That's right fellow internet peeps – I've decided that ED would seriously benefit from base-building. Allowing players to construct little homes-away-from-home on the various worlds they come across. Now, I'm not suggesting the sort of base-building where you place every wall and window and design every aspect of the layout…. no, no, no. I'm suggesting a modular approach, where you can "bolt" together predefined modules to build you own little homestead.
But wait – I hear literally nobody cry – what is the point of all this? What gameplay does it facilitate? Why would I even want to do this? Well my good friend, let me tell you what I think we would gain from base-building:
- Passive income. Like carriers, you should be able to build services that players can use who may stumble upon your little outpost. Such as refuel/repair, selling cartographic data, buying/selling ships / modules. All the good stuff.
1a) Doesn't that make fleet carriers redundant? Maybe, maybe not. The fact of the matter is, fleet carriers should never have become the things they have. they should be for carrying fleets – and if they wanted to have something with all these services, they should have had a separate "mega-ship" that people can buy. But what do I know. I'm just your average peon.
- Passive income 2 – Planetary mining. You know all those elements that are listed as being on a planet when you scan it? How about, when you probe a planet now, you get a heatmap of those and you can then choose to build automated mining rigs on them. These slowly extract materials and deposit them in warehouses (that you can also build) and every so often you can pop across with your ship and take a bunch of these materials to sell or otherwise use in whatever nefarious ways you deem fit. You can also choose to sell directly to passing ships, perhaps with some automated ui – or by paying for staff to… well…staff the facilities.
- A place just for you. I don't know about anyone else, but I like the idea of just having a small little few rooms, on the edge of a mountain range, looking out across the galaxy, listening to Galnet playing from the speakers as I take my biological samples and process them in my own lab to make them more valuable to sell later on.
- Maybe I don't want to build any of these. Maybe I'm the sort of person who wants to break into these places and steal things. Maybe you can do just that – using all the existing settlement mechanics.
You now have questions, here are some of the most obvious ones:
- But what if I don't want my stuff stolen while I'm not there? Simple – hire NPC guards and place turrets to dissuade all but the most stubborn of thieves. Also, lock your doors. Place upturned rakes on the ground so that people sneaking around get a nasty pole to the face.
- What if someone blows my stuff up while I'm offline/Away/On holiday/Eating pizza/Doing Jury duty or in prison? Current settlements cannot be damaged – neither can these. Still someone may be able to come in and make a mess.
- But wouldn't allowing people to build these things just mean littering the galaxy with stuff? – There's 400 billion star systems and probably over 1 trillion planets. I don't think it will be a problem – but if you REALLY wanted it – a decay mechanic, where if a settlement has not been visited or used in x amount of time, it falls into disrepair and eventually vanishes.
- Where do I get these "Module" schematics from. Awesome question – you are indeed a person of keen intellect. Simple: Mission rewards, scanned data points/salvaged ships, downloaded illegally from a settlement that you hear may have a certain blueprint you're after, CG rewards – any number of other ways. You can even buy a basic set of modules from pioneer supplies.
- How do we build these things? You have a new ship module "construction drone" – which can be loaded with a blueprint and then takes materials directly from the ships cargo-hold. You may have to make several trips if the thing you are building is particularly volumous.
- Where can I build these things? Certain core systems would indeed be off-limits to building, but outside that – anywhere you can put down.
- All of this sounds like a lot of work, it'll never happen. This is not a question, but I'll allow it: Perhaps, but with Odyssey we already have settlements and everything that goes along with them – surely the system could be expanded to allow players to design and place these settlements themselves?
- But elite is a space-ship driving game. I want to drive space ships. SHIPS! SHIPS! More ships! – yes I agree – they should add more ships, but there's only so much you can do flying your space ship before you've done everything. It's easier to play through all the content than it is to add it. This would hopefully trigger some more emergent game play.
- I've had enough of listening to you, go away now. Fair enough, I shall go.
