Well if they had put some thought into it, rather than making it up as they go along it may be consistent and somewhat believable. As it stands, has anyone the first clue where anyone actually is, if we are holograms or real?
Feedback from CMDR creator tool (The i am hologram, lore explanation and its placement on UI)
- Thread starter Thetele
- Start date
Well if they had put some thought into it, rather than making it up as they go along it may be consistent and somewhat believable. As it stands, has anyone the first clue where anyone actually is, if we are holograms or real?
CMDR Immergo was minding his own business. He'd recently received a telegram from the Pilot's Federation that a CG had started 8 weeks ago. This one was different, though, and was supposed to go for 10 weeks instead of the usual one. Fortunately for him, he was able to participate! At last! He rushed off to the CG station as quickly as his FSD would take him, eventually finding it. Loading up his ship with precious cargo for which he paid a price that might well be reasonable (the daily telegram about galactic averages had not arrived yet), he took off towards the CG destination.
Unfortunately for him, he missed a telegram telling him that there were hostile pirates in the area. As they pulled him over for interdiction, he was not worried. Surely the space police would save him! "I am calling the police" he started to flash his ship lights to say. "Lol get rekt scrub" the enemy commander, standing on his bridge replied, in semaphore.
As the pirate's weapons started firing, CMDR Immergo quickly wrote down the name of the pilot and attached it to his carrier limpet. Unfortunately, the carrier limpet could only travel 2,000C (technically still FTL, but that's neither here nor there), and the station in this system was over 50,000 ls from where he'd been interdicted. The carrier limpet rocketed through space to alert the space police. Receiving the highly immersive delayed communication, the space police pulled up the pirate's name. "He's not wanted, actually. We can't do anything."
As it turns out, the pirate's own carrier limpet, which due to Pilot's Federation standards automatically launched to inform a faction of a CMDR's wanted status, had to travel to the headquarters for the faction, which was even further away, and in another system. "Well, I guess we'll have to wait to see if this guy is actually wanted. Maybe CMDR Immergo is a legal target. Unfortunately there's no way to know without FTL communication."
"Haha!" laughed the System Authority garrison officer. "Faster than Light communication? How totally inconsistent with the lore! Let's go get lunch."
CMDR Immergo was destroyed.
Unfortunately for him, he missed a telegram telling him that there were hostile pirates in the area. As they pulled him over for interdiction, he was not worried. Surely the space police would save him! "I am calling the police" he started to flash his ship lights to say. "Lol get rekt scrub" the enemy commander, standing on his bridge replied, in semaphore.
As the pirate's weapons started firing, CMDR Immergo quickly wrote down the name of the pilot and attached it to his carrier limpet. Unfortunately, the carrier limpet could only travel 2,000C (technically still FTL, but that's neither here nor there), and the station in this system was over 50,000 ls from where he'd been interdicted. The carrier limpet rocketed through space to alert the space police. Receiving the highly immersive delayed communication, the space police pulled up the pirate's name. "He's not wanted, actually. We can't do anything."
As it turns out, the pirate's own carrier limpet, which due to Pilot's Federation standards automatically launched to inform a faction of a CMDR's wanted status, had to travel to the headquarters for the faction, which was even further away, and in another system. "Well, I guess we'll have to wait to see if this guy is actually wanted. Maybe CMDR Immergo is a legal target. Unfortunately there's no way to know without FTL communication."
"Haha!" laughed the System Authority garrison officer. "Faster than Light communication? How totally inconsistent with the lore! Let's go get lunch."
CMDR Immergo was destroyed.
I love the commander creator. Top notch work.
That said I think it belongs in the Esc Menu. Doesnt make much sense as a ship function.
Also telepresence in multicrew... It doesnt bother me at all (hey... Its a game) but it does make a lot of missions (data transport) and exploring a bit silly. Not sure how eager are the devs to move on with this little inconsistencies.
That said I think it belongs in the Esc Menu. Doesnt make much sense as a ship function.
Also telepresence in multicrew... It doesnt bother me at all (hey... Its a game) but it does make a lot of missions (data transport) and exploring a bit silly. Not sure how eager are the devs to move on with this little inconsistencies.
Because gravity, okay?!
And our holograms will suffocate when the Life Support is shot out too, because... because suffocate, okay?!
Does the holohair needs to "breathe" when doing multicruise?
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This is completely irrelevant to the discussion, but it's a pet peeve of mine... data compression is all about transmitting fewer bits by exploiting lack of entropy in data, while data encryption is all about hiding data by adding entropy to it. The two are diametrically opposed to each other, a perfectly encrypted block of data is incompressible because it is indistinguishable from pure noise, which cannot be compressed because there are no predictable patterns in it. Now back to your regularly scheduled program...
