Release V3 of the Colonization construction spreadsheet is now available!

[nepomuk]

Great sheet.

I'm confused on the quantities - I think you sheet for an 'Industrial Outpost' is showing what the UI showed me when I picked that type of outpost to build but the actually values once I started changed, most went up by a few, some by a lot but Aluminium went down by 30!
I actually made a simple doc sheet with all the quantities based on the initial selection UI, but had to change them all once I started building and looked again in the system view for outpost

Actual total units required to build it was: 21,777 ( not the 18,987 )

Did anyone else notice this ? ( different quantities in the selection UI vs what's actually required when you accept it ?

Yes, many people were surprised at first. But there is probably a tolerance of around 2% by which the quantities can shift up or down. I don't know that exactly either.
You'll have to have a look at the colonization thread or ask again there.

News & Bulletins

forums.frontier.co.uk

System Colonization Assistance Megathread

Attempting to expand out to COL 285 Sector AO-U B18-3, daisy-chaining off of others to venture deeper into the black. I'll be honest, I made a mistake picking an Apollo Coriolis when I don't own a carrier. I wanted a place with full services like material trading and didn't do my research on...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[DaftMav]

Actual total units required to build it was: 21,777 ( not the 18,987 )

Did anyone else notice this ? ( different quantities in the selection UI vs what's actually required when you accept it ?

It's mentioned on the changelog tab but it's a bit hidden at the bottom I guess, maybe I should add a ReadMe tab or Info or something specifically for colonization quirks... but yes while the spreadsheet uses the amounts shown in the build menu in-game, all amounts are variable:

• Your first station (while claiming) won't cost any construction points, but it will require more commodities:
  (rougly +16% for Outpost, +33% for T2 Station, +20% for T3 Station)
  Colony tabs show this automatically (on the first construction), but on cargo hauling tab you have to add it manually.
• All commodities amounts have a small % of RNG applied so amounts will always be a little off. Sometimes it even goes up or down by 1 while delivering...

That's why you should only take those numbers as a rough indication. And you can adjust the % offset at the bottom of the Cargo Hauling tab, but to get exact numbers I'd recommend using the OCR snapshot method.

Sadly Frontier hasn't learned after 10+ years that adding RNG to certain gameplay mechanics is only going to be really annoying for players...

 

[DaftMav]

Does that mean you can't place a surface tourism settlement until you've placed an orbital one? Or the other way round?

The Tourist Settlements require a satellite to be build first. And the Orbital Tourist Installation requires a settlement to be built first (therefore also requiring the satellite before that).

 

[Frankymole]

The Tourist Settlements require a satellite to be build first. And the Orbital Tourist Installation requires a settlement to be built first (therefore also requiring the satellite before that).

Think I'll go agricultural for now

 

[Erratic Spawn]

I have finally finished working on v3 of my Colonization construction spreadsheet. Lots of changes and improvements so it's a new spreadsheet:

Use this link to 'make a copy' of the spreadsheet.

v3 Changes / New features:

• Construction Points reflect the increased costs as you build more stations.
• There are now two checkboxes to mark active builds & completed builds (correctly applies points cost/reward).
• Added Layout selection with observed population/score and reported bugs.
• There are now eight Colony planning tabs.
• New tab: Changelog, has a bunch of info and links, it will also show if there's a new version of the sheet.
• New tab: Settings, allows you to customize various things that are used on other tabs.
• New tab: Cargo Hauling, which can be used with all your colony tabs;
  • Shows active constructions and their required amounts for checked active builds on the selected colony.
  • Can also use an OCR snapshot for exact amounts (see settings tab) which will be auto-sorted to in-game categories.
  • Ardent & Inara commodity search links are generated if you enter the system name on the colony tab.

There are a few help/documentation screenshots on some of the changes and features. I've added a short clip that shows the OCR snapshot tool in action. Details about that tool can be found on the settings page.

Call for help: report observed population & score changes!
It's clear that FDev is not going to give us more details so we're going to have to figure things out ourselves. Every construction adds a bit of population and/or score but with 109 layouts we don't have all the data yet. Use this google form to report observed population & score changes, you can also report layout-specific bugs.

The spreadsheet takes layouts data from an external sheet, so as we get more reports I can update that and the updated data will show up for everyone without requiring people to make another new copy. (The changelog tab also takes from the external sheet so I can update info there as well.)

