Colonisation Answers

[KKomrade Sylas]

The implication is that they will - everything seems to be "once you create a system, normal BGS rules apply", and every faction is only native to one system each. Of course, a retreat could only happen if at least three other factions also got into the system, which probably is sufficient to stop most oddities.

Main problem I suspect is the system having only 1 faction (The faction that creates the new system, in a way) and it's just immediately at 100% influence, triggering expansions that cannot be stopped until another faction expands in, and essentially locking out that faction from normal BGS activities in the bubble.

I wonder if when the system spawns as a proper BGS system, it'll have the faction that created it as a non-native alone with no other factions, or if it'll have it as a native faction, or if it'll spawn in a few proc-genned native NPC factions. Systems don't really need to have native factions, as shown by plenty of systems like that in the bubble.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I wonder if when the system spawns as a proper BGS system, it'll have the faction that created it as a non-native alone with no other factions, or if it'll have it as a native faction, or if it'll spawn in a few proc-genned native NPC factions. Systems don't really need to have native factions, as shown by plenty of systems like that in the bubble.

Adding in a few new native NPC factions each time would seem the simplest way to stabilise a new system - especially for those colonists who don't have any particular desire to mess with the BGS details and just expanded whichever PMF had taken over the edge of the bubble in the direction they wanted to go.

Though that would really need to come with new systems getting a better or at least shorter system name, because those NPC factions are generic enough without also being called the "Col 285 Sector AB-C d1-23 Crimson Universal Inc"...

 

[Cosmo]

Things I would like to do with colonisation.

Name the System, Planets and Moons.
Decide on the Ecconomy.
Pick the Ships, Modules, Weapons, Enginnering, Paint and Decals of the System Security.
Be able to have my Team filled with ships belonging to the System.
Have my Face on some bilboards in the system.
Employ an Engineer who can do all experimentals on demand as well as thier own speciality.
Employ a Techbroker.
Employ Material Traders, all of them.
Be able to buy and sell Materials ALL OF THEM.
Improve the Systems Facilities, with new Stations, Planetary ports, Capital ships, Megaships, Instalations, Bars, Casinos, Restraunts, Museums.
Let us stock the Bars and Restraunts and Museums with Rare goods and Items, Let people walk around them and see the items on display at the museums. Let people buy food and drink from the bars and restraunts.
Manage the funds of the system and dictate the prices for goods and services.

Thats all i can think of atm.

Seconded. This would make colonization awesome.

 

[aRJay]

If a system is 'sought-after', what would be the fair and equitable way to distribute that system?
A way that would satisfy all of the dozens, if not hundreds, of players that want it?

That is an easy one there isn’t a way to do it that would satisfy the players the system didn’t go to.

• First come first served, unfair to those not playing 24/7
• Auction, unfair to those poorer than the winner
• Lottery, unfair to those unluckier than the winner and losers had to pay

The 10 Ly limit seems like it will be a Beta thing, but given the emphasis on trade and BGS at maximum it's not going to be much more than double that.

Yep.

 

[aRJay]

Things I would like to do with colonisation.

Name the System, Planets and Moons.
Decide on the Ecconomy.
Pick the Ships, Modules, Weapons, Enginnering, Paint and Decals of the System Security.
Be able to have my Team filled with ships belonging to the System.
Have my Face on some bilboards in the system.
Employ an Engineer who can do all experimentals on demand as well as thier own speciality.
Employ a Techbroker.
Employ Material Traders, all of them.
Be able to buy and sell Materials ALL OF THEM.
Improve the Systems Facilities, with new Stations, Planetary ports, Capital ships, Megaships, Instalations, Bars, Casinos, Restraunts, Museums.
Let us stock the Bars and Restraunts and Museums with Rare goods and Items, Let people walk around them and see the items on display at the museums. Let people buy food and drink from the bars and restraunts.
Manage the funds of the system and dictate the prices for goods and services.

Thats all i can think of atm.

Yes your Godliness. /S

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'm curious, what do the folks who are so sure 10ly is not enough actually want to do?

