There's a world of difference between a corporation, and a corporate state, which is what we have in Elite Dangerous. When a corporation becomes the government, human rights abuses have followed. There is a long and ugly history in the real world about what happens when you get a government by the shareholders, for the shareholders, and whose only goal is to extract maximum profit from its holdings.
Being a Good Samaritan doesn't pay.
- Thread starter CaptnPicard2305
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You could say the same for authoritarian patriarchies, feudal empires, theocracies. The game features those. Maybe too uncritical. It doesnt really show players what it entails. Maybe it would ruin the game a bit. I can suspend my disbelief enough and use it to play with those because my character is motivated to make a better world and tread such governments into the muck but its all headcanon. None of it is narrated. Elite is pretty much all head canon to me, it never delivered its story to me.
I played the original and FFE - aside from the planet blurb text there was nothing. FFE had an empire come out of nothing. Why would people submit to such a rule? It's the future and humanity is emancipating. That is my expectation of a space game. Not a millenium in barbary - it is basically the opposite of an enjoyable utopia for me.
To illustrate: Until Battletech I just knew "cool mechs" about mechwarrior. With one single game intro video I was told how this world happened. Elite never did that. How the empire happened is a mystery.
When you play WH40 you get told it's grimdark fantasy and can follow the extensive lore. You can certainly learn how this all came to be.
ED suddenly was cuthroat murderhobo galaxy. Why? I suppose because it's a MP game.
When you play WH40 you get told it's grimdark fantasy and can follow the extensive lore. You can certainly learn how this all came to be.
ED suddenly was cuthroat murderhobo galaxy. Why? I suppose because it's a MP game.
On topic:
Being a samaritan in-game pays when you role play the good guy.
If you play the game for the petty, little rewards - yeah, you have to pry them real hard out of the game designers' rears. Not really worth it, imo.
Being a samaritan in-game pays when you role play the good guy.
If you play the game for the petty, little rewards - yeah, you have to pry them real hard out of the game designers' rears. Not really worth it, imo.
So the OP is going on strike and not recovering downed pilots until they're paid more?
[Insert cheap joke re: NHS ambulance union.]
I don't recall the Fuel Rats demanding payment.
When I do refugee missions I normally do so for the flat 10k & rep.
Of course I make my credits from trade mostly (exobiology has obviously jumped recently but still isn't the major source yet) so I do so for reasons other than my bank balance.
[Insert cheap joke re: NHS ambulance union.]
I don't recall the Fuel Rats demanding payment.
When I do refugee missions I normally do so for the flat 10k & rep.
Of course I make my credits from trade mostly (exobiology has obviously jumped recently but still isn't the major source yet) so I do so for reasons other than my bank balance.
How the Empire happened is one of the things in the Codex. It's one of the things they followed from my original codex suggestion. I guess that's why that bit is good.
I can, and do. It’s an ugly universe out there… if you choose to pay attention to the little details sprinkled throughout the game.
It doesn’t show the players because the players don’t have on-foot access to the universe, except for the Pilots Federation’s enclaves in stations and starports, and some tiny specialized compounds on lifeless worlds. Even these don’t have many variants, even between the major powers. Which is a pity, but I’m sure it’s on Frontier’s “Itcwould be nice to do someday” list, after all the major stuff is done.
It’s not headcanon. Headcanon is explaining the absurd rewards we’re offered for missions is due to the FSD not yet having reached universal adoption, and the Pilots Federation has a near monopoly on access to it. That corporate states exist is canon. What the words “corporate state” describes will vary from player to player.
It’s narrated. It’s just not very verbose in that narration, which IMO is good for an open-world game. It leaves plenty of room for a player to create their own narrative. It’s the difference between a book and a movie.
So did I, but there were plenty of details in the game to form an impression on the setting, and that setting remains a dystopian one. Dictators rule entire star systems with an iron fist, and theocracies brutally suppress any hint of heresy. Corporate states keep their workers perpetually in debt to their company store, and suppress any hint of a union. Communist regimes keep their impoverished workers under constant surveillance, criminal syndicates controlled entire systems, and only in the rare Democratic state is freedom and prosperity allowed to flourished.
