Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

[photomankc]

So in short:
Extraction+ Refinery+ Industrial= Machinery used for High Tech & Agricultural
Extraction+ Refinery+ High Tech= Tech, Electronics & Medicine for most economies
Extraction+ Refinery+ High Tech AND Industrial+ Agricultural= Food type supplies
Types of out posts and settlements not listed merely offset losses of things like security and population drops form other types of bases while anything orbital I believe is able to offer those materials based on it's type while larger orbitals are merely a colony that handles all trade in your system in one location. Granted this is supposition based on what we CAN build and knowing this is enough for me to be ok building out my systems now. I also believe without evidence that the type of planet you place an extraction site on determines the quality of the materials it mines.( I.E. A high metal world will get you titanium from the refinery while an ice world may get you copper from the refinery or something like that). You probably should do your best to align your outpost type with the settlement types as well but my theory is if you put down extraction and refineries to cap your output first then expand into High Tech and Industrial then Agricultural after you will set yourself up to generate a ton of commodities and have a self sustaining system. IF it works as intended.

Okay. That’s been probably dragging me down. I noticed a surface industrial port was really doing nothing as far as offering products to sell but I have focused on getting the system to show up as Industrial. So sounds like I need to now place some mining settlements. I think they work as both extraction and refining right? I was wondering if that was not the case.

Question develops then, does a nearby extraction system do the same thing by creating trade routes?

 

[attilahell]

I think this Trailblazer is a total waste of time and only good to bring some new players in for maybe a week or some months than they realize that this game is not for them (grind, empty) It will be full non important systems and station Hope it will be reset when beta is over. To many garbage stations out there now.

 

[Tifu]

Hope it will be reset when beta is over. To many garbage stations out there now.

FD has clearly stated several times that they're not rolling anything back. Though I expect exceptions in cases where systems were built using exploits.

 

[attilahell]

Sad thing, but when FD decide this way. But that is they decision, my opinion stays it is a mistake, but time will tell

 

[Jmanis]

It's literally right there in the front. First paragraph.

"the power to claim and expand your very own Star Systems in your hands"
This phrasing denotes that you have the ownership. It was emphasized by the order of the wording and the use of 'very'.

What it does not say is:
"the power to own a claim to expand Star Systems"
This phrasing denotes that you do not have the ownership.

Then there is this later on in the page.

Once again denotes ownership by stating "your first station" and "your new station".

What it does not state is it saying "constructing your faction's station". Which would indicate that it is not your's or your squadron's.


There's this that's pretty much self-explanatory.

No other way to explain "YOUR NEW EMPIRE" in bold letters followed by "your first station" again.


I sound like a broken record now...

"Your system " again... I won't get into advertising the 'home base' thing that we have not gotten in the update because no station we built is treated like 'our base'. Just like every other one. But that's for a different discussion.


The word 'you' happens 45 times, 26 of them 'your', twice with 'own' after them.
Faction shows up 2 times in one short paragraph. No sight of 'own' with them.


On a different page. The System Colonization Guide

Once again states "your own new colony" and no mention of factions.


This is why people are saying that they own the systems. It was unclear from the very start. Read the notes and guide. Both telling us that we own the system and not the other way around. So yes @Jmanis. It actually did state on the website in very certain terms that we are the owners. In not one of the images you shared did it say the faction we bought the claim from is the owner. Just the controling faction.

Now if FDev came in here and said that we don't own it. Which I don't remember if they did or not. Then they need to reword their entire website and promotions about it.


Sources:
https://www.elitedangerous.com/update-notes/4-1-0-0
https://www.elitedangerous.com/news/system-colonisation-guide

Edited for formatting.

Yes, I've read that many times. No, it says nothing about owning the system.

All these arguments rely on cherry picking terms out of context, bluntly.

From an Air BNB listing:

Quick! Get in touch with them and tell them you now own their bathroom and bedroom, because it says "your own" in there, right?

