Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

[KrixtinaViperX]

From Galnet News: New Era of System Colonisation Hailed a Success

• 26,684 Claims have been made
• 13,165 Systems have been colonised

Pretty much shows that around 1/2 of the players who have claimed a system found it too boring to haul that much stuff

• 24,037 New starports and outposts have been built
• 14,216 Surface installations have been established

And that the other 1/2 likes it so just enough to build 2 installations.

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 the thread: people really really want to like this expansion.

 

[Novarek]

I won't repeat all the good suggestion posted by other here (and the critical lack of documentation in the codex), but I will just add one thing.

Planet listed as "terraformable" Trailblazer IS the opportunity to be able to do something with them, maybe FDev are already planning something with those (which would explain the strange fact that terraforming is THE missing economy type doable in colony).

 

[CMDR Ecaep]

"Alternate" actions which still need a commensurate effort would be fine... PP2 and the Thargoid War both proved these were good things.

But that's a far cry from "Pay NPCs to do it for us" like what was being suggested in the quoted post. It would be a substantial own-goal for FD to deliver a major update only to include a "pay to skip" option.

True, just paying npcs to haul for you isn't a gameplay loop. I don't suggest it, unless it is part of some other loop, such as convoy defense.

 

[Kzak]

I won't repeat all the good suggestion posted by other here (and the critical lack of documentation in the codex), but I will just add one thing.

Planet listed as "terraformable" Trailblazer IS the opportunity to be able to do something with them, maybe FDev are already planning something with those (which would explain the strange fact that terraforming is THE missing economy type doable in colony).

I'm saving one surface building slot on my terraformable high metal content planet in case terraforming-buildings come along later.

 

[Eldritchsen]

From Galnet News: New Era of System Colonisation Hailed a Success

• 26,684 Claims have been made
• 13,165 Systems have been colonised

Pretty much shows that around 1/2 of the players who have claimed a system found it too boring to haul that much stuff

• 24,037 New starports and outposts have been built
• 14,216 Surface installations have been established

And that the other 1/2 likes it so just enough to build 2 installations.

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 the thread: people really really want to like this expansion.

With only 2 of the allowed 4 weeks for initial build done I think it might be a little too early to tell either way. You may be correct but it could simply be that people are not done yet. This information doesn't say anything about a dropout rate and there would be no way to know it anyway vs just idle players.

Some people are casual players and may only play a few hours at a time (like me). I only play 2-3 hours at a time so I planned accordingly and started with a smaller outpost. Since the initial completion I've done 4 others and I'm starting on my 6th. Others may only play on the weekend or have started with bigger structures that take longer and are simply still in progress and possibly even close to done or now complete since they pulled the numbers.

 

[CMDR Ecaep]

I'd like to provide feedback on a different element of this update: The refinery contact.

The refinery contact is a great idea and I'm glad it has been added to the game. It improves the mining profession and give miners more choices about what to mine and where to sell.

That said, the implementation, as it currently stands, makes the refinery contact mostly useless, and only miners who want to roleplay will use it.

Here is a chart of the current market prices I could find at stations that have high demand for the listed product, along with the ratio of how much the raw product sells versus the refined product.

Bauxite​	15327​	Aluminum​	3705​	4.14​
Bertrandite​	21649​	Beryllium​	44063​	0.49​
Coltan​	7849​	Tantalum​	15514​	0.51​
Gallite​	13829​	Gallium​	27367​	0.51​
Haematite​	19556​	Steel​	5533​	3.53​
Indite​	13470​	Indium​	25662​	0.52​
Lepidolite​	6450​	Lithium​	2863​	2.25​
Rutile​	20764​	Titanium​	5804​	3.58​
Uraninite​	4202​	Uranium​	8535​	0.49​

The raw products of Bertrandite, Coltan, Gallite, Indite, and Uraninite are all priced about right for the ratio of 2 raw to 1 finished good. I think that if a player goes to the refinery contact and does the work to make the refined good, the player should get a slight boost to the sell price, for the extra effort, so I recommend the ratio or the prices for these goods be adjusted accordingly.

Every other product on the list makes absolutely no sense to take to a refinery contact, because the price to sell the raw material is several times higher than the price to sell the refined good. This makes no sense economically, and gives the player no reason to spend time or resources on refining these products. I recommend the ratio or prices for these items be adjusted significantly to at least make using the refinery contact profitable.

