Elite Dangerous | System Colonisation Beta Details & Feedback

[Freyar]

Overview of Trailblazers Experience
(Week 9)

Current Progress and Objectives
To better contextualize where I am.

Work has begun on an outpost to help bridge out of the pocket of other colonization I got caught up in. Work makes this slow. Haven't been feeling well lately, but I'm hoping to be able to pick up the pace again next week, especially since I'll have infrastructure to build.

Business Plan - Updated

Though I'm tempted to stop expanding there and push further out generally. The changes to economies will take some time to get a good understanding of so I can anticipate what will happen, but this level of complexity is what I had expected out of the launch. I will be filling out the systems I built before looking at trying to make a self-sufficient cluster somewhere, assuming I don't end up having to fight people for that space. (It's likely I would...) but I hope I can build enough facilities somewhere to act as a depot for other construction further away from the bubble.

A Coat of Paint, Almost Perfect
I picked up liveries for my stations. The Clinical Yellow is a nice touch. I don't like the Copper/Grey since it seems far too imperial-like, but the matte/sterility of the Clinical Yellow is nice.

Only problem is, it is incredibly difficult to read the station name since the text markings are not inverted (set to black) for readability. Hopefully this is something we will be able to fix later. This is less of a problem on the Coriolis, but a major problem on Orbis.

View attachment 428178


Statistics
System #1 - Orbis Port (Tier 3); 5 Infrastructure
System #2 - Coriolis Port (Tier 2);
System #3 - Coriolis Port (Tier 2);
System #4 - Coriolis Port (Tier 2);
System #5 - Outpost - Industrial under construction.

Overview of Trailblazers Experience
(Week 10)

Current Progress and Objectives
To better contextualize where I am.

With the small outpost completed, and a major redesign of the economies of existing systems, my attention has turned towards my first settled system. New projects are getting spun up to support not only the materials the system is generating, but also the quantity. The process has been smooth sailing so far, just another 210,000 tons to move.

The Tier 3 Planetary Port is currently sitting at about 20% complete with 174k tons remaining. This project has been ongoing for about four days.

The Everlasting "Is It Worth It" Debate

I've been trying to quantify and track my expenses, including weekly carrier upkeep, tritium fuel, commodity purchases, jump costs, and any financial impact having other commanders involved. Unfortunately LLMs can't hold that much data, resulting in hallucinations and I will have to resort to manually tracking in Excel-likes (LibreOffice in this case, I'm done paying more Microsoft tax) for transactions. Maybe I can build some level of automation there.

Tools feel fairly limited so far, with basic counts for project demands, how much as been delivered and how much remains. I appreciate these tools, but so far they don't account for things like cost, carrier capacities, and other commanders (without requiring those other commanders to log in to a service they aren't primary for.) I appreciate the work people are doing to build the various tools around colonization, however they just aren't fitting into my workflow yet.

While make Wallet-Go-Up™ is my gameplay objective, I'm not too worried about earning a lot from these projects right away, I just want to be sure that any losses I can see are reduced so that the overall work results in a net0 or better. This exercise in tracking the new port has shown me just how legitimately expensive Tritium fuel is.

Further out from established ports and when the Trailblazer Megaships get re-tasked, costs and ease of availability will likely take a hit. I would love to be able to build a reliable cluster of systems that can help furnish the materials we need for building outside the bubble.


Statistics
System #1 - Orbis Port (Tier 3); 5 Infrastructure; Tier 3 Planetary Port Under Construction
System #2 - Coriolis Port (Tier 2);
System #3 - Coriolis Port (Tier 2);
System #4 - Coriolis Port (Tier 2);
System #5 - Industrial Outpost (Tier 1);

 

[Ralph Vargr]

What would happen if I placed a Coriolis over a terraformable HMC? Difficulty: I have a science outpost over a WW in the same system, and there is another orbital slot over the WW...

