Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

[DazeDreamer]

Placing of stations appear to be a bit off attempted to place an installation by a star this appeared by the first planet, I thought no probs it's not what I wanted but I'll cope. I then thought as the satellite is there I will put the relay station by the star, this appeared by the asteroid belt near the star. I thought oh well wanted an asteroid base there but I do have another asteroid belt so it can go there. Stupidly thought it may go differently a third time (Sure there's a saying for this) so attempted to place a communication station by the Star (I think you'll know where this is going) this appeared on a second slot attached to the asteroid field which wasn't there before and still the primary location was empty. Upon investigation found that the two installations by the asteroid field where in the same instance admitted a distance away (23km from each other approx) but you could still see the other one when dropping from supercruise. @Paul_Crowther Is it possible one of these Installations could be moved to the star or just removed also don't mind which one and I will wait for this to be sorted before I place anything else my OCD will learn to adapt lol. Again as I can only remember your name as a Cm you've got this lol. I have sent a bug report initially before sending this any help would be appreciated and can you confirm whether this is already being worked on or people are aware of this happening. Oh yeah System may help it's Tucanae Sector Te-p B6-1 cheers again o7

 

[Rudolph Kingsfield]

I solo-built an Orbis station that is orbiting a gas giant as my system's primary port with the intention of making it an industrial economy to make use of the nearby platinum hotspot for in-system platinum mining. Apparently, since it orbits a gas giant, this station will forever be an orbiting septic tank with no functional economy. All of that effort was a complete waste of time and that station will forever be useless. FDev needs to give us documentation on all of these secret rules and colonization mechanics. At the moment, it's impossible to figure out to make a functional system economy.

 

[HalseySpartan2]

I solo-built an Orbis station that is orbiting a gas giant as my system's primary port with the intention of making it an industrial economy to make use of the nearby platinum hotspot for in-system platinum mining. Apparently, since it orbits a gas giant, this station will forever be an orbiting septic tank with no functional economy. All of that effort was a complete waste of time and that station will forever be useless. FDev needs to give us documentation on all of these secret rules and colonization mechanics. At the moment, it's impossible to figure out to make a functional system economy.

View attachment 422320

On the bright side, your station residents have a spectacular view whilst on the space toilets producing the biowaste.

 

[CMDR GFJake]

I saw this same info from this post on reddit

View attachment 422315
My primary T2 station -the one which we can't decide its location- orbit around a non landable planet...

How can Frontier be this incompetent and not see this coming ?

Fdev for the love of all that is Raxxla.

please just give us the ability to link ground structures to individual spaceports or make buildings have bigger range or just allow us to place down Ports with a predetermined economy.

gutting everyone's Stations they worked hard on just because it had the misfortune of being placed above an un-landable planet is only gonna harm the game, people are already quitting and giving up because so far, the Update has been largely garbage and somehow you keep making it worse.

the idea of colonization is amazing, in theory what people could do is amazing but forget the bugs for the moment, you have so many restrictions and so many dumb mechanics that Colonization is not amazing, its garbage that's going to produce garbage systems as commanders give up on their goals and dreams and just shun the feature entirely

Said bad restrictions below

1. doubling T2/T3 point costs if you build two Tier 2's, 3's or one of both? this is bad, why can't T2 be separated from T3? and also, why can't the T3 Starport's be separated from the T3 ground ports especially with how important those are for population? bad restriction.

2. restricting markets to Colony just cause your ports above an un-landable? I'm sorry but what? this is the dumbest one out of the lot of them, why? what possible good does this do? this is just staggeringly a bad choice for a restriction.

3. Emergency Power Cells, why in the name of Raxxla are these only available from a very small space in the bubble? this is going to seriously screw those CMDR's colonizing into the black or when Colonia is turned on, absolutely end their Colonization dreams immediately since nowhere even remotely close will be making these. Another terrible restriction but with an easy fix (make all high-tech land ports and maybe even the star ports make them)

4. 15 Light Years colonization range is bad, yes you have said you'd increase them slowly during the beta, but you still haven't and people are getting locked out of colonization from colonizing where they want to go and with what factions, before people go "but your squads faction comes along!" this doesn't mean squat; people can have pet factions they like working on that doesn't have anything to do with their squad. Bad restriction that could easily become reasonable if its increased by at least double, 30 LY is not a game breaking amount, hell not even 50 as many have been asking for.



these are the biggest bad no-no restrictions that have to go or be redone, most of the rest of the colonization is pretty well done, but these four particularly the first two make it bad, the third one is also bad but it's a future issue once colonization spreads out more than it has now or when colonia turns on colo.

