Explorer's gear: emergency data recorder

[newman1702]

Sorry? I don't get this. Why explore in solo when you're not likely to meet anyone anyway?

Why not? If you won't meet anyone anyway what's the difference, other than being able to take higher res screenshots? Why even risk running into some kid who can only have fun if he ruins an unarmed explorer's day by destroying weeks or even months of progress? For example, there have been reports of griefers stalking people at Sag A. That's not exactly in the bubble..

But most importantly, some people prefer solo, others open, others private groups. Everyone should play they want to. As for self destructing in order to go home quickly, you'd still have to travel all those tens of thousands of ly to retrieve the data, and you'd have to cover the rebuy cost, so I fail to see how that'd accomplish anything. Sure you could self destruct, go explore, pick it up on the way and go home again, but what's the point? You've effectively gone on two trips now anyway, the same as without self destructing, only now you had to travel to the same spot twice.

With that plan not really worth it, I think most black boxes would actually be used in the bubble, on the return trip, for those explorers that play in open and have run into griefers on their way back. While you can certainly take damage out in the black, it's usually to flying too close to something causing an emergency drop, which typically only does a few % damage. If you have an AFMU it's nothing to worry about as long as your canopy is intact. Sure it's still possible to get yourself killed but it's not nearly as likely as in the bubble.

 

[Leper Messiah]

You see, I am way to honest to have thought of that, very good point though.

Still, very unrealistic IMO.

Totally agreed, for me an instant sell would mean I probably would just stay out exploring and never come back to human space!

 

[Jesters09]

Its funny, my exploration ship used to be a really cut down light ASP for maximum range.
This trip, seeing as I was heading inwards rather than to any rim/edge, I thought I'd A grade the lot.
The stars are close together.

I still get a fraction under 30LY range with a full combat ship all A class except for the life support and scanner.
I have removed 2 of the class 1 hardpoints, but even those didn't make much of a difference.

I play in open, so that I can see other cmdrs who are also brave enough to play in open.

It helps keep me company and it is interesting to see where others are out here in the black.

 

[Sapient6]

You see, I am way to honest to have thought of that, very good point though.

Still, very unrealistic IMO.

Not necessarily unrealistic. What you're asking for isn't just the ability to broadcast a signal back home at speeds that greatly exceed the speed of light, but you're asking to broadcast it back at speeds faster than your ship is capable of over distances that are greater than your ship can jump. And you're suggesting the equipment that can accomplish this is so compact that it's just standard equipment in any bird you happen to by flying.

This isn't a matter of realism. It's a matter of gamey-ness, much like the ability to determine if your target has a warrant in other jurisdictions requiring the near-instantaneous remote poling of thousands of databases (all of them light years away). But unlike a Kill Warrant Scanner, the feature you're requesting runs contrary to what gamey-ness requires as your feature would make self-destruct return trips a standard procedure for most explorers.

 

[Mike W]

bottom line,,,

If you choose long trip, deep space exploration as your path here, we put ourselves in the position in this game where we can, and do lose days, weeks and even months of work, with absolutely no "safety net",,, whatever the reason,,,,, that could be a unique position in this game, and any other game come to that, I've played games where with an "Ultimate" character you could "lose it all",, months or more of work,,,but there were always "safety nets" ,,,there had to be,, otherwise you could lose a years work or more,,,,don't use them and you would pay the price,,, but there were there, and your choice for you to use or not,,,,

We should not suffer such a massive loss, so out of proportion with any other career path in the game,,,,or as i say, most other games,,, even just a simple auto save where you only lost that days data or so

A great solution would be say 3 levels of data retrieval modules, that need a slot in your ship, that are launched on destruction of your ship,,,,,and a huge non negotiable given here is,,,,,that only you have access to, and can see it out there in the system where you lost your ship,, and being able to buy a particular size module best to suit your needs, trip, pocket

