Galactic cloud servers for data storage

[CMDR Lefty Jackson]

In the tech age of ED, it amazes me that we can lose data if our ship gets destroyed. Explore the galaxy, grab a bunch of system data, only to lose it in some "accident" because we carry that data with us. No idea where that data is, maybe in a pocket in our flight suits?

We need a galactic data storage system...scan a system, then upload data to your server, done. Now it's there for when you are ready to sell the data. You are no longer running around with millions in system scan data in your flight suit back pocket.

With all the technology in the game, this should be standard tech.

 

[metatheurgist]

It's for gameplay. It was decided a while ago that each activity would have a risk of loss, that's a basic principle of most games. As the game has gone on this principle has been steadily eroded. Probably because of suggestions like this one.

When you store something on 'the cloud', you send data to some computer somewhere. It travels there via wires and signals maxed out at the speed of light (though in practise much slower). In space the only thing you could rely on to send data would be signals, which are maxed at the speed of light. So if you sent a message to store your data on 'the could', you'd probably get back to civilisation years before your data found a server.

Now we could get interesting and have a module that fires little missiles that use FSD tech to deliver data to the bubble. But then explorers would be losing their precious jump range and complaining about module bloat or something. And there'd be interesting questions about fuel, range and data capacity. Pirates would wonder why they can't interdict and steal them. It'd be a fun Pandora's box to open. More fun than Colonoscopyisation for sure.

 

[alexzk]

In the tech age of ED, it amazes me that we can lose data if our ship gets destroyed. Explore the galaxy, grab a bunch of system data, only to lose it in some "accident" because we carry that data with us. No idea where that data is, maybe in a pocket in our flight suits?

We need a galactic data storage system...scan a system, then upload data to your server, done. Now it's there for when you are ready to sell the data. You are no longer running around with millions in system scan data in your flight suit back pocket.

With all the technology in the game, this should be standard tech.

It's called "Fleet Carrier". I use it last 2 years in the Void. Fast backups - each 7 jumps about.

 

[Ozric]

It's for gameplay. It was decided a while ago that each activity would have a risk of loss, that's a basic principle of most games. As the game has gone on this principle has been steadily eroded. Probably because of suggestions like this one.

Actually due to design changes and bugs that were never fixed, Exploration data is the only thing left you lose.

Not that I think you should keep Exploration data on death. I think you should lose everything. But that will never happen because people would complain they can't stockpile billions of combat bonds.

 

[CMDR Lefty Jackson]

It's for gameplay. It was decided a while ago that each activity would have a risk of loss, that's a basic principle of most games. As the game has gone on this principle has been steadily eroded. Probably because of suggestions like this one.

When you store something on 'the cloud', you send data to some computer somewhere. It travels there via wires and signals maxed out at the speed of light (though in practise much slower). In space the only thing you could rely on to send data would be signals, which are maxed at the speed of light. So if you sent a message to store your data on 'the could', you'd probably get back to civilisation years before your data found a server.

Now we could get interesting and have a module that fires little missiles that use FSD tech to deliver data to the bubble. But then explorers would be losing their precious jump range and complaining about module bloat or something. And there'd be interesting questions about fuel, range and data capacity. Pirates would wonder why they can't interdict and steal them. It'd be a fun Pandora's box to open. More fun than Colonoscopyisation for sure.

LOL, I knew somebody was going to bring up the whole data transfer speed thing. Yeah, I get it, speed of light is slow!

Riddle me this if what you say should be some kind of game restriction due to known laws of physics...

...How is that we have speed of light ships? Humans can't even go 1% of the speed of light in reality. My point is the game makes exceptions to reality, which is kind of the whole point to a video game. Sticking to basic real world laws of physics has merit, but how close do you want to stick?

...physics of time and space? So how are we transfering a wholel freakin' ship across space in mere real life minutes? The game kind fudged that one too!

Sooo, yeah, I prefer staying close to real world laws of physics, but being creative with unknown future technology allows for some...tweeking of reality in-game.

 

[metatheurgist]

LOL, I knew somebody was going to bring up the whole data transfer speed thing. Yeah, I get it, speed of light is slow!

Riddle me this if what you say should be some kind of game restriction due to known laws of physics...

...How is that we have speed of light ships? Humans can't even go 1% of the speed of light in reality. My point is the game makes exceptions to reality, which is kind of the whole point to a video game. Sticking to basic real world laws of physics has merit, but how close do you want to stick?

...physics of time and space? So how are we transfering a wholel freakin' ship across space in mere real life minutes? The game kind fudged that one too!

Sooo, yeah, I prefer staying close to real world laws of physics, but being creative with unknown future technology allows for some...tweeking of reality in-game.

Like I said, we would need a new module to fire little FSD missiles, since that is the only FTL tech we know.

Actually due to design changes and bugs that were never fixed, Exploration data is the only thing left you lose.

Yes, I covered that with:

As the game has gone on this principle has been steadily eroded. Probably because of suggestions like this one.

