Pleiades Colonization!

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Here's PLEIADES SECTOR HR-W D1-79. The second planet is a candidate for terraforming. How can we not have a station here? Perhaps Maia would only have a Mining/Tourism Outpost, and this place could have a mix of Terraforming/Extraction/Refinery economies, and when that second planet is terraformed (Yes, it's terraformable), it can serve as an agricultural hub.



Now all we need is a High tech system! Back to the Galaxy Map! We have a plan!

EDIT: Perhaps Maia could have a Coriolis orbit Maia A 1 as the High Tech station of the region with only a small extraction economy, and Pleiades Sector HR-W D1-79 could serve as the large, corporate-funded system that may potentially hold billions of citizens one day, and huge extraction operations would occur upon the un-terraformable High Metal Content Planets.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Now that I think about it, I want to name Pleiades Sector HR-W D1-79! I will name it Washington, and the terraformable, once terraformed, will be named New Montana!



I think the following people should get to name the rest of the unnamed systems:

Vasious
777Driver
Jezzah
Defacto
Erimus (If he finds this)
Zion Ravenscene (Again, if he finds this)
CMDR Nutter (And once again, if he finds this)

A system and it's planets for each of them! And the developers can't divvy up the rest

EDIT: Just realized we might not really have such a huge expansion as I'm hoping for, but I hope it can all come true!

I'll be back on at around 8:30 PM GMT tomorrow.

 

[Vasious]

Now that I think about it, I want to name Pleiades Sector HR-W D1-79! I will name it Washington, and the terraformable, once terraformed, will be named New Montana!

Awesome Idea, cannot rep you again for it however

EDIT: Just realized we might not really have such a huge expansion as I'm hoping for, but I hope it can all come true!

But to begin all it takes is a single wagon train to the stars!

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

This is a great idea and makes a lot of sense.

I still find it hard to believe that in the year 3300 AD humans don't have any established presence like science outposts out at some nearby local places of immense scientific interest. Once hyperdrive technology had been invented surely one of the first things humans would have done would to be go and set up permanent manned outposts in black hole and neutron stars systems, and of course nearby nebulae. Yet is seems we took no interest because there is none of our infrastructure out there. I'm sure the Pleiades would have been one of our first destinations beyond frontier borders due to its close proximity.

With science outposts the infrastructure to support them would have built up over time too, so it makes sense that stations and supply depots would be out there. That opens the game up to ultra long distance trade routes and passenger courier missions taking scientists back and forth, something I hoped would be in the game at some point. Also tourism points of interest that brings the Orca into play - players can ferry passengers back and forth to local nebula, so there could be purely tourist outposts out there too. A celestial pleasuredome in the rings of Celano 1.

I'd love to see humans spreading further afield. New Yembo is a start but its just another system really, why didn't they build it in a system that has neutron stars and black holes to study, and why couldn't we have a completely new type of station dedicated to scientific research? That's what I'd love to see too

 

[Vasious]

As a complete aside.... sort of ... New Montana reminded me of the idea

I would be overjoyed if eventually my Pilot could have a Colt Model of 1851 remake by "Kamorin Historic Weapons"


I wonder if we can organize a community data base of the systems in an around the Pleiades to find the key systems would be, I am a little distracted by the UA hunt at the moment but sounds like a good project

 

[Poseidal]

Hyperdrive technology as we know it has only been improved relatively recently wasn't it? Before it would have taken months to get to the Pleiades whereas it is done much more quickly now (even if out quick FSD is just an abstraction).

 

[Vasious]

Hyperdrive technology as we know it has only been improved relatively recently wasn't it? Before it would have taken months to get to the Pleiades whereas it is done much more quickly now (even if out quick FSD is just an abstraction).

