Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

The F Fdev?! This is incredibly stupid. It's hard enough to build a T3 station without doing this. Doubling costs is unnecessary and will only HARM system development. This needs to be changed immediately. This is an absolutely trash idea that undermines the entire point of this feature.
Agreed the whole idea to increase the construction point costs after 10 structures should be abolished immediately. Who knows what happens after 20, 30, or more? Does it keep doubling?

If anything. It should be halved or discounted itself.
 
Agreed the whole idea to increase the construction point costs after 10 structures should be abolished immediately. Who knows what happens after 20, 30, or more? Does it keep doubling?
pretty positive its just a discount after 10 builds. Also i feel like the points were meant to be halved but instead were doubled accidentally. Lets just make sure Fdev knows so we can get to the bottom of this.
 
pretty positive its just a discount after 10 builds. Also i feel like the points were meant to be halved but instead were doubled accidentally. Lets just make sure Fdev knows so we can get to the bottom of this.
Then why did the T2 Station cost an extra T3 construction point? Its not a bug. It was by design.
 
Exactly, people are just looking to get angry instead of just giving feedback and pushing for a change, this is why its in beta.
I cant speak for others. I had no problem with everything up until this new discovery. Pretty calm about it.

This one wanted me to grab the pitchfork because the shear ideocracy of it knowing what it would do to the game and active player base.
 
Just cross posting this into the feedback thread

As much as i think the 15Ly range limit makes sense for a few reasons, this might be a reasonable compromise.

Tl;dr linearly increase costs of building the initial station based on range of the expansion.

So, up to 15Ly is cost-as- expected... 15-30ly is double, 30-45ly is triple... call it extra resources for remote sustainability of the intial construction.... out to some sane limit of like, 150Ly or so. That way it's equivalent effort in terms of materials, but doesn't just result in a bunch of spam outposts in between

Additionally... To prevent sprawl of single- outpost chains or "landgrabbing" more than people need, particularly large systems that could languish surf otherwise be better used... introduce the idea of a "vacancy tax" that makes further expansion more expensive if your other systems aren't utilised properly... say at least 30%, because that way a typical 3- slot star- only system can be preferred for chaining, as you wouldn't need to do anything else to bridge without further cost.

That would promote people being more strategic about where and how they push out.
 
Mechan just made a video about it the points requirements inexplicably increase as your "reward" for industriousness.
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKkVUW0fF0Y
Woof. Not cool. Would love to dismiss it as a bug but I doubt it. This seems like an intentional thing that Frontier were too ashamed to broadcast. Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last.

Most charitable dismissal I can think of is they might have put this in place for the beta stage as a way to slow some of the more enthusiastic expansion initiatives before they've worked out the fine balance.

If this is staying, and I can certainly imagine justifications for and against; it ABSOLUTELY MUST BE COMMUNICATED UPFRONT. Leaving this as a quiet surprise is downright malicious.
 
So, up to 15Ly is cost-as- expected... 15-30ly is double, 30-45ly is triple... call it extra resources for remote sustainability of the intial construction.... out to some sane limit of like, 150Ly or so. That way it's equivalent effort in terms of materials, but doesn't just result in a bunch of spam outposts in between

I like this idea a lot. It makes you really think if you do want to expand that far - even if you have a FC.
 
Woof. Not cool. Would love to dismiss it as a bug but I doubt it. This seems like an intentional thing that Frontier were too ashamed to broadcast. Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last.

Most charitable dismissal I can think of is they might have put this in place for the beta stage as a way to slow some of the more enthusiastic expansion initiatives before they've worked out the fine balance.

If this is staying, and I can certainly imagine justifications for and against; it ABSOLUTELY MUST BE COMMUNICATED UPFRONT. Leaving this as a quiet surprise is downright malicious.
It certainly seems malicious. Think of all the thousands of systems that would have changed their build plan for the system had they known this was a wall they would hit. There is no documentation no communication in any channels that this would have happened.

Nor for the "happiness", wealth, development, standard of living, tech level, security, initial population and or max increase. We all are flying blind here against the house with all the cards.

FDev does listen to its player base on important things. Hopefully they will hear the hundreds or thousands of CMDRs that disapprove of this current issue.
 
Additionally... To prevent sprawl of single- outpost chains or "landgrabbing" more than people need, particularly large systems that could languish surf otherwise be better used... introduce the idea of a "vacancy tax" that makes further expansion more expensive if your other systems aren't utilised properly... say at least 30%, because that way a typical 3- slot star- only system can be preferred for chaining, as you wouldn't need to do anything else to bridge without further cost.
I would agree with this "vacancy tax" if we didnt just find out about the "structures tax" on top of the "passive income tax". Take a system i have for example has 144 total build slots. 30% would be 43-44. However I currently will not build past 11 total because of the "structures tax". How long before i start losing income due to the "vacancy tax" becomes in effect?
 