However, the biggest issue of all is that the current mining meta is Platinum. Raw platinum currently sells for 296,138 credits per ton. There is absolutely no reason to mine anything else right now, except for fun or roleplay. I don't recommend lowering Platinum, a nerf is a poor choice. Instead, I recommend greatly increasing the value of refined goods, so that several of them actually compete with the cost of platinum, and adjust the ratios granted by the refinery contact so that mining for these raw goods and then refining them actually produces enough of the refined good to be useful, either to directly sell, or to use in a colonization project.

How awesome would it be to have mining be a viable strategy to build most of your station! Sure, haul in a few tons of vegetables and non-lethal weapons, but for all the steel, aluminum, and titanium you need, go mining, take it to a refinery contact, and then drop it off at your colony ship. Even if mining isn't quite as good as hauling, as long as it is in the same range of time spent to value, this provides an excellent alternative to keep players interested, and perhaps even convince more players to try mining game loops.

All that is needed to make most of these changes would be some adjustments to the refinery contact ratios. The adjusted ratios might not make sense, but currently the pricing and economy options don't make sense, so forget trying to make the refinery contact realistic, and instead make it valuable as an asset for players.

 

[MDHansen]

use ingame credits to build stuff.

Simply put, never. If a portion of the players can't handle some manual labour, then that's on them. As a solo player with a full job (and then some), living with my gf, time for the gym 4 days a week, and even some trips away in the weekends, I find time to do this fairly easy. And I've asked for help from people ingame here and there to finish builds.

It is very easy for some to post, often using exclamation marks and/or speaking on behalf of the community, that something is too harsh. Funny thing, most of it boils down to "we must be able to use credits to do <things>", because credits are way too easy to get.

Back to colonization. I blame attention span amongst reasons for fallback of players finishing an expansion. Materials are fine priced and fine weighted in stocks. I use the ingame "tools" available to us and have absolutely no issues finding what I need in spades. Heck there are stations around 60-80Ly from the fringe with hundreds of thousands of steel/aluminium/titanium, and tens upon tens of thousands of CMM.

 

[Jmanis]

Simply put, never. If a portion of the players can't handle some manual labour, then that's on them. As a solo player with a full job (and then some), living with my gf, time for the gym 4 days a week, and even some trips away in the weekends, I find time to do this fairly easy. And I've asked for help from people ingame here and there to finish builds.

It is very easy for some to post, often using exclamation marks and/or speaking on behalf of the community, that something is too harsh. Funny thing, most of it boils down to "we must be able to use credits to do <things>", because credits are way too easy to get.

Back to colonization. I blame attention span amongst reasons for fallback of players finishing an expansion. Materials are fine priced and fine weighted in stocks. I use the ingame "tools" available to us and have absolutely no issues finding what I need in spades. Heck there are stations around 60-80Ly from the fringe with hundreds of thousands of steel/aluminium/titanium, and tens upon tens of thousands of CMM.

If there's any piece of feedback for FD around this... when they introduce substantial new game loops like this... there needs to be some more work around change management.

Reality is, while all the materials are available in spades (and CMMs/Insulating Membranes number in the hundreds of thousands across the bubble, and up to tens of thousands in a given station)... people have never had any game loops that need them to master how commodities work in the game, and so it's a problem space the community at large is totally unfamiliar and unprepared for. There are people who do understand these things, and for them this is all very easily navigable... and so it really boils down to the integration of this feature with the rest of the gameplay and how it all fits together.

This played out with the Thargoid war, as otherwise ignored mechanics (e.g Tissue Sampling) came to the fore, which really put a focus on the cracks around that as a feature... meanwhile PP2 has put renewed focus on a whole bunch of otherwise ignored acitivities, resulting in the horrendous balancing and (ongoing) shutdown of activities... because the lack of people doing these led to a false understanding for FD of how the player base might interact with them.

And now we have colonisation, a system which poses logistics challenges in a game where players have generally never had to deal with that before.... so of course, since there's no practical reason to trade goods other than a very select few... the requirement to source a diverse range of goods, particularly ones that are less-scarce than the usual FOTM meta plays, has players confused. This isn't helped by the in-game tools being less than ideal around this.

As I've said a few posts back, I just hope FD take this as the impetus to A) Improve the market tooling, and B) Rebalance the economy... and not C) Just spam more item spawns like they've already done with CMMs. It's a very surmountable problem that the game does nothing to prepare players for, and that is the core problem.

