...Which is why I made this post in the first place
And yet you keep saying "this is the current system," and no it isn't, it isn't the current system until it has been implemented, this is the "proposed" system, not the current system.
Problems with permanent "System Architect" Status
- Thread starter BardBowman
- Start date
And yet you keep saying "this is the current system," and no it isn't, it isn't the current system until it has been implemented, this is the "proposed" system, not the current system.
Oh my gosh, who cares. These debates over semantics are tiring. Fine. It's the proposed system.
They have also said on the livestreams that they are constantly surprised by what and how players do things in the game, so their anticipation of us cooperating should not be given too much weight.
The issue here is how long an absence constitutes abandonment there are players posting all over recently that have returned to the game from years ago.
Maybe other planets in the system can be “secondary architectures”. With so many years in Elite, longevity of the claim status, like first footfall etc, is motivating; else why spend so much time, like the fleet carrier time sink that disappears when you take a break from gaming to pursue life.
I knew where this was going the moment I had the misfortune of reading "the leader of a medium-sized squadron" (read: another BGS-littering PMF bandwagon) not once but twice. Adding "...(and player minor faction)" to boot, as if one doesn´t automatically come with the other.
The fact that the process of colonisation is already being looked at systematically by the OP, implying organised takeover of systems, confidence in expansion rate, as well as concern for hypothetical systems of interest "going to waste" uncovers yet another rotten sprout emblematic of what PMFs have been from the start.
Not only do they strip weaker groups and players of even a chance to make the slightest impact (let alone meaningfully influence a system) and assert indirect dominance over the unorganised playerbase simply through presence; in other words: "look at us - we are the boss and the lore in this system, and that other one, too", nullifying the importance of NPC factions and gradually eroding political landscape of Elite. Which is all in a good day, isn´t it - always has been. This time, things are being taken to the next level, with actual tangible bits potentially snatched off the table by PMF criminals before anyone else has a chance.
Now that the cost and effort of colonising a single system are peasant-accessible, I have little doubt that most squadron members will be able to immediately start slaving away for their absolutely madly unhinged player factions, allowing for unchecked territorial expansion in a planned direction. Taking over everything in sight in the tightly packed Bubble, leaving no option for regular CMDRs but to settle for one Bubble system at release - that is, if they are lucky to be the first to fling their colonisation beacon. At such rate, there will be no other options but to eventually resort to using player factions as vanguard colonisation entities - the likes of the venerable Deep Space Penetrators for example, or worse and far more ubiquitous - now proudly steering your new colony towards success. Spreading visual clutter in the form of poor and ugly naming conventions throughout the rest of the galaxy for everyone to see and notice if they haven´t yet.
This being one of the reasons why I hopelessly proposed the hail-Mary double-digit billon initial price tag and a substantial amount of lateral non-credit grind for a single system - to slow things down, all likely poorly thought out. As well as restraints in the form of locking the ruling faction and outward expansion approval/denial mechanisms. Instead, CMDRs will likely be witnessing the continuation of the rampant disease that is the spreading of the most bloated player factions and their sidekicks. Completely eroding the political landscape of Elite and reducing it to a handful of diseased, bandwagon PMFs with no NPC factions in sight - not even at the bottom of the mission board this time. Artificial ego-pleasing parade of ugly, tasteless nameplates slapped across the Bubble serving as the ever-present reminder of modern degeneracy and a lack of taste - no limits. If you look at any player faction now - their presence greatly skews the perception of the game´s "politics": one automatically assumes PMFs have strong support in most cases, while NPC factions are largely dismissed, ignored and overall not taken seriously. Used as a tool at most, undermining the broader political depth the game could offer by restricting most of the activity to player-made abominations.
As if the fleet carrier fiasco wasn´t a good enough cautionary tale. Now, in addition to hectically juggling the filters every 2 systems thanks to all the undeservedly earned knock-off fleet carriers cluttering the navigation panel, CMDRs will be stroking the galaxy map back and forth looking for a system nearby not already being taken by some bloated bandwagon zerg player group.
