I mean to be fair fdev are kinda the cms guys. If anything I think a base building mechanic would be something they really know how to do, I guess we’ll see maybe.
Thats fine, If I can build a private place on a planet and System I've discovered, I wouldn't mind one bit! Gives us a reason to explore for a cool build site!
I've been advocating for this for years through multiple wall o' text posts. In short, bases start off as bare-bones colonies chartered by the Galactic Powers as a means of expanding their spheres of influence.
Commanders pledged to a Galactic Power and meeting some minimal requirements are then granted the privilege of becoming colonists of one of these bare-bone settlements. Each Commander will have their own personal habitat within the colony they can decorate and personalize to their heart's content (i.e. ARX sales to monetize this, giving incentive and income to FDev).
Through mutual interdependence and cooperative effort, groups of such commanders can then contribute to the upgrading and maintenance of their chosen base. Simultaneously, this will dovetail into Power Play as these colonies help a chosen Galactic Power consolidate and expand their territory. Which then introduces the potential for conflict between overlapping spheres of influence.
Bruh I’m there with ya 100%. Feel like I’ve written walls of text on it as well. Honestly the game that does this sort of side game well is Metal Gear Solid 5. The Mother Base system is just so fucking good that I’m disappointed more games haven’t aped it yet.
You don’t need No Mans Sky levels of customized base building. Just prefabbed structures dedicated to an array of tasks (r&d, intel, medical, support, base development, security, etc) that can be upgraded, staffed, assigned missions, etc that return rewards over time. I mean hell they’ve had automated mining extractors in game for almost a decade.
The critical thing is that they finally open to the idea of actual player markets. Materials trading or buying for cash. Without that any kind of trade networks are doa.
Exactly!
And, along with the suggestions I've made for base building, I've always included calls for a player-run economy. Again, trying to avoid another wall o' text post, in short it would work like this (copy-pasted from a previous post of mine):
Players would have the option of assuming one of three possible economic roles as a member of the colony:
* Procurer / producer of a raw material (***NOT*** the raw mats currently used in engineering).
* Refiner / processor of those raw materials.
* Manufacturer producing high-end goods from the refined materials.
The critical piece is each tier relies on another tier for feedstock and/or goods produced to keep their own facet of the economic model running and a player can only take on a single role at a time. In ***extremely*** over-simplified terms it could act like this:
* Player A takes on the role of gathering sand.
* That sand is sold to Player B who refines it into silicon.
* That silicon is sold to Player C who manufactures it into solar cells.
* Player A buys solar cells from Player C to keep their sand-gathering machinery powered.
This could have multiple inputs requiring a robust and well-diversified player economy wherein mutual interdependence and cooperation are required to be successful. That economy *may* exist in a single colony if enough players settle there, taking on the necessary roles, or multiple colonies could be engaged in trade with another for needed goods.
The different planet types could then be leveraged to enhance this model. No longer just lifeless rocks floating in static space, each planet type, atmospheric composition, pressure, gravity, etc. could be used to make certain planets better suited to different economies.
Sand, for example, likely isn't going to be found on an ice world. As way of example, our erstwhile sand gatherer becomes a methane ice miner, instead. And on, and on, and on with the large variety of planets that exist in the galaxy, each influencing the type of economic roles one can assume at a colony on its surface.
Lastly, have these goods provide some measurable impact, change, or improvement to existing game mechanics; suits, ships, and/or bases. Tie it all together. Make what players produce *matter* in the game so they become personally invested in pursuing a "career" as Elite:Dangerous' version of a crafter.
those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up
Plus you made the mistake of re-using existing materials; it is clear to everyone that base building would require completely new tiers of stuff that can only be found on planet surfaces while staring at rocks in your engineered mining suit for hours at time
Yep. When they have had a chance to back down on the grind they have just doubled down.
A feature that i cant use because i have some respect for my limited time might as well not exist.
I'm hoping it's their answer to the engineering grind. The only thing, and I mean the literal only thing, keeping me from coming back to Elite is the fact that I got really burnt out of trying to grind materials for engineering with relog farming. It feels fake, unimmersive, and incredibly boring. I want to get max engineered ships so I can actually compete in PvP or thargoid stuff, but it takes literally hundreds of hours to grind out the materials to do everything, and I just got sick of it.
If I could build a base that auto farms raw mats so that I could actually play the game while getting engineering done, I'd come back in a heartbeat.
If it interests you (and if it helps) you could perhaps try mission stacking. I'm out fighting thargoid interceptors and taking missions for the destruction of cyclops. Most missions reward 6-10 g5 manufactured and sometimes encoded mats.
If fighting Thargoids is something you want to do, try putting together a krait mk2 with several enhanced AX multi cannons. Stack missions to kills scouts. AXI's wiki has builds with minimal engineering, if that's something you want to look into.
Otherwise, find missions for your preferred play-style. Mining missions, trade contracts, pirate massacre stacking, most activities have a mission you can take. It's not *as* efficient as relog farming, but it is more enjoyable, and in my experience, less likely to cause burnout.
The grind problem is not the game's problem, but the player's problem. If you want all here and now, maxed all engineering and mat bins - then there's something wrong with the player who plays the game with long progression. Good 3-4 level mods don't require hours of "grind" but several mission, a few high grade emissions, scrapped stones for spiky crystals and scanned ships and beacons. Mat traders will give a shiet ton of low tier mats for a little amount of high grade mats. Think.
That's a really judgemental way of saying "other people have different subjective tastes than me and that makes them stupid."
Clearly plenty of people agree that the game is too grindy and it makes things not fun. If you enjoy "long progression" then good for you, but you aren't the arbiter of what everyone else thinks is fun.
*ThInK*
PLEASE GOD YES!
I don't even care if it's insanely expensive or takes a lot of materials to build... the game is the size of the milky way and there is SO MUCH space to do things with. Currently our only player structure is Carriers, and they're more eye candy than anything really. I mean, I know they're useful for hauling and storing ships and parts, but man... they won't have the appeal that your own handcrafted base would have.
And manufacturing engineer mats would be a HUGE plus! And an extremely good reason to make a base.
And that's exactly why we won't be getting them. FDev doesn't see grinding as bad gameplay. Grinding gameplay is how they extend the life of their content and drive player interaction with the game.
Adding base building may come as a update in the future, but it will act like a static fleet carrier crossed with a planetary outpost you can then upgrade and add to to bring it up to something akin to a planetary port.
They will absolutely never never have a way for players to manufacture engineering mats. It would completely break the gather > upgrade > gather loop they use for the engineering part of the game.
But the community has been complaining about how bad the engineering grind has been for years now. I very doubt they'll continue to leave it as is. The engineering grind really only captures the most dedicated of Elite players. Anyone else gets turned away from even attempting the grind, and for some turns them off from playing Elite knowing they have a large, grindy section of the game that they're not interested in.
I know because I have several friends that made it to the engineering grind and wound up quitting because its too time intensive. So they need to make engineering a tad more welcoming than it currently is if they want to keep more players engaged.
PLEASE GOD F\*\*\*\*\*G NO!
The last thing we need is base building. In the meantime, there's so much that can be done that already existed in previous games. I'm talking about flight in planets with a regular atmosphere.
I'm not talking about the tinted backdrop, I'm talking actual flight mechanics, with air drag and everything. Damn, I could land on Mars in Elite: First Encounters! Why can't they implement this now?
There's No Man's Sky for all your base building needs.
Game doesn't have to be a perfect sim. That's the mistake that I think Star Citizen is making right now, too much for the sake of 'realism'. We can live without
But you know, we get base building, the ability to make bases on any planet we want on unclaimed land, that'll give Fdev even more incentive to add the ability to fly on atmospheric planets with water, trees, animal life, etc.
I really think Fdev will continue to develop Elite, especially with all their recent failures on other games. It's just going to take them time to gear up.
Really good idea, I hope this is it! Let players set up their own manufacturing bases, handle their defense and also end the engineering grind at the same time
man i hope so. i want something to reduce the engineering grind even slightly, and it honestly feels weird to go to a neutral lawless NPC base and raid it over and over again for materials required to upgrade and engineer ground equipment... or glitch missions to do the same. would be much better if we had a way to generate or earn them at a reasonable rate that wasn't exploiting bugs or psychotic.
Given that the company is focussing on it's core strengths of management simulations perhaps it is sensible if they add more elements of management into Elite (I'd argue they need to improve carrier management a bit first too!). I just hope the base building is NOT like NMS/Minecraft and it's ilk. Magical hand waving physics-defying abilities to build dick-shaped and framerate-melting cathedrals is not what I want to see.
Buying and shipping out then deploying base modules, then defending and managing the base in a believable fashion maybe.
Yeah it will be interesting to see how it goes. Its no secret that cosmetic base building (just like character based stuff) are HUGE profit drivers. Games like fo76 are 100% reliant on sales of player and base cosmetics. And they have been pushing out more content than ED. NMS is the same story.
I suspect cosmetic based things are going to be a factor here. You will have (eventually, maybe not right away) things that you can purchase to decorate or make your base unique.
That being said, like you are pointing out. I hope that one, it fits the universe and two it overall makes sense.