 

[KrixtinaViperX]

With only 2 of the allowed 4 weeks for initial build done I think it might be a little too early to tell either way. You may be correct but it could simply be that people are not done yet. This information doesn't say anything about a dropout rate and there would be no way to know it anyway vs just idle players.

Some people are casual players and may only play a few hours at a time (like me). I only play 2-3 hours at a time so I planned accordingly and started with a smaller outpost. Since the initial completion I've done 4 others and I'm starting on my 6th. Others may only play on the weekend or have started with bigger structures that take longer and are simply still in progress and possibly even close to done or now complete since they pulled the numbers.

You are correct, they are early figures and the amount of stations will go up relative to the claims, especially now that it is an exclusive activity. However, with 26684 claims and 13165 colonised, that does show that only 50% of the claiming commanders have completed 1 or more stations so far. It's great that you are having fun with it and are going towards 6 installations, but given that there are 3 times more installations than colonised systems, you are working at twice the rate of the average "working" commander and so are not very typical at all.

 

[KrixtinaViperX]

Simply put, never. If a portion of the players can't handle some manual labour, then that's on them. As a solo player with a full job (and then some), living with my gf, time for the gym 4 days a week, and even some trips away in the weekends, I find time to do this fairly easy. And I've asked for help from people ingame here and there to finish builds.

It is very easy for some to post, often using exclamation marks and/or speaking on behalf of the community, that something is too harsh. Funny thing, most of it boils down to "we must be able to use credits to do <things>", because credits are way too easy to get.

Back to colonization. I blame attention span amongst reasons for fallback of players finishing an expansion. Materials are fine priced and fine weighted in stocks. I use the ingame "tools" available to us and have absolutely no issues finding what I need in spades. Heck there are stations around 60-80Ly from the fringe with hundreds of thousands of steel/aluminium/titanium, and tens upon tens of thousands of CMM.

With 50% of commanders not completing their initial claim, you can blame attention span, but the fact remains that 1/2 of the players that made a claim (and they will be the fanatic ones, as there wasn't that much time to stake a claim) are not enjoying this content. A feature is not built for only 1 out of 2 players to enjoy and the other 1 out of 2 to not enjoy. So Something Must Be Done (tm) and that probably involves doing less monotonous hauling somehow. I can think of reducing the materials requirement or allowing ingame credits to be put to use. If you have a better idea then please by all means, I am curious how you want to include the other half of the game better.

 

[vicwarrior]

What i think is stopping people from following tru on building their claims is the endless monotonous hauling, not a lack of time, most are reaching the conclusion that while having a system is cool and all, the process of building it is mind numbingly boring and would rather go do literally any other activity, or just play another game.

What many have said, and i can only reiterate is that there absolutely must be other activities as alternatives to build stuff.
Simplest way could be to inject mission boards to construction sites and nearby systems. Bonus dev points if those mission boards can only pull commodities from markets that are over 50% filled. Perhaps some way of easing FC to construction site delivery too, while i do understand theres whole communities of loaders/unloaders in PTN or carrier owner clubs, maybe we could cut back on it to ease hauling with some system to slowly, but automatically unload carriers while owners can go do something more engaging instead. This way loaders/unloaders still have a job at loading the FCs, unloading them for profit too, but for colonisation, so long as prices remain as there is, theres no way to incentivise them, so perhaps we should be able to fly the FC to the construction site and chuck the cans out the window or send short range drones or some equivalent less mind numbing to the current state.

 

[GreenCrusher44]

With 50% of commanders not completing their initial claim, you can blame attention span, but the fact remains that 1/2 of the players that made a claim (and they will be the fanatic ones, as there wasn't that much time to stake a claim) are not enjoying this content. A feature is not built for only 1 out of 2 players to enjoy and the other 1 out of 2 to not enjoy. So Something Must Be Done (tm) and that probably involves doing less monotonous hauling somehow. I can think of reducing the materials requirement or allowing ingame credits to be put to use. If you have a better idea then please by all means, I am curious how you want to include the other half of the game better.

tbh some people only wanted to try the new content, some stays some gone, it happen anytime it will happen all over again and as you know lot of people not enjoying certain gameplay loop is normal.

you cant blame people who doesnt enjoy BGS for not doing it, or people who doesnt enjoy exploring, nor Thargoid combat, even after Titan arival player number are plumeted anyway, and there are more gameplay loop that even is considered abandoned and now we have colonisation.

and by doing one thing too much it goes monotone anyway, thats why for me personally im doing various of gameplay loops to deal with that.

as much as i wanted for colonisation to be more feasible to everyone including me, and in this context we use the recent galnet update of this discussion to judge whenever colonisation successful or not is unfair and unrealistic.

just to let you know there are random building his/her Orbis alone 5Ly from my system (screenshot) and alr at 69%, i finish my ocellus in 6 days and now i got 11 other stuffs alone while working on figuring out how the economy actually work, everyone goes on their own pace, not to mention he still got 2 weeks left and me with my infinite time.

