"Development Level >>"? Figuring out what all these numbers do.

My binary star with no planets says hi! ...😅
Heh, what about my lone brown dwarf? I only picked it up because it has a name and I used to park my semi rare commodity trading carrier there. I had no interest to develop it a lot, just to have a landmark. However, I did open with a coriolis, knowing that there aren't many slots. There is one more slot. I'll build an installation there once I understand the numbers better.
 
Heh, what about my lone brown dwarf? I only picked it up because it has a name and I used to park my semi rare commodity trading carrier there. I had no interest to develop it a lot, just to have a landmark. However, I did open with a coriolis, knowing that there aren't many slots. There is one more slot. I'll build an installation there once I understand the numbers better.
In my case, i intend to make every facility in the system Security related.
 
How do you actually build refineries?

Everything around colonization comes down to refinieries. But how do you build them? Where do you get all the steel and the CMM composites? How do you tilt the economy to Refinery?

Cant imagine that the only way will be to build that large surface port. Which is like an Orbis on a planet. What an effort?!
 
How do you actually build refineries?

Everything around colonization comes down to refinieries. But how do you build them? Where do you get all the steel and the CMM composites? How do you tilt the economy to Refinery?

Cant imagine that the only way will be to build that large surface port. Which is like an Orbis on a planet. What an effort?!
According to the Codex, facilities influence the market of nearby dockable ports. So presuming you need to build those, and they will shift things from "colony" economies to whatever (refinery in this case)

I would definitely anticipate cmm's only being from surface ports, since that's a restriction on CMMs writ-large. It would be awkward to make colonisation differentc since they're exactly the same markets.
 
From what I understand, CMMs can only be found at ground ports with the refinery economy type. I looked through the surface building UI late yesterday and couldn't see any refinery surface assets, though the spreadsheet I posted earlier lists a refinery surface hub (which I probably ignored in the UI because it has no landing pads).

Based on that spreadheet (I'll check in game later) the refinery surface hub has a surface economy influence of "refinery" so it seems if you build enough of these you should get a refinery economy system, but one with no dockable refineries!

It's too glaring to be an accidental omission, IMO. Maybe it's designed to significantly slow long-range daisy chained colonies appearing, or maybe the range of available asset economy types will be expanded later (that is purely a data change, I guess.)
 
How do you actually build refineries?
It looks from the documentation that
- build a bunch of Colony economy stations
- build a bunch of the Refinery Surface Hub (at T2) to drag their economy to Refinery [1]
is the likely answer.

I've colonised a suitable system to test this out but it'll take me a while to haul the necessary cargo to build the stations, so someone else will probably be able to verify it first.

[1] Finding things which give T2 construction points without having a different economy influence is the thing to watch for here. Colony planetary ports are an obvious 2-for-1 idea if it works (T1 large pad stations!), but quite expensive themselves.
 
Few further notes:
  • Choice of 1st station may have huge impact when you have smaller system with less build points. It's even more critical with low amount of planets with dockable surface.
  • Is highly advised to plan whole system layout at start with smaller systems.
If you pick a large system with multiple good moon systems and an ELW... You can't pick where the first station goes, at the moment. You might end up with your first station around the D star even though the A star looks like the above.

Which makes your points there ... Tricky.

Is there a thread going to try and reverse engineer where ED tries to put that first station? I already abandoned my first find because there were multiple good locations near the star and instead it went a lonnnnng way out to a planet that was almost a twin of a good near-star choice.
 
If you pick a large system with multiple good moon systems and an ELW... You can't pick where the first station goes, at the moment. You might end up with your first station around the D star even though the A star looks like the above.

Which makes your points there ... Tricky.

Is there a thread going to try and reverse engineer where ED tries to put that first station? I already abandoned my first find because there were multiple good locations near the star and instead it went a lonnnnng way out to a planet that was almost a twin of a good near-star choice.
There is a little flag icon where the station will be put. No need to reverse engineer, just look at the system map.
1740993339142.png
 
It looks from the documentation that
- build a bunch of Colony economy stations
- build a bunch of the Refinery Surface Hub (at T2) to drag their economy to Refinery [1]
is the likely answer.