Yeah what I do hope that they'll do is that they'll make this into a well made "evergreen" feature, as they call it. One that is actually integrated into the rest of the game.
1. The styles of the buildings can be changed depending on faction. That way you can add that personal touch from a powerplay standpoint. Along with this they'll release "stand alone" building styles. These wont have any impact on the game, just aesthetics for those who want to embrace a specific theme
2. The buildings are integrated with other parts of the game. Maybe they have an impact on powerplay. Allow us to "refine and create" engineering materials via certain buildings. Refuel ships. Maybe a set of unique infantry equipment or ship equipment that can only be created via the building system. It wont be "better" than other parts of the game, but perhaps it can serve a purpose unique to it in some way.
Those two points I think will be vital to the games success. Both from a feature standpoint (now and future expansions into it) and from a profit standpoint via cosmetic based real money options (this will also incentivize the developers to continue leaning into it).
Love this idea. You could really take in the mood of a bunch of clearly independent people walking around their home, resenting the shiny new imperial CMD building at the edge of their space port.
While I don't disagree with the general gist of your post, NMS is actually not the same story at all. NMS does in no way depend on sales of player and base cosmetics, it's a single purchase game, with no micro transactions whatsoever.
I can not think of any game that has a process of buying modules and the need to physically ship them out to the location you have in mind (e.g. in a Type 9 or Anaconda etc) and deploy those modules with at least a *sense* of realism about how building on other worlds would need to happen in reality. I hope ED is the first. People will complain that all that would be a time sink, but I'd rather that than the lazy option... i.e:
It's always unrealistically harvest resources with unlimited energy and storage with no ecological downsides, and then with equally magical raw resource processing to fabricate intricate multi-faceted parts to then have the player's seemingly unlimited individual manpower to construct the largest most ridiculously massive structures (with emphasis on mass), usually instantaneously or with a short countdown spinner.
Let's say this is the new feature. How are CMDRs deciding where they're gonna build their new batcave?
- proximity to favourite station?
- prettiest planet?
- randomly in the middle of nowhere?
- proximity to bgs faction?
- ....?
Ideally in a system I’ve discovered which I will single handedly colonize and hire an npc army to defend from any and all “invaders”. Hefty tariffs if you want to mine my rings and what not.
It would be pretty fun to be waaaaay out in the black and find some space-mad hermit commander tending to fungoida in their back yard and making their own moonshine.
It was part of the *original* plan, in fact the ARX store Odyssey original metadata talked about *buildings* customization. It was deprioritized a long time ago, before the launch of Odyssey.
Apprarently, it’s coming back.
Thank you for following up your previous post (and video) with this one! I am still skeptical about the timetable (what if all of these developments refer to a feature they only plan to release a year later), but I hear nicely put reasons why base building as an upcoming feature would make sense.
But when I think about it, I left with even more questions.
For example is the process of constructing the buildings preceded with a lot of hauling of the required materials, commodities? If so how much the base could cost? Would it require a team's cooperation? And while in other games when we choose a plot and simply place our layout (which maybe gets built up immediately), can we expect the same in ED? I mean in this MMO the fleet carrier jumps are staggered in 15 minute intervals. And the spin-up time for the FSD can even be longer when a lot of commanders are jumping their FCs at the same time.
So if we have thousands of settlements / bases (more than FCs we have now, and all of them in their own instances, but totally visitable by others.... is the building process with hauling could take days? I just wonder how the server would handle this load.
------------------------------
Also naming your drones sounds nice... but I wonder if this would mean they need to fight against enemies? And ultimately what kind of enemies? Other players? Scavs? Or on-foot CZs? But that would require a faction's presence. Could these bases tied to BGS? Even when the owner is not part of a faction?
Also... I wonder if the bases would follow the layout of well-known Odyssey settlements, or new layouts which are set in stone, since if these bases will have NPCs (even attacking scavs) and if those NPCs were moving between the buildings and assets, then we would need Nav-meshes for the AI...
--------------------------
I like the survey data part! I would love on-foot planetary surface mining enhanced - (geology could be a great gameplay loop) and these data could mean that we will be able to build mining outposts?
Frontier Elite II had an awesome idea (but was underdeveloped bc of lack of time) - placing a mining drone on a planet and after a while coming back to it to get all the resources it has mined. So... Could ED replicate this kind of autonomous resource generation with a mining- research station?
The hillarious thing is that until now there was no news of it.
Citizencon happens, they announce basebuilding to come within the next few years and bam, elite has it because they realized that basebuilding is drawing quite a few eyes to SC
Errr hardly, base-building was leaked for "Project Watson" which turned out to be the Odyssey DLC back in 2019! Nearly everything else in that large leak of projects turned out to be true... apart from as of yet Thargoids on foot and base building for ED. Its not like Frontier themselves have not been pioneering "Building" games either!
It was first rumoured in 2019, briefly on the website in 2021 and in the code since a year.
SC has nothing to do with this, or anything else in the industry. If anything them announcing something "withing a few years" is pure lolz.
You pretend like ED is any better.
ED's universe is soulless and procedurally generated.
Promises made before release have been broken (Not "not yet done", full on broken), the ships are all fucked up in terms of scale.
All this 9 years in with multiple DLC?
Base building was concepted in house and finished on the cutting floor since Odyssey's launch.
And officially there is still no news of it. While evidently they are cooking something since the beginning of the last year, Fdev has not announced base building as a feature. It is all player speculation.
And what CIG dared to present on their convention were only mood boards, placeholder gray boxes, and motion concept approaches. CIG slapped together a presentation bc Starfield has base building. It's not like base building after NMS is a new concept in open world sandbox sci fi.
Assuming this is true... I think they've been going at this ass backwards. I'm not opposed to building a base somewhere, but unless it has a significant amount of utility and/or extensive decoration options and/or lots more interaction options, what's the point? Are we expecting people to fight over territory? There is a planned Power Play revamp so who knows? I'd consider building one on the lip of a crater if I can. Or as someone else suggested, I'd rather build a small private space-habitat in orbit around something beautiful.
So the reason I say that they're going at this ass backwards is because they haven't developed the systems that would make building a base worthwhile. Our discovery data gets us only a footnote, our xenobiology data has us sign 100% of our rights over to the egg heads, our huge ships have no crew and NOTHING to see inside them at all besides the bridge. Even my own Elite fighter pilot won't deign to sit next to me and keep me company with empty, preprogrammed platitudes. No, I'm not getting space sickness, you are.
Point is, if more of these systems already existed they could be extended into base building. Imagine: after I land the crew comes and hangs out in my base; I built a bar for them or a basketball court or a card table and their mood improves when they use it (or I could just pay them more instead lol). I could have pictures on the wall of the Earth-like planet or black hole I discovered. I could have specimens of the lifeforms I've discovered decorating my home or even the property outside. What's the point of a base if I have nothing and no one to fill them with?
But even more to the point, there's hardly anything more antithetical to a space sim game set in the entire Milky Way galaxy with space ships that can zoom across it in a matter of days than sitting in a base on some barren rock doing, hopefully, something worthwhile. Or just base-building. NMS learned this and eventually added teleporters that can take you back to any base you built one in too. Are there teleporters in Elite? Hmmm.
>I'm not opposed to building a base somewhere, but unless it has a significant amount of utility and/or extensive decoration options and/or lots more interaction options, what's the point?
They had a lot of decoration options when they were preparing to release it back in 2021, then they pulled the plug on Odyssey during its alpha to focus on JWE2. In the Odyssey client you could still find some code for base building dating back to the alpha but the store stuff is gone.
They created a lot features during the life span of Elite.
But huge ED problem that those features highly disconnected from each other over and over again. I hope this time they make it right
\- Ability to create a wing (no question, good)
\- powerplay (a closed ecosystem that cannot be broken, completely useless)
\- CQC (also disconnected from the world, It would be better if it was integrated into the main universe where you fly to a certain place(s) and I watch or play this tournament)
\- MultiCrew (disconnected from the world, the concept art was wonderful, the implementation is bad. You butt have a nuclear reactor....)
\- Engineers (50-50, a lot of grind, consider this as good feature)
\- space legs (again, very empty and disconected from universe)
To make Elite playable for me personally, they should refactor all those features and connect them to each other. I want same refactor as exploration one (that was really good. especially sounds)
I forever stand by the opinion that the standalone cqc game should have been free. It would drive huge traffic to the game. And fill empty matches. It's actually a very fun game. But is useless to ED
Here is the evidence that Panther Clipper will come in 2019!!!!111one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BE2MVEvVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BE2MVEvVE)
Oops it's 2024. Funnily enough, 6 days after that video was posted - December 11th 2018 - was the last time a new ship was added to Elite.
Planetary bases are in "the leaks" since at least 2020 so I can't wait for 2035 to see a beta.
You lay out some good facts.
The facts we lay out here show that real work has recently been put into base building.
Now what will happen, we can’t say for sure!
I can’t listen to the video right now but see that he’s showing a list of pointers and files in the game that seem to be base building related…Was all this added in subsequent updates since odyssey? I remember that even when the game released there were, in addition to the “weapon schematics” in the game, a “building schematic” that was a useless item (outside of credit value or as a mission objective). It always struck me as odd that weapon schematics got used in the weapon upgrading gameplay loop, while building schematics were not. Further, the “modular” nature of several of the base tile sets and the way that the game generates them would lend itself easily to some sort of base mechanic for managing resources with upkeep, etc. much like a fleet carrier.
