You're not being punished at all, you chose to participate in an open beta test. This is not the finished product and is a work in progress, something that has been mentioned in most every post from FDEV regarding this BETA. Some of the systems I colonized are absolute trash - only selling Bio-waste and Hydrogen Fuel in a "Commercial" outpost. I knew going into this it was a BETA, because I read the dev posts and knew what I was getting into. Why should the developers be ripped because you didnt take the time to read or understand what this was all about? The insult here is that you're mad at someone else because you didnt stop to think logically or take the time to read. Additionally, if you already knew about the Guardians and Thargoids not being explained well, why did you expect different from a new feature that is still in BETA? I think we should cut the Dev team some slack - and appreciate all of the hard work that is going into fixing this, and be patient to see if fixes come down the pipe in time.
Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
- Start date
The original claim was that it was "Feature Complete" and the only thing they were working on was balancing. Not mechanical changes.
Because there was nothing to read or understand, since FDev did not provide documentation beyond a couple of vague codex screens and literally incorrect game information that is displayed to the player. We found out the most critical piece of information about colony economic management from a random TWEET REPLY. Stop cutting them slack for failures in customer communication and basic software development best practices. "Hard work"? They aren't volunteers working for free. They're software professionals. It's their jobs. They're being paid to do this. We PAY THEM MONEY to do this. Why should we not expect, and push for, higher quality and better experience?
Last edited:
I'm probably sticking with my little system. Going further out induces space madness in me.
Hey Paul,
If this is going to be the response at the slightest sign of any market demand, why bother with the diverse shopping list if the availability of all the different types of cargo is so homogenous that it makes no difference what the goods are? Steel, Titanium, Aluminium, CMMs, Insulating Membrane... it doesn't matter what they are now. They're now just widgets available in supply levels that make any further distinction irrelevant.
The real issue here is the substandard in-game tools for finding commodities in-game. There is market strain for sure, but there is very far from a shortage at the levels requiring this sort of intervention. There's currently over 7,000 stations which supply Insulating Membranes... but people rely on tools like Inara, which surface only a subset of market data for players to find, and players have similar patterns of play which means instead of being spread over those 7000 stations they're, as a general rule, just concentrating on a small handful of stations and ignoring:
- Smaller than L-size ports; or
- Anything that isn't the closest station; and
- Seeking out better sources, instead choosing to camp a slow market resupply
The Trailblazer Megaships were a great example of that, because it essentially centered the entire player-base doing Colonisation (the only feature to put real demand on a variety of market goods) onto eight locations. In a world where there's over 7,000. Of course supply was going to tank at those locations.
These are all symptomatic of the poor in-game tools. I've certainly worked out how to use them over the years, but they're just not good, and result in these behaviours that create "false issues" with the market; issues that are very much a real, experienced aspect of play, but are not representative of reality due to the lack of good UX for the market interfaces. Simple fact remains even with Inara, there is still sufficient supply for hundreds to thousands of concurrent Orbis-size constructions right now, players just lack the tools to exploit them.
I've also got broader concern with this response in general to any market demand. What's the end-goal here? How can players create attractive "mini hubs" like what was suggested in the FU streams, when demand for goods can't be left to grow? Player markets require player demand. If FD intervenes each time there's player demand for goods, this will never happen. If the goal isn't mini-hubs and player-driven market supply and demand... then what is it?
At this point, given the the above:
- If sourcing goods is meant to be challenging, undo the CMM/Insulating Membrane supply changes and improve UX for the market interfaces; or
- If sourcing goods is not meant to be challenging, Introduce a new commodity; "Colonisation Supplies", and make them available in almost infinite amounts at Refinery economies, since the overwhelming demand for any colonisation goods comes from these economy types.... and make this the only commodity that new structures require.
The only reason a diverse shopping list makes sense is if the sourcing of those different goods presents different challenges... and that won't work if market demand is just magically tweaked each time demand occurs.
(As a tangent, changes like this also remove collaborative play options; since sourcing Insulating Membranes was seen as difficult, I was going to start a program of offering Insulating Membranes at-cost to development areas, in volumes commensurate with assistance to my own build projects e.g for for every 1000t delivered to a project, I'll add 100t to the FC which I'll jump into a convenient location for the contributors when full... exchanging time spent supplying a construction site with a perceived "time spent" getting insulating membranes. There's no differential there anymore, and therefore no incentive)
EDIT: Also, if this really is "the way" and FD aren't going to change course here... piece of advice, take a look at Emergency Power Cells now, before players start similar complaints there.
Last edited:
I do agree that finding small amounts of goods , and actually having to go seek something, like emergency power cells or the insulated membranes made the hauling almost somewhat engaging, althought that might have been my standards dropping after spending hours on refinery metal runs. It absolutely wasn't an issue IMHO, get players to actually care about market availability of stuff.... But i guess FDEV just doesn't want to distract players from their mindless hours of hauling.
