UA Mystery thread 4 - The Canonn

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I know exactly how I'd put it for the Sitakapan Expeditionary Forces (SEF), Imperial Dictatorship and my "player faction".

Abridged history lesson:
(while some of this is hammed up roleplay, they're actually an accurate representation of what's gone on in my home system): The system of Sitakapa used to be prosperous under rule of the Empire League, even conquering a neighbouring anarchy system. Since then it's gone into a state of almost constant conflict between factions, with Empire League influence dropping as low as 10% compared to domestic Pirates. The SEF were originally a wing of the Empire League's navy, but during the conflict, were deferred system authority by the Empire League. The SEF put in place martial law, resulting in a 4-way civil war. The outcome of this put six of the systems stations into the hands of either the Empire League or the SEF (split equally 3 and 3). While the Empire league still represents itself as a governing body, it's well known that the SEF are still the major authority in the system.

In gameplay terms, I always supported the Sitakapa Empire League, then the opportunity to "fly my own banner" came up, so by some self-defined lore and hand-wavium the SEF and SEL are basically different aspects of the same organisation.

Being a dictatorship means being focused on conflict. Since I'm a founder and major patron of theirs and (arguably) a major contributor to some of the early discoveries with the UA e.g the morse signal, SEF do have an (cannon) interest in what makes the UA's tick.

At the very best, success with the UA CG could be used to glean some sort of hint in the form of research. At the very least, fuelled by it's dictatorial desires, the SEF glean some information through destructive studies about the damage caused by the UAs and allows them to develop a "rare good" which weaponises this into some form of EMP/corrosive effect. Obviously this would be illegal elsewhere, but oh well.

At the worst, Sitakapa goes up in flames. As someone posted here earlier said, it's not the end state, it's the journey to get you there that matters.

Between the SEF and SEL, there are two systems and 7 stations under their control between Sitakapa and Mac Og, so they have the resources for it. I thought the Canonn might have a better chance of getting a CG floated since they're the main player entity at the crux of the UA story right now. I'm going to wait for 1.5 to drop, but if the Canonn don't put up a CG, I might just copy/paste/tweak what I just wrote and put it up. I mean, if we can get a CG to turn slaves into master chefs...

EDIT: On an aside, station failures, whether a result of FD monitoring UA sales, or just narrating what players publicly say they do, is clearly an FD-injected occurrance, and not a result of players "tripping" some mechanic. I strongly feel FD wouldn't allow CGs to become a means of 'griefing' random systems/stations by dumping UA CG's on it.

All good :)

I still have the text prepared for a Canonn 'event' for this, which would be open to all - based on the text I originally wrote for Weyn.

The basic thrust of it was to see if we could take a 'clean' station and force it to shutdown based on thousands of UAs being dropped there - i.e. direct, concerted, effort should lead to direct effect (notwithstanding yours and other CMDRs own attempts to do the same in secret, which I applaud wholeheartedly).

As an event it works well (especially with a bit of FD publicity; sticky thread etc) but as a CG - Domm's right - it would be difficult to write, because what would the reward tiers be, beyond a few mill Cr? Like you say, if you're a player harvesting effectively 'for free' (running costs associated with AFMU and repair bill aside), you're already going to be making 2MCr each run if you're well-equipped. Another 5MCr/10MCr on top with no other bonuses (such as new station features or whatever) won't be much of an incentive.

Sure, there's the argument that many people here would still do it regardless - and perhaps that's valid. There is scope for at least two other CGs at the same time that I can think of. But if the distribution and existence of the UAs changes significantly in 1.5 or 2, then the plans are all moot anyway...

So I guess I'm saying I completely agree - I've personally been desperate to find a way to launch a UA-inspired 'proper' CG, but every time I think about the different aspects, I keep getting stuck on intractable points. Some of those could probably be answered through a dialogue with FD - however something tells me getting anything other than a 'no-comment' response will be like trying to get more information out of the UA audio...
 
CGs are supposed to achieve something. What would that be, CG to destroy a Station ? (even though I still don't necessarily believe the theory)
Thats not a very Community Minded Goal

All good :)

I still have the text prepared for a Canonn 'event' for this, which would be open to all - based on the text I originally wrote for Weyn.

The basic thrust of it was to see if we could take a 'clean' station and force it to shutdown based on thousands of UAs being dropped there - i.e. direct, concerted, effort should lead to direct effect (notwithstanding yours and other CMDRs own attempts to do the same in secret, which I applaud wholeheartedly).

As an event it works well (especially with a bit of FD publicity; sticky thread etc) but as a CG - Domm's right - it would be difficult to write, because what would the reward tiers be, beyond a few mill Cr? Like you say, if you're a player harvesting effectively 'for free' (running costs associated with AFMU and repair bill aside), you're already going to be making 2MCr each run if you're well-equipped. Another 5MCr/10MCr on top with no other bonuses (such as new station features or whatever) won't be much of an incentive.

