If that kind of thing isn't your cup of tea than you can neglect that aspect of the game, like dedicated explorers ignore combat zones. I agree with Raymond Saint, it could add a lot to the game to make the BGS and persistent universe feel more real.
How could player-owned outposts / bases work?
- Thread starter Cmdr Travers
- Start date
If that kind of thing isn't your cup of tea than you can neglect that aspect of the game, like dedicated explorers ignore combat zones. I agree with Raymond Saint, it could add a lot to the game to make the BGS and persistent universe feel more real.
verminstar
Banned
Then it becomes circular as I disagree with your argument and it seems I'm not the only one...
So...as this is gonna keep coming up again and again despite yer reservations and objections, where do we go from here?
I don't want Elite to become a completely free to play (or just buy to play) equivalent of EvE - I have avoided EvE for this very reason and would consider steps in the direction some want it to go a betrayal of the trust of the user base.
I don't disagree that it would be nice to see factions expand more, but if you are talking about real - then it is pretty realistic as it is, we have CGs to support factions improving or building new facilities and this does not happen overnight but over a protracted period of time. It would feel unrealistic if it did expand at the pace some seem to want it to IMO.
Building new stations and bases is bound to cost lots of time, money, and man power.
As for the game feeling dead or boring, it seems FD have plans for that - Thargoid related ones.
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this is the key on a lot of issues. people want to homogenise every game so they all fit in neat little samey boxes and they can say oh x game is a FPS/strategy/whatever genre. its the same attitude some have to say the BGS and undermining - they only see elite as a shooter game or they are used to shooters - so their only idea is to shoot players undermining their faction rather than work the BGS as designed. when those players happen to be out of sight because not instanced with them or in solo - it must be bad design to have solo where players hide to undermine with no opposition etc etc. and so they aregue to turn elite from what it is, a sandbox space game with multiple play styles, into what they are used to (not what they want - sometimes they dont know what they actually want) where the response to everything is more combat.
elite doesnt need to be EvE online. nor does it need WoW style garrisons which is what player bases and outposts would become, unless...
it would work in this way; players will have to spend much of their time doing all the chores that come with leading an outpost, most of which they will need to do while docked or effectively mandatory missions in their own ship, to keep the place operating. until it reaches a certain critical point. they will need to fund it until its self sufficient - so they need to pay the system security - or they risk pirates raiding the outpost reducing its population and thus the income. they want to attract other npcs to come, miners if the system has resources, and that means building a refinery is an option costing a lot of money. or they keep it as merely an extraction point. anyway a commodities market will eventually spring up and commanders and npc ships will start turning up. if its in open other players may try to take it over by force at this stage. eventually other claims are made on the planet surface or nearby planets if its an outpost orbitting. they will grow as the colonisation snowballs gradually.
now if the place gets big enough, npc factions will spring up who have different ideas on how it should be run. OR if its really useful a nearby independent world or a power will view it as ripe for expansion target. this will start by other factions trying to become more influential than the player faction. they may try a coup or civil war may start. in any case the player can accept the attempt at take over and become a minor part in the powerplay or just move on.
if the player or group get bored with the grind (and wow garrisons DID become a grind and a reason why i quit) then the place becomes abandoned. it may thrive and a new faction takes over bloodlessly - or it might fail and become abandoned. then of course its something that can get lost from maps and rediscovered by players like alien stuff - or a focus for a mission because a pirate group operates from it. so lots of possibles if abandoned.
FD might even demand a real life payment to implement a player outpost.
-yawn- I see this all the time "If we have player owned bases" EVE ONLINE!, you guys do realize that player structures have existed in various other mmos. Eve online is a spread sheet simulator, with a map that reveals far too much information. I have played eve for over a decade, I know how EVE works, I've played Elite since beta 1, I know how Elite works, a player owned structure is not going to magically turn this game into EVE online. Unless you add
-NPC agent locators (used to find and track down various players you want to kill or grief)
-A right click menu to control your ships and hot keys associated with the menu, Warp to (Whatever celestial object in space)
-Gates, creating artificial choke points for a false system of control.
