Horizons Would you like to build your own base in Elite Dangerous?

[NeilF]

About the ONLY reason I can see for a player base at the moment, would be for something like mining (should mining ever make more sense)!


eg: You travel to a remote location to find a good area of resources. You drop a beacon there so you can find it again with the view of "working it".

You and your Wing/friends then go about building a local surface base or platform. Once built it will allow you (& your wing/friends) to go to the mining beacon, slowly work away at the resources there and bring them back to your base/platform to be stored.

Imagine then if you could set the price of the metals/minerals there, and other CMDRs could land at your base, buy the metals/minerals and travel back to the bubble to sell them so they can make a profit in that way!?

My God! Look! Emergent gameplay! Who'd have thought it!

First thing we'd need to do is to break the self-contained mini-game approach FD are taking to almost everything. ie: Where resources in an area are never ending, and simply respawn/change the moment you come back! I fear this will never change though And, unfortunately, this kicks so many interesting outcomes in the doodads!


ps: The issue would be what to do with platform/bases once they serve no (further) purpose etc.

 

[JohnnyTwoKettles]

ps: The issue would be what to do with platform/bases once they serve no (further) purpose etc.

Well. (at the risk of making everyone sigh) this would allow a new breed of pilots. Salvage Engineers. Ships equipped with metal cutting lasers to dismantle the bases and transport the metals away for resale. Converted Asp explorers and Cobra's. "The Flying Scrap Men" (and women) recycling and removing. I may even have a shot of that myself.
I can see a few bases set up on certain moons just so that they can shove all the old copper wiring into furnaces to strip the coating off so that it could be melted down. Solitary moons and planets where the black acrid smoke from the furnaces was vented out into space. Jumping over to 'Sheffield Outpost' (a joke that maybe only the British players will understand) to unload hundreds of tons of metals.
On a more serious note, it does allow for another career option I suppose.

 

[NeilF]

Well. (at the risk of making everyone sigh) this would allow a new breed of pilots. Salvage Engineers. Ships equipped with metal cutting lasers to dismantle the bases and transport the metals away for resale. Converted Asp explorers and Cobra's. "The Flying Scrap Men" (and women) recycling and removing. I may even have a shot of that myself.
I can see a few bases set up on certain moons just so that they can shove all the old copper wiring into furnaces to strip the coating off so that it could be melted down. Solitary moons and planets where the black acrid smoke from the furnaces was vented out into space. Jumping over to 'Sheffield Outpost' (a joke that maybe only the British players will understand) to unload hundreds of tons of metals.
On a more serious note, it does allow for another career option I suppose.

So the owner declares a platform/base "decommissioned"... It then appears on a list all CMDRs can see, and they can then fill their boots on ripping it to pieces. After a certain timeframe it will disappear no matter what (ie: NPCs have cleared it).

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

As we have gotten Planetary Landings would you like to build your own base anywhere you want. This could be an excellent credit sink and also include crafting and loot. Some base modules you buy and some you craft. If you have played ARK you know what I mean. If I had a base somewhere in the Elite Dangerous universe I would use more time on it, and many others would to.

What do you think?

YES (but lots of small print)

I would like the option, but only if other players cant destroy it.... and indeed i think it should be something saved on our harddisk to save FD network space, and therefore probably only reachable by dropping into your own instance.

i cant see any other way being workable as it would potentially just slow the network down as FD have to transmit more and more data.

also, i remember playing the starwars mmo, and it was just littered with half finished bases etc iirc.

i would be dead against other players being able to damage or steal from it - which is the thing which stops me playing Ark.

but, in principle, having my own base would be cool - even if "building" it was actually more like the npcs build it, and the more i supply them with stuff the bigger it grows ratehr than me having direct control.

edit

damn already responded to this. sorry must be going senile.

at least my reply was consistent

 

[NeilF]

YES (but lots of small print)

I would like the option, but only if other players cant destroy it.... and indeed i think it should be something saved on our harddisk to save FD network space, and therefore probably only reachable by dropping into your own instance.

i cant see any other way being workable as it would potentially just slow the network down as FD have to transmit more and more data.

also, i remember playing the starwars mmo, and it was just littered with half finished bases etc iirc.

i would be dead against other players being able to damage or steal from it - which is the thing which stops me playing Ark.

but, in principle, having my own base would be cool - even if "building" it was actually more like the npcs build it, and the more i supply them with stuff the bigger it grows ratehr than me having direct control.

edit

damn already responded to this. sorry must be going senile.

at least my reply was consistent

There are issues though... What if 1,000,000 CMDRs all try building their bases next to each other.. What would the game do? So there would need to be limitations to numbers per system/planet/area etc...