Special thanks to CMDR Mechan for suggesting some of the changes, and many CMDRs on the Canonn discord for figuring out how a lot of the colonization aspects work.

Thanks a lot for this, just an amazing tool.
One thing I noticed, once I entered my values it showed -2 T2 points because of the prime Coriolis (which causes -3 T2), but the game actually ignores the deduction from the prime station, so that in fact I have +1 T2 points. It does acknowledge the +1 T3 though from the prime station.

 

[DaftMav]

One thing I noticed, once I entered my values it showed -2 T2 points because of the prime Coriolis (which causes -3 T2), but the game actually ignores the deduction from the prime station, so that in fact I have +1 T2 points. It does acknowledge the +1 T3 though from the prime station.

I can't reproduce this so are you actually using row 5 for the primary station? That's the first row for constructions and it's calculated differently than the other rows because that's where the prime station goes. It shouldn't show any negative points on that row, only point rewards (when 'build done' is checked).

 

[CMDR Ecaep]

Thanks for this great tool!

A question on the stats page, which also is reflected on the colony page when selected:
The facilities "Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 S" and "Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 M" both claim to cost a tier 2 build point and grant a tier 3 point. Is this correct? I thought all tier 1 facilities had no build point cost, and granted a single tier 2 build point.

Structure	Max Pad	Dependencies	T2	T3
Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 S	M	Installation - Satellite	-1	1
Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 M	L	Installation - Satellite	-1	1

 

[DaftMav]

The facilities "Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 S" and "Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 M" both claim to cost a tier 2 build point and grant a tier 3 point. Is this correct? I thought all tier 1 facilities had no build point cost, and granted a single tier 2 build point.

Structure	Max Pad	Dependencies	T2	T3
Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 S	M	Installation - Satellite	-1	1
Surface - Settlement - Tourism T1 M	L	Installation - Satellite	-1	1

I'll just copy/paste my answer from the reddit post as someone asked this there as well (except about the Research ones which have the same points cost/reward):

Those really do cost 1 T2 point because they award a T3 point, those two types (Tourism and Research) are different from the other settlements.

I think FDev did that because the research structures increases the Tech level quite a bit. Which determines what services are available at stations like universal carthographics and shipyard etc. so Tech is worth stacking up on. (FDev support has mentioned this in support tickets, apparently it's around 35~40 tech level to get all services unlocked).

It does make we wonder why the tourism structures are more costly as well... (plus those have the added prerequisite of a Satellite on top). Perhaps having a Tourism economy is worth more in some way? In fact all the possible constructions that have Tourism influence have a T2 cost of 1, there are no free to build options and it's the only economy type that has this.

 

[Monosodium]

The spreadsheet claims that the T2 L Minerva layout for the military settlement turns into the T1 M Enyo layout when built. Do we know if the security and system points provided are affected?

 

[DaftMav]

The spreadsheet claims that the T2 L Minerva layout for the military settlement turns into the T1 M Enyo layout when built. Do we know if the security and system points provided are affected?

No, I think I got that report from the issue tracker and it didn't have any other info. But as we can't actually see our total stats in-game there's no way of confirming with 100% certainty anyway.
Although we could see it perhaps through the score and population increase as the Tier 2 Large settlements give more than the Tier 1 settlements. But no one has reported stats on those yet so... feel free to test it out and please report your findings.

 

[Monosodium]

No, I think I got that report from the issue tracker and it didn't have any other info. But as we can't actually see our total stats in-game there's no way of confirming with 100% certainty anyway.
Although we could see it perhaps through the score and population increase as the Tier 2 Large settlements give more than the Tier 1 settlements. But no one has reported stats on those yet so... feel free to test it out and please report your findings.

Ah, darn. Well thanks for the quick response and the spreadsheet. Your spreadsheet has been incredibly helpful for keeping track of everything in my system.

 

[Erratic Spawn]

I can't reproduce this so are you actually using row 5 for the primary station? That's the first row for constructions and it's calculated differently than the other rows because that's where the prime station goes. It shouldn't show any negative points on that row, only point rewards (when 'build done' is checked).

Sorry, my mistake. I've entered my bodies/slots in column 4 (Body) as they are in the system map and my prime station ended up in row 83. Didn't realise that "initial construction" meant the very first station.

