Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

[Kzak]

How do I choose the economy type? I bult an outpost and at no point during the commissioning process was I given the option to select a market economy. Will that happen when the outpost is deployed after the weekly maintenance? Have I missed something obvious? I went through the motions to build another just to double check, but I couldn't see where I was supposed to make a selection.

IIRC your economy is decided by what other orbital/ground structures you place after making the initial structure.

 

[Nowski]

I'm saying you are confusing game incentives for personal ones. nobody cares about your personal ones but you.

I was talking about incentives in general, which includes but is not limited to, game assets like credits, mats, etc. If we are talking about player motivation, which I understood we were. I think the general sense is the more relevant one.

players shouldn't have to rely on things outside of a game to get a complete experience playing the game.

I agree, if there exists an unlimited or at least less limited budget. As things are, if this means less actual game to play I'd rather they stuck to current practice. The existence of the Journal files and api shows out-of-game tools are catered for, and the player has some pretty amazing choices available.

i don't think fdev wants to produce features players choose to avoid because they either know it's not good or don't know why they should care about it or what it actually does.

'good play something else' is generally not a good strategy for someone looking to grow their game and keep it active.

I find combat fairly boring most of the time. I do it sometimes for variety or rare times I'm in the mood. I mostly ignore combat-related gameplay, and wouldn't miss it much if it were to disappear. Should fdev therefore cease developing combat game loops?

Many players ignore exploration. Should fdev abandon exploration features?

I think the answer is obviously that the game is not fixated on one type of activity and options exist to suit many players with different tastes. I don't think that's a negative or discourages growth.

i think a good game loop isn't one that feels like punishment, but that's not what this feature provides. so if that remains then it should provide a very good carrot if it wants to live or it may find itself unattractive to players like pp1 was.

The carrot is the long-term gameplay of system building, at least for me.

if you find the activity of moving between two stations where all you're doing is undocking, sc, wait a min, exit sc, dock at other station, play with spreadsheet, and repeat the same exact thing in the opposite direction 20 times then yea. i can't conceive of that as enjoyable because in no reality is that good. it's mindless repetitive tedium.

So how to explain I feel like I'm having fun doing something like that (I use vim, not a spreadsheet)? Am I mistaken? I've moved a few thousand tons of aluminium and titanium while having this discussion and don't feel punished for it!

nobody is forcing fdev to release free updates at a specific day but them. if the feature hasn't been actually play tested or is not actually complete, they could easily finish what they need to and release it when it's cooked. What's frustrating is when such releases are made with all evidence pointing to them considering this ready when immediately players find issues like bugs, missing content, much less the subjective experiences doing it. it makes me less inclined to believe these issues are a matter of just not having resources and more about not identifying that they even needed those resources.

I can't argue that quality control couldn't be improved. Not so much in this feature as in other longstanding bugs. I still get the stutters at 5, 15, 25, 55 minutes past the hour for example, and I've run out of slots to vote on issues. A lot of bugs were fixed with this release, many more remain, for sure.

As far as the features for this update go, it looks like a reasonable compromise between the huge scope and what's practically achievable, to me. As a sometime programmer I'm well aware of the perils of scope creep and the reality of Hofstadter's Law. The correct answer to "how hard can it be?" is often "much harder than you think."

 

[Michael Ryan]

There is no reason to argue about own, personal feedback...

 

[Nezzie Muso]

Well turned out I mis-counted. 21.7 kT. over 120 landings, just for a science outpost. Really glad I didn't try for a spaceport. I made the job harder than it needed to be by bringing everything to the carrier first. (a) that doubled the number of landings and (b) introduced long delays when moving the carrier would have been optimal. I did it because I wasn't sure I'd be able to collect all the required mats, but once the CMM refresh rate was buffed everything was fine. Also as a way to reduce attempted pirate interdictions. But unstocking the carrier was absolutely interminable, I'm never doing that again. Can anyone tell me how i do the rename?

 

[CMDR Noah Truso]

IIRC your economy is decided by what other orbital/ground structures you place after making the initial structure.

Ah, okay. I suppose that makes sense, but by the same token I would prefer to just... click a menu option.