I'm not planning on doing another, but while I have this one and its already somewhat messed up, no harm trying things.
Yeah, and while I'm indifferent to how much hauling overall there is, having to break that up into different problem sets makes it more like 5 x 5000t problems due to different sourcing needs for an outpost, which is more enticing than 1 x 25000t problem. but that's what it is now.
Last edited:
That's the problem in a nutshell, The original bubble systems operate by a different rule set , nothing to be gained by studying them as our colonisation systems operate by a different set of rules that FDev seem reluctant to disclose. *
*Apart from a poorly worded few lines in the codex.
The current placement of assets couldn't follow the same rules. When the bubble was first populated, surface installations didn't exist. When surface assets were populated, they were likely based off what the orbital installations/economies were, within some variance. Same again with Odyssey settlements.
With colonisation, it's the opposite... the orbitals are now based on the infrastructure. So it was never going to follow the same rules.
Edit: the bubble was populated procedurally... in part to save time, obviously. Flipping the rules on their head for Colonisation to retroactively apply would have insane impact across the whole populated galaxy... and to do it manually would be a prohibitively large amount of effort to prevent that insanity.
Last edited:
I had a pretty good idea of how things worked after reading the entries they added to the codex / pilots handbook. I have tested with a couple of systems myself, to help them gather data and make adjustments where needed. I did not expect that it would work perfectly at first, and that is exactly what I got and that is exactly what they told us it would be. I agree that they are professionals and that we pay them to develop and produce a quality product, but I dont think we should be in here demanding perfection after three weeks of live beta. With time they will make adjustments if they are needed and then we wait and see what happens as more data is gathered and analyzed. I'm not cutting any slack, I am being patient and realistic. I dont think any game out there does this better than Elite does.
It's just not reasonable to expect players to glean enough information from in-game materials when the game tells you that you're building an Eirene satellite installation but instead it's actually a Scientific Installation, or that you tried to build an Ichnaea Relay but oops, it's a Comms Station instead. The game doesn't tell you nearly enough and what the game DOES tell you is flat-out incorrect, whether through bug or design.
Well it certainly brightened my day because despite having a reasonably nice system to build in, I actually woke up this morning with the intent to just walk away from colonisation.
Too many unknowns, too much time needed to find out if you have guessed wrong or even just copied that great pre existing system that you thought would be a good template to copy but yours for some reason only known to Fdev doesn't follow the same rules.
We did at least get an answer about why our systems don't match the Bubble's original systems. it's because the bubble systems were first populated only with outposts and starports (1.0), then Asteroid bases, then surface sites, then megaships, then installations. They could make them all work like the original 1.0 BGS worked without breaking everything terribly in the process, so this is at least the technical reason for the changes in economics for our colonies.
That's a bug, though. Of course the manual wouldn't say that.
Can you show a screenshot of what parts of the Codex are incorrect? Coz FD should know that.
I built a Commercial Outpost in a system which once constructed came out as a Colony Outpost only selling Bio-Waste and Hydrogen Fuel. Then I constructed an orbital farm. It now has a Colony Economy and sells only Bio-Waste and Hydrogen Fuel. I did all that solo, and it did take me a week or so. I am a little irritated that it didnt work right on the first try, and that I put in all that time and so many trips hauling, but I also think these things will get worked out in time. If they dont, thats ok too! I think that the colonization is an amazing concept for this game and I am happy to participate to try and make it better. Could things be better now? Yes. But they could also be worse. Taking that into consideration, is what we have REALLY that bad? I am literally colonizing my way into the void...
Wait until they fix this stuff up and release more details about how things work before you try to build out a multiple station system, its likely what we all should have done in the first place. Take this time and make a path out into deep space with small outposts to get further out. Honestly, the community here has put out some really great guides and summaries on how things work. I am sure this will end up the same way. Try not to get discouraged, and happy Friday. 07
Is that something you know to be happening, or just something you made up?
I mean, colour me unsurprised when FD announces "8 great sources of colonisation commodities" that the entire community descends on just those 8 places and complains there aren't enough commodities, whether or not it's because of hoarding or just a focus of the community on 1/1000th of the whole market supply.
This is true. I have avoided them for that reason. Would be a good place to get ganked.
The biggest question for me (among many others) is to ask if there's an upper limit to the stats that are internal to the system? Right now I have a build planned with DaftMav's system tool that gives me totals of:
Security: 32
Tech Level: 151
Wealth: 129
Standard of Living: 115
Development Level: 175
Is there a number that there's no reason to exceed for this? Does it vary between statistics?
Security: 32
Tech Level: 151
Wealth: 129
Standard of Living: 115
Development Level: 175
Is there a number that there's no reason to exceed for this? Does it vary between statistics?