Improve exploration player retention by leaving behind black box upon death.

[[VR] Goooost]

I've known a couple players, and seen the threads for countless others, who have given up on Elite after dying during a long exploration session. My idea is that after collecting more than 500k in exploration data, any ship death will leave behind a signal source with all that data in the form of a black box. The owner will have exclusive access to it for 48hrs, but after that anyone could theoretically stumble across it and pick it up for themselves. (this is to prevent griefers from specifically targeting explorers for their data). When other players take the data, it's payout-only (no nametags).
This will mean that players can journey back to where they died, and pick up where they left off. It will also mean that over time the galaxy will be scattered with treasure troves of exploration data to claim. Very rare, but what a story when someone does find one! They might post a thread about where they found it, people will be speculating its value all the way back to the bubble, and maybe it's worth way more than anticipated- who knows?

 

[varonica]

Can't be done in any meaningful way due to the issue of object persistence, any object that persists when the player logs off has to be a primary entry in the galaxy master database like Fleet Carriers and stations, and FDEV aren't going to do that and have tens of thousands of abandoned black boxes all over the galaxy forever.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

Can't be done in any meaningful way due to the issue of object persistence, any object that persists when the player logs off has to be a primary entry in the galaxy master database like Fleet Carriers and stations, and FDEV aren't going to do that and have tens of thousands of abandoned black boxes all over the galaxy forever.

Thats a shame, its a cool idea, particularly if when/if the data is turned in by another player, the original player would still get any name markers.

 

[Kissamies]

Yeah, this has been discussed before, but that's the most concise writeup of the idea I've seen. Kudos.

 

[[VR] Goooost]

Can't be done in any meaningful way due to the issue of object persistence, any object that persists when the player logs off has to be a primary entry in the galaxy master database like Fleet Carriers and stations, and FDEV aren't going to do that and have tens of thousands of abandoned black boxes all over the galaxy forever.

They manage it just fine when they add player names to systems. Those appear for everybody and they're permanent and way more abundant. You're telling me it's so different to have an invisible tag next to a stellar body that has a player name and a value? The actual discovery data would still be local to the owner of the box.