Player Planet Bases - An Actual Purpose

[Suvi Anwar]

FTFY

I'm not against player bases per se, they're just very low on my priorities list.

They would only be a waste if nobody used the feature. They may be low on your priority list, that doesn't mean it is for anyone else. Lets face it, the current feature set in ED is pretty small. I can count on one hand the number of categories of things that players can do. At some point, tedium sets in after doing the same thing 200 times, and another 400 times, and another 300 times.

 

[[VR] Goooost]

I think orbital bases would make more sense. Megaship type things. On a planet surface there would be the issue that modifications to stellar forge could displace hundreds of player bases. Base spam could be an issue is certain circumstances. Building mechanics would need to be introduced. Without spacelegs it would be underwhelming.

 

[etien]

First I think this is a great idea; they should be persistent and destructible by other players, modular and generic enough so the network load would be spared. I see it more like an outpost camping place than a mansion, think the recent mars movie; of course tower defences are mandatory
I think we should be able to place them on planet or orbit; picking a cool spot would be really fun.
Point about load on a single system: just limit the max number of base per planet; I now this isnt perfect an breaks immersion but who cares. Or batch load them when we load the game, assuming max 100000 bases this isnt such a big file.
Destroyable is all the fun; obviously with rebuy cost and no lost of content like stored cargo. Base destroyed by griefer it is left burning ( noone can take the spot ); hangar still works to go out if the owner was parked there and logged out when the attack occured and with $$$ and a certain delay can be restored.
thargoids should be able to clean their planets if some idiots settles there

 

[MrFailfactory]

The Squadron Carrier ships (versions for individual players) are a much better idea than anything planetary.

If they added terrestrial bases/assets that were owned by players, aside from the previously-mentioned Stellar Forge complications, people would want a Hearthstone-like ability to return to their base. Otherwise, it becomes more of a liability than an asset, especially for those who are chronically bad at planning things out in advance.

A moveable Carrier that could provide storage (including Exploration data), while having the ability to dock/refuel/rearm 2 small ships, 1 medium, and 1 large, would be just about perfect, I think.

Riôt

 

[Chris Simon]

The chances of finding a small unmarked player depot on a random lone planet is remote at best. Even if you did randomly find one by chance (and the devs made them destructible) some basic defences is all you need.

.

Frontier says - there is an alien ruin in the game. 48 hours later it's found. Don't underestimate people. If someone posts a screenshot of his base with a patch of sky in the shot, I can bet there will be someone crazy enough to to triangulate their position just to ruin their day.

 

[obliterator]

- Making the bases and defence systems indestructible would obviously solve this issue. But it would arouse the question, why they are so tough ... (I could definitely live with this minor logical flaw, though.)

They'd be just as tough as any other non-player structure. You can't destroy any base, so it wouldn't be weird to be unable to destroy player bases.

 

[Cosmo]

It would be better to have a capital ship as a mobile base. The Fleet Carriers are supposed to be mobile bases. That's better than having a base stuck in one location.

A base on a planet or station would be interesting if players can claim a system.

 

[M00ka]

Who wants to stick to one little patch of dirt all the time. The longest I think I have called a specific station 'HOME' was about a week. Now that you can transfer ships and modules between stations, why restrict yourself to one very infintesible patch of space?

But hey, if that concept rocks your boat, go for it, I just hope that they are invisible to other players (looking at the childish, idiotic gankers out there who would be the only ones wanting to destroy another Commander's home/base)

 

[Snarfbuckle]

- If we add player bases they would require a support structure
- Oxygen / Food / Employees / Fuel / etc
- Not supporting the base should make it fail
- Failing to support a base removes ownership
- New player supplying a base should gain ownership
- Not supporting a base after a month should remove it (it's a pain to keep track of a gazillion little outposts people could spawn)
- Bases should be able to be attacked in open (and should be viewed as a serious crime unless in Anarchy space)

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I like the idea of a player owned base somewhere, as long as it doesn't interact with the BGS, it should be fine. I would also have them as permanent POIs for everyone to see. But if you don't have permission to go there, , if you enter the exclusion zone after 10 seconds or so you will be attacked by the base defences. Also they would need to be managed somehow. They should be indestructable like any other base.

 

[o2thaZ]

Its the same as all the other player ownership madness.
Your assets are in my galaxy (its shared), I don't want them there for reasons, I destroy them, you cry.
Could only work if the galaxy wasn't persistent and shared, but thankfully it is.

I really struggle why people like you are against something like personal bases.
Its beyond me. But i must be crazy.

 

[NeilF]

While playing the game last night I began thinking of player planet bases and their uses. The obvious use would be to have a private place where you could have your own outfitting, universal cartographics and ship storage, etc.

However, there is another unique use I wanted to put before you for discussion. Each player base would have a warehouse for 1,000 units of either cargo or engineer materials. Players do missions, then receive physical manufactured items that occupy their cargo bays. We can't store these on stations, nor should we. A private warehouse, however would allow a place to store these materials. You have to deliver them to your Player Base to store them, then when ready to engineer, physically transport them where needed for use.

This then gives you the option of keeping materials long term. Instead of carrying physical manufactured items like arsenic, manganese and Thargoid Energy Cells in your cargo hold attracting interdictions.

If used only for cargo, 1,000 tons won't upset any local economy to any great degree if they are all dumped at once. That's roughly 1.3 times the max. capacity of a Corvette or Cutter load. The player base would be the only place in-game where you could store cargo / manufactured items.

Surely that's a hammer to crack a nut? Simply have storage at stations?

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Its the same as all the other player ownership madness.
Your assets are in my galaxy (its shared), I don't want them there for reasons, I destroy them, you cry.
Could only work if the galaxy wasn't persistent and shared, but thankfully it is.