-A Galactic map that reveals who owns what and where and how many players are in a given system.
-Remove physics and allow stupid things like small ships bumping large ships off a station cred hundreds of kilometers away, no collision damage or any form of real collision.
-remove 99.9% of the systems in the galaxy and keep it to around 5-7000 star systems
-Remove Solo an Private group play and keep everything to single sharded universe.
-remove jump drives from ships so every ship is forced to use gates for inter stellar travel.
-make sure you have ships with specific bonuses to weapon systems, limiting your ability to customize the combat potential of any given ship
-make battleships with only 8 weapons.
-remove point defense and interdictions and replace them with static deployable drag bubbles that you use to pull ships out of warp.
-remove super cruise and replace with warp drive, a point to point warp to function within a solar system.
If I have to keep going to describe how different EVE on-line is to EVE and someone comes in here and still says "Player owned bases = EVE" then you are delusional. Elite is a different game, it doesn't matter what you add to it. Elite will still be a different game than EVE or any other game.
Everyone saying "Feature X doesn't belong in Elite" Should get up and walk out of these threads, because Multiplayer never belonged in Elite, and yet here it is. Multi crew was never in Elite and yet here it is. The galaxy is big enough for everyone to have their cup of tea. thanks.
-NPC agent locators (used to find and track down various players you want to kill or grief)
-A right click menu to control your ships and hot keys associated with the menu, Warp to (Whatever celestial object in space)
-Gates, creating artificial choke points for a false system of control.
-A Galactic map that reveals who owns what and where and how many players are in a given system.
-Remove physics and allow stupid things like small ships bumping large ships off a station cred hundreds of kilometers away, no collision damage or any form of real collision.
-remove 99.9% of the systems in the galaxy and keep it to around 5-7000 star systems
-Remove Solo an Private group play and keep everything to single sharded universe.
-remove jump drives from ships so every ship is forced to use gates for inter stellar travel.
-make sure you have ships with specific bonuses to weapon systems, limiting your ability to customize the combat potential of any given ship
-make battleships with only 8 weapons.
-remove point defense and interdictions and replace them with static deployable drag bubbles that you use to pull ships out of warp.
-remove super cruise and replace with warp drive, a point to point warp to function within a solar system.
If I have to keep going to describe how different EVE on-line is to EVE and someone comes in here and still says "Player owned bases = EVE" then you are delusional. Elite is a different game, it doesn't matter what you add to it. Elite will still be a different game than EVE or any other game.
Everyone saying "Feature X doesn't belong in Elite" Should get up and walk out of these threads, because Multiplayer never belonged in Elite, and yet here it is. Multi crew was never in Elite and yet here it is. The galaxy is big enough for everyone to have their cup of tea. thanks.
verminstar
Banned
Thats really not what this is about though...in many ways, eve relies on player owned structures fer much of the gameplay. They can mine, manufacture almost anything, refine almost anything, defend against a small fleet, supply cyno fields and even build capital ships. A corp of 50 players can store every single ship they own with room to spare and store enough raw minerals to fill a dozen freighters. Blueprints can be researched in labs...etc etc etc
Thats really not gonna happen here because its a different game and nobody wants to create another eve in elite. All anyone really wants to do is pitch the idea of the possibility to a personal stash that is purely fer personal use. W2ould mobile bases be cool? Well ye they would but thats faction owned at the very least and this is not what this is about...not fer me anyway because Im loyal to just one person...me.
Imagine something along the lines of a small, unarmed, non service station outpost that only you can use, store stuff in even name it like we do a ship. It serves no other purpose ingame other than to serve as a personal stash spot sorta thing. It doesnt matter if you or anyone else holds the opinion that theres not enough actual things one could store and theres no logical reason why...people still like their little patch of heaven...something that belongs to them and not to some faceless faction.
Fer some, it appears that even this is an issue...however, all the arguments against are based on bgs related consequences or the negative reaction to the idea of empire building and area denial. How...someone fer the love of jeebus explain to me how that small, almost meaningless personal item could in any way threaten their precious bgs? How does that equal empire building?
