Station construction in game

[Auronio]

Personally I would very much like the idea of implementing a colonization and construction mechanic.
Construction in order to build new stations, ports etc based on a system's/faction's wealth/economy state and colonization into a nearby unihabited system also based on wealth etc and way more expensive/unlikely.

Provided a set of rules were given similar like for expansions it added a lot more dynamics.

Powerplay might benefit by turning unprofitable control bubbles into profitable ones by increasing population for instance.
Many ideas come into my mind.

Imho more opportunities than risks in the long term.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

And when stations start popping up all over the galaxy like zits on a teenagers face Elite instantly loses it's sense of scale and danger for explorers

True, but bearing in mind there are 400 billion star systems out there (or whatever, I haven’t had time to count every one), isn’t it likely to take some time for the universe to lose its sense of scale? Even if 1000 new stations were brought online every week, it would take nearly 2000 years to colonise another 1% of the Elite galaxy, so I reckon you can relax on that score.

It depends very strongly on how and where they're placed.

If they're placed as close to Sol as possible in uninhabited systems, then yes, the rate of expansion will be pretty slow on a galactic scale and no-one will really notice from an exploration perspective. It would take decades just to fill up Wregoe with stations, and most of them would be pretty pointless.

If they're placed in an "octree" model (which is not the most efficient, since the galactic disk is very flat, but it's good enough)

- DWE's station at Sag A* means you can never be more than ~40,000 LY from a station
- 8 more means you can never be more than ~20,000 LY from a station
- 64 more means you can never be more than ~6,000 LY from a station
- 256 more means you can never be more than ~2,000 LY from a station
... that's less than your single week and the galaxy is already covered in a substantial grid of stations slightly denser than the Colonia-Sol highway. A fast ship can reach safety in under an hour without even needing to neutron-boost. The concept of "deep space" exploration is now very definitely dead.

- 2,048 more means you can never be more than ~600 LY from a station
... two more weeks, and the entire galaxy is as dense as the halo of deep-space stations surrounding the bubble

- 16,384 more, and you can never be more than ~200 LY from a station.
... four more months, and a fast ship can neutron-boost to the nearest station in a single hop

- 131,072 more, and you can never be more than ~60 LY from a station
... three more years, and you don't even need to neutron boost. A fast ship can never be more than a single jump from a station.

I find that scenario highly implausible.

First, you would have to organise enormous number of players to place these stations exactly according to "requirements".
Second, you assumed the galaxy is mostly flat, it isn't that flat (sure a certain "mile wide inch deep" quote comes to mind, but nvm).
Thirdly, all agree that station building would be time/resources consuming. But still, according to your math and the further assumptions it would take 500 people two weeks to build a single station, then the same number of people would need almost ten years to complete 256 stations:

256 stations * 2 weeks / 52 weeks in year = 9.8 years (single squadron)

Now let's take the absolute maximum number of concurrent players on steam (yeah spare me the usual not everyone's on steam, we're theorising here) which was around 18 thousands a few years ago. 18000 / 500 = 36 squadrons playing ideally orchestrated station construction, in parallel, without rest and delays, they would complete the 256 milestone in about two and half months.

256 stations / 36 squadrons * 2 weeks / 52 weeks in a year = 0.2 years, or 2.4 months.

I find this highly unlikely in itself due to the coordination and orchestration needed, but will let it fly for now. I acknowledge there are dedicated groups who could do this. Now the next milestone is way harder:

2048 stations / 36 squadrons * 2 weeks / 52 weeks in a year = another 2.1 years of ONLY orchestrated, station building gameplay...

And that's not factoring haulage times, timezone differences, people getting bored, people getting sick, people quitting etc. etc... So our proverbial elephant in the room is a sphere in ideal vacuum as in old physics textbook excercises

Yeah.

Not happening

And to (again) put the size of the galaxy in ED into focus, according to EDSM:

0.008134% of the galaxy has been discovered on EDSM, it will take 44,060 years, 4 months, 25 days to discover it entirely.

. Even if we assume that only a fraction of players uses EDSM, that number is stil MIND-BOGGLINGLY huge.

We also have people who refer to their significant others as "bae", which makes the Danish people cringe.

Not only Danish. Crippling any language with abbreviations like this is cringeworthy in itself.

