[Lore] Death in Elite

[Howard o Pato]

If to consider what we currently have in the game:
-We have escape pod.
-probably cryogenic due to not appear on the radar.
-we have some specific missions pod busy exhaust recovery.
-apparently they are not self-oriented return. they are always standing on the spot.
If they are found by chance, they are considered as stolen and can only be resold on the black market as slaves.
(This last consideration implies that someone has already claimed ownership of it. Maybe a recovery organization in every season, paid by the company insurance. Perhaps the last season that landed should be considered as your last entry in the records of flight).

 

[Mack Winston]

In game is one thing, in stories is another. The way we dealt with it in the EBBS days while writing stories about Frontier First Encounters was basically remloks (taken from The Dark Wheel), escape capsules (an in-game mechanic) and perhaps uncertainty whether someone was actually dead or not. For the purpose of fiction there was also "dead dead", in other words being actually unequivocally killed, usually up close and personal.

 

[krylite]

In my imagination, I assume an escape pod container is used along with a special stasis field perhaps just under the structure of the pod surrounding the pilot.
The stasis field works like Larry Niven's emergency stasis field described in his novels like Ringworld. Except only the salvage insurance company has an opening stasis field
keycoded by frequency or whatever means to open the field of the pod containing the pilot. So otherwise the same idea of a signal for the insurance company to find and pick up the pod, or a salvage mission for someone else to pick up the escape pod.

 

[Space Exploration]

I think that once you eject in your escape pod, there's the 'rescue ships' that have a special FSD, that can travel everywhere in the galaxy instantly, and take you back to the last station you docked at. The rescue ships are invisible on the radar, and I also think that there is there holographic overlay thing that prevents people from seeing the rescue ships, while those rescue ships don't have the holographic overlay, so the rescue team doesn't ram into each other. (Also I think they come near your ship's explosion, just to go under the radar, just in case something goes wrong.)

 

[Sapyx]

Wow! This thread is over 5 years old! Nice necro.

"Escape pods" are the logical explanation for death in a ship. My head-canon lore explanation is that Pilots Federation membership comes with ownership of an indestructible, 100% foolproof, FSD-equipped escape pod that instantly teleports you to the last known safe port when your ship blows up.

This, of course, fails to take into account:

• How a spaceship that's exactly like your one that just exploded, right down to the paintjob and specialist Engineered modules, always happens to be sitting there at the port you wake up at (even if that port doesn't actually have a shipyard to source a spaceship and parts from), ready for your insurance company to instantly purchase on your behalf. (Yes, I do believe that ship death ought to cause the loss of engineered modules, Powerplay modules, and the inability to rebuy that ship type if the ship is a superpower-locked ship and you're now hostile to that superpower.)
• How weapons designed to punch clean through an entire starship always seem to miss both the pilot's chair and the escape capsule.
• How you crawl back into your escape pod if you die while in your SRV. On-foot deaths seem to be covered by the "rescue ship finds you" scenario, though it doesn't explain how the rescuers always find you and save you so quickly.
• How your escape pod rescues you from dying in the middle of a Black Hole, deep inside a star or planet, when covered in Thargoid corrosive, or being in some other extreme-environment location where even a super-fast-reacting FSD shouldn't be able to rescue you from.
• Why the FSD teleporting thing failed to happen for those poor unfortunates that you find sitting in "occupied escape capsules" all over the galaxy, and why such failure never seems to occur to players or our NPC crew.

 

[Space Exploration]

Wow! This thread is over 5 years old! Nice necro.

"Escape pods" are the logical explanation for death in a ship. My head-canon lore explanation is that Pilots Federation membership comes with ownership of an indestructible, 100% foolproof, FSD-equipped escape pod that instantly teleports you to the last known safe port when your ship blows up.

This, of course, fails to take into account:

• How a spaceship that's exactly like your one that just exploded, right down to the paintjob and specialist Engineered modules, always happens to be sitting there at the port you wake up at (even if that port doesn't actually have a shipyard to source a spaceship and parts from), ready for your insurance company to instantly purchase on your behalf. (Yes, I do believe that ship death ought to cause the loss of engineered modules, Powerplay modules, and the inability to rebuy that ship type if the ship is a superpower-locked ship and you're now hostile to that superpower.)
• How weapons designed to punch clean through an entire starship always seem to miss both the pilot's chair and the escape capsule.
• How you crawl back into your escape pod if you die while in your SRV. On-foot deaths seem to be covered by the "rescue ship finds you" scenario, though it doesn't explain how the rescuers always find you and save you so quickly.
• How your escape pod rescues you from dying in the middle of a Black Hole, deep inside a star or planet, when covered in Thargoid corrosive, or being in some other extreme-environment location where even a super-fast-reacting FSD shouldn't be able to rescue you from.
• Why the FSD teleporting thing failed to happen for those poor unfortunates that you find sitting in "occupied escape capsules" all over the galaxy, and why such failure never seems to occur to players or our NPC crew.

for the SRV part, I think the seat just ejects you to your ship. (also, if you are upside down, it ejects out of the bottom, right side up, eject outaa top.)