Restrictions can be placed on them so that certain items cannot be stored at all...theres another counter debunked in no time flat about UA bombing or whatever they call it.
But to shut the entire argument down with "this is not eve"...cool...so shall we go down memory lane and start counting off a few already existing mechanics that have already been copied? Not shameless clones, just ideas that existed in other games before this one was even a dream in Brabens head...ideas that have gone through little tweaks and alterations to make it an elite original. Thats what this is about...taking an idea from somewhere else and using that as a base and tweaking it to fit in as an elite original.
Or should we stop dreaming and hoping and accept that this is as good as space games can get? Theres no room to improve or try new things that have never been tried before?
That doesnt sound like the frontier I heard about...maybe that was a different frontier?
yes but APART FROM all that....
joking aside, i think elite should concentrate on being elite, not take features from other games be they EvE or WoW or anything else. if player owned bases/outposts/systems are part of FD plan fine. i dont have to own another garrison. my WoW one cured me of that particular grind need. i can take or leave bases. if its just a small patch on a planet thats an entry to an underground storage hangar, and it costs me nothing to maintain it and its not possible for others to break in and steal the ships/cargo/modules stored there thats would be something i might like. somwehere to dump all my mats and rare cargo that engineers might need. maybe even something that if we can have a second commander on the same game i could share stuff to them to make the grind to get out of the sidey quicker. i doubt it since FD dont seem to be thinking of second commanders it seems to be one per game copy.
you know having a 'home' on a planet would give them other stuff to sell in FD shop - furnishings, wall pictures, decoration etc. you could dock when legs come and wander about in your home checking the galnet to see how the galactic war with the thargoids is going. view your exploration journal on a special terminal. pray before the image of the FD developers in the basement or soemthing lol.
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prolly been said a thousand times but how about: You get pally enough with the controlling faction and can then buy shares in the station. If the faction does well your shares go up and you get dividends, if they don't your shares lose value. You can choose to sell shares (back to the station) for loss or gain at any point. You get cheaper or free services at said station. You could buy shares in multiple stations if you want.
can't say I have thought this through much though!
can't say I have thought this through much though!
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I never said anything about Eve. I argued that, whichever game aside, Elite doesn't need to include everything you see in other games. Simple. Player owned parking lots have always been 'in the vision'. Station building has been, on occasion, ruled out. I believe the term FD uses is; Command/Control mechanics. Which they don;t like.
"Asteroid Bases", where you can hide Ships and Modules has been in the works from the beginning, but massive group based station building has not. But, happily, there are plenty of opportunities out there for you to have these experiences.
"Asteroid Bases", where you can hide Ships and Modules has been in the works from the beginning, but massive group based station building has not. But, happily, there are plenty of opportunities out there for you to have these experiences.
The Elite series is primarily a space flight trading and combat game. ED moves the seeries into a multiplayer arena with players able to join together in player factions against a backdrop of the BGS. As factions expand into more systems, command and control and some form of ability to create a settlement in an unsettled system is needed. It makes sense therefore to have some sort of base building to facilitate that. Once you commit to that it makes sense to give individual players the same facility.
The key issue is what those bases actually do, how easily they are built and how they can be located. If you take the base building too far then ED could lose its identity.
I think systems should only be able to have a finite number of player bases, perhaps based on the number of planets in the system and a player faction should only be able to build one although they can take ownership of others. Player bases should be allowed to grow to have the same facilities as the current outposts and bases. When a base is player owned the missions spawned support the activities of the player group. If the player group loses control of a system the player base can change ownership but would be the last station to fall. Depending on control the station could fall under npc faction control. However when a player group begins to cease control of a system npc controlled player bases would fall first. I am happy for the bases to provide storage and maintenance, but i dont think it would be a great idea to turn them into profit centres simply because the game morphs into something its not.
I think there is a good opportunity to introduce faction research trees to be able to choose which modules you can build and then provide the ability to choose which aspect of a station you want to develop.
The key issue is what those bases actually do, how easily they are built and how they can be located. If you take the base building too far then ED could lose its identity.
