Fantastic to hear that you're enjoying colonisation solo ... but this doesn't address the point I made about conflicting game design at all ...
Requirements for building a Coriolis starport
- Thread starter Jaffz
- Start date
I have a question regarding the construction point cost increase for T2/3 ports. Am I understanding correctly that for the 1st and 2nd T2/3 port the costs are the normal amounts and then for the 3rd one onwards they double. No matter how many other things I build? It always increases for the 3rd T2/3 port?
When you can't be bothered to spend 15 hours doing something you don't like, then you simply have not earned it. If you don't like hauling, or actively hate it, don't do colonization.
A Coriolis costs what? 50k tons of goods. That is 15 hours of hauling in a Type-9, a bit longer for an initial one. That's 5 evenings. Or 1 Saturday. With a game loop you can do on the side while watching TV. Assuming you make one round trip in 15 minutes. I did. While having to fly 49k Ls to the construction site.
That is less time than you need to spend grinding missions for Corvette or Cutter rank.
This have nothing to with "top" players and groups. This is what every student will do in less than a week, and every adult on the side while doing ironing or cleaning the house.
Dont have a Type-9? If you have less time than money, you will buy it. If you have neither time nor money, then hauling a system is not your game loop, and doing some BH for an hour a week will have to be enough. Bit then you will never have a Cutter, a Corvette, an engineered ship, visit Colonia, have a decent Powerplay rank etc. either. Nor see the mid-endgame of any other game with medium or higher complexity out there.
Yes, I'd like to have different game loops in building bases. Like in planet zoo, where you can build every detail of every building. But that is a totally different discussion than "Coriolis is too expensive".
This kind of rhetoric is not compatible with creating fun games imo. It's important to remember that game worlds should not reflect the mundanes of the real world.
Again - colonisation should not be just about hauling. Its such a one dimensional feature if it remains as reskinned hauling. Me and many others were kinda hoping that colonisation was to be a new core gameplay feature, not a reskin of a pre-existing one. The role of "System Architect" is misleading and should instead be renamed "System UPS Driver" or something.
Completing Coriolis in 15 hrs - this likely doesnt take into account the time sourcing the materials either. But anyway, 15 hours/ 5 evenings / 1 full day of just straight hauling to construct the smallest/simplest of large stations just proves my point that system colonisation's material requirements are geared more towards groups over solo players.
Ah yes. The famous "grind X is justified because grind Y is worse". Again, just not a compatible opinion with positive & fun game design. If we're comparing grind for grind - you can earn Traditional Elite Trade rank shifting less cargo than it takes to build an outpost .. talk about balance ... yikes
I think you've not read my suggestions as they are a bit more nuanced then "Coriolis is too expensive".
A coriolis costs 71K tons of goods. You're criticizing the people whose experience says it's too much grind and you haven't even built one?
Well, i built an Orbis with some friends and hauled 100k for that. And the 71k are for the inital Coriolis system starport, not the second one. In colonized system one is 53k, right?
I don't know how I had time to work!
But I have been able to squeeze in a few more hours of play the last couple of weeks, it won't last though!
does it matter realy,once you have the system,its youres do what you like time is youres to do and play how you want,building a large station over a period of time will make no difference to game at the moment as there are 1000+ more about,its up to each player what he does,the game isnt going to stop because you havnt finnished youre station in a week,whats the race anyway,as soon as you complete the station the goidies will re-appear and close it lolo.
Why does everything have to be hard-locked into one thing or the other?
It's a continuum of activity which - surprise surprise - is easier to do when people share the workload.
Nobody, not you or anyone else, is being prevented from doing anything.
You don't like the rate of progress when it is Just You Doing It. That's fine, but it's not like solo building a Tier 3 station in 4 weeks is the only point of engagement available! The small ports are very accessible goals for just about any player, if that's a project they want to take on.
Meanwhile the massive ports, once you remove the time limit (which is what happens once a system has been claimed), just become another long-term project for a solo player, no different from ranking up to Elite. It's another avenue of progression you are free to pursue or not pursue, AND if you can convince people to work with you on it, you can go much faster.
In isolation (closer to 54, technically), but it can't just be built out of the blue without earning construction points. With the prerequisites, you're in for a 70+K slog either way (although the prerequisite installations do grant additional perks and are more pleasant to build than the repetitive refinery runs of the initial port).
