I've seen the notes, but by "really" I was implying "I hope they don't forget to merge the specific code changes" like they did with the journal entries 2 patches back
Elite Dangerous | Trailblazers Update 3 - Wednesday April 30
- Thread starter Phil W
- Start date
I think this colonization economy system makes perfect sense contrary to some opinions
1. We are system architects not system rulers there should be no reason for us to be able to decide what station trades with another station so natural links based off of transportation costs makes sense.
2. I think many people are too focused on the ability to make hyper-specialized markets to stand out among systems without considering how other economies affect a population and stations i.e Standard of living, security, wealth, technology. They have given us the tools to make a hyper-specialized economy but if you want say a mega-refinery your system will reflect the conditions of having everyone living there working in a refinery or mine so you will not have good security or standard of living since you didn't wanna build those to pump out a few hundred more CMM composites. This may even backfire in the form of high buying costs, frequent pirates, and low paying missions. Settlement shutdowns may also play a factor.
3. we still don't know if economies consuming other economies in system is really a bad thing. It could make more products for the end market or increase population growth which will lead to more product.
4. We appreciate everyone who has helped us understand things in the beta to bring in feedback, but you shouldn't expect your system to go exactly as planned when there was no plan, we were and are still in the gathering intel phase.
1. We are system architects not system rulers there should be no reason for us to be able to decide what station trades with another station so natural links based off of transportation costs makes sense.
2. I think many people are too focused on the ability to make hyper-specialized markets to stand out among systems without considering how other economies affect a population and stations i.e Standard of living, security, wealth, technology. They have given us the tools to make a hyper-specialized economy but if you want say a mega-refinery your system will reflect the conditions of having everyone living there working in a refinery or mine so you will not have good security or standard of living since you didn't wanna build those to pump out a few hundred more CMM composites. This may even backfire in the form of high buying costs, frequent pirates, and low paying missions. Settlement shutdowns may also play a factor.
3. we still don't know if economies consuming other economies in system is really a bad thing. It could make more products for the end market or increase population growth which will lead to more product.
4. We appreciate everyone who has helped us understand things in the beta to bring in feedback, but you shouldn't expect your system to go exactly as planned when there was no plan, we were and are still in the gathering intel phase.
What percentage of colony systems made in the 'great land rush' are actually worth going to? My first colony is totally useless. The only thing you can buy from the two stations is fuel and fruit. Nothing else.
When we can name systems I'll name it 'a void'
When we can name systems I'll name it 'a void'
As opposed to the commodities that matter?
The only thing that makes a commodity matter are the arbitrary requirements missions or colonization, itself, require. It's not like this stuff is used as resources for other aspects of the economy or in crafting useful things.
Just ask fdev to make more grocery run missions.
What makes a colony interesting can be/likely is highly subjective. Some will build them in visually interesting locations, others purely functional for the sake of supplying local colonization, a combination of the two, plus a whole lot of other factors which could be listed… and then there’s the Hutton Truckers doing Hutton things.
Gathering thousands of settlement data pieces isn't effortless. It demands coordination, stealth, time, and teamwork over days or even weeks. It's not "free" undermining.
Powerplay isn't supposed to be purely defensive. Systems should be able to fall if attackers are clever and well-organized. Otherwise, it’s just a stale "who can grind more shields" simulator. A system that takes months to fortify but cannot be realistically threatened (which your suggested 20-item limit would basically guarantee) would make Powerplay meaningless and discourage active, strategic play.
Yes, storing data to "surprise" opponents just before the tick is possible. But that's part of tactical Powerplay gameplay - and always has been. Just like in real conflicts, intelligence gathering, deception, and surprise actions are crucial tools. Not everything should be perfectly visible and predictable 24 hours in advance.
What bothers me about your post is that it puts a personal playstyle over others'. You argue settlement activities should be nerfed because you personally don't like them (e.g., because you avoid on-foot content due to VR limitations). That’s not a neutral position. Some players in our faction, for example, prefer almost exclusively on-foot gameplay. Should they now demand that only the first 50t of mined minerals should count toward fortification, because mining is very strong compared to settlement raids or ship-to-ship combat and trading? It’s important to keep Powerplay activities diverse and accessible to different kinds of players, not just one favored method.
That being said, I do agree that ship-vs-ship combat currently feels underpowered compared to activities like mining (for defense) or settlements (for offense), and that Powerplay 2.0 definitely needs some balancing adjustments moving forward.