 

[anShpan]

Not that I think you should keep Exploration data on death. I think you should lose everything. But that will never happen because people would complain they can't stockpile billions of combat bonds.

But combat bounds have digital source, where its copy is stored, so could be (at least in theory) somehow re-issued to player upon rebuy. Exploration data has no digital source anywhere until re-scanned, as far as I understand.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

We have FTL communications and sensing in game already, presumably working on the same magic as the rest of our ships do.

(And confirmed by various appearances in the early Elite fiction and lore guides not to be just an in-game simplification; there are plenty of scenes in the licensed fiction where characters in different systems - or even more than a Ls apart in the same system - have a real-time conversation)

Actually due to design changes and bugs that were never fixed, Exploration data is the only thing left you lose.

Bounties (and yes, this is particularly weird and inconsistent when combat bonds aren't)
Cargo
Codex vouchers (for all 2500cr matters) and the various other miscellaneous vouchers like wing trade bonds
Certain mission types
Your entire ship in extreme cases

 

[aRJay]

The game plays very differently if you know by one bad decision (allowing pets or children in where you play) or careless flying could wipe out everything you have done for the last several months. Than when the worst that happens is you are in a shiny new ship safe in the last/nearest dock and have lost less than 100,000,000 credits for the rebuy.

The ability to bulk store combat bonds etc has had an adverse effect already in my opinion. This would be another step towards the modern infants school sports day where about the only way not to win something is not to go.

 

[Ozric]

Yes, I covered that with:

I don't think posts like this have anything to do with the decisions though

But combat bounds have digital source, where its copy is stored, so could be (at least in theory) somehow re-issued to player upon rebuy. Exploration data has no digital source anywhere until re-scanned, as far as I understand.

But your ship remembers you've been to the system. The Galaxy Map shows the system as visited and you can still view the system map and it's contents, even though you've lost the names of the objects within it. So it's stored somewhere.

Bounties (and yes, this is particularly weird and inconsistent when combat bonds aren't)
Cargo
Codex vouchers (for all 2500cr matters) and the various other miscellaneous vouchers like wing trade bonds
Certain mission types
Your entire ship in extreme cases

Codex vouchers I had forgotten about, but they are exploration related

Physical stuff I think is fair enough, and missions have been a design choice from the time they were added to the game.

Do bounties really not stay though? I find that odd, I don't do combat so I wasn't sure.

The reason Combat Bonds stay is because when Odyssey released they didn't want you to lose on foot combat bonds when you die in an on foot conflict zone. Because the nature of them is so different to ship ones and you are repeatedly dying/respawning. The knock on effect was no-one checked whether they were linked to ship ones and so you no longer lost those when your ship blew up. Rather than try and disconnect them, Frontier chose to leave them as invulnerable.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Do bounties really not stay though?

No - because of the Odyssey-related reason you mention. A bounty and a combat bond are different transaction types (you hand them in at different contacts, even), so when Odyssey made them not lost on death it applied to all combat bonds (including AX ones, which don't even have an Odyssey equivalent), but not to bounties.

 

[CMDR Lefty Jackson]

We have FTL communications and sensing in game already, presumably working on the same magic as the rest of our ships do.

(And confirmed by various appearances in the early Elite fiction and lore guides not to be just an in-game simplification; there are plenty of scenes in the licensed fiction where characters in different systems - or even more than a Ls apart in the same system - have a real-time conversation)

Exactly. The ability to transfer and retain data is already in place, as you say, working by the "same magic".

My logic is that in the ED universe, no question some commanders got tired of losing data so surely they would come up with a way to safely store data that can be very valuable, credit wise.

Heck, the whole freakin' galaxy knows when there's a bounty on my head!

Where you've been is stored somewhere, so it's known you've been there, so details are still available to you. It seems that even though you lose the ship, you don't lose that data to systems already visited, so that data must be re-downloaded to the new ship on rebuy, one would think.

It's great I can sell the data collected and still have the details, that's awesome, but that doesn't replace the credits that could have been made by selling now-lost data. Imagine having to go back to systems that are 1000s of Ly away just to try to sell it again? Uh, no, that beyond sucks.

 

[CMDR Lefty Jackson]

Like I said, we would need a new module to fire little FSD missiles, since that is the only FTL tech we know.

Yes, I covered that with:

No need for any new hardware, the data movement issue is already being done with multiple things. Totally wireless and faster than light. In fact, the reality is that it moves now WAY faster than the ships. We are talking quark superposition fast!

Eroding the game? I think trying to replicate how humans do things is hardly eroding anything.

If we were living in that world, with that amount of tech, I can't see how humans wouldn't come up with a way to protect such valuable data that moves around just like so many other data items that are already "protected" somewhere.

Scan system, upload data, done. It just seems like a no-brainer. It's not dumbing down the game, it's following the logic of how humans think and evolve how they do things with technology.

Physical cargo? Fair game. It is physical just like the ship and pilot. This eventually would evolve into humans sending unmanned ships to do the work for humans, and they will be able to do everything way better than a human that makes mistakes without losing their lives.