Auto planet colonisation

[Lance]

When I watched the 2nd twitch video I was surprised by the response to a question about planet colonisation.

My concern is that this seemed to require a manual input from FD over if/when this actually happens. True, their decision may be based on watching player actions, but I was surprised this doesn't happen automatically. We should be able to trigger this ourselves, purely by interacting with the economy and missions system with no input from FD.

So, as an example, if 100 players decided to try and help a planet to colonise they would collectively do everything possible to help the planet. This would include clearing out the pirates, delivering raw materials and completing helpful procedurally generated missions in the planets favour.

For a completely unpopulated system, I would expect missions from its neighbours that will help trigger colonisation, or just heavy mining or traffic may be enough to trigger missions to help establish a station.

Either way I would be concerned if FD had potential veto rights over theses player actions that's would make them worthless or FD may just be to busy to notice/working on other projects. Given the size of the galaxy I hope FD only ever adds/injects events but never interferes with player triggered ones.

The rate of expansion should also depend on the number of players involved. If thousands banded together on a collective goal of their choice I would expect colonisation to happen much quicker.

An achievable timeline by a large group could be a week or two's concerted effort should result in an outpost (basic ship service, fuel etc), a month for a small station (basic trading of commodities and source for missions) and maybe 6 months for a large station. Delivering new NPC settlers and paying NPC's to do missions may also help speed it up. The key question of balance will be the number of players/actions required to achieve this timeline. That will probably depend on how popular ED becomes which will effect the number of players available. But I think it's essential that players can clearly see the result of their efforts.

I would also like there to be some reliable indication of progress, for example seeing population and GPD expand where we would be able to work out the range of pop/GPD that triggers the next stage of station growth.

My motivation is that I like the idea of encouraging a string of outposts / stations stretching out deep into the galaxy rather than just seeing the core systems area slowly expand. I expect this will happen in the direction of the galactic core for example.

Additional clarification would be much appreciated. Thank you

 

[popuptoaster]

Why should it be automatic? colonising a planet would be a massive undertaking, not least governed by having some willing colonists in the first place!

There would have to be some very good reasons for people to up and leave their homes to move to another planet so if players picked some remote planet light years from anywhere why should anyone go there at all?

Players could pick an entirely unsuitable system full of radiation or with unstable orbits for planets of to many asteroid hits or any number of other reasons.

I think having it supervised by FD makes way more sense and will keep things far more believable as they will be able to check on the viability of the planet that's chosen by players.

 

[Memnoch]

Or perhaps a set of trigger conditions that have to be met, and for a certain period of time, before neighbouring systems send out an expedition to the newly discovered system to start the process. As long as all these conditions are met it could well be automated. Having someone at FD decide on whether each and every system is going to be allowed to be colonised or not might end up being a full time job in the long run as the sphere of humanities influence expands.

 

[Tinman]

Background Simulation proposal from the DDF Archive:

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6305

In case someone haven't read it.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I think executive control is probably necessary. Imagine if there was a bug, or someone found an exploit to trigger colonisation of a new system...

 

[Memnoch]

That's true. For sake of argument, say there was a very determined set of players who know the automatic colonisation process very well, how to trigger it, how long it takes etc. They could set in motion a process where they align with one faction and through careful collaboration with other player groups manage to expand their factions area of control and surround another faction, effectively cutting it off!

In reality it probably wouldn't matter if they did as there is probably no reason why a factions ability to colonise new systems has a requirement of them being adjacent but its worth bearing in mind.

 

[Tinman]

That's true. For sake of argument, say there was a very determined set of players who know the automatic colonisation process very well, how to trigger it, how long it takes etc. They could set in motion a process where they align with one faction and through careful collaboration with other player groups manage to expand their factions area of control and surround another faction, effectively cutting it off!

In reality it probably wouldn't matter if they did as there is probably no reason why a factions ability to colonise new systems has a requirement of them being adjacent but its worth bearing in mind.

Keeping some Imperial players from turning the Sol system into a colony of the Empire is also a good reason for why FD probably want to keep some control over what happens.

On the other hand...Michael has his hand on "the button" so that might happen anyway!!!

 

[Dirtmuncher]

That's true. For sake of argument, say there was a very determined set of players who know the automatic colonisation process very well, how to trigger it, how long it takes etc. They could set in motion a process where they align with one faction and through careful collaboration with other player groups manage to expand their factions area of control and surround another faction, effectively cutting it off!

In reality it probably wouldn't matter if they did as there is probably no reason why a factions ability to colonise new systems has a requirement of them being adjacent but its worth bearing in mind.

I think that the faction being ringed would very aggresivly prevent the ringing. Maybe not through the obvious mechanism like all out war, but maybe through helping the colonisation effort and shift the balance of power within the colony. A bit like is happening in the Ukraine.

I wonder how black flag operations will be implemented.