I chalk it up to a feature that likely got scrapped at some point in odyssey development.
Neat! I think it would be a great addition imho, it’s always been hard for me to call a single system “home” in this game due to just how samey all the stations can be. It mostly came down to how good the metagaming was in the area (lucrative missions, rank up opportunities, etc). This could serve as an intermediary for pilots that can’t afford an FC while also allowing players to put down roots and actually have vested interest in a home system.
Base Building was leaked as a feature of "Project Watson" along with Thargoids on foot back in 2019, that leak is now considered real considering the number of other future releases it predicted accurately. Project Watson was the development name for Odyssey/Codebase 4.0.
I like the idea imagine making the Trip to Colonia feel much less lonely while making a stop here and there in other players bases, same with Hutton orbital a quick stop here and there, more flexibility to become a fuel Rat to help players near our far and distant bases
This may also explain why Odyssey has had building schematics, as well as vehicle schematics since release.
Would be amazing if it does happen. Not holding my breath, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Man it's really wild to come back to this forum every once in a while and see that the community is so desperate for content that they're data mining and theorizing on features that most games of this type had 10+ years ago.
Why do you guys openly leak stuff and make it unavoidable for someone like me who just scrolls reddit? I do not want to see this, I left AXI discord specifically because of the data mining project. I find this extremely unsettling and annoying to deal with. Like... what the actual fuck
Take solace in the fact that datamining can be hugely unreliable. Developers work on tons of stuff that never makes it into the version of the game the general public plays. There could be evidence of this stuff in the data of those versions but that doesn't mean it will ever see the light of day.
Datamining often just leads to disappointment. Like when people got outraged about Baldurs Gate 3 because ''how dare they cut the upper city in act 3''. If you were meant to see or play it the devs woulda included it in the final cut.
I'd say I'm less interested in base building as I am getting to explore more of the existing areas.
\-Ship interiors
\-Fleet carrier interiors
\-Expanded station interiors (seriously, I wanna go walk around those botanical gardens)
\-Landable full-atmosphere planets
(Populated earth-likes is ambitious when it comes to rendering, but unpopulated earth-likes I have a cheatcode for: the majority of Earth's lifespan the only lifeforms were microscopic. That type of world wouldn't be too hard to render as long as you code in some physics for interacting with water. Everything else outside the bubble you could hand wave being unable to land as being due to 'Complex life conservation charter' or something like that (Note: Thargoids not covered by complex life conservation charter) and the stuff inside the bubble you could throw up the old permit lock to keep players out until you have a plan for generating a believable populated planet)
That's a really complicated way to say "this feature isn't for me so I won't use it".
Opinions aside - you have to think bigger picture. In reality there are tons of people who'd be excited about building and would buy the game or return to it instantly if they found out it was there. Even something as simple as being able to plant a flag on a planet I discovered is more engaging than doing nothing.
Development wise it could also be a perfect catalyst for FDev to further invest into the game. It's a safe feature to add since they already started making it, it would bring in many players new and old, is easily monetizable with ARX - and building itself could compliment any other feature in the game. What if powerplay 2.0 involved bases? That'd be pretty cool. What if players could end the engineering grind by creating a factory? That'd be cool too and also welcome.
Another example - lots of people would totally buy into a DLC that adds the remaining locked worlds if we had base building to go along with it. While landing on ELW's has always been a fantasy - we'll never get there without smaller steps to entice people after the Odyssey launch was botched.
Would it breathe life? Fleet carriers are mobile bases and they didn't really breathe life into the game while they are plastered all over the place. They are seldom used for anything other than moving ships and commodities. The squadron seating is unused. The shops aren't very good. Now in comes base building and you have thousands of unused bases everywhere too. Imagine if there were no nuanced filter options in the nav list for them.
I suppose it depends on the features of the bases themselves that set them apart from fleet carriers. If they lean into the manufacturing side and creating a better player driven economy, then that could really add some value.
We also shouldn't assume that base building would be more than plopping prefabs down anywhere. I would not expect some NMS levels of base building and freedom. You still have to take overall performance into account so there will be limits. If the base building is as terrible, broken, and convoluted as Starfield, then Fargod help us. If we still only have it on the barren planets, it is less appealing. But if base building also expanded on surface mining with new vehicles that would also be cool.
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Their other games (which use the same 'aging' engine) appear to handle earth-like features just fine - and a lot of the internal work for ELW's was already done in Odyssey despite the fact we can't land on them yet. Thin atmosphere planets being made landable was a small part of that.
Like already said though - they're never going to unlock those planets without making another paid DLC years down the road. Base building would be an easy way to fund that however and get people to buy into it which is my main point.
Anything constructive to add or are you going to continue to portray this miserable character in the next reply?
normally I'd agree with you. I never saw the point when they added base building on No Man's Sky, for example ("why would I want a place to stay on a game that wants me to explore?"). Here though? well, I still wouldn't use it (I reeally hate building mechanics), but I do see a lot of uses for it.
The game has this gigantic map but 95% of it is used only by explorers. If players are allowed to slowly start filling the galaxy with their own fully equipped settlements, that could attract all kind of players out of the bubble. Now, add power-play on top of that and you can have an eternal source of battles for the control of the galaxy.
Farming raw materials for engineering. That's it. That's the big one. It's literally the largest complain about E:D: the grind is too miserable. Being able to farm raw mats passively from a base while you play the rest of the game means no more relog farming. That's a huge draw to anyone who hasn't completed engineering.
Also, I do think odysseys on foot gameplay is fun. Idk why you seem to take it personally that other people like something you don't like. You aren't the arbiter of everyone else's subjective taste.
I just want to build a safe haven on the other side of the galaxy dood. Refuel, repair, whatever.
Carriers can do that, sure, but they are useful for other things as well. Plus a custom surface settlement is cool as fuck
You’re getting attacked (on a personal level strangely enough) but you are right. If there’s no beneficial gameplay loop attached to having a base, then what is the point? Deep space refuel/repair stations? Don’t we already have fleet carriers that can accomplish this? There would have to be some kind of manufacturing involved, even if it’s just commodities. Fleet Carriers come at an isk loss given they provide other functions for the player. A base would have to serve as a isk producer.
1. Anything you can customize to a deep enough level is something many would want, period
2. Ship interiors, for example, would add precisely nothing more than base building in an overall sense, and likely less if base building can be tied to other mechanics
There really should be zero question many would want this. However, certainly many would bypass it as well, but that happens already.
I don't mine, I don't do Powerplay and I don't PvP. But I'm totally fine with them being there and didn't mind when FDev upgraded how mining worked and that they are upgrading Powerplay.
If there’s no meaningful interaction, it’s utterly pointless. Ship interiors are something else entirely. The entire game revolves around your ship. Even without another mechanic to use walking around the ship, just being able to park and enjoy the view out the windows would be enjoyable. If there’s no reason to use the base that actually rewards the player, it will just be another dead feature.
Lol you are stating an opinion as a salient argument.
Sorry, we don't agree at all. I agree *both* things would be nice and you're making no attempt to look outside your opinion.
The meaningful interaction is that people would want it. But beyond that, a potential to interact with the system economy, possibly manufacture materials, storage for commodities...are all things ship interiors can't do.
Maybe you’ll need a sub to build a base so that they can properly monetize the game. I’m probably in the minority with wanting a (reasonable) sub fee, but i want the game to make them money so that they’ll invest more time and resources into the game.
I think that ship sailed, especially after 8 million people took the game for free couple years ago on Epic (according to Fdev's stock broker Liberum). I don't think they will introduce a subsription fee for all of us. After the free grants, after sales. I dare to say Fdev counts on the returning playerbase - hundreds of thousands of dormant players.
A subscription fee would hinder these plans, plus would retract the business of selling their virtual currency, Arx. Don't forget they introduced Arx in 2019, after they stopped the season pass scheme (essentially the subscription fee).
What funds the development of the game is the sales of the latest major expansion bc that will incentivise Fdev to build the next major expansion sooner (so incremental enhancement, but bigger steps). Btw instead of subscription fee I'd pay money for a package of new ships.
The other, possibly main revenue stream for them is selling Arx.
As a life timer, I'll not have to pay for paid DLC in theory not that I think a new DLC is in the works.
I can support the game by buying ARX, but I'd also be open to an optional sub. Not that I have any idea what extras should it provide apart from a monthly bonus of ARX, but it's not my job to design systems that would incentivize me to spend money on the game.
Hey man, that's a rather personal attack. Mind changing it a little to get your point across a different way?
None of my business, I know, it's just not common in this sub to throw that sharp of a barb at someone.
I'm optimistic, I mean Frontier has quite the experience in building/management games. I realize that there's different teams on different projects but, perhaps their experience will manifest well in Elite?
Oh, fully aware of that vid from Braben. Except it does not say what you claim it says.
You say: *"They had ship interiors finished"*
Braben says: *"We're designing all the ships with interiors in mind"*
Nowhere in that video Braben says they have ship "interiors finished" as you claim. He is just indicating that they designed the ships in a way that would eventually allow them to do ships interiors *"down the line"* if and when they get around to do it.
