It is with great excitement that we receive the news about player-driven colonization. I speak as an individual commander committed to exploration and advocating for "population dynamics" which I posted about here years ago. I also am one of the leaders of a larger squadron and leading player minor factions. All of these hats instigate me to express great joy and hope for the announced new mechanic and desire to give our input in shaping the design of this initiative.
I can tell you right now that Celestial Light Brigade have massive interest in getting our dedicated exploration sector, Voqooe, colonized beginning with DSSA #53 which we sponsor. We also have our PMF based out of HR 8202 which lies single-digit light years from uninhabited deep space. We also acknowledge that various uninhabited systems in the Bubble will get gobbled up very quickly by various interested parties including ourselves. With these priorities several questions arise:
Ownership:
-The stream clip prominently featured the colonization megaships and that only 1 can be active at a time and only move between asset completions
-Will these megaships be aligned to individual commanders, squadrons, or factions? Design precedent from Frontier (fleet carriers) suggests that it'll be based on individual commanders, though initial materials suggested that fleet carriers would be squadron-based before they were released.
-Colonization by individual commanders will grow the number of systems VERY quickly. This has advantages and disadvantages. Allowing individual commanders to launch such ventures will not penalize large squadrons/factions for "putting all their eggs in one basket;" which also opens the way for larger groups and those with alts to proportionally colonize more space than small groups. Like PMFs and fleet carriers, many derelict system claims will accumulate shortly after the update is released and bog down several systems in and near the Bubble with ventures which will never be completed.
-Frontier should add a mechanic for colonization projects to fail/time out/decay and become available for other entities to take up should initial colonizing efforts fail.
Factions:
-Which factions populate these new systems is of paramount importance to anyone with an eye for BGS and/or galactic superpower politics. There seem to be 3 logical mechanics which could co-exist in the final release:
1. Procedural faction generation: like most systems in the Bubble, new systems will have 3-5 newly-minted factions like "<system> Empire League," "<system> Jet Crew," "<system> Liberty Party," etc. Allowing players to have some input on which government types these procedurally-generated factions take could be fairly easy to implement.
2. Local imports: the "architect" commander selects a set of factions from the local area to populate the new system OR a mission-weighted process of choosing a few local factions to populate the new system could be implemented. This route could produce some complicated and potentially contentious gameplay that would fundamentally change how commander play the minor faction BGS.
3. Sponsoring faction: when launching a colonization initiative, the "architect" commander designates a sponsoring minor faction (identical to the squadron pledge system that currently exists) which is defaulted to the controlling faction of the completed colony. Such a mechanic could facilitate a mission spawn process which would cause the sponsoring faction to offer missions in service of the colonization effort. Such a mechanic would incentivize much local development in addition to long-distance initiatives.
-For my own selfish reasons, I'm obviously hoping for a combo of Sponsoring faction with another 3-5 factions procedurally generated.
Range:
-The bi-modal distribution of intent for short range and VERY long range colonization invites a careful discussion of how to facilitate both these ambitions in a way that is balanced. Obviously, the costs of colonization need to depend in some respect on the distance of that initiative. These need to be balanced with a few principles in mind:
1. Short-range colonization needs to not be too fast to avoid immediately congesting the Bubble with barely-touched claims
2. Long range colonization needs to have a reasonable cost/speed balance such that CLB can colonize Voqooe and the several groups heading out the Azura Initiative (and God forbid, Beagle Point!) from spending multiple years just to get a flag planted in the intended territory.
-In my view, a system in which the range is PART of the cost calculation (and thus factors in material and cash costs relevant to travel like tritium) while a majority of the factors at play remain static regardless of distance.
-Such costs should increase based on a less-than-linear curve like root(distance) or ln(distance) with a maximum range somewhere upwards of a thousand lyrs; if we take Colonia as our example, even 10k+lyr range can be argued for
Depth of Development:
-The stream mentioned that colony ships can only move on after completing at least 1 assets; implied within that statement are many questions:
1. How many assets can we build per systems, or is there even a limit? What of economy types; will we be stuck with just 1 per system?
2. If an "architect" elects to move their colony vessel on to another system, can they return to a former colony effort and continue the work by adding more assets?
3. New systems means adding population; high-supply/demand economies require large populations. Can players hope to establish billion-pop agricultural ventures or what can we reasonably expect for the maximum size of our colonies?
-players want access to these high-power economies, but summoning billions of NPCs from the ether seems overpowered; Frontier need to balance this mechanic carefully to allow efforts on the order of a CG to generate billion pop colonies, but this threshold needs to be a heroic (but attainable) effort. The population capacity of systems without ELWs needs to be capped as well. In no world should 100 million people fit on a Coriolis as much as I'd like them to.
Naming:
-Frontier allows us to name our commanders, ships, squadrons, and fleet carriers with free-text with profanity filters. Frontier also has a stock list of NPC and assets names. There appear to be a couple ways Frontier could apply this to colonies; these same principles apply to both the systems and each asset, though I imagine they'll just not change the system names at all:
1. Free Text: use the same filtering controls they use on all other player-named objects and let us free-text from there
2. Mix-and-match: Frontier provide a list of things to combine to make the name like <Sutter, Myasichev, Lincoln> <orbital, refuge, ring> where we get a hundreds-item long 2-3 field multiple choice for asset names
3. Random: Frontier just roll the asset names from the stock list without exposing themselves to the liability of potty-mouthed commanders to name stuff
-I hope Frontier will go with the free text route, but I also understand the desire not to have 500 stations named "deez nutts."
