Elite Dangerous | Colonisation Facilities & Markets

[Ian Doncaster]

I just skimmed it, but there didn't seem to be any effort to sort out correlation vs causation.

Oh, there is. But at a pace of one experiment every few days, even getting any useful data to pick out correlations to design causation-checking experiments around will take months. (For comparison, it took about nine months of community effort to reverse engineer the Thargoid War algorithms for attacking systems, and that was a very simple ruleset once it was worked out)

I keep the front post updated with what little actually seems to be solid and repeatable, so you don't need to read the entire thread.

It would be better if Fdev just told us the rules to their game, I think.

I would expect even if they did people would still need to do a fair bit of experimentation to work out what the actual implications of all that were, but knowing what "wealth" does even in vague high-level terms would be nice.

(In the same way that Powerplay's rules for delivering escape pods were simple, clear and largely documented ... but the various high-speed exploits resulting from them weren't a pure consequence of those rules in isolation, and took a couple of weeks to be picked up on)

 

[Markov Chaney]

Alright, well, I'd like to ensure no-one else is put off by that dismissal.

I just picked five comments at random from that thread and three of them had real numbers in them to support a previous hypothesis, one of them was making an inference, and another one of them was part of a discussion which did end in a deduction. I admit 63 pages is a lotta comments but you do seem to have been extraordinary unlucky to get a screenful of "almost entirely speculation." A good number of the comments in there have screenshots of the documentation, for a start.

It is poor that FDev did not tell players about the orbital influence, and that gets exacerbated by the problems with the placement of the first build (and we do know from another announcement that is not even working as intended, documented or otherwise) and I also used the word "incompetence" but it's not like the level of documentation is zero.

 

[Zimous]

BGS is pointless and just fluff so no one cares how it really works except a few hardcore groups (that is until FDev introduces real player factions we can actually control and reap rewards from).

Colonization is a completely different thing and should be completely transparent and come with an instruction manual. Otherwise the reality is most players won't bother with it.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

But at a pace of one experiment every few days, even getting any useful data to pick out correlations to design causation-checking experiments around will take months. (For comparison, it took about nine months of community effort to reverse engineer the Thargoid War algorithms for attacking systems, and that was a very simple ruleset once it was worked out)

I said that it would take years to figure out and that thread was provided as evidence that it would not.

I suppose it's possible that you all will figure it out eventually, but, assuming Fdev knows how it works, they should just tell us.

I know that, due to the fact that the rules aren't being told to us, that I'm finishing up my active build and setting colonization aside. There's too much time investment to blindly participate and hope it turns out okay.

but the various high-speed exploits resulting from them weren't a pure consequence of those rules in isolation, and took a couple of weeks to be picked up on

I am not concerned with min/max/exploiting, personally. I would be happy enough just knowing the rules.

 

[Markov Chaney]

Oh right... yeah... so I'm just kinda stating how it is.

TBH, I'm totally unsurprised by the opacity because of the opacity requirement of the BGS, and I'm ok with that.

But your average punter would want transparency, for... well... reasons...

I think every Commander should have to solve the fireplace puzzle from Myst and the colours puzzle from Riven as part of their flight training.

 

[tomalus]

can 2 space farms in orbit make an orbis or coriolis an agriculture market?
can 1 space farm turn an outpost into agri market?
can 2 tourist installations or 2 bars turn an orbis into a tourism market?
can 2 tourist instalation turn a coriolis to tourism?
can 1 tourist instalation turn an outpost to tourism?

asking caus I want to build orbit of earthlike world

 

[Jmanis]

Oh, there is. But at a pace of one experiment every few days, even getting any useful data to pick out correlations to design causation-checking experiments around will take months. (For comparison, it took about nine months of community effort to reverse engineer the Thargoid War algorithms for attacking systems, and that was a very simple ruleset once it was worked out)

Yup... that's been the biggest issue around having a Live beta. An offline beta where everything cost 1t of fish would've been great to work the issues through and also get a grip of the mechanics.

I mostly just read dev posts. That thread is almost entirely speculation. I'm not sure it counts as "figuring it out" in any meaningful sense of the phrase. I just skimmed it, but there didn't seem to be any effort to sort out correlation vs causation.

