Opinion: 10 LY range for colonization is ridiculously low.

[Darrack]

At first i thought i had misheard or Piers had misspoken.

Yes, they said the numbers can change, but starting from a base of 10LY and possibly making it bigger? I'm pretty sure many of us (most of us?) had images of spreading out into the dark at a rate much faster than 10LY... even 100LY would be low in my opinion. 1000 LY, yeah, i could go with that.

10LY is fine, folks wanted base building but not in Beagle Point thanks.

O7

 

[Desirsar]

10LY is fine, folks wanted base building but not in Beagle Point thanks.

O7

I don't recall wanting base building (and I still don't), but I did want colonization (but I'm not sure I still do.)

 

[Darrack]

I don't recall wanting base building (and I still don't), but I did want colonization (but I'm not sure I still do.)

I have a mobile colony with 40ships, why would i want to be tied to a system

O7

 

[Shir]

Colonization looks great so far, wondering about the final costs in time and money..

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

My question is: Do you really think players want to make colonies which, ultimately are just glorified cosmetics for unpopulated systems, because there's nothing they can interact with in range at a bgs level?

Does BGS in colonized systems really add anything though?

Looking at other space games with colonization/building mechanics (NMS/X3) - the building can add significant new gameplay options to the game using existing mechanics (adding new trade routes in X3 to scale up) and/or be a way unlock new ones (building vehicles in NMS). Both those games do much more with their base building than those examples and base building is different from colonization.

I would compare Elites version (as presented to date) to industry or city building in vanilla Transport Tycoon Deluxe - it does unlock new options, but it's expensive and doesn't allow you any control over what the things you develop do beyond what the proc gen things could achieve on their own.

I think the only way to not be dissapointed in colonization is to go in with the expectation that it'll be mostly cosmetic, but the 10Ly limit ruins even that due to the effort required to get anywhere interesting.

I think it's also plausible that there won't mathematically be enough systems for everyone week 1 with a 10Ly range and people will be literally unable to engage with colonization until a few weeks down the line when more open up or the first batch of claimers times out on building their first station. In practice finding systems that can be colonized without external tools might be a big hurdle too so there'll be a few less desirable systems that could be colonized that no one finds week 1.

 

[Khaine]

I made an account for the forums just to reply to this.

I did a little theorycrafting in some of the online ship builders.

If we make the assumption that FDev want the average or new player to be able to take part in building a system (not actually staking the claim, just shipping the materials), then the average LY range of most hauler-style ships is approx 15.

A python with full cargo racks, no shield, D-rated everything except FSD (A rated) can do 15LY.
A Type-8 with the same can do 14LY.
A Type-9 with the same can do 12LY.
And finally, the Imperial Cutter with the same for modules, can do 15LY (unlikely for a new/average player as they likely didn't grind rep).

My assumption is they'll be using that as a rough idea and intentionally want to limit it to 1 jump if possible so players can team up, no matter your resource level, and get the system built fast.

Obviously an engineered FSD (manually done or pre-engineered) will go further, as will doing lightweight/stripped down on as much stuff as possible, but I just went with base, completely unengineered ships that a lot of people would probably just buy and use.

EDIT: All numbers are pulled from EDSY assuming a fully laden ship, just FYI.

 

[Darrack]

Does BGS in colonized systems really add anything though?

Looking at other space games with colonization/building mechanics (NMS/X3) - the building can add significant new gameplay options to the game using existing mechanics (adding new trade routes in X3 to scale up) and/or be a way unlock new ones (building vehicles in NMS). Both those games do much more with their base building than those examples and base building is different from colonization.

I would compare Elites version (as presented to date) to industry or city building in vanilla Transport Tycoon Deluxe - it does unlock new options, but it's expensive and doesn't allow you any control over what the things you develop do beyond what the proc gen things could achieve on their own.

I think the only way to not be dissapointed in colonization is to go in with the expectation that it'll be mostly cosmetic, but the 10Ly limit ruins even that due to the effort required to get anywhere interesting.

I think it's also plausible that there won't mathematically be enough systems for everyone week 1 with a 10Ly range and people will be literally unable to engage with colonization until a few weeks down the line when more open up or the first batch of claimers times out on building their first station. In practice finding systems that can be colonized without external tools might be a big hurdle too so there'll be a few less desirable systems that could be colonized that no one finds week 1.

