A lot are suggesting it, though. Some are almost outright saying it. People think they should have the right as the architect to make the first claim. Why? So that the system they have their eye on doesn't get taken from them. That's the same as thinking you have a right to it.
Changes are needed for making claims at new outposts
- Thread starter winchester1188
- Start date
Yeah, I guess I'm just saying that the alternative mechanic would be better. I would rather that the sniper has to build AT LEAST ONE outpost in order to snag a system off of a chain. Or, they have to wait and see if the system architect is asleep at the wheel. I don't think we're going to be able to agree on that, which is fine.
I mean yeah, people don't want to put in a bunch of time and effort only to miss out on their end goal. Doesn't surprise me at all. Still, I'm not in the camp of thinking people should be able to hold first claim indefinitely, or that they have any specific "right" to the system they're chaining towards. I just think it's bad design that they have to race other people to their brand new outpost, which is a race they can't win in a cargo ship.
That'd be someone else
Mainly because it would be really annoying in a wide range of other situations, including other chaining situations.
For an alternative solution: what about letting the Architect reserve the "next" system even before completing the current one by giving them exclusive rights to chain from their incomplete system? But .... they only get the hour they would have done anyway to deploy the colonisation beacon to secure the claim, and they can't do that until they've finished their current construction, and if they miss the hour's window, they get hit by the cooldown on reclaiming the same system. (Which would be entirely their own fault, because they should know better than anyone else when they're going to complete the system)
Doesn't stop people putting in more effort to finish a half-complete system while they sleep, or racing them from a system further back (probably nothing can) but you seem okay with that possibility as it at least requires a bit more hauling effort by the competitor.
Also, crucially, makes no difference at all to people who actively want others to chain from their system because of a group project, so it doesn't introduce unnecessary delays into every other use case: the architect can just choose not to pre-register a follow-on claim (and most probably won't, most of the time).
That's someone misunderstanding what the "Crimes" report in station news is. (Which is easy to do, given the weird name it has)
It's not crimes committed by players. It's the bounty claims obtained by players in the system.
So if you e.g. kill a pirate in system A, and then hand in the bounty in system B, that's 500,000 credits on system A's crime report, and 500,000 credits on system B's bounty report.
Yes, and though a short pause before the colonization contact activates is viewed as benefiting the architect, nobody seems to have considered that it can also benefit the "sniper". If the architect has the advantage of knowing exactly when the build completes and reaches the outpost quickly, he still can't access the contact immediately and it gives extra time for snipers to reach the outpost and join the starting line. It's the only fair solution and I'm baffled at how people are still arguing about it. I guess it just must be people wanting to retain their advantage, and not be forced to compete fairly with the architect for the next system.
And to be very clear; I empathise with that sentiment (of the OP)
Slogging out dozens or even hundreds, of systems, maybe single-handedly, to get into a particular system that you really wanted to put your name against, only to have someone else grab it... that would suck.
But in other threads we see comment of people who simply don't have time to put in that much effort... maybe they can throw down an outpost or two on a weekend, but that's it. Should they just forget about ever having a chance of claiming a system like the Op? Is there no empathy for that either?
If we're going to throw rules in to try and protect these efforts, they need to protect those efforts, not just be barely more than lip-service to a bigger concern... otherwise it'll just foster greater toxicity and get in the way of routine play.
And again, I don't have a good solution because the problem isn't just "sniper got to the outpost first".
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One thing I'm thankful is that at least it doesn't all come down to the contact only becoming available after the weekly maintenance. Boy would that have been permanently horrible depending on your timezone.
But yes, it is a bit of rabbit hole because once there are rules because of one case, others should be accounted too (wink wink first discoverer grace period wink).
Oh I know, I'm just bad at juggling multiple quotes haha. That comment was to Jmanis, the rest was to you.That'd be someone else
Yeah I think I understand what you're saying, and I'd be on board with that too. Yeah if they have a 1-hour window and it's use-it-or-lose-it, I think that's fair. And yeah I'm perfectly fine with people branching off of a daisy chain to swoop around and grab something - at least they're putting in the work to complete that one branched-off system in that case. And, the system architect would have a chance to see on the map "Oh snap, this guy's trying to swing around me, I better hurry."
On the CG: I see, fair enough. I guess my point is just "Players were definitely putting in work on bounties," because I know I was one of them and I talked with others doing the same. And I'm admittedly a little frustrated that those efforts were dismissed as just FDEV "Godhanding" the situation when in my view we were all enjoying a fun tug-of-war scenario.
Well I don't think people are talking about the colonization contact not coming online at all, or at least I'm not. Just that the system architect should be the only one with access to the colonization contact for 10 minutes, or an hour, or something. The "compete fairly" bit is what I take issue with - If the system architect is in a Type-9, and the sniper is in a speedy Viper, the system architect has 0 chance of competing fairly.
Thanks, yeah THAT'S the frustration that I'm talking about, and I think FDEV really could do something to prevent it without it being too restrictive.
And that's fair too, certainly more casual players shouldn't feel shut out of the system. But really, I think that once this gets rolling there are going to be plenty of opportunities for them. I think in a month's time, it will be fairly easy to fly out 200LY or so and find something really nice that nobody's likely to fight you over. But for now, everybody's duking it out over the juicy stuff right by the bubble, and I just think that OP's situation is genuinely frustrating in that case.
