Because it's fun. A lot of people enjoy building player homes in games. Player bases can be used to make the DSSA even better, start actual player-driven bubbles in the Galaxy etc.
So, what's going to functionally distinguish them from FCs in that role?
The challenge here is to do so without introducing new functional pieces. If we build a base... why is it useful
without adding things like "automatic refineries" or "ship manufacturing yards"... just purely in terms of what the game currently offers. If you can't, you don't want base building in and of itself, you want something else.
And if it leads to more dynamic and thriving player-to-player economy, all the better.
And how would they do that? Their mere existence isn't going to do that.
And, you've made an assumption player economy == better. I disagree with that entirely... a player economy isn't what Elite needs, given how the game currently operates.
And how would it do that anyway? Only thing players need in the deep is Tritium. Why would someone buy, say, a tonne of fruit and veg? Unless you're implying there's also a base management consumption/maufacturing loop, which needs a whole new thing besides base building to happen.
Also, why have pulse lasers, burst lasers, cannons, fletchette launchers, mines and missiles when PA+railguns or beams+MC-s is the most effective weapons loadout? Why have Kraits, Mamba, Clipper when Python is the best multirole ship and FDL the best combat ship? Why have populated star systems with no stations that have large pads?
...
Why have Coriolis, Ocellus and Orbis stations when they're functionally all the same?
Variety and options.
That's not right. Elite is not a game of the "variety and options" genre.
The "why" is because Elite is a game where "
Players take control of their own starship and can fight, explore and travel throughout an expansive cutthroat galaxy". Inherent to that design is a choice of:
- Do we have a single ship that can ostensibly do it all, with progression being centered around the player rather than the ship; or
- Do we have multiple ships with specific features that can be further customised to specific tasks
FD just happen to have gone with the latter. But to get away from that a little bit, the features of elite are, as it states, combat, exploration, travel. Trade is absent, but hey, they threw that in there too.
"Variety and options" is not the "why" in the game. It's an input into successful mechanics for combat, exploration, travel and trade which are the "why"... if you had one ship, one planet to discover, one place to travel and one good to trade, and one enemy to fight, you could absolutely meet those goals. But it would suck.... but nonetheless, "variety" is not a goal in it's own right.
By contrast, No Man's Sky is, "
a game about exploration and survival". Although ships are also customisable, they are as customisable as bases, the player and their weapons, because at it's core as a survival game is resource gathering (to survive). A survival game in this sense also presumes hazards, both intelligent and environmental. Towards that end, bases as a means to defend from both makes sense (though are certainly not requisite, much like the single vs multiple ships choice).
Elite has no such target in it's repertoire that I can see. It's a game about flying ships, not building bases. What next? We get a
cabaret club game? I actually really enjoyed that minigame from the Yakuza series, so we need it in here yeah? Variety and options yeah? Of course not... because there's no reason to have it in the game.
Why have a bazillion different mineable minerals when platinum, painite and void opals are the only ones that pay well?
This is one of the biggest failings of Elite at the moment. Bottom line, they shouldn't be the only ones that pay well. Each mineral type should have it's own reason for existing... this is certainly the case for all trade goods which aren't just "variety and options"... each plays fundamentally different roles and effects... with a small amount of overlap only.
They need to go back to the drawing board on mining. More realistically, while FD has botched the economy completely, they've let it rest on having a single activity from
most major activity groups. It's their stop-gap for fixing the economy writ-large... meaning if you do combat, there's a way to get good credits (massacre stacking), same for mining (aforementioned high value ones), trade (30k/t gold runs), piracy (LTD jacking), exploration (ELW hunting), exobio (lol). The rest of the activities
are basically pointless, much like the other mined minerals... and that's what a broken economy does to the game.
So, yes, I ask the same question of FD. They need to make all minerals viable in their own way.
So what do players actually want, then?
I know I personally enjoy building player homes in Skyrim and industrial complexes in X3. I think base-building would be a nice addon to Elite, just like Odyssey settlements and on-foot missions are.
Right, so like before, you don't want base building, you want your own customisable home (not base building), and you want an industrial manufacturing layer to the game (not base building).
To gather together the various things I've heard mentioned with "base building"... players who want base building
actually want:
- Mining and refinement facilities
- Home building and customisation
- Ship and module manufacturing
- Industrial manufacturing and player driven economy
- BGS integration and a replacement for PMFs
- Combat opportunities and the ability to destroy player bases; which begs
- Player-customisable defence systems
- Numerous of these imply places to obtain blueprints or items, so this implies a whole new range of shops and facilities in standard facilities to support this.
And then of course, you'd need to fundamentally rebalance all NPC market commodities and costings so that manufacturing
actually makes sense, and how BGS states would then impact those player markets. And what sort of base-building are we talking? The Subnautica/Planet Crafter sort? The Factorio sort? The EVE PI sort? The Sim City sort? The Stardew Valley sort?
It's not hard to take a look at the current state of the game and go from now, to later this year, that we're going to just have base building "happen" without either alienating a huge swath of players, or expecting an absolutely unrealistic amount of work to occur for a game fundamentally not set up for base building. Base building is certainly a framework that can accomodate all that, but if "base building" doesn't deliver most of that, it's dead already.
But any one of those features
on it's own, or even all of them
on their own are very achievable without base building. You would only do base building if you intended to do most of that list, which I think is completely unrealistic this far into the game.
As for Odyssey, do I enjoy the activities it presents? Yes. Do I think it's completely pointless in achieving the broader remit of the game? Yes.
Again, people didn't want "space legs" which is what they were asking for... they wanted:
- To walk around the interior of their ship
- To EVA out and into space wrecks
- To raid, board and steal other player's ships
Instead, they got a virtual analog of the space game, but on foot... no surprises for me... and it's
embarrassingly optional. Pretty pointless addition to a spaceships game, but it exists and what it offers is fun... but so would be a cabaret club simulator