Is it a desire to explicitly be disconnected from the bubble in terms of trade/BGS/Powerplay etc (in which case yeah, I guess that's not what Frontier are doing with this) or is it mostly because you have a specific, very scenic system/planet in mind that you wanted to be the first to colonise?

If the latter, then I do wonder how sure we are that there aren't plenty of nice places within a few multiples of 10ly around the edges of the existing bubble.

I've tried to do some maths.
The radius of the bubble is approx. 150ly.
That means the surface area of the bubble (4πr²) is about 282600ly².
If we divide that by the 10ly range then I think we have around 28260 systems that could be current starting points from which we could begin our colonisation efforts.
This is a complete guesstimate but let's say each one of those has 2 or 3 systems within 10ly that only it could colonise.
That means there's something like 70,000 systems up for grabs on day 1.
Someone PLEASE check my maths but that sounds like a lot of systems to dismiss as "uninteresting".

For me, the reason they are uninteresting is because:

a) None of the interesting systems are within close range of my faction. As I noted, within 10LY there is only 1 system up for grabs, which has nothing in it, just 2 suns.

b) Even if they were, i don't want just another system within the bubble, i want to build way outside the bubble.

 

[Mr Lindsay]

That is an easy one there isn’t a way to do it that would satisfy the players the system didn’t go to.

• First come first served, unfair to those not playing 24/7

Completely agree that there's no system that would please everyone for this.

However, I don't think it's accurate to say that First-come-First-served is only best for the 24/7 players. While on Day 1 there might be an initial crunch (and probably server collapse!) if it's only a question of logging in, picking up a beacon, then travelling to the system (10 ly away) it doesn't sound like that initial claim is going to be super time intensive. After that first week, due to the 4 week time to complete the station, everyone's colonization rates will start to misalign anyway, so the pressure to be first online after the Thursday tick will ease off a bit. Though it really depends how rare 'desirable' systems turn out to be.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

OK, so here's a thought. How about if Colonisation phase 1 is about systems that can only sustain themselves by being connected to the supply chain that is the rest of the bubble (and maybe Colonia too in due course?), and then later in the year they announce "Deep space colonisation" (which might cost more) where you can initially establish a self sustaining mining economy anywhere you want (perhaps with a 500ly minimum distance away from populated space rather than a maximum distance) from which phase 1 style colonisation can also then grow outwards?

If FD were to announce that, it would be an interesting compromise, but why wait?

 

[ruifo]

Things I would like to do with colonisation.

Name the System, Planets and Moons.
Decide on the Ecconomy.
Pick the Ships, Modules, Weapons, Enginnering, Paint and Decals of the System Security.
Be able to have my Team filled with ships belonging to the System.
Have my Face on some bilboards in the system.
Employ an Engineer who can do all experimentals on demand as well as thier own speciality.
Employ a Techbroker.
Employ Material Traders, all of them.
Be able to buy and sell Materials ALL OF THEM.
Improve the Systems Facilities, with new Stations, Planetary ports, Capital ships, Megaships, Instalations, Bars, Casinos, Restraunts, Museums.
Let us stock the Bars and Restraunts and Museums with Rare goods and Items, Let people walk around them and see the items on display at the museums. Let people buy food and drink from the bars and restraunts.
Manage the funds of the system and dictate the prices for goods and services.

Thats all i can think of atm.

Yes, yes, yes...

 

[aRJay]

Completely agree that there's no system that would please everyone for this.

However, I don't think it's accurate to say that First-come-First-served is only best for the 24/7 players. While on Day 1 there might be an initial crunch (and probably server collapse!) if it's only a question of logging in, picking up a beacon, then travelling to the system (10 ly away) it doesn't sound like that initial claim is going to be super time intensive. After that first week, due to the 4 week time to complete the station, everyone's colonization rates will start to misalign anyway, so the pressure to be first online after the Thursday tick will ease off a bit. Though it really depends how rare 'desirable' systems turn out to be.

The desirability will be the big salt generator, fortunately what is really desirable will vary among the players.

 

[CMDR Snailman]

Thing is, as an explorer, that's 100% not what I would have any interest in, why would an explorer want to set up a permanent home anywhere? Surely that's what huge mobile bases are for?

