Base building

[Ian Doncaster]

It's certainly something that they could do - the question is, what would we actually do with them?

Our own space base where we could store our ships and goods.
Invite our friends, have a walk around.
Build fences, lookout towers, turrets, different building blocks.

Maybe in the future, have our ships do automated trading runs that we would program (similar to X series), then watch them leave and approach our base.
Grow a little empire of our own.

Fleet Carrier lets you store ships and goods already, with the big advantage of being able to move that storage around when needed. So mechanically that's not adding anything new, though of course the stationary store might be cheaper.

Being able to build and customise them in a fully-modular fashion would be neat ... but again isn't adding any new game mechanics. Now, sure, some people would just like having the customisable space even if it didn't "do" anything - I'd probably try to start a "mazes" club if it was sufficiently flexible with the wall placement - but it probably needs some more direct use as well.

Trading runs sounds great but because the trading economy is primarily set up to let traders make big money, actually undercutting the NPCs and their larger reserves would be pretty tricky too. And sure, you could set up a colony in deep space where there aren't any NPCs and trade with each other ... but again the question of "to do what"? comes up - Indium is already basically useless and it doesn't become less useless if a player sells it to someone to build a Crop Harvester which is also useless [1]. They'd have to seriously flatten 99.9% of the NPC economy to make trading with player bases a useful (not even required, merely potentially useful from time to time) thing to do in normal circumstances. (And I like the idea of running a multi-commodity trade network - but not the idea of trying to control it from an interface optimised for HOTAS control of a spaceship. I just play other games entirely to do that)

[1] The Community Managers were asked about player-driven economy on the AMA, and said that it sounded like a cool idea but it was going to take a while to come up with uses for all this stuff ... the extremely limited player-driven economy in Tritium receives more complaints than praise on the forums ... it's at the very best a very long way off.

 

[alexzk]

Plenty of processing power

Limiting factor is storage. EDSM stores 0.001% of Galaxy now and full DB is 200 Gb to export. Scale it to 400 billions of stars and x7 of planets which can have bases.
As ED does not have subscription that could be a big problem to keep stored half completed bases everywhere.

 

[Stellar Shepherd]

I assumed if base building would be a thing, it wold be within a carrier or buying an apartment on a space station or planet stations, than decorating it to your liking with furniture. But again what would be the function of it, other than a hangout.

Perhaps a mission board connected to said station, lockers for gear, bounty boards, display stand for certain items (eg. thargoid heart, framed picture of Braben asteroid mining, miniature model of asp scout, etc.), crafting station (assuming we would upgrade our own gear), access to galnet and coffee machine (mandatory).

Even if it's not an apartment, sort of like a warehouse/crew house where you could bring your wing to start a mission. Your hired npcs would hang out there with their telepresence device, with storage crates visible (in case we could use it as storage like in the carrier), again mission board connected to said station and stuff I mentioned above.

But I don't think we would have full base building as nms has.
Even nms has issues with it, mostly in multiplayer where it takes time for parts to load in, peoples bases that aren't on your friends list or in party don't load up at all, parts (doors) disappearing, etc.

 

[Harley Quinn]

Well a base would effectively be a landed carrier to run and provide services, or if going back to their original proposal an asteroid that provides those services, I can't see why they wouldn't pop the option in when the in game graphics options are available. They can reuse a lot of things and add more items in the store and therefore increase real life money spent on Arx.

Whether we actually build it rather than paying into a huge credit sink for it to magically appear is a different matter and for that I think a credit sink and asteroid base would be the preferred method and easiest for them to enable. I can't see us getting this through means other than "you pay billions, this appears".

I also don't see the base doing anything more than a carrier, particularly considering FDevs reluctance to add in off line credit making, and I would expect it to come with the same type of ongoing costs as carriers. So really other than a vanity item I don't see much reason to have one when you could put a carrier in the same system.

That said, I would probably get one

 

[Urbanski101]

I never thought FD would bring in fleet carriers...I couldn't see what new gameplay features it would introduce. Well we have FCs now and they don't really add any new gameplay, they just enable what is currently in game in a slightly different form and allow players some agency in the economy.

I think the introduction of planetary operations including:
mining / geology - minerals & metals
xeno biology research - patents
astronomy / stellar research - cartographic data
terraforming - food production / settlement taxes

This might be something they'd consider. It would be ridiculously expensive, modular so the actual buildings snap together. Well protected and with the usual repair / rearm, shipyard etc features that would cost extra.

Scan the planet, stake a claim, build a base....profit!

 

[Semivivus]

...what would we actually do with them?

Nothing that we can't do with a fleet carrier already - its functionality can't be that much different. Why assume base building absolutely has to come with new mechanics? How many MMOs that offer player housing fully integrate it into existing gameplay loops? If the goal is to attach mechanics to any new content, a lot of content ideas are going to be dismissed. Base building is not where I would be adding new mechanics.

