Inconsistencies not explained by lore

Telepresence is the elephant in the room, but the thing that grinds my gears most of all is when you arrive in a new system for the first time.

Your ship will pick up celestial bodies in its immediate vicinity, and "discover" them, without any interaction whatsoever.

The ADS honk will find everything else in the system outside of your ship's range.

All good so far.

But, if you arrive in a system with only one star and no planets, it proudly tells you "System scan complete" when you have yet to "honk". How can your ship know that there's nothing else out there without honking? It honks me off every time. :ROFLMAO:
 
It seems that the different systems onboard all run on different operating systems, that do not communicate with each other very much. Say, you scan a body using the FSS and it shows the body has geolocial and/or biological signals. This data isn't sent over to the SysMap software, which is completely unaware of such signals until the DSS collects this same information and sends it to the SysMap.

Also, it looks like the HUD's navigation software provider has mistakenly installed some kind of educational version pre-schoolers can play with, when they're taught about piloting spacecrafts. Instead of providing any real, useful information about the selected body when opening the window from the NavPanel, we're just given some vapid "This is a moon. Moons are celestial bodies. A commander can explore its surface." nonsense.
 
Sure, i get that, but the problem is that their shenanigans, go outside the boundaries at minor system squabbles.

I mean, take the Imperial Senator with hit private fleet. Now put that into context with cold war russian vs US.
A russian politician takes his private fleet, invades California and changes the laws there to more favor russian interests. And the US do not bat an eye?

I mean, he LITERALLY takes a military force, into another superpowers territory and subvert that areas laws.

And it get's better, he does this, unbeknown to his own Empress, who has her own faction, causing a diplomatic mess that SHE has to deal with. I have yet to see a more blatant reason for execution due to treason than that.

Yeah, I've been somewhat vocal in the past (probably three years ago, lol) that PP is making a farce out of lore. PP was/is to Elite what WoW was to Warcraft.
 
Don't get me started on artificial gravity, that just shows how lacklustre and at times inept FD can be. First they state that artificial gravity doesn't exist in 'their' galaxy to justify having spinning space stations (cos they look kewl or something - okay because of the legacy of the original Elite, I get it).

But then they completely screw up everything by having coffee machines fitted to ships. Coffee machines that need gravity to operate, otherwise there would be coffee floating all over the damn cockpit. Yes the coffee machine looks good but how about a little consistency FD, it isn't asking for much is it!
That's probably one of the easier ones to explain though. Artificial gravity via generators or grav plates or whatever would have some kind on ongoing power requirement. Why provide artificial gravity on a stationary facility in a way that requires power when you can just spin the thing and get it for "free"?
 
I mean, he LITERALLY takes a military force, into another superpowers territory and subvert that areas laws.

It sounds like you're talking about flipping the controlling faction of a system here. If that's what you mean, it's a political/martial mechanic that occurs whether or not a Power is involved and always requires either a legal election or a war. Or have I missed something?
 
TL; DR (mostly)

The problem with these sorts of threads is that:

1) This is a videogame. Not meant to be taken so seriously.

2) Nobody asks why magic mushrooms work on Mario and Luigi but not King Koopa!

3) Many things viewed as “inconsistencies” aren’t actually inconsistent, including some on this thread. Debating it is futile because people’s minds are already made up... much like real life I guess.

Now excuse me while I argue with the Jameson Memorial traffic warden about my lethal loitering fine...
 
It sounds like you're talking about flipping the controlling faction of a system here. If that's what you mean, it's a political/martial mechanic that occurs whether or not a Power is involved and always requires either a legal election or a war. Or have I missed something?
It's this guy.

https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Denton_Patreus
http://remlok-industries.fr/8178/the-complete-powerplay-guide/?lang=en#43

Expansion for Denton Patreus is – Destroy System Resistance at military attack points.

He literally takes his own fleet and goes into another system to destroy local military forces.
 