Yes, I believe it has been, so previously it was 1 week per jump at max range

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

Yes, I believe it has been, so previously it was 1 week per jump at max range

That's all the more reason why outposts should have already been out there decades ago. In theory now that we can get there in 20 minutes there wouldn't need to be a permanent presence, but a century ago it would have made sense to build bases out there where humans could stay for long periods of time while working out there. A bit like Antarctica today where there are permanently manned scientific bases due to the remoteness of it all. I'm sure in 200 years time people will be able to commute to do a days work in Antarctica, and be back home before teatime.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I completely endorse any attempts to colonise and expand into these relatively nearby areas. For one thing, they're among the most popular visitor spots by new explorers and sightseers. They would also make for great bases for further expansion, discovery of new curiosities and further research.

It's a little strange that the major factions haven't looked this way yet. One wonders why: is it for conservation and preservation purposes after what mankind has done to Earth? Is it just that they haven't bothered to go that far? Or has the envy and rivalry of other factions kept us too preoccupied for anything else? Or maybe is it something else preventing them from going to these specific areas?



As for naming systems, thanks and I'm flattered and maybe a bit overwhelmed and intrigued to be included in such company. However, I'd give only silly and inconsequential names to things. I'm not the best when it comes to giving out names.

 

[CmdrDaymian]

Currently it seems like ''in-lore'', even small forays into uncivilized space are huge projects that require enormous amounts of resources and investments, rapidly increasing with distance.
This is pretty ridicilous if you consider how a well-equipped ship can travel to the galactic core in a just a few (well, less than hundreds atleast) hours.

That's a private ship with no passengers and no costs though. An expedition to build a station is infinitely more demanding.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Shameless self-bump because I want people to see the update

 

[firlit]

Thanks for the update, looks nice! I honestly don't understand why colonization isn't happening much at all. I mean, it is obviously possible with the amount of human populated systems, and their distance from Sol. You would think with the exponential growth of populations, and the monetary possibilities of colonization, we would see something similar to the colonization rush in our historical exploration era. Yet (correct me if I'm wrong) very few new colonies have appeared, even in already populated systems. I don't know if it would be possible for the sake of playability, but maybe for the sake of realism we could see more colonization efforts in the future.

 

[Pendra]

Colonization is not happening because there is no drive to do so. You can get everything within a 30 LY bubble. There is no shortage of anything. Why colonize something so far out when you can just colonize a system 1 jump away. Better yet, just dock with a station 10 LYs away and find hundreds of tons of whatever you wanted.

However, say, material X, a basic ingredient of spaceships, was in short supply throughout the habited space with prices skyrocketing. Maia happened to have a huge deposit of it. Two weeks from now, Maia would be crawling with CMDRs. The drive for profit is big.

 

[dean0001]

Hello everybody, I've been mulling over the fact that all of the pretty nebulae in Alpha were removed for the sake of realism, because it really does bother me. Why are explorers the only people who get to see the sights?

I think that explorers have enough room to breathe with the entire galaxy simulated 1:1, so I think Human Space should be expanded towards the various Nebulae. The Pleiades Nebula is very beautiful, and the Maia system has mineable planetary rings and high metal content planets, so I think there should be a Community Goal to build a Coriolis station there, and perhaps outposts around the rest of the nebula, with enough options to allow the different types of players (Bounty Hunters, Pirates, Miners, Traders, Etc) to live there comfortably, without needing to get back to the main of human space.

The very first Community Goal after 1.1 considered to build a starport there, but it was New Yembo that was chosen. I propose that FD create a Community Goal to build an Alliance starport in the Maia system around either Maia A 1 or Maia A 4, with a bit of leniency towards the construction, so that the shipyard and outfitting will always have basic mining ships (Adder, Cobra, ASP, and maybe Diamondback ) and mining lasers, both class 1 and 2.

Does anyone share my vision? I get excited just thinking about flying in the rings of a gas giant with a huge A-class star looming overhead, with pirates and miners flying throughout the rocks, and that black backdrop is no more!

Please, bump this post if you agree with me, and want to see this in the game. It's to get FD to notice I'd love if they responded.

Updates/Suggestions: If you want to add anything, let me know!