Cheers 07

 

[Xenia_K]

@Paul_Crowther
So time for my personal Feedback (and therefore purely subjective - not up for discussion ) now:
- Numbers:
for me the amounts needed for each Construction Type do absolutely make sense (except Tier 3 Station - should be abot 2 to 3 times of a Tier 2, not 5-7 times) and are no hinderance for a solo-player to achieve their goals. If one like me (retiered) has around 8 hours gametime daily, an initial Outpost can be build in one day, even without FC, hence doable for fresher Commanders as well (I wouldn´t try with a T-6 though)

- Tier Points:
as much as I understand the intention to minimize System-Littering with Big Stations without an adequat Economy- and Population-Background and thus Systems going into BGS-Lockdown or worse immediatly, the method applied currently (just doubling the necesseties) doesn´t hit it. A gradual increase feels more appropriate

- Claim-Range:
doesn´t cut it at all - even at the altitude of the bubble there are several areas of 20-30 Ly Diameter which to cross takes 2 to 3 "Relay"-Systems just to get around - this way its predictable that a solid percentage of Systems will be claimed/minimal colonized just for that purpose.
Looking at the average Star-Distance below/above ~ y +/- 450, which quickly reaches >20 Ly, under current limitations Galaxy-Colonisation will result in a quite flat "Pancake".
Therefore I strongly recommend an increase of claim-distance to 25-35 Ly

- Station/Installation Identification:
ingame unfortunately not existing -> this needs to be improved! If I in Sys-/PlanetMap click on an Installation/Station its Type should be shown - otherwise a reasonable architectual work is not possible, who keeps the notes what was build where and in which order in System 22 out of 150 ?

- Hauling:
well, if someone wants to achive a goal, one has to work for it
Nevertheless - although as Hardcore-Explorer it has some meditative aspect to me, not the hectics of FSS, DSS, BioScan, next System but the slow process of moving boxes - I can understand the comments of some Pilots that, especcialy if you do it solo, it can get gruesome a little.

On the other hand, nobody is forced to finish a System with some 120 Space-/Surface slots within a given period of time - except the initial Port (4 weeks), so it may (should?) be concieved as a huge personal CG without Time-Limit. You contribute to it if in the mood for, if not - well you do something else (like writing a review / feedback here)

A possible (and much asked for) improvement might be to implement a new category of missions,
Type source and deliver to xyz - Reward Payment only, pre-paid and selected (Mat, Volume, Payout) by the Architect, and published in the Mission Menue with its own Tab. If you click it, it shows all such missions in a Range of ~ 50 Ly

Thus it fits into Lore and existing game-mechanics as well as avoiding any pay to play to achive your goal.
Mission-giver would be the leading local MF/PMF, Payout would be at destination -> FC, Construction-Site (both have menues already).
Thus BGS/Economy would be bolstered AND Player-Cooperation incentivized as an INGAME possibility for activity-advertisment would be given.
Limitation to such Mission Type is to avoid any mis-use in regard of BGS.
edit2: as I just think about that, this also would give the Pilots/Architects a possibility to follow up the deliveries for their current project(s) - if they take up that missions themselves.

Overall I am very pleased (besides the initial Hickups) with that new feature.

edit: I forgot - until first batch of Mats is delivered, there should be a CANCEL-Button for all Constructions except Primary-Port. Mistakes can and will happen and shouldn´t force a player to waste some 10 to 20 Manhours only to finish something they don´t need/want or worse, destroys all possibilities of a proper system-developement (specially in systems with low slot-count).
The idea of de-constructing existing Sites I strongly oppose, as it would be an exploitive mechanic - you build some to get the Tier-Points, after You use those You destroy the pre-requisits - a Big NOGO for me.

 

[mkizub]

True, just paying npcs to haul for you isn't a gameplay loop. I don't suggest it, unless it is part of some other loop, such as convoy defense.