 

[kepler68]

I'd like to suggest that the Security Station no longer generates Military economic influence for the following reasons:

The military economy type eats many important low-stock commodities like Medical Diagnostic Equipment and Insulating Membranes, which causes a player who wants to produce them to either need to dedicate the entire system to just refinery hubs to offset it (Which themselves lower system security) or never increase system security to begin with. Disabling it's influence allows much more freedom in building an economy

We already have a Military settlement, installation, and hub. All but the settlement are outclassed by the Security station (Large settlement is a 1->2 T2 to T3 converter), so this change would make their purpose generating a Military economic influence

Hypothetically, you could reduce the effectiveness of the Security station as well, such that it's a choice between generating military influence in exchange for less slots dedicated to Security vs building more security stations but getting those lower capacity commodities.

There are technically Comm stations and the Government installation for security, but you need a huge number of them to offset a major starport or boost the system security rating. Their main purposes seem to be Standard of Living and Tech Level boosts in orbital slots.

 

[Frankymole]

Gotta say, I do love the NPC names. Like this one, it sounds very...respectable.

View attachment 428960

There's a whole thread for them: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/funny-or-famous-npc-names.391280/page-65#post-10626558

 

[PilotB]

We already have a Military settlement, installation, and hub. All but the settlement are outclassed by the Security station (Large settlement is a 1->2 T2 to T3 converter), so this change would make their purpose generating a Military economic influence

Security station provides an important alternative for systems that don't have planet slots to spare. Those systems are also generally more limited on slots and need the stronger influence to get their security. The surface sites cost dramatically less to build so it's appropriate that they're weaker. The Military installation has slightly weaker stats but you get military influence from it's pre requisite which you don't get for the security station.

I like where it's at as if you did remove it it'd no longer be possible to gain security in many of my systems without stacking outposts.

 

[Kira Goto]

I like where it's at as if you did remove it

The suggestion is not to remove the security installation, but to remove its military influence.

 

[Kissamies]

I have been experiencing and pondering the strong and weak link system for a while now. In general, I like it but it could use some refinements. The major issue is that you end up with unwanted mixed exonomy stations especially if you are trying to build several specialist stations, but also if you are simply adding some settlements or installations just for the stat boosts. Other issue is more of a preference: I'd like there was some intermediary effect between strong and weak for local systems, like planet and its moons or double planets.

Several half-formed ideas to I've had solve the problem.

• Cut-off point: If the influence is lower than certain % of the whole it's not considered at all. That way you can overwhelm the influence with couple of strong links to hubs and other stuff in the system don't matter, unless it's really numerous and uniform.
• Specialization limit: A port can only have a certain number of economies and only the strongest influences are considered. I'd make it that the bigger tiers can host more. Maybe 2 for tier 1, 3 for t2 and 5 for t3. Ports with inherent economies, like many outposts would always have the inherent one as primary.
• Limit the number of links: The port can only take certain number of links in. First all the strong ones, then it considers the local intermediary links and finally the weak ones. The big question here is what happens if it can only take part of the weak links, which one it takes? My main idea for this that if it's not satisfied after one level it takes all on the next, no matter how many. There are other solutions, however, like preferring complimentary economies. That would get pretty complicated, tho.
• Local priority weak links: Simplified version of above. If there is any "local" link, no other weak links are considered.

I like the idea that there is no "intermediate" strength links for local systems, just weak links that have the priority over those that are elsewhere in the system.

 

[PilotB]

The suggestion is not to remove the security installation, but to remove its military influence.

it's an orbital installation it's market influence is weak and it's secutity influnce is strong because it's pre requisite is extremely weak. As it stands the military market influence will be a weak link in most systems it doesn't need weakening at all. The surface installations are already cheaper than it and far stronger all it has is good stats and a bad prerequisite.

 

[Kzak]

it's an orbital installation it's market influence is weak and it's secutity influnce is strong because it's pre requisite is extremely weak. As it stands the military market influence will be a weak link in most systems it doesn't need weakening at all. The surface installations are already cheaper than it and far stronger all it has is good stats and a bad prerequisite.

Even a weak military link of 0.05 strength will still eagerly devour the low-quantity rare refined goods such as Insulating Membranes. Security != military. Security to me means more a police force than a military force.

 

[PilotB]

Even a weak military link of 0.05 strength will still eagerly devour the low-quantity rare refined goods such as Insulating Membranes. Security != military. Security to me means more a police force than a military force.