 

[Space Exploration]

Wow! This thread is over 5 years old! Nice necro.

"Escape pods" are the logical explanation for death in a ship. My head-canon lore explanation is that Pilots Federation membership comes with ownership of an indestructible, 100% foolproof, FSD-equipped escape pod that instantly teleports you to the last known safe port when your ship blows up.

This, of course, fails to take into account:

• How a spaceship that's exactly like your one that just exploded, right down to the paintjob and specialist Engineered modules, always happens to be sitting there at the port you wake up at (even if that port doesn't actually have a shipyard to source a spaceship and parts from), ready for your insurance company to instantly purchase on your behalf. (Yes, I do believe that ship death ought to cause the loss of engineered modules, Powerplay modules, and the inability to rebuy that ship type if the ship is a superpower-locked ship and you're now hostile to that superpower.)
• How weapons designed to punch clean through an entire starship always seem to miss both the pilot's chair and the escape capsule.
• How you crawl back into your escape pod if you die while in your SRV. On-foot deaths seem to be covered by the "rescue ship finds you" scenario, though it doesn't explain how the rescuers always find you and save you so quickly.
• How your escape pod rescues you from dying in the middle of a Black Hole, deep inside a star or planet, when covered in Thargoid corrosive, or being in some other extreme-environment location where even a super-fast-reacting FSD shouldn't be able to rescue you from.
• Why the FSD teleporting thing failed to happen for those poor unfortunates that you find sitting in "occupied escape capsules" all over the galaxy, and why such failure never seems to occur to players or our NPC crew.

for the extreme-environment location thing, it's the 3300s (specifically 3308)

 

[CMDR SleepyDelegate]

Wow! This thread is over 5 years old! Nice necro.

"Escape pods" are the logical explanation for death in a ship. My head-canon lore explanation is that Pilots Federation membership comes with ownership of an indestructible, 100% foolproof, FSD-equipped escape pod that instantly teleports you to the last known safe port when your ship blows up.

This, of course, fails to take into account:

• How a spaceship that's exactly like your one that just exploded, right down to the paintjob and specialist Engineered modules, always happens to be sitting there at the port you wake up at (even if that port doesn't actually have a shipyard to source a spaceship and parts from), ready for your insurance company to instantly purchase on your behalf. (Yes, I do believe that ship death ought to cause the loss of engineered modules, Powerplay modules, and the inability to rebuy that ship type if the ship is a superpower-locked ship and you're now hostile to that superpower.)
• How weapons designed to punch clean through an entire starship always seem to miss both the pilot's chair and the escape capsule.
• How you crawl back into your escape pod if you die while in your SRV. On-foot deaths seem to be covered by the "rescue ship finds you" scenario, though it doesn't explain how the rescuers always find you and save you so quickly.
• How your escape pod rescues you from dying in the middle of a Black Hole, deep inside a star or planet, when covered in Thargoid corrosive, or being in some other extreme-environment location where even a super-fast-reacting FSD shouldn't be able to rescue you from.
• Why the FSD teleporting thing failed to happen for those poor unfortunates that you find sitting in "occupied escape capsules" all over the galaxy, and why such failure never seems to occur to players or our NPC crew.

I also find hard to understand why, when you die on foot, while disembarked from your SRV, you find yourself back in your ship and your SRV is gone...

 

[GTB]

How does Elite's lore deal with death?

When my ship got blown to pieces, I get it that it's now respawned in the last station I was docked. Afterall, I did pay for the insurance.

But how did I get there??

Is there cloning technology? Is... it that I'm somebody else using the same name? Did drifted in space after it exploded? in a crygenic pod or something?

How? Why?

Thanks!

It's actually your Ghost after you die that gets taken back to that station you re-spawn at. You are in fact still now dead and fly around in a Ghost ship.

 

[CMDR QMax]

Don't know if anyone who posted here will see this but from the manual: "If your ship is destroyed, your personal escape system will kick in and eject you from the ship, micro jumping you to the last starport you docked in, where you will be processed by the authorities and your insurance company."

I had never noticed it before but this is actually the official explanation. (from the Players Guide v2.40,2017)

 

[Robert Rockbite]

Yeah, that's what they tell you, eh, sheeple.