Given the relieving opportunity to cheapskate the costs, what in actual fact is there to slow the relentless rate at which the immediate near-Bubble territories will be systematically devoured via "coordination", "strategy" and other CMDR "wit"? On the other hand, everyone is happy and unoffended by the costs. No limits whatsoever looking at all those formerly average-Joe player factions now with 100+ systems each after just a couple of years. To say nothing of the massive conglomerate groups practically living in their discord channels surrounded by red buttons, ready to promptly address any situation that challenges their control.
I have looked at the map, and, at the current 10 Ly, it doesn´t look promising - some small PMFs potentially willing to expand are almost completely locked out (not mine - I don´t even have any). The prime real estate is on the edges of the Bubble now. If anyone has statistics or has worked out any numbers given the known initial values, that would be interesting to see. @Jmanis @Ian Doncaster
Unironically looking forward to seeing where this goes beta and live.
The fact that the process of colonisation is already being looked at systematically by the OP, implying organised takeover of systems, confidence in expansion rate, as well as concern for hypothetical systems of interest "going to waste" uncovers yet another rotten sprout emblematic of what PMFs have been from the start.
Not only do they strip weaker groups and players of even a chance to make the slightest impact (let alone meaningfully influence a system) and assert indirect dominance over the unorganised playerbase simply through presence; in other words: "look at us - we are the boss and the lore in this system, and that other one, too", nullifying the importance of NPC factions and gradually eroding political landscape of Elite. Which is all in a good day, isn´t it - always has been. This time, things are being taken to the next level, with actual tangible bits potentially snatched off the table by PMF criminals before anyone else has a chance.
Now that the cost and effort of colonising a single system are peasant-accessible, I have little doubt that most squadron members will be able to immediately start slaving away for their absolutely madly unhinged player factions, allowing for unchecked territorial expansion in a planned direction. Taking over everything in sight in the tightly packed Bubble, leaving no option for regular CMDRs but to settle for one Bubble system at release - that is, if they are lucky to be the first to fling their colonisation beacon. At such rate, there will be no other options but to eventually resort to using player factions as vanguard colonisation entities - the likes of the venerable Deep Space Penetrators for example, or worse and far more ubiquitous - now proudly steering your new colony towards success. Spreading visual clutter in the form of poor and ugly naming conventions throughout the rest of the galaxy for everyone to see and notice if they haven´t yet.
This being one of the reasons why I hopelessly proposed the hail-Mary double-digit billon initial price tag and a substantial amount of lateral non-credit grind for a single system - to slow things down, all likely poorly thought out. As well as restraints in the form of locking the ruling faction and outward expansion approval/denial mechanisms. Instead, CMDRs will likely be witnessing the continuation of the rampant disease that is the spreading of the most bloated player factions and their sidekicks. Completely eroding the political landscape of Elite and reducing it to a handful of diseased, bandwagon PMFs with no NPC factions in sight - not even at the bottom of the mission board this time. Artificial ego-pleasing parade of ugly, tasteless nameplates slapped across the Bubble serving as the ever-present reminder of modern degeneracy and a lack of taste - no limits. If you look at any player faction now - their presence greatly skews the perception of the game´s "politics": one automatically assumes PMFs have strong support in most cases, while NPC factions are largely dismissed, ignored and overall not taken seriously. Used as a tool at most, undermining the broader political depth the game could offer by restricting most of the activity to player-made abominations.
As if the fleet carrier fiasco wasn´t a good enough cautionary tale. Now, in addition to hectically juggling the filters every 2 systems thanks to all the undeservedly earned knock-off fleet carriers cluttering the navigation panel, CMDRs will be stroking the galaxy map back and forth looking for a system nearby not already being taken by some bloated bandwagon zerg player group.
Given the relieving opportunity to cheapskate the costs, what in actual fact is there to slow the relentless rate at which the immediate near-Bubble territories will be systematically devoured via "coordination", "strategy" and other CMDR "wit"? On the other hand, everyone is happy and unoffended by the costs. No limits whatsoever looking at all those formerly average-Joe player factions now with 100+ systems each after just a couple of years. To say nothing of the massive conglomerate groups practically living in their discord channels surrounded by red buttons, ready to promptly address any situation that challenges their control.