1 pay say 100,000,,,gives you a day real time to retrieve it
2 1,000,000,,,gives you a week
3 5,000,000,,,give you infinate time to retrieve,,,needed for Cmdrs where the distance involved, plus RL means they would maybe never be able to "race" to retrieve their lost data

This needs to be done,,Simple

 

[Sapient6]

If you choose long trip, deep space exploration as your path here, we put ourselves in the position in this game where we can, and do lose days, weeks and even months of work, with absolutely no "safety net",,, whatever the reason,,,,, that could be a unique position in this game, and any other game come to that, I've played games where with an "Ultimate" character you could "lose it all",, months or more of work,,,but there were always "safety nets" ,,,there had to be,, otherwise you could lose a years work or more,,,,don't use them and you would pay the price,,, but there were there, and your choice for you to use or not,,,,

We should not suffer such a massive loss, so out of proportion with any other career path in the game,,,,or as i say, most other games,,, even just a simple auto save where you only lost that days data or so

A great solution would be say 3 levels of data retrieval modules, that need a slot in your ship, that are lauched on destruction of your ship,,,,,and a huge non negotiable given here is,,,,,that only you have access to, and can see it out there in the system where you lost your ship,, and being able to buy a particular size module best to suit your needs, trip, pocket

1 pay say 100,000,,,gives you a day real time to retrieve it
2 1,000,000,,,gives you a week
3 5,000,000,,,give you infinate time to retrieve,,,needed for Cmdrs where the distance involved, plus RL means they would maybe never be able to "race" to retrieve their lost data

This needs to be done,,Simple

The way I'm in the habit of calculating risk is to identify a potential disaster (in this case: the destruction of my ship resulting in the loss of X days of exploration data), then identify the Impact and the Probability of that disaster. The risk itself is the multiplication of the Probability and Impact. For exploration the Probability is very low and the Impact is potentially very high (as opposed to bounty hunting and loss of bounty data, where the probability is high and the impact is low).

While the Probability of losing our exploration data is so terribly low, I feel like dispensing with the Impact of it would be a big mistake. There's a lot of tension on the way back in from a long trip, and exploration kind of needs to keep that. If instead I'm thinking "well, if I get jumped then I'll just hop into my Vulture and zip on over to retrieve the black box and everything will be fine", then the risk will be entirely gone.

Now where I think this all changes is when we reach the point where the Probability starts going up. Common, hostile alien NPCs cruising around outside of populated space, for instance, might completely kill exploration until some mechanism is available to protect exploration data.

Even then, though, I don't think it automatically follows that an explorer's black box should only be available to that explorer. Something like that should be vulnerable to pirates, under the right conditions, and with the stipulation that stolen data be sold only on the black market at a very marked-down rate, and carry very heavy penalties if picked up by authority scans. Such stipulations are important to prevent explorers becoming the primary target of all pirates in every situation.

 

[newman1702]

Come to think of it, it may be better to not have a time limit on retrieval, but rather have only one black box possible at any one time - meaning if you don't go retrieve the last one, and then deploy a new one, your old one is lost. I'm generally not a fan of games being specific on when I should play something - MMOs tend to do this and it's one of their least likeable traits, so I hope ED steers away from this. I don't think this part even needs a tier system, it seems silly to limit it on amount of data it can save too, since it's over a 1000 year from now - don't tell me they don't have large data storage devices everywhere

 

[iain666]

Oh, and if you can afford the insurance, what would stop people from going out one way and getting a load of data, self destruct to leave the data there, go out again but using a different route, collect their old data and add it to what they have curenty got, SD again, rinse and repeat until they can go to Elite status in one, then travel back.
.
I mean, it still doesn't make sense to me, but can anyone think of a way that would save time or effort?

That just costs you your insurance premium. A to B and back again via a different route gets you exactly the same data as A to B then self-destruct and take the same different route from A to B as you would have from B to A. You've not saved time or gained any extra data and it's cost you credits.

