"Development Level >>"? Figuring out what all these numbers do.

[KKomrade Sylas]

The circumstances in which the green/red bars show up is a bit weird to begin with and I don't think we ever completely pinned that down. It's not impossible that it measures them in some way relative to the system economy rather than the station economy, even if the underyling tonnage number is identical, for example.

When I was testing building Agricultural settlements, I did not see any significant effects on the Ind->Agri outputs of my Ind outpost which is isolated from weak links when measuring numbers, though I didn't think to check the green/red status.

Perhaps it is then just something that affects the green/red status and not the numbers as you say. If that's the case then it's probably done so people don't get OP BGS trading opportunities between two stations that sell to each other in the same system?

I just checked my Extraction T1 Surface Outpost, which has pretty colossal supply numbers compared to the Coriolis (Say, selling stuff with 5 million supply) and yet the same thing is observed here with those commoities consumed by Agri and Tourism being on red bars or no bars at all with lowered supply (Namely Palladium, Silver and Biowaste) while its demand for Agri commodities is also diminished. I do have to say that previously, when the whole system was exclusively extraction, literally every commodity on both pages was at a healthy green.

If it has to do with the supply of stuff from the Agri/Tourism station I imagine those numbers make a difference given the supply is higher per the station population, and settlemens always sell stuff on like 50 supply so they can't make a big difference on their own other than the weak links.

This is a picture of the demand in the planetary outpost, seems like the prices are also bad

 

[Kira Goto]

Perhaps it is then just something that affects the green/red status and not the numbers as you say. If that's the case then it's probably done so people don't get OP BGS trading opportunities between two stations that sell to each other in the same system?

I just checked my Extraction T1 Surface Outpost, which has pretty colossal supply numbers compared to the Coriolis (Say, selling stuff with 5 million supply) and yet the same thing is observed here with those commoities consumed by Agri and Tourism being on red bars or no bars at all with lowered supply (Namely Palladium, Silver and Biowaste) while its demand for Agri commodities is also diminished. I do have to say that previously, when the whole system was exclusively extraction, literally every commodity on both pages was at a healthy green.

If it has to do with the supply of stuff from the Agri/Tourism station I imagine those numbers make a difference given the supply is higher per the station population, and settlemens always sell stuff on like 50 supply so they can't make a big difference on their own other than the weak links.

This is a picture of the demand in the planetary outpost, seems like the prices are also bad

View attachment 432761

The only reason an agri/tourism station elsewhere in the system should have any impact on the demand/supply of another station is if it has a construction or two providing those aspects, which create a weak link to the planetary station. (Unless you built two same tier ports on/around the same planet, in which case it seems one may send links to the rest of the system, though I'm not completely familiar with the whats and ifs of that situation)

Should because we don't fully know what does and doesn't work differently in colonization systems yet (if we ever will), at least to my understanding we don't.

... and planetary ports seem to be fairly generous when it comes to their supply and/or demand, more so than orbital T2 ports are. Why exactly I'm not sure (probably station population, if so bit meh that the port which requires more effort/time to build gives less commodities, not that it's highly relevant with the current number), but that's how it is.

 

[KKomrade Sylas]

The only reason an agri/tourism station elsewhere in the system should have any impact on the demand/supply of another station is if it has a construction or two providing those aspects, which create a weak link to the planetary station. (Unless you built two same tier ports on/around the same planet, in which case it seems one may send links to the rest of the system, though I'm not completely familiar with the whats and ifs of that situation)

Yeah, what happened here is that the Agri/Tourism Coriolis is completely isolated, though. It orbits a water world which is where it gets its economies, there are no weak/strong links supporting those two economies. No agri settlements, hubs or installations anywhere and same for tourism. The other Coriolis and T1 port are on a diferent body.

... and planetary ports seem to be fairly generous when it comes to their supply and/or demand, more so than orbital T2 ports are. Why exactly I'm not sure (probably station population, if so bit meh that the port which requires more effort/time to build gives less commodities, not that it's highly relevant with the current number), but that's how it is.