 

[scott429]

i am having difficulties with the table pasting into the settings resource list. its pasting every other

resource and leaving the other ones blacked out is there a fix to this

 

[DaftMav]

i am having difficulties with the table pasting into the settings resource list. its pasting every other and leaving the other ones blacked out is there a fix to this

It looks like you're maybe copy/pasting from a different spreadsheet or table with background colors? Because I do see values in the darker rows. You could use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste, which would paste it without the styling and insert values only. Or after pasting, use the little menu that pop-ups at the bottom right corner (visible in your screenshot) to change it to values only.

 

[DazVader2]

You can just right-click the carrier column on the cargo hauling tab and add columns to the right for multiple carriers. The sum formula in the "Still Needed" column will just automatically include newly added columns that way. (if the "still needed" amount goes into the negative it gets a grey font color, indicating you have more than needed)

Is there a dummies guide to using this excellent spreadsheet?

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Is there a dummies guide to using this excellent spreadsheet?

Great sheet, but I need at least 12 point fonts to read anything nowadays.

 

[DaftMav]

NOTE: A small error got in with 3.2, so spreadsheet has been updated too now, but in case people want to manually fix it:
Copy/paste the following formula in cell K2 on every Colony tab: =COUNTIF($D5:D,"<>")

Spreadsheet updated to v3.2:

• Updated Stats on facilities that were changed in the recent game update.
• System name and available construction slots in the system can now be added on the settings tab.
• Population is now shown as a min-max range.
• Observed influence column added (not enough data to actually calculate economy yet, reports are needed)
• New tab: ReadMe (will be updated from an external sheet)
  • Shows colonization details you should know, how to report data and links to other useful community tools.
• Added counters for built support facilities adding T2/T3 points, this does not count stations. (These counters are collapsed by default above column J)
• Increased row count on Colony tabs to 500

You will need to make a new copy of the spreadsheet this time, it's the same link: Colonization Spreadsheet v3.2
How to migrate data over: see this comment.

On the Updated Stats: Most stats changes were +1 Development to a lot of facilities, though some of the medium and large settlements got slightly better stats as well. The L Tourism settlement got worse with an additional reduction in Security though. Also notable is the Criminal Outpost which now has Contraband as facility economy, though unsure if this actually changes things or simply wasn't shown in the UI before.

The added counters may be useful if you use other colonization tools from the community that are able to calculate & generate a plan for which facilities you'd need to support a certain amount of stations etc. These counters show the amount of supporting facilities that specifically add T2 or T3 construction points.

Thanks to everyone reporting their observed changes using the submission form, we still need a lot of score increases and of course the economic influences. A new EDMC plugin may help with that and they're linked on the new ReadMe tab, along with some more details on how and what to report.

 

[Frankymole]

Have you got a link to the new one?

 

[DaftMav]

Is there a dummies guide to using this excellent spreadsheet?

What do you need help with?
I suggest reading through the changelog and readme tabs, and have a look at the help/documentation screenshots (though I still need to update these for v3.2).

Then play around on the Colony1 tab to start planning a system. Use the dropdown menu in column D to add stations and other facilities and choose their layout just like in-game. Doing this will show various stats as you add more (total stats are sadly not shown in-game yet). You can use the checkboxes to mark a construction as "active build" or "build done" once completed.

Constructions that are marked as active, you can also find on the 'Cargo Hauling' tab with their estimated commodityty amounts (note there's a % variance in the amounts). You can use this tab to help keep track of commodity amounts needed for one or multiple constructions, perhaps to fill up a carrier. That said I think the EDMC plugin tracking deliveries might be easier to use for the delivering part (it's linked on the ReadMe tab).

Great sheet, but I need at least 12 point fonts to read anything nowadays.

I understand but at the same time it's getting very hard to keep it somewhat compact and manageable. But with v3.2 that I just posted most of the headers on the colony tabs have a slightly larger font size. Aside from that you can also always use the browser to resize/zoom everything (using ctrl + and - ).

Have you got a link to the new one?

It's the same link: Colonization Spreadsheet v3.2

 

[Frankymole]

It's the same link: Colonization Spreadsheet v3.2

Same as where - couldn't see it in the first or then-latest post (still can't)!
Is there a way to get our current systems' data across to a new copy?