Auto planet colonisation

[Lance]

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.

The point with Elite is that it's always been an open sandbox game. I think groups working towards a collective goal will be an emergent properties themselves. If enough players choose to regularly fly a particular route in and out of the core system, I want to see that route become developed automatically based on economic supply and demand, not what any one person or group think should happen.

It will be like ribbon developments along a main road, or a road into the Amazon becomes dotted with hundreds of logging outposts that slowly turn into settlements, then town and cities.

As for speed, just think how quickly this happened in America once they had the transport tech. There was a mass exodus from Europe looking for fame and fortune in to the massive expanse of America.

Now travel in ED is quick the population will rapidly spread out into a bell curve shape centred on the core systems with a large number of the surrounding system having populations of diminishing numbers of people with distance but with a very wide spread. It would be extremely odd if there was a sudden cut off with not much variation between billions of people and none!

If we were given the tech in ED now in the real world, i promise you it would only take a couple of years for there to be thousands of systems that would have dock-able outposts and settlements, and going back the my main point, I don't want FD to artificially limit this or have to spend their effort managing it when they can spend it better building us lovely new content and expansions.

 

[Helios]

I 'do' think, that there might also be some concept of "acceptable copy protection" linked into this.
For example if you look at my very first post on this forum that I posted in 2012: I suggested realizing "copy protection" more or less by offering value for those who play online - even if it is only singleplayer. What we see right now, to me, almost seems like an implementation of my suggestion from back then: The game is fully playable offline, but those who do so might miss out on something.

I do however understand those, who ask for an 'automated' colonization system. Not because I'd have a problem being online, but rather because I'd be fascinated by the fact that the game, besides the space exploration thing, also simulates the evolution of entire human societies in the background.

But well, I think I can live with hand-written colonization.

 

[Lance]

From the Injected Events DDF:
Quote:
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.

I like the sound of this, but I hope they give it a bit more priority than implied!

I'd be fascinated by the fact that the game, besides the space exploration thing, also simulates the evolution of entire human societies in the background.

That's exactly the thing I'm most excited about with the game. I really hope they don't just focus on the pew pew, galaxy sight seeing, mining and trading BUT in a relatively static civilisation. I'm desperate to see how the galaxy evolves. It would be silly not to given its size. I want the galaxy to be dynamic and interesting in itself. I want the read about people's adventures about our expansion into the frontier. Note that I'm happy NOT to own/manage/control individual stations, that's where we as individuals are far to insignificant.

In fact even if there where NO player actions in the galaxy simulation, given the new jump technology I would still expect to see the NPC population rapidly expand out into the vast expanse with the galaxy on its own! If it doesn't, FD's modelling of population dynamics will be very wrong.

 

[FrogsFriend]

My guess would be that a fully/semi automated system would be very difficult and time consuming to test. It looks sensible to manage it manually at the start while recording the inputs and decided-upon results, longer term consequences, etc. These results can then be used to specify and gradually introduce an automated system with more limited oversight required.

Less chance of some rogue code laying low for a while and then suddenly populating the whole galaxy over one unsupervised weekend

 

[popuptoaster]

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!



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.

Hmmmm, maybe, I'm still unsure though about it being abused somehow though.

 

[Spook]

As long as it remains that players/groups can't own territory then it could work.

If a group did set out with the intention of creating a de-facto home system then it could even work against them - once the system reaches a certain level of wealth by trade/transactions or even just sustained player activity the game engine trips an increase in technology level and possibly a slide up the scale in government. This then brings more police so any attempt to blockade the system increases police response.

The erswhile kingmakers then have a choice - expand more energy to flip the system back to anarchy - but increasing activity with the potential for a never ending cycle to begin. Or cut their losses and go colonise somewhere else thereby expanding the galaxy for all.

If all else fails then the game engine/Fdev could even trip a military response which brings the might of one or more of the established powers to bear.

 

[Zarconian]

I remember reading that even though the devs will have to trigger events, players will receive missions to help them, be it clearing pirates or delivering goods.

 

[Duita Rider]

The point with Elite is that it's always been an open sandbox game. I think groups working towards a collective goal will be an emergent properties themselves.

I've the same point of view.
Why a large player guild/alliance would not have the possibility to work together to build small outpost or small space station to make their own base.

I see that like a pirate outpost and I read somewhere in the forum that will be some in space.

Clearly it will not be possible in the proximity of Sol or Achenar, but more in the Frontier of the actual known space.

Politically it will be an anarchy system at the beginning, but if the group is big enough to make them self a kind of militia, some NPC could come over time to increase the station population, open new trade routes and so on...

I know for that, the first point will be that FD team will allow it and that the group will be big enough, and, and , and...

but would be great

 

[Ayo]

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.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that players own the stations, they are owned by factions, but by completing missions given by that faction you can increase the chance/speed of new stations being built.

There are plenty of automatic checks that can be done to prevent unrealistic growth/spread of populations. E.g. Only planets that are near to already established economic areas are going to be of interest to the factions for the most part.

The game already uses a series of complex rules like these to procedurally generate the star systems.

 

[kilvenny]

The background simulation of the evolving galaxy is fascinating but with the immensity of the galaxy FD need to ensure they don't get the galaxy evolving too quickly and an automated colonisation could easily go pear shaped quickly. So keeping it manual at least for now is wise.

 

[Lance]

The background simulation of the evolving galaxy is fascinating but with the immensity of the galaxy FD need to ensure they don't get the galaxy evolving too quickly and an automated colonisation could easily go pear shaped quickly. So keeping it manual at least for now is wise.

Sounds like a pretty accurate recreation of what mankind has done to planet earth! Just a shame we didn't have FD controlling things when Europe decided to try and colonise the entire planet.

I've heard it said multiple times that mankind has a lot of similarities to a parasitic virus. I doubt we will be any different when it come to space exploration.