Hire NPC pilots to collect colonization materials

[MysticWolf]

I've seen quite a few people mention how nice it would be if we could hire traders or use our own npc crew to passively gather and deliver materials to colonization ships, so I made this thread in case it hasn't been mentioned here yet.

I believe such a feature would be not only a great QOL feature, but also a way to increase game immersion and allow those who like the idea of colonisation but are put off by the grind to interact with the systems. At the very least it could be a new starport menu or an option to hail nearby cargo ships, or if you want ideas for a new big DLC with many features it could be expanded into an NPC overhaul where you could hire wingmates or have added crew functionality, etc.

Please, FDev, this would be amazing. I would legitimately spend way more time in the game as I love base building mechanics but really want to be able to do activities other than cargo hauling. I'm sure most of us would be happy to pay extra and even wait longer than usual for deliveries could we do so passively.

 

[SoftDrive]

Agree

 

[CMDR Venence Shadow]

I've seen quite a few people mention how nice it would be if we could hire traders or use our own npc crew to passively gather and deliver materials to colonization ships, so I made this thread in case it hasn't been mentioned here yet.

I believe such a feature would be not only a great QOL feature, but also a way to increase game immersion and allow those who like the idea of colonisation but are put off by the grind to interact with the systems. At the very least it could be a new starport menu or an option to hail nearby cargo ships, or if you want ideas for a new big DLC with many features it could be expanded into an NPC overhaul where you could hire wingmates or have added crew functionality, etc.

Please, FDev, this would be amazing. I would legitimately spend way more time in the game as I love base building mechanics but really want to be able to do activities other than cargo hauling. I'm sure most of us would be happy to pay extra and even wait longer than usual for deliveries could we do so passively.

My idea that I'd hope the Developers would seriously consider, would be to put stations (all builds) on timers. A timer equal to the tons of mats required would be fine, but It would look like NPCs are auto delivering stuff. However, in reality, it's just a timer that players can chip away 1 minute per ton of the mats that are already in demand by being proactive in the build. Also, cool little mini vids of each facility being quick built upon completion would up the wow factor of the game.

With these ideas in mind, it would solve many problems with both solo players and people who want to play the game without it being an endless grind.

From another post. *

There's got to be some automation somewhere, otherwise only well-connected players will have absolute monopolies on the industry while solo players pick for scraps out in the outer fringes before losing interest in the entire game. Without direct access to the bubble, especially this early on, no solo player will be able to build more than a few outposts.

It is a viscous cycle, but with the proper balancing (particularly for solo players) it should work best with either timers or NPC deliveries. To keep people from going overboard, maybe after the third or fourth facility in a system it requires a player to become self-sufficient. Or have the timer limited to one build at a time while all others are on hold or could be built by the player. As it stands, a newer solo player (mildly new) that hasn't gotten a carrier has little to no chance to even get their first outpost built beyond the fringes of the bubble. Once things expand even more, even carrier owners will begin to feel the pressure.

Like another example would be Inara, we all use it these days. If occupied systems expand over the next 3-6 months and players spread out in all directions, what kind of information will those solo players be seeing when they need resources. Carriers at that point would be an absolute must before anyone could even begin to think about expanding further while the well-connected players takeover most all of the universe of the new bubble.

I get that solo players will always be at a disadvantage, especially for large stations, but they still need to feel like they CAN remain solo and build their own little slice of paradise somewhere out in the black without the need to grind their entire lives away just to get there.

 

[CMDR X]

Lol. I can't even convince mine to sit next to me in my Clipper.

 

[Factabulous]

No. This is not an offline game.

 

[Koma Pahu]

I want to colonise a new system, but I don’t want to do any of the work to colonise the system.

Edit: I do find it jarring that all the NPCs landing on the colonisation ship are just, presumably, passing through the system only using the colonisation ship to refuel their T9s.

 

[Evoflash]

Just have a button that you click for an instant Coriolis Station. Also for Elite ranking too why not.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'd like some alternatives to cargo hauling, certainly. A few of the ideas from other threads
- trade in Building Schematics to reduce requirements
- "defend convoy" POIs can have them offer to do a single hauling run for you if you keep them all alive under pirate attack
- mission commodity rewards can be applied to a construction rather than your cargo hold
- scanning other bases of the same type outside your systems (only works for the Hub and Installation builds) takes a little bit off the requirements


Hiring NPC pilots to do the delivery is trickier, though - what's a fair rate to pay them?

It's not difficult to earn 200M/hour from stacking up "mining" gold/silver/palladium missions at Industrial stations and then buying the cargo. Four missions an hour (which don't take fifteen minutes each to do, and a T-9 or Cutter might be able to do two in a single trip) gets you there.

So if you can earn 200M/hour, and that's substituting for an hour's hauling (and not having to find good local sources of cargo), that's a payout of well over a billion credits just to build a basic T1 outpost.

