Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

LittleBigYin

L
James Razor said:
Frontier confirmed the issue and that it was a mistake.
It will also seemingly take up to 2 weeks for all the effects to be reversed.

And frankly said, without Mechans work, I doubt we would have gotten this much attention to the issue and such a quick reply.

I do not know the guy nor am I a follower, but I am thankful for him bringing this to FDevs attention, as I currently have the 3rd attempt going on to get a useful station with a specific economy according to the rules laid out in the meantime by FDev and this change would have screwed me over for a 3rd time.
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The feedback thread was full of people raising the issue. I am sure it would have got fixed with or without a bait video.
 

Capt. Hook

Capt. Hook
Currently slowly lugging pixels across the FDev servers to build an asteroid station for jolies in my extraction system. Hopefully this will add to the mining goodness in the system and not turn it into a tourist economy which my coralis station did!
 

Ladiesknight

L
I have just finished my large planetary port on a rocky planet (after the reset of the unwanted changes), with one large tourist settlement on it - yet no builds with any influence for industry or refinery in the whole system.

Looking at my system, Trade Data for the port say "Tourism - Industrial - Refinery" (no Colony at all).
The market in the Nav Panel or in Local Services is "Industrial". (With offering Nerve Agents, Bismuth and Battle Weapons --- yeah..)

Whatever they changed, there still seems to be an influence of the rocky planet - whatever the portion may be.
 

danteuk

danteuk
Paul_Crowther said:
We are aware that there were some issues with facilities and System Colonisation economics during the weekend. This was an error and not an intentional change and has been reverted. We are committed to looking at improvements and potential changes to the way facilities and the economy works in regards to System Colonisation, as well as how we can improve documentation. Where possible we will endeavor to share economic and facility changes in update notes.
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@Paul_Crowther You might want to change your spell checker to UK English :)

So FDev acknowledge that something got changed at the weekend but players are saying they started seeing the differences in results on Wednesday.

Still no explanation of exactly how FDev think the economies etc are suppose to work, probably:
  • It's so damn complicated the documentation/support team don't understand it.
  • Trying to document it in a way the player base will be able to understand will be a nightmare.
  • They'd have a large number of player complaining they did wrong and it makes no sense or logic ( like a lot of things in Elite )
Please don't make us haul tens of thousands more items just to discover it's still broken!!

@FDev - next time you do a 'Beta' maybe give an explanation of how you intend for a something to work before ask us to report issues - since currently very little 'appears' to work sensibly but with have no idea how much that is bad design ( and working as intended ) or actually broken.

TL;DR; - Colonisation is still broken - don't bother with it until FDev explain how it's suppose to work.
 

regdc

R
Paul_Crowther said:
Hi folks,

We are aware that there were some issues with facilities and System Colonisation economics during the weekend. This was an error and not an intentional change and has been reverted. We are committed to looking at improvements and potential changes to the way facilities and the economy works in regards to System Colonisation, as well as how we can improve documentation. Where possible we will endeavor to share economic and facility changes in update notes.

We thank you for your continued patience and feedback during the System Colonisation beta.
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Hi Paul,

Thanks a lot for the update.

I went live with a new Primary Port last night/early hours of this morning, and it was a Colony Commercial Outpost around an Ice Planet.

What I got was an Industrial Outpost :(

I did NOT want an Industrial Outpost!!

Now, I have nothing against Industrial Outposts, indeed I quite like them, but if I had wanted an Industrial Outpost, I would have picked one as the Primary Port, not a Colony :)

My goal was to give myself lots of flexibility to develop the planet and its orbital slots.

Are there any plans to fix this sort of thing?

I am quite aware we are still in beta!

If Ice Planets only produce Industrial Ports, there are going to be millions of Industrial Outposts everywhere!!

While I think the idea of the planet affecting the economy of the orbital port makes some sense, it should not overpower things and force all ports around that type of planet into a single paradigm.

If you think about it, ELW worlds should possibly have some influence on the orbiting economy, especially as the ELW word has no planetary slots at all.

However, the same logic should not apply to Ice Planets causing all orbiting stations to be Industrial (see above) because you should be able to build Industrial Outposts and Planetary Settlements any where, just as you can in real life.

Ditto for Refineries. They should not be predicated on a particular planetary type.

Extraction economies make sense based upon the planet as they need the raw materials from that planet.

However, you can honestly build a Refinery or Industry facility anywhere on Earth as long as you do not mind shipping the raw materials there that it depends on.

The same should hold true in ED.

I have colonised several nice systems recently, but I am holding off on developing them until I know how all this works, and I can develop new systems with confidence.

My first system is a bit of a disaster, as some facilities work fine, while others, such as the Planetary Outpost, do nothing even after several weeks.

This is very frustrating, and I am sure I am not alone.

In another system, I have one outpost, the Primary Port, and I had to put it around the Earth Like World (ELW), which filled the only slot available. It is part of a binary pair of planets.

I put a Colony there and it is still there. I was hoping the planet might affect it and turn it into an Agriculture Outpost. There is no additional slot around that planet, but the neighbouring binary planet also has a single orbital slot.