Works fine in many other games.

 

[Crank Larson]

Surely that's a hammer to crack a nut? Simply have storage at stations?

lol, you know that's never likely to happen.

The other thing that strikes me about bases is that they're not going to be very interesting if you are not able to walk around them. So, spacelegs would presumably need to come first, and we know that isn't happening any time soon. Personally I hope that FD implements everything hoped for regarding planets and ships before they start to look at legs (e.g. atmospheric landings).

 

[Mephane]

The chances of finding a small unmarked player depot on a random lone planet is remote at best. Even if you did randomly find one by chance (and the devs made them destructible) some basic defences is all you need.

Oh there's plenty of ways to narrow down the search:

* Follow a player as they descend to their base.
* Estimate where a player launched from if they appear climbing out of the gravity well in supercruise.
* Go to common hot spots. Capital systems. The Old Worlds. The Pleiades. Colonia. Shinrarta Dezhra. All planets with engineer bases.

Sure, you could hide your bases in some faraway corner (or even outside the bubble, I suppose) but the longer it takes to even just go there, the smaller the utility of the base in the first place. For someone trying to do maximum damage to other players, they don't even need to find Bob's well-hidden and rarely-visited base at the edge of the bubble, they just need to blow up the regularly-used bases in the most efficient and easy to reach locations.

 

[Manwë]

A Self Storage unit located on a planet surface of your own choosing would be perfect. To be able to store Materials (Raw, Manufactured & Data) would greatly help as you prepare for many ongoing projects.

The advantages of the vulnerability of the units is argued well by CMDR Yates in posting #29. If you do lose all of your stored materials to a burglar (possibly even Bilbo) .... well you'll just have to go and find some more.

 

[GraXXoR]

One of the things that Elite does is that it tries its hardest to prevent a buildup of wealth. Pretty much every consistent money making scheme is smashed after a few months of exploitation generating copious salt in its wake.

In the end, players are forced to farm this and that to make credits... With billion+ credit "endgame" content, this makes for a lot of pent up demand for a quick buck.. Especially those players already sitting on a billion+ credits with ships that cost 200,000 to repair after a single fight with a Thargoid
They are unlikely to want to grind out anything less than 5m per hour.

The problem comes with early game content, too..

It's far too easy to earn early game credits these days... For example, join a trade CG planned to finish within a day or two, deliver 1T of excrement or whatever they require and get rewarded 600k credits for being in the "top" (!) 100%.
Boom, you're in a basic Cobra MK III... Now if there are two such CGs primed to end on the same day you're on 1M+ credits without any appreciable effort all you need to do is collect your credits. You don't even need to go back to the CG system any more.

Bang... Straight to Type 6 Transport... Jumping a whole raft of starter content...

However, imagine if bases were REALLY expensive, you could start off with a base that has a single small pad and can store one ship.
It would start at the old Elite "Tech Level 1"
But with more money, you could build a hangar, shielding and defences (mandatory) some fancy blingaling.... biodomes roads and outer walls, flags and decals etc.
later on you could add medium or Large pads and more hangars, refuelling facilities (requiring you to bring in or purchase hydrogen etc.) repair facilities requiring materials etc.

You could even set up a trading hub which starts with few commodities and work your base up to "Tech Level 5," each one being a magnitude or two more expensive than the previous one... (the trading hub would be for your convenience/roleplay and your faction's BGS rather than make you any money more than a regular trade hub).

Anyway, it's endless...

The thing is, there should be a way to play the game at your own level and make sure progression is steady but neither glacially slow nor roadrunner quick.

O/T

That's a pretty snazzy facility you've got there. I've yet to get quite so fanciful with my own base-building. I tend to go for compact and practical myself. Kind of surprised not to see any Geodomes though - with 16 spots for planting, and no additional demand for resources, Biodomes are tough to beat.

4 biodomes suspended three-quarters of the way up the main tower.
After 1.3 that is indeed the case. before 1.3 planting did not require fuel.
I haven't bothered making a decent base this time... Too much grind. Not enough reason.

 

[Crank Larson]

I haven't bothered making a decent base this time... Too much grind. Not enough reason.

lol, those were my thoughts. I just repopulated my four biodomes with the new plants. I didn't really put much thought into my base at all.

Out of interest, did you use the hack to increase the number of objects you can use in your base? I ran out, and found there is a setting in one of the config files to increase this (you can effectively remove the limit). Didn't notice any adverse effects.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I like the idea.

They can't be persistent, otherwise you might be called on to defend them while you're at work or asleep, or whatever. Unless they're just indestructible.
Then they can be persistent, and basically just surface installations only you (and anyone you allow) can dock at.

I like the idea of storing materials and data at these, as well as some commodities, although I think 1000t is a bit too much, maybe 250t…?
(Why would you need that much anyway?)

Upkeep should be fairly expensive, and storing corrosive goods should damage the base overtime, making them incredibly expensive to run, and leaving it in a state of disrepair, will risk loss of stored cargo, data and materials.
So if you try to hoard 250t of UAs to UA bomb stations, you'll likely cripple your own base and lose everything.
You could add a corrosive resistant depot to your base, but only 1 and it can only store 10t of corrosive cargo.

It would be cool if bases were modular aswell.
You start by placing a central hub, power generator, 1 type of landing pad(you can pick your first one), and then add sections later on. Each one increasing power use, and running costs.

There's so many landable planets out there, that every single CMDR ever could own one, and you'd hardly notice. Lol

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

 

[hobblygobbly]

I do not see significant use for it in the game yet but what I think would be nice for it to have is ability to store some of your ships and it also be a respawn point instead of the last place you docked (as an option).