Hello Frontier, Hello Commanders,
I've started my first Colony a couple of days ago and so far I've been feeling very positive about the colonization feature. It's tiring to haul hundreds of thousands of tons of materials alone, but besides that, its really fun and makes me engage with the star system more than ever. Also, I like the stages you need to absolve in order to build special settlements, bigger stations etc, which allow many relatively immersive and individual ways of designing your own in-universe star system. So overall, the colonization allows for much individualism in the gameplay.
Unfortunately, naming your own installments is way too expensive, and not being able to name star systems, planets etc. is throwing away some of these efforts. If I want to design my star system, it comes with a price tag. Don't get me wrong, I understand Elite has to make some money and that In-Game Purchases are the new way of video game monetization. I don't like this system and I don't like the exploitation that often comes with it, but I can understand it. In this new colonization feature however, it is a very disconnecting barrier, that kills immersion and the feedback loop of engaging with the galaxy.
First and foremost, I, the commander, as the person who designs the system, transports the goods and plans the installments, should be able to name a station by default. This is the most personal part of the "design your own" - philosophy, which has been implemented in more extensive ways with the colonization feature. It's like putting a price tag to naming your ship in Elite, it wouldn't be reasonable and against the idea of owning a ship in the first place.
But as I said, I get the fact that there should be a price tag from a developer's perspective. 5000 Arx for a single installment ist just too much though. With the possibility to earn 400 Arx weekly by playing, I would need to play 13 weeks, just to rename A SINGLE INSTALLMENT. That's just way too much. Now consider a system with about 10-20 orbital construction slots and about the same amount on landable planets. that would be about 30 sites, for each 12.5 weeks to grind, that equals 375 weeks. or in other words, more than 7 years. Of course I could buy the Arx, right? 5000 Arx is cheaper than a cup of coffee, or as we in germany would say, cheaper than a döner kebab. But for 30 sites, this would be 60.000 Arx, about 40$ worth of in-game currency. That being said, many star systems have far more construction slots than 30, especially those that people love to claim for colonization. My current system has 75 total building slots, more than twice that amount, and there are some systems out there who can double even that number I reckon.
Now that I laid out my considerations with the current pricing model, I would like to offer my ideas for a new one.
First of all, I would change the pricing down to 400 Arx or 800 Arx per building. That way, you could rename one installation every week (or every second week) for free. At those prices, the naming could be only one-time (maybe with a 24 hour window to change the name again), not infinite. Also, at this price, there are still people out there who whould buy Arx for the process, since some installments need not more than a few hours to build, if you got a big enough hauler to deliver the materials. So the building and therefor naming of the installments would still be way faster than the weekly Arx limit would allow you to do for free.
Next, there could be different price tags for the different tiers of installments. For example: 400/800/1200 Arx, so that the Orbis or Coriolis Stations would be more expensive to name, since they are the bigger, the better and also the more frequently used types of installments. No one cares about the sattelite i needed to install for my tourist settlement, but the big space port with all the goods an services would be worth the bigger price tag.
My last idea considers somewhat more technically challenging ways of pricing colonization. As for now, the naming is only able to alter man-made installments. The star system itself as well as the planets cannot be named, but they should be. I don't want to build my legacy in HIP 116932 or COL 285 Sector CW-W T21-3. Instead, why not implement the renaming of star systems and it's contents, maybe even in different stages. How about a "Star Settler License", which allows me to rename a colonized star system and altering the bodies accordingly (in the standard naming scheme), and an "Advanced Licence", which lets me rename the different planetary bodies individually. I wouldn't mind paying 10.000 or 15.000 Arx leaving my mark on the galaxy map.
I can understand that this can mess with bookmarks, the star map itself and the technical parts of the simulation, but people on reddit mentioned an idea of two names for colonized star systems, like a legacy name and a colonization name. So one works just as an update of the visual and informational identifier, but not as a technical one. I don't know much about programming, but if this would help integrate the naming of colonized star systems, it would surely make a great feature.
Anyways, let me know if I'm the only one feeling like this about the pricing. Maybe there are even better ideas about this, maybe some of this even finds its way into the game... at some point. Let's discuss!
