Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback
- Thread starter Paul_Crowther
- Start date
Seems to be a bug that won't allow some CMDRs to build there. Even when selected. (wonder if that only happens when there is an asteroid field in slot 2)
Finding surface refineries is easy. Finding in-space refineries is even easier. I think you need to add "not using Inara" to your gameplay?
The information is sparse , I completed many different installations , surface settlements, outposts and have no ship yard to store ships , this lack of information of how to obtain the facilities that are necessary for efficient gameplay is diabolical . and frustrating . I completed a large surface port that took many hours , no ship yard , no commodities even though planet has many refineries and industrial settlements with no missions . Waste of time and effort to pay to have a name on one facility with a system name that no one would visit .Greetings Commanders,
With the launch of our Trailblazers update we will be bringing System Colonisation to Elite Dangerous! The launch of System Colonisation will be as a live Beta for the feature, allowing us to review data and make adjustments over time. This is a significant update to Elite Dangerous and whilst we are very happy with the feature we do understand that some fine tuning may be required initially.
Though this is a Beta it will be on the live version of the game and any actions/progress made will NOT be wiped unless a significant issue is identified. Here is a brief explanation of how the Beta works:
What the System Colonisation Beta is
- Feature complete
- All actions/resource payments made are final and will not be refunded
- A period where we can monitor data and make balancing adjustments
What the System Colonisation Beta is not
- A work in progress
- There will be no progress wipes
- There will be no resource refunds
The aim of the Beta is to gather data and feedback specifically focused on resource balancing. We are happy with the System Colonisation feature itself and whilst we are always happy for you to share your feedback the aim of this Beta is aimed firmly at resource balancing and not changes to the feature itself.
To help us in our balancing we will be using this thread for you to share your feedback on the following areas:
As always you are welcome to share additional feedback on the forums or to raise an issues you encounter on our Issue Tracker.
- Amount of resources required
- Amount of time/distance taken to complete tasks
If you use the new Refinery contacts, you can mine your aluminium and whatnot just fine and when you drop it off at the construction, it doesn't care whether you bought aluminium or mined bauxite and refined it, so I'm unsure what you want to change here? If you want to mine metals for your Outpost, you can. It will take you a lot longer than buying it though, so you'll probably be wishing you were space-trucking after cracking your fifth space rock...
Mind a 4 truss Coriolis is 70k+ commodities, not 53k. Even though the ingame screens show no difference.
O7,
O7,
I got 3 spots there before the first planet, wich is at 39Ls. When I put down an Orbis in the 3rd slot it ended up being 2.19Ls from the star
I've visited a number of new player created installations and in all cases the space stations and orbitals are always very close to the planet, regardless of its size, gravity etc. Always uniformly close, rather than having any variation at all. Surely they should have orbits more in line with existing stations and based on local gravity conditions? Even the orbital platforms I built in KSP have more variety, and that's pretty tight physics.
Works fine (for me), I got an ORbis in the 3rd of the 3 slots I got before the first planet (see above). I have no belt though
edit: I can only assume the asteroid belt isn't counted as a slot, so the asteroid belt would f.ex. be the 4th slot, if you got 3 slots plus the asteroid belt
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This problem exists only in some places.... I am trying to figue out why
I've come to realise - after years of deliberately avoiding external tools to use trade - that there is an intended discovery path for trade. If you use the Commodities screen properly and you use all the depth that's there, you can discover a hell of a lot about surrounding systems and make intelligent decisions about trading.
Someone upthread (or maybe the other thread) did make the point that you can't look up anything on that screen unless there happens to be supply of it or demand for it, but you know what, that's fine, because the economy types versus import and export do make some kind of sense, so if you need to find Fruit and Veg, you're gonna need Agricultural systems. So find one using the galmap and then when you get there, you have the tools the first place you dock in-system to work out where everything is in the rest of the system.
This is the intended trading game. It's actually Inara that broke it, not FDev.
(There is a big fat hole in the in-game experience which is the whole Rare Goods thing which is totally undiscoverable without external tools. Putting it in PP 2.0 without fixing that gap and then breaking PP 2.0 anyway is pretty poor, BUT the point is Trailblazers does the opposite of that and doesn't step on the Rare Goods landmine either.)
Trailblazers introduces gameplay which forces you to build up your trading-fu, not use external tools. This is a feature. It's brilliant. And then they have also added the Refinery Contact, which fixes a gap in gameplay and roleplay - the credits don't have to make sense, it's not there to grind out cash, it's there to let you get aluminium when you can only find bauxite.