It seems to be because of population, yes. My system's population grew a lot more with the T1 port than it ever did with the lone HMC Coriolis.

I agree it's a bit silly but I don't entirely mind since the supply is always more than enough for pretty much anything. I mean, between 50k supply and 4 million, neither of them are going to run out for me

 

[PilotB]

You can't fully control the red/green supply bars. I don't think those are linked to any links but they do reroll and change over time. This means when you build stuff in the system and it rebuilds the market it'll roll you up a new set. Even if you don't build anything and barely use the system they'll still vary.

Red is easy to cause. Run the market down to close to empty and the market will go from high supply to low supply prices and regenerate slower.
Green bar i've got no idea if a player can cause it so you usually just have to wait for the market to decide to change on it's own.

 

[Cymoril]

I've found a white star system that has 3 4-slots on rocky planets (all have bios), 5 3-slots on rocky planets (all have bios) and 2 6-slots on HMC planets (both have Geos). There are a couple of Gas giants slots and an asteroid slot as well as a load of 2 and 1 slots (all rocky). In the last system I colonised, I had already built quite a few bases and installations and due to sod's law, hardly any of the bases corresponded to the planetary influences introduced in the update. As I also made the system a general mix of Agriculture, Refinery, Industrial etc, I lost a few commodities... notably semiconductors and insulation membranes.

For this new system I want to focus on refinery so I plan to put a Coriolis above 1 4-slot and planetary port on another together with refineries to try and get a workable supply chain to include insulating membranes, CMMs etc. Would 4 refineries be enough to produce IMs and 3 refineries planetside for CMMs. Iwon't be putting any industrial or high tech in the system although I would like to make it high security and I'm a little concerned the security might bleed the IMs or is that just Military? I had thought of putting some agriculture in the system too. AFAIK, that shouldn't interfere with the refinery or am I wrong?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

For this new system I want to focus on refinery so I plan to put a Coriolis above 1 4-slot and planetary port on another together with refineries to try and get a workable supply chain to include insulating membranes, CMMs etc. Would 4 refineries be enough to produce IMs and 3 refineries planetside for CMMs. Iwon't be putting any industrial or high tech in the system although I would like to make it high security and I'm a little concerned the security might bleed the IMs or is that just Military? I had thought of putting some agriculture in the system too. AFAIK, that shouldn't interfere with the refinery or am I wrong?

A single rocky world without geo or bio will produce plenty of IMs and CMMs if you build a Colony surface port and a Colony orbital port with no need for extra Refinery hubs at all (add them later if you need even more cargo, sure, but you probably won't need them)

Agriculture won't interfere with a refinery in terms of affecting refinery exports (it will mess with its imports a bit). This is a case where you might want to avoid building Refinery hubs so that the refinery weak links didn't mess with your Agriculture, though.

Security doesn't affect refinery production, it's just that most of the ways to increase security also generate Military links which will (especially for fragile exports like Insulating Membrane). If you stick to things like Government Installations and similar you'll not have a problem; again, avoiding building Refinery hubs and just using the planetary economy influence will mean you don't have as much negative security to counteract, too.

 

[Cymoril]

A single rocky world without geo or bio will produce plenty of IMs and CMMs if you build a Colony surface port and a Colony orbital port with no need for extra Refinery hubs at all (add them later if you need even more cargo, sure, but you probably won't need them)

Agriculture won't interfere with a refinery in terms of affecting refinery exports (it will mess with its imports a bit). This is a case where you might want to avoid building Refinery hubs so that the refinery weak links didn't mess with your Agriculture, though.

Security doesn't affect refinery production, it's just that most of the ways to increase security also generate Military links which will (especially for fragile exports like Insulating Membrane). If you stick to things like Government Installations and similar you'll not have a problem; again, avoiding building Refinery hubs and just using the planetary economy influence will mean you don't have as much negative security to counteract, too.

