My first station was an Industrial outpost, when I delivered the last load, presto magico, it appeared! It raised the population by about 5500 or so... But oddly, no one was present at the station except one lonely lady working the travel desk...
A week later, the scaffolding disappears, the bar and the store are fully stocked, and the usual riff raff are at their usual places offering the usual nefarious activities... You didn't have to do a thing. You didn't need to bring the initial stock of liquor, beer and wine for the bar, or personnel weapons and suits for the store. Nope, it all just appears. Magic. Just like leaving the ship, you don't have to even say "one to beam down Scotty"... Magic.
This is totally in keeping with the Eltie ethos, but I wish that FDEV had you bring items in a loose, but certain order. For instance, you should bring steel and titanium first and as you get to a percentage, say 25% of those items, the stations framework appears, then you bring in CMM composites and the shell begins to fill in and the form starts take shape. It doesn't have to be really granular like you were actually building it, just enough to actually look like something is being built.
I put a bar in a really scenic location, nice view of and ice ring with a pretty pale blue planet... If only I could sit at the bar and enjoy the view... You see, it says that is has a medium pad, but, in fact, it's nothing more than a lawn ornament. Sure, it adds something to the system, but what, I don't know. It's like you put a really fancy fountain in your front yard, if you have a mansion, it will add greatly to the charm and value of the property, but, if you put the same grand fountain in front of your run-down mobile home... Eh, not so much.
Why can I build an Orbis to start a colony, but if I build an outpost, I can't build an Orbis until I build a whole lot of other smaller facilities? Why does an asteroid station take as much stuff as a Coralis station? It would have been nice to have a mid-tier a station between the outpost and larger star ports that could at least allow you to store a few ships and modules while you flesh out the system. Or even a smaller version of a fleet carrier that you could store limited quantities of commodities, ships and modules with no market or other things that need to be tracked that limit the mobility of a fleet carrier. And let's not even talk about the missed opportunity to add a large, bulk carrying ship to game when this update clearly demands it. I fear by the time one is introduced; I will have moved on from system building like I did from trading once I hit elite.
Sure, I can build a station and park ships and modules there, but I can do that anywhere. Unlike a fleet carrier, I can't make a long journey to pick up rare materials like insulating membranes and store them until needed. If I didn't build a large star port to start with, I have to keep ships in another system that has a large star port. Which is a pain, because I keep needing to switch between a medium ship to hit rarer items at outposts and a large ship to bulk haul the large quantity items like steel.
I built a surface extraction site, and, unlike my outpost which seems to have a decent level of production, one week later it makes about 30 tons of water a day and 1 unit of nerve gas... Never more than one unit, but if you buy that, another is produced. Most likely a good thing as that's a nasty thing to have around, better it be in limited quantities!
This gives me a little pause as to adding more settlements, what if the next produces a similar level of worthless goods? Judging by the amount of station markets that produce limited quantities of bio waste, hydrogen and nothing else, I'd say that is likely. Is there a mechanism to produce a wider variety of goods? Flail around and find out, the usual way information is dispensed in Elite as the documentation is sparse at best. It would be nice, since there are limited places to place a facility, if you could decommission a facility and reuse the site and salvage the materials used to build something that is more needed by the system or as a manufacturing base to more easily expand to the next system.
You are called the "system architect"... But other than vague indications in the facility selection menu that indicates which way the various, yet invisible, sliders will wander. As system architect, I have no real idea what adding an installation will do. I built a bunch of orbital installations and now my security for the system is "High". Ok, but if add an asteroid station or an Orbis the security will go down. Why? And by how much? How does the architect plan his system? If I never added a security installation and filled every slot with a Coriolis station and/or asteroid station would that make the system an anarchy?
Say I want to provide the citizens of my system a reasonable standard of living and security, how do I ensure that is accomplished? I want to expand to another system, a good quantity of steel, titanium, CMM composites and insulating membranes are crucial and, at some point, and it would be a good idea to build facilities that produce these items nearby to cut down on the travel times. Just how do I add facilities that produce the desired products in sufficient quantities and avoid those that produce limited quantities of relatively worthless commodities?
You are called the "system architect", but you don't have the tools to manage the direction of growth to achieve the desired end product. Indeed, what is the desired outcome? What system attributes make for a better producing industrial system or high tech? How do I maximize the income from a system?
You build a station, and you wander the corridors like any other random commander... No private space to setup an office to plan out your next installation or colony or to get off the ship and sleep in a real bed, no recognition for the effort by citizenry at large for your achievement and sacrifice... Not so much a plaque commemorating the builder and the date the station was completed.
