This is good, because I have no clue about how to configure a system so that there is a synergy or coordination with the individual constructed items. Ideally the whole system prospers because all the parts are working together, and I don't know how to do that. So I'm waiting and researching, and hoping that soon there will be a FAQ/Guide/"for Dummies" to help folks like me. Until then, my one and only system will wait, with just the starting outpost, until I understand how to do the rest of the development, because there's no "undo" feature.
So, how can I help gather information for you smart folks? and where's the current best/latest information on how to build a coordinated system from scratch?
It's simpler than it might seem - at least at the moment. There are plenty of fine details still to work out, but they don't really seem to "matter" all that much. Everything you can build is in
some way positive for the system, so there are limits to how wrong you can go if you don't have very specific plans for your system.
You've got a few different effects from every construction, which are largely documented on the build selection pages (though the landing pad info is messed up there):
1) It may be a dockable base, with potential to have a market with some economy or another
2) It may or may not be dockable (hubs and installations aren't) but it influences the economy of any large dockable to be closer to its own,
if they're on or around the same body
3) It gives (usually positive) effects to the various mostly-hidden system variables like security, wealth, etc. which (with the partial exception of security) seem like straightforward "bigger is better"
4) Tier 1 constructions give you Tier 2 build points, which you need for the Tier 2 constructions which give you Tier 3 build points
5) A few things have other requirements (e.g. you can't build much Tourist stuff until you first build a Satellite Installation somewhere in the system)
So:
- for each body (planet or moon), decide if this is going to be a "market" body or a "system quality" body first and foremost (it's not a complete either/or, but having an idea in mind helps)
- for a "market" body, you want to build at least one dockable market base (orbital outposts/Coriolis/Orbis ... or planetary outposts and cities), and then build as many other constructions as that body will support which have a particular "system economy influence". This will turn the dockable market into that economy type. This is generally best done with the "bigger" bodies, with lots of surface slots and/or orbital slots (4 combined surface+orbital slots is generally plenty, though more is even better). Markets are per-body and completely isolated, so you can build one moon as industrial and the next as extraction and so on without penalty for a varied system, or if you want a themed industrial powerhouse you can make them all industrial - all up to you
- for a "system quality" body you're looking at things which give nice boosts to things like "tech level" or "wealth", or things which are dependencies (like the Satellite Installation mentioned above) for other constructions. These tend to be the Odyssey settlements, the orbital installations, and so on. These can be built anywhere you have space - but it's probably best to put them around the smaller bodies, the non-landable ones, etc. which you can't use for "market" purposes so well. (Smaller bodies can also be occasionally useful for things like the Vulcan Industrial Outpost - it comes with a preset economy, so you can just stick that anywhere you like for a bit of medium pad industrial market - once it gets going, that's your entire Industrial commodities requirement for future building covered locally, for example). You need to build up these values from their initial low baseline to get your system behaving properly overall - if you don't, your markets will produce tiny quantities only, your BGS factions will be vulnerable to Lockdown, and so on. There's unfortunately no way to track this stuff other than recording how many chevrons you've added, and exactly what the difference between "wealth" and "development level" and "standard of living" is Frontier has failed to mention; just trying to keep them all moving upwards in rough step (you can get by without "security" being more than just "vaguely positive", if you want the low security look)
- large stations (the T2 and T3 big dockables) are limited and you'll have to build other stuff elsewhere to get the points needed to make them. They're also going to take a lot of hauling to build. So those you generally want to save for your "best" market bodies where they can really pick up the influence from lots of settlements and hubs and installations, and stick to the cheaper stuff elsewhere. Smaller or mid-sized systems might only have room for one or two total, and that's okay.
EDIT: oops, forgot the
most important point of system construction! You get to choose exactly where your ground constructions go - with the caveat of a minimum 200km distance between any pair - so it is vitally important that you place them somewhere which looks cool. They'll auto-flatten a small bit of terrain around them as they get placed, so you can use this to do a bit of landscaping and emphasise cliffs, too.
