A remote high-security prison has today been engulfed in chaos following a large scale prison riot. The prison is now under the control of its former inmates. This report is brought to you by GalNot News, broadcasting from a highjacked comms beacon as the mainstream media blackout continues.
Located seven thousand lightyears from inhabited space in the Eagle Nebula, the prison's existence was not widely known prior to these events. Constructed within an asteroid ring, it appears to have been the site of a major mining operation using the prisoners as slave labour. While early reports indicate that the inmates originate from all three superpowers, it remains unclear who is ultimately responsible for the prison's funding or jurisdiction. Federal and Imperial authorities have each accused the other of operating the prison, and the Alliance has refused to comment at this stage.
It is claimed that tensions had been rising within the prison for several months over various issues, including multiple welfare failures stemming from overcrowding, unsafe working conditions in the mines, and even disturbing reports of wardens removing inmates from the main prison to be used as 'entertainment' for the guards. This practise was supposedly used to dispose of 'undesirable' inmates and to keep the others in line. Multiple lockdowns have also been imposed in recent months, to little effect.
Much of this information was gathered from messages being broadcast from the prison since its takeover. The inmates, led by Chief Weber, claim to be political prisoners and freedom fighters, imprisoned far from inhabited space to silence them. Unsubstantiated allegations have been made by some inmates against those supposedly responsible, including public figures such as Shadow Vice President Isolde Rochester and Chancellor Anders Blaine. These claims are largely being dismissed by authorities as baseless tales inspired by the deceased terrorist Salomé.
An investigation is underway to identify those responsible for the security failure. Several anarchist groups have experienced surges in activity over recent months, leading to speculation that they may have participated in a joint effort to free imprisoned members. However, analysts have noted that a conventional extraction would be impossible, due to the huge numbers of prisoners and the distances involved.
There are also concerns that if the inmates gain full control of the prison, they may be able to use it as a base to launch an attack on the nearby Colonia Connection base of Eagle's Landing. This would cause significant disruption by breaking the chain of support outposts between the core systems and Colonia, as well as the possibility of an escape to Colonia utilising the transport infrastructure it offers.
The situation is unstable, and it remains to be seen what aid will arrive for either the guards or the inmates, both trapped for the time being within the facility.
------------------
We started planning this "little" project nearly a full year ago, as GalNet began to be further reduced and then shut down. Flipping this system to Anarchy is no small achievement, having taken months and months of some pretty horrendous grinding to achieve. The Inmates were as low as a faction could possibly go, offering no missions, controlling no assets, and constantly being driven down by the flow of exploration data being dropped into the system. We spent months searching for elusive signal sources that would give us the chance to gain reputation with the inmates so we could run passenger missions.
Once we could finally do that, the only missions available were trips to and from the bubble, and a single scan would fail them ALL and send you back to square one looking for signals. Some of you might remember the long-distance smuggling missions from Robigo - imagine that, but over 14,000LY each trip. And if you fail you can't pick more up for another month.
But we slowly managed to claw our way up, triggering multiple Lockdowns to cut off the flow of exploration data while we handed in the missions. And now we've finally done it, the Eagle Sector Inmates have taken control of the prison. You might be asking...why?
Elite is a game that owes so much to its lore and its community. If you took them away and just had the gameplay on its own, well, I doubt any of us would be here. We did this because we wanted to create a story, and this system jumped out as a prime candidate. This system was tailor-made by Frontier for something like this, all the way back in 2017 if I remember right. Back in the days when we still had an overall narrative, when GalNet stories didn't have to be stretched out for months to fill time. This system is a remnant of that.
GalNet is dead now. There's no word on if it will return, or in what form if it does. Once something is removed, it's very hard to justify to management why they should pay to bring it back. For example, Frontier has stated that regular CGs aren't planned to come back, nor "off-camera" articles. Will the things that were meant to take their place be coming back? Are we still on track for this being a "slight decrease" in content?
So we've done this, based on the last bits of communication we had from Frontier about the future of GalNet. This is not some "off-camera" change, we fought to make this happen with the tools Frontier gave us, in a system hand-crafted to make this possible.
This isn't a request for this to be published on GalNet, that was never really a goal of ours. It doesn't make a difference if the change is acknowledged, it still happened. But as information on Odyssey is now starting to slowly be released...can we at least know if GalNet will be addressed in one of these Dev Diaries? What does it mean by "in-game activity" if Fleet Carriers didn't get a mention? And, over a year later, has that investigation into covering the activities of player groups finished?