And this finally demonstrates the issue with "why can't I build a colony where I damn want" - well, the constraint is if you go too far from established infrastructure in the Bubble then guess what, it gets more difficult. This is also a good piece of roleplay.
Kinda is integrated though, for a change!
I get what you're saying, but I don't think there was any obligation on FDev to say "hey, you're gonna have to actually understand the trading gameplay to do trading." The Commodities screen is the one screen in the whole thing that makes sense as a UX nearly everywhere, there isn't a whole lot broken in the UI either, and it prompts you to go find things you would not find otherwise.
This is mostly fair but I'm not sure what needs improving in the market tools, except perhaps better ways to interrogate your own history. It is a bit stupid that there's no easy way to look up where you bought that coffee last time a mission popped up for it.
I don't think they should be adding "how to find stuff cold from 100ly away" because that's never been intended gameplay and it still isn't. I think the perceived desire for that is more another case of the core game being fairly well designed around 20ly ish and then the commodity range for a ship slowly inflating to 35ly and beyond...
With my first system, once I was in trucking mode, I just made sure to visit every system that was within one hop, just in case there was something I needed. And in most cases there was. I think a lot of the CMM Complainers have just failed to do that, even regardless of any more intelligent use of the Market.
I'm sure there are deserts here and there in the Bubble with no surface refineries but really not many of them, if you settle there, Cmdr, that's on you.
Same, I really hope FDev don't cave in on that.
EDIT: Have just realised that Emergency Power Cells actually is an example where you just have no way whatsoever to know where to get those in-game, so that's not cool.
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That is exactly my point, mining should be made to be a viable strategy for building a station, at least for all the raw and refined goods needed. Maybe not quite as a efficient as hauling, but much more efficient than it currently stands.
As for the refinery contact, I've already provided feedback on it here, where I recommend making it usable both for mining in general and for colonization.
I was talking about the very first slot closest to the sun.
After constructing the smallest starport in about a week and completing two small Tier 1 facilities, I’d like to provide some feedback.
Building anything beyond a Tier 1 starport within four weeks for colonization seems extremely difficult. I understand that we are meant to start with small facilities and add the larger ones later, but why does system colonization propose tier 2 or tier 3 starports right from the start?
Some resources are really hard to find. There should at least be some in-game assistance, as having to rely on external databases like Inara just to locate essential commodities feels excessive.
Examples:
• Emergency Power Cells are produced by High-Tech and Refinery systems within 30 light-years of the Akhenaten system.
• The Muon Imager was also pretty epic to find.
After all, I was just trying to construct a small mining settlement—nothing extravagant.
The material requirements for higher-tier constructions become prohibitively high. This makes the process far too time-consuming, meaning most player-colonized systems will likely only have tier 1 facilities. However, we don’t want a galaxy full of small landing pads when we’re flying ships that require large ones.
At some point, we should be able to construct a larger starport without it feeling like an exercise in self-flagellation.
Maybe the NPC ships landing at the construction site should be able to contribute in some way. A larger facility could be completed over time—even if it takes several months—without requiring the player to do all the hauling alone.
Building anything beyond a Tier 1 starport within four weeks for colonization seems extremely difficult. I understand that we are meant to start with small facilities and add the larger ones later, but why does system colonization propose tier 2 or tier 3 starports right from the start?
Some resources are really hard to find. There should at least be some in-game assistance, as having to rely on external databases like Inara just to locate essential commodities feels excessive.
Examples:
• Emergency Power Cells are produced by High-Tech and Refinery systems within 30 light-years of the Akhenaten system.
• The Muon Imager was also pretty epic to find.
After all, I was just trying to construct a small mining settlement—nothing extravagant.
The material requirements for higher-tier constructions become prohibitively high. This makes the process far too time-consuming, meaning most player-colonized systems will likely only have tier 1 facilities. However, we don’t want a galaxy full of small landing pads when we’re flying ships that require large ones.
At some point, we should be able to construct a larger starport without it feeling like an exercise in self-flagellation.
Maybe the NPC ships landing at the construction site should be able to contribute in some way. A larger facility could be completed over time—even if it takes several months—without requiring the player to do all the hauling alone.
The star fills the entire view from my Construction Ship (which is pointing right at it when you're on the landing pad!) And I'm in the fourth slot out.