Thanks! I'm happy they did some focus on the trucker/trader players! But it did address the point. The end goal of Colonization isn't a bunch of people building up a one system. The end goal is groups spreading out and making their own bubbles, where large groups are contributing to systems its individuals control when needed. In that scenario, the individuals can do pretty much ALL the other stuff pretty easily. The requirements for most are pretty low, so the group only has to contribute for the big stuff, allowing the group effort to be staggered. If everything was way beyond what an individual could do, then no person could build up on their own, and the group would be bogged down one system at a time. In that case it'd be more about the group building up a system one at a time, and then yeah, I'd suggest allowing multiple architects.
From Galnet News: New Era of System Colonisation Hailed a Success
This to me indicates pretty clearly that material costs should go down and/or you should be able to use ingame credits to build stuff.
A 50% dropout rate is pretty huge, especially considering the length of these threads: people really really want to like this expansion.
- 26,684 Claims have been made
- 13,165 Systems have been colonised
- 24,037 New starports and outposts have been built
- 14,216 Surface installations have been established
This to me indicates pretty clearly that material costs should go down and/or you should be able to use ingame credits to build stuff.
A 50% dropout rate is pretty huge, especially considering the length of these threads: people really really want to like this expansion.
Or, equally likely, that 50% of the claims are being built at a leisurely pace, because there isn't any rush to finish them, having 28 days and new claims currently suspended?
2 sides to each coin...
A valid point, but what it does show is that 50% of the (probably fanatic because they staked their claims before it was shut down) players are going at a rate of 3 installations per commander and 50% at a rate of (so far) 0. Given the the amount of claims, people really want to like this activity but in 2 weeks time 1/2 the players haven't gotten a single installation built yet.
So yes, there are almost exactly 2 sides to this coin
But you don't build a feature for only one side of the coin to be happy (ok the analogy is breaking down here!), you want both heads AND tails to be happy uhm sides of the coin.
Perhaps it is worth waiting until 28 days have passed since the claim window closed, and see how many systems drop off? If that approx 50% is a bunch of single CMDRs who doesn't have a huge amout of time to play, progress is going to be slow, unlike groups of players working together for the common good. (I also wonder just how many of those chose an Ocellus, without actually looking at the requirements relative to their own playtime, or whatever)
I have seen the complaints that there is too much hauling for a CMDR who doesn't want to haul, but, oddly, wishes to stamp their ideas on a system.. The figures we have been given to build assets are already unrealistically low, but, as always, there will be a few folk who consider more than a T-6 worth of hauling to be excessive.
It is very common for players to blame developers for bad design, or whatever, rather than players considering what a feature entails, and being able to decide if it is attractive for them. what appears common is that the player chooses to interact with the feature, then blames the developer for their choosing so, because they are not having fun doing something they don't consider fun...
I'm not a big fan of hauling masses, but was curious how colonisation would 'work', so have put a few hours more than normal in trucking commodities around, I don't intend to complete the 17 space slots and 33 surface ones in any rush, but as & when. Blowing ships up never loses its attraction.
ETA: The comments equating, affectively, to: "I knew hauling was going to be dreadful, but I did it anyway, and it was dreadful - bad design FD!" have already appeared, because, after all, the player is never wrong...
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I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if some of those 50% (or many?) of claims were made by players who failed to understand, despite plain wording, that, actually, they would have no claim, or ownership, of the systems they built, bar a name as architect, and the option to build assets of their choice.
Then realising, after the fact, that they are just the person who bought the contract to build for the faction who supplied the beacon...
Then realising, after the fact, that they are just the person who bought the contract to build for the faction who supplied the beacon...
Yup. Si many people seemed to only read what they wanted this to be, and assumed this was Base Building, not colonisation. I think it's on- point that they would've seen other people finishing only to have an everyday NPC facilty that shoots them on sight for trespass.
alternately, some of that is likely going "well, it's beta, and there's a pause, so maybe there will be some changes. Let's wait to see what happens". I'm certainly doing that with my system developments atm.
I'm using the system colonised from day 1 as an experiment, finding out what affects what, and how, as we don't really have a lot of useful documentation to go along with the feature.
When we are permitted to set forth, once again, in making the galaxy a better place (marketing, of course), our little group should have some idea of what we are doing, in readiness for the next effort.