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And this is my point of contention; I don't think such a thing exists that is either:
- Not so restrictive as to become it's own problem; or
- Not restrictive enough and still allows for system sniping through other mechanisms, which just results in more frustration and anger that the extant rules don't protect enough (just like we see with C&P[1]; people think the rules are meant to protect, when in reality they just apply consequences)
[1] and just in case anyone picks at this analogy; yes there should be consequences for crime, but they should be in place to ensure criminals are careful/selective about their crimes, not simply as a punitive measure... risk vs reward type stuff
I get it, and I can see that it would be frustrating and I do emphasise, but the point stands that just because someone has that goal in mind, it doesn't mean they own it. It hasn't been taken from them in the way people are claiming here. The rules people want to put in place are because of that and I don't think it's right. That's not how the system is set up.
so you didn't think that was a move or did and just did it anyway?
Fair enough, yeah I think we just disagree on that fundamental point, which is okay.
As for crime, that's a whole can of worms that gets into all sorts of other game systems. But yeah I agree, I wish it felt more like gankers/pirates have to weigh, "Is it really worth it to attack this guy?" Because they gain nothing game-wise from blowing up that unengineered sidewinder on its way to Deciat (short of satisfaction, which I can't wrap my head around, but okay). But the sidewinder player goes, "Wait, so people with ships 100x better than mine can just blow me up in 3 seconds? Why would I play in Open then?" Anyway, yeah that's a tangent.
I mean again, I'm not saying they should just own that system. Just that they should have a 10 minute grace period to get from the colonisation ship to the new outpost. That's all.
Anyway, I gotta leave for now, I appreciate you all engaging. I think colonisation has a ton of potential, but also a ton of quirks, it being a beta after all. I think we should keep giving feedback to try and improve it where possible.
You can actually see little tendrils forming away from the bubble in different directions now on the galaxy map, it's pretty cool. There's probably a lot of potential prospects already because there's a few that are hundreds of light years out.
I could agree with a 10 minute one. I did mention it before when talking with the OP. It does seem like a fair compromise, but you'd still get complaints like this.
10 minute grace period before the colonisation contact is enabled, but then usable by anyone, would remove the disadvantage to the system architect without giving anyone any additional entitlement. You'd still potentially have a race for the contract but at least it would be on an even footing.
Until I finish the outpost while the architect is asleep, then get the claim.
To be clear, I have said repeatedly in this thread that the architect is at a disadvantage to campers and that, along with the possibility of cmdrs finishing a system while the architect is offline to snipe a claim, are the two biggest issues. I tried to get people to acknowledge whether or not they thought those were issues and it kept getting glossed over. Yes, the problem was I didn't get the system I was chaining to. That was the what, not the why. The possibility that the architect could land to bring the system online was just an idea I had to potentially solve this. Others have suggested a 5 or 10 minute timer once the system comes online and I think that's fair. Even that would have been enough for a level playing field because I would've had a guaranteed window that I was safe and could've swapped into a faster ship.
So you're annoyed that someone else has elected to do the work for you?
That's definitely the what...
...but addressing this "why", doesn't address the "what", which will still happen, it'll just be for a different "why". That's just treating the symptoms rather than the root cause.
A bit of an obvious question, but what's aggrieved you more? That your outpost got used to stake a claim before you could? Or that you didn't get the system you wanted? These are two very different things, and if the answer is "both" (because X led to Y) then you can't fix that without addressing both concerns
This is important... because if your grievance is you missed the system you wanted to get and put a lot of effort in to try and get. You might be ok missing the system if the why was different , but I'd wager plenty more wouldn't be ok when different mechanisms are used.... and a token effort to protect that initial claim would be seen as tacit endorsement of protecting first-dibs.... then this just becomes a precedent for future protection mechanisms.
Like... let's fast-forward, we do this change, and someone still gets sniped because <reasons>. They come here and go "Well, FD clearly want to ensure people's effort to get to a system is preserved, because they introduced <this mechanic> to protect their initial claim.... but that doesn't prevent this when players do <some other mechanic>... so it should be changed in this way to prevent <whatever happened>".
So, why this happened is somewhat immaterial... the what will be the souce of greivance for many others. People won't get upset because a claim got made using their outpost before they could do it themselves... they'll get upset because they lost a system they had their eyes on.
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Most of the systems I've been interested in were taken or out of reach. It's only a momentary disappointment and then I resume my search. Grinding for 12 hours straight to lose at the last second to someone who was camping out waiting for me to finish was 100% the issue, regardless of the system. Granted, I wouldn't have been chaining to just any system so this one was pretty high on my list, but this comes down to the camper having a built-in head start.
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I'm not sure I agree with this. People are going to be quickly asking themselves how that happened. It's pretty easy to see that the architect is at a disadvantage.
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Assuming that you're referencing this comment:
I think you missed part of the conversation in an earlier comment. Some people have reported that there are cmdrs that have waited for architects working on a chain to go offline, then finish that system while the architect is away so they could grab the target system before the architect comes back online.
Because there's a high chance only one good system in the range of 15ly with every step. That's why you build a chain.
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