That's why I picked a Scientific Outpost. Gonna get a lot of science done with THIS many photons.
EDIT: 6.8ls out from the primary. Mercury is about 193ls. Surface temp of this star is about half of the Sun, but even so, yikes.
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When a Muon Imager came up as a build need for me I had never heard of it. Since it sounded like tech I when to a High-Tech system, landed somewhere, navigated to the item in the sell part of the market, then looked at the right side of where I could buy it (from the also produced by data). I was able to get some right away in about 15 minutes have no idea what they were or where they were. Maybe I was just lucky but I've used that for many things that seemed obscure and it's served me well so far.
This probably doesn't address your thoughts but I've been considering the visual NPCs ships doing exactly that but in a hidden way that doesn't affect my list. I realize you mean it should affect the list of material needs but I consider the list to build something small compared to role play real needs so I fill that discrepancy gap with the NPC deliveries I see. I grant that's just mental fun and not related to game play like you were mentioning though.
As for completing facilities over time, even months, that's the exact approach I'm taking with my system. After building some Tier 1 installations I started a Coriolis to get a large pad. I plan to bring some goods for a bit then when it gets tedious (if it does) then do other game activities. Then come back. It might take me a month to do it but I'm okay with that since I don't have a time limit and I have 4 other concurrent constructions I can use if I want to build something else.
I built a relay station then a security station and the system went to high security.
to what end ? you can toil for hours "discovering" trading info around you as you try to be smart about where you're jumping to avoid just blindly wandering around and spend an entire game session getting nothing done but "research" ...or you can use an interface made by someone who cares about their user's time and just shows them where what they want is (but has to use a roundabout crowd sourced third party setup to do so).
it would be one thing if there was interesting and fun gameplay involved in this "research" phase. But it's not. it's just repetitive tedium. The deep screens in the galaxy map are not good interfaces.
I shouldn't have to navigate into the galaxy map to deal with trade. I should be able to, right from the commodity board, get a list of nearby sources (that i can actually land at in my current ship) and click on them from there to plot a course and be done. That would be a smart interface. People dont use the in-game "tools" because A. they didn't always exist and B. they aren't good. Better than nothing, sure, but people make better ones as a side project with little issue. Fdev should be able to do better.
And when they dont carry barely any stock and you've now wasted valuable time with nothing to show for it? Good game design would make everything you invest time to do have some benefit. If i need a particular item, the trade mechanic doesn't let me benefit in any way unless i am going to a place that has that particular item. I dont gain some needed resource while i "research" trade in places that end up not having it. The most elite does is send a pirate to semi-randomly interdict you if you have cargo ...but that's -ALWAYS- just a nuisance. Killing them or escaping them gives the player nothing of value to compensate them for the interruption and the interruption is all that much more annoying when the very act of traveling in the game is tiresomely repetitive and offers nothing of value to do.
there's a reason why people use third party sites to avoid this "in game discovery of trade". It's not good gameplay. it eats valuable time for nothing.
Fdev made it poorly and that drove people to create all of these external sites. The economy is fake, shallow and there's no real gameplay involved in trading. So these commodities become just things to acquire to get something you actually want instead of the transport of those things being the game.
That's not inara or the player's fault. That's fdev's. Players going to play the game. If there's a huge portion "doing it wrong" that's the game's fault.
rare goods, another example of timesink gameplay and zero imagination. It's rare cuz we only let players get like 4 units per 10 min or whatever. What else do they do? Oh...they're worth a little more the further you take them. So if i take them across the galaxy i'll be insanely rich? No, it's capped. But i'll still get rich? No, it's much easier to get rich mining platinum anywhere in the entire galaxy. So what's the purpose? exactly.
No it literally doesn't force you to not use external tools. it just ensures players experience an even worse experience as they visit systems that are randomly depleted that isn't something they can tell before wasting their time going there. Lets get this real clear, players (the normal players). are going to use the tools that make the best use of their time in the game to avoid all of the boring parts as much as possible and are the easiest to use. That is not the in-game galaxy map trade buttons and such. It's not a matter of being a master at trade or not that changes that. Fdev would need to redesign how trade works so that players do not have to waste time with uneventful time-sinky travel to systems to just find out it doesn't have what they need.