Yes, FD stated that. You are a real person. In the Creator, you see a hologram that gets applied to Real You. Telepresence is projecting your Hologram to a different location. The Real You stays where it is. If the Hologram dies, you return to Real You. If Real You 'dies', you are ejected in an escape pod and return to a station. 'Dying' as SRV driver, SLF pilot or crew member is fine, you are a hologram. Having your main ship, where your Real You is, blown up means Big Trouble.
Its not that hard, and if you squint a bit its fine. The only part thats off is the idea of instantly applying Hologram modifications to yourself. The only real alternative I've heared is have everything be Real You, adding magical escape pods to the SRV/SLF (which isnt any more immersive as the escape pod mechanism makes no sense at all), only apply appearance changes at a clinic for a fee (and possibly have a forced recovery of a month
) and only allowing multi-crew when docked at the same station. Sounds like fun... [ugh]
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It's going to play havoc with my split ends!
lol.. I can forgive everything if we get one of these holoships...
[video=youtube_share;k3hUHz5F6Hg]https://youtu.be/k3hUHz5F6Hg[/video]
'Forced to have sex with beautiful women on demand... ' I'd be telepresent for that. [haha]
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
I really can't post about this anymore - because if we are going to selectively discount certain game mechanics, and then on top of that start using the "I can't see it" line to prove lack of existence, we have truly descend into the dark pits of (un)reasoning.
Dont like the name one bit, if this is the name its going to ship with well you know its bad but I can live with it a name is just a name.
I just see it as a avatar creator which so many games have. I can give my commander a body and a face, which is nice.
Doubt very much I will ever use Multi crew, so as far as anything else goes when I boot up ED I'll still be pretending that Lokvette is at the helm, just now I can see her from time to time.
I just see it as a avatar creator which so many games have. I can give my commander a body and a face, which is nice.
Doubt very much I will ever use Multi crew, so as far as anything else goes when I boot up ED I'll still be pretending that Lokvette is at the helm, just now I can see her from time to time.
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That's the problem though - telepresence solves that one specific problem well, but it creates a whole bunch of other problems - that's what the ruckus is about. Problems such as, what about the owner of the ship? does he/she only get to change their appearance when they're on someone else's ship or are they in a different room in the ship other than the bridge? why do fighters not have this technology as well, so there's no 30km limit and pilots don't have to die if the mothership explodes? The answer doesn't have to be particularly good, it just needs to be consistent which telepresence is not.
Literally invisible Jetsons robots change your hair and clothing while you sit at the Helm. Just go with that.
Or better, go with "it doesn't really matter since it's clearly a game mechanic, who cares" the same as we all do with "but how does my escape pod make it back to the bubble instantly after I smash myself on a rock outside the galactic rim???"
Keeping in mind that in the lore one of the largest religions is a virtual reality simulation cult where devout followers immerse themselves entirely in simulated reality to receive spiritual teachings from their simguru, telepresently projected holographic avatars is literally already canonical. This is the mechanic by which CQC works. It is already in the game as presented.
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So if my crew members are just holograms and they have full control over my fighters, why does my NPC Pilot have to die when my ship explodes, and why must they be present on my ship at all if they could just holo-hop from the other end of the galaxy?
Why can't I just holo-hop into my ship so I can deactivate my life support for more power?
If no lag real-time galaxywide 2-way comms are a thing, what's the point in my cmdr even getting into his cockpit if he can just poof anywhere in the galaxy where there's a chair?
I feel like this holo-telepresence magic is just a bad explanation for what should have been "it's a game, and they join your instance so you can play with friends".
Why can't I just holo-hop into my ship so I can deactivate my life support for more power?
If no lag real-time galaxywide 2-way comms are a thing, what's the point in my cmdr even getting into his cockpit if he can just poof anywhere in the galaxy where there's a chair?
I feel like this holo-telepresence magic is just a bad explanation for what should have been "it's a game, and they join your instance so you can play with friends".
See, that is a perfect example of a not very good but consistent mechanic. If I were in charge of the space loach, I would have made all this stuff something you access from the main menu (graphics options for holo-me and start for multicrew) and most of the problems would go away.
First and foremost, this is a game. People need to remember that. sometimes, things don't make sense, and that's OK.
However, I'm a fan of internal consistency in a fantasy or scifi universe. so I gave this a few seconds of thought. I'm still having difficulty seeing how this is immersion breaking. Italics are assumptions based on existing info.
1) it's established that FTL coms and telepresence exist.
2) It's semi-established that long-range telepresence exists (skimmers on planets). presumably it takes a lot of power, because...
3) You cannot control your own ship while telepresencing another. Presumably your entire power output is maintaining life support the FTL link.
4) Short range telepresence control of a SLF is possible.
5) Long range telepresence control of turrets are possible.
6) long range control of helm is not.
So then we come down to bandwidth.
