There are a few threads about this very subject now, and the puzzlement shows no signs of stopping!
It does indeed seem bizarre that rescuing an escape pod counts as an illegal act, but as Elite is a work in progress, it's highly likely that will change one day.
But that doesn't help those of us who are obsessive 'justifiers' - we need to find a reason TODAY!
So here's how I justify the illegal nature of these pods right now...
First off, I start by putting my Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly hat on, and imagine I'm a rogueish fellow trying to live free in a galaxy strangled by bureaucracy and red tape. Not a huge leap of course, because the Elite galaxy IS one that's strangled by bureaucracy and red tape. Heck, your gorram ship can get scorched just for loitering in a station after all!
So here's the play :
Sure, there are legal, official recovery procedures and Rescue Services out there - but they're invariably run by bloated and inefficient corporations staffed by overworked and underpaid employees, so the chances of getting rescued by them in a timely fashion are not great, unless you're a major celeb or high-ranking politician (or in the case of the Federation, both, probably). But, incompetent and slow as they are, they ARE still the officially recognised way of doing things, and the authorities take a dim view of freelancers creating more paperwork for them by ignoring protocol.
But we are humans, not soulless bureaucrats, so when we see an Occupied Escape Pod floating around in space, we're not going to just leave it there, 'official channels' be damned!
We accept that if the authorities scan us we'll be deemed to be carrying 'illicit cargo' because we didn't follow official protocols. Hey, it wouldn't be the first time we didn't go by the book, so what? We scoop the Pod up and head to the nearest Black Market...which (of course) just happens to be run by an old friend who's a bit of a dodgy geezer and who also happens to loathe authority as much as we do.
Our dodgy mate pays us a 'finder's fee' for the Pod. He does this because he knows that if word gets out that the Rescue Company wasn't picking up Pods and instead leaving them to be scooped up by pirates or god knows who, their stock will plummet and they might lose their local franchise. So he knows the Rescue Company will pay him a tidy sum for the Escape Pod so that they can claim they recovered it!
And he's splitting that reward in advance with his ol' Commander buddy
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So there you go - that's how I justify it ingame
I scoop 'em up and bypass bureacracy to collect a small finder's fee, and the Pod's occupant gets to return to whatever it is they do, just as surely as if the 'official' Rescue Services found them - only I got them back to it sooner
It does indeed seem bizarre that rescuing an escape pod counts as an illegal act, but as Elite is a work in progress, it's highly likely that will change one day.
But that doesn't help those of us who are obsessive 'justifiers' - we need to find a reason TODAY!
So here's how I justify the illegal nature of these pods right now...
First off, I start by putting my Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly hat on, and imagine I'm a rogueish fellow trying to live free in a galaxy strangled by bureaucracy and red tape. Not a huge leap of course, because the Elite galaxy IS one that's strangled by bureaucracy and red tape. Heck, your gorram ship can get scorched just for loitering in a station after all!
So here's the play :
Sure, there are legal, official recovery procedures and Rescue Services out there - but they're invariably run by bloated and inefficient corporations staffed by overworked and underpaid employees, so the chances of getting rescued by them in a timely fashion are not great, unless you're a major celeb or high-ranking politician (or in the case of the Federation, both, probably
). But, incompetent and slow as they are, they ARE still the officially recognised way of doing things, and the authorities take a dim view of freelancers creating more paperwork for them by ignoring protocol.But we are humans, not soulless bureaucrats, so when we see an Occupied Escape Pod floating around in space, we're not going to just leave it there, 'official channels' be damned!
We accept that if the authorities scan us we'll be deemed to be carrying 'illicit cargo' because we didn't follow official protocols. Hey, it wouldn't be the first time we didn't go by the book, so what? We scoop the Pod up and head to the nearest Black Market...which (of course) just happens to be run by an old friend who's a bit of a dodgy geezer and who also happens to loathe authority as much as we do.
Our dodgy mate pays us a 'finder's fee' for the Pod. He does this because he knows that if word gets out that the Rescue Company wasn't picking up Pods and instead leaving them to be scooped up by pirates or god knows who, their stock will plummet and they might lose their local franchise. So he knows the Rescue Company will pay him a tidy sum for the Escape Pod so that they can claim they recovered it!
And he's splitting that reward in advance with his ol' Commander buddy
----------------------------------------------
So there you go - that's how I justify it ingame
I scoop 'em up and bypass bureacracy to collect a small finder's fee, and the Pod's occupant gets to return to whatever it is they do, just as surely as if the 'official' Rescue Services found them - only I got them back to it sooner
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