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

Ever watch that tv show location, location, location?

That's my concern. One new station coming soon to the Core will already have a massive impact on explorers heading out beyond that point, but after 4 years I have no complaints about this

Irrespective of cost/time to build, my concern is solely WHERE they are built.

I.e. a thousand new stations within let's say 1000ly of the Bubble/Colonia would imo be fine. A dozen stations spaced out around the furthest points of the galaxy.....much less so

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Powerplay might benefit by turning unprofitable control bubbles into profitable ones by increasing population for instance.

Powerplay would in many respects be ideal for running colonisation mechanisms.

- only 11 powers, which provides a natural rate limit on colonisation no matter how many people take part, but conversely also provides a natural focus for player effort rather than risking 1000 under-funded attempts.
- requiring that colonised systems be within an existing control sphere strongly limits expansion rate and encourages a gradual filling out of the fringes of the bubble rather than deep space sprawl
- existing PP conflict mechanisms could easily be repurposed to make it possible for colonisation to fail if insufficiently supported - e.g. a colonisation could take 4 weeks, costing X CC a week on top of the other requirements, so the power would have to ensure it always had that much surplus, and did not lose control of the target system to "contested" status.
- as you say, obvious incentive for powers to colonise new systems

On the other hand, Powerplay needs a fair bit of fixing before it even achieves its original goals, never mind trying to add extra things on top of it.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Ever watch that tv show location, location, location?

Irrespective of cost/time to build, my concern is solely WHERE they are built.

I.e. a thousand new stations within let's say 1000ly of the Bubble/Colonia would imo be fine. A dozen stations spaced out around the furthest points of the galaxy.....much less so

I am pretty sure there will be initiatives to build some "roads" to well known places, but apart from that I would expect lots of bases on the fringe of the bubble. I myself would look on edsm, choose an area which sees little traffic and start hauling there. To alleviate your "fears" one could simply exclude these player owned stations from galaxy map filters Problem solved, you'd have pretty slim chance to stumble upon one in the sea of stars... But frankly I would be glad to stumble upon some small colony in the fringes of known universe. Look at it this way - one station is not a bubble. Though it would be cool if it could grow into one

As for the show, I don't get the reference though have watched it (has a different name here). Or were you referring to the title itself?

 

[Auronio]

Current expansion mechanic for factions has a distance limit. 20lys (without investment) or a little bit more next system with <= 6 factions and no presence of the expanding faction yet.

Similar logic could be applied for factions/systems colonizing a new (uninhabited) system. Might be less distant, might take longer, might get a timer, whatever.

Similar logic could be applied for factions/systems contructing a new starport/outpost/whatever.

Is any of the discussed scenarios realistic?

I would say
As realistic as human mankind waging war against each other 24/7 in 1300 years.
As realistic as murder being the main profession (or at least requirement) of almost all pilots in our bright human bubble in future to be.
Shall I continue?

It's a game.

I believe this game would benefit from these additional scenario elements (construction/colonization) and hence I support the idea.

 

[ADAMtheWELSHMANz]

So in summary everybody agrees some form of colonisation would be good for the game as both a credit sink and time investment/project for med+large groups of players

Ian's PP scenario would see the majority built near to current inhabited regions, expanding them outwards in a fairly uniform pattern

Deep space stations appear much less frequently, more akin to current one planned for the Core so would need FDev approval and special CG's to prevent then becomming overly abundant

My, let's call them concerns not fears, are abated as FDev would make the call on number and location of the far flung stations

Is that pretty much where we're at?

 

[Jefferson613]

So in summary everybody agrees some form of colonisation would be good for the game as both a credit sink and time investment/project for med+large groups of players

Ian's PP scenario would see the majority built near to current inhabited regions, expanding them outwards in a fairly uniform pattern

Deep space stations appear much less frequently, more akin to current one planned for the Core so would need FDev approval and special CG's to prevent then becomming overly abundant

My, let's call them concerns not fears, are abated as FDev would make the call on number and location of the far flung stations

Is that pretty much where we're at?

If new stations were an eventual reward from your pp faction doing well, that'd be awesome and would imo breathe new life into it.... Possibly even getting it the attention it needs.