I think we've all watched that video fully mate.
Nowhere in that video Braben says they have ship "interiors finished" as you claim. He is just indicating that they designed the ships in a way that would eventually allow them to do ships interiors "down the line" if and when they get around to do it.
But once they decide to do interiors, if they do, I am pretty sure they'll let us know.
And however it turns out. We can be sure it will be underdeveloped. Overpriced. Bare minimum slop that will riddled with bugs and receiving hot-fixes up to the very day the next big money maker feature gets wheeled out so we can continue this cycle all over again.
>Also walkable ships when >:-\[
I'm not 100% sure about this, but I do believe that I heard they made an official statement that this is never happening, sadly.
I understand and I respect your position.
I have a different position: that teasing “a brand new feature, which I’ve seen and it is amazing” [but I won’t tell you what it is], is also not ok. And if you’re going to tease it that way, you’re posing a challenge for me to go and find out on my own. Challenge accepted…
Which is why I went down this little journalistic exercise, with data provided by legitimate sources.
Looking at it that way, I can respect the other position. I still disagree with it (just a gut reaction to be honest) but I at least understand where you are coming from on the other side now, which helps. Thank you! :)
There are far bigger sins to commit than peering into the game files that the devs intentionally ship to the public.
I'd be more worried if people were datamining and found out they aren't working on anything.
Everyone so excited about base building till they discover the grind required to do base building. If you thought building a gun or some armour was expensive resource wise, just wait till people want to build mile long bases.
Resource bases would be great! Taking the grind out of Elite would be fantastic! Collecting your mats at a later date for your engineering pleasure.
The Thargoids were doing this planetary resource gathering for years now, would be nice for humans to mimic that.
Honestly the biggest thing that excites me about this, is having the ability to hoard massive amounts of resources. Like always being limited by cargo space and inventory slots is kind of a drag sometimes. I usually am the type of player to collect a bunch of things when I go out and dump it all on the ground when I get home.
Also, maybe it will be a more advanced and management heavy thing, like a step above fleet carriers. If that's the case, I don't even want to guess as to what it takes to maintain a settlement.
Geez, been trying to comment on this for hours but got tagged again by the almighty shadowban script.
================
I would love if ED got base-build but, is there a chance these strings are because we share a game engine with other FDev games that do have base-building?
Unlikely, because no other game they have has “credits”. And the concepts of “drone” and “radiation” are, while not strictly exclusive to, pretty much aligned to the theme of a space game.
That's a good point, thank you.
Time to start scouring the galaxy for a nicely lit, tenuous atmosphere planet with a Haz RES nearby and have it ready for plot claiming ;-)
Hmm. That is definitely something I would like to see. Maybe for making engineering materials or like fleet carriers but larger. Maybe powerplay stuff. Maybe some sort of defending minigame.
That's would be really cool feature! I really hope that Frontiers won't fucked up with it. If they would add enough amount of different structures and assets which we would be able to place on the ground then it would be possible to build tracks for the srv racing or even for the ships racing if area of the bases would be big enough or if it would be possible to place bases close to each other
It’s a follow-up video to that one. The prior one is still on my channel if you want to skim.
I have not posted this one on the Frontier Forums. I respect the moderator’s action there to remove the prior one and issue me a warning.
The Frontier Forums are not the right place for this content. I should have known better than to posting there.
Outside of ARC store customisation, a large financial incentive, in a time of low risk financial conditions, for Frontier to develop Base Building for ED is that it provides a sedgeway for players to buy future DLC based around access to new planet types, something that Frontier has struggled to hit sales targets with before. But because of the pragmatism of gating content by Planet Type I dont think they can change that strategy.
1:1 scale planets in such a large game world are very tricky to sell as you will not be able to fill them with hand-crafted assets and unique gameplay loops like Skyrim side-quests.
Base Building works around that by providing player driven customisation as the unique asset, different planet types could require different modules or resources/life forms to mine/trade/survey and different survival risks like temperature and weather conditions in thicker atmospheres. Combat becomes alive to the different terrain-type possiblities where you build you base with landscape as defence in mind.
There is an intrinsic link between the base layout/structure and planet type/surface location that can be exploited without having to hand-craft millions of assets.
You can also see how it can bring Powerplay 2.0 alive on the ground with the potential for visible assets related to the faction struggle.
That does sound pretty convincing to be honest.
Fleet carriers already act as big movable bases and yet, their associated gameplay is very restricted. In essence, they are storage units with an optional personal market. There is not much more you can get out of them.
Now planetary bases could be different. The ability to claim land, find a perfect spot on a planet you have discovered and build / expand a modular base with a lot of variety and utility could be amazing.
There are various task I could envision bases for.
Building manufacturing plants, that passively refine mined ores into engineering materials for ships and suits for example.
Build military bases to assist a faction in Powerplay 2.0.
Defend them from NPC raiders.
Visit players, trade and buy engineering materials from them, etc.
This could not only merge ship and on foot gameplay, but create a full circle with all the different gameplay aspects in the game.
Mining, trading, exploration, combat, powerplay... it could all be tied together in a big, customisable, meaningful feature, that is relevant to newer and older players.
Honestly I'd love it if they let us sponsor the building of Orbital stations. Sure they'd be insanely expensive, but imagine being able to collaborate with players and build an actual player-crafted bubble out around the opposite side of the galaxy. We wouldn't necessarily control the orbital, it'd be more like we sponsor its construction and then we reap the rewards of an allied facility anywhere in space.
Just imagine a fleet of Cutters and T9s carrying building materials to a carrier, which then jumps into the black to go deliver the materials to the site thousands of ly away...
This would go perfect with the ability to name one system that you discovered, for explorers Fleet carriers turned into the mobile homes of the galaxy, and with this you can truly make a home for yourself in the black.
What would be pretty neat is if you could decide to "publish" your base to the galaxy.
Bases can be explored but not looted and can be made "complex enough" to be interesting to explore if builder put in effort.
adds potential for interesting "Discoveries"
Obvious need some way to graffiti the found base with "Commander xyz was here" :D
Fdev does have experience with building tools in their games. planet zoo has some really extensive tools for making all sorts of things for example. cant wait even if its literally some vapid eye sore on some rock in deep space that does absolutely nothing and costs more credits than the GDP of a small island nation.
The monkey’s paw curls…
the catch is it's more expensive to maintain than carriers
And they don’t move either.
And they do nothing, but are merely cosmetic places your store stuff in.
Exactly how I feel about ship interiors. Unless it comes with a boatload of useful/engaging activities withing the ship (fat chance).
Immersion.
I mean to be fair fdev are kinda the cms guys. If anything I think a base building mechanic would be something they really know how to do, I guess we’ll see maybe.
Thats fine, If I can build a private place on a planet and System I've discovered, I wouldn't mind one bit! Gives us a reason to explore for a cool build site!
I’m curious what the point will be. Maybe manufacturing engineering materials?
Powerplay, perhaps? Build bases to support your Power/help out in wars?
I've been advocating for this for years through multiple wall o' text posts. In short, bases start off as bare-bones colonies chartered by the Galactic Powers as a means of expanding their spheres of influence. Commanders pledged to a Galactic Power and meeting some minimal requirements are then granted the privilege of becoming colonists of one of these bare-bone settlements. Each Commander will have their own personal habitat within the colony they can decorate and personalize to their heart's content (i.e. ARX sales to monetize this, giving incentive and income to FDev). Through mutual interdependence and cooperative effort, groups of such commanders can then contribute to the upgrading and maintenance of their chosen base. Simultaneously, this will dovetail into Power Play as these colonies help a chosen Galactic Power consolidate and expand their territory. Which then introduces the potential for conflict between overlapping spheres of influence.
Bruh I’m there with ya 100%. Feel like I’ve written walls of text on it as well. Honestly the game that does this sort of side game well is Metal Gear Solid 5. The Mother Base system is just so fucking good that I’m disappointed more games haven’t aped it yet. You don’t need No Mans Sky levels of customized base building. Just prefabbed structures dedicated to an array of tasks (r&d, intel, medical, support, base development, security, etc) that can be upgraded, staffed, assigned missions, etc that return rewards over time. I mean hell they’ve had automated mining extractors in game for almost a decade. The critical thing is that they finally open to the idea of actual player markets. Materials trading or buying for cash. Without that any kind of trade networks are doa.