 

[popuptoaster]

Background Simulation proposal from the DDF Archive:

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6305

In case someone haven't read it.

This part is very relevant,

INJECTED EVENTS AND INTERVENTION
Events that affect entities can be injected into the game that can directly change an entity’s statistics. This mechanism can be used to add specific events to the game, like civil wars, economic collapse and major story items.

Intervention messages are a failsafe in the system. When an entity’s stats reach set levels (a minimum and a maximum) a message is sent to whoever is monitoring the galaxy highlighting possible collapse or expansion opportunities. They can then be used to manually add events as desired.

I think it implies that should players create the opportunity for colonising a new planet then an alert will be issued to the staff monitoring that area of the galaxy and they will decide what happens.

that should satisfy everyone, players can attempt to set up conditions for expansion, but FD can keep an eye on them to see what they are up to.

 

[Stoo]

And according to the Kickstarter posts, DDF members will be able to assist in these "interventions"...

Not sure it'll happen though, although it would be cool to do so

 

[Stoo]

In fact, DB used the words "God-like"..... lol

"The Design Discussion Forum (DDF)

Many people have asked (via Reddit and elsewhere) whether the design discussion forum will continue post-release.

The people on the DDF together with people from Frontier will have near god-like powers post-release. They will have access to live stats for the galaxy on rates of piracy, locations for player death, trade activity and so-on. They will decide how the galaxy will evolve. They will decide when famine (or plague) might arrive in a particular system. If, for example piracy is unusually high for a sustained period in a particular system how should the galaxy respond? Should an adjacent system send warships? Should it decay into anarchy and any government collapse? When we create a new ship type or variant How should we introduce it? How do we close down a particular game exploit - or do we? As you can see, the decisions will not stop at release."

 

[Vargur]

That's true. For sake of argument, say there was a very determined set of players who know the automatic colonisation process very well, how to trigger it, how long it takes etc. They could set in motion a process where they align with one faction and through careful collaboration with other player groups manage to expand their factions area of control and surround another faction, effectively cutting it off!

In reality it probably wouldn't matter if they did as there is probably no reason why a factions ability to colonise new systems has a requirement of them being adjacent but its worth bearing in mind.

Surrounding a faction would be a nearly impossible feat though.
You have to remember that in this game space will truly be in 3D.
It's not like in EVE where the galaxy is just flat and 1 starsystem thick, or how the star trek maps look with neatly drawn borders.
The galaxy is around 5000 lightyears thick in the main disk, and the current colonized space is only in a volume of a few hundred lightyears around Sol, so there's a lot of surface area there that needs to be contained.

But i do agree that having FD regulate the colonization process is no problem. I quite like the fact that there are other forces that act onto the universe other than just the automated system and the players. There needs to be some counter balance to make sure players can't game the system.

 

[Lance]

Why should it be automatic? colonising a planet would be a massive undertaking, not least governed by having some willing colonists in the first place!

There would have to be some very good reasons for people to up and leave their homes to move to another planet so if players picked some remote planet light years from anywhere why should anyone go there at all?

Players could pick an entirely unsuitable system full of radiation or with unstable orbits for planets of to many asteroid hits or any number of other reasons.

I think having it supervised by FD makes way more sense and will keep things far more believable as they will be able to check on the viability of the planet that's chosen by players.

Okay should have named my post SYSTEM not planet colonisation. Apologies for that. Would edit the title now but don't seem to be able to.

I guess by colonisation I'm trying to refer to the creation of places you can dock and interact with. My assumption is that there will be a local population to support this. Whether the dock is in orbit, or on the planet surface is not important.

A small outpost might only have a local population of a thousand people and it's styling would depend on the local conditions (eg hardened for radiation if needed).

If there is enough traffic and conditions allow the population may grow, if not it could stagnate and even become abandoned. It's only reason to exist might be to service space goers if there is no other NPC self sustaining economy develops.

The sequence could be...
Small depot (pop 1000)
Small station (pop 10,000)
Large station (pop 100,000)
Huge station (eg Coriolis) ... ?

... with each level providing more services to travellers. There are plenty of examples of settlements and even cities on Earth that are in silly locations but serve a purpose, just look as Los Vagus for example!

As for speed of development think of this as the early stages of a real world military campaign. If you have a need you can send in the engineers and build a very substantial outpost in a matter if weeks. Again, there are lots of examples of military outposts sporning local populations to service it. These populations also often outlive the original purpose of the base.

All initial settlers would need to be shipped there as a mission goal. Station construction crew might need transport. There could even be a specific set of missions at every station to support the colonisation of the neighbouring systems. It's then up to players to pick the missions that progress towards helping the systems they want to see being developed.

You might start with a small orbital depot and end up with a growing population on the planet surface if habitable. I accept that getting a large population (billions) would take years, but I expect small outposts to spread like wildfire out into the galaxy and evolve over time based on player actions.