I'm still sure there's someway to allow something more emergent to come of these bases than simply allowing you to choose what colour curtains you want.

ie: If as I suggested in #284 you could store minerals/metals you've mined in your own bases, set their "SELL" price and other CMDRs could then come and buy them to take them onto other locations. And if you then got a cut of any fuel/repairs done too. Guess the issue would be how CMDRs would know what bargains you've got for sale at your base (easily).

I'm sure it would also be easy to have "BUY" prices/quantities for stuff you're interested in, but I can't see any benefit to it!?


And the concern with any BUY/SELL commodity prices in your base is someone would use them to exploit CR transfers. eg: Sell Palladium for 1CR.

 

[willowfan]

Everquest 2 had a system pretty much like that, where you could buy a noticeboard for your home that allowed you to put your stuff, either harvested or crafted, up for sale.

 

[Chrystoph]

YES (but lots of small print)

.... and indeed i think it should be something saved on our harddisk to save FD network space, and therefore probably only reachable by dropping into your own instance.

i cant see any other way being workable as it would potentially just slow the network down as FD have to transmit more and more data.

This is not a realistic appreciation of how the game works. As long as Frontier implements it correctly, any PC base or station just becomes another record in the database, no different in terms of data from any other base. What is unique is the ownership and purpose, but those things are just more data.

Additionally, if it is stored on a local PC, then the facility ceases to exist any time the "owner" is not logged in. Many of the suggestions here are about interactivity; this would not be possible if the facility is not part of the server side universe.

 

[NeilF]

This is not a realistic appreciation of how the game works. As long as Frontier implements it correctly, any PC base or station just becomes another record in the database, no different in terms of data from any other base. What is unique is the ownership and purpose, but those things are just more data.

Additionally, if it is stored on a local PC, then the facility ceases to exist any time the "owner" is not logged in. Many of the suggestions here are about interactivity; this would not be possible if the facility is not part of the server side universe.

The issue then is tens of thousands of bases sprouting up, diluting what's there? And if they're appearing/disappearing with the owner that sounds bizarre to me.

As I said earlier the only real world example I can think of so far that actually seem to fit fairly well, is:-

You travel to a remote location to find a good area of resources. You drop a beacon there so you can find it again with the view of "working it".

You and your Wing/friends then go about building a local surface base or platform. Once built it will allow you (& your wing/friends) to go to the mining beacon, slowly work away at the resources there and bring them back to your base/platform to be stored.

Imagine then if you could set the price of the metals/minerals there, and other CMDRs could land at your base, buy the metals/minerals and travel back to the bubble to sell them so they can make a profit in that way!?

Maybe if there's other good resources nearby, you could even offer a buy price/quanity at your station to allow other miners to unload at your station?

That seems to be a logical mechanic to me... Or maybe players setting up remote bases to help explorers and the like with repairs, at a premium

But I suspect FD would not be keep on this because:-
1) It means people can setup devices to earn money from doing nothing. ie: The station is there, earning money while the player is not even in the game!
2) It would require mining to be more logical with areas offering better resources, you being able to return to these specific locations and to work them and deplete them etc. ie: The ED universe becoming more "stateful". I'm getting the feeling, "stateful" isn't on their immediate list.

 

[EUS]

I'm not sure how this would work. Consider Jaques station. To move it requires manual intervention on FD's side. They have to place it somewhere in the universe, and restart the servers, or whatever, which is why it only seems to move after a major patch/server update.
1,000,000 CMDRs build their stations/bases/homes all over the place, at any given time. Would we have to wait for a major update after building/buying or whatever mechanic is used?
As I understand it, the universe we're dealing with in this game is mostly static.
For better or for worse, I think it will be implemented, only it had better be available to all players, lone wolfs too.

