Galnet is dead. Let us fill the void using reverse newspaper subscriptions using squadron like opt in

For some time now Galnet (and the general storytelling/ scene setting) has stopped. Galnet lies empty, and Galnet Audio collateral damage.

Hopefully the New Era will restart this, but if not ED has a bit of an ongoing problem thats never been really sorted. We have the official ED story thats simply stopped, while the players have continued to do theirs in places like INARA.

Now, why not allow people to create their own channels (like you do squadrons) populate it in a specific format (like the old one- 150 words max etc) using the log feature maybe or an enhanced squadron UI(?) and players then can look through and subscribe / opt in out? You could then populate your own Galnet for free with multiple viewpoints. It would be covered by the naughty language filter and reported channels can be removed / blocked.

Everyone wants media to suit them, why not let them have it? In the era of unlimited fake news it would be quite fitting to have the same in the 3300s.
 
Sliiiiiiiiightly tangential to your suggestion... Galnet often reported on the latest CGs going on, which are also generally absent these days too.

Wouldn't it be great if, along with a subscription news service like you suggest, Squadrons could also post basic CGs? Doesn't need to be much, just something like:
1. Designate a funding pool (which squadron members can only contribute to, not withdraw from)
2. Designate a system/station/faction as relevant
3. Designate an activity (e.g Bounties, Combat Bonds, Trade, Cartographic Data)
4. Designate a % profit bonus for the conduct of that activity (up to 100%, to avoid exploitation for credit transfers)

Squadrons could post a public news article to their subscribers about an upcoming activity, including dates, timeframes etc so they have time to prepare ships in the necessary locations, post up the CG and away they go.

e.g Faction X, supported by Squadron Y is going to war. Squadron Y announces they have an interest in seeing Faction X win, and post a pool of 300m credits to provide a 20% bonus to anyone handing in bonds for Faction X

Or: Operation IDA are struggling with a particularly distant station requiring repairs. They post a 500m pool to double all trade profits made when commanders trade repair goods at the station

Such events could have these Squadron-galnet articles backing their efforts. Think it would be a good pairing.
 
Sliiiiiiiiightly tangential to your suggestion... Galnet often reported on the latest CGs going on, which are also generally absent these days too.

Wouldn't it be great if, along with a subscription news service like you suggest, Squadrons could also post basic CGs? Doesn't need to be much, just something like:
1. Designate a funding pool (which squadron members can only contribute to, not withdraw from)
2. Designate a system/station/faction as relevant
3. Designate an activity (e.g Bounties, Combat Bonds, Trade, Cartographic Data)
4. Designate a % profit bonus for the conduct of that activity (up to 100%, to avoid exploitation for credit transfers)

Squadrons could post a public news article to their subscribers about an upcoming activity, including dates, timeframes etc so they have time to prepare ships in the necessary locations, post up the CG and away they go.

e.g Faction X, supported by Squadron Y is going to war. Squadron Y announces they have an interest in seeing Faction X win, and post a pool of 300m credits to provide a 20% bonus to anyone handing in bonds for Faction X

Or: Operation IDA are struggling with a particularly distant station requiring repairs. They post a 500m pool to double all trade profits made when commanders trade repair goods at the station

Such events could have these Squadron-galnet articles backing their efforts. Think it would be a good pairing.
Great minds think .. similarly :D

 
Sliiiiiiiiightly tangential to your suggestion... Galnet often reported on the latest CGs going on, which are also generally absent these days too.

Wouldn't it be great if, along with a subscription news service like you suggest, Squadrons could also post basic CGs? Doesn't need to be much, just something like:
1. Designate a funding pool (which squadron members can only contribute to, not withdraw from)
2. Designate a system/station/faction as relevant
3. Designate an activity (e.g Bounties, Combat Bonds, Trade, Cartographic Data)
4. Designate a % profit bonus for the conduct of that activity (up to 100%, to avoid exploitation for credit transfers)

Squadrons could post a public news article to their subscribers about an upcoming activity, including dates, timeframes etc so they have time to prepare ships in the necessary locations, post up the CG and away they go.

e.g Faction X, supported by Squadron Y is going to war. Squadron Y announces they have an interest in seeing Faction X win, and post a pool of 300m credits to provide a 20% bonus to anyone handing in bonds for Faction X

Or: Operation IDA are struggling with a particularly distant station requiring repairs. They post a 500m pool to double all trade profits made when commanders trade repair goods at the station

Such events could have these Squadron-galnet articles backing their efforts. Think it would be a good pairing.