Why build...
A week later, the scaffolding disappears, the bar and the store are fully stocked, and the usual riff raff are at their usual places offering the usual nefarious activities... You didn't have to do a thing. You didn't need to bring the initial stock of liquor, beer and wine for the bar, or personnel weapons and suits for the store. Nope, it all just appears. Magic. Just like leaving the ship, you don't have to even say "one to beam down Scotty"... Magic.
This is totally in keeping with the Eltie ethos, but I wish that FDEV had you bring items in a loose, but certain order. For instance, you should bring steel and titanium first and as you get to a percentage, say 25% of those items, the stations framework appears, then you bring in CMM composites and the shell begins to fill in and the form starts take shape. It doesn't have to be really granular like you were actually building it, just enough to actually look like something is being built.
I put a bar in a really scenic location, nice view of and ice ring with a pretty pale blue planet... If only I could sit at the bar and enjoy the view... You see, it says that is has a medium pad, but, in fact, it's nothing more than a lawn ornament. Sure, it adds something to the system, but what, I don't know. It's like you put a really fancy fountain in your front yard, if you have a mansion, it will add greatly to the charm and value of the property, but, if you put the same grand fountain in front of your run-down mobile home... Eh, not so much.
Why can I build an Orbis to start a colony, but if I build an outpost, I can't build an Orbis until I build a whole lot of other smaller facilities? Why does an asteroid station take as much stuff as a Coralis station? It would have been nice to have a mid-tier a station between the outpost and larger star ports that could at least allow you to store a few ships and modules while you flesh out the system. Or even a smaller version of a fleet carrier that you could store limited quantities of commodities, ships and modules with no market or other things that need to be tracked that limit the mobility of a fleet carrier. And let's not even talk about the missed opportunity to add a large, bulk carrying ship to game when this update clearly demands it. I fear by the time one is introduced; I will have moved on from system building like I did from trading once I hit elite.
Sure, I can build a station and park ships and modules there, but I can do that anywhere. Unlike a fleet carrier, I can't make a long journey to pick up rare materials like insulating membranes and store them until needed. If I didn't build a large star port to start with, I have to keep ships in another system that has a large star port. Which is a pain, because I keep needing to switch between a medium ship to hit rarer items at outposts and a large ship to bulk haul the large quantity items like steel.
I built a surface extraction site, and, unlike my outpost which seems to have a decent level of production, one week later it makes about 30 tons of water a day and 1 unit of nerve gas... Never more than one unit, but if you buy that, another is produced. Most likely a good thing as that's a nasty thing to have around, better it be in limited quantities!
This gives me a little pause as to adding more settlements, what if the next produces a similar level of worthless goods? Judging by the amount of station markets that produce limited quantities of bio waste, hydrogen and nothing else, I'd say that is likely. Is there a mechanism to produce a wider variety of goods? Flail around and find out, the usual way information is dispensed in Elite as the documentation is sparse at best. It would be nice, since there are limited places to place a facility, if you could decommission a facility and reuse the site and salvage the materials used to build something that is more needed by the system or as a manufacturing base to more easily expand to the next system.
You are called the "system architect"... But other than vague indications in the facility selection menu that indicates which way the various, yet invisible, sliders will wander. As system architect, I have no real idea what adding an installation will do. I built a bunch of orbital installations and now my security for the system is "High". Ok, but if add an asteroid station or an Orbis the security will go down. Why? And by how much? How does the architect plan his system? If I never added a security installation and filled every slot with a Coriolis station and/or asteroid station would that make the system an anarchy?
Say I want to provide the citizens of my system a reasonable standard of living and security, how do I ensure that is accomplished? I want to expand to another system, a good quantity of steel, titanium, CMM composites and insulating membranes are crucial and, at some point, and it would be a good idea to build facilities that produce these items nearby to cut down on the travel times. Just how do I add facilities that produce the desired products in sufficient quantities and avoid those that produce limited quantities of relatively worthless commodities?
You are called the "system architect", but you don't have the tools to manage the direction of growth to achieve the desired end product. Indeed, what is the desired outcome? What system attributes make for a better producing industrial system or high tech? How do I maximize the income from a system?
You build a station, and you wander the corridors like any other random commander... No private space to setup an office to plan out your next installation or colony or to get off the ship and sleep in a real bed, no recognition for the effort by citizenry at large for your achievement and sacrifice... Not so much a plaque commemorating the builder and the date the station was completed.
Why build...
Me thinks this update should be called Make Space Trucking Great Again...
