Colonisation Answers

[K Olley]

I do understand concerns about there always being a station within 1000ly, removing deep space. But just balance it; the further a new system is from the closest inhabited system the more resources are initially needed. This makes deep space colonisation initially a group effort, after which individual cmdrs can add to the new bubble.

Looking at it from the other side of the coin, how many players are frightened of going out in the black because of the lack of facilities once they get out there, this is both ship only owners and carrier players who are frightened of running out of Tritium.

I have had experience with both rescuing out of fuel carriers and the occasional badly damaged ship asking if they can dock, those newbee's that did not even know that most carriers provide repair facilities

 

[SergMx]

I wonder if there aren't a lot of single people playing Elite. Even in the open game, even though we have a single player mode, can they participate in Colonization?

 

[Flimley]

Hmm, not necessarily, you only need 50 colonies, if you can plant the beacon, start construction and have the primary star port built before the next weeks tick you could do it in a year. The 4 weeks isn't how long it will take, the 4 weeks is your time limit for doing it, you must finish the first star port before the 4 weeks is up or you fail to colonise, in theory I suppose it could be done in a single week, but lets say 2 to be safe, then that's 2 years!

We could all be dead by then.

Flimley

 

[Darrack]

how many players are frightened of going out in the black

Carriers removed pretty much all the risk from exploration, with the exception of high G landings and the odd multi star jump.
Running out of Trit on a carrier is just bad planning.

O7

 

[K Olley]

We could all be dead by then.

Flimley

Rated most popular computer game in retirement homes

 

[Darrack]

Rated most popular computer game in retirement homes

That's just the pirates

O7

 

[Jmanis]

Nonsense. There is zero reason the game can only handle 10ly. The game can take weekly credits out of my pockets, I am sure it can also add to it.

I'm not sure why you're roping in the 10Ly piece here... it's not really relevant. Your quote of me was disagreeing with my suggestion "the point of this was to grow the bubble".

To quote myself in a previous post in-entirity, I said:

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.

... if Colonisation were meant to be about those things, then 10Ly would be inadequate, absolutely. But that's why I'm saying Colonisation as a feature is clearly not about those things, regardless of what players have asked for. Because if FD were in the business of delivering what players asked for, Odyssey would've been EVA'ing and boarding ships.

tl;dr Whether it's possible to make the expansion range further thatn 10Ly or not isn't in question... but for what it seems FD are trying to achieve here, a range beyond 20LY wouldn't make sense. Whether people like that or not is immaterial.

Sorry, but that argument seems really disingenious. Not all questionable design choices are "because thats how game development works". If I want that kind of rhetoric Ill go to the star citizen forums.

I never said anything of the sort... if that's how you read it I'll be explicit and say that's not what I meant.

Rather, I meant that's how FD do it. I personally don't like it in the in the slightest... but it's been that way ever since FCs. You'll find no shortage of posts where I criticise how FD do it... but that doesn't change the fact it is how they do it.

I feel like we're having two very different discussions atm.

 

[K Olley]

Running out of Trit on a carrier is just bad planning.

Yep, but I thought that forward thinking was removed from the school curriculum years ago

 

[Darrack]

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.

Im going to bump this because i think this is by far the best description of what colonisation is going to be, most wont like it but it aint going to be owt like NMS.

O7

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Well... technically each time you eat a rebuy you 'save' 95% of your ship and when you decommission the FC, you get most of the credits back also.

Decommissioning a FC isn't an "on failure" event, though - same with selling modules and ships for a mostly-full refund.

I'm thinking more about "you don't get refunded if you die with exploration data aboard" or "you don't get refunded if you get stuck in the mailslot and killed for loitering at the end of a two-hour mining run". And yes, those are certainly also the sorts of events which can and have put people off the feature or the game; other people actively enjoy having some level of risk or tension; can't really please both at once.

Again, really depends on what the requirements to fulfil are, but I'm currently expecting along station repair levels, even though I think that would be too much, I can see FDev at least initially aiming for that ballpark.

They've said they want it to be within reach of an established solo player, not necessarily at the FC ownership level (though presumably with access to a T-9 or Cutter for bulk hauling), who gets four weeks to do it.

If we say that means someone with the hauling rate of a 50% CG participant, that would put the requirements in the 20-30kT range at most. If they're intending after testing to relax the range limit enough that people can start doing things beyond the fringes of the existing bubble, that probably falls to about 10kT even for just an extra 100LY of round trip based on what happens with out-of-bubble trade CGs. And that sounds quite low for an organised group, of course - Op IDA hauls 250kT a day and there are even bigger groups than that out there.

There's no good balance point between "individuals stand no chance" and "large groups can successfully colonise hundreds of systems at once" though, so it's just a matter of seeing which of the two "problems" they've gone for.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I'm not sure why you're roping in the 10Ly piece here... it's not really relevant. Your quote of me was disagreeing with my suggestion "the point of this was to grow the bubble".