X3 is Transport Tycoon in space, don't get me started on NMS, i don't know what that's turned into recently i gave up.
Either way we don't want Elite going that route.

O7

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

Player expectations, pure and simple.

Yes, isolated systems exist, and they're entirely uninteresting. No missions to speak of except a board full of donation or mining (one or the other, not both... that's just how they work). The markets are bland and uninteresting because there's nothing around to interact with. It functions because there's no detriment to the shortfalls because players can choose to go elsewhere.

Colonisation is different. When players drop a system, even though it's a player interject, by all accounts they behave just like normal populated systems, just a player is allowed to develop them further.

Therefore... all the interactions will be the and too.

My question is: Do you really think players want to make colonies which, ultimately are just glorified cosmetics for unpopulated systems, because there's nothing they can interact with in range at a bgs level?

If so.. great, do nothing. I look forward to the complaints though, as i suspect people are going to want the colonies they drop to be more lively than that.

You don't need to look further than Odyssey, PP2 and the various other updates to see when people being unhappy with the updates despite then being entirely inline with the game's limitations.

So then FD scrambles to make changes that are merely kludges without addressing the core issues, and so things continue to get exacerbated... PP2 balancing being the most recent example because we're well overdue an economic rebalance.

But every time people like myself highlight those issues or limitations and the need to address them... heads go in the sand.

So by all means, people can advocate for bigger range all they want. The end result will either be:

• bland, uninteresting colonies due to the current limitations... or;
• major optimisations and overhauls to mission generation, market mechanics and the entire BGS, which will result in a very different lived experience and break many FOTM activities which rely entirely on those limitations.

Edit: as an example... general missions are limited to 20Ly for optimisation; is an O^3 increasing problem (that is, double the radius, it's not 8 times slower) which will ultimately cause mission board timeouts/ failure to generate as evidenced in the past. Now extend that consideration to everything relevant in the BGS. That's a major optimisation needed right there.

Thanks for the detailed response.

All of that seems like it would be a show-stopper for distant colonies having an interesting BGS if players were limited to only being able to establish one ever. But it's been explicitly stated we can build more than one, and mini-bubbles have also been mentioned on-stream. If system architects are concerned about the BGS issues mentioned, then I reckon it should be on them to either put in the work needed to create their own mini-bubble of systems clustered within 20ly of each other, or else be prepared to set up their colony somewhere they'll have neighbours. Or they don't care about interesting BGS and just want their own sleepy space hamlet in the star-strewn darkness, and I wouldn't have a problem with that. But the 10ly limit basically forces players into a very particular pattern of colonisation, which seems to be at odds with the "blaze your own trail" ethos.

People are going to complain no matter what happens. I think it's a mistake to get hung up on that. So long as its common knowledge (or at least written down in a wiki or guide) how system colonisation works and what the BGS implications are of one's colony location, then people will have only themselves to blame for not being happy with the outcome of their choices.

The fact that the limit is so low makes me hope that it's a temporary measure while FDev work out how system colonisation actually works when put in the hands of the players. If it's a permanent limit then that's disappointing and will likely limit the appeal of the feature.

 

[Darrack]

Lets bare in mind the Bubble only has a radius of around 200LYs after all this time, the only things outside that were the failed (or did they) Generation ships.

O7

 

[aRJay]

Colonization looks great so far, wondering about the final costs in time and money..

If you think you need to worry about the cost you can’t afford it.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

X3 is Transport Tycoon in space, don't get me started on NMS, i don't know what that's turned into recently i gave up.
Either way we don't want Elite going that route.

Yeah I wasn't arguing for the quality of those games or even the quality of their base building, but it's clear there was more intent behind it.

X3 had more goal oriented missions/story stuff (still bare bones though) to use all that financial power to save the galaxy or whatever.
NMS has more elaborate base building that allows for the life sim/interior decorator playstyle along with giving you resources and other stuff they've probably added later.

In both cases they were kinda essential for the game and there were multiple good gameplay/progression reasons to do it - going full nomad in either would lock you out of a lot of stuff probably.

It's pretty clear that Elite is not taking either of those routes, but from what we know it doesn't look like it has anywhere else it wants to go with colonization - which would result in a pretty bare bones experience. Not unusual for elite, but also one of the major criticisms of any existing feature that hasn't received a second pass.