 

[Fendalton]

Building your own base on a planet, and making a SRV racetrack would be pretty cool.

Would require metals for delivery for upkeep and maintenance, and food deliveries for staff, and paying staff wages, to make it expensive enough to not spam them everywhere.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

No. But thanks for asking.

 

[Infidel Deity]

I also hope it will become possible to build personal bases in planet rings.
Not just on the planets.

 

[Chrystoph]

Would require metals for delivery for upkeep and maintenance, and food deliveries for staff, and paying staff wages, to make it expensive enough to not spam them everywhere.

Seen this in other games, and it is not a good thing. You end up spending all your time husbanding the base, and the game becomes a chore. If you want expense, then make the base Cost to assemble, but the quoted proposal hasn't worked in any game I have seen where the environment is even close to as large as here.

Making the base so expensive to maintain that it becomes tedious will just end up being a waste of the developers' efforts since most people will have to spend a significant amount of time feeding the installation. If you must have a maintenance cost, make it credits, not something that players have to ship in.

 

[PiLhEaD]

No thanks, and I'd really rather FDev devote their energies to their re-imagining of Elite.

Stop messing around with frippery like PP and CQC, ta.

 

[Korben Dallas]

FD needs to learn from the mistakes made by other developers.

I'm gonna quote X-Rebirth here from EGOSOFT, who before it was released was pretty much the hype of fans of the genre. Don't get me wrong: X-rebirth is a beautiful game which at that time promised and delivered what fans had asked for: Walking on stations and interaction with NPC's a bit like in the Mass Effect series. A tiny detail is also that the X-Rebirth galaxy is very small compared to ED.

However when it was all done and you played Rebirth, the stations interiors felt dull and bland; repetitive use of identical NPC models, identical music in every bar etc. Soon a mod came out which enabled you to talk to NPC's on the station (within a certain range) without leaving your ship. All the stuff that EGO spent so much time and effort to deliver to the community was just washed down the drain. Players did not feel compelled to get out of the ship anymore to buy weapons, hire NPC's or upgrade the ship since every station felt the same.

I have to give FD credit for ED's dogfighting combat model, which is very good compared to any other game in the same genre I know. I-War 2 comes very close indeed. The next big hurdle for them will be to make the interiors of all stations that we have already just as interesting and good as this combat model so that walking on them and exploring is not only going to be appealing over and over again, but also that the walking will have a purpose. I'm just talking stations here, but don't forget that we still have planets like Earth, the Moon, terraformed Mars, and cities like Merlin who also need to be developed not to mention Lave Academy and all the zillion surface bases that came with Horizons....

At the moment we have 4 types of stations which look gorgeous on the outside:

- Coriolis and Coriolis with appendages (you know what I mean)
- Orbis
- Ocellus
- Outposts (in different kitbashed forms)

The basic interiors for every station are going to be a lot of work, if they want us to visit a whole station, not just a flight hangar. Then they need to add shops, bars, museums, dark alleys, black marketeers, second hand ship dealers, scrap dealers, mining unions etc..), never mind what they will put into some to make them places of interest or pilgrimage (like statues of prominent figures, memorials, an Apollo 13 museum capsule or statues of Gagarin and Armstrong). Then we can add rentable space on these exsiting bases, which you as a player will not need to worry about being destroyed.

I would say, let them do that first, and if they succeed (which they probably will) we can look forward to either personal mining bases (outposts) and other personal bases for those who want them, planetary or not.

I am aware that FD has given us a big galaxy, but...I just hope that FD (if they allow these bases) makes them real personal and restrict their in game model visibility to that specific player's 'Solo game', or that specific player's 'Friends Group game'.
We've all witnessed what a garbage heap the internet became over the years. I don't wish to see the galaxy we all paid for littered by players who drop their personal condo wherever they please, just because they can.

 

[Infidel Deity]

FD needs to learn from the mistakes made by other developers.

I'm gonna quote X-Rebirth here from EGOSOFT, who before it was released was pretty much the hype of fans of the genre. Don't get me wrong: X-rebirth is a beautiful game which at that time promised and delivered what fans had asked for: Walking on stations and interaction with NPC's a bit like in the Mass Effect series. A tiny detail is also that the X-Rebirth galaxy is very small compared to ED.

