Things in the game you've always wondered about

[verminstar]

Ive always wondered about who cmdr Validating was...guy is without a doubt the most experienced and most proliferal explorer Ive ever seen...name pops up everywhere he must be be triple or quadruple elite in exploration only. Considering how much mr validating has scanned and named, Im guessing one of the richest too and thats on the old rate ^

 

[Spacecat]

I don't think its telling you to slow down.

I think its telling you that you are slowing down because you are in a gravity well. [smile]

This has been theorized before, but I don't think it's right. Planets will slow you way down and the message doesn't appear. I think it's just ED dumbly shouting at you to slow down because it assumes whatever is closest to you is your goal.

 

[GunnerBill]

Because you need luxury ships during a crisis?

You need every ship in a crisis.

 

[DNA-Decay]

Why would you spin a coriolis?

A cylinder, sure. Orbis yep. Non rotating platform stations make sense.
But a coriolis station is a ridiculous thing to rotate.

 

[Habu2u]

Nope, none of them can be purchased anywhere in the Galaxy. Planetary Mining (which doesn't exist for Players) only...

actually you can surface mine, you can’t do subsurface mining. Drive your SRV around using your scanner to identify various minerals/metals and shoot the boulder/rock/outcropping and go Pick up the materials. There are several good posts around the forum that will show you how to identify materials based on the scanner signals.

Regards!

 

[Pumabear8]

The 'Slow Down' isn't telling you to slow down; it's telling you that you are being SLOWED DOWN by a gravity well.

That's not the impression I get, when approaching a space station for example, it comes up as a warning at the 4 second mark if you've not dropped to 75% engines before the 5 second mark, I always figured it was telling you that you are going to overshoot, so stop the engines to reduce the overshoot.

 

[Lightspeed]

Traffic Control tells you to "descend to flight level three zero zero" when you are hovering over the pad ! ...... flight level three zero zero is 30,000 feet !

 

[Pumabear8]

Traffic Control tells you to "descend to flight level three zero zero" when you are hovering over the pad ! ...... flight level three zero zero is 30,000 feet !

In this universe, it does refer to 300 meters, but I do find it odd that the call out comes as you just pass 300, but then many comms are delayed, when using DC for example, it will kick in and do it's thing, then a few moments later the announcer gives permission for auto dock, it's already started!

 

[Sapyx]

Not so much wondered about, but fascinated with the galaxy's population. Earth at present has a population of ~7.5 billion and growing. Technological and medical advances has helped our species live longer and healthier. With present day figures, we average approx 80 million new people per year, or about 1% of the world's population per year.

The estimated human population in the Elite Dangerous galaxy is about 6,617,138,343,697 (figure taken from EDDB). Assume the same 1% growth that present day Earth has and you have approximately 66 billion people born every year. However, the Elite Dangerous galaxy has further advanced on technological and medical breakthroughs. Indeed, you have people like Edmund Mahon who is 114 years old, but doesn't look a day over 45. So that 1% growth rate is rather small given that humans enjoy longer lifespans and have more time to procreate. Nevertheless, I'll stick with that figure. Now my opinion is that Earth is fairly overpopulated, but I'll round some numbers and simply say that 10 billion is an average maximum per Earth sized world. Therefore, Elite Dangerous, and by extension it commanders (ie: us), need to find a minimum of 7 earth like planets per year to keep up with population demands. While that's not a challenging feat in this game, to think that every year our species must occupy another 7 Earth like planets is mind boggling. Assuming we ever get off this rock in one piece, one day such a thing will be reality.

Much of that 80 million people per year is happening in the underdeveloped parts of the world. The rate of population growth in highly industrialized/technological societies does decrease; it is a sociological axiom that as technology advances, raising children becomes more expensive, to the point where they become an overall financial liability rather than an asset, therefore fewer and fewer people choose to have them, at the same time as education and cheap access to medical technology provides the means whereby people can readily choose not to have children if they don't want to. Add to this: future dystopian governments taking control of a planet's reproductive capability: e.g. putting contraceptives in the food and water supply, and "rewarding" good workers with the antidote, so the only people who breed are those with proven loyalty to the State. This would be especially evident in the domed, underground lifestyles of the citizenry of non-Earth-like planets, where a lack of population control could literally kill everybody.

Unfortunately, population growth modelling is still almost non-existent in ED (populations do change, but I think it only changes when FD manually edit the system data). I think one of the main reasons why population has not yet been made dynamic is the fact that certain systems with low population are considered "Unexplored"; the threshold population is 1 million. So what happens if an "Unexplored" system grows above 1 million population? Does it suddenly become "Explored" and people no longer collect exploration credit for scanning the system? Do the First Discoverer tags disappear?

And population can presumably go down as well as up, in the event of a natural disaster. So what happens if an Explored system drops below 1 million? Does it suddenly become Unexplored? Will people then be suddenly able to Tag those systems as first discoverer?

Finally, another key difficulty: once the mechanisms to raise and lower populations and the positive and negative effects of population growth and shrinkage become known, population-bombing by BGS players will become a thing. Powerplay systems suddenly becoming more or less profitable due to artificially induced population movement. A player group's home system gets turned into a ghost planet by rival BGS groups, or (perhaps worse) gets flooded with refugees and its economy trashed. FD need to think very carefully about how a dynamic, player-affected galactic population is introduced.

 

[Cupsuki]

NPC names, I obviously know they are there because I'm playing a game but I wonder, Lore-Wise is that their name, their nickname? And why do we have CMDR in front of our name not them?

