You just summed up how I feel about it, "coming across random player systems in far flung areas" rather than every 10 jumps.
Opinion: 10 LY range for colonization is ridiculously low.
- Thread starter Agony_Aunt
- Start date
The existing bubble, or an existing inhabited system?
If it's the latter, there's also Colonia, about 60 systems on the route between Colonia and Sol many in interesting places, Explorers' Anchorage near Sag A*, and a substantial number of settlements in various nebula out to about 7000 LY from the bubble, which could all be their own starting points.
As a side note, one big reason to keep colonisation fairly close to existing settlements is the detention centre. Picture the scene...
- you've colonised a couple of systems in the middle of nowhere
- one day you're running an Odyssey settlement mission in this new bubble and mess it up
- you respawn at Grim Pioneer or Odin's Crag or somewhere similarly distant and your nearest ship has a three-day transfer time and a multi-billion credit transfer cost
(Plenty of the existing locations for spreading colonisation out from will be annoying enough for that sort of incident!)
I was discussing this on discord just now, and I had to rewatch the segment on the live stream. Here is what Piers said regarding system colonization contacts at stations.
That would at least be something. That would also allow us to choose Colonia or any system with a station as a starting point. Perhaps mini-bubbles then would spring up around the colonia highway or Sag A*
Though based on that ... wouldn't that make it difficult to chain from an existing colonisation at all, if it not only has to be colonised, but built up to the stage where it gets its own contact?
(Conversely if you have to go back to the bubble to get the permit, but can pick any system within 10 LY of any inhabited system once you have the permit, that's mildly annoying for long-range colonisation but you were probably going to need to go there for supplies anyway)
I'd have to rewatch the segment again to get the exact wording, but I am sure Piers said that once you finish building the station, it gets its own system colonization contact so someone can use that station to expand further out.
My favorite stopover on the Distant Worlds II expedition was the Caravanserai station in Gandharvi. Beautiful spot, wouldn't mind having a colony near there.
Yes, he said exactly that. The colony expansion will definitely be daisy chained.
Various parts of the anatomy would most probably be the first choice of players as well, if they were allowed to name systems. You could expect a system named after a certain young CMDR Richard on day #1 I guess.
Not to mention things interacting with said.
As @Alien commented, it was clear that the intent for the beta is that only systems in the bubble are to have a colonisation contact.
But it does seem that allowing colonisation to start from the out-of-bubble places you mention, especially along with a moderately expanded claim range, would be the best option for satisfying the less bubble-oriented playerbase while not introducing arbitrary new mechanics like some of the suggestions here (range for arx, range for credits, range for star density, etc.) which are probably non-starters at this late stage in development.
Assuming there's no dependency on nearby system resources or trade opportunities for colony viability, that is. Though sourcing colonisation goods at remote locations may well provide challenges already, possibly requiring multiple carrier loads to be shipped from the bubble, depending on numbers required.
To shake out "interesting" situations (like the detention one) that will crop up with out-of-bubble colonies, and maybe gauge the interest in it, it could be worth introducing remote colonisation contacts at some point in the beta.
Regards the detention issue specifically, would this already be a possible outcome of odyssey crimes at systems like GM Cephei with its numerous settlements?
Maybe we'll have the option of adding a local penal station / settlement to avoid this!
Start from the Bubble, 10 Ly, build station with time limit, enable colonisation contact, claim next system.
They didn't specify the time limit for building beyond the 24hrs for the initial claim.
Yes, absolutely. A trawl through the forums will find plenty of people caught out by the same sort of thing in the existing nebula colonies
Restricting initial colonisation contacts to be near detention centres would still allow Colonia, Sag A*, Rohini and Gandharvi to be used as sources, which would at least allow a little more variety in location (and in the case of Colonia, at least some nearby supplies for the effort)
So... sounds like this whole thing is going to be wrapped up in going tall, rather than going wide, and also going slow.
Goodo. Wonder how ridiculous the costing will be... was funny hearing words to the effect of "minimising the grind" without any scope for an economic rebalance, which is sorely needed for this sort of mechanic to succeed.
Goodo. Wonder how ridiculous the costing will be... was funny hearing words to the effect of "minimising the grind" without any scope for an economic rebalance, which is sorely needed for this sort of mechanic to succeed.
FD is going to use the beta to establish that building time limit for sure.
The colonisation contact only becomes available in the new system once the first station is built. That's sounding like at minimum a week already
I must admit I'd like to place a tourist resort with a bar called 'The Fiddler's elbow' in the fine tradition of humorous British pub names.
New mechanic: player run prison where offenders have to serve their time in real time.
I wonder how many of these would have 0 connections due to the 10ly range limit.
With the nebula systems near the bubble having all colonizable systems grabbed the first week might be an actual problem too.
Here's a render of the colonizable systems near (max ~1k cube distance) the main bubble (color is number of 10ly connections to inhabited systems). If I were to threshold out anything below 15k fss scan value there would be a big hole in the middle of the bubble because the only thing uncolonized there are the worthless systems.
I also tried attaching the data I used to make this to this post, you can view it by putting it in https://kitware.github.io/glance/app/ (can just drag the zip file into it and it will figure it out).
Might actually be cheap in credits, high in effort, low in profits.
Crab Nebula you certainly wouldn't be getting far (and even 20LY would be iffy there). NGC 7822 you'd be hopping around the nebula but not able to get very far out of it. Most of the rest I think you'd have enough options to do something with and spread out further into deep space.
I hope you don't mind a little cross-posting, but I've gathered all my thoughts on this subject into a single thread I've put on the Suggestions board. Thanks all.
forums.frontier.co.uk
My Thoughts and Suggestions on the 10ly Distance for Colonisation
Okay, so we'll start with the fact that the 10ly distance for colonisation is getting a lot of pushback from the player base. It's going to change but what will it change to? I wanted to put down my thoughts and suggestions. 10 LY vs 40,000 LY If players can only build colonies within 10ly...