 

[HalseySpartan2]

FDev please fix whatever you broke with Insulating Membranes because they are the only commodity that is in constantly low (20 units) supply at every megaship I've been to.

 

[Tifu]

3. Emergency Power Cells, why in the name of Raxxla are these only available from a very small space in the bubble? this is going to seriously screw those CMDR's colonizing into the black or when Colonia is turned on, absolutely end their Colonization dreams immediately since nowhere even remotely close will be making these.

Emergency power cells are now available in the tens of thousands in the six CG megaships now distributed throughout the Bubble.

Here is a screenshot of Trailblazer Dream's inventory. This particular megaship is in HIP 90578.

 

[Jmanis]

To illustrate on this a bit further about why I'm so miffed.


View attachment 422317

This is my system. I picked it deliberately because it had a lot of landable moons with their own orbital slots, and I was going to specialize each gas giant in a different thing. Since the logical way this system should work is that the economy of a station is affected by everything that orbits the same body as itself - if not the entire system - (eg, landable moons, landable planets, non-landables w/ orbital slots), this would have allowed me to create an industrial gas giant system, an extraction system, a tourism system, etc. Had it been possible to choose the primary port location I definitely wouldn't have put it around a gas giant that won't ever allow it to develop into something useful. I would've put it over the only decent planet in this system under the way FDev has apparently designed and implemented the feature: the ringed landable planet with a single orbital slot to influence.

But instead I have a big pile of useless landable moons without enough slots to do anything with on their own orbiting things we can't influence because FDev hasn't given us the ability to build Cloud City yet. What a bizarre choice for something that seems very obvious when looked at by anyone that didn't have input into making the game.

I mean... i get the frustration, but take it as a lesson learned and just move on to a new system?

There's no shortage of good systems out there... i just got one with a moon with five surface slots which will be great... my first system has been botched by some bad choices, and my current ones I'm experimenting will probably have some dud configs... but oh well! You'll still get your payout based on how far you've progressed it.

An interesting galaxy has a mix of good and bad things, and isn't just homogenous.

 

[Jmanis]

FDev please fix whatever you broke with Insulating Membranes because they are the only commodity that is in constantly low (20 units) supply at every megaship I've been to.

I was going to trashpost earlier and say "taking bets on the first complaints about megaships having inadequate supplies" because everyone will converge on them.

But to @MDHansen 's point a while back.. time for me to post this picture of insulating membranes again.

The megaships are going to be supply hotspots, and so necessarily not ideal for some commodities.

 

[photomankc]

Well I have to say I’m about to give up on this feature. 3 weeks. 90K units hauled. Nothing sells anything. No services really work. Nothing else I build or add changes anything. That’s not remotely entertaining.

 

[Nosrik]

I mean... i get the frustration, but take it as a lesson learned and just move on to a new system?

There's no shortage of good systems out there... i just got one with a moon with five surface slots which will be great... my first system has been botched by some bad choices, and my current ones I'm experimenting will probably have some dud configs... but oh well! You'll still get your payout based on how far you've progressed it.

An interesting galaxy has a mix of good and bad things, and isn't just homogenous.

What lesson ? Players suffers from lack of agency (not being able to choose location of main station), lack of critical information (the relation between station market and land structures), and terrible design choice (stations orbiting no landable world being worthless). All of this is Frontier responsibility.

Is the lesson supposed to be "Stop hitting yourself" being told by someone punching you ?

 

[cidiantoby]

There

I saw this same info from this post on reddit

View attachment 422315
My primary T2 station -the one which we can't decide its location- orbit around a non landable planet...

How can Frontier be this incompetent and not see this coming ?

Ohh what the hell? First the cost point doubling and now this?

@FDev
I think this mechanic just gave the colonization the killing shot for a large amount of the player base once its widely known. You dont let people chose their primary port. Many have a station on a non landable planet or orbiting a star. This KILLS their station. Just a glorified space toilet. Why call it "System Influence" when its really "Planet or Moon Influence"?