I think a lot of people would find that excessive on paper - colonisation itself costing a fairly accessible 25 million and then the "fast track construction" button costing considerably more than a Fleet Carrier for the larger stations.

The problem is that if it's significantly cheaper than that - say it just costs a still pretty sizable 400 million to fast-track an outpost - then the meta rapidly becomes
- don't haul anything yourself
- do mission stacking or exobio or one of the super-fast credit earners
- use the money to pay for NPC hauling
- complete the station much quicker than you'd otherwise have been able to
- maybe also get some faction rep / pilots rank / Powerplay merits / engineering materials / etc. from the money-making process
and at that point the stations might as well just have credit price tags on them, because any other approach (including most of the ways you could earn the credits!) is the long way round. They're just not a useful way to balance anything in Elite Dangerous.

 

[Factabulous]

The problem with alternatives is they would not be balanced (nothing in the game is). If the alternatives don't become the meta they are wasted dev time. But if the meta isn't hauling then you end up with more casual players being at a disadvantage compared to forum sweats because they don't know.

NPCs doing the work is even worse as people could just buy extra accounts and get more done (by their NPCs). P2W.

 

[aRJay]

Are we really hauling in enough mass for a Coriolis* for example, if not then the NOCs are already making up for us slackers.

Isn’t a Coriolis somewhere up in the gigatonnes range.

 

[Jmanis]

I just don't get this whole "Pay to not play the game" mentality...

Other options to do activities that contribute to making the station, sure. But not just pay credits to literally remove the activity.

 

[MysticWolf]

Just have a button that you click for an instant Coriolis Station. Also for Elite ranking too why not.

I know you're just being sarcastic, but that's not quite what I'm arguing for. I know my idea as-is is not balanced or too well thought out, I'm simply trying to pose the idea that we have some other sort of method to progress colonization. I do not want this to be a "fast-track" where it takes less time or is instant, I just want to be able to slowly progress the building passively at some cost to the player. I built my first coriolis station fully legit, and I am an Elite, but sometimes life just gets in the way. I want to play the game but don't want every hour spent to be just more and more cargo hauling.

 

[MysticWolf]

I just don't get this whole "Pay to not play the game" mentality...

Other options to do activities that contribute to making the station, sure. But not just pay credits to literally remove the activity.

That's a fair point too, I would also love other activities that contribute as well. I think I may have mentioned somewhere in another thread that it would be neat to be able to defend cargo haulers from pirates as a sort of combat loop too.

I'm not saying this idea is perfect by any means whatsoever lol. I just think this method could work well with implementing a combat cycle (hire then defend your hauler), so I wanted to post it.

As for the "pay not to play the game" bit, I see your point but still disagree. I think that doesnt apply here as it's less "pay not to play" and more "pay to play the mechanics you like if you don't have that much time to play the game". Just a personal opinion though, I get that people will disagree and that's fine

 

[MysticWolf]

I'd like some alternatives to cargo hauling, certainly. A few of the ideas from other threads
- trade in Building Schematics to reduce requirements
- "defend convoy" POIs can have them offer to do a single hauling run for you if you keep them all alive under pirate attack
- mission commodity rewards can be applied to a construction rather than your cargo hold
- scanning other bases of the same type outside your systems (only works for the Hub and Installation builds) takes a little bit off the requirements


Hiring NPC pilots to do the delivery is trickier, though - what's a fair rate to pay them?

It's not difficult to earn 200M/hour from stacking up "mining" gold/silver/palladium missions at Industrial stations and then buying the cargo. Four missions an hour (which don't take fifteen minutes each to do, and a T-9 or Cutter might be able to do two in a single trip) gets you there.

So if you can earn 200M/hour, and that's substituting for an hour's hauling (and not having to find good local sources of cargo), that's a payout of well over a billion credits just to build a basic T1 outpost.

I think a lot of people would find that excessive on paper - colonisation itself costing a fairly accessible 25 million and then the "fast track construction" button costing considerably more than a Fleet Carrier for the larger stations.

The problem is that if it's significantly cheaper than that - say it just costs a still pretty sizable 400 million to fast-track an outpost - then the meta rapidly becomes
- don't haul anything yourself
- do mission stacking or exobio or one of the super-fast credit earners
- use the money to pay for NPC hauling
- complete the station much quicker than you'd otherwise have been able to
- maybe also get some faction rep / pilots rank / Powerplay merits / engineering materials / etc. from the money-making process
and at that point the stations might as well just have credit price tags on them, because any other approach (including most of the ways you could earn the credits!) is the long way round. They're just not a useful way to balance anything in Elite Dangerous.