The 10Ly range being low matters because it's not "the range is 10Ly, but you can...", it's just "the range is 10Ly" and nothing else, because there doesn't seem to be anything to it other than building stuff so you can stations/bases in cool places. I hope there's more to it that gets revealed later, but a short range (even at 20 or maybe 30-40Ly) undercuts the one thing we know colonization would be good for right now.

Would the building in X3 or NMS be worse if everyone could only build in one specific system? Yes but not significantly since it's fun for other reasons too. Apply the same to Elite and the main stated reason for the feature to exist in the first place goes away. Maybe it's a bit unfair to compare it to X3 and NMS because colonization is different from base building, but comparing Elite with actual strategy games wouldn't work either because there's clear goals to why you want to expand in those and explicit rewards and benefits for doing so. In a way it's harder to be immersed in Elites backround sim stuff when this pushes up against it's limitations so much.

 

[Isilwen Stardust]

A few points...

I think we can assume that we can't colonize systems with no planets in them?
A station needs a planet to orbit, am I correct.. I know of none that orbit a star alone?

The other point is the BGS faction who controls the new system. I wonder if its the faction that owns the station you initiated the colonization from or the controlling faction of the system you are colonizing from.

We definitely need some clarifications.

 

[Jmanis]

Does BGS in colonized systems really add anything though?

Looking at other space games with colonization/building mechanics (NMS/X3) - the building can add significant new gameplay options to the game using existing mechanics (adding new trade routes in X3 to scale up) and/or be a way unlock new ones (building vehicles in NMS). Both those games do much more with their base building than those examples and base building is different from colonization.

I would compare Elites version (as presented to date) to industry or city building in vanilla Transport Tycoon Deluxe - it does unlock new options, but it's expensive and doesn't allow you any control over what the things you develop do beyond what the proc gen things could achieve on their own.

I think the only way to not be dissapointed in colonization is to go in with the expectation that it'll be mostly cosmetic, but the 10Ly limit ruins even that due to the effort required to get anywhere interesting.

I think it's also plausible that there won't mathematically be enough systems for everyone week 1 with a 10Ly range and people will be literally unable to engage with colonization until a few weeks down the line when more open up or the first batch of claimers times out on building their first station. In practice finding systems that can be colonized without external tools might be a big hurdle too so there'll be a few less desirable systems that could be colonized that no one finds week 1.

Yeah I wasn't arguing for the quality of those games or even the quality of their base building, but it's clear there was more intent behind it.

X3 had more goal oriented missions/story stuff (still bare bones though) to use all that financial power to save the galaxy or whatever.
NMS has more elaborate base building that allows for the life sim/interior decorator playstyle along with giving you resources and other stuff they've probably added later.

In both cases they were kinda essential for the game and there were multiple good gameplay/progression reasons to do it - going full nomad in either would lock you out of a lot of stuff probably.

It's pretty clear that Elite is not taking either of those routes, but from what we know it doesn't look like it has anywhere else it wants to go with colonization - which would result in a pretty bare bones experience. Not unusual for elite, but also one of the major criticisms of any existing feature that hasn't received a second pass.

The 10Ly range being low matters because it's not "the range is 10Ly, but you can...", it's just "the range is 10Ly" and nothing else, because there doesn't seem to be anything to it other than building stuff so you can stations/bases in cool places. I hope there's more to it that gets revealed later, but a short range (even at 20 or maybe 30-40Ly) undercuts the one thing we know colonization would be good for right now.

Would the building in X3 or NMS be worse if everyone could only build in one specific system? Yes but not significantly since it's fun for other reasons too. Apply the same to Elite and the main stated reason for the feature to exist in the first place goes away. Maybe it's a bit unfair to compare it to X3 and NMS because colonization is different from base building, but comparing Elite with actual strategy games wouldn't work either because there's clear goals to why you want to expand in those and explicit rewards and benefits for doing so. In a way it's harder to be immersed in Elites backround sim stuff when this pushes up against it's limitations so much.

