Horizons Building your own space port?

[Lord Hexias]

Oh if only...

Elite: Dangerous has a scope that is unparalleled. Giving an individual player the ability to fund the construction of a station seems to fly in the face of the scale of the game as we have it. But to give a player own faction the ability to work toward something like that feels just right. Perfect, even. I run a player owned faction that at one time proudly fielded just over thirty active commanders. We had a lot of fun getting through those early stages of running a faction but now as we are close to entering our 20th system, the current level of engagement we have with the game isnt enough. We should be able to build outposts or small mining facilities, to aide in the completion of terraforming systems (lord do we need a damn agriculture economy in our neck of the woods), or to interact with our controlled systems and stations in some meaningful way.

No one wants this to be easy. I don't believe too many of us want executive control, but we do want to be able to effect change in some other way than just influence or state changes. I imagine creating such a thing as a mining outpost on a High Metal Content planet would be costly. Perhaps several billion credits. But it would solve the engagement problem so many players have. We want to play Elite so badly, but we need something more to do than just blow stuff up and/or earn credits. We'd love to add to the galaxy and help shape it. There is plenty of room for us all, isn't there?

 

[who?]

I think it's a great idea. For the simple reason that FD can't possibly create a galaxy with enough variety and entropy to be interesting and rewarding to explore. Once you realise all stations are just copy 'n' paste copies of each other, with a limited number of templates, then much of the incentive to travel to visit them is gone. They're reduced to trade/mission spawn points, not locations worth visiting in their own right.

But put tools in the hands of the players, and you have many thousands of station/base builders, each with different visions/styles/preferences; creating a much richer variety and more diverse galaxy to explore.

 

[avow555]

My first ELW is quite close to the bubble and I would like to live there.
Surely they can get this ingame a small personal outpost.

Currently you would think an asteroid base would be possible for the players to build and stay in.

It's modern gaming after all.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

Compared to something like space legs, adding base building would be trivially easy. All you need is the ability to select a point on the ground (nearby your ship would work) plus a base outfitting screen exactly like the ship outfitting. You wouldn't need new base models, voice work, or animation.

But the main reason I like this idea is that it addresses the main flaw in Elite Dangerous; that there's absolutely nothing to spend your money on except ships.

Because of the large number of players in the game, taking over existing bases or using community goals just aren't viable. Even if they did a new player base CG every week, it would take over a decade just to build the bases for the PC playerbase.

 

[varonica]

I think you must be confusing me with someone else; have you read my post on this topic? I can't see much of a demand in



However, I apologise if I called you apoplectic when you were not, because I assumed you must have been angry when you wrote



I now realise it's calm and normal wording and punctuation.

You are indeed quite correct it is indeed normal wording and punctuation, although I guess it may be bit a flowery for your average reader, I will remember in the future to keep it simple, you on the other hand seem to have some sort of issue with people who disagree with you, ascribing emotions and behaviours to them in an effort to denigrate their position. It's not an unusual tactic, fortunately it's one I can ignore, so henceforth consider yourself ignored.

 

[Chrystoph]

There are games, virtual worlds, where users have the ability to build. Now, designing and constructing a space station is not a task for the average joe...it's a task for a COMPANY, with engineers, architects, physicists...a lot of smart, educated people. I can see Frontier seeing a challenge to enabling it for players, and they have a lot of higher priorities on their plates.

This is just rationalizing the current FD mentality. The biggest hole in the logic is that players are not allowed to create a company which creates a circular reasoning argument to justify not giving players the ability to make facilities.

Given that there are both planetary installations and outposts in the game being used as asylums, I believe that your argument is... flawed.

---

My recommendation from previous threads along the station/base discussion:

For the terms of this discussion, the word facility is a generic term that refers to both stations and planet side bases.

First Quote

I would recommend that the resource gathering be limited to one or a couple of relatively generic commodities. For discussion's sake, call them "station components". These should only be available from High Tech localities. That way, you are bringing in pre-built modular components. This lends itself to group effort without requiring that a build plan be custom designed by FD every time someone submits for a facility.

To clarify, the facility creator would take components to the desired location, via haulage, and create a foundation.

If you add a banking system to the facility, other players can land on the station and sell components to the facility to complete whatever the current task is (see below for specifics), thereby creating inclusion.

Second Quote

Emplacing the station would get you a facility to land on which would be a respawn location, with the ability to add modules for additional capability.

Modules would include:

Refuel
Repair
Restock
Security Hangar - Provides Station Security patrols
Others possible - Contacts, Crafting, Engineering, Universal Cartography, etc



It would NOT have Bulletin Board, Black Market, Commodities, Outfitting, and Shipyard.