> An outpost or two along the way to the Pleiades for refueling, so small and medium ships don't need a fuel scoop.
> A High Tech station, because it would stink to have to return to human space for anything other than the best ships and upgrades. I guess that's determined by the CG contribution though. They never hit Tier 8
> This "Pleiades Colonization Expedition" could form it's own miniature major power, or perhaps all of the stations aside from a few could share the same controlling faction.
> CMDR 777Driver: Later expansion to other nebulae. For example, criminal activity within the Coalsack, mining within the Orion, Tourism in the California and the Pleiades, etc.
> Perhaps some form of Unknown Artefact could be discovered around the Pleiades area? That would make for an interesting sequence of events.
> CMDR Firlit: Colonizer role, a subcategory of explorer, which looks for colonizable systems and pushes to colonize them.
> CMDR Sandmann: Create new rares in the Pleiades nebula stations, and/or new minable minerals/metals/other for miners heading to the area. (Did you mean other than Painite and Osmium?)
> CMDR Bam: Have a capital ship placed before an outpost/station is built, and allow that to be a place where materials for the outpost can be offloaded. This doesn't seem very good for traders, but miners in the area would have a blast!
> CMDR Defacto: Allow frontier systems to have a true hankering for technologically advanced equipment and goods, as they can't manufacture these things themselves. Also, change them so extraction economies, which would make up the majority of these frontier systems AFAIK, would sell their goods for very low prices, bringing traders to the area.

Share you Pleiades System Map Screenshots here! https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142575&p=2186205

My Plan for PLEIADES SECTOR HR-W D1-79, or what I shall Washington:

View attachment 33684

Here is my plan for Maia. I want Erimus to name the Stations and Planets/Stars (Aside from Maia itself). Please excuse the shoddy work, I used paint, I'm no good with Gimp

View attachment 33685

Hold on, I'll get to the trade route in a minute!

I don't have screenshots of other systems, and got no responses on my request (found above), so I will simply mention the other systems. Sterope II, which only contains a binary white star and what I remember may be a G or K star, could have an anarchist outpost built for the pirates, which I want to be named by Jezzah. If I do get any screenshots of the Pleiades stars, I can further divvy it up between the rest of you lot, and please, if you want a particular system, call dibs!

Now for the trade route. Since Maia will be a High Tech system, and Washington will have Agriculture and Extraction/Refinery, the route will be similar to the Atlantic Slave Trade, without the slaves, a triangle. The Agricultural economy will export foodstuffs to the Extraction/Refinery economy, the Extraction/Refinery economy will export minerals and metals to the High-Tech economy, and the High-Tech economy will export farming machinery to the Agriculture economy. If this makes enough profits, which I would it expect it to in a flourishing fledgling cluster, it will fill the role of producer alongside the miners in the interstellar food chain. Next would be the pirates, and upon that the bounty hunters, and all this leaves room for passenger missions, and perhaps long-distance smuggling, when it's fixed/implemented.

I was playing my game grinding for a better ship when my imagination took off. I get bored trading but it is the best way to get ahead in the game. I was thinking how would I implement capital ships in Elite dangerous to make every career choice excited. I think my main concern with Elite dangerous is the trading and how it outshines the other professions and I disagree with the solution to nerf the higher pay outs in the game. I think instead of slowing down the player maybe make it more realistic and bring in currencies for the different factions. With the currencies add player owned money exchanges to encourage the more elite player. You could take the cap off rare trades and make only certain products available to buy with that currency. To balance rare trades cap the selling which fits because if you introduce a volume of something rare the price drops.