Still, overall, making Powerplay more active, tactical, and less passive grinding is a big step in the right direction.
I do agree that the defensive nerf feels quite steep at the moment. But it’s also clear that Frontier is likely collecting data from this first phase and will rebalance if necessary, once they have a better understanding of how the new dynamics actually play out.
BFP depends on who is doing the attacking - so Patreus supporters could attack a lot of your space with Standard BFP, but Kaine, Antal and Delaine supporters would generally be facing higher rates.
But yes, again a problem of balancing as Frontier does this: if the average ratio is close to 1:1 reinforcement:undermining that's going to mean a substantial number of Powers end up with quite a negative balance, unless there can be incentives made to also even out the attack and defence ratios. Current figures for week 26 are around
Code:
+------------------+-----------+--------+---------+---------+
| power | size | u | r | ratio |
+------------------+-----------+--------+---------+---------+
| A. Lavigny-Duval | 397023329 | 126645 | 2932737 | 23.1571 |
| Aisling Duval | 376265269 | 67602 | 4918619 | 72.7585 |
| Archon Delaine | 142628317 | 133229 | 616273 | 4.6257 |
| Denton Patreus | 161471128 | 174852 | 763362 | 4.3658 |
| Edmund Mahon | 301370061 | 137063 | 1063100 | 7.7563 |
| Felicia Winters | 158461734 | 54142 | 1762427 | 32.5519 |
| Jerome Archer | 260956921 | 245964 | 2636878 | 10.7206 |
| Li Yong-Rui | 276334660 | 49042 | 3725670 | 75.9690 |
| Nakato Kaine | 132851790 | 56300 | 1217782 | 21.6302 |
| Pranav Antal | 179215154 | 355525 | 1258143 | 3.5388 |
| Yuri Grom | 241324988 | 909662 | 2716977 | 2.9868 |
| Zemina Torval | 124166809 | 595355 | 1438555 | 2.4163 |
+------------------+-----------+--------+---------+---------+So any change which gets the overall ratio close to 1:1 still leaves Aisling or LYR with close to 10:1 reinforcement boosts, while Torval, Grom and Antal get swept away, if it can't also specifically incentivise attacking those big two.
I think part of it has to be providing more "accidental" ways to undermine. At the moment if I go to Kaine space, and don't even try to do Powerplay things, I'll be collecting merits all over the place without even trying. Whereas if I go to Torval space, there's a good chance that I could spend an entire week there and not actually do any undermining, if I didn't set out specifically to do so. Adding more "accidental" undermining - scans, bounties, maybe new stuff like warzones or some of the other mission types - pushes down the biggest Powers faster just because they have more targets.
The ones within the old bubble, not necessarily. Once you get outside that, yes.
Oh right, I have never seen a non pristine unpopulated/uncolonised one, I guess.
Interesting once you break down the data by power it is easy to see which powers are skewing the ratio... The "untouchables" of LYR, and Aisling, ALD, Archer and Kaine with very high ratios as well as winters (though she took her losses early in 2.0). Meanwhile everyone else has to fight pretty hard for what they have, even before fdev make these changes.
Why yes i do, thanks
I do wonder if the way is to maybe have extra but universal methods common to all powers, since the issue is how the map is zoned (as in, you are really locked into battles with neighbours and that activities are unbalanced).
This is why I pondered the idea of other powers having a bounty bonus on wrecking the top 3- it overrides the BFP and breaking out from the 'topography' of the territories a bit (as well as any alliances going on). The flipside might be the top 3 has maybe a bonus tweak like the old 1/2/3 PP1 bonuses to reward for being 'the best'.
The other thought was of FD making murder the way of moving the needle fast, since its already greatly punished. This could be linked to system status where the greater the control a rival has the more 'shocking' it is (translated as a boost to UM merits). If you are only safe in your own territory this sets up explicit raids that could be countered by say, random presence of ATR themed to that power (which is in game right now). Thinking more it would also be fun considering that if you attack many powers to are living dangerously over a larger area, and that using attacks wisely might be in order (or just go beserk and deal with it).
Another is riffing on the limited quantity of PP fleet carriers- it should be the more space you control the weaker strongholds get (supply lines) and the smaller you are the more robust it is- so small powers are tougher but lack bonuses (say) while large powers have the bonuses but decay easily.
But in the end its a paradox. People fret over small powers being steamrollered but it masks the greater issue- it should be everyone wanting to be #1 that balances things out with the big powers looking over shoulders and not the small guys.
