Why do you call Destruction of Property Murder?

[Nara]

Because the "instant, ever-present, indestructible" escape capsule is a description of an aspect of the current game code, while everything else is an aspect of the game's simulated world.

As players we all have the instant escape pods because a) there's no ironman mode, b) there are no manually operated escape pods that we can buy and, even if there were, c) nobody wants to sit in front of their PC for days, weeks or months after ship destruction while their avatar floats in deep space waiting for the rescue ship to arrive and take them back to civilisation.

In the game world, not every entity has a escape system and characters have no way of knowing who has and who hasn't. So blowing someone's ship up is murder, or at the very least attempted murder. Players know that other players have an instant escape capsule, but applying that knowledge to the in-game crime of murder is confusing the in-game universe with the meta once more.

The game world and the game code, the game players and the game characters. Easy to keep separate. No bullet-proof vests, blank rounds or bananas needed. Of course certain agendas are furthered by conflating the two, which does muddy the waters a bit.

That's a good point, but it is based on your assumption that the escape capsule is not part of the game world and only a game mechanic.

I disagree with this because it clearly is part of the game world. The game mechanic is the fast travel, not the escape capsule. Also, as quoted a few pages back FD have said it always exists. You could say that they only mean for players but that would also be an assumption.

So we are back to escape capsules being always present and infallible, and therefore murder is still impossible.

 

[Pendra]

So my question is this. How do you refer to your self? What do you call your, actions. As you have pointed out. You are not a bounty hunter, or even a pirate, so what are you, what is your title, in the great scheme of things?.

A simple trader, who went full space nuts and turned into a homicidal maniac. Now he captaining his U-Boot on the Atlantic. Evading allied navies and sinking cargo.

 

[Arry]

A simple trader, who went full space nuts and turned into a homicidal maniac. Now he captaining his U-Boot on the Atlantic. Evading allied navies and sinking cargo.

Careful, homicidal, is another word for murderous?

Arry.

 

[Loskene]

What if you could mount a rescue mission to practically save your pilot floating in space? That could be fun. Coming up with a good in-game reason and explanation may be hard, thou.

Hmm. If we had multiple commander slots we could solve this problem and add a more hardcore game mode. If you die you have to start a new commander, then send him on a rescue mission to retrieve your stranded pilot, otherwise he'll die and all his achievements will be lost after some suitably long time in his escape pod, a few weeks at least. It should be enough time that you can mount a rescue mission halfway across the galaxy in a gutted sidewinder if you absolutely have to.

 

[Arry]

Hmm. If we had multiple commander slots we could solve this problem and add a more hardcore game mode. If you die you have to start a new commander, then send him on a rescue mission to retrieve your stranded pilot, otherwise he'll die and all his achievements will be lost after some suitably long time in his escape pod, a few weeks at least. It should be enough time that you can mount a rescue mission halfway across the galaxy in a gutted sidewinder if you absolutely have to.

If we had mirrors on the ships we fly, you could see the string trailing behind your ship, ready to pull you back to the last landing place, when the ship is destroyed?

Arry.

 

[jmg]

What if you could mount a rescue mission to practically save your pilot floating in space? That could be fun. Coming up with a good in-game reason and explanation may be hard, thou.

it would kill the game. With all the closet RL psychos in this game, we'd have no one left to mount rescues, they'd all be floating in space.

 

[Loskene]

it would kill the game. With all the closet RL psychos in this game, we'd have no one left to mount rescues, they'd all be floating in space.

If you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Nobody is going to be interested in rescuing a stranded pilot except the pilot themselves. Maybe if, when we get stranded in our escape pods, we can warp back to the point of view of a rescue worker at the last starport we docked at. You take control of his ship and have to go mount the mission to retrieve your pod, fly home and take ownership of your replacement vessel (after paying your insurance of course). The rental ship should be an Asp or Anaconda outfitted for maximum jump range, and you can't change the outfitting or the bright yellow paintjob since it isn't yours.
You should have to scoop yourself up with the cargo scoop for added tension.

