Well in the words of Jeremy Kyle they should have put something on the end of it!
ED needs more populated systems
- Thread starter StarDemon
- Start date
Well in the words of Jeremy Kyle they should have put something on the end of it!
Jaques arrived early June 3302, discovered late June 3302
Colonia Hub surface base constructed early September 3302
Initial six surface Colonia highway bases ... can't remember exactly, but I think some time in September 3302 as well.
Initial outposts in other systems near Colonia (and one Coriolis shell) late October 3302
...then a very big expansion of about 60 systems with a mix of surface and orbital stations mainly between February and July 3303
...and three more highway systems with big orbitals towards the end of 3303.
But post-FSD supply lines are a rather different question, and that's only really applied in the last 15 years or so.
Yeah. I went down the bottom and carved out a little pirate kingdom solo.
The reason I moved out? Because there aren't any players down there, least of all in open, and I got sick of having to do a carrier jump just to see if there was anyone to pirate in the mining hotspots.
Expanding the bubble outwards would only exacerbate this issue - all you'd end up with is more systems that nobody visits other than a few secluded little groups doing things on their own because they're too far away from anything else to be convenient.
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Again, I point out the most important part of my post which is that it is difficult to colonize space. You can check my other post in this thread for further details. Our population has grown so large in the last century here due to there still being plenty of space on the planet to grow into and plenty of food being produced. Once you get to a certain point, however, changes in social behavior and living conditions as well as hard counters like food and places to set up shop, become severely limiting factors. There are 1st world nations that are at this moment experiencing negative native population growth and would in fact be shrinking if it wasn't for immigration. In some third world nations, lack of food is severely curtailing population growth (lots of children are being born but mortality rates are sky high). By the way, there are quite a few population biologists who believe our population growth is already beginning to slow down and will probably cap at somewhere between 9-11 billion and then maybe even start to shrink a bit. Now, consider my earlier point that space is difficult to colonize. For the first few centuries beyond the year 2000, growth would be extremely limited. Even once expansion gets seriously underway, the difficulties of building up infrastructure to support new colonies, would still be a challenging task and still be a limiting factor for population growth. I still believe growing the population to over 6 trillion spread out over 20,000 star systems is quite an achievement.
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The Motie problem. Population increase will generally only take place on the fringes, highly populated systems in the center of the bubble will have population controls in place to avoid a continuously expanding population using up resources and causing conflicts. With continuous population increase there comes a point where the population in the center of the bubble increases to such a point that even with FTL ships and the most efficient production you can no longer provide sufficient food and other resources to support them, in the end refugees flee in waves of invading ships trying to reach less populated areas, resulting in conflict with already existing and settled popualtions that don't have the resources to handle the increased population.
Readers of Mote in Gods Eye will be familiar with the concept, expansion will happen at the edges and it will be at a much smaller rate than expected because it won't be a continuous increase across all human inhabited space.
I did read all the element that I snipped out.
What I would like to point out is that your numbers aren't really accurate. 6 trillion is 6,000 billion. If you look at the disbursement, the majority of of that population is still in the gov't centers, which is largely comprised of the daughter colonies. Most locations in the Bubble aren't anywhere near that sort of population. Should you really be including a system that has one mining outpost and a grand population of 17 in the count of 20,000? Statistically, it is insignificant on the scale being discussed.
Now, before you go saying that I am proving your point for you, think about that. The daughter colonies, as a class, are the oldest habitations outside of Sol, and they, generally, are societal hubs for their areas. That means that they are the main markets, the concentrations for higher learning, etc. They have every reason for having high density populations.
TLDR; You aren't really talking about 20,000 systems, you are talking about, maybe a couple of hundred where a lot of people gathered, and the population grew because that is what happens to large populations in a post-scarcity environment.
Actually, in post-scarcity environments, populations start to slow down and become stagnant or even decline. The reasons for this are mostly socio-economic. Affluence tends to have a significant negative effect on growth. At that point, any further growth will be largely due to discovering new places to inhabit. Places, which, when in space, tend to be hard to get to and even harder to get infrastructure up for. Curiously, it has been proposed that increased automation of the work place may make such efforts to colonize new worlds more desirable as there would be increasingly larger portions of the population with little to do and probably few resources allocated to them.
Deep space mining outposts? Surely you ment deep space carrier hubs with a near zero supply or demand for any commodity.Some deep space mining systems would be handy, somewhere where you could buy some of the rarer refined commodities cheaper and cheap Tritium, and be able to sell at higher prices consumer items, food and beer
I'd rather have more varied and unique systems than more of the same that we have now
I actually meant mining and refining bases, somewhere to sell some of the mined products maybe at slightly lower than bubble prices for refining having refined products for sale at again lower than bubble prices and a demand for living type products.