I think systems should only be able to have a finite number of player bases, perhaps based on the number of planets in the system and a player faction should only be able to build one although they can take ownership of others. Player bases should be allowed to grow to have the same facilities as the current outposts and bases. When a base is player owned the missions spawned support the activities of the player group. If the player group loses control of a system the player base can change ownership but would be the last station to fall. Depending on control the station could fall under npc faction control. However when a player group begins to cease control of a system npc controlled player bases would fall first. I am happy for the bases to provide storage and maintenance, but i dont think it would be a great idea to turn them into profit centres simply because the game morphs into something its not.
I think there is a good opportunity to introduce faction research trees to be able to choose which modules you can build and then provide the ability to choose which aspect of a station you want to develop.
the bold bit is how garrisons in WoW work. you choose what you want to build based on the things it provides be it more henchmen (i forget the term for the npcs you can employ and sound out each day on missions for the garrison or defend it when its attacked with you) or certain resources such as mounts, or stuff you need if you make armour or weapons, or for the hobbies. and you have to do missions to earn the stuff needed to build the facilities and even to get the blueprints in the first place. if FD decide this is the kind of thing to do then so long as i dont have to do it (since unlike WoW there is no storyline triggered at set character level which results in a garrison/base being in your care whether you want it or not) then fine.
with expansion - there is already mechanics for that. colonia got started in a different way but the FD way seems to be community goals to build things. new spaceports, etc - i have participated in a CG to build one though i forget now what system it was in except that it was around B1 of the primary i think so you no longer were forced to travel the long distance to the stations in the secondary system after jump in.
In most of those cases, said structures are instanced to a specific player/guild and do not affect other people's game play - what some want is not that and tantamount to turning ED into an EvE hybrid monster.
The number of star systems is not an excuse to do what some want, FD seem to have some interesting things in the works - there are some locked systems and we know that the Thargoids are on the way to being a more active component in the game. The size of the galaxy and number of systems is a large playground perhaps but FD do seem to have some large ideas without resorting to the kind of player/guild centric gameplay some have been pushing for.
yes but APART FROM all that....
joking aside, i think elite should concentrate on being elite, not take features from other games be they EvE or WoW or anything else. if player owned bases/outposts/systems are part of FD plan fine. i dont have to own another garrison. my WoW one cured me of that particular grind need. i can take or leave bases. if its just a small patch on a planet thats an entry to an underground storage hangar, and it costs me nothing to maintain it and its not possible for others to break in and steal the ships/cargo/modules stored there thats would be something i might like. somwehere to dump all my mats and rare cargo that engineers might need. maybe even something that if we can have a second commander on the same game i could share stuff to them to make the grind to get out of the sidey quicker. i doubt it since FD dont seem to be thinking of second commanders it seems to be one per game copy.
you know having a 'home' on a planet would give them other stuff to sell in FD shop - furnishings, wall pictures, decoration etc. you could dock when legs come and wander about in your home checking the galnet to see how the galactic war with the thargoids is going. view your exploration journal on a special terminal. pray before the image of the FD developers in the basement or soemthing lol.
Oh I'm not saying that your idea is bad or anything or that bases couldn't be implemented in the manner you suggested. To be fair Elite is a space game and Eve is a space game, if we start saying feature x is in this game so this game is now the same as that other game, then it is just spewing hyperbole. There is room for player bases in Elite, there is room for player ships that can act as bases too, there is room for all kinds of things.
The idea is how we can make this work, and so far you have presented a pretty good idea, that's good to see. + REP
Except that player guilds are coming, in an AMA David braben was asked about it, it is something they will be implementing. That does not mean the whole game has to revolve around that though, I am pretty sure that player guilds can exist along side, the existing content. You to seem to want the game to evolve a certain way, and you most certainly will have your way, as will the people who want to have an establishment outside of the bubble in their own little corner. The game is just simply large enough for everyone to get what they want.