No it isn't. Dude. . role play ? You're in a universe where your ship can jump 50 ly in a single bound (and not empty while doing it) or 500 ly or whatever in a fully loaded carrier. It makes no sense at all in "roleplay" for colonies to be limited to 16ly. None. Zero. And from a non-roleplay gameplay perspective, you're just forcing players to participate in creating colonies they dont want. Why would any of that make sense? There's a practically unlimited number of stars in the galaxy, there's no reason to limit players. The game is like 10 years old. There's no grand plans that players are going to conflict with out in deep space. Drop the sector permits, drop the limitation for colonization and let players do what they want and have fun in this game while it's still relevant to play.
i'm not sure what game you're playing that this intended gameplay of "finding things out thru traveling to places yourself and using their "put information 6 menus deep everywhere" ui is good. It's not. It would make sense if travelling in the game was good gameplay, but it's not. It's loading screens and uneventful time sinks waiting to get to another station and pointless interruptions by interdictions randomly interspersed. none of which add any value to the player or enrich the game experience. They just serve to add more time sink to the desired activity.
So no, your take on what fdev's intended thing for players to do is correct. But fdev's game mechanics very often do not value player time or reward it in any meaningful way and players do and should circumvent that poor design whenever and however they can.
No, CMM was a problem because there were dozens of people in the same areas doing exactly the same thing. This led to random reductions in amounts that can easily lead to not being able to get any in a given gaming session ....totally wasting the players time and ing them off because they had no way to avoid that. It was turning into a game of luck or just forcing them to go much further away for items in the hope some other areas wasn't being strip mined.
The amount of player blaming for a game's bad design is really funny here. "obviously there was no problem because i was doing stuff in some other random area on the surface of a multi-thousand ly sphere in the game and didn't have a problem sourcing items in my particular gaming schedule (potentially while other players are asleep, etc)...so they're probably all just not doing it right".
That and CMM's were surface only items and that goes back to travelling being only a time sink and not functional gameplay to be enjoyed. It's a couple more steps to get to do the exact same thing done in orbital stations but taking longer. Not appreciated.
I'm sure fdev wont fix things so you dont have to worry there. But where we differ is that i dont think it's a matter of some ideological vision on the game's mechanics and more that they just dont have the resources to refactor all of the likely hardcoded and interwoven parts of the game that would need to be adjusted to do so at this time. And i dont think they've ever had it since leaving kickstarter. much of these game mechanics are the placeholder mechanics that existed then and have just been left mostly as-is with some expansions built on them. The only hope on really fixing things in-game is to open up the game to third party servers and modding.
but i think if you believe that the way colonization succeeds is by players "getting gud" at playing elite the "fdev way" then there will be very few players that see the mechanic as successful. Sort of the same way PP was for half a decade (if not still is). Sure there will be a minority of people who enjoy it, but it will have not delivered anything close to its potential and most players will end up not really participating unless it becomes aggressively easier to circumvent the time sinks or space trucker repetitive activity. we'll see this initial activity spike that will never happen again and some initial bridges to some nearby nebulas and maybe colonia and then once those are done, it'll drop off a cliff. The 16ly limit is pointlessly kneecapping the mechanic, the space trucker mechanic is boring and unnecessarily repetitive. The surface station items are acutely annoying for the previous reason. The UI is unintuitive and looks like the design was chosen out of what was convenient for them rather than what would work best for players . The rewards for participating are entirely meta and imaginary. The amount of personalization is lacking to bolster those meta reasons to participate. And the effort has little to no effect on how the existing game plays because you're just adding copies of types of systems to a game in an area of the galaxy that already has thousands of such systems all within the volume of a few jumps of most of the game's ships.
Is there anything you like about Elite Dangerous? genuine question.
Within bits of time, certain things are enjoyable. Enjoying elite is something that seems commonly done in spite of the game mechanics rather than directly from it though. There were periods where the game was a lot more collaborative with the userbase for in-game content. Those had fun times. The spire battles in the thargoid war where players organically cooperated to just gang up on thargoid ships for insane credits was fun. Even some times the narrative mysteries were fun. VR dogfighting is fun for a bit until you've littered entire CZ's with wreckage you aren't going to even bother picking up and the game starts spawning just eagles and sidewinders and killing the rest gets boring. PP was fun for a while that was brand new, before it became apparent that it wasn't going to deliver anything that gave it a purpose. New ships are generally enjoyable to toy with.
even exploration was a bit interesting if not insanely repetitive and boring when the game was young and there was still this idea that things were out there to be found.
But so much of those are not things that happen in the game now and most of the issues with game mechanics were things being complained about by players since the launch days. We just had more distractions then and at various other time periods of the game.