Sure, there's the argument that many people here would still do it regardless - and perhaps that's valid. There is scope for at least two other CGs at the same time that I can think of. But if the distribution and existence of the UAs changes significantly in 1.5 or 2, then the plans are all moot anyway...

So I guess I'm saying I completely agree - I've personally been desperate to find a way to launch a UA-inspired 'proper' CG, but every time I think about the different aspects, I keep getting stuck on intractable points. Some of those could probably be answered through a dialogue with FD - however something tells me getting anything other than a 'no-comment' response will be like trying to get more information out of the UA audio...

Well my tuppence worth is that a CG to break stuff (a station) would be a negative thing to do, whereas a CG to mend stuff (a station) would be a positive thing to do. So I'd rather we find out how to fix stations (yeah, I know...) and then have a CG to do that, and be the saviours of the galaxy :D. And of course, a CG to get the Canonn a science station would be top of my list.

"The Canonn have found out how to make things worse" isn't really the kind of headline I wanna see
 
Well my tuppence worth is that a CG to break stuff (a station) would be a negative thing to do, whereas a CG to mend stuff (a station) would be a positive thing to do. So I'd rather we find out how to fix stations (yeah, I know...) and then have a CG to do that, and be the saviours of the galaxy :D. And of course, a CG to get the Canonn a science station would be top of my list.

"The Canonn have found out how to make things worse" isn't really the kind of headline I wanna see
Once we know what the cure is, we can propose a CG to Bond:
Tier 1 : Convert Bond to Science Station with Repair Facilities (cheeky)
Tier 2 : Discover Cure : Cure Bond
Tier 3 : Duplicate Cure : Cure Another Station
Tier 4 : Produce Cure : Cure 2 More Stations
Tier 5 : Mass Production : Cure all Stations
 
Well my tuppence worth is that a CG to break stuff (a station) would be a negative thing to do, whereas a CG to mend stuff (a station) would be a positive thing to do. So I'd rather we find out how to fix stations (yeah, I know...) and then have a CG to do that, and be the saviours of the galaxy :D. And of course, a CG to get the Canonn a science station would be top of my list.

"The Canonn have found out how to make things worse" isn't really the kind of headline I wanna see

So we really have two CG's...

  • The first to get as many UA's to a station as possible...

  • If that breaks the station the next CG is to repair the station
 
Once we know what the cure is, we can propose a CG to Bond:
Tier 1 : Convert Bond to Science Station with Repair Facilities (cheeky)
Tier 2 : Discover Cure : Cure Bond
Tier 3 : Duplicate Cure : Cure Another Station
Tier 4 : Produce Cure : Cure 2 More Stations
Tier 5 : Mass Production : Cure all Stations


That's perfect. The cure should then become a rare good at Bond Hub. Just in case a station gets affected after the CG has ended.
 
Once we know what the cure is, we can propose a CG to Bond:
Tier 1 : Convert Bond to Science Station with Repair Facilities (cheeky)
Tier 2 : Discover Cure : Cure Bond
Tier 3 : Duplicate Cure : Cure Another Station
Tier 4 : Produce Cure : Cure 2 More Stations
Tier 5 : Mass Production : Cure all Stations

That's perfect. The cure should then become a rare good at Bond Hub. Just in case a station gets affected after the CG has ended.

Liking it... liking it...

:D
 
So. What do we make of today's GalNet story?

https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/uid/565c25129657bac051303c3f

People lost in space a thousand years ago, slow communication, poor scanners and Halsey.

Is it UA related in any way?

I'm really starting to believe that there might be some kind of splinter faction of humanity out there. Maybe related to the UA. Perhaps a human/Thargoid colony living in harmony out there somewhere. I know it's been speculated in the past. Probably indicates that we should be finding a lot of wreckage on planets at a minimum.
 

Michael Brookes

Game Director
What bothers me with these station malfunctions is that it is implied we are supposed to find a way to fix them. If it's UA-related, which I think it is, and we find THE commodity that will cure the stations, the same commodity should prevent the UA from eating our ship. However, we've seen with several huge commodities/rares tests that nothing works.


Thus, I would really like to know if there is an in-game way of preventing UA damage to our ship. (MB, please? *3*)

Not yet - there's science to be done first!

Michael
 
Well presumably the first step to preventing the damage is to figure out why the damage is occurring and what it is?
 
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I think the batch file has been launched/switch thrown. Frontier Store is down.
Thats why he has a spare 30 secs to read all the fresh posts and poke us with a stick

Not quite. Some people can't seem to access the store at the moment, but it isn't down. I'm in fine... but no updated launcher yet :(
 
Not yet - there's science to be done first!

Michael

Excellent, still more for us to do!

Sorry I tried to +rep:
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Michael Brookes again.


p.s. I am enjoying reading your book Elite: Legacy... but two questions:

  1. Which season are asteroid stations planned for?
  2. Are we getting cloaks?
 
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