That being said, have a nice week Commanders ^^
I've started my first Colony a couple of days ago and so far I've been feeling very positive about the colonization feature. It's tiring to haul hundreds of thousands of tons of materials alone, but besides that, its really fun and makes me engage with the star system more than ever. Also, I like the stages you need to absolve in order to build special settlements, bigger stations etc, which allow many relatively immersive and individual ways of designing your own in-universe star system. So overall, the colonization allows for much individualism in the gameplay.
Unfortunately, naming your own installments is way too expensive, and not being able to name star systems, planets etc. is throwing away some of these efforts. If I want to design my star system, it comes with a price tag. Don't get me wrong, I understand Elite has to make some money and that In-Game Purchases are the new way of video game monetization. I don't like this system and I don't like the exploitation that often comes with it, but I can understand it. In this new colonization feature however, it is a very disconnecting barrier, that kills immersion and the feedback loop of engaging with the galaxy.
First and foremost, I, the commander, as the person who designs the system, transports the goods and plans the installments, should be able to name a station by default. This is the most personal part of the "design your own" - philosophy, which has been implemented in more extensive ways with the colonization feature. It's like putting a price tag to naming your ship in Elite, it wouldn't be reasonable and against the idea of owning a ship in the first place.
But as I said, I get the fact that there should be a price tag from a developer's perspective. 5000 Arx for a single installment ist just too much though. With the possibility to earn 400 Arx weekly by playing, I would need to play 13 weeks, just to rename A SINGLE INSTALLMENT. That's just way too much. Now consider a system with about 10-20 orbital construction slots and about the same amount on landable planets. that would be about 30 sites, for each 12.5 weeks to grind, that equals 375 weeks. or in other words, more than 7 years. Of course I could buy the Arx, right? 5000 Arx is cheaper than a cup of coffee, or as we in germany would say, cheaper than a döner kebab. But for 30 sites, this would be 60.000 Arx, about 40$ worth of in-game currency. That being said, many star systems have far more construction slots than 30, especially those that people love to claim for colonization. My current system has 75 total building slots, more than twice that amount, and there are some systems out there who can double even that number I reckon.
Now that I laid out my considerations with the current pricing model, I would like to offer my ideas for a new one.
First of all, I would change the pricing down to 400 Arx or 800 Arx per building. That way, you could rename one installation every week (or every second week) for free. At those prices, the naming could be only one-time (maybe with a 24 hour window to change the name again), not infinite. Also, at this price, there are still people out there who whould buy Arx for the process, since some installments need not more than a few hours to build, if you got a big enough hauler to deliver the materials. So the building and therefor naming of the installments would still be way faster than the weekly Arx limit would allow you to do for free.
Next, there could be different price tags for the different tiers of installments. For example: 400/800/1200 Arx, so that the Orbis or Coriolis Stations would be more expensive to name, since they are the bigger, the better and also the more frequently used types of installments. No one cares about the sattelite i needed to install for my tourist settlement, but the big space port with all the goods an services would be worth the bigger price tag.
My last idea considers somewhat more technically challenging ways of pricing colonization. As for now, the naming is only able to alter man-made installments. The star system itself as well as the planets cannot be named, but they should be. I don't want to build my legacy in HIP 116932 or COL 285 Sector CW-W T21-3. Instead, why not implement the renaming of star systems and it's contents, maybe even in different stages. How about a "Star Settler License", which allows me to rename a colonized star system and altering the bodies accordingly (in the standard naming scheme), and an "Advanced Licence", which lets me rename the different planetary bodies individually. I wouldn't mind paying 10.000 or 15.000 Arx leaving my mark on the galaxy map.
I can understand that this can mess with bookmarks, the star map itself and the technical parts of the simulation, but people on reddit mentioned an idea of two names for colonized star systems, like a legacy name and a colonization name. So one works just as an update of the visual and informational identifier, but not as a technical one. I don't know much about programming, but if this would help integrate the naming of colonized star systems, it would surely make a great feature.
Anyways, let me know if I'm the only one feeling like this about the pricing. Maybe there are even better ideas about this, maybe some of this even finds its way into the game... at some point. Let's discuss!
That being said, have a nice week Commanders ^^