And in ED, we learn that the Federation, supposedly the bastion of Democracy in the Elite Universe, allows corporate interests to have representation in the Federal Congress, which anyone who’s read “The Wealth of Nations” knows is a very bad thing.
Because the ruling class had guns, and the their slaves didn’t? Of course we learn in ED that Imperial Slaves are indentured servants rather than chattel slaves, which is a lesser class of human trafficking, but when it comes to the game, mechanically there’s no difference between the two. My headcanon is that there is collusion between the Pilots Federation and large segments of Imperial Society to illegally trade in Imperial Slaves as if they were chattel slaves, but that’s most certainly headcanon to explain the difference between what we are told, and what we are shown.
Humans are going to human, and while we have been slowly improving over the last 10,000 years, I doubt we’ll breed a better human in the next thousand years. Our technology may change, but human nature won’t.
My expectation of a space game is for it to have an interesting setting, and a true utopia isn’t interesting. Of course, utopias in fiction inevitably have some horrific secret underpinning the illusian of a utopia, but that’s another matter entirely.
Battletech has nearly 40 years of novels, as well as numerous sourcebooks describing the details of the major and minor powers, their history, culture, and even clothing. Just because you weren’t aware of them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Elite doesn’t have have nearly that level of detail, but even the 1984 game included a novella describing the final days of a father and son whose ship were ambushed by pirates, and FE2 included two gazetteers about the history and some of the worlds circa 3200. This isn’t “suddenly.” Elite has always had a dark, cutthroat setting, even if you chose to ignore the details.
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Given we see 'Emergency bulk/supply oreders' for Imperial Slaves in systems getting invaded by Thargoids, (a death sentence for debt?) Claiming any distinction between Slaves and Imperial Slaves is disingenuous at this point.
Which is why my character eventually chose to swing her allegiance from Arissa Lavigny-Duval to Aisling Duval. ALD may have represented the "traditional" Imperial, but it was clear she was failing at enforcing our own laws and regulations, especially when it came to Imperial slavery. If we're not enforcing the regulations that protect the most vulnerable segment of our society, perhaps its time to end that institution.
There is also going around to distressed NPC pilots with fuel limpets. Kind of a poor man's PvE version of the Fuel Rats.
1984 I barely understood English and I dont remember my FFE edition including any texts. The Empire always appeared to be a sudden player to me which I never really bought.
And while humanity has developed average over the last couple millenia most of the progress was made in the last 400 years. I expect better than slavery and feudal incest for the future.
That's money to give away, not receive.
I don't doubt it. Unfortunately it took years after release to get it done. It would have been a different experience had the basic world-building been included from the start.How the Empire happened is one of the things in the Codex. It's one of the things they followed from my original codex suggestion. I guess that's why that bit is good.
The murderhobos end up in my fleet carrier's hall of skulls..... I did think of feeding them to the thargoids, but then who would I have to talk to?
Bill
OP was thinking of this collection of eight stories I think, which was released with FE2, not FFE.
Stories Of Life On The Frontier: Eight Short Elite Stories | Dream-Ware
Eight short stories from Frontier: Elite II, each one ties into the the next. - Dream-Ware
www.dream-ware.co.uk
If I go and look how much that book is on eBay now I'm going to be really annoyed about my last house move, aren't I?
Fair enough, though just because you lacked the skill to read the information that accompanied these games, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.
I would argue that most of our progress has been made in the last 80 years, and we’ve been regressing lately.
No, it was done in 1993, with the release Frontier: Elite 2. Most of the details about the Empire, the rise of the Duvals, the genocide of a sapient alien species on Capital, the Empire’s use of cloned soldiers to drive of the Federation, Admiral O’Brian’s war with the Federation over whether Cemiess would remain part of the Empire or not, and the treaty that made slavery illegal in Cemiess are all detailed in the books that came with the original release of the game.
That’s why I chose Emerald, in the Cemiess system, as my character’s home world in 2013 for its (relatively) rich history. By 2014, as we learned more information about 3300 ED’s lore, it became clear some time between 3250 and 3300, the Empire obviously violated its treaty with the Federation, but there were no reprisals from the Federation.
Perhaps that's why the name of the game is Elite