The truth is, a pilot creates a mind backup when visiting a station. When a pilot is killed, the mind backup is installed into a fresh clone. And because the Pilot's Federation handles your insurance and the corresponding mind backups, they are in the unique position to mess with your mind. Which they do. Quite often, in fact. Therefore, it is generally recommended to die as infrequently as possible and keep writing notes to your future selves. If you keep accumulating deaths, you might become a mindless pawn of the Pilot's Federation. You have probably seen such people. They go through the same motions again and again and frequently post the same messages again and again. At later stages of mental degression, they might even show up on your radar as completely filled.

 

[Gauntlet]

pfff... mind backups, clones, escape systems they're all fairy tales to keep you sane.

The real truth is that we're all just sophisticated AI software uploaded into a space ship. That's why when you 'die' you instantly re-gain consciousness in a new ship based at the last place you saved a back up copy, no matter how far away that might be, no delay whilst they grow a new body because there are no bodies. "Ah but what about when I get out of my ship and walk to the bar?" I hear you ask. Well you don't actually get up and walk through your ship do you? No, there's a fade to black whilst the hard light projectors warm up and then your AI consciousness is uploaded to the projection and surely, if you were going to walk to the bar you'd have a drink? When was the last time you had a drink? or a bite to eat? Are your CGI eyes open yet?

 

[Robert Rockbite]

Interesting. So what if the space ships aren't real, too?
You could test this hypothesis by turning off your "thrusters" while staying in the vicinity of a "space station" for some time. You may notice that your "ship" will move along with the "station"'s orbit. The "space station" would correctly change its alignment with its circular trajectory - while your "ship" will continue to face the same direction in space while maintaining the same relative position to the "station". That's not possible. And nobody notices! Seems like the idea of jumping light years in seconds has dulled people's perception of physical phenomena.
And if not even your "space ship" follows established rules of orbital mechanics, it makes me wonder if the abundance of those fancy "star systems" with 3 or more heavy bodies of more or less similar mass should actually be unconditionally stable. Usually the majority of such systems would be chaotic, the stars would fly all over the place, crash into each other and might even become expelled from the system.

We are being duped!
Wake up, sheeple!(!!!11!1!11!)

 

[CMDR SleepyDelegate]

I hear stories about us being just a game characters, controlled remotely by some beings, who are actually less developed than us... Imagine that... They have no FTL capabilities, the have never travelled outside of their own system, they have no Thargoids etc... Imagine that... I guess it is just a conspiracy...

 

[Rubbernuke]

Its always been a bit woolly. IIRC we had the idea of an escape pod with a micro FSD (I think this is the early art for it)

Whereas now its kind of abstracted handwavium.

 

[Erei]

Can I have the "micro FSD with more jump capabilities than any other FSD" as an actual module on my ship ? Because I'm not going to lie, the idea of being able to jump from any place in the galaxy to another is quite attractive.


It's a game, so handwave it and forget it exist. If you don't like it, you can alwyas play Ironman and delete the save every time you die. Side note, if you do that, don't play a ground CZ.

I hear stories about us being just a game characters, controlled remotely by some beings, who are actually less developed than us... Imagine that... They have no FTL capabilities, the have never travelled outside of their own system, they have no Thargoids etc... Imagine that... I guess it is just a conspiracy...

What kind of horrible creatures would submit us to such horrible things for their entertainment ? Seeing ship burned by thargoids, station destroyed, war.... I refuse to believe such wicked entities can exist.

 

[Space Exploration]

It's actually your Ghost after you die that gets taken back to that station you re-spawn at. You are in fact still now dead and fly around in a Ghost ship.

then how can you still die, and what if someone who hasn't died yet (somehow) killed you?

 

[Space Exploration]

Interesting. So what if the space ships aren't real, too?
You could test this hypothesis by turning off your "thrusters" while staying in the vicinity of a "space station" for some time. You may notice that your "ship" will move along with the "station"'s orbit. The "space station" would correctly change its alignment with its circular trajectory - while your "ship" will continue to face the same direction in space while maintaining the same relative position to the "station". That's not possible. And nobody notices! Seems like the idea of jumping light years in seconds has dulled people's perception of physical phenomena.
And if not even your "space ship" follows established rules of orbital mechanics, it makes me wonder if the abundance of those fancy "star systems" with 3 or more heavy bodies of more or less similar mass should actually be unconditionally stable. Usually the majority of such systems would be chaotic, the stars would fly all over the place, crash into each other and might even become expelled from the system.

We are being duped!
Wake up, sheeple!(!!!11!1!11!)

about the ship FA could be on, and it is the 3300s' and the planets + star systems, well... uh..... maybe the guardians have something to do with it?

 

[Condor]

What about a theory that commanders are not clones but some sort of robots/cyborgs?

This advertising might be the answer
This also might answer how the pilot survives extreme temperatures and extreme gravity
Although, no idea why this robot might need oxygen...

 

[EdzUp]

I always thought you were a holo projection so when you die in a ship they just put you back at the last place visited, that would explain the multicrew mechanic and telepresence stuff