what kind of twisted idea sprang from your head? 
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Just thought about it now. But has anyone tested the footfall on the sovereign planets making sure it falls in line with public worlds. Especially with the compactness turned off
Thatâs kind of the point that Iâm trying to raise. The only reason a player âneedsâ a home (as far as Iâm aware, I could be wrong) currently is as a free escape vector. A way to ensure they arenât stuck due to simultaneously having no money and their current planet being/going offline (although even this doesnât always work, the home planet could be the one thatâs offline).
Itâs also highly desirable as a way to get back to somewhere relatively safe when all hope is lost.
Itâs also a requirement to switch skill pages without cooldown. Most of my alts only had a home beacon for this reason.
Thatâs three different purposes with differing requirements and use-cases tied to the same functionality. If I only needed a home beacon as a place to switch skill pages, it wouldnât matter at all that I didnât have control of the actual beacon, or that at some point in the future it might go away.
Out of curiosity, is that because it canât be done, or because it just isnât done right now? Would it be technically troublesome to prepend the characterâs home beacon to their beacon list if not already present?
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I donât know enough to deny that this is the case, but Iâm having a hard time understanding how it works⌠Isnât the extra space/data usage from having to have it ready for people to spawn into and explore when itâs online?
Youâre paying for it at that point. If youâre not paying for the hosting where is it to go? Iâd imagine they have to pay to store it then.
One more totally different suggestion on the home beacon question, and this one wonât be liked by some but might by others, because it also adds a layer of competition. Also, it is a far simpler solution. But Iâll throw it out there because why not.
The highest prestige settlement in the game (overall capital, perhaps you could term it) is always on everybodyâs list as a free warp. Unfair? Perhaps. But serious incentive to build big for some (footfall and all). And it sort of makes sense, wherever has the highest could be considered the default capital. Unless someone were to put some SERIOUS effort into trolling, it would also be somewhere you can easily get to everywhere else to (based on the highest ones now). Edit: Though probably have to restrict it to T 1-3 worlds due to atmosphere. Highest prestige on any T3 or below gets titled the Boundless Capital. Could actually be pretty useful for newcomers too.
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I actually love this!
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Really nice idea. Iâd worry about the potential side-abuse like âOh, we all just independently plotted around your town, completely because we like your town and not to get in the way at allâ.
I might also point out that itâs giving people who live near to the centre of the capitol an extra free warp âhomeâ (albeit one is out of their control and has the potential to move with no notice).
But⌠at some point you have to stop worrying about edge case abuse and just make the game better already. Having free access to a high prestige area might even encourage shopping (if you can warp to AND from the shop for free, itâs an easier journey). Itâd definitely encourage the community aspect of the game to get people to help build up their local mall for the benefits.
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Thanks!! 
Yeah, I think if this was done, devs would have to reserve the right to be pretty strict with anything approaching trolling, even if not exactly against the rules - like, someone were to decide to create a prestige bomb prison underground with no way out.
But I think, yep, that this could be a net big benefit - on thinking on it more, really, giving newcomers free access to what will become a natural gathering spot could be huge. Iâve seen in some reviews complaints about not seeing other people. Do this, and you might have the opposite problem - could end up with the planet filled at peak times. Currently, looks like River Towns has the lead by a good margin. Could do a lot worse than to have newcomers naturally gravitate there, pretty much anything you need you can get there or get to easily, lots of portals. And theyâll get to see some really great builds too.
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I have some real concerns about this idea.
Does this not create an incentive to have every planet become Biitula where the point for a group of players was to absorb everyone in order to create the largest settlement possible? Was all the drama on Biitula worth it enough to have this happen on other planets just so a group of players can have the universe capital?
Does the center of this settlement actually mean it is easier to get places? Are the hubs always in the center or in a planet spanning settlement could the hub be thousands of meters away from the center? I am not sure what advantage this offers for newcomers either? If it is not a hub so they can travel and not a shopping location, but merely a prestige dump then what benefit does it offer the new player? It certainly offers ff for the players with beacons there, but why is that important for a new player or any other player?
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Definitely the potential for drama would be the biggest drawback, I think. But I think the number of people (groups, really) that would go for it would be pretty limited. I can think of just a handful I could imagine trying to contend.
Incentive to try to build big though might be a positive with the rentals coming though⌠a huge reason to keep a massive settlement on a public world.
The way things stand now at the top, I think the odds are it would remain in a spot that is convenient. Truly, as long as it is on a T 1-3 and you can get out of it (if not, it could be deemed trolling and removed) that is all that is really needed here, to get a fail-safe so that home beacons could be placed on rentals. The rest is just icing, really. If someone just prestige bombed with adding no features, first, their footfall wouldnât be quite as great once people figured it out (and even for newcomers, nothing really lost⌠just sort of oh well, letâs return home), but if that DID happen, people would also have incentive to build useful things nearby. Like, hypothetically, if it happened on Raxxa or Gyosha, Iâd almost certainly get a portal set up near to it as I could. 