As for turning ED into an EVE hybrid monster, that is just simply not possible, read my post about EVE, look at all the things surrounding it. There is far more than massive player owned structures that makes eve what it is, and hell the OP and other people in this thread have merely asked for a small deployable base, that's a far cry from what you throw down in EVE which are now citadels which are just ridiculous. Some people just want to have a nice spot to hang out and conduct their gameplay, thats what these bases are far.
Some of us don't want to be nomads like you and I. I personally want my ship to be my base in the future, and we are a LONG way off from that.
Will players who have been playing longer have the advantage in first discoveries? Yes, but they already do. However one can argue that once a player finds a place they really like, they might just stay there. There is no need to arbitrarily throw these features in either, We need systems and gameplay surrounding, mobile bases, and deployable bases, we need ways in game to conduct research on what we find. Instead of useing out of game methods to unlock story content for instance. These things need to be developed.
Look at the other guys example of how a concerted effort created by players could happen, base gets abandoned other NPCs or player factions move in, and you have a dynamic and evolving location that the developers did not need to input. There are thousands of ways to implement features and add variations to x and y. There's no need to hate on a feature just because it exists in another game you don't like. We fly ships in both EVE and Elite, but the implementation of control is far different in each game. The same can happen for player structures.
It could work like that: when you reach maximum relations with certain faction and this faction is ready for expansion and has unhabitable planets nearby (or in a nearby uncolonized system), you can take a chained mission about building new settlement by delivering cargoes with building blocks and passengers & killing pirates to protect it. In the end the habitable human world will expand.
How is it not in Elite's spirit?
How is it not in Elite's spirit?
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Think of Elite like you would if you where playing GTA. That ship is a sports car. You're knocking about up to no good. The only difference is you cant get out and smash folk.
The bgs and mission system needs loving. Playing the minor factions opened this game up for me a long while back and its still going strong. I'd rather see assets poured into enriching this style of gameplay. More variety with the minors would be nice. Specific mission types based on the minor factions tag, like it was before. By tag I mean, dictator, anarchy, company. To many factions hand out the same mission types all over the bubble because certain players had a problem. I just dont see how player owned bases would enrich the game.
For those that say the game is boring. You've been playing it wrong. Think smaller.
The bgs and mission system needs loving. Playing the minor factions opened this game up for me a long while back and its still going strong. I'd rather see assets poured into enriching this style of gameplay. More variety with the minors would be nice. Specific mission types based on the minor factions tag, like it was before. By tag I mean, dictator, anarchy, company. To many factions hand out the same mission types all over the bubble because certain players had a problem. I just dont see how player owned bases would enrich the game.
For those that say the game is boring. You've been playing it wrong. Think smaller.
Assuming that corner is instanced to the player/guild there is no issue, as soon as it goes beyond that you are talking the kind of EvE-esque gameplay I do not want to see in ED in ANY shape or form.
I don't really think you can have eve gameplay even if it went beyond the corner being instanced to the player/guild (which is what I'm hoping for btw) the reason is because this is a 1-1 scale game, so trying to control a single planet would take massive amounts of effort and manpower, never mind an entire solar system. That's just too much work.
Having structures instanced to player/guild instances would probably be how it's going to work, somehow. It might be visible in open but untouchable unless you are invited by the player guild or instance. I have no idea how FD will implement this though, So we'll see.
Or Frontier could make it easy on themselves and just not do it at all.
Even if they hid such bases away in player/guild instances, you know exactly what will happen. No matter what Frontier will do, there'll be those who insist they got it wrong (and I might even be one of them). There'll be those who demand that such bases be visible to all and that they be attackable/destructable.....and if Frontier doesn't they'll leave the game, or protest in-game until they do, or the game will die or something. There'll be those who'll complain about people 'hiding' away in those instanced bases instead of coming out into open. And so on.
If I were Frontier, and given the likely reactions of certain sections of this community no matter what they do, I wouldn't touch this particular can of worms with a 65,000 lightyear long barge pole, let alone open it.
The thing that might work with minimum contention is players and groups being able to own facilities within NPC-controlled bases/outposts, but of course there'll be those that would wail even against that simply because they exactly want Eve-style territorial and asset control.
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