ED:Colonisation Summary and Tips

ED:Colonisation Summary and Tips

Introduction

Over the past two months, like a lot of commanders, i've been dabbling with Colonisation. A bunch of stuff has happened during that time. As things are appearing to stabilise, I wanted to capture and share my experiences and knowledge. If you're curious about Colonisation in Elite Dangerous - experienced or novice, you may benefit from some of the approaches, experiences and thoughts. I'm posting this on both the official forums and Reddit for visibility.

Who am I?
I've been playing since Elite Dangerous was launched and am very much a Trader. I enjoyed the original many years ago. It feels a simple concept that's been incredibly well revived on modern technologies. I play on PC, only play solo, have never owned a Fleet Carrier and very rarely engage in combat. My hauling vessel of choice is the Cutter. I like the immersion of trading, honestly. That's enough background flavour.

Approach to Colonisation
From memory, Trailblazers release date was announced at the end of January 2025, to be in live beta a month later. At that time I hadn't played Elite Dangerous for well over a year. It appealed to me (building a permanent home in games always has), so I thought i'd get back into the game and do some touring around the bubble to find a number of potential systems - I knew nothing more about it than some Reddit posts talking about a ~15Ly range from existing populated system. I'd typically had my 'home base' as LTT 15278 so I went 'inwards' (toward the centre of the galaxy) only jumping to systems with zero population and just seeing what they looked like. I quickly had a list of six systems where any one of them would be excellent (my criteria was):
Greater than 5 landable bodies
Greater than 2 different landable body types (icy / rocky / metal rich / high metal content)
At least 1 gas giant (ideally with a ring that isn't depleted)
At this stage I had no clue about how Colonisation would work; primary port location being so very random, body slots, orbital slots, body types effecting economy, etc.

I want to take a moment to mention Beta. Frontier Developments (FDev) have used the term "Live Beta" in relation to Colonisation & Trailblazers. For good or real that's what we've got and I'm not going to get drawn into a deep debate about how good or not that's been. It's imperfect, everything is. I've played enough Early Access or Betas to know that you go into it with a view that Things will change that you cannot control. If you don't like that, don't go into it yet. Sure, there's the perception that all the good systems get taken if you don't engage early - I can see it from both viewpoints.

At release of Trailblazers I flew to the first one in my list and claimed it. I know subsequently a number of commanders had issues with duplicate claims, failure to claim, etc. I count myself lucky that I didn't have any issues.

Like a lot of early colonisers, we didn't spot the small flag in the system to denote the Primary Port location. I think if I had, I would have checked out the other systems first, because my Primary Port location was 1,223 Ls from the Star. After realising this was what i've claimed, I should just get on with it, I spent a few days hauling CMMs (and some other commodities, but mostly CMMs, it felt like) to build my Coriolis. Intentionally I wanted to build a Coriolis first knowing that it was a sizable amount of time. The universe smiled upon me when clicking through the random renaming with "X Relay" for my four-truss variant Coriolis.

"Planning"
I like city builder games. I'm at city planning. My first approach was to think "What type of System do I want?". I hadn't realised then how important that question is now. With the changes implemented at the end of April (Trailblazers Update 3: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-trailblazers-update-3-now-live.636973/), all that planning pretty much went out of the window. However, at the time the playerbase didn't know the method that FDev would implement. So I came up with an approach which looked like this:
[Pre-Update 3 plan]
ED_Colo.png


I'd planned to group stuff geographically on a theme. All my Tourist stuff around one gas giant, etc. I created a spreadsheet that was based on DaftMav's (https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/1j17478/ive_made_a_spreadsheet_with_details_on_the/). Don't ask for mine because it's staggeringly inferior to the one linked. The same principle applies; what are you going to build, where and in what order. The order is quite important because of the concept of the Construction Points AND some builds require other facilities to be in the system first (i.e. to build a Surface Hub Exploration you first need an Orbital Installation Communications Station). And then, each thing you build also effects some system factors: Security, Tech Level, Wealth, Standard of Living, Development Level, Population). We still don't fully know what these things fully do just yet, some of them we have some idea though.

For me, originally I wanted to build a mixture of stuff and if possible i'd like my port to be primarily Tourism then High Tech. Why Tourism? Because all the other systems around me were mostly Extraction, Industrial, Refinery, Agriculture. There were no Tourism ones and not a lot of High Tech.

Once the Update 3 criteria came out, my primary port had an economy spread of:
1.70 Extraction (Top one is the Main Economy)
1.45 Industrial
1.30 High Tech
1.05 Agriculture
1.00 Terraforming
0.05 Tourism
0.05 Military
0.05 Refinery

Before I talk about how those numbers are calculated, it's worth briefly mentioning where you, as a commander, can see them. In short, you can't in-game. Every time you dock at a station the game creates a journal file (C:\Users\WARTFACE\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous). You don't need to go digging through them manually. There's a number of addons that can read them for you. Personally I use "Elite Dangerous Market Connector" with the "Station Economies" plugin. When you dock at a facility, it'll show you current values for the economy for that port.

How we get to those numbers isn't fully bottomed out; though we have a good idea. When reviewing the Update 3 patch notes from FDev, we see talk of a number of things:
  • Default Economy for Colony Port based on Body orbited
  • Economy Boost/Decrease
  • Links (Strong and Weak)

It's really super important to understand these when you're building a system. Let's take the example of my Coriolis port (primary port) with those values above. We can calculate and understand the values behind the current colonisation system.