I'd disagree but you're going after a symptom just fix the root cause the market influences are not yet in a good state. Removing influence from things here and there doesn't fix the core system doesn't encourage interesting systems and has too many conflicting effects.

 

[cmdr remo_d]

Here are some stats of my builds.

This spreadsheet assumes a .4 increase for strong links and a .05 for weak links.
Two stations shown are dedicated economies and not colony type. Note is highlighted in red.

Observations:
1.0 is given for each Override (pardon the misspelling in the SS) attained economy. 1.4 is given for the main economy of the dedicated economy stations.
Overrides only affect colony stations.
Boosts/Decreases affect strong links with +/- .4 .
In a colony with an override economy, boosts/decreases appear to also be applied.

In the two stations that orbit a refinery hub, there is an extra .8 refinery economy. The economy of Frauhofer's Pride when first built (primary station), was according to the above rules/observations. Ref - 1.4, Agri - 1.4, Terraforming - 1.0 . My other strong link builds are settlements, and they don't offer any extra eco.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

This spreadsheet assumes a .4 increase for strong links and a .05 for weak links.

In the two stations that orbit a refinery hub, there is an extra .8 refinery economy.

I believe this can be explained by the strength of strong links being dependent on the tier of their source. Refinery hubs are tier 2 so they give 0.8 base rather than 0.4.

 

[kepler68]

I'd disagree but you're going after a symptom just fix the root cause the market influences are not yet in a good state. Removing influence from things here and there doesn't fix the core system doesn't encourage interesting systems and has too many conflicting effects.

A cutoff point could definitely help (Nothing below 0.1 influence affects it) but if the intent is that players should not be able to make everything systems it does make full sense IMO.

My pain point is that we have no real security solution that doesnt generate Military influence, which devours a commodity exclusively produced by a hub that decreases security.

Medical Diagnostic Equipment is more feasible for example since hightech doesnt directly lower security, meaning it can be realistically countered by spamming gov installations all over (Though IMO thats still not a clean solution)

Another thing that could make sense actually, below lets say 0.2 influence or below 5% market share, it just drives up the price of the commodity rather than taking it all. There's high demand but you can still outbid the local security force and get the IMs for a premium

 

[cmdr remo_d]

I believe this can be explained by the strength of strong links being dependent on the tier of their source. Refinery hubs are tier 2 so they give 0.8 base rather than 0.4.

That would make sense. Thanks for your continued help on this.

 

[Markov Chaney]

It seems like the bug might be a bit different, though - LP 855-34 (the CG system) had Winters exceed the Acquisition threshold last week, but seems to be back to zero now.

I'd be careful drawing inference from a CG system, good chance someone has their finger on the scales there...

So it may be: "no Acquisitions work at the start of week 28" rather than "no Acquisitions work in colonised systems"

This is sounding likely then (I expect you guessed that's where my question was going)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'd be careful drawing inference from a CG system, good chance someone has their finger on the scales there...

Though it may also have just been "the servers weren't warmed up enough" - the CG system is now obtained for Winters (but the nature of mining as a reinforcement/undermining action rather than an acquisition one means that it'll be lost again this week), and lots of other acquisitions seem to have gone through normally.

 

[Steven G]

well, i saw it was good after some time last thursday.
but finally it is a bit confused. i have another laptop at home and for some reasons, on this laptop, whatever the account, the acquired systems from last week shows as not acquired.
i can't fixed it, tried files validation, reisntalling the game, changing OS (was on win 10 thrusday, moved to win 11 yesterday).
very weird.

 

[Nudl]

Since the latest update, certain bodies and especially earth-like worlds will provide huge bonuses to the populations of stations built in their orbit. This is great because it gives these planets value which they should have.

What's disappointing though is that you cannot benefit from this bonus in any way if there's no orbital slots (directly) around that body. This is the case with a lot of earth-likes which have a moon, then the orbital slots attach to the moon instead of the earth-like.

I really hope Frontier changes something about this because it really drags down the value of certain systems.

 

[cmdr remo_d]

Tonight was the first time in years I didn't have to 'double tap' the commodities market on my fleet carrier to complete buys and sells.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Yes there seems to have been a stealth/server side patch for the buying bug.