We’re Pilots Federation members, looking at data provided to us by the Pilots Federation, based on data provided to the Pilots Federation by Pilots Federation members.
That pretty much allows reconciliation of most things - because most NPCs aren’t Pilots Federation members.
That's why I said "does fit in with lore", but like a circle in a spiral we're right back to First Footfall not meaning "first footfall" at all but something closer to "first footfall apart from the various random non-PF guys who got here first and left all these
things lying about all over the place
."
That might not matter to some players as much as it does to others; some won't care at all and for others maybe just beating other players to the punch is enough. But FD are the ones who evoked the "Armstrong moment" in promoting
Odyssey and I'm willing to bet Armstrong's moment would have a very different historical resonance had his "One small step" speech been interrupted by Collins broadcasting that he'd just seen half a dozen LK descent stages littering the lunar surface. That would change the whole scenario, regardless of the fate of any cosmonauts.
Maybe if FD had called it "First Officially Recorded Surface EVA" or something it wouldn't be as much of a problem, but they didn't. They wanted a punchier description and they evoked Armstrong, for whom "first footfall" had and will always have an absolutely unambiguous meaning (unless someone finds those LKs, of course).
But they also wanted, indeed already had, random structures and crash sites all over the landable planets.
There are perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting both of those things, but it's simply not possible to reconcile them in a way that doesn't bring into question the believability of one, or the fundamental meaning of the other. Either the galaxy is littered with stuff built by humans who got as far as landing their ships and deploying thousands of SRVs onto planetary surfaces (before crashing a great number of them) but, in an affront to probability, never once managed to stick so much a single foot outside the cockpit. Or the much vaunted First Footfall is less of an Armstrong moment and more of a Schmitt show.
Personally I'm not happy with either of those, but I prefer to keep the romance of the Armstrong thing*, which is why I'm doing the retcon equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and going "la-la-la-la" every time I see signs of obvious human surface activity on a world that's supposed to be untouched by human spacefeet. Obviously other mileages are available.
*As has been pointed out a few times, 2000ly is a relative stroll down the street in ED so there is an argument
that all "local" planets should be teeming with human activity by this point anyway. But taking that to its logical
conclusion, with ships engineered to cross the galaxy in less than seven hours, the better part of the entire
Milky Way should be swarming with research stations, mining outposts and all manner of human activity. And
certainly further out than 2000-3000ly. Bagging a legitimate First Footfall should really be quite challenging,
especially in main sequence and other interesting systems. But this is a game which appeals to a broad range
of player types, and it would be unfair to squeeze exploration-focused players into the margins. Which makes it
all the more surprising that one of the two main quantifiable bones thrown to explorers in Odyssey -- the other
being exobiology -- has for some been undermined to a limited degree by another pre-existing mechanic.
S