GalNet is an integral part of this game. It'd be good to know if we're ever going to see a return to what it once was, before it was cut down to the point where a single story had to last months to fill space.
o7,
CMDR Rainbro, CMDR Jacen Hajna Wo'Ash, CMDR Rebel Scum, CMDR HunterzKillerz
Located seven thousand lightyears from inhabited space in the Eagle Nebula, the prison's existence was not widely known prior to these events. Constructed within an asteroid ring, it appears to have been the site of a major mining operation using the prisoners as slave labour. While early reports indicate that the inmates originate from all three superpowers, it remains unclear who is ultimately responsible for the prison's funding or jurisdiction. Federal and Imperial authorities have each accused the other of operating the prison, and the Alliance has refused to comment at this stage.
It is claimed that tensions had been rising within the prison for several months over various issues, including multiple welfare failures stemming from overcrowding, unsafe working conditions in the mines, and even disturbing reports of wardens removing inmates from the main prison to be used as 'entertainment' for the guards. This practise was supposedly used to dispose of 'undesirable' inmates and to keep the others in line. Multiple lockdowns have also been imposed in recent months, to little effect.
Much of this information was gathered from messages being broadcast from the prison since its takeover. The inmates, led by Chief Weber, claim to be political prisoners and freedom fighters, imprisoned far from inhabited space to silence them. Unsubstantiated allegations have been made by some inmates against those supposedly responsible, including public figures such as Shadow Vice President Isolde Rochester and Chancellor Anders Blaine. These claims are largely being dismissed by authorities as baseless tales inspired by the deceased terrorist Salomé.
An investigation is underway to identify those responsible for the security failure. Several anarchist groups have experienced surges in activity over recent months, leading to speculation that they may have participated in a joint effort to free imprisoned members. However, analysts have noted that a conventional extraction would be impossible, due to the huge numbers of prisoners and the distances involved.
There are also concerns that if the inmates gain full control of the prison, they may be able to use it as a base to launch an attack on the nearby Colonia Connection base of Eagle's Landing. This would cause significant disruption by breaking the chain of support outposts between the core systems and Colonia, as well as the possibility of an escape to Colonia utilising the transport infrastructure it offers.
The situation is unstable, and it remains to be seen what aid will arrive for either the guards or the inmates, both trapped for the time being within the facility.
------------------
We started planning this "little" project nearly a full year ago, as GalNet began to be further reduced and then shut down. Flipping this system to Anarchy is no small achievement, having taken months and months of some pretty horrendous grinding to achieve. The Inmates were as low as a faction could possibly go, offering no missions, controlling no assets, and constantly being driven down by the flow of exploration data being dropped into the system. We spent months searching for elusive signal sources that would give us the chance to gain reputation with the inmates so we could run passenger missions.
Once we could finally do that, the only missions available were trips to and from the bubble, and a single scan would fail them ALL and send you back to square one looking for signals. Some of you might remember the long-distance smuggling missions from Robigo - imagine that, but over 14,000LY each trip. And if you fail you can't pick more up for another month.
But we slowly managed to claw our way up, triggering multiple Lockdowns to cut off the flow of exploration data while we handed in the missions. And now we've finally done it, the Eagle Sector Inmates have taken control of the prison. You might be asking...why?
Elite is a game that owes so much to its lore and its community. If you took them away and just had the gameplay on its own, well, I doubt any of us would be here. We did this because we wanted to create a story, and this system jumped out as a prime candidate. This system was tailor-made by Frontier for something like this, all the way back in 2017 if I remember right. Back in the days when we still had an overall narrative, when GalNet stories didn't have to be stretched out for months to fill time. This system is a remnant of that.
GalNet is dead now. There's no word on if it will return, or in what form if it does. Once something is removed, it's very hard to justify to management why they should pay to bring it back. For example, Frontier has stated that regular CGs aren't planned to come back, nor "off-camera" articles. Will the things that were meant to take their place be coming back? Are we still on track for this being a "slight decrease" in content?
So we've done this, based on the last bits of communication we had from Frontier about the future of GalNet. This is not some "off-camera" change, we fought to make this happen with the tools Frontier gave us, in a system hand-crafted to make this possible.
This isn't a request for this to be published on GalNet, that was never really a goal of ours. It doesn't make a difference if the change is acknowledged, it still happened. But as information on Odyssey is now starting to slowly be released...can we at least know if GalNet will be addressed in one of these Dev Diaries? What does it mean by "in-game activity" if Fleet Carriers didn't get a mention? And, over a year later, has that investigation into covering the activities of player groups finished?
GalNet is an integral part of this game. It'd be good to know if we're ever going to see a return to what it once was, before it was cut down to the point where a single story had to last months to fill space.
o7,
CMDR Rainbro, CMDR Jacen Hajna Wo'Ash, CMDR Rebel Scum, CMDR HunterzKillerz
