Engineers A thought for exployers

[viper666]

Do you guys still lose your hard earned data if you die before you can turn it in? If you do, WHY?
Frontier saw fit to retain materials and scan data if a player dies.

So, my point is (and I am not an explorer that often), why can exploration data not be preserved with an SD card (or the futuristic equivalent) that would fit into the pocket of a flight suit.

So explorers unite, engineer grinders are moaning like hell so join the line and be heard.

 

[Ozric]

Do you guys still lose your hard earned data if you die before you can turn it in? If you do, WHY?
Frontier saw fit to retain materials and scan data if a player dies.

So, my point is (and I am not an explorer that often), why can exploration data not be preserved with an SD card (or the futuristic equivalent) that would fit into the pocket of a flight suit.

So explorers unite, engineer grinders are moaning like hell so join the line and be heard.

Why would they bother it's only exploration.

Anyhow to answer your question. Since they introduced the first discovered tag it would be unfair. You could fly to the other side of the galaxy collecting lots of unexplored systems along the way, now rather than flying back carefully to sell your data and earn all those FD tags that people care about so much, you could just self destruct and then sell the data, still get all the Credits and the tags. Ir you have an accident out in the black and die, doesn't matter, you still get all the Credits and the tags.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Reason :
- if there's nothing worth fighting for (= your Exploration Data), people might just self-destruct to fastpath straight home

-- edit --

Ninja'd by Ozric

 

[Jamie Wolf]

To be honest i was thinking the same.
The escapepod can hold hundreds of strange materials, but is unable to hold the datasets for exploration data and bounty vouchers.

Ozric's explanation makes sense, regarding the core idea of the game, and I could support that.
But it makes the keeping of materials even stranger.

The only fix to that would be a "bank" where you deposit the materials whenever you dock at a station, then they could and should also be destroyed like all teh data upon ship destruction.

The way it is now, makes it feel like an add on that was never planned for in the core design of the game, and feeling really a bit out of place.

 

[Mengy]

Do you guys still lose your hard earned data if you die before you can turn it in?

Yes, yes we do.

If you do, WHY?

That’s a very good question. A better mechanic would be for our data to drop and then allow us to fly out to retrieve it.

 

[Discjirm]

This really annoyed me as well whilst I was out in the black, so I tried to think up a reasonable explanation. I have no idea if this conflicts with current lore:

When Universal Cartographics was founded in 2805, the founders decided that any Pilots Federation pilot could be trusted to give accurate data. Their only stipulation was that the data had to be submitted in a standard format. They received submissions on data crystals, cuticle drives, scraps of paper and even, in one memorable case, a twentieth-century 8" floppy disc. UC took pride in being able to cope with the data in whatever format it was received.

This idealistic trust-based approach worked well for the first twenty years. Pilots would return data, and UC representatives at all major spaceports would pay out accordingly. First visits and scans would earn the pilot more credits; later scans would be used by UC to check for scientifically-interesting changes within systems.

However, by 2825 UC scientists were expressing concerns about the consistency and accuracy of the data they were receiving. First and secondary scans performed by different pilots were revealing some widely disparate systems, including differing numbers and types of stellar and planetary bodies. Whilst UC scientists could accept some changes within systems in such a short period, the variations seemed scientifically implausible.

UC set a team of private investigators on the case, and they soon discovered a band of pirates led by a figroll-loving leader called DBOBE. DBOBE flew a Cobra Mk-I called the Golden Hind, and had written a galaxy simulation called Stellar Forge. This used existing exploration data (hacked off UC servers) and basic scientific principles to create false data for unexplored systems. They would often generate this data whilst drinking Lavian Brandy at their base on Leesti, before staggering to their ships and selling their criminally counterfeit data around the bubble. Most UC representatives saw these peccant pilots - dishevelled and drunken as they often were - as genuine spacefarers who had just returned to the bubble.

Later research showed that the data generated by Stellar Forge was surprisingly accurate when compared to real data, leading some conspiracy theorists to wonder if DBOBE had really generated the data via stellar forge, or if they had really got it from another source (Thargoid contact being a favourite). These theories received a boost when DBOBE was never charged with any offences and was instead welcomed into top management posts; initially at UC and later at the Pilot's Federation.

To prevent this happening again, all discovery and surface scanners are now sealed units manufactured by UC. UC will only accept data received directly from their units, which is protected by the strongest Bellian Encryption. This change led to some controversy, as it meant that any pilot who lost their ship also lost their data. However UC see the accuracy of data as being of primary importance to both science and, most importantly, their bank balance.

There have been many accusations of further fraud recently, including rumours of a next-generation Stellar Forge. However to this date these remain unproven, and UC state that they are happy that their encryption system remains unbroken. To quote one UC manager: "No pilot has ever complained of being permanently lost after using our data."
So if you lose your exploration data after six months of hard work on the far rim, remember that you are losing it for science.