All fair, but the problem with the BGS is its great for general case situations, and falls apart in the extreme cases, which has always required FD to waste time and resources intervening and kludging workarounds. The most exploitable circumstances are ones of:

• lack of faction/ market diversity
• large distances between POI such as stations
• lack of other occupied systems

Almost every popular activity out of the BGS is exploiting static limitations of the BGS, rather than actual intended outcomes.

I would have zero issue with a multi- billion-credit-per-day activity fall out of the BGS *if * it followed BGS logic of being dynamic, time bound and opportunistic. Instead, the best opportunities result from those static edge- case oversights, which are absolutely oversights because i doubt it's intended for, say the sleepy backwater population of 1000 to have "massacre pirate" missions which routinely wipe out more than that population on the regular.

Colonisation with larger expansion ranges will essentially allow players to craft these edge- case scenarios pretty easily. Is that what we really want? To shape the galaxy into a minmax paradise? That's not Elite...

If you want to avoid that, you need to expand the range of influence of the already-strained mechanics, and it's an exponential drop of efficiency the further you go, and has a diluting effect on the core galaxy.

I simply think the impact of increasing the range and the knock ons to player expectations and the mechanics are grossly misunderstood here.... and there's strong de-ja-vu here with both Odyssey and PP2 which ultimately landed exactly where i expected, but apparently not where others expected it to.

 

[OrdinaryMan]

My personal opinion is they need 2 types of expansions one for players/groups who want to expand their power or their faction territory and influence and another for exploration and distant colonization.

THIS!

 

[DazeDreamer]

Just an idea if people want to colonise out In the black why not start from Colonia would be quicker to reach somewhere more isolated from there ( Using the word quicker very lightly ). Obvs this wouldn't work so well if you wanted to be tied to a faction in the bubble but hey it's an idea, just to add an idea fueled by lots of pain meds lol

 

[Tifu]

There are BGS-related problems with systems that don't have another system in that range - mission selection is poor to non-existent, they'll rapidly ban themselves as expansion sources, as a consequence of those two the controlling faction tends to pin as close to 100% influence as the secondary faction count allows. But they can certainly exist.

If you build it, they will come...

Not if they're worse than anarchy systems (check out Ian's post).

There are already systems within the Bubble which I consider as armpits of the galaxy, isolated colonies out there with no real reason for being will be places no one will want to go to.

 

[Isilwen Stardust]

There are a lot of populated systems and stations out in the middle of no where if that is what someone wants.
Allowing system colonies from those places would solve the single system BGS issues.
Even with a 10 LY range, there will be populated bubbles popping up all over..

Asteroid Bases all over the place. Each of these could be a bubble

Asteroid Base

An Asteroid Base is a station built inside a large, hollowed asteroid. They can be found in various deep space locations such as nebulae.[1] Asteroid Bases hold 4 small Landing Pads, 8 medium pads, and 6 large pads. While they rotate like other station types, the rate of rotation is noticeably...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Bubbles on the highway?

Colonia Connection Highway

The Colonia Connection Highway is a network of Starports, Outposts, Surface Ports, and Megaships that stretches across 22,000 light-years to connect the Core Systems to the distant Colonia Region, home of the famed Colonia system and Jaques Station. On September 15, 3302, Latugara PLC, an...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Or the Explorers Anchorage bubble?

Stuemeae FG-Y d7561 - star system | Elite:Dangerous | INARA

The companion site for Elite:Dangerous with the game database, market data, trade routes, outfitting, engineers, blueprints, crafting, Thargoid war, squadrons, logbooks, galleries, galaxy information and much more...

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[Agony_Aunt]

10LY is fine, folks wanted base building but not in Beagle Point thanks.

O7

Speak for yourself, not for others.

Also, we are not getting base building. We are getting base placement.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

A few points...

I think we can assume that we can't colonize systems with no planets in them?
A station needs a planet to orbit, am I correct.. I know of none that orbit a star alone?

The other point is the BGS faction who controls the new system. I wonder if its the faction that owns the station you initiated the colonization from or the controlling faction of the system you are colonizing from.

We definitely need some clarifications.

Can't say what limitations will be placed on colonization, but there are systems with no planets, just a spacestation in orbit around the sun.

 

[Isilwen Stardust]

Can't say what limitations will be placed on colonization, but there are systems with no planets, just a spacestation in orbit around the sun.

Can you shoot me an example? I am genuinely curious now.