What's the "lore" for the BGS shenanigans?

[Deadlock-3000]

I'm really bad at fan fiction - I'm still scarred from when I first found out about it years ago, which was an e-mail from my mum saying she'd found a massive online stash of Frodo/Aragorn slash fiction and thought of me, thanks mum.

Maybe you can help me justify what's been going on with the universe in proper gushy Galnet style-y.

So just over a week ago something fairly major happened to the whole galaxy all at once. Every single system - disaster zone and paradise alike - suddenly switched to a completely neutral state. Then, within days, conflict zones break out randomly outside stations, famine is eradicated, millions of tonnes of low level cargo spontaneously appear (and constantly re-appear) throughout all civilised space, killing people makes them stronger, helping them makes them weaker, left becomes right, beans become peas etc. etc.

It's like the original series Star Trek episode where those pacifist dudes turn out to be hyperdimensional beings and they turn everyone's weapons off all at once and everyone was all like "Dudes, no" and they were all like "Deal with it". But I don't really want to invoke more aliens, we have all the inscrutable insects and extinct overlords we need. Maybe it's more like that one time Pamela Ewing had a year-long dream and none of it really happened and you just cut away from Bobby in the shower.

But I checked Galnet and there's inexplicably nothing about it.

I'm sure you can do better?

 

[Morded]

Bugs in the new IPF software. Or had to purge a Thargoid virus. Maybe an intern downloaded something naughty and got a Grom cryptocurrency miner.

 

[Jukelo]

No need fore lore, just retcon it. Nothing special happened, things have always been this way, move along.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

In my effort to produce a line of Zerek Null clones, I accidentally created a quantum inversion that caused our universe to fold through the 7th dimension. The result was a sort of galactic “stun”, that caused everyone to behave rationally for a day, before reverting to their usual barbaric ways.

On the plus side, my line of Zerek Null clones turned out both more intelligent and more rational than the original. Seems the original has a defective chromosomal fragment, resulting in 42 chromosomal pairs, and one additional half-pair. The clones do not have this half-pair, but by introducing a specially engineered sequence to resemble this half pair, the clones have been proven to be superior to the original. Replacement will proceed as scheduled.

Sorry about the dimensional fold.

 

[Mo Ronik]

Shenanigans is such a cool word. I think I'm gonna name a ship that...

 

[EUS]

Blame T.J.

Or maybe Thanos and that damned glove of his.

 

[Deadlock-3000]

I'm now going back to my idea that none of this is real - the human expansion into space, the Powerplay politics, any of it. In fact the reason the whole thing is so weird and temperamental and buggy is that it's a simulation running on a underground Guardian crystal shard, left over from their empire, a sort of virtual reality matrix but vastly complex. The Guardians built it as a form of diversionary entertainment in which they would pretend to be a vastly inferior space-going species in the early stages of civilisation, which they would play for months at a time when there weren't any weddings to go to. They could actually play fully AFK by uploading a digitised copy of their minds to the matrix, which would play the game for them while they went to the space shops or whatever. Following their extinction, the crystal mainframe kept on running, gradually degrading with time, trapping all of those simulated conscious minds within it, running down and falling apart to the point where very little in the gameworld actually makes any sense.

We, as real people*, are playing that game - we are not human commanders of freelancing starships, we are playing dead AI Guardians running on a gradually decaying construct.

* OR ARE WE

 

[Dommarraa]

12 months ago, at a meeting of the Pilots Federation Grand Council :

Item #6, Too Many Elite Rated Pilots.
The rank of Elite is supposed to be special, but some moron in accounting has juggled the numbers so that now there are thousands of them. Hardly any of them are worthy of the rank, and with nothing to fill their time, they are running around the bubble causing mahem, and generally bringing our good name into disrepute.
What are we going to do about it?

Well sir, if you look at holo slide #56, you will see that many of them have been heavily involved in local politics. I propose we give further funding to Project 2.8%, which as you know is under the purview Cyber Warfare. This project is a computer virus that would infect every station services computer, and cause every action to be randomly distributed to local political bodies that have no affiliations with Pilot Federation members. The expected outcome is that these Elite Commanders, would get so annoyed that the would say 'haz our stufz' and retire from active space flight. Therefore drastically reducing the number of Elite pilots and their unwanted effects on the Galaxy. We can then be left with Seal Clubbers and Bots, which we all know can easily be ignored.

 

[Dagwit]

There is a Far God, and He likes His little jokes at our expense.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Dude, it's been like 5 days. Why don't you give it some time and let it stabilize.

 

[Dagwit]

Dude, it's been like 5 days. Why don't you give it some time and let it stabilize.

Dude, it's been like eleven days, and I'm seeing people starting to worry that Things Will Never Be The Same Again.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Dude, it's been like eleven days, and I'm seeing people starting to worry that Things Will Never Be The Same Again.