Does the binary planet slot affect its neighbour?

Can I put a Space Farm there to turn the colony outpost in the neighbouring ELW into an Agriculture outpost?

Or is that a waste of my time?

The April 3rd change implied that my ELW would affect the orbiting colony outpost, or have I missed the boat and I am stuck because the ELW only has one slot and I have been forced to fill it with the Primary Port, and the 3rd April change only takes affect once ANOTHER change is made to that slot?

Sorry for all the questions, but I, like so many, have put a LOT of effort into Trailblazers, and in many ways it is great, but it is really hard to work in an information vacuum and see your efforts turn to dust.

Thanks a lot for your work, but I would really like to see the following:

1. Allow binary planets to be treated as single economic slot, not two economic slots
2. Reverse or severely reduce the effect of the 3rd April change to give player-architects agency to shape their solar systems slot by slot rather than letting planet type decide everything
3. Provide more ingame documentation, with actual examples, of how star system economies can be developed after the primary port is created
4. Document how space and ground installations and hubs interact and shape both the slot economy and the star system economy
5. Provide a means for the architect to adjust and evolve orbital economies around Non-Landable planets
6. Give players the ability to select the Primary Port location for the first station
7. Give players the ability to have a planet-based Primary Port, such as you see enroute to Colonia
8. Increased the colonisation limit from 15 LY to say 25-30 LY. The 15 LY limit seems arbitrary and unrealistic in the context of the game where only tiny ships have a jump range of less than 15 LY

Thanks for reading this, sorry it is so long!!
 

Mr T

Mr T
regdc said:
Hi Paul,

Thanks a lot for the update.

I went live with a new Primary Port last night/early hours of this morning, and it was a Colony Commercial Outpost around an Ice Planet.

What I got was an Industrial Outpost :(

I did NOT want an Industrial Outpost!!

Now, I have nothing against Industrial Outposts, indeed I quite like them, but if I had wanted an Industrial Outpost, I would have picked one as the Primary Port, not a Colony :)

My goal was to give myself lots of flexibility to develop the planet and its orbital slots.

Are there any plans to fix this sort of thing?

I am quite aware we are still in beta!

If Ice Planets only produce Industrial Ports, there are going to be millions of Industrial Outposts everywhere!!

While I think the idea of the planet affecting the economy of the orbital port makes some sense, it should not overpower things and force all ports around that type of planet into a single paradigm.

If you think about it, ELW worlds should possibly have some influence on the orbiting economy, especially as the ELW word has no planetary slots at all.

However, the same logic should not apply to Ice Planets causing all orbiting stations to be Industrial (see above) because you should be able to build Industrial Outposts and Planetary Settlements any where, just as you can in real life.

Ditto for Refineries. They should not be predicated on a particular planetary type.

Extraction economies make sense based upon the planet as they need the raw materials from that planet.

However, you can honestly build a Refinery or Industry facility anywhere on Earth as long as you do not mind shipping the raw materials there that it depends on.

The same should hold true in ED.

I have colonised several nice systems recently, but I am holding off on developing them until I know how all this works, and I can develop new systems with confidence.
Click to expand...
I would hold fire for now as changes are afoot:

Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

Thank you for ruining all our efforts since the beginning of colonization by imposing economies on us because of planet types. Everything that's been done in a little over a month is good for the trash. Now it's going to be difficult to have stations other than industrial ones, given the number...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
 

Freyar

Freyar
Freyar said:
Overview of Trailblazers Experience
(Week 5)

Current Progress and Objectives
To better contextualize where I am.


I ended up not spending all that much time focused on the Trailblazer's update. Between work responsibilities and my motivation to complete these primary ports tanking, I'm having a hard time wanting to log in. The third primary port I've been working on has basically gone stagnant for a week (but should be completed today), and I still can't see any movement on BGS or economies with my stations.

Frustration Heading Towards Apathy

I am frustrated that Frontier seems to be not commenting on these issues we have. Last I heard was "We're looking at expanding influence for economies on stations" which is great, but.. what am I supposed to do with what I have now?

Every single gameplay loop I've been trying to engage with, save for the claims process and building that initial port, is broken.
  • I can't properly plan and manage my systems and starport economies.
  • I can't build a planetary port because those markets are entirely bugged (or at least Frontier can't comment if the behavior is intentional).
  • I can't influence the minor factions in my systems while it's a good time to do so (low pop = easier manipulation) because the Background Simulation has now been halted for three weeks.
  • There's still no documentation on how this is supposed to work, so we have to test, in production, with permanent changes to the bubble.
​
All these problems are highly discouraging me from developing these systems more. Trailblazers released five and a half weeks ago (February 26th). The broken experiences I've had for three weeks since my first primary port was completed has not improved, even though we're on "Update 2" for Trailblazers.

I'm hearing some discussion related to the Thursday Tick™ not completing on time and claims release problems, but nothing on process or economy problems.

