The entire game is centered around improving your personal position, strength, wealth, invulnerability through ranking up and purchasing privilege. This is at the core of why anyone who does so can buy votes.
While a one man = one vote is very democratic and fair, Elite is not about fairness, but privilege. Strategy and counter strategy.
For every move there is a counter move, and not everyone has discovered every move in the game.
Also, doubtless FD has intentionally favored coop in a game where at its core, strife and competition cook up constant turmoil through built in stresses.
Balancing the individualism of pride, personal power and combat, small and large scale coop are designed to counter these forces.
For those of us who favor order and progress, and realize how powerful a tool coop is toward stability, there will always be a large element of gamers who do not see
Elite as a model of real life, but as an escape into chaos and will resist organization with everything they have. They will take pride in their ability to purchase large scale
chaos. Is it rational to force the purchase and upkeep of a losing system on a power struggling at the limits of their income? No, but rationality is not the object of these influences the game permits.
While game benefits only get rewarded to powers near the top which are then rewarded through territorial numeric superiority, more is better is hard to resist for the casual gamer.
If the game was designed to be rational, there would be no human combat. Perhaps even multiplayer capability is irrational enough to doom the game if it wasn't for coop.
It's possible to assign every motivation and intent to the ghost squad behind every chaotic and misguided territorial shift. This accomplishes little besides entertaining conversations.
FD is watching all this with data mining tools displaying the moves and counter moves from both micro and macro view points. They are probably falling on the floor entertained
by the imaginative chaos and organizational blows and counter blows. Since we cannot see the universe at their level, we continue to be folly fodder for their game plans.
Goldfish in a bowl staking out leaves and crumbling calcium towers.
FD has resisted and will likely continue to resist changes to the core philosophy of the game. Power Play IS the CORE COOP element to counter the core individualistic chaos element.
That PP is so complex and convoluted, difficult to completely envision is likely intentional to prevent creating stability out of nothing or no effort. In other words, stability in PP
comes from effort, not entropy. There is also a background AI 5th column which is in total control of FD. It responds to their directives and manipulation. When FD wants more stability, they flip a bit.
More chaos, they flip a bit. This same AI also responds to the human element in PP through AI faction responses to reputation, trade and undermining.
Communication, large group strategy, and multi-power agreements are the primary tools to win against the chaotic element.
Accept that like the real world, chaos will continue to be a major instability in the game and will never be removed, nor will it ever become comfortable.
While accepting this, continue the building of human cooperation towards manipulating the economic AI background which is the value and power dynamic behind the acquisition of territory.
The current human populated "bubble" is very very small. The resources remaining to be exploited are so vast as to be nearly incomprehensible.
Also keep in mind, eventually, we'll run up against aliens. We'll need to be very organized to prevent losing everything we have to them.
-Pv-
While a one man = one vote is very democratic and fair, Elite is not about fairness, but privilege. Strategy and counter strategy.
For every move there is a counter move, and not everyone has discovered every move in the game.
Also, doubtless FD has intentionally favored coop in a game where at its core, strife and competition cook up constant turmoil through built in stresses.
Balancing the individualism of pride, personal power and combat, small and large scale coop are designed to counter these forces.
For those of us who favor order and progress, and realize how powerful a tool coop is toward stability, there will always be a large element of gamers who do not see
Elite as a model of real life, but as an escape into chaos and will resist organization with everything they have. They will take pride in their ability to purchase large scale
chaos. Is it rational to force the purchase and upkeep of a losing system on a power struggling at the limits of their income? No, but rationality is not the object of these influences the game permits.
While game benefits only get rewarded to powers near the top which are then rewarded through territorial numeric superiority, more is better is hard to resist for the casual gamer.
If the game was designed to be rational, there would be no human combat. Perhaps even multiplayer capability is irrational enough to doom the game if it wasn't for coop.
It's possible to assign every motivation and intent to the ghost squad behind every chaotic and misguided territorial shift. This accomplishes little besides entertaining conversations.
FD is watching all this with data mining tools displaying the moves and counter moves from both micro and macro view points. They are probably falling on the floor entertained
by the imaginative chaos and organizational blows and counter blows. Since we cannot see the universe at their level, we continue to be folly fodder for their game plans.
Goldfish in a bowl staking out leaves and crumbling calcium towers.
FD has resisted and will likely continue to resist changes to the core philosophy of the game. Power Play IS the CORE COOP element to counter the core individualistic chaos element.
That PP is so complex and convoluted, difficult to completely envision is likely intentional to prevent creating stability out of nothing or no effort. In other words, stability in PP
comes from effort, not entropy. There is also a background AI 5th column which is in total control of FD. It responds to their directives and manipulation. When FD wants more stability, they flip a bit.
More chaos, they flip a bit. This same AI also responds to the human element in PP through AI faction responses to reputation, trade and undermining.
Communication, large group strategy, and multi-power agreements are the primary tools to win against the chaotic element.
Accept that like the real world, chaos will continue to be a major instability in the game and will never be removed, nor will it ever become comfortable.
While accepting this, continue the building of human cooperation towards manipulating the economic AI background which is the value and power dynamic behind the acquisition of territory.
The current human populated "bubble" is very very small. The resources remaining to be exploited are so vast as to be nearly incomprehensible.
Also keep in mind, eventually, we'll run up against aliens. We'll need to be very organized to prevent losing everything we have to them.
-Pv-
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