It would have the standard No-Fire zone.

It would not have a faction affiliation, and, as a result, it would not affect the BGS.

With the proposed banking system, the facility can have an economy, providing repair, refueling and restock, presuming it has those modules.

Third Quote

Building your own base on a planet, and making a SRV racetrack would be pretty cool.

Would require metals for delivery for upkeep and maintenance, and food deliveries for staff, and paying staff wages, to make it expensive enough to not spam them everywhere.

Seen this in other games, and it is not a good thing. You end up spending all your time husbanding the facility, and the game becomes a chore. If you want expense, then make the facility Cost to assemble, but the quoted proposal hasn't worked in any game I have seen where the environment is even close to as large as here.

Making the base so expensive to maintain that it becomes tedious will just end up being a waste of the developers' efforts since most people will have to spend a significant amount of time feeding the installation. If you must have a maintenance cost, make it credits, not something that players have to ship in.

Fourth Quote

Lastly, in order to combat the "build and forget" mentality, require "rent" be paid for the facility. DO NOT make this a resource farming exercise since it again prevents anyone without a massive player support or lots of time from having a facility. It should have a Credit cost which can interpreted as wages for station staff, budget for purchasing supplies, etc. A popup once per rent period asking if the player is willing to pay their rent, and 3 refusals equals no more base.

Again, if the facility has a bank, then the rent comes from the bank. If the bank cannot pay, the creator is contacted.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

It would NOT have Bulletin Board, Black Market, Commodities, Outfitting, and Shipyard.

It would have the standard No-Fire zone.

It would not have a faction affiliation, and, as a result, it would not affect the BGS.

I don't see the point in a player base without a shipyard. That should be the very first thing unlocked. Nor do I understand why it couldn't have mission boards, faction, and work with the BGS just like the countless thousands of NPC bases already in the game.

 

[Chrystoph]

I don't see the point in a player base without a shipyard. That should be the very first thing unlocked. Nor do I understand why it couldn't have mission boards, faction, and work with the BGS just like the countless thousands of NPC bases already in the game.

The problem with all of those things is that they are economy. Excepting the Bulletin Board, every one of those items directly generate revenue, which Frontier has explicitly said that they would not support.

If the base influences the BGS, then it requires factions, which I believe should be avoided. Frontier has to get involved with the process at that point, and I was trying to avoid that because it is one of the major bottlenecks in the current process.

 

[Ben Sevil]

[/I];5869671]The problem with all of those things is that they are economy. Excepting the Bulletin Board, every one of those items directly generate revenue, which Frontier has explicitly said that they would not support.

I agree with you. I would however, add the possibility of, say, a mining outpost offering small amounts of a few metals or minerals to sell (an abbreviated commodities list, so to speak) as well as, maybe, outfitting. It wouldn't unbalance the economy in-game if 99.9% of your profits were deducted for base maintenance. Essentially, a base would be a vanity project or a money sink, but offering other commanders something to make their stay worthwhile.

 

[Chrystoph]

An argument could be made for Outfitting with stock items if the money were not put into the bank since those items sell for what they were bought for. The only problem that might present is that stored items would have to be managed.

Would items stored at the base be limited to the item's owner or would the base have them publically available?

 

[Ben Sevil]

An argument could be made for Outfitting with stock items if the money were not put into the bank since those items sell for what they were bought for. The only problem that might present is that stored items would have to be managed.

Would items stored at the base be limited to the item's owner or would the base have them publically available?

Silly me, sorry. I meant repairing, not outfitting.

Outfitting would work if you could order modules. The selling cost would be the base plus transport price. No profit, just a service to commanders.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

The problem with all of those things is that they are economy. Excepting the Bulletin Board, every one of those items directly generate revenue, which Frontier has explicitly said that they would not support.

Are you suggesting that if a someone buys something from the commodities market that the station's owner would get that money? I would certainly be against that. But, then again, I'm against this entire bank type idea. You pay for the station's modules with credits, upgrade the station by hauling supplies, but it otherwise should act just like every other NPC station in-game.

 

[Flick Montana]

I think some people want this game to become the X series.

 

[Chrystoph]

Are you suggesting that if a someone buys something from the commodities market that the station's owner would get that money? I would certainly be against that. But, then again, I'm against this entire bank type idea. You pay for the station's modules with credits, upgrade the station by hauling supplies, but it otherwise should act just like every other NPC station in-game.