I hope a fruitful discussion of any thought I may have missed follows on from here. I am really looking forward to what Frontier make of this content!
I can tell you right now that Celestial Light Brigade have massive interest in getting our dedicated exploration sector, Voqooe, colonized beginning with DSSA #53 which we sponsor. We also have our PMF based out of HR 8202 which lies single-digit light years from uninhabited deep space. We also acknowledge that various uninhabited systems in the Bubble will get gobbled up very quickly by various interested parties including ourselves. With these priorities several questions arise:
Ownership:
-The stream clip prominently featured the colonization megaships and that only 1 can be active at a time and only move between asset completions
-Will these megaships be aligned to individual commanders, squadrons, or factions? Design precedent from Frontier (fleet carriers) suggests that it'll be based on individual commanders, though initial materials suggested that fleet carriers would be squadron-based before they were released.
-Colonization by individual commanders will grow the number of systems VERY quickly. This has advantages and disadvantages. Allowing individual commanders to launch such ventures will not penalize large squadrons/factions for "putting all their eggs in one basket;" which also opens the way for larger groups and those with alts to proportionally colonize more space than small groups. Like PMFs and fleet carriers, many derelict system claims will accumulate shortly after the update is released and bog down several systems in and near the Bubble with ventures which will never be completed.
-Frontier should add a mechanic for colonization projects to fail/time out/decay and become available for other entities to take up should initial colonizing efforts fail.
Factions:
-Which factions populate these new systems is of paramount importance to anyone with an eye for BGS and/or galactic superpower politics. There seem to be 3 logical mechanics which could co-exist in the final release:
1. Procedural faction generation: like most systems in the Bubble, new systems will have 3-5 newly-minted factions like "<system> Empire League," "<system> Jet Crew," "<system> Liberty Party," etc. Allowing players to have some input on which government types these procedurally-generated factions take could be fairly easy to implement.
2. Local imports: the "architect" commander selects a set of factions from the local area to populate the new system OR a mission-weighted process of choosing a few local factions to populate the new system could be implemented. This route could produce some complicated and potentially contentious gameplay that would fundamentally change how commander play the minor faction BGS.
3. Sponsoring faction: when launching a colonization initiative, the "architect" commander designates a sponsoring minor faction (identical to the squadron pledge system that currently exists) which is defaulted to the controlling faction of the completed colony. Such a mechanic could facilitate a mission spawn process which would cause the sponsoring faction to offer missions in service of the colonization effort. Such a mechanic would incentivize much local development in addition to long-distance initiatives.
-For my own selfish reasons, I'm obviously hoping for a combo of Sponsoring faction with another 3-5 factions procedurally generated.
Range:
-The bi-modal distribution of intent for short range and VERY long range colonization invites a careful discussion of how to facilitate both these ambitions in a way that is balanced. Obviously, the costs of colonization need to depend in some respect on the distance of that initiative. These need to be balanced with a few principles in mind:
1. Short-range colonization needs to not be too fast to avoid immediately congesting the Bubble with barely-touched claims
2. Long range colonization needs to have a reasonable cost/speed balance such that CLB can colonize Voqooe and the several groups heading out the Azura Initiative (and God forbid, Beagle Point!) from spending multiple years just to get a flag planted in the intended territory.
-In my view, a system in which the range is PART of the cost calculation (and thus factors in material and cash costs relevant to travel like tritium) while a majority of the factors at play remain static regardless of distance.
-Such costs should increase based on a less-than-linear curve like root(distance) or ln(distance) with a maximum range somewhere upwards of a thousand lyrs; if we take Colonia as our example, even 10k+lyr range can be argued for
Depth of Development:
-The stream mentioned that colony ships can only move on after completing at least 1 assets; implied within that statement are many questions:
1. How many assets can we build per systems, or is there even a limit? What of economy types; will we be stuck with just 1 per system?
2. If an "architect" elects to move their colony vessel on to another system, can they return to a former colony effort and continue the work by adding more assets?
3. New systems means adding population; high-supply/demand economies require large populations. Can players hope to establish billion-pop agricultural ventures or what can we reasonably expect for the maximum size of our colonies?
-players want access to these high-power economies, but summoning billions of NPCs from the ether seems overpowered; Frontier need to balance this mechanic carefully to allow efforts on the order of a CG to generate billion pop colonies, but this threshold needs to be a heroic (but attainable) effort. The population capacity of systems without ELWs needs to be capped as well. In no world should 100 million people fit on a Coriolis as much as I'd like them to.
Naming:
-Frontier allows us to name our commanders, ships, squadrons, and fleet carriers with free-text with profanity filters. Frontier also has a stock list of NPC and assets names. There appear to be a couple ways Frontier could apply this to colonies; these same principles apply to both the systems and each asset, though I imagine they'll just not change the system names at all:
1. Free Text: use the same filtering controls they use on all other player-named objects and let us free-text from there
2. Mix-and-match: Frontier provide a list of things to combine to make the name like <Sutter, Myasichev, Lincoln> <orbital, refuge, ring> where we get a hundreds-item long 2-3 field multiple choice for asset names
3. Random: Frontier just roll the asset names from the stock list without exposing themselves to the liability of potty-mouthed commanders to name stuff
-I hope Frontier will go with the free text route, but I also understand the desire not to have 500 stations named "deez nutts."
I hope a fruitful discussion of any thought I may have missed follows on from here. I am really looking forward to what Frontier make of this content!
