economy factors from the Docked event in the Journal)
| Convertor / Converting | T1 Planetary Outpost | T1 Orbital Outpost | T2 Orbital Station | T3 Planetary City | T3 Orbital Station |
| Small Settlement T1 | 0.25?-0.6 | 0.0? | |||
| Medium Settlement T1 | 0.25? | 0.5 | 0.15? [1] | ||
| Large Settlement T2 | 1.0 | 0.5 | 0.45 to 0.6 | 0.5 | 0.45? [1] |
| Hub T2 | 0.45 | 0.45 to 0.5 | 0.45 to 0.5 | 0.5 | |
| Installation T1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | |||
| Installation T2 | 0.5 | 0.3 | |||
| Criminal [2] Outpost T1 | 0? | 1.0 | 1.0 | ||
| Planet ??? | 0.85 to 2.15? | 1 to 2.15? | 1 to 2.15? | 1 to 2.15? | 1 to 2.15? |
[2] Industrial outposts have also been reported having 1.0 influence on co-orbiting orbital economies, as an undocumented influence.
Influence levels can exceed 1.0 - "Proportion" is best read not "of the station's total economy" but "of a standard-sized station economy".
If an influencer has two markets in range, it gives its full influence to both - the effect is not split but copied.
Planetary influence types
These remain uncertain, but the following patterns have been observed since 2 April to apply at least some of the time. Ultimately there is no way to know but to build and see what you get.
Note that economy influence only seems to be recalculated at the moment on additional construction completion around that body. If you have a pre-change construction with an economy you would like to keep, do not build further things near it (this may well not work forever).
These remain uncertain, but the following patterns have been observed since 2 April to apply at least some of the time. Ultimately there is no way to know but to build and see what you get.
- Extraction: HMC or Metal-rich
- Refinery: Rocky, Rocky Ice
- Industrial: Icy, Rocky Ice, has been reported elsewhere in unclear circumstances
- Agricultural: Uncertain, common but apparently not universal on atmospheric worlds, appears to be in addition to "planet type" economies, may be related to presence of bio signals in some cases.
- Tourism: ELW or WW (which also get Agricultural)
- Military: Stars
- Unknown: AW, gas giants of various types, rocky ice world / High-Tech, Contraband
Note that economy influence only seems to be recalculated at the moment on additional construction completion around that body. If you have a pre-change construction with an economy you would like to keep, do not build further things near it (this may well not work forever).
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