While I don't agree with exactly what's been said here (esp bits directed at MB), I do agree with the sentiment.
I'm about ready to just drop everything related to UAs and just "do something else", which is hard, but while I can't prove a "general case", I've at least proven to myself that *I* have zero agency in the events playing out before us, and with that in mind it's kinda pointless for me to try and pursue anything in regards to the UA. Palin's CG is frankly just the icing on the cake for me. To date:
- My article to announce the morse discovery was ignored (yes, I did relate it to Patreus which probably wasn't great, but lets face it, as a Patreus pledge and a major contributor to the morse discovery, why wouldn't I do that?)
- Despite overwhelming evidence that UA's are the cause of station failures, my covert run of 200 UAs to a single station achieved nothing.
- My overt announcement of where I sold the 200 UA's achieved nothing
- My CG to collect 10,000-200,000 UAs, while acknowledged as received (Thanks Zac A
), has not resulted in anything further.
What annoys me the most about Palin's CG is that this is a scientist who, given how quickly he seems to be moving around, is a rather small entity. I consider Sitakapa Empire League to be an "affiliate" minor faction of the Sitakapan Expeditionary Forces (My faction). Together they own two systems, 8 stations, and have holdings in half a dozen other systems. SEF is the ruling body, and is a morally ambiguous dictatorship. They have the resources and mentality (and since I'm central to the SEF, the ambition) to research UAs through a CG. They'd happily risk civilian lives to achieve this, and would put down dissenters. But instead, nope, lets cart shelters back and forth for a snailpace scientist.
I kinda saw this coming waaaay back when Community news and Player Factions were first mentioned. This didn't sound like agency to carve out your own story, it just sounded a bit like a popularity contest. I imagine FD must be looking at my suggestions in the same way I looked at some friends I dungeon-mastered for. I presented an elaborate mechanical device which they needed to "figure out" in order to get a key and proceed. For the purposes of the scenario and maintaining "canon", it was not a magical device. I put a lot of thought and effort into how they could interact with this thing, but what I didn't think of was their warrior going hulk-smash on the device, pick the key up and use it. But I let them, because in other scenarios I had been presented similar suggestions and "pretended they weren't serious" and tried to hint them towards the "proper way forward", and this very quickly lead to them being disenfranchised with the story I was telling, and their agency in it.
FD have clearly intended to demonstrate these things are dangerous. What I get the feeling they didn't anticipate was players wanting to face that danger head-on and do dangerous things with them, whether it's out of game with CG/galnet submissions, or in-game literally transporting incredibly dangerous amounts of these goods intentionally. This is clearly not popular with FD's vision of this story, and that's fine, it's fundamentally their game to do with what they will, but ignoring these specific going-ons basically strips me of any agency in this plot whatsoever... and I'd rather not participate in something where my participation or lack thereof achieves the same outcome.
I hope someone in staff reads this, not so they run back going "Oh sorry Jmanis, we were wrong, have your CGs and Galnet articles", but to just realise that if you're going to tell an interactive story, you need to allow interactions with it.
At least we can turn Slaves into Master Chef's though...
