[Lore] How does the (solar) system lock actually work?

[Agony_Aunt]

In Michael Brooke's book, it's made clear that firing on an escape pod is considered the lowest crime in space.

Which is probably why they were not implemented when they made the game multiplayer.... because online, if there is a new low to be reached, the playerbase will oblige.

 

[Commander Debic]

@CDMR Debic, alas, you are mistaken.

In Eve if your ship is destroyed, your pod is ejected, and you can (hopefully) make a getaway. If your pod is destroyed, at the moment of hull breach, your consciousness is transferred via fluid router to a waiting clone (location generally at your pre-arranged clone-vat pleasure). With any luck you will have paid for a clone capable of housing your learned skills...

In Elite, we are treated to an escape capsule - upon ship death your escape capsule carries the pilot back to the last station successfully docked at.

There is technically no pilot death. Yet.

Die was used as regards Eve as if you had been podded, not if you were quick enough to escape. technically you do not ever die but transfer consciousness to clone. As regards Elite I have to presume you die and are miraculously placed back at your last station, as surely there is no escape pod that could travel so fast that if your ship died near Sagittarius A, it could travel at quantum electron speed almost instantaneously back to Sol if that was your last station area.
Anyway this is a semantics argument as both games are using magic formulae to keep you playing in game.

Basically yes, but you might be missing my point. EVE has very well thought-out and intriguing background story built around the ship's destruction which -this is important- reflects in the actual gameplay: escape capsules, or pods, are "physical" objects in game that can be seen, flown and/or destroyed, at which point cloning kicks in (see: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Capsule). Whilst in Elite we've got almost nothing neither lore or gameplay-wise; all we can do is to speculate

Wasn't really missing the point so much as emphasising the way both games work magically to reincarnate the player, but I take your point that Eve's lore regarding resurrection is more complete than ED. But in ED's defence Eve has been around many more years than ED and so has a lot more flesh on its body.

As regards the lockout on systems I guess it could be explained like a number of posters have postulated here.