I have looked at the map, and, at the current 10 Ly, it doesn´t look promising - some small PMFs potentially willing to expand are almost completely locked out (not mine - I don´t even have any). The prime real estate is on the edges of the Bubble now. If anyone has statistics or has worked out any numbers given the known initial values, that would be interesting to see. @Jmanis @Ian Doncaster
Unironically looking forward to seeing where this goes beta and live.
Last edited:
Sounds like a lot of words to say "I wish Elite was a single player game."
Edit: Assuming your post isn't satire, which I'm kind of guessing it is at this point - if you're worried about "clutter," wouldn't you be in favor of some sort of expiration mechanic like what I've proposed?
Last edited:
I think that's a great idea. Like I've tried to clarify several times now, I have absolutely no desire to take away the original architect's name from the system or remove their stuff. My only point is that the system shouldn't forever be closed off to further development.
At the moment every single system in the entire galaxy is closed off to further development unless FDEV decides to do something there, once the architect decides they are done with a system that's it, it joins the rest of the 20,000+ inhabited systems that are forever closed off to further development by players. As the system architect I might actually want there to be only a single station in a system, why should my desires be superseded by some other johnny come lately who thinks he has the right to destroy my vision? This is how I planned my system, with a single station, do not mess with it!
TBH given Fdevs past history of dealing with PMFs I'm expecting the door to get slammed in his face pretty hard...
That's inevitable - and the expansion extent of certain PMFs is at most a symptom of a symptom of the underlying nature of the distribution of in-game activity. You could have written almost this exact post with just a couple of word changes had PMFs never been introduced at all, and player groups just stuck to adopting NPC factions.
Both player activity and player group activity (see squadron leaderboards, Powerplay weekly activity tier thresholds, less precisely CG thresholds) are distributed on an approximation of a power-law distribution - i.e. the multiple of activity between the 1st and 10th, the 10th and 100th and the 100th and 1000th player is approximately the same. For example (and most real in-game activity is fairly close to this sort of inverse-linear distribution [1], though there are complicating factors making it less "perfect" in practice):
1st: 1,000,000 "points" (whatever it is you get a point for - cargo tonnage carried, ship kills, bacteria scans)
10th: 100,000 points
100th: 10,000 points
1000th: 1,000 points
10000th: 100 points
100000th: 10 points
The consequence of this is that a large organised group can do anything hundreds of times faster than a lone but reasonably dedicated player.
- In a busy week I average multiple hours a day, in a fairly effective but not min-maxed fashion, which is still more than a lot of players do
- the top individual Powerplayers on the leaderboard are getting 10 times my total (though it's usually different players each week!)
- the top Powerplay squadrons are consistently getting close to 100 times my total.
So if colonisation is to be possible at all for an established individual probably doing a little less than I am, obviously the big established groups will be going a hundred times as fast. That's nothing to do with PMFs, that's just the game not heavily penalising all attempts at cooperation. The only way to stop the big groups going that fast is to put colonisation entirely out of the reach of everyone else.
[1] One of the other consequences of this is that you'll often see players quite high up the chart describing themselves as "casual" - sure, they're in the top 1% of activity if you look at everyone, but most of the other players they hear about are doing ten times more.
I don't think anyone has checked how many factions have expansion possibilities. At the moment there are too many unknowns anyway:
- what, exactly, counts as the edge of the bubble for getting a colonisation contact?
- is any infill colonisation back into the bubble allowed, or is there a minimum distance from Sol too? If so, is it a fixed minimum distance or is it set to more closely follow the rough shape of inhabited systems?
- do the semi-isolated fringe systems (New Yembo, Robigo, even the Pleiades?) count as "the bubble" or not?
- does a faction need to control the system to access the colonisation contact? Or own a station? Or just be present?