This growth mechanic should also happen in system with outpost popping up wherever there is enough traffic / need /demand etc (eg at particular mining hubs). It should all be algorithm based and not need someone sat behind a desk at FD trying to manage this by hand.

 

[popuptoaster]

I don't think growth would be as fast as you think, there needs to be pressing reasons for people to move out onto a frontier where life is harder and more dangerous, if we discount needing more space then it really boils down to economic reasons or political/belief systems.

Even building and populating a space station needs a reason to get started, just the fact that it can be done does not mean anyone will do it unless they can either get rich or gain power in most cases.

Can you really truely imagine the logistics of several hundred thousand people deciding they want to move somewhere else?

 

[Lance]

But i do agree that having FD regulate the colonization process is no problem. I quite like the fact that there are other forces that act onto the universe other than just the automated system and the players. There needs to be some counter balance to make sure players can't game the system.

I do agree that FD's all seeing eye will be important to look out for exploits. I'm just concerned that if players are trying to achieve a genuine goal that doesn't fit FD's story arc their efforts might be wasted or show no effect. 'If' A group spent two years shipping enough people and materials into a system to build a Coriolis station and one doesn't appear I would be very upset!

And if the Fed players want to try and surround imperial space then great! I would live the see them try! As long as players see a realistic reaction/countermeasures to their efforts rather than no result il be happy. These countermeasures to mass player actions are likely to be what makes the game fun long term.

I see no reason why player actions might not result in both imperials and Feds having stations in the same system within contested space. This would result in an anarchy system and the stations would need a lot of ongoing support to be sustained.

 

[Dante80]

I do agree that FD's all seeing eye will be important to look out for exploits. I'm just concerned that if players are trying to achieve a genuine goal that doesn't fit FD's story arc their efforts might be wasted or show no effect. 'If' A group spent two years shipping enough people and materials into a system to build a Coriolis station and one doesn't appear I would be very upset!

And if the Fed players want to try and surround imperial space then great! I would live the see them try! As long as players see a realistic reaction/countermeasures to their efforts rather than no result il be happy. These countermeasures to mass player actions are likely to be what makes the game fun long term.

I see no reason why player actions might not result in both imperials and Feds having stations in the same system within contested space. This would result in an anarchy system and the stations would need a lot of ongoing support to be sustained.

Have in mind that the tone and scope of ED is not empire building or large player groups/factions/alliances play. Its far more personal and (dystopian in some way), focusing on you being a single pilot thrown into the galaxy.

Player cooperation and emergent gameplay are things FD (and David Braben in particular) are excited about and want to see in the game. Having said that, its their game and their universe. This is not a democracy, nor can we as players dictate how the universe will emerge/move on. We can just influence it. Remember, systems may have billions of inhabitants, and the active players would be but a tiny speck in the totality of the universe simulation.

But in the example you gave, I think there is nothing to be afraid of. If indeed a large group players spend two years shipping enough people and materials into a system to build a Coriolis station, then that could probably happen. Hehe, even sooner than you might think.

Don't expect though to have a cordon of outposts spanning a thousand light years in the same direction...until 2030 that is..XD

 

[Memnoch]

Colonising a new system should be a major event, not something we see every other day. Building a new city port in space should involve a tad more effort than putting up a Wimpey home!

 

[popuptoaster]

Colonising a new system should be a major event, not something we see every other day. Building a new city port in space should involve a tad more effort than putting up a Wimpey home!

I would hope stations are multimillion credit investments that are beyond even large groups of players for the most part and they should also have high ongoing costs that need meeting simply to keep operating.

Very large corperations and planets should be setting up stations, not players.

 

[Lance]

I don't think growth would be as fast as you think, there needs to be pressing reasons for people to move out onto a frontier where life is harder and more dangerous, if we discount needing more space then it really boils down to economic reasons or political/belief systems

My point is no-one should have the think how fast it should grow. As long as FD creat a realistic economic modal that includes the ability for automated expansion than wee will find out!

Can you really truely imagine the logistics of several hundred thousand people deciding they want to move somewhere else?

It would take 200 flights with 500 people on each to transport 100,000. So that would take 10 players 20 flights each.

As for materials... The international space station is about 450tons, about 50 ton per person. So a station of 100000 people is about 5 million tons. At 500 tons a shipment that would take 10 thousand flights, or if you had 100 players that would be 100 flight each. That's assuming there is no NPC shipments helping you out.

Ok, big numbers (and big assumptions), but if your talking about a popular corridor to say towards the galactic centre or an interesting nearby nebula then their will be a constant flow of people bringing materials. Now it won't happen over night, but I don't think this is insurmountable and I can guarantee their will be groups of people who will want to do this just to show that they can and so they can see their personal impact on the galaxy.

 

[Associat0r]

From the Injected Events DDF:

In the future, we would hope to create a system that maintains a semi-autonomous approach to this, creating these events without the need for developer interaction, but also still allowing the team to inject separately.