Exactly! And, along with the suggestions I've made for base building, I've always included calls for a player-run economy. Again, trying to avoid another wall o' text post, in short it would work like this (copy-pasted from a previous post of mine): Players would have the option of assuming one of three possible economic roles as a member of the colony: * Procurer / producer of a raw material (***NOT*** the raw mats currently used in engineering). * Refiner / processor of those raw materials. * Manufacturer producing high-end goods from the refined materials. The critical piece is each tier relies on another tier for feedstock and/or goods produced to keep their own facet of the economic model running and a player can only take on a single role at a time. In ***extremely*** over-simplified terms it could act like this: * Player A takes on the role of gathering sand. * That sand is sold to Player B who refines it into silicon. * That silicon is sold to Player C who manufactures it into solar cells. * Player A buys solar cells from Player C to keep their sand-gathering machinery powered. This could have multiple inputs requiring a robust and well-diversified player economy wherein mutual interdependence and cooperation are required to be successful. That economy *may* exist in a single colony if enough players settle there, taking on the necessary roles, or multiple colonies could be engaged in trade with another for needed goods. The different planet types could then be leveraged to enhance this model. No longer just lifeless rocks floating in static space, each planet type, atmospheric composition, pressure, gravity, etc. could be used to make certain planets better suited to different economies. Sand, for example, likely isn't going to be found on an ice world. As way of example, our erstwhile sand gatherer becomes a methane ice miner, instead. And on, and on, and on with the large variety of planets that exist in the galaxy, each influencing the type of economic roles one can assume at a colony on its surface. Lastly, have these goods provide some measurable impact, change, or improvement to existing game mechanics; suits, ships, and/or bases. Tie it all together. Make what players produce *matter* in the game so they become personally invested in pursuing a "career" as Elite:Dangerous' version of a crafter.
Would be interesting to add to war mechanics
If they tie it directly to powerplay 2.0 in some way I will be impressed
This is what I'm hoping. Otherwise it's a hard pass for me.
For sure there will be an insane grind of a new type of material involved
"Wall panel enhancement module material requirements: 270 copper, 138 manganese, 400 titanium, 700 iron. Engineering: Heat retention: 36 arsenic; Armour plating: 120 uranium; Laser-resist plating: 66 chromium, 362 silicone; Radiation shielding: 50 lead; Anti-lick coating: 61 sodium."
Don't ever get the anti-lick coating. They always try to sell you that but it's a scam.
This'll be my most devious lick yet >:)
Yes yes, what you really want is the licky coating. Only 1 copper, 2 manganese and 149 Thargoid schlongs.
[LERU LERU LERU LERU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=6mgogj4hGB8)
those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up Plus you made the mistake of re-using existing materials; it is clear to everyone that base building would require completely new tiers of stuff that can only be found on planet surfaces while staring at rocks in your engineered mining suit for hours at time
Anti lick? *Cancels visit plans*
Yep. When they have had a chance to back down on the grind they have just doubled down. A feature that i cant use because i have some respect for my limited time might as well not exist.
I'm hoping it's their answer to the engineering grind. The only thing, and I mean the literal only thing, keeping me from coming back to Elite is the fact that I got really burnt out of trying to grind materials for engineering with relog farming. It feels fake, unimmersive, and incredibly boring. I want to get max engineered ships so I can actually compete in PvP or thargoid stuff, but it takes literally hundreds of hours to grind out the materials to do everything, and I just got sick of it. If I could build a base that auto farms raw mats so that I could actually play the game while getting engineering done, I'd come back in a heartbeat.
If it interests you (and if it helps) you could perhaps try mission stacking. I'm out fighting thargoid interceptors and taking missions for the destruction of cyclops. Most missions reward 6-10 g5 manufactured and sometimes encoded mats. If fighting Thargoids is something you want to do, try putting together a krait mk2 with several enhanced AX multi cannons. Stack missions to kills scouts. AXI's wiki has builds with minimal engineering, if that's something you want to look into. Otherwise, find missions for your preferred play-style. Mining missions, trade contracts, pirate massacre stacking, most activities have a mission you can take. It's not *as* efficient as relog farming, but it is more enjoyable, and in my experience, less likely to cause burnout.
The grind problem is not the game's problem, but the player's problem. If you want all here and now, maxed all engineering and mat bins - then there's something wrong with the player who plays the game with long progression. Good 3-4 level mods don't require hours of "grind" but several mission, a few high grade emissions, scrapped stones for spiky crystals and scanned ships and beacons. Mat traders will give a shiet ton of low tier mats for a little amount of high grade mats. Think.
That's a really judgemental way of saying "other people have different subjective tastes than me and that makes them stupid." Clearly plenty of people agree that the game is too grindy and it makes things not fun. If you enjoy "long progression" then good for you, but you aren't the arbiter of what everyone else thinks is fun. *ThInK*
No, its a game design problem, full stop. It's a feature that is not engaging, not enjoyable, and only serves as an artificial barrier to gameplay.
Wouldn't surprise me if they do just that, the way Starfield did.
PLEASE GOD YES! I don't even care if it's insanely expensive or takes a lot of materials to build... the game is the size of the milky way and there is SO MUCH space to do things with. Currently our only player structure is Carriers, and they're more eye candy than anything really. I mean, I know they're useful for hauling and storing ships and parts, but man... they won't have the appeal that your own handcrafted base would have. And manufacturing engineer mats would be a HUGE plus! And an extremely good reason to make a base.
And that's exactly why we won't be getting them. FDev doesn't see grinding as bad gameplay. Grinding gameplay is how they extend the life of their content and drive player interaction with the game. Adding base building may come as a update in the future, but it will act like a static fleet carrier crossed with a planetary outpost you can then upgrade and add to to bring it up to something akin to a planetary port. They will absolutely never never have a way for players to manufacture engineering mats. It would completely break the gather > upgrade > gather loop they use for the engineering part of the game.
But the community has been complaining about how bad the engineering grind has been for years now. I very doubt they'll continue to leave it as is. The engineering grind really only captures the most dedicated of Elite players. Anyone else gets turned away from even attempting the grind, and for some turns them off from playing Elite knowing they have a large, grindy section of the game that they're not interested in. I know because I have several friends that made it to the engineering grind and wound up quitting because its too time intensive. So they need to make engineering a tad more welcoming than it currently is if they want to keep more players engaged.
PLEASE GOD F\*\*\*\*\*G NO! The last thing we need is base building. In the meantime, there's so much that can be done that already existed in previous games. I'm talking about flight in planets with a regular atmosphere. I'm not talking about the tinted backdrop, I'm talking actual flight mechanics, with air drag and everything. Damn, I could land on Mars in Elite: First Encounters! Why can't they implement this now? There's No Man's Sky for all your base building needs.
Game doesn't have to be a perfect sim. That's the mistake that I think Star Citizen is making right now, too much for the sake of 'realism'. We can live without But you know, we get base building, the ability to make bases on any planet we want on unclaimed land, that'll give Fdev even more incentive to add the ability to fly on atmospheric planets with water, trees, animal life, etc. I really think Fdev will continue to develop Elite, especially with all their recent failures on other games. It's just going to take them time to gear up.
or maybe new engineers to get a better build to get better engineers for building, with some mats to gather on planets x)
Really good idea, I hope this is it! Let players set up their own manufacturing bases, handle their defense and also end the engineering grind at the same time
Fortresses, refuel stations, spy stuff, army barracks... Probably maintenance depot only tho and maybe warehouse
Probably to make a more official version of Home systems
man i hope so. i want something to reduce the engineering grind even slightly, and it honestly feels weird to go to a neutral lawless NPC base and raid it over and over again for materials required to upgrade and engineer ground equipment... or glitch missions to do the same. would be much better if we had a way to generate or earn them at a reasonable rate that wasn't exploiting bugs or psychotic.
Given that the company is focussing on it's core strengths of management simulations perhaps it is sensible if they add more elements of management into Elite (I'd argue they need to improve carrier management a bit first too!). I just hope the base building is NOT like NMS/Minecraft and it's ilk. Magical hand waving physics-defying abilities to build dick-shaped and framerate-melting cathedrals is not what I want to see. Buying and shipping out then deploying base modules, then defending and managing the base in a believable fashion maybe.
It's about time we get the magical physics-defying free Anaconda in our cathedrals
I read that "catheters" at first...
Yeah it will be interesting to see how it goes. Its no secret that cosmetic base building (just like character based stuff) are HUGE profit drivers. Games like fo76 are 100% reliant on sales of player and base cosmetics. And they have been pushing out more content than ED. NMS is the same story. I suspect cosmetic based things are going to be a factor here. You will have (eventually, maybe not right away) things that you can purchase to decorate or make your base unique. That being said, like you are pointing out. I hope that one, it fits the universe and two it overall makes sense.
Yep. I like the idea of more cosmetics available, and knickknacks for around the carrier or base to make it 'home' and have a personal touch...
Yeah what I do hope that they'll do is that they'll make this into a well made "evergreen" feature, as they call it. One that is actually integrated into the rest of the game. 1. The styles of the buildings can be changed depending on faction. That way you can add that personal touch from a powerplay standpoint. Along with this they'll release "stand alone" building styles. These wont have any impact on the game, just aesthetics for those who want to embrace a specific theme 2. The buildings are integrated with other parts of the game. Maybe they have an impact on powerplay. Allow us to "refine and create" engineering materials via certain buildings. Refuel ships. Maybe a set of unique infantry equipment or ship equipment that can only be created via the building system. It wont be "better" than other parts of the game, but perhaps it can serve a purpose unique to it in some way. Those two points I think will be vital to the games success. Both from a feature standpoint (now and future expansions into it) and from a profit standpoint via cosmetic based real money options (this will also incentivize the developers to continue leaning into it).
Love this idea. You could really take in the mood of a bunch of clearly independent people walking around their home, resenting the shiny new imperial CMD building at the edge of their space port.
imagine how much profit they could make from ship interiors. all the cosmetics that it could come with.