 

[Pendra]

Hmm. If we had multiple commander slots we could solve this problem and add a more hardcore game mode. If you die you have to start a new commander, then send him on a rescue mission to retrieve your stranded pilot, otherwise he'll die and all his achievements will be lost after some suitably long time in his escape pod, a few weeks at least. It should be enough time that you can mount a rescue mission halfway across the galaxy in a gutted sidewinder if you absolutely have to.

There was an old C64 game called Airborne Ranger with this exact mechanic.
There, you played a lone ranger dropped behind enemy lines to do something (photo recon, sabotage, assassination, POW rescue etc.) Your guy could be captured by the enemy instead of killed. When that happened, he became a POW and could not be played anymore. You had space for 8 different rangers, so you could resume another character. Occasionally, this other character could receive a POW mission, where he could save your POW ranger. If successful, your POW ranger would become playable again.

There needs to be some in-game reason not to blow up the capsule. Maybe if you blow it up, that would be a REAL murder which would clear the save of attacker as well. But that is very hardcore.

He could still pick the CMDR capsule up and sell and sell it on the black market, kinda like a Slave. If the CMDR was slaved, then he would be in a ship roaming around the galaxy.
If you could see the your downed player's current location on the map, you would be able to track down the AI ship pop it or pirate it and free your other CMDR.

If you can't do it yourself, you can get some other CMDR do it for you. You rely him the coordinates from your map and wait until he turns up with your CMDR and drop him for you to pick up.

 

[Jukelo]

Careful, homicidal, is another word for murderous?

Arry.

Careful there, homicidal is intent-neutral, whereas murderous is not.

 

[Loskene]

There was an old C64 game called Airborne Ranger with this exact mechanic.
There, you played a lone ranger dropped behind enemy lines to do something (photo recon, sabotage, assassination, POW rescue etc.) Your guy could be captured by the enemy instead of killed. When that happened, he became a POW and could not be played anymore. You had space for 8 different rangers, so you could resume another character. Occasionally, this other character could receive a POW mission, where he could save your POW ranger. If successful, your POW ranger would become playable again.

There needs to be some in-game reason not to blow up the capsule. Maybe if you blow it up, that would be a REAL murder which would clear the save of attacker as well. But that is very hardcore.

He could still pick the CMDR capsule up and sell and sell it on the black market, kinda like a Slave. If the CMDR was slaved, then he would be in a ship roaming around the galaxy.
If you could see the your downed player's current location on the map, you would be able to track down the AI ship pop it or pirate it and free your other CMDR.

If you can't do it yourself, you can get some other CMDR do it for you. You rely him the coordinates from your map and wait until he turns up with your CMDR and drop him for you to pick up.

I'm just thinking about cases outside of human space, where you can't rely on near instantaneous pickup from a nearby wingmate or system security ship. You could easily skip straight to the insurance screen after ejecting there, makes no difference. Outside of human space though, your escape pod is unlikely to be discovered, let alone attacked, so you should be tasked with retrieving it if we don't want to make cylon resurrection part of elite canon. Would make possible recovery of catastrophic exploration missions since your data would be saved in your escape pod, and you can cash it in when you bring it safely to your new ship. If I spent 3 weeks swanning across the galaxy building up millions in stellar data and valuable first discoveries, I'd certainly be willing to undertake a 1 week race across the cosmos for the slim chance at not losing it should my canopy breach after a disastrous hyperjump. It'd be icing on the cake if I got to do it in a big yellow rented anaconda, since I'm unlikely to afford one for real any time soon.

My reasoning for the rented, unarmed Anaconda is for the case where your doomed exploration ship was also an Asp or Anaconda that got destroyed in a system only ships with >35Ly jump range can reach.

 

[Jack Schitt]

The game mechanic is the fast travel, not the escape capsule. Also, as quoted a few pages back FD have said it always exists.

They said it always exists for anything other than Ironman, but since we didn't (and I suspect we never will) get Ironman I guess that's a bit of a meaningless distinction now.

You could say that they only mean for players but that would also be an assumption.