It will be a fairly large fraction because the majority of the volume of a 200 LY sphere is within about 40 LY of the surface - but that's just an approximation of the bubble too.
(I think it's also highly likely that the 10 LY range is an initial limitation so we can't break things too badly in Beta, and it will be relaxed at least a little later)
So within the bubble... there's definitely uninhabited systems dotted around, though I imagine that's mostly due to the mechanics which populated the bubble once the systems were generated ruling them as uninteresting/mostly unviable (though i imagine any system is on the books; is there any confirmation whether star-only systems can be populated?)
I don't have a good read of numbers, Ian Doncaster would be much more knowledgable... but I'd go back to the idea that I don't think players expanding particular factions under Colonisation is in scope of anything for this, rather it's just populating systems outright. Even particular factions in the bubble, let alone the whole need to potentially run expansion through otherwise full systems, requiring the retreat of multiple factions along the way, you're going to have to go through, what, 20 or 30 colonisation efforts before even getting to the edge? It's just not practical in the slightest... but again... players have always cared for factions more than FD's original vision intended... i suspect we'll see more design choices in the future that detract from political games with factions.
The thing is, those 20K systems made by FDEV (in an automated manner I expect) have some infrastructure to them. Finding a system with a very small number of settlements (1-3) is an exception rather than the norm. Yet for player colonised systems the only requirement is the initial station, which can be an outpost.
So the architect will have this power, to lock a system behind a single outpost. But let's not forget that this power impacts the whole game world, for ALL THE OTHER PLAYERS. How about building a string of colonies or a bubble of colonies, each populated with a single outpost? That would be a top notch practical joke on an unknowing Anaconda explorer with a damaged ship, making an emergency trip there to repair....
Saying "my system must have only one outpost and that is my final royal decision" sounds very selfish. This doesn't sound like colonisation at all...
Here's another thought: Rackham's Peak. Never been there, but I've heard the stories about carrier spot locking and the whole drama that ensues. Is it ok to have such a blockade mechanic, that other players cannot work against? Does it have a positive effect on the game overall?
In the end, we need to respect the architect's work and desires, but we also need to respect the rest of the playerbase and the way they experience the shared game world.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
.... one system at a time, noting that there are c.400,000,000,000 systems to choose from - that "this power impacts the whole game world, for ALL THE OTHER PLAYERS" is technically correct, the best kind, the impact of colonisation of each system is miniscule on the game world as a whole.
Precisely no worse than those systems being unpopulated with no docks at all.
Less selfish than "I must be able to change an already colonised system for which I am not the System Architect", IMO.
Last edited:
Thanks. Yeah, I did some rough maths a while back to try and work out vaguely how many systems were up for grabs with a 10ly range. I came up with 70,000 but I may well have overestimated by a factor of 10. A couple of other people followed my post up with their own (I think better) estimates.
Colonisation Answers
It, along with a bunch of other unused states, appear via the game API used by sites like inara. The economy type you mention is Colony, which i understand to be a population with no specific purpose other than people living at it. Actually just realise I was thinking of terraforming. So...
We went over the number a few pages back I think....
it's not 400B. It's whichever number of systems is in the shell defined by the colonisation range and size of the current bubble. Still huge but not all of it .But that's not even the point here, the point is, players will naturally congregate towards interesting areas of the galaxy. Black holes, ELWs, guardian sites or staging areas for Thargoid homeworld invasion (when we get there
). Then there are the situations presented by the OP. It doesn't matter that there are 400B systems out there when your colonisation efforts are dead in their tracks because of a single member leaving.Yes worse.
In my (albeit exaggerated) example, that Conda makes a run for that colonized bubble precisely because the GAME's galaxy map tells it that there's civilisation there. If those systems would be uninhabited, then the CMDR would know better.
Imagine if Bligh made the trip all the way to Coupang only to be told: "ze boat does not fit at ze dock, you must go back to England".
Don't know what to tell you... it's just each man's definition of selfishness I suppose...
Option 1: Putting a single outpost in a system only so that others can't play there.