If there is enough support from trading - mining carriers other outposts could be built in the near vicinity, such as manufacturing and agriculture then maybe tourism, in other words like a second Colonia, something started almost from nothing but if properly player supported could grow into a small community.
Look at the DSSA network, if enough supplies were taken out to one of there locations or somewhere similar then a small outpost could be constructed.
While i understand your premise and think its a good idea it would probably come into conflict with the way the BGS works with an independant growth cycle next to the growth/ cycle of the BGS
In my suggestion it would also be subtle- the growth would be at best once a month as not to overwhelm the BGS. All it would do is 'seed' new colonies that then respond to the BGS which then dictates growth (or not). For example over the month the BGS could tally growth factors that might increase population, which in turn could add surface bases. You are right though the system would have to be reworked so they become cohesive and logical.
I wonder why the most obvious scenario hasn't been picked and dissected.
How did the Colonia bubble grow after the initial community goal for Jaques Station? Was it FDev placing systems one by one or community goals being achieved one by one for each system? All 70?
I don't see a single issue with lack of space for player factions, which seems to be the underlying issue of the OP. Not even every colonia-bubble system has been made native home to a player faction and there are still roughly ten thousand systems in the bubble without powerplay influence, and also roughly ten thousand systems without a native player faction. There is bound to be overlap within those two blocks.
The things I do hope to see though is a BGS extension that fires both ways when it comes to infrastructure: Medium Space and ground stations that are often visited and have reasonable trade, especially when it comes to building materials and sustenance, should be able to grow to large stations with an increasing population. Conversely, large stations that see little to no traffic at all and don't get enough stuff to sustain themselves should devolve to medium stations with decreasing population. Would be an interesting way to add two new station types: Derelict large and upgraded medium. This naturally causes a migration flux, thus people are not "created out of thin air".
Of course, one could argue, that the BGS already accounts for stations being nurtured because we see NPC ships all the time everywhere and so they do not let deterioration happen. That's fair. I wonder though how much of an impact are stats like outbreak, famine, drought and the like are having? Are they actively decreasing population? What about bankruptcy and failing infrastructure? Are these just pretty tags to entice players to go there and do stuff? And if they don't, what happens? Failing infrastructure would lead me to believe this is a serious issue which could actually cause regression in station size. Like large landing pads no longer sustained, etc. Sure, they might just get taken over by other, richer factions in system. I'd buy that.
Yet, there are some stations that I severely wonder how they manage to stay afloat. System Arare for example. It has a large station, orbiting ... nothing. There is only a Tauri type star and a common metallic asteroid belt. And more than 1 million people living there. Since they can't even send ships to the star to fuel scoop and bring back to station, I wonder where they get their hydrogen fuel to sell other than needing to go to neighbouring systems which would drive up the price? A SINGLE common belt as income is able to sustain all that? Can't be quite right.
Let's find a system with a better quality metallic belt and less population. For example Kwangatjali. Not even 90 thousand population, two medium stations, a large planetary, 3 settlements, a pristine metallic belt, and a good chunk of celestials that have potential mining capabilities and still well within powerplay influence.
Want something less far out? LPM 752 , halfway between the two. A major metallic belt it's still better than the common from Arare. 160k pop, two medium stations, two settlements, plenty of celestials that can be mined.
Do you see the discrepancy?
I certainly would not be opposed to have a BGS extension in place that allows expanding factions to go to uninhabitated places and set up a "goal" to build a station with tens or even hundreds of thousands of units of cargo required in total to get something running, along various stages. If players want to build a station willy nilly in space, then so be it. They get faction dibs on the station if they are linked to a faction, or they invite other factions into it. And then they have to maintain that station. With everything required. People cry over the maintenance of fleet carriers, and they have been proven wrong by the thousands - 3310 active carriers according to eddb. Carriers are limited to one per player, and given the affluence of some, they could easily field and maintain several. So if we scale up the building requirements and maintenance of a station goes up by a multitude of fleet carrier maintenance, I'd still say that we could be seeing 500 new stations being generated and sustained. How many of them actually grow is subject to speculation. There are over 100 player factions that have control over at least 25 systems. With that level of manpower, 100 stations could well be entertained. And that is all without the public knowledge of "players can build their own stuff."
Many systems don't get the player traffic because their only station is 60kLS out, somewhere in the back yard. Granted, Fleet Carriers made visiting and playing on those stations actually viable.
An abandoned station could easily be occupied by a different faction to breathe new life into it should the former builders decide to move on and quit the game. If you quit the game and expect your station to still function and belong to you after you return, then that's pretty delusional. These abandoned stations could also very well be the cause for other NPC factions to expand into. "Look, the benefactor billionaire abandoned stuff, let's go grab it for ourselves."