You make good points here that I hadn't thought of. I appreciate the well-thought-out criticisms and alternative ideas instead of just saying "stupid idea" or whatever. I think my ideal implementation of this would be a slow system that doesn't let you spam hiring npcs and still takes significantly longer than just hiring yourself, so it would be much faster otherwise and is just a passive option for those who want it. However, I do totally agree that we need new activities for it too (I actually really like all your ideas).

I guess the reason I went with this idea is because for all the great immersive aspects of Elite, I've always wished we could have more interactions with non-hostile npcs. I feel like adding a system where I could hire and optionally escort an npc trader would be not just a time saver, but also a way to be more immersed in the gameplay. Am I crazy to want that? Maybe, Idk. But it's something I want nonetheless.

 

[Galactic Fork]

I don't think the requirements are the absolute materials needed, I think it's the requirement of the pilot's federation. Everything else is handled by NPCs.
While I looooathe the idea of contracts to have NPCs haul, I could see a system where we buy the required goods, setup a payment per ton and post it for other players to haul. Setup a huge Pilot's Federation job board with the routes. The player can look at the board, see the route and choose how many tons they'll deliver. This could be a cool option for new players to have quick possibly very lucrative hauling jobs.

 

[MysticWolf]

I don't think the requirements are the absolute materials needed, I think it's the requirement of the pilot's federation. Everything else is handled by NPCs.
While I looooathe the idea of contracts to have NPCs haul, I could see a system where we buy the required goods, setup a payment per ton and post it for other players to haul. Setup a huge Pilot's Federation job board with the routes. The player can look at the board, see the route and choose how many tons they'll deliver. This could be a cool option for new players to have quick possibly very lucrative hauling jobs.

Actually, that would work too. An in-game bulletin board / mission board for player contracts is a fun idea too. Not a bad idea at all.

 

[aRJay]

I know you're just being sarcastic, but that's not quite what I'm arguing for. I know my idea as-is is not balanced or too well thought out, I'm simply trying to pose the idea that we have some other sort of method to progress colonization. I do not want this to be a "fast-track" where it takes less time or is instant, I just want to be able to slowly progress the building passively at some cost to the player. I built my first coriolis station fully legit, and I am an Elite, but sometimes life just gets in the way. I want to play the game but don't want every hour spent to be just more and more cargo hauling.

The problem is even if the system takes exactly the same time as it took the commander to do a particular structure type and wasn't available for any structure they hadn't already completed an example of it would still let them set the process going and go shooting NPCs for a week while it happened. It wasn't instant but it had just as much effect on their game as if it was.

I suspect when I get to start colonising I am going to want some sort of alternative to ease the strain or add variety but I don't think this is quite it.

 

[Jmanis]

I do not want this to be a "fast-track" where it takes less time or is instant, I just want to be able to slowly progress the building passively at some cost to the player.

Except that's what paying NPCs is doing... it's fast tracking things, or at the very least, making the problem disappear one way or smudge by paying credits

First, credits are straight-up busted as a game resource. Secondly, it would severely undermine the update itself... imagine going "hey, here's our new feature, but if you like just do whatever you were already doing and post to skip it".

Imagine this was the Thargoid War.... and instead of fighting it, 10,000 players just decide to stack NPC pirate massacres and then pay NPCs to fight the war instead of us.

Instead, the war offered varied activities, but you still had to do those activities.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I just don't get this whole "Pay to not play the game" mentality...

Look at the suggestion forum - over the years it has had its share of suggestions to modify the game so players don't have to play the game. It's weird . Hiring NPCs to do activities instead of players is right up that alley. I don't get it either.

 

[CMDR Venence Shadow]

You make good points here that I hadn't thought of. I appreciate the well-thought-out criticisms and alternative ideas instead of just saying "stupid idea" or whatever. I think my ideal implementation of this would be a slow system that doesn't let you spam hiring npcs and still takes significantly longer than just hiring yourself, so it would be much faster otherwise and is just a passive option for those who want it. However, I do totally agree that we need new activities for it too (I actually really like all your ideas).

I guess the reason I went with this idea is because for all the great immersive aspects of Elite, I've always wished we could have more interactions with non-hostile npcs. I feel like adding a system where I could hire and optionally escort an npc trader would be not just a time saver, but also a way to be more immersed in the gameplay. Am I crazy to want that? Maybe, Idk. But it's something I want nonetheless.

You have some good points, but wouldn't escort missions be just as time consuming as moving the goods yourself? Though it would somewhat solve the sourcing problem. Hmm.. hard to say. However, a timer count for one build at a time would offer a sure way for even mid rank solo players to get things done in a timely fashion, but add in some of your ideas that could knock time off the clock beyond that isn't a bad idea either. (Sigh)

I can't seem to get over the idea that there should be some sort of countdown timer that helps solo players progress fast enough to stay relevant and interested in the game. If the game only caters to the well connected, then it could have a bad effect on new and solo players.