TL;DR:
Universal Cartographics don't trust spacefaring scoundrels.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

Its the activity with the lowest risk but also the highest possible loss. I like that.

 

[wolferr]

Automatice subspace backup to the cloud? I love it!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I think if you try to look at it in terms of "realism" within the terms of the game world it does end up hard to tell why it's that way - though I think trying to look for "realism" in a game set in the 3300s doesn't work: think of what you see as a metaphor for something as far outside our experience as the internet, space flight, and so on would be for a 7th century peasant [1]. It makes for a more exciting and comprehensible game than the life of an AI subroutine responsible for optimising thruster performance on a remotely-piloted ship.

In gameplay terms, trade goods, bounties and exploration data are "potential" - and if you die, you don't keep them, similar to how in the previous games if you died between stations and reloaded your save, you didn't get to keep the beneficial consequences of your failure. Assets, on the other hand, get kept - your ship and credits get kept when you reload the save after death (well, mostly kept - the insurance fee is new). Data and Materials are Assets in this model, intended to be accumulated over a period of days or months - instead of goods and bounties largely intended to be cashed in next time you dock - so they're not lost on ship destruction.

This model breaks down in a couple of places.
1) Exploration data: because there's no major risk while exploring and the incremental risk is pretty low, and there's no time limit in the way that ammo or fuel will eventually force someone out of a RES, or cargo capacity limits a trader, pirate or minor, you can accumulate ridiculous amounts of data. Going on the DWE, for instance (depending a bit on exploration style), could easily get someone from Aimless to Elite in a single trip, which is not remotely plausible for other professions. The original exploration designs had extremely strict limits on endurance, for which the losses would be much lower and perhaps more comparable to "lose a T-9 of Palladium" - still something to be avoided, but by the time you're risking that much, you've probably gained the experience to usually survive it.

2) Engineer cargo (Nanobreakers, for instance) feels more "assety" than "potential" to a lot of people, but I definitely think it's deliberate on Frontier's part that Engineers take a mix of "asset" and "potential" items as payment.

(It'll be interesting to see, if storage gets implemented, if they then switch data/materials on board your ship to the "potential" model. There are arguments for and against)


[1] Said peasant, by the way, would find it very implausible that 21st century personal transports can't be directed to get you home while drunk, because the horses of their time already do that, and is complaining down the local inn about how unrealistic Ye Olde Elite Dangyrouse is.

 

[Bartizan]

I do not view this as a mistake or half baked idea but a choice they made to give risk to exploration. How do we know what other versions of this risk existed on the drawing board? This may have been the best option at the time. Removing this feature from the game, means they would have to introduce a different kind of risk for explorers. I gladly accept THIS risk keeping the perspective that I am not exactly fighting off pirates and assassins in the black.

 

[Jastebro]

It's great that there's an actual risk involved, as it connects the player emotionally and makes the game interesting. Fear of death, adrenaline from risks, despair over losing lots of hard earned data on destruction all provide to the game experience.
If not, players would go gout, explore, get bored, self-destruct and instantly be back. It would diminish any sense of vastness of the galaxy.

 

[Mengy]

It's great that there's an actual risk involved, as it connects the player emotionally and makes the game interesting. Fear of death, adrenaline from risks, despair over losing lots of hard earned data on destruction all provide to the game experience.
If not, players would go gout, explore, get bored, self-destruct and instantly be back. It would diminish any sense of vastness of the galaxy.

This could easily be countered though. Simply have the player “drop” exploration data upon destruction into a player specific USS, which can then be retrieved by the player if they want to fly all the way back out and pick up their personal data cache. There, no more loss of data upon destruction and also no more destructo-cheat to bubble-hearth home. Solved.

 

[Jastebro]

And thus the whole experience of risking data loss is reduced to the mere inconvenience of retrieving it. Boring.

 

[Mengy]

And thus the whole experience of risking data loss is reduced to the mere inconvenience of retrieving it. Boring.

You forgot to add the "in your opinion" to that opinion there.

 

[mono]

I agree with both sides on this. I like the idea of dropping a data pod and flying out to pick it up (think tedium and risk of losing it again) but I like the risk that you lose it, it's final and gone.

 

[metatheurgist]

This could easily be countered though. Simply have the player “drop” exploration data upon destruction into a player specific USS, which can then be retrieved by the player if they want to fly all the way back out and pick up their personal data cache. There, no more loss of data upon destruction and also no more destructo-cheat to bubble-hearth home. Solved.

As long as I can shoot returning explorers and take their data. And explorers can now look forward to NPC pirates coming after them for their "tasty data".