About Persistence and Player Bases

[IndigoWyrd]

I found myself poking about another universe I haven't put much time into for a while - Entropia, and it dawned on me - there may be a solution that is both persistent and provides for the functionality of a personal facility at the same time.

In Entropia, it is possible to purchase (you actually do purchase EVERYthing in there, but that's not important right now) a plot of land which may have a hanger, or a house or be part of an apartment complex.. and that's when it dawned on me (actually it dawned on me when I was cashing in on a number of real estate deeds that had sold) - we could take a similar approach here - place some persistent omni-sized landing pads at different locations, on different planets, throughout inhabited space and allow players to claim these by means of missions, reputation and influence with whichever faction happens to control the system where these are located.

This would, or at least should, create some automatic vested interest in things like "Who controls this system?" (BGS-related) as well as resolve the issue of persistence as these would be placed structures.

I still side with These Should Not Be Space Ports, Stations, Trade Centers, or anything more than simple domiciles - a place to land and spray the funk out of your RemLock suit after weeks in space.

And this doesn't preclude the creation of "Tent Land" style "pop-up" facilities as mentioned above - as these sorts of structures would be more suited to long-range explorers, or those conducting extensive planetary surveys or just trying not to have any neighbors within a Diamondback's Jump.

 

[Muetdhiver]

^^ By decorating I was thinking something like having a few templates/themes to choose from,
and each template would have a bunch of assets that have a few variant each.

Nothing too fancy. For minor space/ground assets, they already have quite a lot to pick/use
with the new ones they put in with 2.2 and 2.3

IMO, we should not except something more developped than this. And this would be already quite good.
I mean, SRV racing track that you can build ? How awesome would that be

 

[Cobra1984]

I've come around very much to the idea of player bases, player storage/hangars etc. I wasn't really in favour of it in the early days because the way the original Elite was played was you headed out on more or less a one way trip across the galaxies. ED plays very differently, in that you tend to travel around and eventually come back to the same areas of space.

Buying new modules for your base and having to resupply those modules with materials to keep them up and running (ie you can't transfer a ship from your base hangar as your staff have all starved to death from lack of food) sounds like the kind of thing you'd want from base building. I can dream...

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I mean, SRV racing track that you can build ? How awesome would that be

That would be awesome, but i think that is well outside the scope of FD and will never happen.

However, go mention it on the Star Citizen reddit and i'm sure Chris Robers will add it to the scope of that game

 

[Muetdhiver]

That would be awesome, but i think that is well outside the scope of FD and will never happen.

However, go mention it on the Star Citizen reddit and i'm sure Chris Robers will add it to the scope of that game

I don't know. I mean : SRV racing already exists in the form of base scan runs. But yeah, while very cool it will likely never happen
since it does not involve shooting stuff :/

*ring races in asteroid fields with ships have been a staple and recuring theme in space games since Tie-Fighter

 

[RamirezKurita]

Rather than having a fully independent base, it would achieve much the game gameplay effect if you were able to instead rent out space onboard an existing station. With some cosmetic customisation in the hangar, coupled with your other ships in the station being visible as part of your own little hangar array, plus some useful things like commodity storage, I'm sure that some players would be willing to put the time into looking after their little home. By tying this personal space into an existing station, there would be no risk of other players interacting with it adversely beyond the normal BGS stuff, meanwhile as everything is tucked away nicely in the station's bowels there won't be any persistence issues.

 

[shadragon]

DB talked about small inflated outposts in the early days, I believe that a simple version would do just fine, the issue would be what you can do with the base.
However some kind of base build should be possible even in a very simple form.

Today with no (face to face) interaction, player bases make some sort of sense. When we get legs, the orbitals will be better places to be to interact with our fellow pilots.

If there are player bases at some point, they should not make money unless directly done by the player like surface mining, etc.

 

[Soon(TM)]

I don't need my own base. I need things to interact with, things that feel alive, a living interactive galaxy.

Not this stale rinse and repeat empty house we have now!

 

[SkipRat]

The problem with player bases... is... well... They are unbelievably stupid in Elite... This is elite dangerous and think of it this way. Take the Star Wars universe, you are not the corporations, the Empire, The Rebels or any other faction, you are the Han Solo's, the one man and his ship verses the universe that doesn't give the slightest damn about him.

You have no need for bases as you blazing your own trail.

If people want corporations and bases, go an play EVE as that is the game for that.

 

[Mr_sukebe]

The problem with player bases... is... well... They are unbelievably stupid in Elite... This is elite dangerous and think of it this way. Take the Star Wars universe, you are not the corporations, the Empire, The Rebels or any other faction, you are the Han Solo's, the one man and his ship verses the universe that doesn't give the slightest damn about him.

You have no need for bases as you blazing your own trail.

If people want corporations and bases, go an play EVE as that is the game for that.

You might not want one, and that's fine by me.
Doesn't stop me wanting to go find a system full of metallic moons and pristine rings that I migh want to setup mining, refineries and have a port for ships to refuel and repair at.
After all, isn't ED meant to be "play as you want"?

