For a game that is entirely text based the lack of dialogue variants is embarrassing.

[Enderby]

Ahhh, come on... you are exaggerating a little. I'm not saying they should just use whatever is sent to them... But if they don't have the time or resources to provide interesting and varied dialogue, why not ask the community for help? I'm sure a few individuals would be happy to help... Heck, I would help for free for a couple of weeks...!

Lol maybe exaggerating a bit. But not by much!

 

[AgamemnonWhen]

Community-provided dialogue? For the love all things holy, no. God no.

Haha, true. The phrases would need more vetting than creating them from scratch in-house.

And Yes! the the station comms are awsomenes recorded

I, for one, would definitely volunteer to voice a few for them... I know they undoubtedly use professional voiceover actors, but I'm sure some of us with theatrical experience would be more than happy to volunteer for a daytrip to Cambridge to record a few more "regional dialects".

Are you listening, FD? I'll do you a free voice acting gig for sandwiches and a coffee (I won't tell Equity if you don't). Anyone else?

 

[bootsam]

HaHarh, they be womens hands...

Sure i'll do voice overs for nowt. Send me the script and Ill voice threats for them. Why not?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I guess OP has never played a text-based game.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

Big haul like that...Good job I found you first...Tasty cargo...Go to hellspace I have heard it all before.
Adding dialogue is not difficult from a technical standpoint.
It does not take very much imagination to write these lines.
This series has generated its own book.
An entire book.
Surely if you have the time to write a book you are capable of coming up with some new one liners for the actual game?
It really is not much to ask.

It's a bit of a shambles, given they could fix this in about 30 minutes by adding some more lines of dialogue to whatever database contains these spurious offerings...

 

[Arry]

Maybe they could use a 'class system' reflected form of chat; connected to rank of the aggressor

Novice: 'Hand over you stuff or die!'

Elite: 'Excuse me; but you seem to have some of my belongings in your cargo hold.'

 

[Archvillain]

You make it sound like ED was in early access or pre-alpha.

I think he made it sound like the game is currently under ongoing development (which it is)

Sorry, but you don't get to draw that card anymore, not 2 years after the official release date.

There is another multiplayer-online game called World of Warcraft. They're still improving things in that game more than ten years after the official release date. Back when that game was as young as Elite, it had rough edges too - things that over the years would get upgraded with nicer replacements - but it is widely regarded as a success story and has a large number of players. (And a movie! )

For games like Elite, the release date is not (and should not be) the end of new features and new content and improved replacements for initially lackluster features.

 

[mp4x]

I remember when THIS addon came out... twenty-something years ago. It was a cool

It can't be that hard to implement now.

Something like that even fits the FD style of selling non-essential to gameplay extras