The quoted Death Penalty Rules specifically talk about "commanders" rather than "pilots" when referring to ship destruction and indestructible escape pods, and the Ironman section even talks about players creating commanders. While I don't think I've ever seen an example anywhere in the ED documentation or forums where "commander" is anything other than a player's alter ego, I will concede that there's a slight bit of wiggle room in this case. After all, NPC's do command their ships and so would fall under the umbrella term of "commander" if one chose to treat it as an umbrella term.

It's stretching semantics to breaking point though, if the only goal is to remove the term "murder" from the game's lexicon. I can remember this argument going right back to alpha where there was a results board including the number of murders and attempted murders. Even then it was ruffling a few feathers, and at the time the game was basically a PvP arena.

Personally, if I was writing the lore, I'd record that the Pilot's Federation historically lobbied the legal branches of all the major powers to include in the category of "murder" any unwarranted attack that would have resulted in the death of the pilot had an escape pod not been present. Maybe a legal throwback from when GalCop laid down the rules for all of human-occupied space.

But ultimately any attempt at rationalisation comes full circle: FD want the in-game act to be called murder, so it's called murder in the game. We as fans and players can spin all sorts of fictional pseudo-scientific and quasi-legal yarns around it in an attempt to bolster or weaken it, but FD themselves don't have to justify it legally or technically, in-game or out. If you blow up a clean pilot's ship, NPC or player, it's murder. Why? Because you're playing in FD's sandbox and they said so.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

No, because the pilot cannot die.

Try claiming that after you hit the "clear save" options in the menu .. that's digital murder!

 

[Nara]

But ultimately any attempt at rationalisation comes full circle: FD want the in-game act to be called murder, so it's called murder in the game. We as fans and players can spin all sorts of fictional pseudo-scientific and quasi-legal yarns around it in an attempt to bolster or weaken it, but FD themselves don't have to justify it legally or technically, in-game or out. If you blow up a clean pilot's ship, NPC or player, it's murder. Why? Because you're playing in FD's sandbox and they said so.

Yes you are right.

What FD calls it is what matters. I think that it doesn't make any sense as no one actually dies. But what FD says goes

 

[Han Brannigan]

A simple trader, who went full space nuts and turned into a homicidal maniac. Now he captaining his U-Boot on the Atlantic. Evading allied navies and sinking cargo.

This is complete and utter drivel only fit as a self delusioning tool.

- He does not realize that there actually is no water around him but void.
- The command console looks way different from a Submarines
- He is alone and not with a 12+ crew
- He has a wiendshield NOT a periscope
- He does ( I assume ) not use Torpedoes exclusively ( and maybe a small Cannon but only when not submerged )

...

 

[tdshooter]

Its murder because the pilot isnt teleported its called dying and respawning its a game

 

[jmg]

Semantics? .

tell that to a defense lawyer

 

[Pendra]

Die and respawn? Are we simply Fraging in a big FFA arena?
Come on, way to kill the immersion factor.
If I Murder someone in-game, I want to murder him for good (in-game, of course). Right now, he just loses some money and flies away like nothing happened. The only perma damage he may receive is a scarred self esteem.

I guess, in the 34th century, deducting money from someone's bank account is considered murder. Wait, in this case, pirates murder as well. And not just murder, steal too.
But the biggest murderes out there are the ship dealers.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

Die and respawn? Are we simply Fraging in a big FFA arena?
Come on, way to kill the immersion factor.
If I Murder someone in-game, I want to murder him for good (in-game, of course). Right now, he just loses some money and flies away like nothing happened. The only perma damage he may receive is a scarred self esteem.

You want to press FD for Iron Man mode then - die and you're permanently removed from the IM universe. Only way back in is to restart.

 

[Kyokushin]

I've been thinking about this lately. In ED, there is no way to kill anyone. When you pop a ship, the pilot ejects and gets teleported to the last station he docked. You can't pop the ejection capsule. You can't wait around until the pilot suffocates.
There is no Murder involved at all. Just some destruction of property.

Hm. Good point of view Are you a lawyer?

 

[Arry]

Hm. Good point of view Are you a lawyer?

No he just feels the need for one.

Arry.