Station rescue 'features' are...

Bill Clement

Bill Clement
...a bit pants! [haha] Both in terms of real time wasted and in (cue Yamick's 'immershun'!) terms of what we might reasonably expect to see in game.

Seriously, I can just about accept automated systems continuing to fine commanders for flight violations, but if we're getting fined, surely we should be able to pay them off? It's beyond ridiculous that a station that's ablaze and staging a mass evacuation would tell a potential saviour to 'naff off' because they don't have the ability to accept a handful of credits to clean their slate!

It's really hacking me off. This is one of the coolest mini games in Elite, a chance to play the reluctant hero, taking hefty risks with our incredibly expensive spaceships to give a little back to the people who make us so rich and powerful.

Or; this is a terrific shortcut in game full of grind to farm materials, reputation or influence, being sabotaged by poorly implemented game mechanics.

Either way, can someone at Frontier sort this out? Surely it can't be a hard thing to fix?
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Never had any issues with fines while rescuing from attacked ships (doing it right now even) - are you shooting the damaged stations? that doesn't count as rescuing....
 

Riverside

Riverside
I received a fine for pad blocking in a burning station recently, I was docking a passenger T-9 and an explosion knocked the ship off course for a few seconds (far less than the usual 30 second warning). Of course I was unable to immediately pay the fine, and could not collect any refugees which did seem silly at first. I returned to the medical frigate, paid the fine & went back to the burning station again.

I think it's been done this way to discourage pad blocking in a much more time-critical situation than normal docking (because your ship is overheating).

It's just a choice & alternatives could probably have been implemented that would have different pros & cons but there is some logic to it from within the context of a multi-player environment so I just accepted it & carried on.
 

Bill Clement

Bill Clement
Factabulous said:
Never had any issues with fines while rescuing from attacked ships (doing it right now even) - are you shooting the damaged stations? that doesn't count as rescuing....
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If your ship overheats, your modules fail and if the failure is your cargo hatch, you drop whatever's in your hold. In my case that was collector limpets to pick up the poor souls bouncing around inside the burning station. An instant fine for dumping cargo- standard fare for undamaged stations- I can understand. I can even see why the devs wouldn't waste time changing that mechanism for the brief period the station's burning. Like Riverside I've also been spanked with a pad blocking fine when trying to get my ship docked. Again, I understand why there might be in game and real life reasons for having the penalty.

What hacks me off is the inability to clear the penalty to accept the waiting and presumably desperate refugees aboard. That's plain crazy! Who'd prevent a rescuer from doing their job just because there's a tiny fine outstanding for a very minor transgression? It's pants game design, it's nonsensical from an immersion perspective and it turns a fun activity into yet another teeth grinding pita, forcing the player to jog on, clear the fine elsewhere and then return.

I could build a dedicated rescue ship, cool running and unlikely to malfunction, but that's not only another time sink, it's immersion breaking and removes the element of suspense and risk the badly overheated station imposes on standard ships.

The attraction of the activity is the feeling that my ship is burning up, malfunctioning all over the place and can't stay in the station for any length of time without risking destruction. Building something that takes those risks away changes an exhilarating and tense rescue mission into a bland, easy mode grinding activity.

It shouldn't be hard to fix the issue, but the devs need to know it's a problem before they'll put any effort into correcting it. Getting a bit of t'internet outrage going on the front page of their official forum is as good a way of getting their attention as any...
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
I can agree with this having been close to getting fines myself. In my case I was using collector limpets to scoop up the gubbins at the back of the station. Now, why there is a timer when I'm picking up occupied escape pods is pushing it (I'll let it go though, since I'm still in the station potentially getting in the way of ships landing). The problem happened when an explosion knocked me into a pile of debris which I got tangled up in. Cue the instant warning about blocking the landing pad. I got away before the fine, but a bit more than the usual instant warning would be nice given that we don't normally have to deal with being smacked in the face by a floating piece of station, while simultaneously making sure the ship doesn't melt.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Speedcuffs said:
What happened to the missions at the rescue ships?:(
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They're (somewhat) back! Well, at one of the rescue ships - along with the AX missons, and NHSS in incursions. But only in this one (that I found) so far. HIP 10492

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