So in essence create (via the squadrons UI) a bulletin board system like the old games? So you'd have a mix of small ads, news channels, squadron stories / declarations, exploration logs etc of which you can subscribe to or not?

oooooo I'm feeling tingly
 
Put me in charge of GalNet. I used to be a reporter for my school newspaper long ago, surely I can find some interesting stories to report on. I mean, it's just TEXT. Though I also did photography, so give me the ability to upload screenshots and I'll win the next Politzer!

TBH, I'd rather Frontier stop their one hour Monday live stream and put all those people into writing GalNet articles. Heck, I'll even read about the Princess changing her hair color, anything to add life to this dead feature of the game!
 
Put me in charge of GalNet. I used to be a reporter for my school newspaper long ago, surely I can find some interesting stories to report on. I mean, it's just TEXT. Though I also did photography, so give me the ability to upload screenshots and I'll win the next Politzer!

TBH, I'd rather Frontier stop their one hour Monday live stream and put all those people into writing GalNet articles. Heck, I'll even read about the Princess changing her hair color, anything to add life to this dead feature of the game!

But thats the thing, if we had:

Commanders with own news channels (like in game streamers or Sag Eye, Lave Radio etc)
People making funny small ads for anything in game (like no questions asked killing, friend me and lets talk, explorer things)
Proc gen things (like now with Powerplay, or have autogenerated) you could opt into (or block)
Alerts (i.e. "offical" Galnet, AEGIS)
Local news feeds (autogenerated, grouped into states like terrorist watch, Thargoid stuff)
Game clues (maybe)
Events (like promoted small ads)

It would be brilliant. You could pick and choose what you want to read, FD would have a river of content for Galnet Audio, you'd have a new career as journalist- its a giant win.
 
But thats the thing, if we had:

Commanders with own news channels (like in game streamers or Sag Eye, Lave Radio etc)
People making funny small ads for anything in game (like no questions asked killing, friend me and lets talk, explorer things)
Proc gen things (like now with Powerplay, or have autogenerated) you could opt into (or block)
Alerts (i.e. "offical" Galnet, AEGIS)
Local news feeds (autogenerated, grouped into states like terrorist watch, Thargoid stuff)
Game clues (maybe)
Events (like promoted small ads)

It would be brilliant. You could pick and choose what you want to read, FD would have a river of content for Galnet Audio, you'd have a new career as journalist- its a giant win.
I completely agree. I think Frontier has become too dependent on 3rd Party tools, which is a shame. Give the Sag Eye people direct access to Galnet, along with some of the more "mature" YouTube personalities (sorry Yamiks, not you), and I think the game would feel much more alive.

For those saying that we should just get our news from these 3rd parties, that does me little good when I'm stuck in supercruise with a VR helmet strapped to my head. If people haven't figured it out yet, I prefer IN-GAME tools over 3rd party tools any day of the week. That doesn't mean I'm ungrateful when 3rd parties pick up Frontier's slack, but I much rather FRONTIER pick up Frontier's slack :p

Well, until then, maybe my Squadron will promote me to in-game reporter. Then again, they rely on 3rd party tools more than the built in Squadron tools, so I'm doomed!
 
I completely agree. I think Frontier has become too dependent on 3rd Party tools, which is a shame. Give the Sag Eye people direct access to Galnet, along with some of the more "mature" YouTube personalities (sorry Yamiks, not you), and I think the game would feel much more alive.
That would be terrible. Most of the "quality" writers were also the most biased and uninformed writers ever, and FD landed in the proverbial biowaste-storm for putting up articles which simply did not accurately represent the world.

For example, the only Galnet article you'll find about issues leading up to Jaques' misjump was a failed sabotage attempt by some religious nut-group tampering with his drives, who were successfully detained. Of course, the UA bombing of Jacques was attributed to that, and not the variety of commanders like myself who did it for completely unrelated reasons. It's worth noting, the author of that particular article actually said they weren't aware of the UA bombings people were doing, and thought it was just a nice piece of fluff to flavour things with.

Or alternately, there was the time I, a Patreus Pledge, wrote an article about successfully decoding the UA morse. That wasn't accepted... instead they went with a factually-incorrect article from one of their "favourite writers". Or the time I wrote an article about potential EMP weapons research using UP's, which got rejected in favour of a virtually identical article, yet again by a "favourite".