Context matters, and nothing about the sentence "claim and expand your very own system" implies you own the system.

Rather, "your own" in both these contexts implies exclusivity, not ownership. So you, exclusively, can claim and expand a system.... and that claim as per the literal codex entry, is for the role of system architect, who guides the development of that system.

For someone claiming semantics matter, you sure are ignoring a lot of them.

But none of this marketing schlock on that page matters. The game has always dissociated commanders from the factions and their activities. This is no different.

By all means, keep cherry picking words to your liking. The full context matters, and there is no mention of ownership of the system or assets.

I'd happily concede that it doesn't imply you don't own it either... my position is rather "it's ambiguous" and, in a world where we can control ships by telepresence but not have verbal discussions to resolve missions with a contact, it's just FD "making stuff up in a way that meets their design"... and if that means people behave like you don't own the system... guess what? You probably don't own the system in FD's eyes.

Edit: also, the faction we support has around 8 colonization efforts where they're either the 3rd faction, or the primary faction, where i have absolutely no idea who did them. Guess i own them right? Unless of course, we don't own the factions.

 

[beatbird]

After the construction of the main port I decided to build an orbital station. I clicked on a free slot in the system, selected the type of station, but the colonization ship did not arrive. no beacon launch point also did not appear (I don't know if it should appear?). As a result, the system map shows that I have one object under construction, an empty slot in the selected location is gone, but I don't understand where I should bring construction materials now )

 

[Cosmo]

I think this Trailblazer is a total waste of time and only good to bring some new players in for maybe a week or some months than they realize that this game is not for them (grind, empty) It will be full non important systems and station

What do you want to change to make it worth your time? Most systems will never be colonized so an outpost is better than uninhabited.

Hope it will be reset when beta is over. To many garbage stations out there now.

Fdev said no reset. The beta is like a soft-launch.

 

[Ladiesknight]

I think this Trailblazer is a total waste of time and only good to bring some new players in for maybe a week or some months than they realize that this game is not for them (grind, empty) It will be full non important systems and station Hope it will be reset when beta is over. To many garbage stations out there now.

What is the definition of a garbage station?

At the moment, f. e. I have a station without any further constructions simply because I want to understand which building has which effect (here the lack of information from Frontier is immense), before try-and-error-building, therefore it's too much boring grind and if you placed the "wrong" construction, there ist no way back.

And even if they would reset everything, it would start right away like it did now and a few thousand systems would be claimed and not every system will be built "well".

And because they promised not to reset, a lot of players would be upset because they invested a lot of time because of this promise that it's not being reset.
Doing that for "not properly" built systems, which would sure appear after a reset again, wouldn't be anything to explain.

 

[Tifu]

After the construction of the main port I decided to build an orbital station. I clicked on a free slot in the system, selected the type of station, but the colonization ship did not arrive. no beacon launch point also did not appear (I don't know if it should appear?).

The colonization ship and beacon only appear for your first spaceport. An Orbital Construction Site is supposed to appear in your case but I'm guessing it's delayed. Check again after system maintenance is over

 

[hutandrei]

One of the systems I colonized was empty, no planets, just some binary M stars. I build a small Hi-tech outpost over there. It has loads of commodities, mostly Hi-Tech, some of them I actually used for the other systems I colonized.
So there is no such thing as garbage station.
Of course, if you develop just a bigger star port, like Tier 2 or Tier 3, and then the rest of the system is left empty, the list of sold commodities will be very short, and probably the shipyard won't work. Everything else, like missions, refueling, rearming, contacts, they all work - and that is not garbage.

By the way, what exactly needed to be done to have a functioning shipyard in my new tier 2 starport?
And also, can we develop a system so much that it will have Fleet Carrier Services?

 

[Jmanis]

Trying to figure out why anyone cares about the semantics over a meaningless difference. It sounds like y'all are looking for something to complain and argue about.

It shouldn't matter. But people use these things as weasel words to try and turn ED into Stellaris or EVE Online, but from Temu.

