Elite Dangerous | Colonisation Facilities & Markets

[CMDR Vhi]

the BGS by design is not meant to be at the front of player's minds

Weird that Squadrons can align themselves with a faction, then.

I think that Fdev doesn't care what people do in-game, because it all counts as people playing the game to them, even when it's just people figuring out how to play the game instead of actually playing it.

My squadron does spend a fair amount of time "playing" the BGS, and I've always believed it to be a failing of Fdev that we have to figure out how it works instead of just being told the rules.

And more to the point, manipulating the BGS to suss out what affects what is relatively quick, when compared to doing the same with colonization.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

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.

Sure - I don't intend to spend a lot of time personally thinking up exploits. But Frontier have repeatedly demonstrated that they can't out-think what tens of thousands of players will collectively come up with (which, given the difference in numbers and motivations, is hardly a surprise). So it's going to happen, especially since they've already released it to live...

FD have pretty unequivocally said (and not really backed from it) that if it is front of mind, they've done something wrong.

...and yet there seems to be fairly strong evidence that:
- the happiness score of the system (used as a payout multiplier) is at least somewhat related to BGS happiness
- which is (by both word of Frontier and what observation is possible given some of the weirdness around happiness readouts) related to BGS states
- which we're not supposed to be thinking about?

I am quite prepared to accept "they've done something wrong" as an explanation for this chain of events, yes.

(Similarly as you've noted elsewhere, a strong understanding of how markets work - which was a month ago a topic of largely theoretical application even among "BGS players" - has suddenly become very important to colonisation)

 

[Robert Rockbite]

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.

Well, I'm currently guessing that I would need 2 refinery hubs to mostly flip a T1, 4 for a T2 and 6 for a T3. But I don't know it.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

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

Finding bugs is not strictly limited to "live beta" and "live beta" is a meaningless term. They called it a "beta" so people didn't freak out if some key numbers weren't to their liking because they were just placeholder values for Fdev, exactly like the FC rollout.

It's worth noting that if they never tell you what "working" is, you can't accurately assess when something is not working. See: Construction points increasing after some stations are built. There were a couple of days where no one knew if that was intended or a bug, because the one group that knows for sure, isn't telling the people who are doing the "beta testing".

The way Fdev handles this isn't defensible. It's bad from a business standpoint, a developer standpoint, and just a personal pride standpoint.

I'm grateful that people give their time and talent away for free to make Fdev's game actually playable, but they really shouldn't; it just encourages Fdev to keep doing it.

 

[AlephKane]

An Idea for a fix:
Assign ELW, Waterworlds values as planets with full agricultural bases.
Assign non landable High metal contents as values of Extraction
Assign stations around just stars as Tourism
Asteroids as extraction etc.

If you can't build ground settlements, just give the planet a base value as though it had it.

 

[Jmanis]

...and yet there seems to be fairly strong evidence that:
- the happiness score of the system (used as a payout multiplier) is at least somewhat related to BGS happiness
- which is (by both word of Frontier and what observation is possible given some of the weirdness around happiness readouts) related to BGS states
- which we're not supposed to be thinking about?

I am quite prepared to accept "they've done something wrong" as an explanation for this chain of events, yes.

(Similarly as you've noted elsewhere, a strong understanding of how markets work - which was a month ago a topic of largely theoretical application even among "BGS players" - has suddenly become very important to colonisation)

Yep... refer back to the dichotomy of this whole "BGS is meant to be opaque" against "Let's release a feature where a thorough BGS understanding helps!".

 

[Jmanis]

Finding bugs is not strictly limited to "live beta" and "live beta" is a meaningless term. They called it a "beta" so people didn't freak out if some key numbers weren't to their liking because they were just placeholder values for Fdev, exactly like the FC rollout.

It's worth noting that if they never tell you what "working" is, you can't accurately assess when something is not working. See: Construction points increasing after some stations are built. There were a couple of days where no one knew if that was intended or a bug, because the one group that knows for sure, isn't telling the people who are doing the "beta testing".

The way Fdev handles this isn't defensible. It's bad from a business standpoint, a developer standpoint, and just a personal pride standpoint.

I'm grateful that people give their time and talent away for free to make Fdev's game actually playable, but they really shouldn't; it just encourages Fdev to keep doing it.

Just a note that you seem to have conflated my support for an opaque BGS with support for poor documentation about Colonisation.

I wholeheartedly agree. The documentation is poor... though I suspect my definition of "good" and someone else's definition of "good" are going to be very different here. I doubt they'd give BGS specifics... but some of the more functional aspects of Colonisation could be better documented and/or a better UX surfaced for it.

 

[Serj_Smirnov]

Greetings Commanders,

The current process for growing the market in a Starport is to build up facilities on or around the planetary body that it is orbiting.

We are continuously iterating on the design implemented, and we will continue to investigate ways to allow all facilities to find a route to market elsewhere within that star system. We have read your feedback and we are taking it into account in our investigation.

Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts during this Beta process and helping us to improve Trailblazers.