Let's assume the Holo'Me is an avatar that the pilot has created of themselves using using pilot's federation tech. The fact that your own body/face changes is just because it's a game. We're not customising ourselves, we're making that custom avatar that resembles us closely.... no matter how freakish our pilot looks.
The avatar therefore consists of a fixed number of settings, and applied numbers. If we say there are less than 70 sliders and the maximum range for those sliders is 16, using hex you could TWEET the data for the hologram. There's no need for it to even be realtime, the computers on the ship can deal with that. So, we then get to the three things the telepresencing player needs:
1) Visual data.
2) Audio data
3) Response.
Visual data needs to be: ship control positions, HUD data, location of enemy/ally ships.
Audio data needs to be: 2-way coms from main ship to remote ship.
Response needs to be transmitting your controls to the remote ship.
OK. Visual data... ID of ship, data about ship (health, shields, target, firing state, make of ship). No video feed is needed. Telemetry can be visualised on the remote commander's HUD with that data.
audio data - the highest bandwidth of this whole thing, with decent compression. We do this now with audio compression, ip phones, etc.
Response - just like the game itself. A keypress ID.
So, we're looking at a one-off packet of pilot ID, a constant stream of audio, and a stream of telemetry data.
OK, that leads us to: Why the hell not just broadcast financial and exploration data?
Most likely explanation:
Fear of tampering with the data.
The PF don't give a damn if you mess up another pilot's ship. They do care that exploration data is accurate.
Now, that means that BUYING data remotely should 100% be possible, and for some reason it just isn't. This could be a limitation that's not advertised (which would be my favourite reason, something deeply secret that the companies that make the kit don't want people to know), or it could be that the data companies maintain some sort of DRM (has to be handed over on a physical tape, or similar.)
However, I'm a fan of internal consistency in a fantasy or scifi universe. so I gave this a few seconds of thought. I'm still having difficulty seeing how this is immersion breaking. Italics are assumptions based on existing info.
1) it's established that FTL coms and telepresence exist.
2) It's semi-established that long-range telepresence exists (skimmers on planets). presumably it takes a lot of power, because...
3) You cannot control your own ship while telepresencing another. Presumably your entire power output is maintaining life support the FTL link.
4) Short range telepresence control of a SLF is possible.
5) Long range telepresence control of turrets are possible.
6) long range control of helm is not.
So then we come down to bandwidth.
Let's assume the Holo'Me is an avatar that the pilot has created of themselves using using pilot's federation tech. The fact that your own body/face changes is just because it's a game. We're not customising ourselves, we're making that custom avatar that resembles us closely.... no matter how freakish our pilot looks.
The avatar therefore consists of a fixed number of settings, and applied numbers. If we say there are less than 70 sliders and the maximum range for those sliders is 16, using hex you could TWEET the data for the hologram. There's no need for it to even be realtime, the computers on the ship can deal with that. So, we then get to the three things the telepresencing player needs:
1) Visual data.
2) Audio data
3) Response.
Visual data needs to be: ship control positions, HUD data, location of enemy/ally ships.
Audio data needs to be: 2-way coms from main ship to remote ship.
Response needs to be transmitting your controls to the remote ship.
OK. Visual data... ID of ship, data about ship (health, shields, target, firing state, make of ship). No video feed is needed. Telemetry can be visualised on the remote commander's HUD with that data.
audio data - the highest bandwidth of this whole thing, with decent compression. We do this now with audio compression, ip phones, etc.
Response - just like the game itself. A keypress ID.
So, we're looking at a one-off packet of pilot ID, a constant stream of audio, and a stream of telemetry data.
OK, that leads us to: Why the hell not just broadcast financial and exploration data?
Most likely explanation:
Fear of tampering with the data.
The PF don't give a damn if you mess up another pilot's ship. They do care that exploration data is accurate.
Now, that means that BUYING data remotely should 100% be possible, and for some reason it just isn't. This could be a limitation that's not advertised (which would be my favourite reason, something deeply secret that the companies that make the kit don't want people to know), or it could be that the data companies maintain some sort of DRM (has to be handed over on a physical tape, or similar.)
Telepresence might raise some questions, but none of these I think. Fighter for example is a small ship .. why would it have inter-stellar comms? It's doubtful too that 30km is limited by comms anyway, radio woulo get you over 30km no bother and the ship could relay your inter-steallar signal to it (much more likely imo, 30km is a security measure, built in so the owner of a fighter can be identified, a ship inside 30km range. If the fighter has no transponder either, being small and to stop fighters blowing things up with no bouty issuable, Bank of Zaonce could only issue license to sell, range limited fighters?)
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Exactly. The main menu is where you get to do reality-distorting stuff like banishing everyone else from the galaxy (AKA logging into solo) or changing your appearance. Once you start the game, things need to be internally consistent.
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