 

[mkizub]

After the construction of the main port I decided to build an orbital station. I clicked on a free slot in the system, selected the type of station, but the colonization ship did not arrive. no beacon launch point also did not appear (I don't know if it should appear?). As a result, the system map shows that I have one object under construction, an empty slot in the selected location is gone, but I don't understand where I should bring construction materials now )

I had the same problem. Switching the game to english version "fixed" issue.

 

[pvaljann]

I logged on the day of launch, about an hour after the hampsters woke up, to see if I could find a system I wanted to put on the map. After some wandering I parked in a station and queried the colonisation contact. However, I had the presence of mind (because of time commitments for the day job) to go out of the game to research detailed build requirements before I claimed. I decided that I could not afford the time.

Some time later, someone else had claimed it, and good luck to them I think it was a nice system - a couple of metal planetoids, some other non-significant, plus and a couple of gas giants, one with rings - the kind of mix that made sense from an economic point of view, as I didn't see any point in claiming a system with just a star (with the exception of the oft-discussed Colonia bridge, perhaps.)

Most posts seem about these two things specifically. Material requirements after excitedly claiming a system and choosing the large spaceport as a first build rather than a ground based installation, and those not getting the system they wanted because they couldn't get in "early enough" to claim one.

With a build pause though, I have had time to read and work out that I can (just about) be a system founder. However, that is having spent a lot of time to gain a better understanding of the process and time involved, especially the distances I will have to haul materials - with thanks to all the commanders that posted those kind of details of their pain with CMM composites etc, which was a good one for FDev to resolve.

With regards to claiming, I accepted that the moment had passed, but understand the bubble expands after every tick, and new systems will become reachable. Yes, I chose to spend time exploring and have half a dozen areas to check on, after the rollover. Some of them are a lot better than my original choice. In addition, I have helped some systems complete - where it would help bubble expansion into, or towards, a new productive area.

In retrospect, I'm glad I decided not to go early. As with every new, "complex" feature, especially when time pressure is a factor, the game could use a tutorial. Also, before claiming, build requirements including a time estimate, and a very clear banner, before confirming a claim (one of the odd occasions when you want to make people click twice) "You only have four weeks to complete the first installation. Please choose your first installation carefully, based on the game time you (or your squadron) have available."
Information, and being spelled out in those terms, may have helped a number of systems struggling-with-coriolis.

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

Yes, I've read that many times. No, it says nothing about owning the system.

All these arguments rely on cherry picking terms out of context, bluntly.

From an Air BNB listing:

View attachment 420901

Quick! Get in touch with them and tell them you now own their bathroom and bedroom, because it says "your own" in there, right?

Context matters, and nothing about the sentence "claim and expand your very own system" implies you own the system.

Rather, "your own" in both these contexts implies exclusivity, not ownership. So you, exclusively, can claim and expand a system.... and that claim as per the literal codex entry, is for the role of system architect, who guides the development of that system.

For someone claiming semantics matter, you sure are ignoring a lot of them.

But none of this marketing schlock on that page matters. The game has always dissociated commanders from the factions and their activities. This is no different.

By all means, keep cherry picking words to your liking. The full context matters, and there is no mention of ownership of the system or assets.

I'd happily concede that it doesn't imply you don't own it either... my position is rather "it's ambiguous" and, in a world where we can control ships by telepresence but not have verbal discussions to resolve missions with a contact, it's just FD "making stuff up in a way that meets their design"... and if that means people behave like you don't own the system... guess what? You probably don't own the system in FD's eyes.

Edit: also, the faction we support has around 8 colonization efforts where they're either the 3rd faction, or the primary faction, where i have absolutely no idea who did them. Guess i own them right? Unless of course, we don't own the factions.

Hitting Frontier's wall of ambiguity and inconsistency must be a pretty brutal experience for the uninitiated player.

Heck, the telepresence one gets me every time I think about it again.