I've colonised a suitable system to test this out but it'll take me a while to haul the necessary cargo to build the stations, so someone else will probably be able to verify it first.

[1] Finding things which give T2 construction points without having a different economy influence is the thing to watch for here. Colony planetary ports are an obvious 2-for-1 idea if it works (T1 large pad stations!), but quite expensive themselves.

Issue is there is only one building of the refinery type. We'll see how that turns out. Maybe the building choices will update after the weekly tick.

Otherwise the only way i see to get CMM Composites will to be to actually build a level 3 port on a planet that has been nudged to refinery. And that will be a major roadblock for colonisation and daisy chaining.
 
Issue is there is only one building of the refinery type. We'll see how that turns out. Maybe the building choices will update after the weekly tick.
Another option for most of the refined commodities:
- build an Odyssey Industrial Settlement (which gets a Refinery contact)
- build an Asteroid base to produce the raw ores

Doesn't work for CMM or Copper but will sort out most of the rest. I certainly found I was running short on local Steel and Titanium too.

Otherwise the only way i see to get CMM Composites will to be to actually build a level 3 port on a planet that has been nudged to refinery. And that will be a major roadblock for colonisation and daisy chaining.
Level 1 planetary port based on the Colony template should be sufficient to get at least some of them. I need to give it more of a test, though.

I think they've deliberately made refineries difficult to construct - because they'd otherwise be a near-automatic pick - but it's early days yet.
 
  • build a bunch of Colony economy stations
  • build a bunch of the Refinery Surface Hub (at T2) to drag their economy to Refinery [1]
is the likely answer.

If there's a mechanic that an asset with colony economy type is transitional to something else determined by the system economy type, that is brilliant!

After an initial look at the contruction system, there doesn't seem to be any explicit influence from resources local to the asset. So I could build an extraction asset on a body with plentiful or scant resources and not see a difference in the UI.

Perhaps the difference would be reflected in the productivity? In that case a hint or two from the developers would be nice especially since there's no apparent way to change an asset once begun, and so no such thing as a "quick system building experiment".
 
Productivity is normally just proportional to sqrt(asset population), but maybe this is also where things like "development level" and "wealth" come in.

so no such thing as a "quick system building experiment".
True, but on the other hand any group which needs to care can probably do it.
- you only really need to worry about local supplies once your colonisation chain is at the very least more than a carrier jump from the bubble's essentially infinite supplies
- if you can chain 40+ systems outwards quickly, you've also got the resources to do some actual tests along the way.
 
Will be interesting to see if the 'Colony is influenced by Refineries' idea works out - I was thinking the wording meant that building more 'X' would mean that all the 'X' would be boosted, rather than 'X' appearing at 'Y', but am open to it happening.

In my system with a Pirate outpost and a surface Refinery the journals still say the Outpost is 100% Service Economy. Then again the journals also say my orbital outpost is a SurfaceStation, and the in-game UI thinks it is an asteroid base - so who knows 🤷‍♀️

I think they may have messed up the economies (or we need to wait for the restart) because there are several locations with economies that don't add up to 1.0 (as they normally would). For example this base only has half an economy:

{ "timestamp":"2025-03-03T11:07:32Z", "event":"Docked", "StationName":"Sanders Landing", "StationType":"CraterOutpost", "Taxi":false, "Multicrew":false, "StarSystem":"Col 285 Sector WG-I b11-3", "SystemAddress":7265608607097, "MarketID":4207615491, "StationFaction":{ "Name":"Canonn", "FactionState":"Expansion" }, "StationGovernment":"$government_Cooperative;", "StationGovernment_Localised":"Cooperative", "StationServices":[ "dock", "autodock", "blackmarket", "commodities", "contacts", "missions", "rearm", "refuel", "repair", "engineer", "facilitator", "flightcontroller", "stationoperations", "powerplay", "searchrescue", "stationMenu", "socialspace", "registeringcolonisation" ], "StationEconomy":"$economy_HighTech;", "StationEconomy_Localised":"High Tech", "StationEconomies":[ { "Name":"$economy_HighTech;", "Name_Localised":"High Tech", "Proportion":0.500000 } ], "DistFromStarLS":299.787695, "LandingPads":{ "Small":4, "Medium":4, "Large":2 } }
 
There are a few pre-4.1 stations here and there with economies that don't add up to 1.0 either. (Usually >1 rather than <1 for those)

Could be intentional as a way of more straightforwardly partly decoupling economy size from station population level.

I was thinking the wording meant that building more 'X' would mean that all the 'X' would be boosted, rather than 'X' appearing at 'Y', but am open to it happening.
It's possible - but having all these T3 stations (and a fair number of T2s) being permanently set to the least interesting economy seems weird.

(And a "Contraband" system economy influence doesn't make much sense with either theory, since that's not an economy type...)
 
(And a "Contraband" system economy influence doesn't make much sense with either theory, since that's not an economy type...)
Yeah, my pirate station turned out to be Service economy, though it doesn't tell you that before you build it (it sells lots of illegal drugs IIRC, I guess that is the 'contraband' aspect). The outpost in that system has a 1.15 Industrial economy:

{ "timestamp":"2025-03-03T11:19:59Z", "event":"Docked", "StationName":"Jensen Works", "StationType":"SurfaceStation", "Taxi":false, "Multicrew":false, "StationState":"Construction", "StarSystem":"Col 285 Sector WG-I b11-3", "SystemAddress":7265608607097, "MarketID":4207275779, "StationFaction":{ "Name":"Canonn", "FactionState":"Expansion" }, "StationGovernment":"$government_Cooperative;", "StationGovernment_Localised":"Cooperative", "StationServices":[ "dock", "autodock", "blackmarket", "commodities", "contacts", "missions", "rearm", "refuel", "repair", "engineer", "facilitator", "flightcontroller", "stationoperations", "powerplay", "searchrescue", "stationMenu", "socialspace", "registeringcolonisation" ], "StationEconomy":"$economy_Industrial;", "StationEconomy_Localised":"Industrial", "StationEconomies":[ { "Name":"$economy_Industrial;", "Name_Localised":"Industrial", "Proportion":1.150000 } ], "DistFromStarLS":299.787690, "LandingPads":{ "Small":2, "Medium":1, "Large":0 } }

Maybe I'm making too much of it - I've only come across 'adds up to 1.0' situations before so it looked weird to me - having proportions that don't add up to 1 🤷‍♀️
 
My Industrial station is also 1.15 Industrial.

Interestingly, despite the system population being 5500 (and therefore, for now, the total population and the station population) the market is tiny - only 73t of H-Fuel in stock implies a station economy size of ~2.5 people. Might be a consequence of it not being fully operational, of course!

Definitely going to start monitoring station economy sizes as I build more stations and boost wealth, dev level, etc.
 
Another option for most of the refined commodities:
- build an Odyssey Industrial Settlement (which gets a Refinery contact)
- build an Asteroid base to produce the raw ores

Doesn't work for CMM or Copper but will sort out most of the rest. I certainly found I was running short on local Steel and Titanium too.


Level 1 planetary port based on the Colony template should be sufficient to get at least some of them. I need to give it more of a test, though.

I think they've deliberately made refineries difficult to construct - because they'd otherwise be a near-automatic pick - but it's early days yet.
Difficult to construct? Yes, for the first one who does it.
Worst thing that can happen is you have to haul an Orbis onto the planet.
This will be doable for 10 commanders in one or two weeks if they enjoy hauling. And landing on planets.
 
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