If FD is smart they could tie in the DW Expedition with a push to colonize more of the galaxy... All those systems being scanned, lots of information on valuable systems where people could make a living off of. Or to use as a buffer from the growing thargoid threat

 

[VR StarLightPL]

I still would like some kind of "owning my OWN base" thingy. Despite being "billionaire", I agree that stations with full services (i.e. shipyard) could be too much, but a planetary base where I can land and build things could give it that "fringe pioneer" vibe... Like said space is big. And who's to say that the station I operate would be friendly to explorers? ;-) Could be an added danger to exploration to go unprepared to some seedy colony far away from home Locking it behind a squadron gameplay or powerplay is... not so much creative. It still wouldn't be my own, even if I managed to gather all the three friends who have a copy of E: D and still some time to play games, sadly. Oh, sorry, that's actually two.

 

[Yure]

Hello commanders
Your friendly neighborhood Sky Marshal here with this observation. Now that DW2 intense to build a station on route to Beagle point why are we still not able to build stations within the bubble. It seems to me that FDev only want players to construct structures where they deemed fit.
I am of the opinion that proper colonization mechanics would be very good for the game it would allow more player freedom and more emergent gameplay.
So I ask when is FDev going to take the dog leash off the players and allow us to make decisions for ourselves.

Building up ground bases would be pretty awesome! I support this message.

 

[Cmdr Beteran]

Idea in theory is great, yet it would undermine the "equality" in the game. Whoever gets the power to colonise would mess up with the balance in game.
Apart from PvPers, nothing we do or buy in real currency give us any tangible advantage, and it should stay that way.

Therefore, colonisation should be a Powerplay feature due to its nature, only if PP becomes an open-only mechanic.

Otherwise, thanks but no thanks.

 

[Jimmox72]

That's certainly a given, but how do you define "expensive".

Good question.

I'd start by asking what kind of rate of construction FDev would be comfortable with, and using that as a guide to judge costs. Then, to start quantifying it, I'd put the cost range as being somewhere between what it took for each world of the Colonia colonisation initiative (ie all that transit and immigration papers hauling etc) and the per-station cost of the original six-station Colonia Highway CG - off the top of my head, start more specifically with something like what the result would have been for say Tier 3 or 4 completion of that CG, then work from there? On top of that, it would not hurt to reach out to some of the heads of various PMFs and Squadrons who might genuinely be interested. All this would be a start.

...three to six months to do that bit.... (versus) ... complete it in a week or two.... (versus DWE-style mass campaigns resulting in setting) up a station in a couple of days

I would make it so that financial and material cost would not be the sole factor determining how long it would take. Instead, use in-game mechanics to time-gate various stages, so that a success for a modest place would be achieved in say 3 months no matter how big a particular group was, as long as it were over a given size so that individual members have doable supply quotas. All that the group size would determine is how quickly and easily that a given week's total supply requirements would be met by reducing the average quota per member. The financial and material cost would only take over as the main time limiter if the group doing the construction efforts were rather few in number and they found it too hard to make quotas required for max construction speed.

I don't think there's a good answer to that. [1] I'm using the commodity part of the cost for discussion because that's where the best data exists on how fast people collectively haul stuff, and the scaling issues don't change with the other types of cost.

Agreed. Time-gating the progression stages would help. With that in place, the F&M costs could then just be determined with reference to historical CG costs and not trying to have them as the main speed-bumps. Indeed, perhaps they could even be reduced to some plausible degree from the historical costs so far because of (I'm inventing 'lore' here) economies of scale arising from a widespread increase in interest in settling places away from the Thargoid incursions. If mechanisms like that existed, and if a group is larger than yay big, then at that point those F&M costs are essentially there just to maintain at least some degree of in-universe consistency for lore's sake and for cost-fairness for those who participated in the past CGs.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

Therefore, colonisation should be a Powerplay feature due to its nature, only if PP becomes an open-only mechanic.
Otherwise, thanks but no thanks.

Nice strawman championing noble cause (I support Open Only PP), but no thanks

 

[Autoculto]

Question - if the community goal station goes into lockdown will that ruin the chance of building the new station ?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'd start by asking what kind of rate of construction FDev would be comfortable with, and using that as a guide to judge costs. Then, to start quantifying it, I'd put the cost range as being somewhere between what it took for each world of the Colonia colonisation initiative (ie all that transit and immigration papers hauling etc) and the per-station cost of the original six-station Colonia Highway CG - off the top of my head, start more specifically with something like what the result would have been for say Tier 3 or 4 completion of that CG, then work from there? On top of that, it would not hurt to reach out to some of the heads of various PMFs and Squadrons who might genuinely be interested. All this would be a start.

