Remove all notions and mentions of 'telepresence' or in-world explanations for respawning after death.

[Chrome]

This is a thorn in my eye, and has been for years. With the prospect of possibly getting spacelegs next year (or some time after that) i thought it'd be a good idea to voice my concern about this directly. It may seem like a minor detail to get worked up about, but hey, it's simple enough

In the past, player death lead to a game over. You had to reload a previous save game: In-world, a death is a death is a death.

Because of the insistence of even solo play being an online-only mode in this new version however, Frontier have been desperately pushing for an in-world explanation for this in some form or another, even if they're just vaguely hinting at it. Despite that, they contradict themselves in other ways within the same framework.

There's mentions of telepresence, of you not actually being there but just a hologram of you. Why? This makes absolutely no sense. Why not simply fly the ships 'properly' on a remote?
Crew is only present via telepresence, yet dies permanently when their fighter or the ship itself is destroyed. Why? This makes no sense if the above is the case.
There's a 'mini FSD' in the pilot seat, capable of jumping 40kly in an instant in case of ship destruction? Yeah, right.

There's a lot of conceits and mind twists going on in an effort to justify this with a lore reason, but i have a different suggestion:

Simply ignore it alltogether.

This is, for better or for worse, a video game. Trying to force these in-world explanations for player death into the game only raises unanswerable questions and seriously deep plot holes. Simply remove all mentions of this in the lore alltogether, remove the hologram effects from players (including multicrew), and simply accept that there is one thing you cannot adequately explain within Elite's world, ever. No one will complain about this, we all can manage to hold up a certain suspense of disbelief in this specific case. We've already always done this in the time of savegames anyway, so why would this be any different?

It's not like any NPC's in any of the storylines (as far as i am aware) have ever actually used the mechanics or depended on them anyway, so literally nothing will be lost.

 

[ebbrell]

I would like an escape capsule, you have to fly back to a station to claim your insurance policy.
Yes pain if out in the black, but hay its realistic

And your crew would have one.
Slower than yours, maybe you have to scoop them up before their oxygen runs out

 

[Toumal]

Ever since they first mentioned telepresence I questioned how this makes any sense. But for better or for worse, nobody is actually playing multicrew because even after all these years, Elite lacks the depth of ship systems management needed to make additional crew neccessary. There's two sides to that coin too of course, but I feel ED needs a bit of a rethink of what flying a spaceship means, followed by a rework of multicrew - and THEN we can talk about how telepresence should work and be explained in game.

 

[777Driver]

There's mentions of telepresence, of you not actually being there but just a hologram of you. Why? This makes absolutely no sense. Why not simply fly the ships 'properly' on a remote?

When I ship explodes the Cmdrs seat has the capability to eject (you even hear the callout) crew do not die when a fighter is lost, they are onboard the ship, no escape pods. Reason is to give a sense of loss in battle since we always get out alive.

Telepresence only applies to the following

Ship launch fighters (Hence why no life support)

Another Cmdr can connect to the main ship via telepresence and does not need to eject.

The SRV requires the Cmdr to be onboard, however the turret is operated by a neural link.

I really wouldn't get too worked up over.

 

[777Driver]

But for better or for worse, nobody is actually playing multicrew

A fair bit of hyperbole there, I guess you only play in private group or Solo. I have no issues finding human fighter pilot crew in open (evenings or weekends GMT) Open play. Agree that other roles need a lot more depth

 

[PopePhil]

yes. if it is "not actually being there but just a hologram of you", then why the need for life support? or the idea that oxygen is running out?

 

[Chrome]

When I ship explodes the Cmdrs seat has the capability to eject (you even hear the callout)

Telepresence only applies to the following

Ship launch fighters (Hence why no life support)

Another Cmdr can connect to the main ship via telepresence.

The SRV requires the Cmdr to be onboard, however the turret is operated by a neural link.

I really wouldn't get too worked up over it if I was you.

So you eject 40kly from the nearest station, what then? That's the insta mini FSD i talked about

And yeah, it's a minor detail, but i'm simply annoyed by the repeated attempts of Frontier to somehow make it work.

 

[777Driver]

yes. if it is "not actually being there but just a hologram of you", then why the need for life support? or the idea that oxygen is running out?

Run down your life support, you can hear the avatar suffocate. Cmdrs are onboard the ship. The fact that we have insta travel escape pods was a design decision. Stating the obvious, sales wouldn't be too good if we had to wait hours/days to get back to port.

 

[Kotuma]

My own headcanon is that characters are persistent consciousnesses passed through a series of clones or other bodies a la altered carbon. Slightly better explains why I can’t telepresence back to one of my in-bubble ships while on the other side of the galaxy without proof of death (strong regulations against duplicate persons!)

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

This seems like an excellent opportunity for me to plug my lore thread with suggestion for this and other important topics including NOT MAKING SLF PILOT DELETION A CONSEQUENCE OF GETTING BLOWN UP IN A KEELBACK AKA A TISSUE SHIP IN THIS BALANCE SYSTEM. Thank you.

It would be cool to have a Zorgon Peterson Codex Entry (and some other suggestions)

Lore. Requesting Zorgon Peterson Codex Entry I have always missed a Zorgon Peterson lore entry in the Codex. Like, really missed one. All other major ship builders have one, but they do not. == Here's a grab bag of other stuff Lore. Trade docking It's silly that a future galaxy-spanning...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[babelfisch]

Because of the insistence of even solo play being an online-only mode in this new version however, Frontier have been desperately pushing for an in-world explanation for this in some form or another, even if they're just vaguely hinting at it. Despite that, they contradict themselves in other ways within the same framework.

No, not really.

There's mentions of telepresence, of you not actually being there but just a hologram of you. Why? This makes absolutely no sense. Why not simply fly the ships 'properly' on a remote?

You are not a hologram and Frontier never said you are. Telepresence is only used when you are flying a SLF because they are made of paper and it would be game over as soon as it is destroyed.

Crew is only present via telepresence, yet dies permanently when their fighter or the ship itself is destroyed. Why? This makes no sense if the above is the case.

Wrong, the crew doesn't permantely die when a fighter is destroyed. They only die if the mother ship is destroyed because they don't have escape pods like we do for some other reason that doesn't make sense.

There's a 'mini FSD' in the pilot seat, capable of jumping 40kly in an instant in case of ship destruction? Yeah, right.

I believe that's the lore the community came up with, personally I would prefer a rescue sequence before you respawn at a another station.

There's a lot of conceits and mind twists going on in an effort to justify this with a lore reason, but i have a different suggestion:

Simply ignore it alltogether.

This is, for better or for worse, a video game. Trying to force these in-world explanations for player death into the game only raises unanswerable questions and seriously deep plot holes. Simply remove all mentions of this in the lore alltogether, remove the hologram effects from players (including multicrew), and simply accept that there is one thing you cannot adequately explain within Elite's world, ever. No one will complain about this, we all can manage to hold up a certain suspense of disbelief in this specific case. We've already always done this in the time of savegames anyway, so why would this be any different?

It's not like any NPC's in any of the storylines (as far as i am aware) have ever actually used the mechanics or depended on them anyway, so literally nothing will be lost.

Since most of your assumptions have been wrong I'll ignore the rest until you come up with an answer that actually takes the current (admittedly mostly stupid) lore into account.