 

[attilahell]

One question, can we destroy other players stations when not what is the point in this hahahahah, NUKE them ALL

 

[Richardanz]

25-40LY sounds like a reasonable balance for the update, as 10 is unfunctional and the jump to 15 made almost no difference. Having a limit makes some sense but it needs to be reasonable.

I think that 1 jump less than an engineered fully laden Type 9 can go on one fuel tank would be a reasonable way to set the maximum distance. I think that would be about 80LY. I don't know, I do all my heavy lifting with a cutter. You could make an argument for a half tank range, so that you can get back after dropping your load. I haven't started yet, all the good ones will be gone by the time I begin. I wonder if these colonies will be like fleet carriers, littering the place up everywhere with little shanty town colonies that ran out of funds as the magnitude of the work involved finally overwhelmed the enthusiasm of the commander

 

[Maolagin]

Honestly I doubt that's true though. Even now after claims have been paused for several days, architect view scrolling around the edge of the bubble there appears to be distinctly more systems still building the primary port than in operational state. And in the other direction, the "structures completed" number is going to be heavily skewed by the many very active systems that have 10+ structures built out.

Well I guess I have to correct myself here. From another discussion I've learned that the data feeds are showing over 30,000 systems colonized (with several thousand more pending primary port construction). So the "8,000 systems" number was if anything an underestimate!

That's probably a bit faster than the devs planned on the land rush going. I wonder how much more difficult they'll make it when they turn it back on.

 

[cmdr chequers]

I have two build spots in the system between the star and the first planet, go to build a satellite at one and a relay station at the other and even though I clicked on the correct locations for both builds the construction sites appeared in slots 0 & 1 around the first planet ?? The construction for both sites is complete yet they're not where they're supposed to be. By design or a BUG! ?

Same here, I have one build spot between the star and an asteroid belt, went to put a coriolis there but instead the game added an extra slot beneath the asteroid belt which wasn't there previously.
Has anyone managed to place anything between the star and an asteroid belt ?

 

[CMDR Aphrodyte]

Okay. That’s been probably dragging me down. I noticed a surface industrial port was really doing nothing as far as offering products to sell but I have focused on getting the system to show up as Industrial. So sounds like I need to now place some mining settlements. I think they work as both extraction and refining right? I was wondering if that was not the case.

Question develops then, does a nearby extraction system do the same thing by creating trade routes?

There would need to be internal trade routes since you may not always be able to build everything on one planet ( many may only allow for one settlement), but I think with the diversity in types of planetary and orbital you have the ability to generate what you need. So you could build an extraction and refinery on planet and a manufacturing orbital on that planet, OR an extraction on planet, a refinery orbital and a manufacturing on another orbital? This is all speculation of course until enough people have correlated the data. TBH I doubt FDev knows how it works in practice, because if they did we would have not had commodity deserts as they would have optimized the bubble before colonization release. Instead they are just buffing production of what is already there. I assume the system as an aggregate determines production levels overall and there is a soft cap when the "meter" caps out it's arrows for any giving category like security or population

 

[cmdr chequers]

That is a display bug, although a very confusing one. What you built under the game hood is still what you built and accurate as far as requirements and affects go. I have a similar situation where I build a relay installation and it showed up as a comms installation when I view it in the game. Then when I went to build a security installation, which needs a relay, it allowed the construction even though visually it didn't look like I had a relay in the system.

Others have pointed out this bug too. One way to verify that they mentioned, though also annoying to do, is to start (but not continue) a rename of the target. The icon shown should be the actual thing built. Then you can cancel out of the rename so you don't loose any of the limited 5 renames given.

I don't blame you for stopping until some of these bugs are worked out. Hopefully that will happen soon. While waiting for that at least we can have some confidence the things we are building are correct inside the game and there's some sort of verification we can do to check it.

Thank you, I will try that.
It's important that this is fixed because the installations are the black boxes of code that determine the system characteristics