Materials Lost on Death.... but...!

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

One of the few (sometimes many) things that bug me about ED, is the inconsistency of many things.
Data, Bounties, Cargo, PP Stuff, etc are all lost on death, with no way to recover them.
However, on death, your pilot manages to gather 300~ 'units' of materials and shove them in their back pocket for safe keeping.
But doesn't think to store the data, and vouchers on a memory stick, and shove that in his other back pocket.... Makes very little sense.

So, shock and awe, and you'll hate this.....

Drop Carried Materials On Ship Destruction
Yes, whatever you was carrying when you boosted in to the rear end of that thargoid, is now lost... Mostly.

Which brings me to the second and third part of my idea.

Black boxes
An idea regularly requested, with a twist.
You purchase a black box via your local stations contacts, (or something), and is stored much like materials are (magically!).
Black boxes will store the following, Exploration Data and All Vouchers.
Better black boxes will last longer before expiring than cheap ones, and increase the likelihood of the signal source beig detected... (Price up for discussion!)
On ship destruction, it will eject in to space, and begin sending out an encrypted signal for you to find(aka, shows on the Galaxy Map/Transaction Tab). Once in the system you left it, a chance to find its signal source will occur. You drop in as normal. Only YOU can access the blackbox, and once scooped, you get back all you lost.
If you die on a planet, your blackbox will be a POI instead.

However, Materials are NOT kept here.
They get dropped as a separate cargo container, which someone could run off with.

Which brings me to the third part of my idea...
Material Storage Locker and Bulk Transport
As of 2.0 you can only carry 300 Materials.
If this stays the same, it's not very good for 2.1+!
So, from starports and outposts, you can purchase various sized storage lockers, from say, 500 (500,000cr) to 10,000 (50,000,000cr?) units of Materials.
These are not magical, and can only be accessed via that station. You can drop off and pick up whatever you need, and ensure you're not carrying rare Materials you don't need while trying to mate your ship with a Farragut Battlecruiser.
Obviously, moving 10,000 Materials 300 at a time is a pain, if you decide to move house.
So, these stored materials can be converted in to Material Cargo Containers, and placed in your cargo hold.
100 Materials = 1T of Bulk Storage.
So if you want to move home, you can load up a ship with all of your materials, and head off. However, these materials can not be used for synthesis while in cargo containers, and must be unpacked at their destination before being used. They can quite easily be stolen via normal piracy methods, who can then unpack then themselves(Yay for pirates)!

From my reasoning, this would create a much greater consistency in the game mechanics, and help with he odd immersion breaking weirdness.

Thoughts?

 

[SHADEVARI]

Nice one, +1.

 

[shreddog]

Just make it simple. On destruction destroy all materials along with your ship. Compensate with increased chance to find rare materials.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Just make it simple. On destruction destroy all materials along with your ship. Compensate with increased chance to find rare materials.

It's still too harsh. Making them more common will just mess up the 'grind' for engineers. And not being able to store them, and lose them on death, is just unfair.
It would also stop all the 'fun' suicidal activities that make ED so much fun.

The only issue with my idea is traders and miners become the worst off. There's no way to get their cargo/money back.

Maybe just have the exploration data the only thing the blackbox saves.

Simply because, having to set out from your starting point to retrieve your data is punishment enough.
Unless you crashed in to the station on the way in. Lol then it's not far at all!

Needs work still.

 

[trollson]

For consistency, and to avoid awkward questions - you lose anything stashed on your ship when it is destroyed. I'd even argue that the pilot is actually your clone, and that you sync synapses whenever they return to a port.

You can already find pods containing survey cache data amongst wreckage - which could be dropped instead of in the black box. There are also encrypted data pods.

However, even if your ship dropped these items on destruction, its very unlikely that (a) you'll find the wreckage before it disperses, or (b) you'll be the first one there. The best is that its salvaged by another pilot and that there is a method by which it can be returned to you (for a price).

Even in this case, I only realistically see 'encrypted data pods' being returnable - since they have greater value to you (who can decrypt) than the salvager/black market. Anything that the salvager can actually, simply, *use* - you won't be seeing again!

I would imagine a BB mission appearing offering your encrypted data for a price if you get to such-a-station in time.

 

[DocLooshkin]

+1. I'm in favour of this kind of mechanic, just for plausibility's sake. I'd do it a little differently, though.

• I would break up the current restrictive materials storage into separate sub-sections: common mats, rare mats, common components, rare components, voucher storage, data storage. Exact numbers per container at FD's discretion, but vouchers and data need not have a maximum limit (the game doesn't seem to limit the numbers of ADS scans, so the black box probably shouldn't either. All data should be treated the same way, I think).

• Every ship should have one black box in it by default, that can be assigned to allow any one of the above to be rescued along with us. We can buy Secure Storage Modules which would allow more boxes (SRV slot style).

• When our ships are destroyed, there's a 5% chance of losing each box. The risk might increase with the number of boxes - our rescuers need to have the storage space, after all.

• Retrieving black boxes via the insurance screen requires a payment, the exact costs at FD's discretion.

I'm not really in favour of having boxes remain in the void. I can see gankers shooting people down, then just waiting around in the knowledge that at least some of their victims will reappear looking for their boxes. Being shot down twice by the same ganker would not be fun for players trying to progress in the Open game.