Sim City/Tycoon style Colony Building.

[Olemied]

I would love to see a colony building system, similar to the Tycoon, or sim city series. This could be done on a planets surface once that becomes available, or even used as a way for commanders to build there own orbiting hangars around a favorite celestial body. The key to this is that by making the colonies planned and maintained by one or a group of commanders, we can choose to have a mining colony by building refineries, a trade hub by building more landing pads, or a military barracks by researching new weapons technologies for outfitting. Building a colony should feel just as immersive and customizable as your ship. With Frontiers experience on this genre, this should be familiar, and immersive to integrate:

Problems to overcome:

• Keep it immersive / First Person: The planning stage should be done on a holographic projection table.
• Avoid the "god view" over head perspective when exploring the colony to preserve immersion.
• Keeping Colonies from over Crowding: Use the same instancing system we currently use for commanders.
• Pricing: A Colony will have to be a pricey investment. Could make them purchasable by a group of pilots in some sort of guild system.

Benefits to Pilots:

• Large colonies could have mining complexes, an economy, and even act as a source of income by charging passing pilots for refueling, and repairs.
• Colonies would have laws and allegiances chosen by the commander/s who built the colony. This means that they could choose to remain independent, or join the federation which would mean extra support in case of attack, but federal taxes would have to be paid.
• Colonies could have a citizen militia of NPC's that could be enlisted to help colony commanders on difficult missions.
• Large enough Colonies could even have the option of building a shipyard, allowing for citizens to purchase ships at a discount.

This is my first Idea submission, so please inform me if I have missed any key points to a post that people like to see. I can't wait to hear your thoughts!

 

[Snakebite]

I really like the idea of a colony building game set in the ED universe, But what i'd do is make it a seperate game that exists within the same Galaxy.
There would need to be limitations on setting up new colonies, because otherwise the human sphere would expand enourmously I mean imagine 100,000 players who play for 6 hrs a week and build 1 new colony every half hour of gameplay.

That would be 300,000 new inhabited worlds every week !

A better way would be a spaceport management game (spaceport being either orbital or dirtside) that way the frontier could be kept intact and maybe allow players colonise new planets but in a very restricted way.

 

[Olemied]

RE: Snakebite

I really like the idea of a colony building game set in the ED universe, But what i'd do is make it a seperate game that exists within the same Galaxy.

Interesting idea as well. I think if we worked on it through the lens of putting it in the same game, it might force the Devs to come at the feature with a fresh perspective. I.e. no god view, and only having limited, gubernatorial influence on the people or their interactions.

If it were its own game it would be interesting if they integrated it into the same universe, but that sort of expansion pack system reeks a little of DLC nowadays.

 

[Olemied]

I agree the restrictions would have to be hefty, however they could be strictly monetary and have it expand for inflation. The existing human sphere would be much cheaper and you might be somewhat beholden to the system powers. As for an uninhabited planet, it would have to be as expensive as an actual planet would be. Potentially billions. That is currently what they are doing with community goals.