Colonia: Outfitting is still underdone (lack of Class A modules) and it's been a year

[Manticore]

When I was in Colonia this time last year it was impossible to get any decent outfitting happening because of the lack of higher class modules.

I've looked all over the colonies in the past month or so and it appears nothing has changed; sure there are more bases, more shipyards, more outfitting and yet no Class A modules for really important core stuff such as Grades 3-5 Class A:

FSD
Thrusters
Power plants

Seriously guys; if you want Colonia to become a relevant and viable alternative the The Bubble this situation needs to be addressed, changed, fixed...... o7.

 

[Rogue_titan]

Also add the engineers, give them an outpost to order upgrades. Set it up as a delivery type where you accept it and then wait x amount of time for it to be installed on your ship. Or send a few new engineers out there that cover the basics. Sort of engineer assistants to take your order and get it for you.

 

[Starwolfe]

Do some work.

QOL like outfitting parts should be upgrade-able by handing in exploration data at the stations.

Its been debated some in BGS threads, but the general idea is to hand in exploration data at a station to improve outfitting - but its a long, tedious, tiresome project for two reasons;

There is a per player cap per station per day estimated at about 5 million, and its speculated you need to hand in MUCH more than that to get one part unlocked.

I agree that method needs adjustments now - especially since Exploration payout boosts - but also because it really doesn't leave much choice on how to do that.

You can't do trading, missions or bounties to help, its exclusively an ambiguous exploration data that may or may not actually function correctly.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Interestingly, EDDB is listing a small number of A-rated (non-utility non-mining) modules available now, which weren't available at all six months ago ... and I'm pretty sure weren't available a month ago either.

The top stations seem to have a partial selection of A-rated Fuel Scoops and AFMUs, and some 2A/3A shield generators. There also seems to be 3A FSDs, Thrusters, Power plants and Life Support available at Dervish Platform.

(I wonder if some of the additions from December's two CGs are in, but not the new stations yet?)

Do some work.

QOL like outfitting parts should be upgrade-able by handing in exploration data at the stations.

When you say "should" do you mean "this would be a great idea" or "this is already implemented"? And if the latter, do you have any evidence for it working like this?

It certainly doesn't seem to be how it works now - Jaques Station in Colonia has received probably orders of magnitude more exploration data than any single station in the bubble, and hasn't changed outfitting much for 6 months. On the other hand, Colonia Dream and Colonia Hub seem to have a few new A-rated modules according to EDDB ... but don't have a Universal Cartographics service ... and some of the A-rated modules are at Aragon in Carcosa which I can't believe has been getting much exploration data handed in there.

 

[Starwolfe]

Should already be in the game, but it is not something that can be easily tracked - or at least I don't know of someone that has done that.

I know my home system has gradually improved over time, but have not kept track of its changes - as a result I don't know how it is updated, or what specifically is needed to do it.

For example, I used to have T9s and only half a dozen ships there, now I sell 10 ships and the best is Federal Corvettes. But that's a change that is over a few months but only from one person dedicating exploration data to one station.


But it gets back to the Black Box - is there a limit? How much is needed?
There is a speculation from influence values that there is a limit on how much exploration data per player per system, but beyond that? Its a mystery.
I'm not even sure if you can get everything at a station - as there is only a couple select stations like Jameson where that is done, so perhaps economy types and such limit how much is available? Like it locks out after a point?

Again, back to that Black Box. We just don't know and FDev doesn't tell us.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Very interesting - good to see that sort of thing is in the game, even if it's not well understood how it works.

so perhaps economy types and such limit how much is available? Like it locks out after a point?

That's very likely, then, and would probably prevent getting much use out of this in Colonia - all the systems are low population, so the ones with better outfitting have probably already been artificially pushed a long way over their natural limits by FDev.

e.g. this is probably our best station right now for general outfitting
https://eddb.io/station/outfitting/67078
... it's in an Industrial system with a population of 220,000, so by Sol bubble standards should look more like ...
https://eddb.io/station/outfitting/12092