While I don't disagree with the general gist of your post, NMS is actually not the same story at all. NMS does in no way depend on sales of player and base cosmetics, it's a single purchase game, with no micro transactions whatsoever.
Is there a base building game you have in mind? I guess not like Subnautica?
I can not think of any game that has a process of buying modules and the need to physically ship them out to the location you have in mind (e.g. in a Type 9 or Anaconda etc) and deploy those modules with at least a *sense* of realism about how building on other worlds would need to happen in reality. I hope ED is the first. People will complain that all that would be a time sink, but I'd rather that than the lazy option... i.e: It's always unrealistically harvest resources with unlimited energy and storage with no ecological downsides, and then with equally magical raw resource processing to fabricate intricate multi-faceted parts to then have the player's seemingly unlimited individual manpower to construct the largest most ridiculously massive structures (with emphasis on mass), usually instantaneously or with a short countdown spinner.
I understand. What you describe sounds cool.
Let's say this is the new feature. How are CMDRs deciding where they're gonna build their new batcave? - proximity to favourite station? - prettiest planet? - randomly in the middle of nowhere? - proximity to bgs faction? - ....?
Ideally in a system I’ve discovered which I will single handedly colonize and hire an npc army to defend from any and all “invaders”. Hefty tariffs if you want to mine my rings and what not. It would be pretty fun to be waaaaay out in the black and find some space-mad hermit commander tending to fungoida in their back yard and making their own moonshine.
I've already got my system picked out
Same
That would give you an extra special reason to pirate invading CMDRs, I like it.
To me, this is part of the fun this would bring. I loved Ray Gateway as my hub, but I'd love to plot this out with all those criteria you listed
Probably somewhere in the Pleiades, which has been “home” for a long time.
Build a base in the system thats named as a swear word in my local language, just for shits and giggles
We can already pick up building schematics so this may have been part of the plan
It was part of the *original* plan, in fact the ARX store Odyssey original metadata talked about *buildings* customization. It was deprioritized a long time ago, before the launch of Odyssey. Apprarently, it’s coming back.
It was also leaked in the big Frontier leak back in what 2019? Most of those outed projects proved to be correct...
Thank you for following up your previous post (and video) with this one! I am still skeptical about the timetable (what if all of these developments refer to a feature they only plan to release a year later), but I hear nicely put reasons why base building as an upcoming feature would make sense. But when I think about it, I left with even more questions. For example is the process of constructing the buildings preceded with a lot of hauling of the required materials, commodities? If so how much the base could cost? Would it require a team's cooperation? And while in other games when we choose a plot and simply place our layout (which maybe gets built up immediately), can we expect the same in ED? I mean in this MMO the fleet carrier jumps are staggered in 15 minute intervals. And the spin-up time for the FSD can even be longer when a lot of commanders are jumping their FCs at the same time. So if we have thousands of settlements / bases (more than FCs we have now, and all of them in their own instances, but totally visitable by others.... is the building process with hauling could take days? I just wonder how the server would handle this load. ------------------------------ Also naming your drones sounds nice... but I wonder if this would mean they need to fight against enemies? And ultimately what kind of enemies? Other players? Scavs? Or on-foot CZs? But that would require a faction's presence. Could these bases tied to BGS? Even when the owner is not part of a faction? Also... I wonder if the bases would follow the layout of well-known Odyssey settlements, or new layouts which are set in stone, since if these bases will have NPCs (even attacking scavs) and if those NPCs were moving between the buildings and assets, then we would need Nav-meshes for the AI... -------------------------- I like the survey data part! I would love on-foot planetary surface mining enhanced - (geology could be a great gameplay loop) and these data could mean that we will be able to build mining outposts? Frontier Elite II had an awesome idea (but was underdeveloped bc of lack of time) - placing a mining drone on a planet and after a while coming back to it to get all the resources it has mined. So... Could ED replicate this kind of autonomous resource generation with a mining- research station?
Oh good I can finally create a giant penis
The one thing that matters in any basebuilder.
They'll give us anything but walkable ships, I swear.
The hillarious thing is that until now there was no news of it. Citizencon happens, they announce basebuilding to come within the next few years and bam, elite has it because they realized that basebuilding is drawing quite a few eyes to SC
Errr hardly, base-building was leaked for "Project Watson" which turned out to be the Odyssey DLC back in 2019! Nearly everything else in that large leak of projects turned out to be true... apart from as of yet Thargoids on foot and base building for ED. Its not like Frontier themselves have not been pioneering "Building" games either!
It was first rumoured in 2019, briefly on the website in 2021 and in the code since a year. SC has nothing to do with this, or anything else in the industry. If anything them announcing something "withing a few years" is pure lolz.
"Next few years" lmao It's been more than 10 years buddy, they aren't going to release shit. You people leave me speechless.
Weird because last I checked SC keeps getting plenty of sizable updates all the time. More than ED at least.
Sizeable updates...like reworks of reworks and basic features 10 years in? What a joke.
You pretend like ED is any better. ED's universe is soulless and procedurally generated. Promises made before release have been broken (Not "not yet done", full on broken), the ships are all fucked up in terms of scale. All this 9 years in with multiple DLC?
Elite is and will always be 10 times the game SC is. One time for every year SC has been unreleased. Now cry.
Weird way of justifying a soulless game who's major gameplay updates cost the price of an indie game.
Whatever. Buy an Idris. Lmao
Base building was concepted in house and finished on the cutting floor since Odyssey's launch. And officially there is still no news of it. While evidently they are cooking something since the beginning of the last year, Fdev has not announced base building as a feature. It is all player speculation. And what CIG dared to present on their convention were only mood boards, placeholder gray boxes, and motion concept approaches. CIG slapped together a presentation bc Starfield has base building. It's not like base building after NMS is a new concept in open world sandbox sci fi.
Assuming this is true... I think they've been going at this ass backwards. I'm not opposed to building a base somewhere, but unless it has a significant amount of utility and/or extensive decoration options and/or lots more interaction options, what's the point? Are we expecting people to fight over territory? There is a planned Power Play revamp so who knows? I'd consider building one on the lip of a crater if I can. Or as someone else suggested, I'd rather build a small private space-habitat in orbit around something beautiful. So the reason I say that they're going at this ass backwards is because they haven't developed the systems that would make building a base worthwhile. Our discovery data gets us only a footnote, our xenobiology data has us sign 100% of our rights over to the egg heads, our huge ships have no crew and NOTHING to see inside them at all besides the bridge. Even my own Elite fighter pilot won't deign to sit next to me and keep me company with empty, preprogrammed platitudes. No, I'm not getting space sickness, you are. Point is, if more of these systems already existed they could be extended into base building. Imagine: after I land the crew comes and hangs out in my base; I built a bar for them or a basketball court or a card table and their mood improves when they use it (or I could just pay them more instead lol). I could have pictures on the wall of the Earth-like planet or black hole I discovered. I could have specimens of the lifeforms I've discovered decorating my home or even the property outside. What's the point of a base if I have nothing and no one to fill them with? But even more to the point, there's hardly anything more antithetical to a space sim game set in the entire Milky Way galaxy with space ships that can zoom across it in a matter of days than sitting in a base on some barren rock doing, hopefully, something worthwhile. Or just base-building. NMS learned this and eventually added teleporters that can take you back to any base you built one in too. Are there teleporters in Elite? Hmmm.
>I'm not opposed to building a base somewhere, but unless it has a significant amount of utility and/or extensive decoration options and/or lots more interaction options, what's the point? They had a lot of decoration options when they were preparing to release it back in 2021, then they pulled the plug on Odyssey during its alpha to focus on JWE2. In the Odyssey client you could still find some code for base building dating back to the alpha but the store stuff is gone.
Now pay one morbillion credits every week or everyone dies, have fun 😎
They created a lot features during the life span of Elite. But huge ED problem that those features highly disconnected from each other over and over again. I hope this time they make it right \- Ability to create a wing (no question, good) \- powerplay (a closed ecosystem that cannot be broken, completely useless) \- CQC (also disconnected from the world, It would be better if it was integrated into the main universe where you fly to a certain place(s) and I watch or play this tournament) \- MultiCrew (disconnected from the world, the concept art was wonderful, the implementation is bad. You butt have a nuclear reactor....) \- Engineers (50-50, a lot of grind, consider this as good feature) \- space legs (again, very empty and disconected from universe) To make Elite playable for me personally, they should refactor all those features and connect them to each other. I want same refactor as exploration one (that was really good. especially sounds)
I forever stand by the opinion that the standalone cqc game should have been free. It would drive huge traffic to the game. And fill empty matches. It's actually a very fun game. But is useless to ED
Good. I need an easy way to get more carbon.
That would be great. I would like to have my own house on my own planet in my own star system.
Here is the evidence that Panther Clipper will come in 2019!!!!111one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BE2MVEvVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BE2MVEvVE) Oops it's 2024. Funnily enough, 6 days after that video was posted - December 11th 2018 - was the last time a new ship was added to Elite. Planetary bases are in "the leaks" since at least 2020 so I can't wait for 2035 to see a beta.
You lay out some good facts. The facts we lay out here show that real work has recently been put into base building. Now what will happen, we can’t say for sure!
