So one thing that hit me recently is why do we have organizations like OMNIPOL and Frontline Solutions? If there is one thing I noticed, it is they have basically outsourced the responsibilities of larger jurisdictions such as Federation, Empire, Alliance, and independent factions. I don’t get the logic of giving control of law enforcement and military logistics to someone playing all sides.
OMNIPOL and Frontline make no sense
- Thread starter Meteironic
- Start date
You are correct that it makes no sense. Nothing in the station concourses make sense. One taxi service in the whole galaxy. Randos standing around shouting, "hey, you wanna fo a crime foe me?" One weapon/armor shop across the galaxy with a complete selection of 3 suits and 11 weapons. Every bartender is a well funded fence. A biological research firm that can give you more than a billion credits for a few dozen scans... So one company that is basically a war taxi is par for the course.
Well sure it doesn't make sense, but the alternative?
Instead of one Pioneer supplies shop you would have a number all selling guns, some selling suits, others just selling supplies like first aid kits, all scattered around with booths offering taxi services, illegal black market agents hidden away in dark coffee shops and booze dives, an entire city of confusing passages and streets, and that sounds good to me, but players in a hurry don't want to run around looking for shops and poking their noses into dives looking for good deal on illegal missions and going to a several taxi services to find one cheaper, or that even runs to the backwater drilling settlement they want to go to for their mission.
So what FDEV did was put everything in one place to make it easier for players, it's a decision, some will like it, some won't.
Instead of one Pioneer supplies shop you would have a number all selling guns, some selling suits, others just selling supplies like first aid kits, all scattered around with booths offering taxi services, illegal black market agents hidden away in dark coffee shops and booze dives, an entire city of confusing passages and streets, and that sounds good to me, but players in a hurry don't want to run around looking for shops and poking their noses into dives looking for good deal on illegal missions and going to a several taxi services to find one cheaper, or that even runs to the backwater drilling settlement they want to go to for their mission.
So what FDEV did was put everything in one place to make it easier for players, it's a decision, some will like it, some won't.
It's a dystopian setting. Frontline makes perfect sense in the context of that: yes, a monopoly dropship operator that makes money dropping hundreds of soldiers from both sides at once into fights with a likely single-digit % survival rate even for the winning side over who gets to temporarily control a minor mining facility is horrifying.
But then, so is an accreditation body that will give its highest accolades to amoral mass murderers who don't have a problem with fighting on both sides of the same conflict.
But then, so is an accreditation body that will give its highest accolades to amoral mass murderers who don't have a problem with fighting on both sides of the same conflict.
Frontline refusing to give Aegis their megaships back to fight the Thargoids, and leaving them parked up doing nothing - now that is dystopian 
Why not? That's exactly how it works on Earth in 2023.
There is no new thing under the sun.
Game play > realism all the way. Although they really could have done something different with Frontline solutions, offering a room where any relevant warring factions have a representative to speak to. Necessary? No, not really. But they could have done it that way.
As you said, they chose not to. And I don't think it really matters. The whole concourse is basically a 3d station menu screen. And in that context, it works fine.
What is this, a video game or something?
Yes, I'm also wondering since when a video game has to make sense..
Welcome to the inner sphere where comstar... wait, this is a different game.
It's a game innit?
I think there's several possible middle grounds they could have taken between hyperrealism and nonsense.
I understand the desire for an "airport like" area with available essentials (I think there should be other options as well), but they could have made the layouts somewhat variable with more visual differentiation between the super powers, as well as independent stations even if the sevices were essentially the same. Not even huge and sprawling, just not an identical layout no matter where you go.
With taxi services, have the companies be regional. One service per region Make company names/signage/logos for a few big corps. Then for small, one station services, use the same method they use to name stations/settlements/factions.
Ships could have a generic taxi checker marking.
Then you only need the one kiosk in the concourses and it's less stupid.
For the equipment, you can have the shops be based on economy and populations. Some might have a separate armor, gun, and consumable stores while some smaller ports might have just a single general store. And the stores could be near each other for the lazy folk. And like the taxis, a few big company names and then some procedural names. It's not like the game doesn't do that A LOT.
THEN instead of Frontline Solutions, just make a state based Kiosk. When at war, it's a recruitement office that functions the same as FS. Famine, it's a food distro sevice. Outbreak, it offers medical transport passenger missions. That way the space isn't useless when the faction's in the wrong state.
To replace the bartender, have something as basic as a pawn shop for item trading, or a salvager store. Anything would be better than the ancient society of bartenders.
There are many things they could have done other than making a single model for each station size and then plopping them inside the models. They didn't even remember some surface ports don't have shipyards, so some have empty inter astra stores just taking up space.
If you want real world examples of omnipresent monopolies, even in areas that looks like conflicts of interests at first glance, look no further than modern weapon guidance systems. Doesn't matter who makes it or who is being killed with it, the US GPS system is one of the methods of navigation for it (even those nations with their own systems often use Navstar GPS as a backup, or in regions where GPS is more accurate), and chances are that TSMC makes the most critical semiconductor components in it.
Indeed, the whole semiconductor market is a good example. The aforementioned TSMC, due to missteps at Intel and Samsung in recent years, has become the high-end process fab. Competing circuit designers pay to have TSMC build their top-end parts. AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA all have at least some of their product stacks built by TSMC. Same sort of thing happens with DRAM. ~90% of DRAM is made by three companies: Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Direct competitors often source the same DRAM from the same company.
It's not hard to imagine protectionist regulation and an obsessive desire for standardization resulting in universal brands against which competition is either futile or outright illegal.
Never mind that; when it comes to things that don't make sense in stations, I still want to know why so many zero-gravity outposts have litter all over the floor. I can just about believe that all the crates and canisters have magnets on the bottom, but who's going around gluing the pizza boxes down?
There's also hair, drinks, plants, hanging canvases, etc, etc.
Clearly we all just use hair gel. Lots of hair gel.
I wonder if Rackham has a business in the cosmetic market?
It makes perfect sense. Every concourse is exactly the same. There may be tens of thousands of people on the station, but for you, there is always the exact same 6 storefronts.
You never actually leave your ship.
It is a user friendly simulation within a simulation to give you some semblance of contact with ambulatory people within the station.
It is really just a more "advanced" version of this:
I'm actually grateful the faces and voices change.
I would actually pay real money if my crew members would do this in the chairs on my bridge.
You never actually leave your ship.
It is a user friendly simulation within a simulation to give you some semblance of contact with ambulatory people within the station.
It is really just a more "advanced" version of this:
I'm actually grateful the faces and voices change.
I would actually pay real money if my crew members would do this in the chairs on my bridge.
I think of the station concourses as the little shop at a gas station. And yep, a single company has monopolised them. The "real" station/city is behind those closed doors no one lets us pilot types go to.