So please, less of the use of "stupid", after all, we both pay for this game...

 

[W4rSkuLL]

Building bases would give us a reason to collect stuff. I never collect cargo anymore as I go after the bounties instead. Its also dangerous picking up cargo as you get scanned to death and pirates jump you like flies on a turd. Using some cargo to build stuff for your base would make it fun to collect again, and also build a warehouse where you can see your stuff. Admire the huge pile of narcotics you have stashed away at your secret base in a crater at lV-51 or something. These bases should be attackable and be able to be occupied and fought over.
Well i´m just dreaming. Space legs need to come also then. E.D makes you dream of what can be achieved in a game.
Although skimmers should be able to be destroyed by ships

 

[GMANTOR]

I would make it asteroid bases as they have already done this. When you buy one you can choose which system and ring to have it "made" in and it only appears to you + friends on the scanner. Having said this it would be indestructible the same as normal bases. inside you buy the number of landing pads you want and sizes so this is configurable. Also internally there should be plenty of customisation capability. The no fire zone outside will shred enemy ships but it doesn't apply to you ! You can fire as well ! There should also be storage options including limited cargo options (maybe 1000 tons) and if friends land they could grab this cargo as well allowing credit transfer (need to think this through more but if the tonnage is limited its hard to see what the harm would be). You should also be able to stock it up with fuel which you carry (cargo) and of course module storage (but not transfer?).

Most of the above is already done and there is no need to worry about persistence as they act the same as a normal base technically. the differences wouldn't take a huge amount of work. Also you could have two options : a cheap base in the bubble with a location you cant choose and fixed internals then the 1 billion+ dollar base which gives you everything. This means its not limited to end game cmdrs and even if you bought the cheap base I think you would always want the better base eventually.

 

[the100thmonkey]

My attitude towards bases is that personal bases with refuel/rearm are fine, as long as the upkeep costs aren't punitively high (it might depend on the size and number of bays, for instance,) while anything that involves station services like missions, a market or outfitting be fully part of the BGS. It's already ridiculously easy to farm credits; players don't need a source of free money.

 

[DNA-Decay]

The people who whine about persistence have no idea how the BGS works and therefore no way to make persistent changes.

They should git gud.

This ^^

I think all the folks who want "Player Bases" and dont understand the BGS think that - they can get some mates together, pool their cash and buy a station for a few trillion credits.

Actually I kinda hope this happens.
And that ownership still relies on BGS manipulation.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take a station worth several trillion credits from the grindy whiners.

 

[Jaiotu]

This ^^

I think all the folks who want "Player Bases" and dont understand the BGS think that - they can get some mates together, pool their cash and buy a station for a few trillion credits.

Actually I kinda hope this happens.
And that ownership still relies on BGS manipulation.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take a station worth several trillion credits from the grindy whiners.

Yes please! Make player-owned Bases such a potential losing proposition that only a very few or the foolish would ever even consider it.

 

[Marra Morgan]

This ^^

I think all the folks who want "Player Bases" and dont understand the BGS think that - they can get some mates together, pool their cash and buy a station for a few trillion credits.

Actually I kinda hope this happens.
And that ownership still relies on BGS manipulation.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take a station worth several trillion credits from the grindy whiners.

Hur hur

I like your thoughts

 

[Traesha]

Just makes your base placeable only on planets that *you* discovered, there are a LOT, you'll notice that when you fly further then 1k ly away from the bubble. That eliminates the very low chance of someone dropping a base exactly at the same position.
As for how they should work:

We should be able to sell our mineable stuff
We should be able to sell exploration data at our base
We should be able to repair our ships
We should be able to buy supplies such as limpets / heat sink etc.

We shouldn't however be able to buy ships or weapons or things like that. Thats what you do in the bubble.

 

[Stealthie]

I would have thought that the simplest solution would be for every landable planet to have 2 or 3 pre-determined locations where a base could be built.

Become allied with the dominant faction in a system.
Get offered the opportunity to set up a base.
Scout planet to find base location.
Scan something in your SRV to "claim" the base.
Do specific, base-related, missions for dominant faction and they'll build/upgrade your base.
Hire & pay NPCs to keep your base operational.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to build Fallout 4/NMS style bases in ED.
As long as it's got a landing pad, somewhere to store ships and repair/re-arm and possibly upgrade your ships then I'd be happy.

Also, make it so that a person can only own a single base at a time to avoid having people obsessively claiming every base-site within 100Ly.

 

[Schlack]

This ^^

I think all the folks who want "Player Bases" and dont understand the BGS think that - they can get some mates together, pool their cash and buy a station for a few trillion credits.

Actually I kinda hope this happens.
And that ownership still relies on BGS manipulation.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take a station worth several trillion credits from the grindy whiners.

Oh that would sting.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Oh that would sting.

That would certainly spice things up with regard to BSG play