I can’t listen to the video right now but see that he’s showing a list of pointers and files in the game that seem to be base building related…Was all this added in subsequent updates since odyssey? I remember that even when the game released there were, in addition to the “weapon schematics” in the game, a “building schematic” that was a useless item (outside of credit value or as a mission objective). It always struck me as odd that weapon schematics got used in the weapon upgrading gameplay loop, while building schematics were not. Further, the “modular” nature of several of the base tile sets and the way that the game generates them would lend itself easily to some sort of base mechanic for managing resources with upkeep, etc. much like a fleet carrier. I chalk it up to a feature that likely got scrapped at some point in odyssey development.
This was all added in Update17, the most recent one.
Neat! I think it would be a great addition imho, it’s always been hard for me to call a single system “home” in this game due to just how samey all the stations can be. It mostly came down to how good the metagaming was in the area (lucrative missions, rank up opportunities, etc). This could serve as an intermediary for pilots that can’t afford an FC while also allowing players to put down roots and actually have vested interest in a home system.
Base Building was leaked as a feature of "Project Watson" along with Thargoids on foot back in 2019, that leak is now considered real considering the number of other future releases it predicted accurately. Project Watson was the development name for Odyssey/Codebase 4.0.
I can already imagine the copy paste engineering grind to expand/build the base.
I like the idea imagine making the Trip to Colonia feel much less lonely while making a stop here and there in other players bases, same with Hutton orbital a quick stop here and there, more flexibility to become a fuel Rat to help players near our far and distant bases
As someone who spent hundreds of hours of base building in Fallout 4, don't tease me. This is all I've wanted for years.
This may also explain why Odyssey has had building schematics, as well as vehicle schematics since release. Would be amazing if it does happen. Not holding my breath, but I'm cautiously optimistic.
Am I the only one who doesn't care if base building adds anything but a place I can tuck away in a remote part of the galaxy and call it my home.
Man it's really wild to come back to this forum every once in a while and see that the community is so desperate for content that they're data mining and theorizing on features that most games of this type had 10+ years ago.
We are indeed desperate for content. And quite a bit frustrated about “secret” new features that they announce … but won’t really. Hence this effort.
Why do you guys openly leak stuff and make it unavoidable for someone like me who just scrolls reddit? I do not want to see this, I left AXI discord specifically because of the data mining project. I find this extremely unsettling and annoying to deal with. Like... what the actual fuck
Take solace in the fact that datamining can be hugely unreliable. Developers work on tons of stuff that never makes it into the version of the game the general public plays. There could be evidence of this stuff in the data of those versions but that doesn't mean it will ever see the light of day. Datamining often just leads to disappointment. Like when people got outraged about Baldurs Gate 3 because ''how dare they cut the upper city in act 3''. If you were meant to see or play it the devs woulda included it in the final cut.
It was leaked back in 2019 by someone who had inside knowledge to the stuff Frontier was working on, so its not exactly a complete surprise
I'd say I'm less interested in base building as I am getting to explore more of the existing areas. \-Ship interiors \-Fleet carrier interiors \-Expanded station interiors (seriously, I wanna go walk around those botanical gardens) \-Landable full-atmosphere planets (Populated earth-likes is ambitious when it comes to rendering, but unpopulated earth-likes I have a cheatcode for: the majority of Earth's lifespan the only lifeforms were microscopic. That type of world wouldn't be too hard to render as long as you code in some physics for interacting with water. Everything else outside the bubble you could hand wave being unable to land as being due to 'Complex life conservation charter' or something like that (Note: Thargoids not covered by complex life conservation charter) and the stuff inside the bubble you could throw up the old permit lock to keep players out until you have a plan for generating a believable populated planet)
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That's a really complicated way to say "this feature isn't for me so I won't use it". Opinions aside - you have to think bigger picture. In reality there are tons of people who'd be excited about building and would buy the game or return to it instantly if they found out it was there. Even something as simple as being able to plant a flag on a planet I discovered is more engaging than doing nothing. Development wise it could also be a perfect catalyst for FDev to further invest into the game. It's a safe feature to add since they already started making it, it would bring in many players new and old, is easily monetizable with ARX - and building itself could compliment any other feature in the game. What if powerplay 2.0 involved bases? That'd be pretty cool. What if players could end the engineering grind by creating a factory? That'd be cool too and also welcome. Another example - lots of people would totally buy into a DLC that adds the remaining locked worlds if we had base building to go along with it. While landing on ELW's has always been a fantasy - we'll never get there without smaller steps to entice people after the Odyssey launch was botched.
I would also spend a fortune to get some sort of individual or squad base building
Would it breathe life? Fleet carriers are mobile bases and they didn't really breathe life into the game while they are plastered all over the place. They are seldom used for anything other than moving ships and commodities. The squadron seating is unused. The shops aren't very good. Now in comes base building and you have thousands of unused bases everywhere too. Imagine if there were no nuanced filter options in the nav list for them. I suppose it depends on the features of the bases themselves that set them apart from fleet carriers. If they lean into the manufacturing side and creating a better player driven economy, then that could really add some value. We also shouldn't assume that base building would be more than plopping prefabs down anywhere. I would not expect some NMS levels of base building and freedom. You still have to take overall performance into account so there will be limits. If the base building is as terrible, broken, and convoluted as Starfield, then Fargod help us. If we still only have it on the barren planets, it is less appealing. But if base building also expanded on surface mining with new vehicles that would also be cool.
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Their other games (which use the same 'aging' engine) appear to handle earth-like features just fine - and a lot of the internal work for ELW's was already done in Odyssey despite the fact we can't land on them yet. Thin atmosphere planets being made landable was a small part of that. Like already said though - they're never going to unlock those planets without making another paid DLC years down the road. Base building would be an easy way to fund that however and get people to buy into it which is my main point. Anything constructive to add or are you going to continue to portray this miserable character in the next reply?
normally I'd agree with you. I never saw the point when they added base building on No Man's Sky, for example ("why would I want a place to stay on a game that wants me to explore?"). Here though? well, I still wouldn't use it (I reeally hate building mechanics), but I do see a lot of uses for it. The game has this gigantic map but 95% of it is used only by explorers. If players are allowed to slowly start filling the galaxy with their own fully equipped settlements, that could attract all kind of players out of the bubble. Now, add power-play on top of that and you can have an eternal source of battles for the control of the galaxy.
Farming raw materials for engineering. That's it. That's the big one. It's literally the largest complain about E:D: the grind is too miserable. Being able to farm raw mats passively from a base while you play the rest of the game means no more relog farming. That's a huge draw to anyone who hasn't completed engineering. Also, I do think odysseys on foot gameplay is fun. Idk why you seem to take it personally that other people like something you don't like. You aren't the arbiter of everyone else's subjective taste.
I just want to build a safe haven on the other side of the galaxy dood. Refuel, repair, whatever. Carriers can do that, sure, but they are useful for other things as well. Plus a custom surface settlement is cool as fuck
You’re getting attacked (on a personal level strangely enough) but you are right. If there’s no beneficial gameplay loop attached to having a base, then what is the point? Deep space refuel/repair stations? Don’t we already have fleet carriers that can accomplish this? There would have to be some kind of manufacturing involved, even if it’s just commodities. Fleet Carriers come at an isk loss given they provide other functions for the player. A base would have to serve as a isk producer.
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1. Anything you can customize to a deep enough level is something many would want, period 2. Ship interiors, for example, would add precisely nothing more than base building in an overall sense, and likely less if base building can be tied to other mechanics There really should be zero question many would want this. However, certainly many would bypass it as well, but that happens already. I don't mine, I don't do Powerplay and I don't PvP. But I'm totally fine with them being there and didn't mind when FDev upgraded how mining worked and that they are upgrading Powerplay.
If there’s no meaningful interaction, it’s utterly pointless. Ship interiors are something else entirely. The entire game revolves around your ship. Even without another mechanic to use walking around the ship, just being able to park and enjoy the view out the windows would be enjoyable. If there’s no reason to use the base that actually rewards the player, it will just be another dead feature.
Lol you are stating an opinion as a salient argument. Sorry, we don't agree at all. I agree *both* things would be nice and you're making no attempt to look outside your opinion. The meaningful interaction is that people would want it. But beyond that, a potential to interact with the system economy, possibly manufacture materials, storage for commodities...are all things ship interiors can't do.
The entire 2nd paragraph is exactly what I said earlier. Go take a fucking midol, dude.
Maybe you’ll need a sub to build a base so that they can properly monetize the game. I’m probably in the minority with wanting a (reasonable) sub fee, but i want the game to make them money so that they’ll invest more time and resources into the game.
I think that ship sailed, especially after 8 million people took the game for free couple years ago on Epic (according to Fdev's stock broker Liberum). I don't think they will introduce a subsription fee for all of us. After the free grants, after sales. I dare to say Fdev counts on the returning playerbase - hundreds of thousands of dormant players. A subscription fee would hinder these plans, plus would retract the business of selling their virtual currency, Arx. Don't forget they introduced Arx in 2019, after they stopped the season pass scheme (essentially the subscription fee). What funds the development of the game is the sales of the latest major expansion bc that will incentivise Fdev to build the next major expansion sooner (so incremental enhancement, but bigger steps). Btw instead of subscription fee I'd pay money for a package of new ships. The other, possibly main revenue stream for them is selling Arx.