It is - a Colony will be "overridden" to Extraction if it is on or orbiting an HMC. So now you can build one of the neutral kinds of facilities, like a Planetary Port, and it will become a big ol' Mining station (as well as a Planetary Port.)
(I've put "overridden" in quotes because I'm not sure it was quite the right word to choose from FDev, looking at how the rules actually work. I'm not sure an "override" completely nerfs every other factor as the plain English meaning of the word would mean...)
What happens to Pristine rings now? Should be the same idea...
Geology. Natural volcanism does some of the work for you... in fact it does some of the Refinery work for you as well. It also enhances the amount of planetary core material that is brought up to drilling depth. Without volcanism you'll have an insane amount of interplanetary dust on the surface and nothing much useful...
Doubt it, otherwise the game engine wouldn't make that distinction in the first place...
If it was me designing the game I might even make this cost a few extra resources - the builds for Tier 3 are so utterly different from Tier 1 I think on a planet you'd have to spend A While obliterating foundations and footings and things to reuse a site, and in orbit an Outpost is built from a strong core with very little hollow area whereas Tier 2 up are completely the opposite way around. Not a whole lot you could directly recycle onsite either.
I've definitely played games (maybe it's Sim City?) where you have to carry out a couple of different kinds of demolition and re-preparation in this way.
And when I wrote my absolute guess about threading and calling back to the server with new Ascendency data, in mid-December, I already based that guess on some pretty solid info in other threads, so that must have been early December. I don't think anyone had worked out it was specifically the GPSS-adjacent thread at that point but it was already obvious this was the issue, to a lot of people on both this forum and Reddit, that early in the process.
(Note, I do think GraphicEqualizer and Ozric and Neilski all did an amazing job of hounding out the evidence)
Yes, it takes effort to collect them but only for one person and all his friends can just come to collect. And it not tactical Powerplay gameplay dropping 150000 control points one hour before the tick, powerplay gameplay suppose to be a fight and not a drop without possibility to counter the action.
If settlement data and goods need to be dropped during the week like ALL the other activities than there is time to respond, like this is just something FDEV overlooked that people can destroy systems without any defense.
FDEV blocked exploration data for that reason. NOTHING can be store to generate 100 times more merits than all the other activities. If you think bombing before the tick is intended tactical powerplay gameplay, why can't I store all the merits I get from power kills and drop them at will on a system to destroy it, and store power goods on 1000 FC to drop it before the tick?
Your tactical powerplay gameplay is basically going to a boxing fight and shooting your oponent in the back on the way to the ring, since you don't want to take the risk that you loose.
Mining can only work on a some systems, the most systems do not have a possibility to mine.
I did not want to remove the settlement data, just that you have to turn it in like all the other activity, which show up 1 hour later in the system. If settlement data is limit to 20 you have to deliver them to the system, you still get more merits than other activites, but there will be a fight back and forth till the tick and whoever puts in more effort wins it.
If settlement data and goods need to be dropped during the week like ALL the other activities than there is time to respond, like this is just something FDEV overlooked that people can destroy systems without any defense.
FDEV blocked exploration data for that reason. NOTHING can be store to generate 100 times more merits than all the other activities. If you think bombing before the tick is intended tactical powerplay gameplay, why can't I store all the merits I get from power kills and drop them at will on a system to destroy it, and store power goods on 1000 FC to drop it before the tick?
Your tactical powerplay gameplay is basically going to a boxing fight and shooting your oponent in the back on the way to the ring, since you don't want to take the risk that you loose.
Mining can only work on a some systems, the most systems do not have a possibility to mine.
I did not want to remove the settlement data, just that you have to turn it in like all the other activity, which show up 1 hour later in the system. If settlement data is limit to 20 you have to deliver them to the system, you still get more merits than other activites, but there will be a fight back and forth till the tick and whoever puts in more effort wins it.
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You probably meant @Nowski there
(I've done almost nothing thus far, though ironically I do have some fresh info from last night which I'll post when I get a moment.)![rollpinpunch [Fenris]](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/294/294986.jpg?1745730203){kind=avatar}
If you want to counter settlement data drops in your systems it's not terribly hard: patrol the settlements and shoot anyone who isn't supposed to be there.
All Tortuga Delaine snipers operate solely in open. We would love to meet opponents there, especially as sniping can be done in combat capable ships.