 

[Kzak]

Ah, okay. I suppose that makes sense, but by the same token I would prefer to just... click a menu option.

That would be far too simple.

 

[Ameeleean2]

Me and my squadron members are cooperating to build up a T3 space station. With the help of 12 squadron CMDRs and 7 FCs in 24/7 two shifts (due to FCs delay and no time slots, we have to buy the commodities without FCs most of the time and of course the god damn lack of CMM), we still have about 40% left to go.
For me personally, the required number of commodities are too many, this will burn people's endurance quickly (We are talking about 500 turns of buy and sell with 784t cutter).
So, in my opinions, the required commodities' number can be reduced a little and give players who don't have pressure on Cr a option to purchase 200% commodities' galactic avg price or more Cr to the colonization ship (or primary station after it completed) and let it buy commodities itself (Just like X4). This will release CMDRs' horrible pressure on transportation and moving to other actions, like CGs/PPs.
There is a easy way to limit the speed of construction, let colonization ship's (or primary station after it completed) automatic supplied (let it buy commodities itself) much much more slower than CMDRs, for example, it needs 200% commodities' galactic avg price and 3-7 days to fulfilled 8000t commodities in need which NOT suffering from lackage(STEEL etc.) , needs about 1000% commodities' galactic avg price and 14 days to fulfilled the same numbers suffering from lackage (like CMM).

Instead of reducing number of commodities I would opt for ability to use resources produced in the system already. I'm building an outpost now- alone- and it takes lots of hauling runs so I can image how bothersome is to construct something larger and even worse to do it more than few times. I think initial phase of building 1st station (no matter how big one) should be reliant on external off-system resources and this option should be also available for any construction undergoing in the system. When system starts to produce resources that are used in construction we should have an option to use them in that process even to the point when entire construction needs are supplied internally (that would be benefit of owning system with many construction spots). Just imagine this as building foothold 1st in accordance to what system architect think (s)he needs the most (logically that should be facility delivering either materials needed in bulk or those rare like CMM Composites which work now like bottleneck for construction progress).

 

[Commander Dave]

Well this is quite annoying.
Tried releasing in a couple of different places. No dice.

 

[CMDR Kasanna]

Unless I'm missing something, everyone seems to be congratulating FDEV on the CMM Composites changes, but it seems to be dry everywhere, especially for the amount we need to gather?

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

You are missing something. Inara is not designed for this situation. There's plenty out there but the hot stations shown on Inara are by definition being emptied out because Inara commanders are visiting them.

Look for high population systems with Planetary Ports and a Refinery economy. Ignore Inara's CMM Composites data.

 

[Michael Ryan]

You are missing something. Inara is not designed for this situation. There's plenty out there but the hot stations shown on Inara are by definition being emptied out because Inara commanders are visiting them.

Look for high population systems with Planetary Ports and a Refinery economy. Ignore Inara's CMM Composites data.

I did it

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

[ignore, misread a post]

 

[Michael Ryan]

Ach, sorry, the other thread ;D

 

[Dushess74]

View attachment 419035At first I thought it was a glitch that I cannot deploy an installation, but after close inspection it seems I cannot place it on either of these planets because they are too close, so apparently I lost 2 orbital station slots in my system. Either these slots shouldn't appear on the architect map or the minimum orbital distance of the station should be reduced so they could be placed

seconding this, any answer?

 

[crob]

How do I choose the economy type? I bult an outpost and at no point during the commissioning process was I given the option to select a market economy. Will that happen when the outpost is deployed after the weekly maintenance? Have I missed something obvious? I went through the motions to build another just to double check, but I couldn't see where I was supposed to make a selection.

When selecting your initial outpost the economy influence type is shown in the details for the structure you select. High tech economy for scientific outpost or colony for commercial trading post etc

 

[Clockdistrict]

Bit of interesting feedback here, is it possible to keep each style of station the same in terms of material requirement? I'm building a mega spreadsheet for my squadron that will allow us to just plug in what we're building and it will auto populate the sheet with everything we need, and a few % variance between two of the same outposts just creates more problems than anything.