To quote myself in a previous post in-entirity, I said:

... if Colonisation were meant to be about those things, then 10Ly would be inadequate, absolutely. But that's why I'm saying Colonisation as a feature is clearly not about those things, regardless of what players have asked for. Because if FD were in the business of delivering what players asked for, Odyssey would've been EVA'ing and boarding ships.

tl;dr Whether it's possible to make the expansion range further thatn 10Ly or not isn't in question... but for what it seems FD are trying to achieve here, a range beyond 20LY wouldn't make sense. Whether people like that or not is immaterial.

I never said anything of the sort... if that's how you read it I'll be explicit and say that's not what I meant.

Rather, I meant that's how FD do it. I personally don't like it in the in the slightest... but it's been that way ever since FCs. You'll find no shortage of posts where I criticise how FD do it... but that doesn't change the fact it is how they do it.

I feel like we're having two very different discussions atm.

Yeah, seems I misinterpret what you wrote earlier. Cant disagree with what you say here.

 

[Jmanis]

Yeah, seems I misinterpret what you wrote earlier. Cant disagree with what you say here.

All good, glad to clarify

 

[Neilski]

There's no good balance point between "individuals stand no chance" and "large groups can successfully colonise hundreds of systems at once" though, so it's just a matter of seeing which of the two "problems" they've gone for.

Yes, there's probably at least a factor of 100, more likely 1000+, between what can be done by sizeable groups and by a normal player with at most a few hours per day. This is a pretty tough problem for the devs to mitigate.

 

[Darrack]

Yes, there's probably at least a factor of 100, more likely 1000+, between what can be done by sizeable groups and by a normal player with at most a few hours per day. This is a pretty tough problem for the devs to mitigate.

Which is why im sure a 10LY restriction will be in place

O7

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

Decommissioning a FC isn't an "on failure" event, though - same with selling modules and ships for a mostly-full refund.

I'm thinking more about "you don't get refunded if you die with exploration data aboard" or "you don't get refunded if you get stuck in the mailslot and killed for loitering at the end of a two-hour mining run". And yes, those are certainly also the sorts of events which can and have put people off the feature or the game; other people actively enjoy having some level of risk or tension; can't really please both at once.


They've said they want it to be within reach of an established solo player, not necessarily at the FC ownership level (though presumably with access to a T-9 or Cutter for bulk hauling), who gets four weeks to do it.

If we say that means someone with the hauling rate of a 50% CG participant, that would put the requirements in the 20-30kT range at most. If they're intending after testing to relax the range limit enough that people can start doing things beyond the fringes of the existing bubble, that probably falls to about 10kT even for just an extra 100LY of round trip based on what happens with out-of-bubble trade CGs. And that sounds quite low for an organised group, of course - Op IDA hauls 250kT a day and there are even bigger groups than that out there.

There's no good balance point between "individuals stand no chance" and "large groups can successfully colonise hundreds of systems at once" though, so it's just a matter of seeing which of the two "problems" they've gone for.

I was merely thinking of areas in the game where -all- credit investment is not entirely lost, in a more general sense, and nothing would stop FDev to implement a mechanic that allows players to recoup at least some of their investment (be that credits, or commodities delivered, or both), even if there's no prior precedent.

It will be interesting what the initial numbers will look like, and I guess until we have those numbers this convo is probably best parked. I will set pretty pessimistic expectations though, given how spectacularly out of touch earlier initial designs were elsewhere (and only got changed after sufficient noise from the player base).

 

[K Olley]

Yes, there's probably at least a factor of 100, more likely 1000+, between what can be done by sizeable groups and by a normal player with at most a few hours per day. This is a pretty tough problem for the devs to mitigate.

That could be mitigated by varying the sizes of the colonies from small land based to large orbital stations

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

That could be mitigated by varying the sizes of the colonies from small land based to large orbital stations

True, but isn't the first station always supposed to be a regular orbital one? Would be great to just start with some small ground bases and later move on to orbitals - would also make the most sense logistically imo.

 

[varonica]

True, but isn't the first station always supposed to be a regular orbital one? Would be great to just start with some small ground bases and later move on to orbitals - would also make the most sense logistically imo.

The first station must be the big primary orbital station, because that's where the contact for colonising the next system will be located on completion of the station, that station is the key to the rest of the system, I believe they did mention some limitations on ground bases you can build based on sizes, you may need to build a large planetary port before you can start building smaller ones.

 

[K Olley]

I was merely thinking of areas in the game where -all- credit investment is not entirely lost, in a more general sense, and nothing would stop FDev to implement a mechanic that allows players to recoup at least some of their investment (be that credits, or commodities delivered, or both), even if there's no prior precedent.

Either reserved stock for a low stock item or a reduced purchase price for a popular stock item.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yes, there's probably at least a factor of 100, more likely 1000+, between what can be done by sizeable groups and by a normal player with at most a few hours per day. This is a pretty tough problem for the devs to mitigate.

Yes - and "at most a few hours per day" is already putting someone well above the average even at the individual level, if they're being reasonably efficient about it.

The 50% mark in a trade CG is generally only just over "one T-9 trip a day". Someone putting in a few hours a day with a T-9/Cutter would be safely into top 25% and stand a chance of making it to top 10%.
(And that's just of the subset of people who like hauling cargo enough to do trade CGs at all, of course)