The Galactic Travel Agency - Expand your horizons!

This is awesome, hilarious, and utterly sad all at the same time!!!!

As a full time explorer I'm not sure if I want to volunteer to help out or rant in protest at easy-mode exploration!!!

If it will help you, it is not exploration. It is something like looking at Twitch, YouTube or Facebook on video made by someone else. Maybe in realtime, but made by someone else.
In other MMOs (Guildwars 2 comes to mind) you also can look at realtime video from raid, but it is not the same as to be part of the raiding group.
 
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I hate to be another Negative Nancy, but are we even sure this would be a viable use for Multicrew? All of the discussion focus around multicrew seems to be centred on combat and all the crew roles are combat roles; it seems to me that any use explorers might extract from the feature would come in spite of how FD will design multicrew to work, not because of it.

My main concern is, in all the threads official and unofficial I've seen on the subject, I haven't seen any details of the actual proposed mechanism for having crew join you. What if they make it so your ship needs to be docked at a station somewhere before you can accept crew onto your ship? You need to be docked at a station to swap your NPC crew around. This wouldn't be much of an obstacle for combat multicrew (which is what the feature seems primarily designed for), but it would kill off this idea dead, except maybe for tourist spots around Jaques, Maia and the other remote stations. A requirement to be docked would largely kill off any kind of multicrew experience for explorers, actually - especially if the crewmember's ship needs to be docked somewhere too.

It's nice to discuss possibilities, but we really should wait and see if this kind of thing is even theoretically possible before we start making firm plans and signing people up.
 
I hate to be another Negative Nancy, but are we even sure this would be a viable use for Multicrew? All of the discussion focus around multicrew seems to be centred on combat and all the crew roles are combat roles; it seems to me that any use explorers might extract from the feature would come in spite of how FD will design multicrew to work, not because of it.

My main concern is, in all the threads official and unofficial I've seen on the subject, I haven't seen any details of the actual proposed mechanism for having crew join you. What if they make it so your ship needs to be docked at a station somewhere before you can accept crew onto your ship? You need to be docked at a station to swap your NPC crew around. This wouldn't be much of an obstacle for combat multicrew (which is what the feature seems primarily designed for), but it would kill off this idea dead, except maybe for tourist spots around Jaques, Maia and the other remote stations. A requirement to be docked would largely kill off any kind of multicrew experience for explorers, actually - especially if the crewmember's ship needs to be docked somewhere too.

It's nice to discuss possibilities, but we really should wait and see if this kind of thing is even theoretically possible before we start making firm plans and signing people up.

Well, the whole idea is based on direct quote from Dev 2.3 Update "When joining a crew, a Commander will log out of their current vessel and transfer to the multicrew vessel, regardless of distance. They can also leave at any time (or be evicted by the ship’s owner) at which point they can return to where their ship was last, making the whole affair a very friendly, drop in – drop out procedure."

Nothing more, nothing less. We will see...
 
This is a fantastic idea and I hope it works as you envision it.

I would've never thought to use this feature in this way and I can appreciate the kind of emergent content this'll bring.
 
If they put in a way to transfer money to other players then I'm OK with it. If I'm spending weeks to travel 50,000 ly out, then I'm going to ask you to pay a substantial amount of Cr if you want to see what I see.

Otherwise IMO this just highlights how badly thought out the instant teleport system is.
 
If they put in a way to transfer money to other players then I'm OK with it. If I'm spending weeks to travel 50,000 ly out, then I'm going to ask you to pay a substantial amount of Cr if you want to see what I see.

Otherwise IMO this just highlights how badly thought out the instant teleport system is.

Transfering money has already been discussed and frontier seems pretty opposed to it as it allows for players to essentially sell credits for real money. While i can see your argument, i think that providing that service for free is better for everyone.
 
If I'm spending weeks to travel 50,000 ly out, then I'm going to ask you to pay a substantial amount of Cr if you want to see what I see.

Not everyone has playtime to see these places, it's hardly a major effort from my side so why wouldn't I? It also gives a bit of company on an otherwise potentially lonely trip. Share the love :)
Some people look down on exploration, some have never tried, this initiative showing them some of the great sights there are to see may kickstart people into trying it and maybe enjoying it.