In my view, the primary purpose of a player base is being eyecandy (as is that of the fleet carriers) - a pretty something in a desired location to call your own. Do you think there are 16000 fleet carriers because players wanted them solely for their functionality? How many of them have their optional extra facilities disabled? If fleet carriers had come as nothing but movable shells, there wouldn't have been great many less of them (bar the price reasons). They are wanted for their superficial qualities before anything, as I believe would be the case for base building.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Nothing that we can't do with a fleet carrier already - its functionality can't be that much different. Why assume base building absolutely has to come with new mechanics? How many MMOs that offer player housing fully integrate it into existing gameplay loops? If the goal is to attach mechanics to any new content, a lot of content ideas are going to be dismissed. Base building is not where I would be adding new mechanics.

If people would be happy with something which was basically "a fleet carrier, but you can't move it and it has more cosmetic options", then fair enough.

The impression I get is that about half the people asking for base building would be absolutely happy with that, and the other half are thinking of more EVE-like "player controlled assets at least as useful as the NPC ones" and would consider that a complete waste of time.

It probably depends how they try to fund it: if it's part of another Beyond-style "extend and refine" expansion then a lightweight purely cosmetic one is entirely possible (but then I wouldn't expect much more customisation than Fleet Carriers have). If it's a headline feature for a paid expansion then it could be a lot bigger including on the cosmetics side, but they would have to do something too.

If fleet carriers had come as nothing but movable shells, there wouldn't have been great many less of them (bar the price reasons). They are wanted for their superficial qualities before anything, as I believe would be the case for base building.

Yes - but I think the movable part of a Fleet Carrier is the really important bit. Without that, it's not really doing anything you can't get from NPC station services (other than cargo storage, but that's a fairly niche use right now, and most of those niches rely on the mobility too)

I quite agree that most people with Fleet Carriers probably got them because being able to move your entire fleet around with you is really convenient ... portable Cartographics is of course a big bonus for the deep space ones too.

Being able to store your entire fleet in one extra immobile location doesn't have the same benefit.

 

[Old Duck]

Anyone wants this beside me ?

Space Engineers - "Open" Changes Everything

My love for Space Engineers is well known, but I eventually hit the "What's the point of it all?" wall in my Solo game. The worlds are beautiful, but empty. NPCs are literally empty ships on autopilot just going through waypoints, and the various assets are also empty and cookie-cutter. NMS or...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Abysinth]

I, too, wouold like to see base building, but I think it should be a different game set in the same universe running off the same galaxy servers. That is, you launch Elite: Dangerous to move around the galaxy or Elite: "Bespin-Base-Builder" to build a base on a planet where you entice other factions to come and set up and other human cmdrs to come and run missions to bring mats to build pads and defences and shops and ... other stuff. I bit like building a dinosaur park but more spaceship-y

 

[Phoenix13]

I don't see the point of it really, tho guess it would be nice as long as is limited to 1 per person. If hate to go to a cool spot for pics and find a base there blocking the view.

Now i do think squadrons should be allowed to control space stations, would provide benefits to that squadron, which could be attacked and taken over by other player squadrons via a multi-tiered combat that includes something like phase1: take out all AI security ships, phase2: take out exterior station cannons, phase3: enter slot and take out interior station canons, phase 4: land and go on foot to the station control room and take control of the room.

It's also important to have this in space due to it being a space game. I don't want it turning into CoD ish with everything now happening in the ground, not in space.

 

[Old Duck]

I don't see the point of it really, tho guess it would be nice as long as is limited to 1 per person. If hate to go to a cool spot for pics and find a base there blocking the view.

I think people underestimate the size and number of planets in this game. I play SE where base-building is the purpose of the game, where we have just ONE solar system with half-a-dozen very small planets, and yet it take serious effort to find another player's base if they don't have a beacon turned on. Anyone can test this in ED - just park your Type 10 (which is big enough to be a small base, LOL) on a random planet and leave your account logged in and see how long it takes for someone to find you. Heck, you could announce to the forum, "Hey, I'm parked on planet 1AB in the Sneezeaball system, come find me!" and nobody would be able to.

So don't worry, base-building in ED won't turn it into NMS where there is an NPC around every corner and over every hill.

EDIT - now if Frontier populates the system map and nav panel with every base there is, well that's a different issue. The fact they do this with fleet carriers with no "off switch" (like a carrier beacon) is absurd.

 

[Maximillian Forrest]

I would have thought we’d be going more in the direction of building our own space stations, rather than having planet settlements.

 

[WR3ND]

If we're talking world ground settlements and the like, I think helping a local faction or similar build a settlement and maybe helping choose the location and layout or infrastructure, like for mining, farming, manufacturing type industry might be pretty cool.