Hey. The whole point of money is that you can earn it through any activity, and then pay for the services and things you need. As you say - one can get convoy protection mission, get paid and spend the money to colonize his system.

 

[CMDR Ecaep]

I'd argue another reason so many initial colonization stations are unfinished is the extremely fast and hard shut down of the colonization feature after only 6 days. This feature release has been hyped for over a year. I believe it was 2022 when a "totally new feature" was first announced, although it was only about 6 to 8 months ago when we learned what that feature was. Since then hype about update has spread. Frontier did a pretty good job getting the community ready and excited to enjoy this update.

BGS factions planned their expansions carefully. Explorers picked distance stars and figured out the path they would need to forge to reach them. Other people just relished the idea of building their own space, much like buying a house in an MMO. For all these reasons and more, Colonization, and Trail Blazers, was an incredible success. Elite Dangerous had the largest number of active players since the release of Odyssey. Trail Blazers was awesome... for 6 days.

Then colonization was shut down so hard CMDRs weren't even listed as their own system architects. While technically colony ships still accepted supplies, nobody was even sure they owned their systems any more. This happened late in the day UK time, and no announcement about what was going on was made for almost 12 hours. For those of us excited and trying out colonization, that was a harrowing 12 hours. Had we lost our systems? Was there going to be a roll back? Can we even complete what we started?

Some relief came after Frontier explained that they had shut it down, although they never explained exactly why. That left the community to make up reasons, some with educated guesses, others with wild theories. A bit more relief came when architect status was restored, and players could at least build out their systems again. But the incredible pace that colonized over 26K systems was lost, and it will never be regained.

I expect an upsurge of players when colonization is fully restored to the player base, but I'm betting a significant number of players will now let their systems fade, or only try the new content causally, instead of the huge wave of interest and excitement that greeted the update. The momentum has been lost forever.

Since this is a feedback thread, my recommended change is to communicate with the community more, especially to manage expectations. At least 3 times a week, provide an official update of the status of colonization. Even if that update is "Our team is still hard at work and we don't know when we will restore the colonization contact". Just hearing that, on a regular schedule, tells us you care enough about the players to keep us informed. At the very least communication before each weekly tick or server reboot is necessary, because players may assume without information that the reboots might be restoring the colonization contact.

Then, don't just spring the restore on us. Give the players several days, maybe a week's warning, of when you plan to restore it. This is important because for many players and factions, the land rush is real, and if you spring the restoration on the player base without warning, many players will lose out on what they planned to accomplish. They will quickly blame Frontier for not communicating, and fear that Frontier is falling back in to the pre-2024 pattern of not telling anybody anything.

Also, please fix the in game messaging about reboots, especially the reboots before a major update. The last reboot was notified out of game to be 3 hours, but in game it said only 40 minutes. Then there were the false messages about a reboot this morning. Some players only get the communication in game, and it is vital that communication is accurate.

 

[beatbird]

You know what infuriating me the most about colonization? When you go to the building selection screen, the game shows you one list of material quantities. When you fly to the construction site, it shows you a different list! That is, the names of the materials are the same (thanks for that!), but their quantity differs from the previously stated quantity - some materials need more, some less. I don't understand, is this a bug, or the developers hate us, players, and want to make us suffer (we don't take into account the fact that endless grind - it's already suffering in itself)? What the hell, Frontiers? Why are the content lists inconsistent with each other?

Proves:

And here's the situation: I brought the agreed 56 semiconductors to the construction site, and I find out on the spot that I should have brought 57! Thank you, dear Frontiers, that now I will have to make an extra trip for a single semiconductor. I love grind so much that I drive all the materials on a Sidewinder with a 2 ton cargo rack. After all, the longer I drive, the more fun it is, right? (that was sarcasm)

You know, I'm willing to grind for colonization, I accept the rules of the game. But when I'm punished for accepting these rules in the form of non-compliance with the list of materials, as if mocking me, it causes me a feeling of total injustice.

 

[Kissamies]

I was hoping this would be something to spend my tens of billions on, but alas credits remain trivial. I can understand not making the general station building expensive because people would complain about it. However, there should be a costly service to hire NPCs to do the hauling. Another, less effective way would be being able to increase the prices the construction sites pay for the goods at the architects expense, so that other players are more motivated to do it for you. My squadron has a couple of guys who actually like hauling, so the latter option might actually work better for me. Give them something extra for their hard work.

