I am referring to PvE activities in terms of human conflict. Some examples of features expanded or new (and I have suggested these for both Colonia and the bubble, but I'd love to see Colonia get some 'unique' love to help spur more traffic back and forth):
- Station Attacks that are caused by humans rather than Thargoids, resulting in CZs and Missions localized to the attack. Human attacks could leave stations 'less broken' than the damage Thargoids cause, which in turn means the work needed to repair them would be less (balanced) to Colonia's population.
- A CG every quarter or more often, and an II at least once a year specific to Colonia and its continuous expansion.
We haven't had a CG out here for a long time - though, of course, there's not been much happening on that front in the bubble lately either.
I think one of the problems Frontier has is that, because the BGS in Colonia is so full of players trying to get intentional results compared with the bubble, they're extremely cautious about holding CGs that could advantage one side or another. (On the one hand, I think they could be less cautious ... on the other hand, I know the region better than they do so I know
where they could be less cautious)
There's also the general principle that Colonia's development should be player-driven. So far Frontier have generally done that as much as possible within the limits of what's actually possible in-game ... but it means that conventional Frontier-led storylines for CGs/IIs at the least need to be meeting some common player demand to Frontier for a change. At the moment there isn't a lot of that going on. It really needs something slightly more automated - advanced BGS - that it's clear that players can influence the outcome, with a couple of exceptions (I think a repurposed station repair cargo goal would be great for this sort of thing, as it's more flexible and less time-limited than a CG)
Colonia is such a great opportunity for some truly unique set pieces, stories, and activities.
Well, there are the engineers. That's certainly a start, and essentially unique (they reused the mechanic briefly as part of The Enclave)
Things that they could use while keeping the player-led aspect:
- Add a "Colonia Expansion" squadron leaderboard. Squadrons do tasks in Colonia to get points, at the end of the season an improvement is added based on the leaderboard scores. There's some complexity around tying squadrons to factions to systems to manage here, and some complexity around - unlike the other leaderboards - having points stack until "won" so that it's not always the same few squadrons winning every time, but it should be manageable. This could also allow new squadrons - e.g. the CEI closed before the PS4 was supported at all - to (with great effort) establish new systems in the region.
- Set BGS goals - e.g. maintain Investment state in a system for X days - that if met will trigger some sort of infrastructure improvement project to start using the station repair cargo mechanism
- Add terraforming - again, using something like the station repair cargo mechanism, and with extremely high targets because it's not supposed to be a quick process - there are 20 suitable terraforming candidates in the inhabited systems.
And an idea for a storyline that would require a bit of Frontier curation, could easily go on for several years, uses only existing game mechanics, and would have a player-led outcome.
- A bubble faction (not a superpower, something smaller [1]) decides to run away from the Thargoids and thinks fighting for control of Colonia infrastructure will be easier than establishing its own system. A series of conflicts is then fought along the Colonia Highway - with CGs in Colonia and in the Bubble taking place to make the conflicts easier or harder to win for each side (I'm thinking "logistics CG in each region, tier reached in that determines the tier levels for competing war CGs on the highway the next week, distance from HQ also a factor - so it's easier for the Bubble side to take Hillary Depot [2], and easier for the Colonia side to defend Polo Harbour")
Every few months, hold a new CG pair for the next contested outpost in the direction of the winner of the last conflict. Have the aggressor take Hillary Depot, Amundsen Terminal and Eagle's Landing in a surprise attack to start with, so the first actual fight is over Rohini.
With decent work on balancing the war CGs, one conflict a quarter could probably have this go on for years. If either side ever manages to take complete control over the highway, its next move is to directly attack the core system of its opponent, which would probably need to be a much bigger event, but which Frontier would have probably have years to think about.
Getting combat-quality ships out to the highway systems (from either side) would give a definite use for Fleet Carriers, too. Entire player organisations could form around the logistics of setting up pre-fuelled Fleet Carriers in key systems so that fighters for each side can turn in their last load of cargo for the logistics CG, then switch to a combat ship and have it rapidly transferred by a chain of Fleet Carriers to the front in time for the combat CG to start.
Times and places of the CGs would be announced in advance, so in Colonia - and perhaps even in the bubble, depending on the commodities used - there could also be a "cold war" phase before the CG of trying to get optimal BGS states for commodity production across the industrial systems, put your opponent's logistics hub into Lockdown or Infrastructure Failure, etc.
[1] Difficulty here is that almost all the large bubble factions which might credibly be able to take on a 79-system coalition are themselves PMFs. Sirius Corp might be a possibility, I guess, as a continuation of the Dynasty project - it would need to be someone where a BGS-based decapitation strike to stop it running logistics CGs at all wasn't straightforward. That said, allowing a PMF or coalition of PMFs to bid Dangerous Games-style for the right to be the other side would mean that at least someone wanted them to win, which might be more exciting!
[2] The need to be able to hand in combat bonds would be a good excuse for adding Contacts services to these stations.