Why did you do that? It's a good thing that I built the installation on the same planet as the station. But a settlement on another planet. Thank you very much, gentlemen developers, for not immediately sharing such important information.
You are required to make a construction cancellation feature. At least those buildings where goods have not yet been delivered.

 

[Markov Chaney]

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.

Welcome to software engineering, have you met "stakeholders?" And those are people who are paid to not do this and they still do it. It's a bug in Human 1.x, there will be a patch available the next time someone like Thomas Hobbes or Adam Smith is born. (Human 2.0 is dependent on the whole Kardashev thing)

 

[Magister]

Perhaps the disappointment of those commanders who built stations with a permanent colonial economy could be corrected by introducing a simple system for setting up the economy in the interface, next to the port rename button. For example, by making a drop-down menu there with types of economies that could be set for the port, provided that the corresponding installations influencing the economy were built in the system.
This is not technically difficult, but would greatly help solve the problem that arose due to the fact that at the beginning of colonization, not everyone knew all its rules.

I would also really like to make it possible to choose the appearance of the port, both outside and inside. Now the appearance is tied to the economy, but it would be nice to have the ability to change it, perhaps for ARX. The same can be said about skins for installations, holographic screens with a choice of displayed content, etc. would be very useful. Colonizers have too few tools for individualizing their buildings.

 

[Skrylly]

We've just made the mistake of having our own carrier shoot at us!
Nobody has a Crimestat.
Has anyone else been able to observe this?

 

[syntaxenabled]

I was on the side of "Just tell us how it works!" But I since almost everything is subject to change and guides can become outdated quick, it might be more confusing to a newer player looking for answers once it's out of beta.
In terms of how markets ought to work, I think the "code" is too simple for influence to work based on distance and function in a gradual way. It seems that things are much more of a toggle and the devs have to figure out how to balance everything

 

[Darrack]

We've just made the mistake of having our own carrier shoot at us!
Nobody has a Crimestat.
Has anyone else been able to observe this?

Was anything chasing you?

O7

 

[Skrylly]

Was anything chasing you?

O7

No.
We've been playing Elite from the start and nothing is alien to us.
We've never seen this kind of behavior before.
I've just written an issue.
Let's take a look.

Many thanks and best regards O7

 

[Zador]

I would also really like to make it possible to choose the appearance of the port, both outside and inside. Now the appearance is tied to the economy, but it would be nice to have the ability to change it, perhaps for ARX. The same can be said about skins for installations, holographic screens with a choice of displayed content, etc. would be very useful. Colonizers have too few tools for individualizing their buildings.

They already announced the custom skins for ports in the last Frameshift Live.

 

[Tessa R Act]

We've just made the mistake of having our own carrier shoot at us!
Nobody has a Crimestat.
Has anyone else been able to observe this?

Battle Weapons or Combat Stabilizers in Cargo?
Your FC´s security aligns with the rules/laws of the dominating MF/PMF of the System it currently is in, so yes, that can happen (happend to me too day before yesterday).
Since then I land on my own FC in silent mode if I have such cargo.....

 

[syntaxenabled]

Not that anyone particularly cares what I think, and this will be long but my wishlist:

• A choice of where the main station goes
• An Undo option for construction that hasn't had anything delivered. A destruction option for ones that have but you "empty" it by shipping out the already delivered materials
• Ability to upgrade outposts to Starports
• All the "arrow meter" stats, station services, and happiness are system wide influence
• Current system stats display
• Markets are a planet + moons hierarchy based microsystem. Place the market around the main body and it's commodities are influenced by that body and what's on all the moons. A station around a moon is only influenced by that moon.
• For balance, outposts can only have one economy type, Starports can have more than one economy type
• NPC Faction ships help deliver materials, how much/quickly they help is determined by how many systems that faction controls. So I actually get something from the NPCs using my construction sites as a gas station and getting me fined for blocking landing pads
• Arrow meter stats are slightly influenced by nearby systems
• Option to enable a small proportional weekly payout to another CMDR for contributing to your system

 

[Tifu]

Your FC´s security aligns with the rules/laws of the dominating MF/PMF of the System it currently is in, so yes, that can happen (happend to me too day before yesterday).
Since then I land on my own FC in silent mode if I have such cargo.....

Geez, I'm much better off landing at the nearest stronghold carrier of the Power I've pledged to. They just let me off with a scan and a warning not to let anybody else spot my contraband.

Are you FC owners sure you really own those carriers of yours?

 

[Darrack]

Battle Weapons or Combat Stabilizers in Cargo?
Your FC´s security aligns with the rules/laws of the dominating MF/PMF of the System it currently is in, so yes, that can happen (happend to me too day before yesterday).
Since then I land on my own FC in silent mode if I have such cargo.....

Well ill go to the foot of our stairs, i never knew that, isn't my carrier a bit of Utopia? Cant i claim diplomatic immunity?

O7

 

[aRJay]

Well ill go to the foot of our stairs, i never knew that, isn't my carrier a bit of Utopia? Cant i claim diplomatic immunity?

O7

Are there diplomats in Utopia?