 

[Mike W]

"Sapient6"""""
""""The way I'm in the habit of calculating risk is to identify a potential disaster (in this case: the destruction of my ship resulting in the loss of X days of exploration data), then identify the Impact and the Probability of that disaster. The risk itself is the multiplication of the Probability and Impact. For exploration the Probability is very low and the Impact is potentially very high (as opposed to bounty hunting and loss of bounty data, where the probability is high and the impact is low).

While the Probability of losing our exploration data is so terribly low, I feel like dispensing with the Impact of it would be a big mistake. There's a lot of tension on the way back in from a long trip, and exploration kind of needs to keep that. If instead I'm thinking "well, if I get jumped then I'll just hop into my Vulture and zip on over to retrieve the black box and everything will be fine", then the risk will be entirely gone.

Now where I think this all changes is when we reach the point where the Probability starts going up. Common, hostile alien NPCs cruising around outside of populated space, for instance, might completely kill exploration until some mechanism is available to protect exploration data.

Even then, though, I don't think it automatically follows that an explorer's black box should only be available to that explorer. Something like that should be vulnerable to pirates, under the right conditions, and with the stipulation that stolen data be sold only on the black market at a very marked-down rate, and carry very heavy penalties if picked up by authority scans. Such stipulations are important to prevent explorers becoming the primary target of all pirates in every situation."""""

Data available for others to retrieve,,,,,, no,,,,,

The biggest point of this whole thread is being put in the position of suffering such a massive loss out of proportion with any other area of this,, or most other games

Bit of perspective here guys,,,,

OK traders,, if your ship is destroyed,, just once,,,,,,you lose your last days, weeks, months profit,, and someone else can come and pick it up

Combat pilots,, killed, just once you lose all your last days, weeks, months combat record rank and credits earned

And no risk,,,,, the explorer may have to travel 20 30 40k ly or more to get the data back,

""Newman1702"""
"""Come to think of it, it may be better to not have a time limit on retrieval, but rather have only one black box possible at any one time - meaning if you don't go retrieve the last one, and then deploy a new one, your old one is lost. I'm generally not a fan of games being specific on when I should play something - MMOs tend to do this and it's one of their least likeable traits, so I hope ED steers away from this. I don't think this part even needs a tier system, it seems silly to limit it on amount of data it can save too, since it's over a 1000 year from now - don't tell me they don't have large data storage devices everywhere """

Totally agree,,, if you have a box out there ,,,if you end up launching a second,,, the first is lost

 

[Sapient6]

Data available for others to retrieve,,,,,, no,,,,,

The biggest point of this whole thread is being put in the position of suffering such a massive loss out of proportion with any other area of this,, or most other games

Yes, we stand to lose more, but as I outlined in my post: we are much less likely to lose anything at all.

What you are proposing is a system where we are both incredibly unlikely to suffer the destruction of our ships, but even if we do we lose nothing more than an insurance re-buy. In short: no risk at all.

That's a terrible idea, and I could never get behind that.

 

[newman1702]

Well, as it stands, if you don't want to risk it, just go solo on the return voyage. I was just thinking alternatives, there's got to be a better way.. I also don't think it's comparable to other professions, because as with any game with lots of grinding, the primary currency is time, and you lose most of it when exploring and losing data. Taking your ship into combat on purpose is a choice, and if you made that choice while not being able to cover the rebuy cost, you have nobody to blame but yourself if you get blown up and lose your ship. However, it's still possible to safeguard against losing months of progress by applying a little common sense.

With exploring, the only way to safeguard against that is playing in solo mode. Was just thinking alternatives. Not saying I had the best possible solution, here, but I'm also fairly sure it's better than what we have now. Perhaps FD come up with an even better system, and if they do, nobody will be happier than me

 

[Mike W]

Yes, we stand to lose more, but as I outlined in my post: we are much less likely to lose anything at all.

What you are proposing is a system where we are both incredibly unlikely to suffer the destruction of our ships, but even if we do we lose nothing more than an insurance re-buy. In short: no risk at all.