I think the closest we've had for that so far are some CGs, like the one(s) to build ground bases near Obsidian Orbital.

I don't think doing this sort of thing for ourselves individually in the game makes much sense, both from a personal narrative perspective as Commanders in the Pilots Federation, and game design.

For people looking for that sort of game, they might want to checkout Space Engineers.

 

[Neo-ST]

OK, I've come up with a solution to getting your base destroyed while you're logged off.
Simple - make them invincible.

Follow me for more tips&tricks

 

[jacozilla]

If they add base building, I imagine it would be more akin to a city builder, where players would play around with modular prefabricated buildings and structures. Meaning these could be placed on the surface and connected together, but not have their design altered by a player (good bye phallic buildings ). There would be a possibility for interior layout customisation (pick 1 out of x) as well as minor interior/exterior cosmetics (similar to the FCs). This way, a base can end up large enough to resemble a city and at the same time not be so performance heavy (try building a massive base in a game with intricate base building design). And the larger the base, the more it will cost - an excellent credit sink.

No Man's Sky has modular base building pieces, and the amount of creativity and designs that players have made are astounding. Shapes and works of art you'd not think possible with the default modular pieces. So I wouldn't put too much confidence in modular pieces being too much a limit to things like phalic buildings

 

[Semivivus]

No Man's Sky has modular base building pieces, and the amount of creativity and designs that players have made are astounding. Shapes and works of art you'd not think possible with the default modular pieces. So I wouldn't put too much confidence in modular pieces being too much a limit to things like phalic buildings

NMS uses pieces, not whole prefabs - its base building design is the exact opposite of what I was talking about.

 

[jacozilla]

NMS uses pieces, not whole prefabs - its base building design is the exact opposite of what I was talking about.

um...when is the last time you played NMS? There are tons of pre-fab pieces, entire modular buildings to make quick base building easier.

In addition to the separate piece types objects - like walls, stairs, doors, windows, etc - there are entire modular pieces to plunk down in 1 placement a small, med, or large cube room, circular dome room, modular hallways - straight and curved, modular connectors for rooms 2 way, 3 way, 4 way, etc.

Sounds like you haven't logged into NMS in years because these modular pieces have been around for years.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

Having toyed with base building in NMS, I would quite like it to come to ED but not in the same way: I would like to see the building fabricators in the commodities menube purchasable so you get one unit of these drop them on a landable planet and come back later to a prebuilt unit which can later be customised.

 

[Semivivus]

um...when is the last time you played NMS? There are tons of pre-fab pieces, entire modular buildings to make quick base building easier.

In addition to the separate piece types objects - like walls, stairs, doors, windows, etc - there are entire modular pieces to plunk down in 1 placement a small, med, or large cube room, circular dome room, modular hallways - straight and curved, modular connectors for rooms 2 way, 3 way, 4 way, etc.

Sounds like you haven't logged into NMS in years because these modular pieces have been around for years.

It has been a while but certainly not years.

Spoiler

Portion of my base in NMS. I had to build it floor by floor and don't remember any prefabs. I am not saying there aren't any at all.

Spoiler

And this is the example of base building prefabs I meant for Elite, each unit being customisable but not to an extent of changing the design completely. These are probably too massive (although small buildings would look laughable next to the landing pads given their own size) but you get the idea.

Spoiler

 

[Cmdr Travers]

But base building would really connect people to the game on a personal level and add that special level of customization.
It would give us a feeling of owning something that's only ours, built by our hands, in a system of our choice, on a planet of our choice, in a crater, or valley, or mountain of our choice.
Our own space base where we could store our ships and goods.
Invite our friends, have a walk around.
Build fences, lookout towers, turrets, different building blocks.

I agree that base building is a good idea. Frontier have said it's not on the roadmap, but the coming of Odyssey really does make player-owned bases compelling.

However... They would have to offer things that Fleet Carriers don't, otherwise it would make much more sense to just park your carrier in orbit as at least you could move that if you changed your mind. I'm thinking this difference should include mining, as it would be great to be able to mine Tritium by building your own base on an ice world (as an example) or gold and platinum on a barren world out in the black. Frontier would need to balance the cost of running the mining operation with the value gained from the materials being mined. It can be done, but would require a lot of thought to avoid being outright exploitable.

Then there's the issue of durability. Fleet Carriers are indestructible. Bases would also need to be indestructible (surely, right?) in order to be similar, but what would this mean for the building of turrets, and the deployment of security drones?

I do love the idea of being able to build a base over time. Let's face it, Frontier have a history of building exactly this type of game. I really hope it happens, as I'd love to have a small base that expands into a fully-fledged outpost, complete with its own NPC and player factions, or even a Tritium mine in the centre of the galaxy to help refuel carriers.

My thoughts.