If this is staying, and I can certainly imagine justifications for and against; it ABSOLUTELY MUST BE COMMUNICATED UPFRONT. Leaving this as a quiet surprise is downright malicious.
Tbh... I'm in two minds.

The complete lack of information outright is a bit of a problem.... it's such a big and time consuming feature, if this really is a beta, it's hard to give feedback easily without that information.

On the same token... what's going to be better feedback?

  • seeing how construction point costs change over time without having played it yet, and just canning that without thought? Or
  • letting that be discovered in its own time and having judgement cast when it's discovered after a few builds.

I think the latter generates more informed assessment.... it's just easier to colour it with bias given history.

But the first? If you saw that construction points increase over more builds, and had never seen how the mechanics play out or even built a structure... you can't really make a good judgement about it.

Just my 40c... but i actually think people are putting too much stock in the tier 2 and 3 builds. I suspect people thought they'd just be able to dump 50 Orbis into a system and go "the best!"... whereas i think the real value is in how you use the T1s... once the type mixups get resolved.
 
I would agree with this "vacancy tax" if we didnt just find out about the "structures tax" on top of the "passive income tax". Take a system i have for example has 144 total build slots. 30% would be 43-44. However I currently will not build past 11 total because of the "structures tax". How long before i start losing income due to the "vacancy tax" becomes in effect?
Seriously we don't need more taxes in this game. Any variation of "Hey you got something! But now we're taking part of it away because it would unbalance the game if you got it" needs to be avoided wherever possible. It makes the game needlessly complicated for no benefit to the player and it's also punitive. Just . . . give us less to begin with if it's such a problem.
 
I would agree with this "vacancy tax" if we didnt just find out about the "structures tax" on top of the "passive income tax". Take a system i have for example has 144 total build slots. 30% would be 43-44. However I currently will not build past 11 total because of the "structures tax". How long before i start losing income due to the "vacancy tax" becomes in effect.
It wouldn't be a deduction from anything, so you would never lose credits.

It would be an increase in material costs for your next initial claim.
Seriously we don't need more taxes in this game. Any variation of "Hey you got something! But now we're taking part of it away because it would unbalance the game if you got it" needs to be avoided wherever possible. It makes the game needlessly complicated for no benefit to the player and it's also punitive. Just . . . give us less to begin with if it's such a problem.

As above, it wouldnt take anything away... it just means taking more costs more, unless you use what you have already.
 
I think we have to wait after FD cleans up the stations that shouldn't be there then look at all the proposed solutions again.

Have the feeling that many systems will shift to unclaimed again.
 
Tbh... I'm in two minds.

The complete lack of information outright is a bit of a problem.... it's such a big and time consuming feature, if this really is a beta, it's hard to give feedback easily without that information.

On the same token... what's going to be better feedback?

  • seeing how construction point costs change over time without having played it yet, and just canning that without thought? Or
  • letting that be discovered in its own time and having judgement cast when it's discovered after a few builds.

I think the latter generates more informed assessment.... it's just easier to colour it with bias given history.

But the first? If you saw that construction points increase over more builds, and had never seen how the mechanics play out or even built a structure... you can't really make a good judgement about it.

Just my 40c... but i actually think people are putting too much stock in the tier 2 and 3 builds. I suspect people thought they'd just be able to dump 50 Orbis into a system and go "the best!"... whereas i think the real value is in how you use the T1s... once the type mixups get resolved.
Look: I think they should have dropped a document outlining all the rules of this board game they've created, along with descriptions of all the building types and how all those sliders and modifiers work. And then all the theorycrafters and speculators and everyone else can get preemptively angry about it, or not. And then frontier can listen to the furor and change things preemptively, or do what they typically do and keep it all as-is for a while and see how people deal with it. That's effectively what they're doing now, anyway, just minus the communication.

As it stands, if they don't communicate matters of massive operational importance to this system they're building, then all the feedback they get, even from players with direct experience, is partially coming from a place of ignorance, which is ultimately going to make the feedback less useful anyway.

I don't think the whole "mess around and find out" ethos is very fun for anybody in this context.

And it upsets people to have the rug pulled out from under you especially when it's a huge thing you're not going to encounter until you've already made All The Wrong Choices.

If this deception was intentional on Frontier's part, it's very low of them is all I will allow myself to say.
 
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