Back to Capital Ships and Game mechanics... First off no capital ship would be appreciated if it was just bought from a ship yard a player should have to build it. A Player could buy a construction ship that has a cobra in the launch bay. Instead of selling the exploration data a person could buy this construction ship and take it to a place rich in ores. The wealthy player would then let people know where the good mining is and buy the ores from players. An onboard manufacturing would make the parts needed and mechanic drones would build what the player selected. At this point I would mention the pirates would be enticed to explore to find these Construction ships. A player would have to stay away from busy areas and the further out the less armor and turrets and the closer the more guns and armor at the start. The player does not build a capital ship right away he first builds the big shipyard needed to encircle the capital ship then that specific ship can be built. The player can repeat and build more capital ships but unfortunately there are no frameshift drives for the rest of his ships so the ships stay in his sector and other players can guard mining operations. He has one frameshift drive for one capital ship and can cruise wherever he or she wants but the other ships built end up in system they can supercruise but definitely stuck in that system. There is ways to buy the super expensive capital frameshift drives and it requires some serious trading at new levels. The player can now use his capital ship to park close to a trade route and buy up the ores and materials and tech for his ships.

Now with my idea your exploration just became incredible and for the more daring players who built to close to the pirates or trade lanes there is the salvager players. Now they look for salvage and are able to get some componants from the capitals frameshift drive but some componants remain rare. These salvagers can build a Capital ship designated to salvage and a storage base to operate from and of course pirates would love the capital salvager as it can take material from their smaller salvage operations. Salvage materials can also be bought from NPC stations and used on player stations. One more game mechanic and that is the construction ship is locjked to the system once the frameshift is taken to build the capital ship. The construction ship is capable of system cruise and that's it till another frameshift drive is afforded and loaded into it.

The reason the player frameshift is made rare is a built in game mechanic that controls the amount of capitals that can. Another game mechanic would be to restrict the players capitals to light weaponry or the system considers them a threat and the faction sends in its armies. Of course blockades would be interesting due to the players taking on the trading equally there could be some intense battles on certain popular trade routes. If a player is federation or member of a certain faction dignitary npc's show up and the players station turns to the same as the npc stations. The dignitary likes kick backs and payola and certain benefits and missions come about. Of course these ships cost time or you have to let people know where your base is and of course you could invite pirates and con man wanting to steal your system capital ship.

I know what I stated here would take time and money but it is a worthy goal for this game. I see several problems solved that a billion star universe creates. You either build on your own dozens of pretty pictures and make exploration interesting which is a extremely big task or just supply a procedural paint brush to the player and make the game so dynamic so addictive no one can escape the intensity of Elite Dangerous. Of course this idea could be added to as well making it even more enticing for the developers.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Colonization is not happening because there is no drive to do so. You can get everything within a 30 LY bubble. There is no shortage of anything. Why colonize something so far out when you can just colonize a system 1 jump away. Better yet, just dock with a station 10 LYs away and find hundreds of tons of whatever you wanted.

However, say, material X, a basic ingredient of spaceships, was in short supply throughout the habited space with prices skyrocketing. Maia happened to have a huge deposit of it. Two weeks from now, Maia would be crawling with CMDRs. The drive for profit is big.

That's a nice idea to add to the Lore, but I think the Pleiades is more suited to a permanent colony. Perhaps the California nebula could have what you need? That takes a bit more dedication that the Pleiades

Also, that reminds me, there is a government type called Colony, and one called Military. The only Military system I know of is Facece, and i have never seen a Colony, nor an Imperial, for that matter (not the Empire superpower, but an imperial government).

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

I was playing my game grinding for a better ship when my imagination took off. I get bored trading but it is the best way to get ahead in the game. I was thinking how would I implement capital ships in Elite dangerous to make every career choice excited. I think my main concern with Elite dangerous is the trading and how it outshines the other professions and I disagree with the solution to nerf the higher pay outs in the game. I think instead of slowing down the player maybe make it more realistic and bring in currencies for the different factions. With the currencies add player owned money exchanges to encourage the more elite player. You could take the cap off rare trades and make only certain products available to buy with that currency. To balance rare trades cap the selling which fits because if you introduce a volume of something rare the price drops.