However, a stepping stone to station building could be making installations more useful. Currently, which purpose do they serve other than pretty floaty bits? No docking possibilities, barely any interactive functions. At least that's for space. For ground, there are settlements which, if you look at them objectively, don't have much going on for them. We have no way to grow settlements or installations.
If someone wants to go through the lengths and build their own Colonia somewhere in Hieronimus Delta, with all the obstacles thrown their way, thousands of tons of material just to get started... and just to have it abandoned when they get bored, the station becoming a husk and thus a future exploration goal for new players... then why not? At least it would add one bit of incentive to go out exploring again, and to actually FIND something that was there before. Eve online has been around for 2003. ED has been around since 2014. And only now we get space legs. Do you seriously believe the game will be dead in 10 years? If you want to keep the game rolling and not railroad it senseless, then what more precious way to let new players "interact" with the legacy of old ones by letting them stumble upon the husks of infrastructure at distant stars, or the history of stations that have traded control over the years?
How did the Colonia bubble grow after the initial community goal for Jaques Station? Was it FDev placing systems one by one or community goals being achieved one by one for each system? All 70?
I don't see a single issue with lack of space for player factions, which seems to be the underlying issue of the OP. Not even every colonia-bubble system has been made native home to a player faction and there are still roughly ten thousand systems in the bubble without powerplay influence, and also roughly ten thousand systems without a native player faction. There is bound to be overlap within those two blocks.
The things I do hope to see though is a BGS extension that fires both ways when it comes to infrastructure: Medium Space and ground stations that are often visited and have reasonable trade, especially when it comes to building materials and sustenance, should be able to grow to large stations with an increasing population. Conversely, large stations that see little to no traffic at all and don't get enough stuff to sustain themselves should devolve to medium stations with decreasing population. Would be an interesting way to add two new station types: Derelict large and upgraded medium. This naturally causes a migration flux, thus people are not "created out of thin air".
Of course, one could argue, that the BGS already accounts for stations being nurtured because we see NPC ships all the time everywhere and so they do not let deterioration happen. That's fair. I wonder though how much of an impact are stats like outbreak, famine, drought and the like are having? Are they actively decreasing population? What about bankruptcy and failing infrastructure? Are these just pretty tags to entice players to go there and do stuff? And if they don't, what happens? Failing infrastructure would lead me to believe this is a serious issue which could actually cause regression in station size. Like large landing pads no longer sustained, etc. Sure, they might just get taken over by other, richer factions in system. I'd buy that.
Yet, there are some stations that I severely wonder how they manage to stay afloat. System Arare for example. It has a large station, orbiting ... nothing. There is only a Tauri type star and a common metallic asteroid belt. And more than 1 million people living there. Since they can't even send ships to the star to fuel scoop and bring back to station, I wonder where they get their hydrogen fuel to sell other than needing to go to neighbouring systems which would drive up the price? A SINGLE common belt as income is able to sustain all that? Can't be quite right.
Let's find a system with a better quality metallic belt and less population. For example Kwangatjali. Not even 90 thousand population, two medium stations, a large planetary, 3 settlements, a pristine metallic belt, and a good chunk of celestials that have potential mining capabilities and still well within powerplay influence.
Want something less far out? LPM 752 , halfway between the two. A major metallic belt it's still better than the common from Arare. 160k pop, two medium stations, two settlements, plenty of celestials that can be mined.
Do you see the discrepancy?
I certainly would not be opposed to have a BGS extension in place that allows expanding factions to go to uninhabitated places and set up a "goal" to build a station with tens or even hundreds of thousands of units of cargo required in total to get something running, along various stages. If players want to build a station willy nilly in space, then so be it. They get faction dibs on the station if they are linked to a faction, or they invite other factions into it. And then they have to maintain that station. With everything required. People cry over the maintenance of fleet carriers, and they have been proven wrong by the thousands - 3310 active carriers according to eddb. Carriers are limited to one per player, and given the affluence of some, they could easily field and maintain several. So if we scale up the building requirements and maintenance of a station goes up by a multitude of fleet carrier maintenance, I'd still say that we could be seeing 500 new stations being generated and sustained. How many of them actually grow is subject to speculation. There are over 100 player factions that have control over at least 25 systems. With that level of manpower, 100 stations could well be entertained. And that is all without the public knowledge of "players can build their own stuff."
Many systems don't get the player traffic because their only station is 60kLS out, somewhere in the back yard. Granted, Fleet Carriers made visiting and playing on those stations actually viable.
An abandoned station could easily be occupied by a different faction to breathe new life into it should the former builders decide to move on and quit the game. If you quit the game and expect your station to still function and belong to you after you return, then that's pretty delusional. These abandoned stations could also very well be the cause for other NPC factions to expand into. "Look, the benefactor billionaire abandoned stuff, let's go grab it for ourselves."