Thank you, very valuable advice. There are a couple of Rocky planets without bios but they only have 1 slot each. From what you are saying, I would be better installing the colony space and planetary stations there rather than the 4 slots with bios? That's quite an eye opener. I'll focus on government and security stations without military influence to get the security rating up.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Bios will include the Terraforming economy, which consumes Polymers, Semiconductors, Superconductors, Synthetic Fabrics and Surface Stabilisers of the Refinery outputs.

Even adding three Refinery hubs won't guarantee exports of them, though you might well get lucky.

So using the 1 slot worlds to just have a single-economy surface+orbital station will be far more efficient in terms of hauling and guarantee production

(Though the 4 slot worlds will - because of the hubs - end up with more production of the things Terraforming doesn't export, if you fully build up the hubs)

 

[KKomrade Sylas]

Security doesn't affect refinery production, it's just that most of the ways to increase security also generate Military links which will (especially for fragile exports like Insulating Membrane). If you stick to things like Government Installations and similar you'll not have a problem; again, avoiding building Refinery hubs and just using the planetary economy influence will mean you don't have as much negative security to counteract, too.

Adding to this is that it's really easy to have high security. 10-12 points is enough.

Funnily enough in my system I needed 11 points to get high security, with 10 not being enough. I built a Coriolis, which technically dropped my security points to 9, but the high security status stayed.

Security is not necessary. Even at low security you are rarely if ever interdicted, and you might want to keep it low security to keep interstellar factors in the system as well as the CNB (I have no idea how security levels interact with Haz Res sites).

But on the other hand, high security looks pretty nice if you care about it. There will be lots of NPC's in supercruise, and lots of system security green spots on your radar. It also increases the security traffic around stations and fleet carriers. I used to have basically 2 vipers and 2 eagles roaming my carrier with low security. Now it's 4 and 4, and sometimes it's 4 anacondas. Lots of 3-way wings of anacondas and pythons roaming the system in supercruise too.

To me it makes the system feel more lively and more like a bubble system rather than a backwater frontier colony system, so I try to go for high security anywhere.

Because you need so little, you can get it with just comms and government installations. No awful military weak/strong links needed. If you have enough orbital spots that is

 

[PilotB]

I'm not really sure security matters too much for colonies. Even at high you're still going to be randomly interdicted and the security response is still going to be too slow to matter. At the opposite end anarchy you're still going to do most of your runs without being interdicted and the contruction sites have security provided by brewer no matter the system security.

Keep it high enough that it lets you keep building and you're fine. It's a bit like standard of living sure it boosts pop but markets are so big anyway that you don't really need any boosts so just keep it high enough.

If you're actually running BGS then you might want security for the slider but it feels like most people just use their colonies as supply points.

 

[_Flin_]

Short update on population growth:
My Orbis around a water world ( https://inara.cz/elite/station/826199/ check it out if you need a pretty Fleet Carrier resupply point for colonizing the upper Orion arm; all refinery commodities available in system, plus some agri and water) was built on June 8th. Since June 10th i have been getting constant system population increases of 26 million per population tick (which is usually somewhere at around 8 p.m. UTC; if it doesn't happen, there will usually be multiple ticks at once at some point in time later). In the meantime i built government, security station, L agri settlement, space farm, t1 planetary port, all around or on other planets. Furthermore i built a tourist installation very early on around the same planet.

This makes 13 ticks with roughly 26m per tick. The latest ticks were 26.25m, the first ticks closer to 26m.

This gives a few insights:

• The numbers for wealth, development and standard of living seem to have a negligible impact on population growth, if any. I assume the additional .25m to come from outpost and T1 port.
• .25m for T1 port and T1 outpost are in line with expectations. There is apparently no "water world bonus", or "high pop bonus" or any other such thing. It appears to me that the population and population growth is defined by the port itself. (an interesting test case would be several T3s on different planets and comparing their population; but I wont test THAT)
• If these numbers have any impact on population growth, it isn't measurable at the levels the system is at ( Current values: Security 8, Tech Level 24, Wealth 53, SoL 35, Development 53).
• The number of constant high value ticks for a T3 Orbis around a waterworld is now 13. This is surprising, i expected them to diminish after 10 ticks
• The large increases started on tick 3 after completion. There was no weekly maintenance involved between completion and first large tick.
• I also put the system into the Boom state, in the hope of maxing out the communicated initial large population gain. This also had no noticeable effect.

