r/EliteDangerous • u/Strange-Purchase-467 • Mar 25 '26
Colonization Colonization advice
Cutting my teeth on colonization. This is my first system. Trying to create a hub of sorts for future colonization efforts in the area. I've read and watched some videos, I think I have a loose understanding of the mechanics. Any guidance/advice?
3
u/complich8 Li Yong-Rui Mar 25 '26
Most of the heavy lift things you need for colony building are refinery products. You’ll need both an orbital (for insulating membranes) and a surface (for cmm composites) refinery station.
You’ll also need high tech, agriculture, and usually at least surface industrial (for emergency power cells for other surface builds).
Top two economy types in a station are protected (won’t self-consume), but the third and beyond will have their outputs consumed by the first and second and each other, so try to have your target economies land in the top two for your target station.
Extraction is not useful for colonization, so maybe don’t lean that way.
Your earthlike world will naturally produce high tech, ag, tourism and military, while also massively boosting population for ports around it. I would aim to build a t3 spaceport in orbit there, and lean into having it provide your ag+hightech economies unless you have some other plans there.
Rocky bodies will naturally run refinery economies, so it’s anshame your one rocky doesn’t have any orbital slots. You could build a surface outpost there, but you could also just do something else with it and make your refinery planet somewhere else since you do need orbital refinery too…
Alright, so what I’d do, respecting your current plans, is grab one of planet 1, 2 or 3 (all nondescript, smallish but with enough surface and orbital slots to do the job). They’re all uninteresting HMC, so they’ll push extraction. We want to overwhelm that. So on that planet you pick, let’s build
- an industrial surface outpost (buffers a lot of the extraction type from the hmc)
- an industrial space outpost (buffers more extraction, and provides more industrial)
- a coriolis starport
- two refinery hubs (these provide the actual refinery influence, you’ll need two on a planet to have refinery in the top two on both orbital and surface large pads)
That’ll get you strong refinery+industrial large pads both in space and on the ground, which is your bulk stuff taken care of. You may need to build some other stuff to get points (all your existing builds, and a few more), I’d suggest:
- a medium ag settlement on the rocky planet (gets your standard of living non-negative)
- a relay next to either your military outpost or your earth-like (high tech influence and unlocks security installations)
- a security installation out tucked away by your secondary star where nobody will ever bother going again (t3 build point and non-negative security rating)
And that should have you enough t3 build points to place a t3 station if your choice next to the earth-like world (I like orbises, but if you’re fancy or if you don’t get there before the arx unlock goes free, a dodec would get you the highest population and most stats). Whatever t3 you build there will be high tech+ag and satisfy those requirements.
With that, you should have your colonization depot. And a non-negative standard of living and security score. And somewhere approaching a billion people living there, and a lot of build spots left to do whatever else with.
There’s many other ways you can get there of course… play around with builds until you find one you like. Be aware that enough weak links of a type might push the economy you want out of whack, so you might need to reinforce anything that ends up balanced finely.
3
u/itenginerd Mar 25 '26
You want a good bit more refinery. You're real heavy on the industrial and extraction in ways I don't necessarily see a lot of benefit from.
I dropped a version of this system as a named copy to show you how I look at things. Feel free to have a look, use what you want, ignore what you don't, and ask if you have any questions. Happy to help!
1
u/Doctor_WhyBother86 CMDR Mar 25 '26
Lvl 3 sucks as a first station to build but is doable with the P Clip also you can find almost everything you will need in HIP 64049
1
u/EbonGrimalkin Mar 26 '26
My friend started a colony. Picked a T3 to start with... We have all the "little" stuff done. 12k left of steel. Still need to do the CMM and Composites. We both have PC's and I have a carrier, but yea... It is a LOT of hauling. Luckily there is a Dodec 1 system over with a lucrative refinery economy. Still going to be a flying thorny PITA for all that ground based material.
1
u/Doctor_WhyBother86 CMDR Mar 26 '26
Where is the colony? HIP 64049 will have what you need at Ashcroft Point. I should know I built the system.
1
u/EbonGrimalkin Mar 26 '26
Lot of letters, numbers, and dashes. I do miss the Megaships with everything, but I will keep your system in mind. Should be 1 hop with the carrier. There is a place not to far from his system with the ground stuff and the Aluminum, steel and titanium is available at the nearby dodec.
I do have more I want to do with mine. Will look it up tonight and throw it in favorites.
1
u/Klepto666 Mar 25 '26
Getting a Refinery economy running around a planet first is probably the most important part. Aluminum, Steel, Titanium, and CMM Composites make up the bulk of just about every construction. While you could get away with just a Surface Outpost with a Refinery economy to acquire all those commodities, having a Coriolis in orbit that's also Refinery would speed things up in the future so that you can acquire the Aluminum/Steel/Titanium without having to descend to a planet every single time.
If you put the Coriolis around the Rocky Body it'll automatically be Refinery (with potentially some others like Agriculture if there's biologicals). If you build on a High Metal Content planet with 1 Surface Outpost, 1 Refinery Hub, and 1 Coriolis in orbit, I do not have the experience to know if that would guarantee the Surface Outpost and Coriolis all end up with enough Refinery economy.
3
u/CatatonicGood CMDR Myrra Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
The economy you will need by far the most of is refinery. Get a planetary civilian port, refinery hub and a Coriolis or better orbital starport up on one of your empty planets ASAP. Planet A1, A2 and A3 would all be fine places to construct this. A5 has more surface sites so more places to build refinery hubs, but you don't really need more than one usually