Remove the build point costs and allow us to manually link the system economies. Its an insane idea that I have a ship that can travel 95Ly per jump. There is a Fleet Carrier that can jump 5 times that. Ships can travel across systems in minutes. BUT its not logically or logistically possible a single commodity can be transported across a system instead of a planet and its moons with "background npcs".

Let me ask you this. Is that Amazon package you ordered grown, made, produced, assembled or fabricated in the same city you live in? I assume not and that multiple different logistics drivers, some short or long haul, spent hours in the different processes of the finished product shipping it from place to place.

 

[HalseySpartan2]

I mean... i get the frustration, but take it as a lesson learned and just move on to a new system?

There's no shortage of good systems out there... i just got one with a moon with five surface slots which will be great... my first system has been botched by some bad choices, and my current ones I'm experimenting will probably have some dud configs... but oh well! You'll still get your payout based on how far you've progressed it.

An interesting galaxy has a mix of good and bad things, and isn't just homogenous.

Why should I be punished with wasted time because the developers can't be bothered to tell anyone the bare minimum of how things work? What lesson could possibly apply here that isn't just handwaving away garbage development and community engagement practices? This system as designed blatantly does not work because the player has no control or information with which to make better choices. This isn't even letting players figure stuff out like with Thargoids and Guardian puzzles, this is straight up hostile game design and goes against numerous best practices. Players have no information, no agency over where the primary port is placed, and a non-intuitive and illogical system that punishes the player for the decisions made by the design team and it's just, okay I guess? Because it's being called a public beta? Like can you understand how insulting it is to spend 2-3 real life weeks building a station that will only ever sell literal feces?

 

[CMDR GFJake]

Emergency power cells are now available in the tens of thousands in the six CG megaships now distributed throughout the Bubble.

Here is a screenshot of Trailblazer Dream's inventory. This particular megaship is in HIP 90578.

View attachment 422326

ok thats cool, that doesnt resolve the issue and is a temporary bandaid until the ships are gone.

 

[Xenia_K]

FDev please fix whatever you broke with Insulating Membranes because they are the only commodity that is in constantly low (20 units) supply at every megaship I've been to.

sorry, nonsens!
If you fly to an Outpost in a high Population Refinery-System you in average get ~4000 to of stock - Bubble-wide.
You just have to move your bum seating aid from your shiny Cutter into a medium Sized Ship like Python, Python MKII, T-8 or what ever You have to collect that Material.

 

[cidiantoby]

Like can you understand how insulting it is to spend 2-3 real life weeks building a station that will only ever sell literal feces?

I am literally that person. Spent 3 weeks soloing an Orbis as a primary port above a non-landable planet 60k ls away from the sun. I did not get to chose that location either. Got it done on Monday.

According to that post. That is all it will ever produce now.

 

[HCR Motorhead]

And once again FDev grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

This really should have been a standalone test with zero continuity in the live game.

The sheer disrespect to the community, so much wasted time, all for some technical exercise vanity project.

 

[GreenCrusher44]

Only if the Twitter guy could explain why this things happen :

1st and 2nd screen shot: Hyadum 2, T3+hitech space installation built last week said by system owner

Hyadum II hi tech outpost market is offline despite being operational and been like this for almost 2 weeks

my mate surface industrial outpost market not getting the influence of the refinery

my surface colony outpost isnt having better luck on it aswell

with respect, some of us dedicated our time and resource to play the colonisation by your own rule by the codex plus whatever information you guys threw at us instead of ego bridging out of nowhere. some of us and my self accept that the investment we made for the primary port will be potentionally become useless. hence the investment on other things properly.

but i find the answer regarding Hyadum II on twitter is insulting and ignorant, and until someone could explain why these things above happened i will call that whoever responsilbe for that comment is just spewing .

o7

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Because everyone is pounding out small outposts in systems they dont actually plan to manage to get further out of the bubble. There are going to be so many gas station systems it'll be like having gas stations on "every corner". Its quick colonization, but pretty messy too. Maybe the cost to claim a system could increase the further the distance you planned to go, limited to the same jump range as a FC... Let us really get out there a ways - and then we can fill in the gaps.

The cost is in time spent by the player getting out to those further destinations. Even an FC has limits.