EDIT: Update: Today's pop tick saw the first diminishing after 13 full ticks, with 12.3 million to 366.7 million.

 

[Astroced]

Hello Commanders. I have a completed T1 planetary port, with its surface facilities. I have a good economy and good quantities of materials. Now if I build a Coriolis on the orbital location above. How will the strong link between T1 and the Coriolis be made? The population should increase. And will the quantity of products from T1 decrease to be distributed with the Coriolis? Will it increase if the population increases? Could someone explain to me please.

 

[Kira Goto]

Hello Commanders. I have a completed T1 planetary port, with its surface facilities. I have a good economy and good quantities of materials. Now if I build a Coriolis on the orbital location above. How will the strong link between T1 and the Coriolis be made? The population should increase. And will the quantity of products from T1 decrease to be distributed with the Coriolis? Will it increase if the population increases? Could someone explain to me please.

The population of the T1 surface and orbital T2 port should be separate. As for the strong link passed on it should be equivalent to that of the planetary’s economy strength (eg a surface port supported by 4 refineries in a pristine system will pass on refinery economy of 4.8 proportion), unless planetary economy already provides a baseline to the facilities present [may only applicable if it is a Colony type port], in which case it’s a little more complicated.

 

[_Flin_]

How will the strong link between T1 and the Coriolis be made? The population should increase. And will the quantity of products from T1 decrease to be distributed with the Coriolis? Will it increase if the population increases?

From my experience:

• planetary strong links will stay, and will be passed on to the Coriolis.
• weak links will stay
• orbital strong links will go to the Coriolis instead
• population will be separate, no change there. Neither negative, nor positive

Source:
Planetary T1:
https://inara.cz/elite/station/808366/

Coriolis above:

Victoria Wolf Steel in Wregoe KP-E c25-11 - station | Elite:Dangerous | INARA

The companion site for Elite:Dangerous with the game database, market data, trade routes, outfitting, engineers, blueprints, crafting, Thargoid war, squadrons, logbooks, galleries, galaxy information and much more...

inara.cz

When comparing those two stations, there is one thing i do not understand: the planetary has 80% extraction less. This is a HMC planet with a ring, and two M extraction settlements somewhere else....

So it seems as if the ring economy override/bonus only counts for one port, the higher one. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[PilotB]

hen comparing those two stations, there is one thing i do not understand:

You get the effect of a strong link from the surface port to the orbital port for each body economy in addition to the links that the surface port has.
t1 surface port 0.4. Rings boost extraction 0.4. There's your 0.8 extraction boost that's not displayed because it's not a true link it's a redirected effect.

Edit: It's mostly a UI problem. They're still not showing all the effects and the breakdowns properly. They went with a simplistic view and them made a complex layered system they're struggling to shove into 1 box in a sane way.

 

[KKomrade Sylas]

Is there any known way to have Material Traders or Tech Brokers in Colonised systems?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Is there any known way to have Material Traders or Tech Brokers in Colonised systems?

A Spansh search of station services at a distance >200 LY from Sol suggests that there's no way to obtain either.

 

[Doctor Dread]

... if you build a Colony surface port and a Colony orbital port ...

Sir Ian, just to make sure: this means choosing a Civilian surface / orbital?

 

[PilotB]

Sir Ian, just to make sure: this means choosing a Civilian surface / orbital?

Any port that has Colony listed as it's economy type regardless of the name will get the colony replaced with what the body provides. The name isn't important the Civilian ones are colony but so are the t3 ports. The ones that come with an economy that's not colony will not get their economy changed by the body.

 

[Cymoril]

Am I right in thinking that System Economy Influence doesn't effect weak links into another stations economy and that only Facility economy stations generate the links?