It's not at all clear whether FTL comms exists in the ED universe. The existence of data-courier missions suggests otherwise, but then how to account for pop-up messages telling you that one of your ships has arrived somewhere, or you've just met the requirements for an Engineer (especially if that Engineer happens to be 5,000ly from you at the time, or even in Colonia).

My solution is that FTL comms now exists, but it's new, has a low bandwidth, and is unsecure. So you can only send/receive brief messages, and nothing that you'd need to keep secret (such as the commercially-sensitive data involved in courier missions).

And telepresence is way ahead of this. No way of rationalising this with current Human technology, so I don't. This is Guardian tech. And nobody has managed to reverse-engineer it, luckily some people have managed to find some Guardian telepresence projectors and gotten them to work somehow. They then refuse to sell them, at any price.
 
Multi-crew for me is just that - I temporarily play a member of someone else’s crew, not my Cmdr.

The logical inconsistencies of that point of view in the game are far less egregious than galaxy-wide telepresence.

I find that I actually was disappointed when I upgraded to an Asp Explorer back in the days, and didn't have to sit and wait at the station to find enough NPCs to crew it... Somehow we can flit about from ship to ship to SRVs to the ships of others. But the NPCs can't? How are we different?

:D S
 
Galaxy wide instant telepresence. Why are there data delivery jobs when we have this ridiculous high bandwidth, extremely secure (has to be extremely secure as it interfaces directly to your brain) instant communications device in our ships.

In fact why doesn't every faction/commodities market/power/organisation use this unbelievably powerful tool. Why can't stelller cartographics use this amazing tech to transmit live data back to them from our ships.

Why are we even risking our necks by actually being in our ships/srvs when we can pilot them from the front room sofa.

That to me is the biggest lore breaking thing in the game, and to be honest, I can't see anything that will fix it apart from complete removal.

Some have said that it needs to be secure, surely having a two way transmission from and to you brain needs to have the highest security you could ever get.


Big data over Sneakernet

If an Airbus A380 were filled with microSD cards each holding 512 gigabytes of storage capacity, the theoretical total storage space onboard would be approximately 91 exabytes. A 4h47m flight from New York to Los Angeles would work out to a data transport rate of well over 5 petabytes per second

Over the history of computer networks, network speed has increased, but so has the size of the files we're dealing with. A big file today (say in the terabytes range) is as much a ballache to send over today's internet connections as a "big" file in the 60s (a few kb) over the networks of that time.

IIRC, for huge transfers (and what's considered huge rises as time goes on), the bandwidth of the high-capacity modern storage media of the era travelling in a fast modern vehicle, has remained higher than using the networks of the same era, for as long as networks have been around.
 
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I find that I actually was disappointed when I upgraded to an Asp Explorer back in the days, and didn't have to sit and wait at the station to find enough NPCs to crew it... Somehow we can flit about from ship to ship to SRVs to the ships of others. But the NPCs can't? How are we different?

:D S

That is yet another one of my bugbears in this game (damn that list is growing lol). In my version of ED, I should be incapable of operating any of the big ships by myself. I should be forced to hire crew just so I can leave the station. To me it is inconceivable that a ship as large as a cutter or corvette can be operated by one person. But if FD did ever decide to poke the game with the reality stick and introduce something like this then a lot has to change, starting with how much you pay these freeloaders considering you never see them on your ship!
 
That is yet another one of my bugbears in this game (damn that list is growing lol). In my version of ED, I should be incapable of operating any of the big ships by myself. I should be forced to hire crew just so I can leave the station. To me it is inconceivable that a ship as large as a cutter or corvette can be operated by one person. But if FD did ever decide to poke the game with the reality stick and introduce something like this then a lot has to change, starting with how much you pay these freeloaders considering you never see them on your ship!

I'd pay my Krait co-pilot well if he or she made coffee well (and maybe operated the FSS).

