I mean in a scenario where I'd have to choose between the two. We don't really have to imagine what base building would do to Elite since NMS would likely be the forecaster of such player driven gameplay. Base building would make exploration rewarding on a whole new level. Just imagine going to Plio Aip QM-W d1-48 (Blue Lagoon – very thick atmoshere) for example and not just look around and eventually leave, but also slap down a base on the coolest spot you can find. It would add a sense of ownership to rare finds in teh galaxy, which would simply be priceless for explorers.
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Perhaps even more importantly, player groups could band together to populate entire systems adding their own points of interests and unique builds and useful facilities for other players when they visit. Player groups could populate faraway places in the galaxy or highlight places worth seeing by adding their own bases. If NMS is anything to go by, this would change Elite quite fundamentally and rejuvenate the player base as well. I have NOTHING against ship interiors, I'd love to have it in Elite, but I think it has such vocal demand from the community while the possibility of base building is barely mentioned. So here we go; I think base building would be far, far better for the game than ship interiors.
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How this would be implemented is a whole different discussion, probably too complex for this post, but since NMS was mentioned as a reference, I want to say that base building should be much more difficult in Elite to stay close to the simulation aspect of the game. I wouldn't even mind if fleet carrier storage was needed to carry enough materials to be able to put together a base, thereby effectively making base building endgame content. Let's give more stuff to do for the veteran players who have basically done everything else; this would give them a whole new world of possibilities. Just imagine a bunch of players each taking their fleet carriers full of base building materials to some cool place on the other side of the galaxy and establish their own mini-bubble. Man, I just want to see this happen.
