The economy of my system is now completely broken
- Thread starter Morrit
- Start date
These might be the worst Devs I've ever seen. They literally just pushed an unpublished change that bricked literally tens of thousands of systems. Players were just getting a grasp on how it worked, and now nobody knows anything! They haven't communicated a single thing to us, everyone is in the dark on this. Nothing works as it should, I mean this change is so bad I suggest not even doing Colonization at all at this point.
Between Youtube videos and their comments and forum posts, I feel like a new meaning for the slang term "bricked" formed when I wasn't looking. All of my systems are still producing things, and in many cases, better things than they did before. Whose systems are producing nothing at all, not even biowaste, and can't be changed with new construction? That would be the common definition of "bricked".
My issue is both my main ports (Coriolis and T3 planetary port) were completed two weeks or more ago and bodies/orbit have no spare slots. So they were useless and remain useless because I can't build anything to trigger this change.
I would welcome the ability to delete installations but that comes with its own complications wrt construction points and dependencies.
Games with better managed updates allow players to reallocate their choices when changes have been made to the systems. I spent days building the support infrastructure of a large surface port with a specific economy before beginning its construction, and now my efforts have been made irrelevant. It is no longer an acceptable state of affairs that constructions cannot be removed or changed afterwards because their influence on the systems gets changed. When I plan to create a specific economy, I create all the facilities for it, and then Frontier changes the way that economy influence works, it's not fair that I can't change what I have made to preserve the integrity of my plan. Players are supposed to be system architects. Architects should be allowed to have plans, and constructions should be able to adhere to those plans. You can't just come in afterwards and nullify what the architect has chosen.
I blame the client who hired us, they said build us a colony in this system you have a free hand apart from we want the primary port right there.Some architect we are, when we can't even choose where to place the primary port
Though it's not really a fix [1] for that.
- any existing station which was on Colony economy and couldn't have anything else built in an adjacent orbit to influence it hasn't been retrospectively changed by this and still produces nothing, and still can't have anything built next to it to trigger the change
- those were only placed in the first place as a consequence of people not understanding the rules in the first week(s): once you knew what the rules were, you could have avoided getting into that position in the first place.
Yes, it means you can place a station into the sole orbital slot of a non-landable planet and have it produce something ... but you could already do that with the Industrial/High-Tech/Military outpost types, which had an intrinsic economy, or you could leave that slot for an installation or similar you were placing for reasons other than its economic influence and not worry about it producing nothing much itself.
So the situation has gone from:
- stations placed in a specific, semi-documented (and avoidable) way will permanently be stuck on a Colony economy
to
- stations placed except in a specific, undocumented (and somewhat unpredictable) way will permanently have a hybrid or otherwise potentially unwanted economy
- a bunch of other aspects of the original design which were working well together are now completely irrelevant
[1] To the extent that "some economies have low export amounts" is a problem in the first place ... some of the new body-based economy influence seems to be Military, which is also essentially a non-production economy (it produces Scrap and maybe a weapon type if you're lucky, in addition to the basic H-Fuel and Biowaste). So you still can't just place stuff down without knowing the rules and expect to always get strong exports out of it.
(And some of the other body-based economic influence is Tourism, which is in terms of import/export levels almost identical to Colony.)
I think many players on these forums are using the word 'bricked' to mean their system is now locked-in a permanent direction that can't be fixed. It has gone in a direction they didn't intend and it can't be fixed, rendering it undesirable to their original intentions. Bricked might seem like incorrect word, but if the player feels the only solution is to abandon the system and start all over then maybe it is correct.
It also didn't help that so many geared up for a refinery economy - the most vulnerable setup to the introduction of planetary economic influences.
Yes - so "bricked" can also refer to "my station is now producing bricks rather than what I wanted it to"
The lesson: It's a beta. Use it to learn and test, and have low expectations. Things will change a bunch more times before it's over.
If you play the new update like it's a beta (which it is), you should be deliberately trying to break the entire thing finding as many problems as possible, not trying to make it work perfectly.
Expect it to not work right, expect many bugs, expect many changes to how the system works, otherwise you have unrealistic expectations and your disappointment is a direct result of this.
Many are also behaving as if their precious colony is the last available system to colonize in the galaxy. We basically have unlimited systems to colonize. Find a new one and try again. I have now done that 4 times and will probably keep doing it until I get it "right" whatever that means.
If you play the new update like it's a beta (which it is), you should be deliberately trying to break the entire thing finding as many problems as possible, not trying to make it work perfectly.
Expect it to not work right, expect many bugs, expect many changes to how the system works, otherwise you have unrealistic expectations and your disappointment is a direct result of this.
Many are also behaving as if their precious colony is the last available system to colonize in the galaxy. We basically have unlimited systems to colonize. Find a new one and try again. I have now done that 4 times and will probably keep doing it until I get it "right" whatever that means.
What are we learning? What are we testing? IDK.
I do expect bugs. And I do expect numbers to get tweaked. But I don't believe I am testing anything. I am gaining a strong belief that Frontier released the update based on a schedule and we are now buying Frontier additional time to finish their software development.