 

[Nezzie Muso]

wow. wondered what might be in the next 15Ly from my new station. It appears that there are exactly two colonisable systems, both of which comprise a single star. So that wasnt a long daisy chain then.

 

[yianniv]

Here's my actual feedback.

1.- The UI isn't as bad to me as it is for others. Feels unpolished, but definitely usable. It's not horrible nor unusable. However there is a lot of information, requirements, etc, that are missing. A lot of this would go well in the codex, so far the pilot's handbook for colonization is very barebones. I think you should let go of the approach of "letting players figure it out themselves" (wastes a lot of time, has to be said) and just put every piece of information in the handbook, as if it was a wiki page.

2.- Takes too long to build stations. You always have to strike a balance between realism, immersion and gameplay: Do you want players to be able to pop out an orbis station every hour? No. Not only does it pollute the galaxy and makes things move way too fast, it breaks immersion and makes the task feel less rewarding. You want it to feel challenging and be a time investment, otherwise it doesn't feel very good once you do complete it.

But for gameplay? Perhaps putting in 14 hours a day for 4 days to build a Coriolis isn't striking that balance either. I think the shopping list needs to be reduced, not by 99%, but by something. Specially considering the repetitiveness.

3.- Repetitiveness: The only way to build bases is by picking up a cutter, and going back and forth all day. I actually don't think stations would need a "time to complete" buff if you could complete it in multiple ways (Supply missions rather than mere trading, protecting the ship from pirates through scenarios similar to those of megaships or installations, donating some money, hiring NPC's to do a small percentage of the work for you, financing it through selling exploration/exobio data, etc...), but as it stands, literally the only way to engage with this is by going back and forth in a cutter or a type 9. Gets old quick and this contributes to why it feels like it takes way too long to complete a station, even though from the outside (Devs that look at the numbers, time to completion, etc... but without playing it) it looks fine. For the players it doesn't feel very fine.

4.- Money sink? Colonization shouldn't feel prohibitively expensive, and it is not. 25 million to start out is a fair price. But you don't really get the option to spend money to speed up the process. Of course you wouldn't want players to pop out a billion credits and voilá, your station is built. No gameplay there, boring and uninspiring. But you should have the option to spend some of that money that is completely useless otherwise in order to skip a portion of the grind. In a way that if that's all you do you'll go broke quickly, but if you just help yourself with a few hundred million now and then, it saves you from yet another 30 cutter trips back and forth.

5.- Content: This update has lots of content and is awesome besides the numbers and the lack of multiple ways to engage with it other than hauling. Being able to choose from so many options is great, placing stuff where you want it is great. Asteroid bases? It rocks, no pun intended plus the ice asteroid bases are amazing. I can see you adding more stuff and more options/models for Stations, surface ports/settlements, space installations, etc. in the future and I'm looking forward for that.

6.- Please fix the goddamn carriers issue.

7.- Yeah you've heard it a million times already, but it doesnt make it less true: Please just delete CMM composites from the list. It's like 50% of the work.

8.- More incentives to develop the system instead of moving on? Passive income and discounts are great. But it would be a lot more engaging if building more bases and more stations in your system actually made development easier and shorter. You obviously wanted to imitate that with the construction points system so that star systems weren't just 30 orbis stations in a row, that you do in fact need a supporting economy in the form of outposts or planetary settlements and installations and so on. But that is very artificial. I don't want it removed don't get me wrong, but it would be great if building a smaller installation was a way to reduce the costs of building the bigger ones too. I figure most players would then follow a pretty balanced approach to system building in a very organic way. Why start out with an orbis if you could reduce its costs by 70% by building a dozen smaller assets first throughout the week. It'd also feel like progress since building a settlement isn't as soul crushing as building a station.

Great points, all of them.

 

[Markov Chaney - Dormant]

Just to say thank you for having one of the development team keeping an eye on the forum and posting replies - it is noticed and appreciated.

 

[CMDR Deckard]

Hello,
Is there any plan to increase CMM Composite much much moar?
I have no time trucking around the bubble in a month to get the requied materials, and waiting 10 minutes at the surface station to get 100 more wasn't the way I expected playing the game.