Famine state - Not very likely in the world of Elite

[MissMeYet]

While trying to score some DWEs at convoy beacons, I started thinking...

All the other system states make sense, but Famine seems so out of place in a world where literally billions of spaceship pilots can bring food anywhere in such overwhelming amounts that any shortage of food would be dealt with in an afternoon.

More realistic states would be "Blockade" for systems that don't produce their own food, and "Pestilence" for agricultural systems. Bringing food to a Blockade system could offer huge rewards and powerful NPCs, and Pestilence would offer rewards for food, agricultural medicines and other agricultural related commodities.

My 2 cents

 

[Hellakitty]

Also, why are all the small ships that come for aid packages high-waking out of the system that's in famine? They'd be low-waking, to go feed their families and communities in the same system.

It's almost as if the distribution centres are just badly disguised and shoddily dressed mind-numbingly broken RNG timegates for engineering materials, or something.

Amazing.

 

[MissMeYet]

Also, why are all the small ships that come for aid packages high-waking out of the system that's in famine? They'd be low-waking, to go feed their families and communities in the same system.

^That too.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

You know there is famine in our current world and yet we have all the means of delivering food anywhere. We have enough food too, how much we throw away is mindblowing.

 

[Schlack]

The way the bgs works with famine is that it is triggered if players dont provide the neccessary commodities. A hidden bucket slowly empties without player intervention

 

[Ian Doncaster]

but Famine seems so out of place in a world where literally billions of spaceship pilots can bring food anywhere in such overwhelming amounts that any shortage of food would be dealt with in an afternoon.

If you add up the total supply of food products and the total demand of food products across all the stations ... the demand will end up considerably higher than the supply.

Sure, they can bring overwhelming amounts of food anywhere ... but they can't bring overwhelming amounts of food everywhere.

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

You know there is famine in our current world and yet we have all the means of delivering food anywhere. We have enough food too, how much we throw away is mindblowing.

Indeed, there's enough thrown away just because it's past the "sell by" or "best if used by" date (which are arbitrary dates determined by the companies producing it based on the notion of "this is when it will taste best!") is staggering by itself.

 

[ilo]

Famine still makes sense IMO, you can bring food, but the system is still lacking the resources to self-maintain itself.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

It's just a game mechanic, OP.

It also makes no sense that systems should undergo political coups ever ten days either, but if we had to wait 32 years for things to shift in the bubble it wouldn't be much of a game.