Back to Capital Ships and Game mechanics... First off no capital ship would be appreciated if it was just bought from a ship yard a player should have to build it. A Player could buy a construction ship that has a cobra in the launch bay. Instead of selling the exploration data a person could buy this construction ship and take it to a place rich in ores. The wealthy player would then let people know where the good mining is and buy the ores from players. An onboard manufacturing would make the parts needed and mechanic drones would build what the player selected. At this point I would mention the pirates would be enticed to explore to find these Construction ships. A player would have to stay away from busy areas and the further out the less armor and turrets and the closer the more guns and armor at the start. The player does not build a capital ship right away he first builds the big shipyard needed to encircle the capital ship then that specific ship can be built. The player can repeat and build more capital ships but unfortunately there are no frameshift drives for the rest of his ships so the ships stay in his sector and other players can guard mining operations. He has one frameshift drive for one capital ship and can cruise wherever he or she wants but the other ships built end up in system they can supercruise but definitely stuck in that system. There is ways to buy the super expensive capital frameshift drives and it requires some serious trading at new levels. The player can now use his capital ship to park close to a trade route and buy up the ores and materials and tech for his ships.

Now with my idea your exploration just became incredible and for the more daring players who built to close to the pirates or trade lanes there is the salvager players. Now they look for salvage and are able to get some componants from the capitals frameshift drive but some componants remain rare. These salvagers can build a Capital ship designated to salvage and a storage base to operate from and of course pirates would love the capital salvager as it can take material from their smaller salvage operations. Salvage materials can also be bought from NPC stations and used on player stations. One more game mechanic and that is the construction ship is locjked to the system once the frameshift is taken to build the capital ship. The construction ship is capable of system cruise and that's it till another frameshift drive is afforded and loaded into it.

The reason the player frameshift is made rare is a built in game mechanic that controls the amount of capitals that can. Another game mechanic would be to restrict the players capitals to light weaponry or the system considers them a threat and the faction sends in its armies. Of course blockades would be interesting due to the players taking on the trading equally there could be some intense battles on certain popular trade routes. If a player is federation or member of a certain faction dignitary npc's show up and the players station turns to the same as the npc stations. The dignitary likes kick backs and payola and certain benefits and missions come about. Of course these ships cost time or you have to let people know where your base is and of course you could invite pirates and con man wanting to steal your system capital ship.

I know what I stated here would take time and money but it is a worthy goal for this game. I see several problems solved that a billion star universe creates. You either build on your own dozens of pretty pictures and make exploration interesting which is a extremely big task or just supply a procedural paint brush to the player and make the game so dynamic so addictive no one can escape the intensity of Elite Dangerous. Of course this idea could be added to as well making it even more enticing for the developers.

When you say build a capital ship, this would take millions of tonnes of metals, something a single player is unable to source himself. This would require a community goal to do, and besides the point, a player cannot own a Capital Ship, so must only create it to sell it to either the Federal or Imperial navies. Now, the player would have no access to the classified military files and blueprints required to build such vast vessels of war, and besides that point, this is crafting which deviates from Frontier Developments goal of an independent starship commander trying to get along in the galaxy, or at least, capital ships would be far too large to stay with the Dev's vision. i believe you're thinking of a game based around a trade Empire, which is really just EvE online. Sorry mate, I don't think your suggests could fit.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Update guys! I'm heading off to the Pleiades in my Python with it's largely unchanged fittings, only a Fuel Scoop and ADS/DSS added. I'm going to map the systems and throw 'em up on the sister thread that can be found in the OP.

First stop, Asterope!

 

[Pendra]

The material was just one example. It can be anything.
A crazy cult or sect looking for the lost paradise.
The fountain of youth that works in that system only.
Artifacts from an alien civilization that was wiped out. Maybe a data core to study.
A splinter colony that was created by the survivors of an explorer ship that crashed hundreds of years ago.
A gateway to witch space.
A self aware planet (Gaia at Maia )

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Update! This thread, https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=142575&p=2186205#post2186205 is now an archive for all your Pleiades screenshots. I'll be updated this as I map the Pleiades, please, drop anything relating to this thread there!

 

[Patrick_68000]

+1 for the OP