Ody settlements more likely to be in the dark?

I have been to a LOT of ody settlements lately in many different systems and it sure seems like most of them have been in the dark. Applies to missions, random visits and CZ’s. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I nuts?
 
You would think that, yes. In the last few months, for me, it’s nowhere near 50/50. And that’s why I’m asking if anyone else is seeing similar.
 
I don't think Frontier has any formula for evening out the bases between the light and dark sides. As for immersion there are differences. Landing on the light side I can get a high temperature hazardous environment warning when going on foot. On the dark side no warning. This suggests that NPCs find it easier to build environment friendly bases on the dark side.
 
Considering spherical planets and light from only one star there's a 50% chance that you land on a dark side.
Ody bases are often found on moons far from their parent star where it provides little more light than any other. Also green atmospheres that render day murky and dark.
Also mountains, if the settlement is the shadow of a mountain we're plunged into darkness, there's no twilight. that's most apparent when you're driving across lumpy terrain when the star is close to the horizon.

For all the times that we're stuck in the dark there are those moments where t's just stunning.
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You would think that, yes. In the last few months, for me, it’s nowhere near 50/50. And that’s why I’m asking if anyone else is seeing similar.
I've had the same impression, but when I discovered that I love scavenger hunt missions in the dark (NV+Masked Executioner), then suddenly all the missions were in broad daylight. 😆
 
Ody bases are often found on moons far from their parent star where it provides little more light than any other. Also green atmospheres that render day murky and dark.
Also mountains, if the settlement is the shadow of a mountain we're plunged into darkness, there's no twilight. that's most apparent when you're driving across lumpy terrain when the star is close to the horizon.

For all the times that we're stuck in the dark there are those moments where t's just stunning.
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Now that you say it, I agree that it’s embarrassingly obvious. For all the reasons that you mentioned, it’s more likely to have low/obstructed light than to have bright starlight. Thanks!

P.S. This means that night vision on a suit is a really good mod to have, most of the time.
 
If it isn't tidally locked then just wait, daylight will come to you!
It might be worth mentioning that tidal lock only matters for planets that are tidally locked to the star. For those, it will be either eternal night or eternal day in a settlement.

Moons that are tidally locked to their planet (like our very own Moon) will still get a day-night-cycle, but that cycle is as long as it takes them to orbit the planet. So if the moon has, for example, a four week orbit, a settlement will more or less be two weeks on the night side and two weeks on the day side of the moon (not taking into account eclipses and planet movement).
 
It might be worth mentioning that tidal lock only matters for planets that are tidally locked to the star. For those, it will be either eternal night or eternal day in a settlement.

Moons that are tidally locked to their planet (like our very own Moon) will still get a day-night-cycle, but that cycle is as long as it takes them to orbit the planet. So if the moon has, for example, a four week orbit, a settlement will more or less be two weeks on the night side and two weeks on the day side of the moon (not taking into account eclipses and planet movement).

Tidal locking, while sounding simple, is actually quite complicated, with things like resonant locking also being tidal locking. Also a moon orbiting a planet at the right distance and rotating at the correct speed could end up with permanent day and night areas even without tidal locking, although it's unlikely to be completely dark due to reflection from the main planet, unlikely sure, but possible. But yes, my initial response was basically simple tidal locking of a planet to a star.
 
Also a moon orbiting a planet at the right distance and rotating at the correct speed could end up with permanent day and night areas even without tidal locking
... if the orbital plane of the moon is not tilted relative to the orbital plane of the planet ;). But yeah, tidal lock is kind of complicated.
 
You would think that, yes. In the last few months, for me, it’s nowhere near 50/50. And that’s why I’m asking if anyone else is seeing similar.
We commented on this last night. It's never felt like 50/50 to me but when doing reactivation missions... it feels more like 90/10 in favour of dark. My statistics education tells me I'm just seeing a pattern and this isn't representative but my gamer education tells me this pattern is possibly driven by some factor of the procgen systems.

I wonder if, on tidally-locked planets, the procgen errs to placing settlements on the dark side where the surface temperature is excessively hot? This would add some skew, at least and would make some sense as well (I even found a really cool planet in a system the other day, very large and very close to the sun which was also huge... I thought I'd like to visit a settlement that gets that view in its sky but every single settlement was on the dark side).
 
We commented on this last night. It's never felt like 50/50 to me but when doing reactivation missions... it feels more like 90/10 in favour of dark. My statistics education tells me I'm just seeing a pattern and this isn't representative but my gamer education tells me this pattern is possibly driven by some factor of the procgen systems.

I wonder if, on tidally-locked planets, the procgen errs to placing settlements on the dark side where the surface temperature is excessively hot? This would add some skew, at least and would make some sense as well (I even found a really cool planet in a system the other day, very large and very close to the sun which was also huge... I thought I'd like to visit a settlement that gets that view in its sky but every single settlement was on the dark side).
I'd have said 60-70%, it tends to be worse in the Empire as the stars are often dimmer.
 
This is why all my suits got night vison mod as must have, more than anything else. Chances are always high to end up in dark side of planet, and sometimes even during day time when sun is low, when there is tons of shadows wich can be completly dark, enough to need use NV or flashlight. Its probly one of biggest QoL suit mods out there for that reason alone.

In PVP scenarios, flashlight gives away your position in dark (npcs seems dont care/notice), especially from above - makin easy lead for dumbfire barrage and thats another major reason for me to equip all my suits with NV so I would not suffer from such disadvantage. That being said, on-foot PVP encounters are quite rare, but in places like Iah bulu you can meet some cmdrs and have some "fun" with them quite regularly.
 
I wonder if, on tidally-locked planets, the procgen errs to placing settlements on the dark side where the surface temperature is excessively hot?

I did plenty of restore missions in a system that had settlements on bodies with temps above 700-800+ degrees
In Full Daylight

sure, statistically this has no relevance....
 
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