A good deal of understanding about the BGS is entirely dependent on speculation, simply because it's opaque. Selling medicines are meant to relieve Outbreak... but there's no evidence that it does. FD have said words to that effect, but they've also said things that have been provably wrong... so FD themselves aren't a 100% guaranteed source of truth (unfortunately). For example, FD have also said Food helps get rid of Famine... which sounds true enough... til you realise Famine is the lower-end economic state... so equally, selling gold for profit (as a +econ activity) would also clear Famine... so there's really no functional difference. So does selling Food fix Famine in a way that selling anything for profit would? Who knows?

So for Colonisation, there's not much more than speculation that you can go on. I've been through too many team building/organisational reorg exercises to have "dealing with uncertainty" well and truly drummed into my head... but when presented with uncertainty, all you can do is set some speculative bounds that encompass a set of actions, and act knowing that while you might not have complete precision of action, that your shots will land "roughly that direction".

 

[Jmanis]

BGS is pointless and just fluff so no one cares how it really works except a few hardcore groups (that is until FDev introduces real player factions we can actually control and reap rewards from).

Funny how that's probably a true sentiment, and equally nobody could find Insulating Membranes or CMMs to save themselves.

If it isn't the consequences of my (lack of) actions, i guess

 

[Zimous]

I'm also wondering if we'll be able to terraform? I colonized a system with 2 WWs and 3 HMCs which are all terraformable, hoping that would be an option.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I am not concerned with min/max/exploiting, personally. I would be happy enough just knowing the rules.

But min/max/exploiting is concerned with you, that's the problem. It's no help saying that you won't do it if other people will and do and therefore get the rules changed in a way that affects your honest use of it. I was quite enjoying Powerplay S&R until people found ways to do it ten times faster than I was and got the whole thing suspended.

I expect there will need to be quite a time after the rules of colonisation are published for Frontier to close down the most obvious exploits and then give up on the whole idea of fixing it while leaving Coriolis station construction permanently suspended.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

A good deal of understanding about the BGS is entirely dependent on speculation, simply because it's opaque.

Is that supposed to be a good thing? I'm arguing that we could spend years trying to figure it out and still not really know how it works. Meanwhile, there's FDev, who presumably knows how it works, and we're their paying customers for their game.

I personally think everyone should stop trying to figure it out, because it only encourages FDev to not bother with documentation, much like how an unnamed game company releases with a ton of bugs knowing the modding community will fix them for them, for free.

If they want us to play their game, they should tell us the rules.

 

[Zimous]

Will ELWs mean we'll get much more population? Or is that all fluff and the population only grows on stations and settlements?

 

[CMDR Vhi]

But min/max/exploiting is concerned with you, that's the problem. It's no help saying that you won't do it if other people will and do and therefore get the rules changed in a way that affects your honest use of it. I was quite enjoying Powerplay S&R until people found ways to do it ten times faster than I was and got the whole thing suspended.

I expect there will need to be quite a time after the rules of colonisation are published for Frontier to close down the most obvious exploits and then give up on the whole idea of fixing it while leaving Coriolis station construction permanently suspended.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here, in relation to our discussion.

 

[Zimous]

I personally think everyone should stop trying to figure it out, because it only encourages FDev to not bother with documentation, much like how an unnamed game company releases with a ton of bugs knowing the modding community will fix them for them, for free.

Agreed. I'm not touching colonization again until all the bugs are fixed (and an undo or cancel option is added) and the documentation is released. Otherwise it's just another incomplete feature no one will care about.

 

[aRJay]

There seems to be a desire - via the various dependencies and requirements - to encourage people to build varied systems, with installations, Odyssey settlements, Horizons hubs, etc. (all of which are important as targets for missions, for example) rather than just building one big station to serve as a stationary FC equivalent and being done with it, and then wondering why you don't get any decent missions because everyone around you has done the same thing.

Which structures least important as mission targets?

 

[Robert Rockbite]

Oh? I thought it was intentional to have a government (system architect) that does things without sufficient knowledge or competence and ends up subsidizing unemployment and producing biowaste. Had a good laugh about that.

The least expensive solution in terms of work and server load and time-to-player would be to explain the currently existing system in more detail.
For example,
1) Can I use close binaries, planets orbiting each other closely, as supply for one market?
2) Is influence maybe just a maximum distance like 5 light seconds?
3) Do refineries also require an extraction facility within the same market? Or can I just add refineries under 1 Coriolis until it flips to refinery?
4) How many supporting facilities would a station approximately need to completely remove the Colony component in its market?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm not sure what you're arguing here, in relation to our discussion.