When Frontier said this was a "Live Beta" and that it was "feature complete", that "it won't mechanically change", and all that was to be changed were balance related things, it didn't make much sense. Sure a lot of the difficulties we're seeing are related to traffic such as the explosion in growth of the bubble, etc. But core systems if this update could have caught a big part of these moment-to-moment issues like economy seperate from the production environment. Hell, Frontier had a test for the Corsair and that's a ship in comparison to such a wide-reaching system.

This reminds me of the frustrations that led to the BEYOND season and the silence we had after Odyssey. Communication was the biggest thing, and I know community teams and all aren't able to say anything about it unless Frontier actually wants to say it (I love the community team, and appreciate the difficulty of their position), so this a business-level problem that keeps coming back over and over. This is the reason I stopped playing Elite for a year or two. New feature comes out, it's broken and has broken other features. This idea of expansion is cool.. but it's being squandered in favor of having released too early... for.. what reason?

Notice how this wasn't posted right after Thursday's tick? Yeah, that's because I forgot, which tells me apathy is settling in.
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An update to this. Apparently the BGS progressed after Thursday's tick. Glad I caught it early enough to still be able to potentially win the election, so that small win has helped pull me away from that apathy cliff.

A total of 3 weeks of BGS stagnation but at least it's moving again.
 

_Flin_

_Flin_
Freyar said:
An update to this. Apparently the BGS progressed after Thursday's tick. Glad I caught it early enough to still be able to potentially win the election, so that small win has helped pull me away from that apathy cliff.

A total of 3 weeks of BGS stagnation but at least it's moving again.
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Can't confirm.

It's Monday now and maybe one of our numerous conflicts progressed a day since Thursday.
 

Squedie

S
Definitely not a popular opinion here, but I'll give it a go...

I don't expect Fdev (or any other dev, in any other game) to give me polished documentation. I don't expect Fdev to thoroughly explain things to me at all, not even the Security/Wealth/other system stats effect on my colony or the "Max Population" concept (like are we going to get passive population changes from Orbis/planetary port once Standard Of Living hits some threshold?).

For me colonization is a long run affair, I don't mind hauling, and it's fun to speculate/figure that out.

And it's not like we were getting completely defunct systems before the "Wednesday" influence change.
My first colony is far from perfect, but the asteroid base is amazing and I was super hyped when my High-Tech Coriolis got ALL services, 24 ships in shipyard and some 90% of outfitting modules after my colony hit Development Level 65.

As someone wiser already mentioned here, part of the mess we have now comes from the "primary port" location. The claim process is explained in the Pilot's handbook but we had to figure out what the little "white flag" goes for. Although this happened within hours of colonisation launch, it still cannot be regarded as "common knowledge". The pre-determined position of primary port should be clearly stated in the interface and in the Pilot's Handbook.

The "local body only" concept is well explained in the Pilot's handbook, and mates from my squadron were putting this to use on week one. When I contacted support why it is not always working as intended (something we now know as infamous "Slot0 issue", which is btw not necessarily the case), I got clear answer: "it's a known bug, but no ETA of solution for now".

The same goes for the "3 commodities" problem for planetary outposts/ports - a known bug.

I patiently waited for (and still do) for fixes to all of that and retroactive update to existing colonies.

Plus maybe an extra planet construction slot for all who built Orbis around a non-landable to make up for their (sometimes wasted) effort, be it automatic or with support ticket.

And that's it.

What I got on Wednesday was a complete mess with arbitrary economies derived from planet type and my already working economies re-rolled and ruined just by adding seemingly irrelevant installations...

Fdev, please, your original concept is really OK...
 

Hibiki54

Hibiki54
See this FDev? 4 weeks later, my Orbis station "Creamer Town" is still not active. The T1 surface outpost showed in screen is active but no influence from any of the markets. I understand you made changes on the back-end, so I need Creamer Town deployed so I can see if any of those markets influence it. If not, I need it moved as indicated.
Screenshot_0006.jpg

/Paul_Crowther
 

kepler68

kepler68
Glad to hear you guys are on this, phew! I love the idea of having a base influence per planet to help un-screw some poorly placed ports (And make ELWs/other exotic worlds more worth it!), but it seems like you got the numbers mixed up haha!
 

Freyar

Freyar
_Flin_ said:
Can't confirm.

It's Monday now and maybe one of our numerous conflicts progressed a day since Thursday.
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I didn't see a progression update on my current Election conflict, I chalked it up to just the time that evaluation is calculated. I'll check it later tonight.
 

Desirsar

Desirsar
Xenia_K said:
the basic Idea to use planetary specs to give (even with a 1.15 Inf) orphaned markets an economy is fine - there is just the "If"-clause missing - if is landable AND has slots -> don´t apply!
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Only just now noticed this suggestion, but I want a toggle button. Whichever way it's pressed at weekly maintenance is how it stays for a week. If people want the planetary effect with installations, go for it.
 

Esplodin

Esplodin
Paul_Crowther said:
Some markets may take longer to be reverted. We anticipate all of these should be complete in a maximum of two weeks.
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Both of the systems I've colonized have spaceports that are yet to come online, even after multiple server ticks. HIP 13715 (Pirate system that's military with no military built) and Col 285 Sector BE-A b14-2. Will this change fix this, as well as all the orbital platforms that are hanging around?
 
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