Interesting examples, as they're very different in difficulty.

Colonia colonisation required about 20,000 tonnes of rares for an average first-stage settlement, or probably about 1,000 to 1,500 tonnes for a sixth-stage settlement. At least a few of the later settlements were founded by a single pilot hauling (presumably with help loading up their ship, though) - a large group could easily meet even the higher first-stage target in a weekend. Though as we saw from those CGs, the distance requirement meant that a lot of large groups weren't interested in trying, or only got in on the effort of a tiny minority of their members.

The original Colonia highway was ~4 million tonnes per station at Tier 6, and I can't remember how linear the tiers were on that one. That would probably be about 3 months hauling for a 100-player squadron.

Agreed. Time-gating the progression stages would help.

It would delay the construction of any individual station, but wouldn't necessarily reduce the overall construction rate.

Say you need 1000 tonnes of something to build a station, and can submit at most 100 a week, but your group is big enough to collect 500 a week. If you just try to build one station you get a station every ten weeks, because that's the fastest it can be done. If you split your effort across five construction projects you can build five stations every ten weeks.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Question - if the community goal station goes into lockdown will that ruin the chance of building the new station ?

Unlikely in this specific case as it already passed the original Tier 8 after the first day.

With a parallel bounty hunting CG, pushing the security level down that far is virtually impossible anyway because there's so many positive transactions occurring. It's been a very long time since any CG was affected by lockdown, and the new security slider model would give more warning of this, too.

There are also reports that Lockdown no longer shuts markets in 3.3, though I've not personally confirmed this.

 

[sirius42]

Hello commanders
Your friendly neighborhood Sky Marshal here with this observation. Now that DW2 intense to build a station on route to Beagle point why are we still not able to build stations within the bubble. It seems to me that FDev only want players to construct structures where they deemed fit.
I am of the opinion that proper colonization mechanics would be very good for the game it would allow more player freedom and more emergent gameplay.
So I ask when is FDev going to take the dog leash off the players and allow us to make decisions for ourselves.

We suggested this game mechanic to build own Stations and colonialize systems years ago on this forums here, thx to bring this idea back into the presence !

 

[Jimmox72]

Interesting examples, as they're very different in difficulty.

They were chosen to be the outermost boundaries of the range of possibilities as based on history, no more than that.

It would delay the construction of any individual station, but wouldn't necessarily reduce the overall construction rate.

Say you need 1000 tonnes of something to build a station, and can submit at most 100 a week, but your group is big enough to collect 500 a week. If you just try to build one station you get a station every ten weeks, because that's the fastest it can be done. If you split your effort across five construction projects you can build five stations every ten weeks.

Yes, you're right. I would have missed that one.

So, depending on what FDev might have in mind, possibilities include that a Squadron can only have one construction on the go at a time, perhaps limited to only one begun per year or longer.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

So, depending on what FDev might have in mind, possibilities include that a Squadron can only have one construction on the go at a time, perhaps limited to only one begun per year or longer.

It's a minor administrative inconvenience, but splitting into five squadrons would bypass that one (and a cross-platform group probably has three already) ... or maybe more than five and rotating members between them, to get around the one per year limit.

Similarly if it was one per BGS faction per year there are a lot of BGS factions which could be used as "flags of convenience" to go faster. Place all the stations close to each other and then use your "real" faction to build the first one and take the rest over afterwards.

 

[BinakAlgo]

So in summary everybody agrees some form of colonisation would be good for the game as both a credit sink and time investment/project for med+large groups of players

Ian's PP scenario would see the majority built near to current inhabited regions, expanding them outwards in a fairly uniform pattern

Deep space stations appear much less frequently, more akin to current one planned for the Core so would need FDev approval and special CG's to prevent then becomming overly abundant

My, let's call them concerns not fears, are abated as FDev would make the call on number and location of the far flung stations

Is that pretty much where we're at?

I'm OK with this.