The reason for the bank was a way of addressing rent. Rent was included to mitigate build and forget situations so that players are not wandering around making facilities in numerous locations.

If you wanted some other fashion for addressing that issue, I am not wedded to rent/banking, but my original proposal was meant to keep the number of facilities within reason because allowing this at all means that Frontier has to provide database information for each public facility. Even if only 75,000 of the 2.75 million accounts create a facility, you have more than doubled the amount of facilities currently in the game.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

The reason for the bank was a way of addressing rent. Rent was included to mitigate build and forget situations so that players are not wandering around making facilities in numerous locations.

I always assumed that each player would only get one base. Sort of as a home.

As to the number, only Frontier knows for certain but I'm also assuming that only a tiny percentage of the players play the game long enough to qualify. I'm thinking something like 500 million CR for a planetary base and 1-2 billion CR for an orbital outpost.

 

[Kinky Jalepeno]

With all the credits we gotten from trade, exploration, combat and piracy going nowhere, can we have the opportunity to buy a plot in space/surface and build our own station/port?

There must be thousands of parts that must be purchased and workers to hire. Good use of our money as the Galatic Bank of Elite pays zero interest (which is better than real banks that gives negative ones I guess).

Sorry this comes up all the time and FD has said no. But you can kind of have it if you make your own player minor faction and take over space stations and systems.

See this is a crap response.
I am in the Wing called Sacra Oculus and we are an injected minor faction etc but in game I don't feel part of anything. I'm not in a wing, guild or squadron. If you come across my ship in super-cruise your readout will not say I'm Sacra Oculus like an NPC vessel does. I am just another spacecraft flying around the galaxy.

Seriously FDEV, when are you going to allow us to feel like we are part of a wing and actually have a HQ we build ourselves (or have our wing name display in our scanned info at least?!). This alone would give us all reasons to go out and mine/collect/barter/trade/steal the materials needed to build it. Hell we could even launch our own CG's and pay other pilots not in the wing for materials or security services during and after building.

This game maybe the size of a galaxy but i've stepped in deeper puddles quite frankly. Where's the crafting, galactic marketplace for player trading, missions that reward ship gear and/or blueprints we can sell or craft ourselves?

*****This game needs a shot of EvE trading/crafting/PvP and general MMO feature medicine IMO******

I like the game, but it's missing so much of what it could be and am sorry to say even in its still "way off" state, Star Citizen feels deeper to me.

Not a rant, more of a desperate plea to give the game some depth to foster the "forge your path" mentality. There really is no purpose to the game beyond making money for the next ship up and suspect Thargoids are only going to give us a little bit.
What about the rest of universe?

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

Sorry Kinky, i do not know what else to say. FD have said no to this on the live streams a couple of times now.
My group are role players and so we have a great time with where the game is right now as just last night we had 2 full combat wings pushing up our influence in a system so we could expand. It was a good night but we do aproach the game like we are playing D&D where the game only gives us the bare bones and it is up to us to breathe life into it.
Sorry, as we would like to sign up to our minor faction as you say, but in our heads we already have.
Anyway have some rep for good idea that hopefully will turn up one day.
3.0 season hopefully?

 

[Siobhan]

Whilst Elite was certainly not the first space-based trader game

I think you'll find it was...
Certainly the first with 3d graphics.

However, I'm happy to be proved wrong if you can show an earlier example.

 

[Kinky Jalepeno]

Sorry Kinky, i do not know what else to say. FD have said no to this on the live streams a couple of times now.
My group are role players and so we have a great time with where the game is right now as just last night we had 2 full combat wings pushing up our influence in a system so we could expand. It was a good night but we do aproach the game like we are playing D&D where the game only gives us the bare bones and it is up to us to breathe life into it.
Sorry, as we would like to sign up to our minor faction as you say, but in our heads we already have.
Anyway have some rep for good idea that hopefully will turn up one day.
3.0 season hopefully?

I'm hoping an praying. If VR hadn't given me a new angle to enjoy this game with, I suspect I'd have been long gone by now and playing "that other game" despite its still way off state, it's a smaller sandbox, but it's already deeper than here.

 

[Kinky Jalepeno]

I think you'll find it was...
Certainly the first with 3d graphics.

However, I'm happy to be proved wrong if you can show an earlier example.

Nope, you are totally correct. I'm an old timer that played the original Elite on (if I remember correctly) a BBC computer or one of the early Atari PC's back in the 80's.
It was ground-breaking back then, and now we have VR lol

Wish I was a teenager again, technology is getting interesting but I'll be dead before we get to the real stuff I dream about.
Ah well.

o7