I was surprised to see the cost of claiming a system was well below the 100-250 million I was expecting. I was even more surprised to learn I actually earn credits by supplying the materials to build everything. Given most commanders are multi billionaires, there should be far more financial burden on creating your own system.
Colonisation should be more expensive
- Thread starter dj_wylie
- Start date
I made a profit building in the system I chose, so far, certainly didn't 'invest' any more than 25 mill bribe to get the contract... (I don't measure play time in credits)
And they don't even have any claim on the system bar their name as Architect - priceless!
The list of systems on Op Ida's waiting list tells us that not everyone can do it. Given the deadline now at 2-3 weeks not everyone is going to complete.
(Don't even think of trying to jump the queue, you're guaranteed to go to the bottom of the list.)
(Don't even think of trying to jump the queue, you're guaranteed to go to the bottom of the list.)
I think they implemented colonization very successfully! A month from now, when everyone has claimed and built a few systems, the land rush will be over, and the colonization activity will probably be a small fraction of what it currently is. And Elite will be a much richer game with the new gameplay.
I mean, I've played the original Elite game, and on and off since then. Now you can create starports and colonize systems, build huge civilized systems, backward pirate ones and everything in between. Build a collection of small colonies, or focus on just developing only a few systems in an area.. who would have guessed a few months ago?
Whoever came up with the feature really brought new life to the game, and I hope it ages well. There may be problems down the line, cause the Elite universe was always static so far, so who knows what may come along .. Good problems to have!
C'mon Frontier fix the system claiming stuff! We need to claim new systems!
I mean, I've played the original Elite game, and on and off since then. Now you can create starports and colonize systems, build huge civilized systems, backward pirate ones and everything in between. Build a collection of small colonies, or focus on just developing only a few systems in an area.. who would have guessed a few months ago?
Whoever came up with the feature really brought new life to the game, and I hope it ages well. There may be problems down the line, cause the Elite universe was always static so far, so who knows what may come along .. Good problems to have!
C'mon Frontier fix the system claiming stuff! We need to claim new systems!
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There is always someone who thinks everything is too cheap. Or going too fast. 25 million credits per beacon is fine. Colonisation is designed as a time sink, not a cost sink (although there is that due to the costs of obtaining commodities initially).
It is possible for even newer players to take part with at least an outpost with ability to do more over time. This is excellent as it's not repeating the mistake of engineering which has seen multiple adjustments to make it more approachable.
The scale of colonisation is testimant to the price being about right given the take up and rate of adoption. Finally, there are billions of systems, of which a fraction have been discovered, the issue of running out of places for humanity to expand to in game is solved by the likely expansion and implosion of our actual star (the sun) well before Frontier have that little issue to solve.
Finally, the game absolutely benefits from a long term mechanic that gives people some structure to go with the sandbox. Making that unapproachable for many, based on very wealthy individuals pulling up the ladder is a bit myopic imho, even if that wasn't the original intent of the OP.
It is possible for even newer players to take part with at least an outpost with ability to do more over time. This is excellent as it's not repeating the mistake of engineering which has seen multiple adjustments to make it more approachable.
The scale of colonisation is testimant to the price being about right given the take up and rate of adoption. Finally, there are billions of systems, of which a fraction have been discovered, the issue of running out of places for humanity to expand to in game is solved by the likely expansion and implosion of our actual star (the sun) well before Frontier have that little issue to solve.
Finally, the game absolutely benefits from a long term mechanic that gives people some structure to go with the sandbox. Making that unapproachable for many, based on very wealthy individuals pulling up the ladder is a bit myopic imho, even if that wasn't the original intent of the OP.
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100%C'mon Frontier fix the system claiming stuff! We need to claim new systems!
One of my squad has his beady little eyes on a couple of likely systems 2 expansions from us, it would be great to get him in one of them.
We're having fun playing space trucker, scratching each other's back rather than solo-ing systems.
Cost too little? Nah. It's an arbitrary cost. The real cost, as others mentioned, is in the labor to complete the project.
I think what is really missing is capitalism, the ability to make money from such projects. You know, like building spec starter homes, whole subdivisions. Or buying, renovating, and flipping homes for fun and profit.
Heck, we should even be able to buy and sell ships between players. Even buy whole systems, or just a station or two.
That's what we need, the ability to buy and sell stuff between players, and trade items between players.
Need a couple million credits? No problem, another player could either give you the credits, or give you a loan where a percentage is taken out from your profits to make loan payments.
We need to be able to exchange items between players. If a player can obtain it, it should be tradeable with another player, including star systems.
We need a Free Market Economy...used ship dealers, station real estate businesses, inter-galactic weapons dealers, hotel chains, and nightclub chains, etc.
I think what is really missing is capitalism, the ability to make money from such projects. You know, like building spec starter homes, whole subdivisions. Or buying, renovating, and flipping homes for fun and profit.
Heck, we should even be able to buy and sell ships between players. Even buy whole systems, or just a station or two.
That's what we need, the ability to buy and sell stuff between players, and trade items between players.
Need a couple million credits? No problem, another player could either give you the credits, or give you a loan where a percentage is taken out from your profits to make loan payments.
We need to be able to exchange items between players. If a player can obtain it, it should be tradeable with another player, including star systems.