:D S
 
Why are SLFs 3D printed while SRVs are not?

Why do NPC crew die when you lose your ship while you do not?

Why do NPC crew get a cut of your profits even when they don’t participate?

Why can an NPC crew member fly an SLF while you’re in a wing but a MC player can’t?

Why do NPC pilots ignore heat mechanics and ignore silent running?

Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?

Why is freight sent by ground transportation called a shipment while freight sent by ship called cargo?
 
Galaxy wide instant telepresence. Why are there data delivery jobs when we have this ridiculous high bandwidth, extremely secure (has to be extremely secure as it interfaces directly to your brain) instant communications device in our ships.

In fact why doesn't every faction/commodities market/power/organisation use this unbelievably powerful tool. Why can't stelller cartographics use this amazing tech to transmit live data back to them from our ships.

Why are we even risking our necks by actually being in our ships/srvs when we can pilot them from the front room sofa.

That to me is the biggest lore breaking thing in the game, and to be honest, I can't see anything that will fix it apart from complete removal.

Some have said that it needs to be secure, surely having a two way transmission from and to you brain needs to have the highest security you could ever get.
My headcanon is that FTL communication does exist in the ED universe, but that it is not particularly secure nor is it particularly reliable.

When factions want to transfer sensitive data (like polling data or battle plans) to another location, they hire a private courier instead of broadcasting the data on FTL comms for everyone to see. Factions aren't paying you to take data from point A to point B, they are paying you to take the data from point A to point B securely.

The many issues with multi-crew stem from the inherent unreliability of FTL communications. All of the UI bugs, de-syncs, and disconnections you get while using multi-crew are a direct result of this.

As for explaining why SRVs and SLFs don't have as many problems with telepresence as multi-crew, the short ranges (<50km) involved means that FTL communication isn't really needed. Because of this SRVs and SLFs are free to use more secure and reliable forms of communication that propagate at the speed of light.
 
When I see an inconsitency in the game I usually chuckle then remember im first and foremost playing a game and I dont require everything to have a lore explanation in order to enjoy the game.
The problem with these sorts of threads is that:

1) This is a videogame. Not meant to be taken so seriously.

2) Nobody asks why magic mushrooms work on Mario and Luigi but not King Koopa!

Yes, it's "just a game". But, importantly, it's a Science Fiction game. The difference between "fantasy" and "science fiction" is that, in science fiction, there's always supposed to be a logical, rational explanation for everything, including "how do you get from here on 21st century Earth, to there in that science-fiction universe". Saying "It just is, so switch off your rational brain and just go with the flow" works for fantasy, but not sci-fi.

Now, it is entirely possible to treat science fiction as fantasy. It's not how science fiction is designed to work, but you can still make it work. But science fiction fans will still be approaching a science fiction game from a science fiction mindset. They will be asking those "how, when, where, why" questions and expecting there to be answers. So threads like this exist in this forum, they have always existed since the game launched and and will continue to exist.

Don't get me started on artificial gravity, that just shows how lacklustre and at times inept FD can be. First they state that artificial gravity doesn't exist in 'their' galaxy to justify having spinning space stations (cos they look kewl or something - okay because of the legacy of the original Elite, I get it).

But then they completely screw up everything by having coffee machines fitted to ships. Coffee machines that need gravity to operate, otherwise there would be coffee floating all over the damn cockpit. Yes the coffee machine looks good but how about a little consistency FD, it isn't asking for much is it!

Actually, this one is easy: the coffee machine is only intended for operation in a gravitational environment - when you're landed on a planet, for example. If you try to use it in zero-G it probably bleeps and says "Sorry, Dave, I can't do that here. Please go land on a planet and try again." I don't know why they keep a piece of machinery sitting around that you can only use on certain relatively rare occasions, taking up space in the cockpit. But then, ED cockpits are so large, space doesn't seem to be much of an issue. The dangling coffee cups are clearly non-functional and decorative, a visual aid to say "this is a coffee machine", as they would be knocked around and float away if they were real coffee cups just hanging there on hooks.