The first thing to realise is that the Body your Port is orbiting will have a significant effect on the Economy for that Port. In my case, the port is above an Icy Body. Now, that Body also has some other variables to note, i'll list out all the ones that we should consider:

Body:
Icy Body​
No Volcanism​
No Geologicals​
Organics (Biologicals)​
No Rings​
Tidally Locked​

System:
A single Star, Class M​
No Black Hole​
Has Pristine Reserves (Rings and Asteroid Belt)​

We now need to add in the Strong and Weak links. Simplistically, if you build facilities on the Body the Port is orbiting and in the same orbit as the Port, it'll create a "Strong Link" and will effect the economy in a large way. If you build a facility anywhere else in the system it'll create a "Weak Link" (and it is very weak) to this Port. Further details in the Patch Notes on multiple ports and links, worth a read. I can't speak to Surface Ports, i've stayed clear for the time being.

From the patch notes we can see that these factors can stack. We can then see that these factors equate to the above figures for my port:
Body gives port:
Industrial (from Icy body)​
Agriculture (from Biologicals)​
Terraforming (from Biologicals)​

Strong Link Facilities from:
Surface Extraction Tier1​
Surface Extraction Tier2​
Orbital High Tech Tier2​

I'm fairly certain that Weak Links are always 0.05 in value. This answers a bunch of my values and leaves the following (i've subracted the weak links from the above value):
1.60 Extraction
1.40 Industrial
1.20 High Tech
1.00 Agriculture
1.00 Terraforming

We know that Terraforming and Agriculture came from Biologicals being on the Body. Which leaves (again, subtracting out the values from Biologicals):
1.60 Extraction
1.40 Industrial
1.20 High Tech

The patch notes also state that Strong Links may Boost/Reduce "economic supply performance". I read that it meant the Commodity Supply, however it could be that it applies to the actual weighting of the Economy itself. I'm working on the working theory it's the former, and therefore:

Icy Body gives 1.40 Industrial weighting
A combined (Tier1 + Tier2) Surface Extraction Settlements on the orbited body give 1.60 Extraction weighting
A Tier2 Orbital Research Station gives 1.20 High Tech weighting

At this point, I realised that this Station was unlikely to become a Tourist attraction of note. Sure, some Mining might be cool to look at, but it would mean a significant investment to swing the primary economy from Extraction to Tourism. I had a single Strong Link slot left on the Body and punted for a Tier2 Surface Hub Scientific build (High Tech). With the fingers crossed that it would be worth at least 0.40 weighting; which would mean High Tech / Extraction equal weighting (both 1.70). As it turned out, that Surface Hub was worth +0.8. My port now looks like:
2.10 High Tech (Top one is the Main Economy)
1.70 Extraction
1.45 Industrial
1.05 Agriculture
1.00 Terraforming
0.05 Tourism
0.05 Military
0.05 Refinery

I've yet to fully bottom out the Economy Boost values just yet - in particular my Agricultural Pluses and Minuses may remain a mystery for a long time. Overall I know that for this Station I have:
Economy boosted/decreases from:
Agriculture:​
- Icy Body​
- Tidally Locked​
+ Organics​
Extraction:​
+ Pristine resources in system​
High Tech:​
+ Orbiting body with Organics (Biologicals)​
Industrial:​
+ Pristine resources in system​
Refinery:​
+ Pristine resources in system​
Tourism:​
+ Orbiting body with Organics (Biologicals)​

My system looks like this:
ED_Plan.png


Which is the spreadsheet version of:
ED_Current.png



What would I do differently?
I would strongly recommend that when building a system, have an aim. If that aim is "I want my port to have Economy type XYZ" then focus solely on that. The Body you build around has such a massive impact that arguably it's what you should build around, rather than trying to brute-force over it.

I would probably just have a system go for a single economy and not go broad. Due to how Economy A supplies Economy B, if you have more than one you're effectively selling your own sofa and wondering why you've got no-where to sit. Better analogies are available.


What am I working on now?
I'm on the fence about building a T3 port around my single Water World. It'll be Agriculture & Tourism by default and I can't effect it much beyond that. Other than big population, i'm really not sure it'll do anything for me. It might just be a big science experiment that blows the system up and likely my sanity. Lot of work for really not much gain, I think.

I've honestly had a blast with Colonisation. I've legitimately felt excited when I have a few hours to play and can do some planning or hauling and seeing the system develop, in design and execution.


Would I want FDev to do anything in particular to improve Colonisation?
Honestly, I think they've got a good enough idea what works and doesn't. Sure, it's imperfect and the comms/detail could be better. I think if I could have one wish it would be to build upon the foundations of Colonisation and enable Player Housing. I'd love to be able to build a planet-side base that I can walk around outside & inside, modular, extendible, freebuild, landing pads, my ships arrayed, etc. Would be awesome.


Pay to win?
I've spent a few quid on Arx lately as i've certainly had my money's worth from Elite Dangerous over the years and wanted to say thanks. I punted for the Copper Coriolis, it looks fantastic on my four-truss X Relay, come take a look at Col 285 Sector YC-N b22-2. The shipyard sells every ship. We sell Battle Weapons and other High Tech goods, we buy all the Silver and Gold. Bartender makes a mean Tom Collins.


Colonisation is simple on the surface, though there is complexity and unknown detail just now. If you have questions i'll try and answer. There's a lot of good information out there if you dig for it.

o7 Commanders.
 
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