But, as the top standings are now, I do think it is useful for newcomers - River Towns or the others near the top would all be helpful places for someone new to warp to, as far as portals and all go. Better than no option for any of them, a free warp to a different planet (or a different spot if on the same planet) at the very least.
Edit: Also, the reason to make the prestige the method, is it is simply the most fair and makes sense with current systems, having planetary capitals already with a title attached. Not that there arenât some issues here, no question⌠but I think it would solve the main problem at hand (the beacons) while potentially adding on serious benefits if it did stay in useful spots. And it might be easier to go with this than anything else, if the goal is to allow home beacons on the rentals.
Facts. For a planet with such a huge âcapitalâ, biitula as a whole was extremely poorly connected and difficult to navigate.
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Clearly building octopuses to connect people doesnât work 
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I have on Zeta Zeta Zeta Prime (Rugged Coal world):
silk mustard ancient
dark mustard lustrous (tall trees)
light mustard twisted
crisp yellow sedimentary
stale tan metamorphic
light mustard igneous
strong cerulean thorns
pale cerulean gravel
cool red sand
(picked up looking for ancient lol)
white gleam - nothing in list was real interesting to pick from.
32 hr 24 min until expiration.
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I do understand the desire to allow home beacons on Sovereign Planets. I do hope the developers come up with a way to make that happen.
I would probably disagree, but maybe I have had the misfortune to run into more players that seem obsessed with this type of gameplay. And how much drama is too much? Biitula went on for quite a while with players staying just within the rules and several players leaving as a result. So if this happens again on 1 planet is that too much or is it two or three? I would argue, adding a mechanic that encourages this even on 1 planet is too much.
I can agree that there are players that would want the title and would continue to build big to keep it. But I am still not sure why that is a good thing or even necessary. A large build does not mean a populated build. The two things have nothing to do with each other. And as far as keeping builds on the public planets, how is a possible prestige dump and a constant jockeying for position benefit the universe? If this capital switches back and forth constantly over time, then it is certainly not a dependable location for players. How is this good? So planet A has the capital and you build a portal, then planet B has the capital, do you move your portal? Do you move your build? If it was just to improve the capital and the capital has moved, what do you do?
While I understand trying to create more populated places so the settlements do not seem as empty to new players, just building big or actually just building for prestige does nothing to create a reason for players to be in a particular location. If a settlement is spread over thousands of plots, you could have 30 players there and never see any of them, while a portal hub may be busy depending on the time of day you are there. There is nothing about a settlement being the capital of a planet that necessarily makes it worth visiting, so why are we assuming that a universe capital would be any different?
I do understand the point to create a useful location as a place to go if the home beacon planet is gone. I just do not see how this does that in a way that is not also going to create the kinds of issues that have driven players from the game in the past.
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You got white by default? interesting!
I always thought itâs a t5-6 color more than lower tier worlds.
I think the system should check â
- If the player has a home beacon on a perm world.
If yes - they get sent there.
If no - - Does the person have any beacon
If yes - they spawn there
If no - they get sent to the oldest one or one with most prestige. - They get sent to a perm planet, in the server region closest to their country (just like a new player is).
Theyâll spawn and go from there just like anyone else would.
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Maybe prestige in a beacon should leach away every day the owner doesnât put foot on it, 5-10% a day seems reasonable⌠Soon as they come back, boom weâre back!
All good and fair points - what Iâm hedging my bets on is that if there IS drama, it would mostly just affect the people trying to compete for it, but that it might not happen to any great extent. I donât see the ones in contention right now really causing issues and they might be trying to raise their total anyways in one case, and it would take a lot of work for even number 2 to overtake River Towns (50 mil difference or so). Any group wanting this would have to be really invested in the idea to want to try for it. To get to the top now, investment would not be offset by footfall for a long time perhaps, and it could be taken from you at any time. So actually, the incentive would be limited on that front unless, like I said, REALLY invested.
I think for the vast bulk of players it would end up being a positive or at worst a neutral. If it stays in a good spot, possibly a big positive as far as the new players go. Worst case, a free warp of dubious usefulness.
I think my original idea with the totem and warp might have less downside, and maybe more upside with lapsed players as far as giving some direction (after taking long breaks from games, I sometimes find myself confused about what I was doing then just leave again!), but perhaps a lot harder to implement.
If the devs were thinking about considering the Capital idea and reading this though, I might say - put this one to a poll perhaps. If a lot of people are really against the drama possibility like what happened with Biitula, probably not worth it. I want what is best for the game, and this WOULD be a gamble. I really do think it could be a huge benefit but also donât want it to be the cause of hurting the game!
All new players start out on the permanent planets with the tutorial.
Their spawn location should be their default location, if no home beacon is found.