Semantics...
My initial system has an Orbis that produces Biowaste, and 4 now completely useless construction sites, because once they will trigger the planetary influence - which will be "industrial" - they will be mediocre at best and possibly not able to fulfil their initial goal of becoming a high tech / refinery economy.
So feel free to spend 5-10 hours hauling into "technically not completely bricked" systems... for me it's bricked and i wont touch it anymore.
Had i known what is now obvious, or had FD communcicated in any meaningful way beforehand - twice - .... I could have saved myself the time. Which was around 40 hours for me building up that system, and similar time for friend of mine.
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Yeah, unfortunately communication isn't FD's strong point. They've tried to "wash their hands" of colonisation by calling it a Beta but it means that we as end users are left trying to work out how the thing actually works. My suspicion is that in coming days someone will tweak the planet influence down a notch for balancing but it would be super nice if they'd talk to us about what they're doing as it affects all of us involved with colonisation.
Honestly the decision to base construction benefits/economy based solely on the type of planet you're build on/around? It's so stupid I can't get my head around it.
Hey I need to buy gas, so I better drive down to Texas where the refineries are.
Need groceries? Drive out to where the farms are.
Maybe not a perfect analogy but the idea that this vast space civilization would operate in such a dumb static way when there's clearly shipping routes and such is just comically bad decision making by the Devs.
Hey I need to buy gas, so I better drive down to Texas where the refineries are.
Need groceries? Drive out to where the farms are.
Maybe not a perfect analogy but the idea that this vast space civilization would operate in such a dumb static way when there's clearly shipping routes and such is just comically bad decision making by the Devs.
I was having some thinking time today, and I'm wondering if FDev's intentions were for this system to affect those stations which orbited solo/non-landable bodies where influencing an economy wasn't possible. Could they have accidentally applied it universally?
It seems to me that if they
1) Implemented this planetary economy system on ONLY those planets with no buildable economy aspects (i.e. ELW, WW, non-landable HMC, etc)
AND
2) Kept the system as it was before for the other planets that DO HAVE buildable economy aspects, the system that players were getting used to
Wouldn't this be the cleanest way forward as of now?
It seems to me that if they
1) Implemented this planetary economy system on ONLY those planets with no buildable economy aspects (i.e. ELW, WW, non-landable HMC, etc)
AND
2) Kept the system as it was before for the other planets that DO HAVE buildable economy aspects, the system that players were getting used to
Wouldn't this be the cleanest way forward as of now?
It's been a few days since the tweak and you could've slept over it and maybe had a shower thought or two.
This tweak makes (G1) bodies very strong compared to how they could be called "cruft" before.
Now they basically get a free 2½×Hub on it; and you get to use the sole planetary slot for something like a Planetary Port.
Even (G2S1+) bodies are boosted by this, because that 2½×Hub inferred from the "body type economy" now doubled their potential as well.
Only if it's the right type you want, though.
So this probabaly helps out quite a bit all those colonies that were facerolled by enthusiastic normies.
But it sabotages people with specific intent; the sweatier players.
» What if... the "body type economy" would act a bit like the malleable and suppressable/replaceable "Colony" economy?
So if you have two Hubs on the body, by your design, those two would fully suppress that "body type economy" and now your own carefully architected design gets imposed a full one hundred percent. The same could be done with all other influencing assets like space farms or ground settlements - because you'd place those explicitly; you'd need more of those then, but still that'd get the same results of replacing the malleable "body type economy".
That would solve both issues - normies that just slap something together that looks cool producing iffy or absent economies in a colony, and sweaties that min/max their solar system designs.
This tweak makes (G1) bodies very strong compared to how they could be called "cruft" before.
Now they basically get a free 2½×Hub on it; and you get to use the sole planetary slot for something like a Planetary Port.
Even (G2S1+) bodies are boosted by this, because that 2½×Hub inferred from the "body type economy" now doubled their potential as well.
Only if it's the right type you want, though.
So this probabaly helps out quite a bit all those colonies that were facerolled by enthusiastic normies.
But it sabotages people with specific intent; the sweatier players.
» What if... the "body type economy" would act a bit like the malleable and suppressable/replaceable "Colony" economy?
So if you have two Hubs on the body, by your design, those two would fully suppress that "body type economy" and now your own carefully architected design gets imposed a full one hundred percent. The same could be done with all other influencing assets like space farms or ground settlements - because you'd place those explicitly; you'd need more of those then, but still that'd get the same results of replacing the malleable "body type economy".
That would solve both issues - normies that just slap something together that looks cool producing iffy or absent economies in a colony, and sweaties that min/max their solar system designs.
I'm sorry excuses like this just don't cut it! This isn't about something being a BETA, it's the fact that they intentionally made a decision that removes ALL player agency from Colonization!!! That's not a bug, it's a feature. It was a choice. Why would they do that? If we don't push back hard on this now, Colonization will be basically useless for emergent gameplay going forward.