That Frontier releasing the documentation is only the first step in the process of colonisation ending up in a state where you can start working on a system confident that it'll do what you expect by the time you've finished building it: you also need to work for exploits exposed by the documentation to either be discovered and fixed, or discovered and left hanging around for so long that it's clear that Frontier has no intention of fixing them, because any changes to fix those might change something which was previously documented.

e.g. say someone comes up with an exploit which happens at 200 Wealth. As a result, to stop people doing this routinely to large systems, all Wealth-generating buildings get moved to T2 so you can only build half as many. As a result, the system design you were half-way through building suddenly doesn't work because you no longer have enough T2 points to finish it off.

(That specific case is highly unlikely, but the existence of consequences to Frontier's rules which they haven't thought of and which we're only prevented from thinking of by not knowing those rules is almost certain)

1) Can I use close binaries, planets orbiting each other closely, as supply for one market?
2) Is influence maybe just a maximum distance like 5 light seconds?
3) Do refineries also require an extraction facility within the same market? Or can I just add refineries under 1 Coriolis until it flips to refinery?
4) How many supporting facilities would a station approximately need to completely remove the Colony component in its market?

1) Not as currently designed, who knows what Frontier will change it to.
2) Not as currently designed, who knows what Frontier will change it to.
3) No - adding an extraction facility will get you a hybrid extraction/refinery economy, which if you're interested in metals for future colonisation purposes isn't as useful
4) This appears to depend on the type of the supporting facility and the type of the station you're trying to influence. A large settlement can completely remove the Colony component of a T1 port; hubs seem to be weaker than settlements.

 

[Jmanis]

Is that supposed to be a good thing? I'm arguing that we could spend years trying to figure it out and still not really know how it works. Meanwhile, there's FDev, who presumably knows how it works, and we're their paying customers for their game.

Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Veering OT slightly... I like games that have uncertainty, things to be understood within a particular bounds. I, personally, don't like it when everything is black-and-white. There's no sense of jeopardy, risk or chance. What makes, say, the XCOM series great is that, as a general rule, you don't know if you're going to hit or not. Now if you peel back some revelations about the source, you'll find that even though it shows you a, say, 80% chance to hit, is not actually 80% chance to hit. Depending on the game difficulty and what's happened beforehand, it might actually be more or less... but the game doesn't show you that... and not only that, it's not even random. If save and reload, and replicate your moves identically, you'll get the same outcome constantly.

Does it help to understand all that? Absolutely not, in fact it detracts from the game to know that. The excitement comes from planning things around "known unknowns"... but if you can be certain "Well, this chain of events happened, so by-design I will definitely hit this shot, even though it only says it's 80% chance to hit"... then that takes away the tension that unknown generates.

Now, to come back to this... the BGS by design is not meant to be at the front of player's minds. Of course, players put it there, but FD have pretty unequivocally said (and not really backed from it) that if it is front of mind, they've done something wrong. It's meant to be shifting and somewhat unpredictable sands that form the basis of how the (populated) universe works.

Of course some people will want, and be disappointed by, lack of transparency of the mechanics of the BGS. Feeling that way is fine and that might not be to everyone's liking, but it also misunderstands the design goal of the BGS, which is that it's meant to be opaque. I don't think that's a bad decision... but if people are expecting something out of a system that it's not meant to deliver, of course it'll be seen as a bad thing.

I will always be disappointed with a hammer that doesn't saw a piece of wood for me, because i wanted it to do that even though i was told it wouldn't.

EDIT: On that last point, it's surprising how many people seem to have come to this not with a "I wonder how this will work" mentality, and instead with a "This is what I think it should look like" mentality, and are critical that it's not that way, even though it was never put out that it would do that.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

That Frontier releasing the documentation is only the first step in the process of colonisation ending up in a state where you can start working on a system confident that it'll do what you expect by the time you've finished building it: you also need to work for exploits exposed by the documentation to either be discovered and fixed, or discovered and left hanging around for so long that it's clear that Frontier has no intention of fixing them, because any changes to fix those might change something which was previously documented.

Unless you're on Fdev's payroll, none of that is something you should do. I agree that Fdev should do all of it, though.

 

[Jmanis]

Unless you're on Fdev's payroll, none of that is something you should do. I agree that Fdev should do all of it, though.

Except this is a live beta.. so implicitly, there's going to be bugs we need to find and surface.