Problem statement: Elite: Dangerous is essentially a live-service game that has no mechanism to guarantee a stable income for the developers. This means that new features are entirely dependent on new players and cosmetics. Long term players would likely be more than happy to invest in the game beyond cosmetics, assuming there was something to invest in. But what?
Enter, a commonly requested feature, expanding the bubble. What if players could pay ARX to encourage factions to setup new stations, outposts etc. in new systems?
Mechanism: Players use ARX to buy a settlement permit. The settlement permit allows players to designate a landable planet, or orbit around a planet or star where a new settlement will be founded, along with the faction that the settlement should be aligned with (in game, players are essentially paying the faction to encourage the faction to expand). Then, a "construction zone" will be established, that will have missions to drop off all the needed commodities, personnel, and further require players to donate more ARX to build the settlement proper, with the amount of missions and ARX required by the settlement varying based on the size/type of the settlement (orbital, station, etc etc) and the available resources in the system itself (terraformable planets, high metal planets making it slightly cheaper vs absolutely nothing being prohibitively expensive). Once all the conditions have been met, at the next server refresh, if the faction is in a state of Expansion, instead of Expanding where they normally would, they expand to occupy the new settlement which is then established, creating a permanent new human system.
Expected outcome: Long term players now have goals to work towards. Expand the presence of humanity to the stars. Establish outposts in remote areas of the galaxy. Doing so should be very expensive, requiring coordination and sacrifice of many players to expand humanity. This also should provide an unlimited ARX drain that can be relied on to support further development of the game.
Enter, a commonly requested feature, expanding the bubble. What if players could pay ARX to encourage factions to setup new stations, outposts etc. in new systems?
Mechanism: Players use ARX to buy a settlement permit. The settlement permit allows players to designate a landable planet, or orbit around a planet or star where a new settlement will be founded, along with the faction that the settlement should be aligned with (in game, players are essentially paying the faction to encourage the faction to expand). Then, a "construction zone" will be established, that will have missions to drop off all the needed commodities, personnel, and further require players to donate more ARX to build the settlement proper, with the amount of missions and ARX required by the settlement varying based on the size/type of the settlement (orbital, station, etc etc) and the available resources in the system itself (terraformable planets, high metal planets making it slightly cheaper vs absolutely nothing being prohibitively expensive). Once all the conditions have been met, at the next server refresh, if the faction is in a state of Expansion, instead of Expanding where they normally would, they expand to occupy the new settlement which is then established, creating a permanent new human system.
Expected outcome: Long term players now have goals to work towards. Expand the presence of humanity to the stars. Establish outposts in remote areas of the galaxy. Doing so should be very expensive, requiring coordination and sacrifice of many players to expand humanity. This also should provide an unlimited ARX drain that can be relied on to support further development of the game.