I don't know if there's a great need to limit the litter of 1 outpost systems everywhere, but here's an idea I thought up while hauling: Cooldown for colonising the next system.
The architect can't claim a new system until the first station in his latest system is 4 weeks old OR the system is sufficiently developed. More developed system might also have better colonization range. Groups would still be able to do rapid expansion to the black by using each others' systems, but it could be a small incentive to develop one's own system a bit more.

Another, less developed idea, would be the ability to hand off the architect rights to someone else. Either name the successor or put it up for grabs. An auction, perhaps.

 

[Jmanis]

Hey. The whole point of money is that you can earn it through any activity, and then pay for the services and things you need. As you say - one can get convoy protection mission, get paid and spend the money to colonize his system.

The problem is the economy is a busted waffle in terms of balance.

If EDs economy made a lick of sense, stacking massacre missions and paying NPCs should be the no less or more effort than hauling yourself, if you ignore subjective skill and interest levels.

When mining 1t of methane clathrates is the same time and effort as 1t of LTDs, and the former is in significantly higher demand, significantly less supply, but pays 50 times less than the latter... you done goofed.

 

[Jmanis]

I was hoping this would be something to spend my tens of billions on, but alas credits remain trivial. I can understand not making the general station building expensive because people would complain about it. However, there should be a costly service to hire NPCs to do the hauling.

But this is the problem. I figure in the current state of the economy... paying NPCs to do, say, and outpost, should cost no less than 10b credits... 100b for an ocellus.

That's valuing based off an ability to earn 1b per hour (which is less what some can do).

Edit: is the average player going to be pulling that in? No way... and that's the problem with the botched economy and it's impact on the game.... we've got some people saying 25m is too much for a claim, some saying 1b should be a minimum.

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

But this is the problem. I figure in the current state of the economy... paying NPCs to do, say, and outpost, should cost no less than 10b credits... 100b for an ocellus.

That's valuing based off an ability to earn 1b per hour (which is less what some can do).

Edit: is the average player going to be pulling that in? No way... and that's the problem with the botched economy and it's impact on the game.... we've got some people saying 25m is too much for a claim, some saying 1b should be a minimum.

Yeah, been saying (in vain) that Elite needs a head-to-toes credits balance pass across every single aspect in the game. Ships, gear modules, FC, markets, missions, CGs. It will never happen but that is what is needed to make the game feel somewhat internally consistent again (I don't actually recall if it ever even did tbh).

I know the game very well, made use of various gold rushes over time, know concepts of mission stacking etc. etc. and have previously held a lot of assets around the 10-15bn mark. I then wiped my account out of boredom and also stopped engaging in the credit-rat-race, as well as playing Elite on a daily basis like a job (which I used to do for quite a few years).

My current account has about 2bn in assets (ships, modules and cash) in total. I'm not doing much mission running (many of those require me to perform repetitive tasks) so play the game outside of that. Bit of PP2.0 in the past, more recently some Colonisation (one outpost, 2 installations), doing the odd mission but nothing really intensive as I'm tired of that playstyle. Also means I'm nowhere near unlocking rank locked ships anytime soon again.

My credit balance only increases significantly when I join certain CGs - the last ones threw hundreds of millions at me for next to zero effort. About 800m of my credit balance was earned by one extended exobio trip (i.e. a few evenings scanning plants in undiscovered systems about 5k LY out) - an activity I get bored of very quickly. It's the essence of casual play now - and that really doesn't earn nearly as many credits as a fair few on this forum believe it does.

So yeah I agree - while for some 10b credits is nothing, for me I'm already struggling to earn enough credits to even afford a basic fleet carrier again. Credit balance is completely messed up beyond hope. Which is probably why they keep adding new in-game currencies rather than addressing it, for fear of rocking the boat. [Father Ted trying to fix the dented car sketch springs to mind].

Edit - one final thought to add... while I absolutely loathed the glacial progress in the early game around launch, where you had the best paying missions barely cracking the 100k (yes, thousand, not millions!!!) mark while ships had the prices we still see now (I remember I thought I will never afford a Cutter let alone A-rated), that sense of having to plan your moves and manage risks out of fear of going bankrupt or ending up with the Startwinder again... the sole CMDR trying to survive in a big bad galaxy, and the dopamine hit of being able to finally afford and fly an E-rated Cobra 3 ... I really miss that feeling. The fact we ended up with an update like Colonisation just shows that the original vision for the game has been completely lost. If that's for good or bad, debatable I guess.