That's a terrible idea, and I could never get behind that.

I do see your point about no risk my friend, and i have a routine when jumping, entering systems, scooping, the dodgy things that can catch you and damage your ship, but i could do nothing about ,,,,approaching an asteroid belt ,, dropping to 50% sc,, then 25% sc,,, then down to idle,, 30km/s sc down to "safe to disengage" ,,, as i exited at idle sc my ship was destroyed within 2secs,, dispite seeing nothing as i exited,, i sent a ticket ,, probably a lot of others not so lucky,, but i do get your point,, the risk is a big part of it,,

 

[WR3ND]

Hmm... OK, so just make it so that the data module doesn't eject if the self destruct sequence is initiated. Simple enough. After all, why would a pilot care about encrypted data that only they can decrypt if they're blowing themselves up? (Disregarding the exceptional gaminess of being magically teleported to a station after self destruction.)

OK... I guess you could crash into a gas giant's ring debris or similar. Fair point.

...

On average, wouldn't it be more profitable for the amount of time needed to scan systems on your way back from deep space anyway than to go out, self destruct, then have to return to where you were to collect your data and return back? Who would purposefully want to go out to where they've already been just to collect the data of what they've already scanned, unless they don't have any alternative, and so what if some people choose to self destruct? Doesn't really seem like an issue in the bigger picture.

 

[Mike W]

Yup,, the self destruct thing would still to me ,, be less of an issue than us losing vast amounts of data in a heartbeat,, most of us are out there for the adventure,,, as i said in another thread somewhere,, for me,,,
whenever i enter a system that no one has ever seen before,,, it is always a buzz no matter if theres 50 objects,, or just the main star,, because no one has ever been there,, i feel a surreal calm thats good for the soul cruising unseen systems,, everything else is just numbers

 

[Kancro Vantas]

Hmm...to be honest gentlemen, I think this is a problem that exist more in probability than in reality....

When was the last time we read a thread of a explorer losing days and days of data to a pirate -or griefer- of some sort?

Besides SAG A* -which I CAN tell you, due to its traffic, it is consider "bubble system" for the effects of this discussion - you don't get to read those threads often...IF EVER!

I know I haven't.

You know what do we read, and not in such quantities? CMDRS getting burnt by stars. But really, think about it: when was the last time you read or knew about a CMDR dying with tons of data because of a star cooked them or an accident???

These are simply things that are on the fringe of possibilities. For me, worrying about that is equivalent to worrying about driving a car. We all could potentially die on our way home from work, but alas, we take a risk every day cause is really low in comparison! When a tragedy strikes, they make it to the news. And still we go out there next day.

Same with exploration, to be totally blunt. I, for one, have always played in OPEN since day one. And I have played nearly every single day in the last 8 months. You wanna know how many times have I been interdicted by a CMDR? Exactly 2!

And none of those I had exploration data!!! So I really don't think this is a serious issue right now.

Of course, the fact that I don't sell my data in Leesti, or Lave helps a lot, doesn't? or that I take my precautions and my ship is fully armed, at all times! It helps the case but still..,is just an Asp after all.

------------------

Yes, black box idea sounds good. The best I have heard on this topic so far. But if you didn't get killed by another CMDR thousands of ly away, then what killed you?? To add to the idea, I do think it should be able to be retrieved by another CMDR. In fact, you know what? that module should start sending a Weak Signal for passer's by....yes, you should hurry back if you lose it.

Maybe it should have your name, so they can contact you in game for a ransom...because if they sell the data, still the first discovery would go to you, but only a quarter of the original value would go to them.

Now think this through a little better: who in their right mind would go travelling 400 billion systems just to kill a CMDR for their black box, so they can sell the data at a reduced price (or even if it was at full price) when they could have done the exploration themselves?

But another CMDR, who happens to know the location because is your wingman, could retrieve it and bring it to you instead. ;-)