 

[Jmanis]

Why should I be punished with wasted time because the developers can't be bothered to tell anyone the bare minimum of how things work? What lesson could possibly apply here that isn't just handwaving away garbage development and community engagement practices? This system as designed blatantly does not work because the player has no control or information with which to make better choices. This isn't even letting players figure stuff out like with Thargoids and Guardian puzzles, this is straight up hostile game design and goes against numerous best practices. Players have no information, no agency over where the primary port is placed, and a non-intuitive and illogical system that punishes the player for the decisions made by the design team and it's just, okay I guess? Because it's being called a public beta? Like can you understand how insulting it is to spend 2-3 real life weeks building a station that will only ever sell literal feces?

Ok... there's a lot to unpack here.

First and foremost. I agree, the documentation is lacking. No argument there.

Nonetheless, useful information is presented. Did your not read it? If not, that's on you.

I knew nothing more than the next person going into this, but i knew enough to look at the coriolis/ orbis descriptors and go "hmmm.. that sense like a lot of effort for a solo player, just for a colony economy (which just produces biowaste). I guess these need more facilities to produce a different economy. Outposts look like less effort (as it is, just two nights), and offer more diverse economy options... I'll start there.

I mean, did you not know what a Colony economy is? They've been in the game since horizons? I know they're not the focus of any "get rich quick" guide or streamer expose, but they exist. But anyway.

So while i built my first outpost, i checked the Codex pilot handbook.... because just getting to claiming a system had multiple tutorials shoved in my face so i presumed something was there.

Lo and behold, it explained how it works, that facilities could have their economy influenced by nearby facilities around the local body. So, i took that as "until i know what that means, I'm going to hold off on a bigger facility, because they're a lot of effort".

Most of the complaints i see are coming from people not having a good understanding of the mechanics (which i understand, the doco isn't good)... but instead of going forward with caution as a result (and noting this is beta), just going YOLO BUILD THE BIGGEST MOST TIME CONSUMING THING and seemingly missing the very obvious information shown presented that this results in a colony economy only.

Like, yeah... it would be frustrating to do that, but equally, my decision making had me look at that info and go "Gee, building a coriolis straight off the bat, as a solo player, seems like a terrible freaking idea, I'll start smaller scale".

So yeah... the doco is bad, but a little bit of caution for a new feature goes a long way... i get that's frustrating, but if this game has taught me anything, is that sometimes people want to uppercut themselves and blame the game for it.

So... yes, you can take this as lesson learned because for whatever reason, you didn't know what you were doing and unsurprisingly didn't get to where you wanted.l, and now know for future... or you can bin the game.

Back when credits meant something... i slammed my first clipper into a station wall without rebuy, and it took me a month to earn that. I didn't think the game needed to change because of that.

tl;dr sure, putting effort in for no/poor return with lack of good docco would be frustrating... but I just don't get why someone wouldn't go "that sounds pretty risky, maybe I'll find more out before putting all that effort in"

Edit: And to reinforce, I posted this a week or so ago:

Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

I agree its not a good idea. I think instead it would be better to allow a discount on the next system you claim if you help someone else build their stations. This could be a reduction in claim fee and resources needed to build the claim station and indeed all stations in that system. That way...

forums.frontier.co.uk

One of the first obvious things to me was that experimenting (given the lack of documentation) was expensive... so that made me very cautious about how I put any effort in.

 

[Jmanis]

Only if the Twitter guy could explain why this things happen :

1st and 2nd screen shot: Hyadum 2, T3+hitech space installation built last week said by system ownerView attachment 422336View attachment 422337

Hyadum II hi tech outpost market is offline despite being operational and been like this for almost 2 weeks
View attachment 422338View attachment 422339

my mate surface industrial outpost market not getting the influence of the refinery
View attachment 422340View attachment 422341

my surface colony outpost isnt having better luck on it aswell
View attachment 422342View attachment 422343

with respect, some of us dedicated our time and resource to play the colonisation by your own rule by the codex plus whatever information you guys threw at us instead of ego bridging out of nowhere. some of us and my self accept that the investment we made for the primary port will be potentionally become useless. hence the investment on other things properly.

but i find the answer regarding Hyadum II on twitter is insulting and ignorant, and until someone could explain why these things above happened i will call that whoever responsilbe for that comment is just spewing .

o7

The suspicion is that bigger ports take more hubs etc to influence the economy of those facilities.