However when it was all done and you played Rebirth, the stations interiors felt dull and bland; repetitive use of identical NPC models, identical music in every bar etc. Soon a mod came out which enabled you to talk to NPC's on the station (within a certain range) without leaving your ship. All the stuff that EGO spent so much time and effort to deliver to the community was just washed down the drain. Players did not feel compelled to get out of the ship anymore to buy weapons, hire NPC's or upgrade the ship since every station felt the same.

I have to give FD credit for ED's dogfighting combat model, which is very good compared to any other game in the same genre I know. I-War 2 comes very close indeed. The next big hurdle for them will be to make the interiors of all stations that we have already just as interesting and good as this combat model so that walking on them and exploring is not only going to be appealing over and over again, but also that the walking will have a purpose. I'm just talking stations here, but don't forget that we still have planets like Earth, the Moon, terraformed Mars, and cities like Merlin who also need to be developed not to mention Lave Academy and all the zillion surface bases that came with Horizons....

At the moment we have 4 types of stations which look gorgeous on the outside:

- Coriolis and Coriolis with appendages (you know what I mean)
- Orbis
- Ocellus
- Outposts (in different kitbashed forms)

The basic interiors for every station are going to be a lot of work, if they want us to visit a whole station, not just a flight hangar. Then they need to add shops, bars, museums, dark alleys, black marketeers, second hand ship dealers, scrap dealers, mining unions etc..), never mind what they will put into some to make them places of interest or pilgrimage (like statues of prominent figures, memorials, an Apollo 13 museum capsule or statues of Gagarin and Armstrong). Then we can add rentable space on these exsiting bases, which you as a player will not need to worry about being destroyed.

I would say, let them do that first, and if they succeed (which they probably will) we can look forward to either personal mining bases (outposts) and other personal bases for those who want them, planetary or not.

I am aware that FD has given us a big galaxy, but...I just hope that FD (if they allow these bases) makes them real personal and restrict their in game model visibility to that specific player's 'Solo game', or that specific player's 'Friends Group game'.
We've all witnessed what a garbage heap the internet became over the years. I don't wish to see the galaxy we all paid for littered by players who drop their personal condo wherever they please, just because they can.

Thank you!
Your post filled me with joy and expectation.
If they get 2.1 right, the future will look bright indeed!
And I hope we get to make our own bases; both on planets and in the bigger stones in the planet rings!
Aaaaaahh!

 

[Acteris]

Firstly - totally support the idea of owning your own piece of real estate, awesome idea.

Where as in practice might be challenging, in the end would really add to the immersion and depth of the game if done well.

A suggestion related to limit uncontrolled space sprawl would be to have 'estate agencies' and/or 'colonisation construction agencies' that might have a finite range, or space (qty of asteroids, area of land on planet etc). ie on space stations agencies would offer space first come /first service basis.

In terms of asteroids, again would be limited to how far the colonisation construction crew can travel which you engage, and how many asteroids are zoned for occupation. Not too dissimilar to how its done in RT.

 

[anikaiful]

Build my own base? No, not interested personally (am a vagabond in space who hasn't and doesn't want a fixed home, would "restrict" my comings and goings too much... in a sense). But some other people would like them, so there - if implementing them is feasible, go ahead.

 

[Korben Dallas]

Actually, if this can be done like any station that is owned by a group at the moment ingame, this could be implemented pretty easily, although you aren't able to walk around in them yet. FD probably already had something of the nature in mind. I can't see why there would otherwise be a pad on some of these bases.

After doing a 'cut the power' mission, I wanted to try this little 'stunt': Here's a few screenshots:

View attachment 109372

After taking out all defenses, I was able to land on this pad, and also switch off the engines. All we would need now is a hangar on the base in which we can park the deployed SRV and a menu similar to the one after docking at regular stations. It would be feasible and manageable as long as FD puts stations on the planets and we as a group can conquer them.

No littering the galaxy with private bases, and the base has a purpose.

 

[Zimpok]

I don't want to build a base. I just want to have a capital ship that I can keep all my ships in.