 

[Whatnow]

Why are there no colors in the spiny kaleidoscope thingy?

 

[Schmack]

I don't know if this is true but I'm sure I read that the more advanced a civilisation brcomes the birth rate starts to drop. More interesting things to do than sex or playing 24/7 in a virtual world?

Cheers,
Mark

Egads

Not a world I want to live in.

 

[Schmack]

Things I wonder about:

1. Why is it faster to jump 50LY and back (100LY total) than to travel 500Ls if you are leaving a planet surface? What can the FSD do for you in witch space that it cannot do for you in supercruise? All the pomp and circumstance, the light show.. the tunnel.. then there you are, crawling.

2. Why is it that I need to be scanned to know if I am wanted, unless I am REALLY wanted at which time I am shot on sight?

3. Why hold a wedding near a conflict zone?

4. Why have 3 or 4 required materials for grade 5 but only one of them is actually hard to find? Are the others just to take up slots and force us to not cache so much stuff, to grind for each engineer instead?

5. Why can't a configurable component be configured into anything other than a configurable component? Why can't it be made into a chemical manipulator?

6. Why are these materials called "rare" in the description but "common" on the Elite Wiki?

7. How long will skimmers chase you in your SRV once you plink it in the dome?

8. How can a skimmer be "wanted"?

9. Why did Ralph Fairweather reappear as an innocent miner after I killed him a million Ls from the star just a few days ago after he interdicted me? You're not fooling anyone Ralph.

10. Why do stations pay so little for something no one else has? For example, you cannot buy painite in any station. It's very expensive, but worth about the same as a data delivery mission next door.

11. Why must I enter the hangar just to request a module be transferred to the station where I am? I don't have to do that to get the entire ship transferred.

12. Why would I want to do business with a black market inside a legal market that pays more, while being required to run the gauntlet of security to get there? If I'm dirty, I'm dirty... the market doesn't care either way.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Egads

Not a world I want to live in.

[video=youtube;Oo4zwiYSGfU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo4zwiYSGfU[/video]

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

I've always wondered how the fuel scoop works

 

[CMDR James Bof]

I've always wondered why...

...you SLOW DOWN when near bodies, when the gravitional pull should speed you up
...something as insignificant as a space station can cause SLOW DOWN
...there's a 4..3..2..1 countdown to Hyperspace and the announcement is out by 1 second
...we need a Friendship drive
...pirates interdict you in a fully weaponised Anaconda and then ask "how is this happening" when their shields go down
...pirates don't give you enough time to eject what they're asking for
...space cops insist on a rubdown when scanning you (ie ram you)
...so many brides don't know their vows, or feel the need to broadcast this embarrassing information
...cargo/materials degrade in space
...ships have a max speed limit
...rocks aren't destroyed by mining
...GalNet articles never reveal the location of the thing they're telling you about
...pledging allegiance to a power makes you a target for constant interdiction
...cargo is measured in weight
...you can't wing in multi crew
...the side panels are inaccessible in hyperspace
...you can't view what's fitted to your ship without going into outfitting
...bookmark default to "Delete bookmark" instead of plotting a route
...you can't turn around on a landing pad
...the docking computer needs potential cargo slots
...your ship glides, when there's no atmosphere
...Nav Beacons are so close to stars
...some stations let you drop in from as far away as 5km and yet most require you to be within 1km
...some rocks in rings are stationary until you get near them, then they start spinning wildly
...why limpets insist on flying through rocks, instead of around

 

[Dakron Nova]

This has been theorized before, but I don't think it's right. Planets will slow you way down and the message doesn't appear. I think it's just ED dumbly shouting at you to slow down because it assumes whatever is closest to you is your goal.

Yup, have to say I've never quite believed this as I've noticed your observation myself. Just quoting the FD explanation in this case.

 

[M00ka]

Yup, have to say I've never quite believed this as I've noticed your observation myself. Just quoting the FD explanation in this case.

Personally I think the SLOW DOWN message was created by a junior level programmer, and what he really wanted to say was: SLOW DOWN YOU IDIOT, LOOK AT WHAT I DID, DON'T DAMN WELL JUST FLY PAST MY MASTERPIECES

Joking of course - well kinda

 

[Nemesis1999]

Why we can't move ships and modules around at any time, not only when in a station
Why we can't put ourselves on a passenger ship to get to another station and then pick up a stored ship there.
Why we can't just drop out of hyperspace at the location in the system we want, not just the star
Why I can't see prices of commodities, missions, etc in game. The lack of an 'Internet' seems very backward

 

[schurem]

I can easily disregard most of the things mentioned here except the economic/ecology stuff:

It makes NO sense that Y miners mine minerals that are worth X while being hunted by Z(=3Y) Pirates that are worth B(=25X). It should be the other way 'round. X times Y should be MORE than Z times B How else would the local miner community pay for the bounties? The current situation is just not making sense at all. The numbers do not add up.

How to fix? Well one could increase Y (the number of miners) but that would make bounty hunting in the REZ tedious and/or taxing on the machinery as there would be ten times as many ships in the belt. An easier fix to make this &%$# make sense is to drastically increase X (the value of the stuff being mined) so that X*Y > Z*B. That way it would make sense the pirates are there because they would have something worth preying on. The miners would have a reason to brave the pirates because the stuff they are getting is so valueable. And the bounties the hunters are getting would have a sensible explanation.

So there you have it FDEV. Just add a couple zeroes behind the mineral prices throughout the galaxy. No more 102c for a ton of bauxite but 10k. A ton of painite is &%#@ing jackpot worth a million or more.