The system I would like to build my home base in has an estimated 18,000 undiscovered systems within a radius of 100 ly. That's a lot to explore.
Also, having a home base doesn't prevent me from going on larger trips for a few weeks.

 

[Alec Turner]

If FD were to announce that, it would be an interesting compromise, but why wait?

I guess to thoroughly test the primary game mechanics first and balance the numbers a bit in a fairly controlled environment before truly handing over the "keys to the galaxy" (or however it was that Piers described it).

 

[Zimous]

Colonization seems a really nice feature to add to the game, which would give us players something to do on the long run. However I have two concerns which for myself could kill colonization altogether.

- Which are the actual benefits from colonizing a system? Are we just "getting the experience" and our name as the "system arquitech", or can we benefit from the systems we colonize? And what kind of control we have over it apart from influencing how the system develops?

- And is this just a solo player thing or can squadrons be part of this? I was hoping we would be able to create a player faction which would work as a guild, so groups of players can join up and colonize and expand their own faction/guild/squadron. I thought FDev suspending the submit of new player factions meant we would an official system to create and manage your own minor faction ingame. But sounds like the systems can only be controlled by single players and factions remain what they are, complete fluff.

 

[Jmanis]

why would an explorer want to set up a permanent home anywhere?

To the point, I don't think the point of colonisation is for players to set up a "permanent home". It's just to populate nearby systems with more NPCs. That's literally all it's for afaict.

EDIT: To be very, very explicit about what I mean here, I get the feeling that in an ideal world, factions would organically expand out to different systems, without any player input.

For whatever reason (and I can theorise many), FD can't/won't make this happen satisfactorily without some form of player inject to direct it. My read is that's literally all colonistion is.

It's not player's having permanent bases. It's not players making a home out of a distant galaxy. It's not a vector for player profit generation. It's not to populate a place that is special to a player for whatever reason. It's just to grow the world we have, because for whatever reason, it can't happen automatically. It's nothing to do with players at all, it's just allowing us to sow a seed that pushes the BGS to do it's thing in a new location.

 

[BDelacroix]

There are 400 billion stars. There will be plenty for all.

 

[SergMx]

To the point, I don't think the point of colonisation is for players to set up a "permanent home". It's just to populate nearby systems with more NPCs. That's literally all it's for afaict.

EDIT: To be very, very explicit about what I mean here, I get the feeling that in an ideal world, factions would organically expand out to different systems, without any player input.

For whatever reason (and I can theorise many), FD can't/won't make this happen satisfactorily without some form of player inject to direct it. My read is that's literally all colonistion is.

It's not player's having permanent bases. It's not players making a home out of a distant galaxy. It's not a vector for player profit generation. It's not to populate a place that is special to a player for whatever reason. It's just to grow the world we have, because for whatever reason, it can't happen automatically. It's nothing to do with players at all, it's just allowing us to sow a seed that pushes the BGS to do it's thing in a new location.

I agree with you but that doesn't change the fact that this place could be at the center of the galaxy or at the other end of it.
Personally, I envision it as thousands of different sized colonies scattered throughout the galaxy.
Otherwise we don't get colonies but just an expansion of the same bubble.

 

[Jmanis]

Yes. I think there'd probably need to be two changes made to counter that:
1) Minor faction fines and bounties get localised to the single system incurred in, so you no longer get locked out of 100 systems for a single offence
2) Effects of player actions on BGS states get turned up to ridiculous levels so that the dilution of player activity keeps things moving

i think there's possibly an even simpler solution. Limit the amount of colonisations a faction can have active at a given time. Finger in the wind for a 4 week establishment might be five?

 

[KKomrade Sylas]

Regarding all the questions about the "point" or "benefit", I suspect maybe Colonization isn't going to be a super enjoyable feature for those who do not necessarily enjoy map painting. I for one don't think I need any "reason" to colonize other than just for the sake of expanding the bubble and developing the world of the game in a tangible way.

 

[UberDuper]

It's a beta test of a new concept of beta: a beta beta, or meta beta, if you prefer.

We've redrawn the map of our understanding of betas.

 

[imski]

Quick question for the thread.

Anyone know where I can find a list of systems/planets I've discovered and sort by their type?