We need a Free Market Economy...used ship dealers, station real estate businesses, inter-galactic weapons dealers, hotel chains, and nightclub chains, etc.
Order of magnitude? It takes around three hours to build a whole settlement. You want it to take 18 minutes?
I am positively surprised by how accessible and affordable it is.
This was Frontier's original 2013-ish ambition, according to the DDF.
This is I think a large part of why the game loop [1] is:
- shoot pirate
- get bounty voucher
- fly to station
- hand in bounty voucher
- get credits
...rather than the one used in Elite/FE2/FFE (and for that matter in most other space-games-with-pirates) where it is
- shoot pirate
- get credits
...because the longer way round lets you sell the bounty voucher to another player, so that they can cash it in (they're going that way anyway).
Obviously that never would have worked out anyway - the chances of meeting a player who happened to be going towards where your random selection of KWSed vouchers were valid was minimal, even if they had implemented the feature - and then Interstellar Factors and later Fleet Carrier and Odyssey's "oh, just hand in any bounty anywhere, who cares" changes gave up on the idea.
Unfortunately by then we were stuck with the extra steps process, and other things had got built on top of it.
[1] Same for missions, CGs, etc. not auto-paying on completion of the objectives, like they do in almost every other space game including the previous Elite ones.
Why does everything have to be available for new players??? What's wrong with end game content?
There's plenty of stuff for new players to get their teeth into. Producing game mechanics that only panders to new players ruins the game.
I think the 25m is far too cheap and the amount of commodities required is far too low.
Ppl are colonising a system in a matter of days, which is sort of lore breaking...these things should take weeks and weeks or even months to achieve.
Nothing at all wrong with end game content...
Although, carting 1000's of units of commodities can hardly be considered end game, pretty much the same as blowing up a few Thargoids could be considered such.
Gating content to only 'veteran' players is not going to be popular, when anyone can access content if they wish will be much better received.
In practical terms, Colonisation is end-game content. We've just all been at the "end game" stage for so many years that we start to have hundreds of sub-gradations of "end-game" where people with Fleet Carriers are claiming to be "casual" players because they only play a couple of hours a day.
Sure, you can claim a system when what you've got is a C-rated Asp Explorer and 25 million in spare credits. The most likely result if you do is that you will fail to maintain the claim. By the time you have a T-9 at all (cost probably around 150 million) you're extremely rapidly approaching the stage where the difference between "25 million" and "250 million" credits is not all that important, because if you get averagely lucky with cargo mission stacks you can probably use that T-9 to get 250 million credits in a couple of hours at most.
It'd be a reasonable guess that there are somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 players making their own system claims, based on the number of incomplete claims seen at any time. That's going to be under 10% of all semi-active players.
CGs have pretty much always constructed stations in a week or so. BGS wars last at most a week. The process of changing the Power-level influence over a system takes a few weeks. Systems completely destroyed by the Thargoids could be rebuilt and fully repopulated in their billions in a fortnight. All of this "should" take years or decades.
The operational timescale of the bubble has always been far faster than "realistic", just so that things visibly change at all while players are watching.
If you want to handwave it, headcanon that the FSD isn't actually instant - it still takes the same week or so per jump as the previous FFE-era drives - and ED just doesn't bother simulating the "are you actually in this system in the same decade as this other player?" effects that generates because that'd be massive complication for no real gain. Lots of things in the lore make more sense at that point; Frontier have never shown any inclination to address "what would the implications of the travel time between any two points in the bubble being an hour be?" because, when it comes down to it, the Elite setting is not depicting one with a well-thought out social and technological background, but one where space pirates and personal ownership of starships and so on are possible, and that's only possible if you carefully avoid asking questions.
In game mechanical terms, if they'd wanted colonisation to be the preserve of groups capable of coordinating mega-tonne deliveries, then they'd probably just have stuck with "CGs are the way new systems get colonised" like the last decade. They clearly want it to be more accessible than that.
They are not going to extend that you think?
AFA cost, I think if you have a billion or more bankrolled then 25 mil is nothing. But, If you are like me, with only 100 mil and change the 25 million was expensive. It depends on how fat your wallet is.
This - already the case for me (progress slowing to zero in fact, regardless of FDev's pause on the mechanism itself), after merely one claimed system.
I think some people are confusing a new content spike with long term interest. Wonder how many players will build 'their' system and stop there because they just want that one home system. Besides, what are you getting for your 25 million? Yes, you get your name on the system and you control what's built, but once you're done, it's the same as everywhere else.
I could fly to a system I have done planetary scans on (or any other system for that matter) and call that 'mine' for the same benefit and no-one could stop me.
Sure, there's passive income, but there's no way that's balancing out the opportunity cost of having spent the time hauling for a station instead of doing most other activities in the game for a very long time.
I could fly to a system I have done planetary scans on (or any other system for that matter) and call that 'mine' for the same benefit and no-one could stop me.
Sure, there's passive income, but there's no way that's balancing out the opportunity cost of having spent the time hauling for a station instead of doing most other activities in the game for a very long time.
With the added flavour that any BGS gardeners can expand into 'your' systems and retreat out the founding faction, leaving only the architect's name in the Local News section.