Option 2: Expanding on the work of another CMDR without taking away anything that they have built, to allow expanding economies, more trade routes, more missions, more opportunities, more gameplay for more players.
The name of the feature is colonisation, not ownership.
I favor a mechanic that allows a player to initiate colonization however they see fit. However, once they start that, the colony makes it or breaks it based on the bgs (modified to support this new colony mechanic). Such that if the system gets traded with and hostilities are low, it prospers and the population can grow and additional stations / settlements etc can spawn.
This can go the other way too if the situation isn't great. Even to the point of total population collapse. If a total collapse occurs, the initial colonization station / settlement would remain, but everything would become 'abandoned' and all services no longer offered at the station. This state has nothing to do with the architect. But rather player activity in the system + the bgs.
The system architect role basically only applies to the initial configuration and naming or whatever fdev is allowing players to do in colonizing a system. After that it becomes just another system in the bgs ....though with the added ability to become abandoned or grow. There's no further powers or abilities or statuses individual players have over that system once colonization begins. The architects job ends when they click the button finalizing their choices to start colonization at a new system.
A system can be re-colonized only once it has been put into the abandoned bgs state. In which case a new system architect could claim that system and re-name/etc it.
it would be fairly rare for systems to go abandoned (lots of violence, very little trading and no nearby prosperous systems). Growth and collapse would occur during the tick if such a change is warranted in the colonized systems. Additional stations that spawn will go into a localized abandoned state during population reduction states and if the system becomes abandoned, the stations that were added are removed. Leaving only the initial station the architect started it with as a dead husk in the system.
Something like that sounds like it would eliminate the broken idea that a player would own a system or have some sort of say over it long term.
edit:
tldr: individual player agency over this mechanic should end once the initial choices are made and the process begins. After that the bgs and player participation in the normal game mechanics control the destiny of the system (to help or kill it). With the potential opportunity to re-do colonization if, and only if, it fully fails (which will be a hard state to reach for most normal colony systems).
This can go the other way too if the situation isn't great. Even to the point of total population collapse. If a total collapse occurs, the initial colonization station / settlement would remain, but everything would become 'abandoned' and all services no longer offered at the station. This state has nothing to do with the architect. But rather player activity in the system + the bgs.
The system architect role basically only applies to the initial configuration and naming or whatever fdev is allowing players to do in colonizing a system. After that it becomes just another system in the bgs ....though with the added ability to become abandoned or grow. There's no further powers or abilities or statuses individual players have over that system once colonization begins. The architects job ends when they click the button finalizing their choices to start colonization at a new system.
A system can be re-colonized only once it has been put into the abandoned bgs state. In which case a new system architect could claim that system and re-name/etc it.
it would be fairly rare for systems to go abandoned (lots of violence, very little trading and no nearby prosperous systems). Growth and collapse would occur during the tick if such a change is warranted in the colonized systems. Additional stations that spawn will go into a localized abandoned state during population reduction states and if the system becomes abandoned, the stations that were added are removed. Leaving only the initial station the architect started it with as a dead husk in the system.
Something like that sounds like it would eliminate the broken idea that a player would own a system or have some sort of say over it long term.
edit:
tldr: individual player agency over this mechanic should end once the initial choices are made and the process begins. After that the bgs and player participation in the normal game mechanics control the destiny of the system (to help or kill it). With the potential opportunity to re-do colonization if, and only if, it fully fails (which will be a hard state to reach for most normal colony systems).
Last edited:
Well Zac did say "Station Owner", (though he also said the Cobra was a medium ship...)
I kind of suspect that he 10 LY thing will be whilst the Bubble gets filled in, then move to it's intended value.
How about a compromise.
Allow the System Architect the option to mark a system complete so that it then cannot be changed by anyone other than FDev, systems not marked complete can be altered by the architect later and would be available for change by anyone allowed to step into the architects shoes.
Allow the System Architect the option to mark a system complete so that it then cannot be changed by anyone other than FDev, systems not marked complete can be altered by the architect later and would be available for change by anyone allowed to step into the architects shoes.