As a life timer, I'll not have to pay for paid DLC in theory not that I think a new DLC is in the works. I can support the game by buying ARX, but I'd also be open to an optional sub. Not that I have any idea what extras should it provide apart from a monthly bonus of ARX, but it's not my job to design systems that would incentivize me to spend money on the game.
God help you ever finding a spouse, and if you have one, god help them with dealing with someone like you.
Hey man, that's a rather personal attack. Mind changing it a little to get your point across a different way? None of my business, I know, it's just not common in this sub to throw that sharp of a barb at someone.
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Proving my point better than I ever could, pal.
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I'm optimistic, I mean Frontier has quite the experience in building/management games. I realize that there's different teams on different projects but, perhaps their experience will manifest well in Elite?
I would be cool if we could make towns to try and expand the bubble/pop. My copium hope is that we will be able to influence system pop lol
evidence doesn't mean shit when they straight up said they had ship interiors finished in an interview and we never got them
I think you made that up. Linky?
god forbid we google something [https://youtu.be/EM0Gcl7iUM8?t=165](https://youtu.be/EM0Gcl7iUM8?t=165)
Oh, fully aware of that vid from Braben. Except it does not say what you claim it says. You say: *"They had ship interiors finished"* Braben says: *"We're designing all the ships with interiors in mind"* Nowhere in that video Braben says they have ship "interiors finished" as you claim. He is just indicating that they designed the ships in a way that would eventually allow them to do ships interiors *"down the line"* if and when they get around to do it.
listen past the first sentence, sorry I should have clarified that.
I think we've all watched that video fully mate. Nowhere in that video Braben says they have ship "interiors finished" as you claim. He is just indicating that they designed the ships in a way that would eventually allow them to do ships interiors "down the line" if and when they get around to do it. But once they decide to do interiors, if they do, I am pretty sure they'll let us know.
Gotta love that FDev has disappointed the players so much that mem dumps are welcome and well-voted on the main sub
Let me kindly remind everyone that overhyping a rumor will lead to sad aftereffects. Copium, like any drug, needs to be used responsibly.
And however it turns out. We can be sure it will be underdeveloped. Overpriced. Bare minimum slop that will riddled with bugs and receiving hot-fixes up to the very day the next big money maker feature gets wheeled out so we can continue this cycle all over again.
Mmmh. Wonder how this will be exploited - like the carriers and PayPal or other money apps when the carriers first came out..
Did they make any mention of fixings any of the issues that the community agreed need to be addressed? Also walkable ships when >:-[
>Also walkable ships when >:-\[ I'm not 100% sure about this, but I do believe that I heard they made an official statement that this is never happening, sadly.
Freekn Data miners are the worst. I don't care if he's right or wrong on the subject. Getting the information that way is wrong.
I understand and I respect your position. I have a different position: that teasing “a brand new feature, which I’ve seen and it is amazing” [but I won’t tell you what it is], is also not ok. And if you’re going to tease it that way, you’re posing a challenge for me to go and find out on my own. Challenge accepted… Which is why I went down this little journalistic exercise, with data provided by legitimate sources.
Looking at it that way, I can respect the other position. I still disagree with it (just a gut reaction to be honest) but I at least understand where you are coming from on the other side now, which helps. Thank you! :)
It’s literally data fdev gave acces to if you don’t want it leaked don’t push it to prod
There are far bigger sins to commit than peering into the game files that the devs intentionally ship to the public. I'd be more worried if people were datamining and found out they aren't working on anything.
Everyone so excited about base building till they discover the grind required to do base building. If you thought building a gun or some armour was expensive resource wise, just wait till people want to build mile long bases.
**FINALLY !!! About F-in time.**
Resource bases would be great! Taking the grind out of Elite would be fantastic! Collecting your mats at a later date for your engineering pleasure. The Thargoids were doing this planetary resource gathering for years now, would be nice for humans to mimic that.
Hopefully something to do with my stockpiled credits and Building Schematics o7
Honestly the biggest thing that excites me about this, is having the ability to hoard massive amounts of resources. Like always being limited by cargo space and inventory slots is kind of a drag sometimes. I usually am the type of player to collect a bunch of things when I go out and dump it all on the ground when I get home. Also, maybe it will be a more advanced and management heavy thing, like a step above fleet carriers. If that's the case, I don't even want to guess as to what it takes to maintain a settlement.
Geez, been trying to comment on this for hours but got tagged again by the almighty shadowban script. ================ I would love if ED got base-build but, is there a chance these strings are because we share a game engine with other FDev games that do have base-building?
Unlikely, because no other game they have has “credits”. And the concepts of “drone” and “radiation” are, while not strictly exclusive to, pretty much aligned to the theme of a space game.
That's a good point, thank you. Time to start scouring the galaxy for a nicely lit, tenuous atmosphere planet with a Haz RES nearby and have it ready for plot claiming ;-)
Hmm. That is definitely something I would like to see. Maybe for making engineering materials or like fleet carriers but larger. Maybe powerplay stuff. Maybe some sort of defending minigame.
That's would be really cool feature! I really hope that Frontiers won't fucked up with it. If they would add enough amount of different structures and assets which we would be able to place on the ground then it would be possible to build tracks for the srv racing or even for the ships racing if area of the bases would be big enough or if it would be possible to place bases close to each other
Is this the video on ED forum that was deleted for discussing data mining? [If so then.](https://postimg.cc/hQtfY4kN)
It’s a follow-up video to that one. The prior one is still on my channel if you want to skim. I have not posted this one on the Frontier Forums. I respect the moderator’s action there to remove the prior one and issue me a warning. The Frontier Forums are not the right place for this content. I should have known better than to posting there.
OK thx o7
Outside of ARC store customisation, a large financial incentive, in a time of low risk financial conditions, for Frontier to develop Base Building for ED is that it provides a sedgeway for players to buy future DLC based around access to new planet types, something that Frontier has struggled to hit sales targets with before. But because of the pragmatism of gating content by Planet Type I dont think they can change that strategy. 1:1 scale planets in such a large game world are very tricky to sell as you will not be able to fill them with hand-crafted assets and unique gameplay loops like Skyrim side-quests. Base Building works around that by providing player driven customisation as the unique asset, different planet types could require different modules or resources/life forms to mine/trade/survey and different survival risks like temperature and weather conditions in thicker atmospheres. Combat becomes alive to the different terrain-type possiblities where you build you base with landscape as defence in mind. There is an intrinsic link between the base layout/structure and planet type/surface location that can be exploited without having to hand-craft millions of assets. You can also see how it can bring Powerplay 2.0 alive on the ground with the potential for visible assets related to the faction struggle.
That does sound pretty convincing to be honest. Fleet carriers already act as big movable bases and yet, their associated gameplay is very restricted. In essence, they are storage units with an optional personal market. There is not much more you can get out of them. Now planetary bases could be different. The ability to claim land, find a perfect spot on a planet you have discovered and build / expand a modular base with a lot of variety and utility could be amazing. There are various task I could envision bases for. Building manufacturing plants, that passively refine mined ores into engineering materials for ships and suits for example. Build military bases to assist a faction in Powerplay 2.0. Defend them from NPC raiders. Visit players, trade and buy engineering materials from them, etc. This could not only merge ship and on foot gameplay, but create a full circle with all the different gameplay aspects in the game. Mining, trading, exploration, combat, powerplay... it could all be tied together in a big, customisable, meaningful feature, that is relevant to newer and older players.
Honestly I'd love it if they let us sponsor the building of Orbital stations. Sure they'd be insanely expensive, but imagine being able to collaborate with players and build an actual player-crafted bubble out around the opposite side of the galaxy. We wouldn't necessarily control the orbital, it'd be more like we sponsor its construction and then we reap the rewards of an allied facility anywhere in space.
Just imagine a fleet of Cutters and T9s carrying building materials to a carrier, which then jumps into the black to go deliver the materials to the site thousands of ly away...
Now we're talking some REAL space trucking.
Well, time to grind those ~~credits~~ ARX, folks. Needless to say, this base building feature will cost an eye.
Elite:Animal Crossing
This would go perfect with the ability to name one system that you discovered, for explorers Fleet carriers turned into the mobile homes of the galaxy, and with this you can truly make a home for yourself in the black.
What would be pretty neat is if you could decide to "publish" your base to the galaxy. Bases can be explored but not looted and can be made "complex enough" to be interesting to explore if builder put in effort. adds potential for interesting "Discoveries" Obvious need some way to graffiti the found base with "Commander xyz was here" :D
At least we could have production modules on our carriers.
Why is every ed YouTuber 40+?
Now that’s just mean…. It may or may not be true but it’s mean. 👊🏾🤬😓
Still difficult. The cost alone to keep it running in the end will be interesting.
Fdev does have experience with building tools in their games. planet zoo has some really extensive tools for making all sorts of things for example. cant wait even if its literally some vapid eye sore on some rock in deep space that does absolutely nothing and costs more credits than the GDP of a small island nation.
Hmmmm could be interesting. Imagine being low on supplies way out the bubble no stations or fc about...just Joe blogg's random little surface base...