No thanks. Player-submitted Galnet is in the bin where it belongs. By all means, like the OP's suggested, let players run their own Squadon publications anyone can subscribe to and receive whatever "fake news" or otherwise through it, but leave Galnet-proper to FD for the official word on lore and galactic developments.
 
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Throwing my opinion onto the pile. I would really like to see more 'news' in the news. I remember the old days when there were multiple stories per week. At the time player contributions were integrated and I liked it for what it was.

So I agree with the people supporting community lead news, but I don't think it needs to be anything so complicated. Subscribable channels are not a bad idea, but would require development.

I partially disagree with @Jmanis. I can see your points, but I didn't really mind inaccuracies as long as there was something to read. To be fair, there are plenty of misreported stories in real life.

So my suggestion/recommendation would simply be to get a writer at FDev to do some kind of main story, and have them vet community stories to piece together a larger universe. We could at least report on things like BuckyBall events... and that space-madness induced Hutton Orbital mug fest
 
So my suggestion/recommendation would simply be to get a writer at FDev to do some kind of main story, and have them vet community stories to piece together a larger universe. We could at least report on things like BuckyBall events... and that space-madness induced Hutton Orbital mug fest
This is exactly what used to happen but Frontier stopped it. I am not 100% certain I believe it was because there were a couple factions having a go at each other via Galnet articles. Also have a writer (Ian Dingwell) but he is busy on "great stuff coming in the future".

Personally, I would bring back the ability of user submitted stories: have a website where people select the impacted system, the faction involved and a text box. Frontier could filter out specific lore-centric systems (Sol, Shinrarta, etc.) in the dropdown. Personally, I would not bother with vetting (as the Duke of Wellington said: publish and be damned) but that is just me :)
 
I partially disagree with @Jmanis. I can see your points, but I didn't really mind inaccuracies as long as there was something to read. To be fair, there are plenty of misreported stories in real life.
Understand what you're saying too, but I guess maybe you missed the song-and-dance that would occur in the Player-Galnet section when FD did put out an article with inaccuracies. Things would get pretty toxic.

Not that I was ever party to those events, just saw them go on :/
 
TBH, I'd rather Frontier stop their one hour Monday live stream and put all those people into writing GalNet articles.

Hmm. If they are as good writing GalNet articles as they are in playing their own games: please have mercy and don't do this... :D

I actually understand that we players are more proficient than the developers. It's a common thing and there's nothing wrong about it. But those who "show off" the game to the public might be well advised to practice at least a bit before creating the show. Even amateur youtubers usually have a kind of a script and tried the things they want to do beforehand. The monday stream very much has the feeling of not having done any of that. It feels very unprofessional and it seems to me that it could really shape up a lot by just one or hours of preparation beforehand.

To really write good GalNet articles would actually require even more effort. It would really help if those writing the articles have an idea on what is happening in the game. Which requires even more time invested.

So in a way, handing it to the players might make sense. Although it definitely will require some (human based) filtering and moderation, which again means operative costs. Which FD shows that they want to minimize.
 
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We should just replace GalNet with a built-in forum reader. Seriously, I learn everything that's happening in the galaxy on this forum! Alexa / Siri / COVAS could read all these threads to me while I'm stuck in supercruise for hours accumulated.
 
FDev Give GalNet to players!!! I fully support the idea!!! This will add a new role for pilots, you can work as journalists, press, and create news agencies!!! Cool, very cool!
 
This may be slightly different than your suggestion, but could reside in the same space. I've suggested a fews times to have the ability to subscribe to local systems newsfeeds. You could go exploring, or whatever, but have those news items which would let you know those systems states, or if a war is brewing, etc. This may be the place to have now. The way it'd work is when in a local system, reading their news, there's a checkbox for subscribing. Maybe only a maximum of 8 or 10 systems, but at least you'd be in touch with some places you care to know about.
 
As ever, Artie and the Inara gang are ahead of the curve and have just installed a functional bulletin board for Squadron news and adverts.

You can find the Bulletin Board Here

I wouldn't expect anything from FD. We create our own stories anyway, all we need are the third party tools and some imagination.
 
As ever, Artie and the Inara gang are ahead of the curve and have just installed a functional bulletin board for Squadron news and adverts.

You can find the Bulletin Board Here

I wouldn't expect anything from FD. We create our own stories anyway, all we need are the third party tools and some imagination.

Very sexy stuff indeed.
 
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