However, a stepping stone to station building could be making installations more useful. Currently, which purpose do they serve other than pretty floaty bits? No docking possibilities, barely any interactive functions. At least that's for space. For ground, there are settlements which, if you look at them objectively, don't have much going on for them. We have no way to grow settlements or installations.
If someone wants to go through the lengths and build their own Colonia somewhere in Hieronimus Delta, with all the obstacles thrown their way, thousands of tons of material just to get started... and just to have it abandoned when they get bored, the station becoming a husk and thus a future exploration goal for new players... then why not? At least it would add one bit of incentive to go out exploring again, and to actually FIND something that was there before. Eve online has been around for 2003. ED has been around since 2014. And only now we get space legs. Do you seriously believe the game will be dead in 10 years? If you want to keep the game rolling and not railroad it senseless, then what more precious way to let new players "interact" with the legacy of old ones by letting them stumble upon the husks of infrastructure at distant stars, or the history of stations that have traded control over the years?
@StarDemon - So, if I've got this correct, you're demanding "more populated systems" for a "game play function" that doesn't officially exist and is something that you self assign for no material value because you don't get paid for promoting any given faction.
In effect, you want your unintended BGS manipulations prioritized as content for a very select, but vocal, group of players. I would suggest that your arguments are self defeating as the "problems" you point out are caused by the game play you are endorsing. In effect, you are creating the Hegemony you are complaining about.
Leaving that aside, why should Frontier support you over any player that isn't engaging in explicit BGS manipulation? Bluntly, I am not playing your imaginary game of Risk, so why should this prioritize over things I am interested in?
In effect, you want your unintended BGS manipulations prioritized as content for a very select, but vocal, group of players. I would suggest that your arguments are self defeating as the "problems" you point out are caused by the game play you are endorsing. In effect, you are creating the Hegemony you are complaining about.
Leaving that aside, why should Frontier support you over any player that isn't engaging in explicit BGS manipulation? Bluntly, I am not playing your imaginary game of Risk, so why should this prioritize over things I am interested in?
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Whilst that is true, as medical advances lead to a longer lived population, the birth rate decreases.
But if we assume it will quadruple every century, it is currently 7 billion, so in 100 years that would put us at 28 billion, then a hundred years later 112 billion. On that measure by 3300 there would be 469,762,048 BILLION humans. That would equate to roughly 1.1 million people in each of the 400 billion star systems in the galaxy...
So I think it's safe to assume FD are expecting some major attrition in the future of mankind, plus a radical slow down of the birth rate, otherwise it would be almost impossible to find an unoccupied system, unless the core systems were home to hundreds of billions of people.
There's a general gist in this thread that the bubble has too many occupied systems spread over too small a volume.
Perhaps the situation could be improved if FDev introduced a mechanism for a station/settlement to be abandoned or closed down if there isn't enough traffic or trade going to it, like IRL ghost towns which were abandoned after the local mineral deposits were depleted.
If that were combined with a big outward expansion then it could wind up with a more spread out bubble with the same or fewer occupied systems.
The in-universe explanation could be as simple as: "Over the last 10 years Hyperspace technology has undergone a series of radical improvements, with the introduction of long range Frameshift drives, Guardian-based upgrades and the mass-production of Fleet Carriers. This has lowered the costs of deep space mining and settlement to the point where many established powers have decided to abandon their existing marginal-profit facilities and are committing to rapid economic expansion and development outside the current bubble of settled space. With the <insert a cheap excuse for a sudden shift in policy by all major powers>, a new gold-rush era is now underway on the interstellar frontier."
Of course this would require significant work by FDev to implement. So I'll file it under "pipe dream" for the present.
Perhaps the situation could be improved if FDev introduced a mechanism for a station/settlement to be abandoned or closed down if there isn't enough traffic or trade going to it, like IRL ghost towns which were abandoned after the local mineral deposits were depleted.
If that were combined with a big outward expansion then it could wind up with a more spread out bubble with the same or fewer occupied systems.
The in-universe explanation could be as simple as: "Over the last 10 years Hyperspace technology has undergone a series of radical improvements, with the introduction of long range Frameshift drives, Guardian-based upgrades and the mass-production of Fleet Carriers. This has lowered the costs of deep space mining and settlement to the point where many established powers have decided to abandon their existing marginal-profit facilities and are committing to rapid economic expansion and development outside the current bubble of settled space. With the <insert a cheap excuse for a sudden shift in policy by all major powers>, a new gold-rush era is now underway on the interstellar frontier."
Of course this would require significant work by FDev to implement. So I'll file it under "pipe dream" for the present.