I have no idea, the Coriolis I built acquired a shipyard today, and the system has been in stasis for a few weeks.
Elite Dangerous | Trailblazers Update 3 | Now Live!
- Thread starter Phil W
- Start date
"Fog in Channel. Continent cut off" as a particularly parochial UK newspaper headline once said.
Sirius Corp have a biogeneration prototype. If you fire the, erm, matter, into the ergosphere (yes it's called that, I don't do the names) of a spinning black hole at the correct angle, it will enter a near orbit which grazes but does not cross the event horizon. The material will give up the maximum possible gravitational potential energy to the environment and that hard radiation can be collected. Even better, the radiation tends to exit near the poles so you don't need that many "solar" panels to collect it.
(Why you all looking at me like that? I just went through 12 screens of you lot failing to work timezones)
You're also able to build structures which don't have economic influence - satellite / relay / government installations, for example.
I have a T1 Industrial outpost in my system's primary slot and that does not appear to generate weak links to other bodies, so that might help with non-rocky primary slots.
As far as mixing economies goes:
- Tourism is safe on orbitals, but will consume Surface Stabilisers on surface ports (so long as it's only a minor proportion from weak links, you'll probably still get it exported)
- Extraction likewise, and will also consume Explosives (though you don't need those for colonisation itself)
- Agricultural likewise, and will also consume Biowaste (and very rapidly, at that) which you need for a few Agricultural constructions.
Other than "Frontier said they'd do it and now they have", I think weak links should just go entirely.
- planetary influence "solves" the "problem" that they were originally intended for
- they're far too weak to give any useful production or consumption levels for stuff you do want, or even to reinforce an existing economy by a noticeable amount
- they're just strong enough to break production of things with a strong consumption bias by turning every station into a rainbow station
I think the point @CaptainPugwash is making is even some of the high-ranked Powerplay players will protest; present company and a few others excepted, of course. Even in the face of your suggestion of matching the increased threat to increased weekly leaderboard standing (or even overall rank).
For example, the #1 Commander on a Power's leaderboard may have gotten there by mining or (now that it's reinstated) delivering exploration / exobiology data; not combat. They may be just as likely to scream bloody murder at an increased NPC threat over their high leaderboard rank as someone ranked #100.
I like your suggestions and would like to see them implemented. Unfortunately, the heart of the problem is the ED community as a whole is one of the most risk-averse I've encountered in any game I've ever played (and that includes me owning the original Pong back in 1976). So it's always going to be an uphill battle over any suggesiton that increases risk.
The thing is though, what do you honestly expect a rival power to do? Unless being the best actually brings rewards and consequences, why have ranks at all, or territory or PP2 itself? Whats happening now is PP2 is universally boring as it never kicks into high gear. Action is monotone and totally predictable- its back to PP1 where the only limit is time and not the game pushing back...at all.
It will be in anyones control to move to safer areas if they draw heat, fly with allies, fly a faster ship etc.
I don't know that I 100% HATE it but it definitely is doing what concerned me in that the number of different influences gets out of hand rapidly and hoses up existing systems that were doing well. On the positive side It may lead to a large variety of slightly different markets with somewhat more diverse sets of offerings.
Maybe two things I would like to see:
1.) Distance fade. A settlement on planet 7 would have very low scale factor in its link. So yes it can have some infulence but things in the same planet system have FAR greater impact. Like say my High Tech on the moon of the Planet 1 I'm orbiting has (for giggles) 0.3x multipler on its economy influence and the Agri on planet 7 has (0.03).
2.) Perhaps a limit of the top 2 weak influences. At least then a settllement here or there to boost some stat doesn't become another color of skittles and you can mold weak links by building out many of the influence types you really want to impact things.
The catch there is the large number of commodities where the production and consumption rates are very different for the same economic size. So e.g. if you get any Industrial at all in your Agricultural, you will lose Natural Fabrics production. Conversely, even the slightest High-Tech component will give you Progenitor Cells exported.
There are relatively few commodities where the precise proportion in the mix is going to make a difference to whether it's exported or imported.
I agree 100% with your assessment, sentiments, and suggestions. I'm simply remarking that suggestions that increase risk for players (as reasonable and as warranted though they may be) will always hit a brick wall with this community; even if they would lead to a much more dynamic and engaging form of Powerplay. On the whole they just don't like combat; even with brain-dead NPCs and zero rebuy cost.
However, there may be a silver lining; they do appear to respond quite favorably to increased rewards (note the differing Community Goal engagement levels between ones offering a module and ones that don't). So if a greater reward - and it would likely have to be much greater to motivate the masses - can be tied to your suggestions of greater risk, there may be more buy-in.
I apologise if it sounds as if I'm having a go at you, I'm not
I'm just trying to argue the point because (as you can see) find it exasperating considering what PP2 during the deep dives was far more vicious.Oo, shiny!
I wouldn't remove weak links, but reduce their effect to only influence a planet and it's orbiting stations + moons. That way we can still use these small moons with only 1 surface slot, but no orbital (or vice versa) to build an economy, but not ruining the economy on other planets in that system.
The current weak links kinda force us into only building up one planet per system to avoid unwanted influences and keep the rest empty.
The update is stuck at 0%. Is it just me?
My Ocellus strong influence says 2. It should say 4.
It shows the connection to the surface science port (Elliot's Folly) and the orbital science outpost (Voro's Reasearch Labs).
It isn't counting the two large science settlements on the planet.
The math might need some tweaking.
AFAIK it only gets a strong link to the largest/oldest of a type on the ground (non ports will link to the ground port but not the orbital). The others should pass their influence through that link. So you should be seeing the full influence from all of them with only one link to a ground port. This may be bugged.
I think it's working as designed in your case. Your science settlements link to the surface port, which links to the space ports.
Yeah that may need some tweaking under the hood in order to not make it so destructive like that. I get what they are going for in allowing stuff that has no other options to pick up influence from around the system but because that is now clashing with import/export and the required diversity we're going to hve some problems.
I just don't have a good feeling that they will actually do that.
Thanks, makes sense. I see that the surface port does show two strong influence from the surface settlements.
This means that each "strong" influence is likely not weighted equally.
I expect the Ocellus on Planet A has stronger influence on it than Ocellus on Planet B.
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Not entirely related, but one thing that I don't like about this weak link stuff is the military structures we have to build to (meaningfully) keep our systems from being pirate-infested dumping holes, or at least stop the security level from going absolutely through the floor.
I haven't checked precisely but at least titanium will be eaten by military (on top of industrial), which is not helpful to setting up a refinery. I generally don't care for military economy if I'm not doing a specific system centered around it, but now I'm hesitant to build a planned security station because it will destroy whatever titanium my supposed refinery still has after the industrial "weak" nuke hit it.
My ideas would be...
At very basic, actually scale the weak link so it doesn't start demanding hundreds of thousands of refinery materials, removing liquid oxygen, polymers, copper and some other stuff from it for... 1,400 computer components and 96 structural regulators? I'll pass on that "deal" (more like a ripoff). An industrial outpost with a little bit of development applied to it(s system) already suffices for most components demanded by them, probably similar for high tech.Seems to be the case already. Still I don't think they are really necessary and merely act to reduce supply of economies which a player actually wants because of stuff like the above-mentioned military installations/hubs/settlements.- Don't apply weak links if they don't match with primary station economy (rainbow economies are boring and also extremely self-destructive, as evidenced).
- Or... get rid of them entirely, like Ian said.
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Only linked chains of bar napkins, written in crayon, will be admissible for the record...