If you wanna charge thats your choice but if you can participate here is Kolas choice as they were the ones to found it, maybe arrange cargo transfers or whatever on your return assuming your customers haven't just flown away... I seriously doubt there will be many takers if there's a free system parallel to it though, there were those that tried to emulate the Fuel Rats for cargo but they didn't last long before folding...
 
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This is great! I'd love to find a cool spot with my conda and chill. Flick the switch and let people fly around in my SLF for an hour or two.
 
I'd be willing to bet credits that what this feature will bring will be that instead of screenshots of Asps in front of things, we'll see screenies of Commanders in front of things. "Here's a shot of me and CMDR Example chilling on my ship's bridge!"
And I'd be quite alright with this.
 
I'd be willing to bet credits that what this feature will bring will be that instead of screenshots of Asps in front of things, we'll see screenies of Commanders in front of things. "Here's a shot of me and CMDR Example chilling on my ship's bridge!"
And I'd be quite alright with this.

Hehe, yeah i don't disagree.
 
Love the entire idea. As an explorer based out of the Colonia region, I'd be happy to talk other CMDRs along for some neutron hopping, black hole site seeing, and a look into space madness. ;)
 
Not only is this a great idea, I think it is only the beginning of new roles for players.
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The first new role that springs to mind is that of the journalist. For example, there are players right now making livestreams/videos who have to fly many KLY out to places like Colonia or the Formidine Rift to make news items showing fungal life or abandoned settlements. With this feature, a player who discovers something interesting can invite another player along who can then record video of a site whilst the discoverer flies around. Since you cannot control your ship whilst in debug camera, this would also allow for different types of journalism that these livestreamers could not previously have attempted safely, such as reporting on fighting in a CZ/RES site during a CG, or from a ship taking part in a racing event. It would allow roving reporters to be docked safely in the bubble and yet gather material by joining ships involved in news-worthy expeditions, scientific investigations of ruins and player-run events of various kinds. This feature will hopefully encourage new livestreamers to step forward and produce innovative and interesting video content.
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Another new role, related to journalism, might be the ability to produce more story-like videos and fan fiction. Turjan's Travels ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3mSrJmFA0_XyekNLThvIvg ) is one of my favourite ED series and uses the existing camera very creatively, e.g. there are even scenes set in the interior of his Asp Explorer. I'm looking forward to seeing what uses the new camera system can be put to that would make it easier for people to create videos featuring their own and other players' characters.
 
News announcement!

The Galactic Travel Agency (TGTA) has now become an affiliate of the Colonia Citizens Network! (CCN)
To avoid confusion and to clarifiy the reasons behind this choiche we've written this text for that express purpose.



What does this mean for the Galactic Travel Agency?


For the most part, not a great deal. The project administration remains the same, the goals remain for the vast majority the same, and our agenda also remains the same. What this does mean for the project is that we now have access to the Colonia Citizens Network's various media outlets and media presence. This allows us to advertise to more crowds, recruit more members and remain in the front of the Elite : Dangerous community. People from all accross the galaxy, with a large crowd in Colonia, will now be aware of the project setting the precedent for a glorious future. In practice this means that the Discord server for TGTA while not being shut down, will be gradually abandoned for the TGTA sub chat of CCN. This means that if you are currently on the TGTA discord, please move to the CCN discord as soon as possible, as it will be the only place in the future where announcements and discussion of the project will take place.

What about the indepedence of the project, what if CCN dies?

While this is highly unlikely, if CCN is ever to become an unsuitable host for TGTA either by becoming irrelevant or becoming otherwise unfit to host the project, know that we are not giving up our independence. While the CCN is likely to be a wonderfull host and one which i intend to stay loyal to for the most part, if it becomes neccesary we will break off and do it on our own. While we may tailor certain plans to cooperate better with the CCN, know that we will be transparent about this, and if you ever were to have a question about something, simply ask.






Overall i think this represents a great opportunity for the project, and one which will allow it to achieve things that were not possible before. The CCN bolds a great infrastructure, which we intend to take great advantage of. There is very little risk involved in this change, and i hope all participants feel the same. If you don't, that's still completley fine, and you are more than allowed to voice that opinion.

Fly safe and keep on exploring CMDRs!
 
Minor-ish news!

We have a new logo courtesy of CMDR Aekzo! It's jaw-droppingly fabulous!


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There's also a 2000 x 2000 pixel variant here: https://i.imgur.com/lgHVhPY.png



Cheers!
 
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