So I invite the illustrious alumni of the Pilot's Federation to come up with their own versions of Lore to explain some of the things in the game that seems out of place.

For my own contribution, I find it inconceivable that high-population planets close to Earth do not all have unique, individual names. Take the Duamta system. It's less than ten light-years away. It must have been colonized in the first wave of generation ships, a thousand years ago. Yet the people of the Duamta system have, in all that time, not been able to come up with any creative names for any of the planets in their system - not even the Earth-like planet where the vast majority of them live. Instead, it's simply "Duamta 4".

My only in-lore explanation is that the planets of Duamta were colonized quite quickly, and everybody on the generation ship and in the initial colonization phase was using the original, boring nomenclature the system's first explorers gave it. By the time things settled down and it was time to start applying their imagination to giving the names to their new planets, it was too late - everyone (including their computer databases) had gotten used to using just the star-name-and-planet-number.
 
My take

There is FTL comms, but it is very limited, so we see Galnet, and text Comms from Engineers, but still have Data Transfer missions

Multi Crew is just acting as someone else's crew, and not actual Telepresence across light years.

Telepresence for SLFs is a Pilots Federation toy and NPC SLF are crewed.

This is my head canon on FTL

That gives no Gravity generators but given ships could burn for weeks and months making transits in FE2/FFE then they can simulate gravity needed for coffee
machines.

I like Darkfyre99's idea that
  • Older Type-B Hyperdrives are still the main method of transporation - While goverments and NGOs do maintain small fleets of FSD capable starships for their own private use, the Pilots Federation still has a near monopoly on FSD travel. Most people and freight travel aboard the much slower transports from 10 years ago, where it took at least two weeks to travel to a nearby system, and months to travel across the Bubble.
That makes the USS's where ships travelling slowly in real space context, and why they hire FSD capable ships to make deliverers from systems to systems they own and have traffic going to

Instant travel back to a Star port on destruction is just a QoL not having to wait for the reasonable time for a S&R to rescue you

Only the Cmdr having an escape pod dates back to FE2/FFE and is something to do with life being cheap as we have a mass of population, limitless energy and 3d printing and not enough jobs for people, but not a society where everyone is free to not work either. I mean look at the forum, most crew seem to be hired solely on their looks.

CR's in game dont represent the in lore economy, and it is hard to make a living with running costs etc

The Pilots Federation is just a "Automobile Association" for freelancers that just has an opinion on Galactic affairs, rather than a Pseudo SuperPower

Engineers are just examples of the types of people out there who can do that sort of stuff

Most things added in Patches have always been there, so there have always been mega ships conveying food stuffs from Agri worlds to the rest of the bubble, & the Imperial Eagle dates back to before 3200 when it was new to service in FE2 and not a new ship in 3300 as examples.
 
For my own contribution, I find it inconceivable that high-population planets close to Earth do not all have unique, individual names. Take the Duamta system. It's less than ten light-years away. It must have been colonized in the first wave of generation ships, a thousand years ago. Yet the people of the Duamta system have, in all that time, not been able to come up with any creative names for any of the planets in their system - not even the Earth-like planet where the vast majority of them live. Instead, it's simply "Duamta 4".

My only in-lore explanation is that the planets of Duamta were colonized quite quickly, and everybody on the generation ship and in the initial colonization phase was using the original, boring nomenclature the system's first explorers gave it. By the time things settled down and it was time to start applying their imagination to giving the names to their new planets, it was too late - everyone (including their computer databases) had gotten used to using just the star-name-and-planet-number.

Actually, the original colonists had decided on a name, but it was met with such derision from the general populace that they asked for community input. The response was so diverse and with so little tolerance of different ideas, that in the end they stuck with Duamta 4.

:D S
 
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