Good.

 

[Dagwit]

Good.

Or bad, depending on what sort of game you play. Elite Dangerous is a broad Church, and it may not benefit the Far God in the long term if He plays favourites among His followers.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Or bad, depending on what sort of game you play. Elite Dangerous is a broad Church, and it may not benefit the Far God in the long term if He plays favourites among His followers.

I've played the BGS. And the BGS I played was absolutely nonsensical.

Now there is chaos. And chaos makes sense.

 

[Dagwit]

I've played the BGS. And the BGS I played was absolutely nonsensical.

Now there is chaos. And chaos makes sense.

I don't play the BGS. Likely I never will play the BGS. And while I'm happy to put up with an occasional inconvenience - a station where I want to get allied with all the factions going into lockdown on me, which has happened - so that other people can have their BGS game, because I recognise that the game needs to support a variety of playstyles to sustain the user base that keeps it alive, I don't much like the attitude of some BGS players that it's their game and the rest of us just have to put up with the consequences of that as best we can.

Also, real life is chaotic. This is a game. And a game that doesn't make sense ceases to be a game - it ceases to exist. Is that what you want?

 

[Deleted member 115407]

I don't play the BGS. Likely I never will play the BGS. And while I'm happy to put up with an occasional inconvenience - a station where I want to get allied with all the factions going into lockdown on me, which has happened - so that other people can have their BGS game, because I recognise that the game needs to support a variety of playstyles to sustain the user base that keeps it alive, I don't much like the attitude of some BGS players that it's their game and the rest of us just have to put up with the consequences of that as best we can.

Also, real life is chaotic. This is a game. And a game that doesn't make sense ceases to be a game - it ceases to exist. Is that what you want?

The chaos is good. More states will come. Famines don't exist yet because nobody has yet been driven into famine. Same with outbreak and other states.

Large, multisystem factions can no longer lock themselves behind artificial BGS walls. Empires can be attacked on all fronts.

That is the way things should be.

Just because there isn't a lot of variety at present doesn't mean there won't be variety. At go-live, everything was the same. Now we're starting to see booms and expansions as the result of mining, and some systems are experiencing wars and civil wars. One notable system has even become the subject of pirate attacks. Eventually player actions will cause outbreaks and famines and lockdowns and everything else.

But the BGS doesn't just snap back into position overnight. Things take time.

Stop whining about it and let them happen.

 

[Dagwit]

The chaos is good. More states will come. Famines don't exist yet because nobody has yet been driven into famine. Same with outbreak and other states.

Large, multisystem factions can no longer lock themselves behind artificial BGS walls. Empires can be attacked on all fronts.

That is the way things should be.

Just because there isn't a lot of variety at present doesn't mean there won't be variety. At go-live, everything was the same. Now we're starting to see booms and expansions as the result of mining, and some systems are experiencing wars and civil wars. One notable system has even become the subject of pirate attacks. Eventually player actions will cause outbreaks and famines and lockdowns and everything else.

But the BGS doesn't just snap back into position overnight. Things take time.

Stop whining about it and let them happen.

You're not listening to me. I don't care about the BGS. I really, really don't care about the BGS. I do care about players being unable to find HGEs with the G5 mats they need, because a change has been made that benefits your game at the expense of theirs. That's not a whine, that's a legitimate concern.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

You're not listening to me. I don't care about the BGS. I really, really don't care about the BGS. I do care about being players being unable to find HGEs with the G5 mats they need, because a change has been made that benefits your game at the expense of theirs. That's not a whine, that's a legitimate concern.

Hey, dude, I hunt G5 mats, too. And I know that there are G5's that are currently unavailable due to a lack of system states.

I also know that in short time those system states will be available again and I'll be able to go find the HGEs that I'm looking for.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other HGEs with farmable mats that can be traded for the ones people need.

 

[Goose4291]

The chaos is good. More states will come. Famines don't exist yet because nobody has yet been driven into famine. Same with outbreak and other states.

Large, multisystem factions can no longer lock themselves behind artificial BGS walls. Empires can be attacked on all fronts.

That is the way things should be.

Just because there isn't a lot of variety at present doesn't mean there won't be variety. At go-live, everything was the same. Now we're starting to see booms and expansions as the result of mining, and some systems are experiencing wars and civil wars. One notable system has even become the subject of pirate attacks. Eventually player actions will cause outbreaks and famines and lockdowns and everything else.

But the BGS doesn't just snap back into position overnight. Things take time.

Stop whining about it and let them happen.

You've inspired me Vin...

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

For the OP, it could just be that with the means of production and access to resources that humanity has in this future, the neutral, harmonious state actually should be a thing, but political interest keeps the mad status quo. Perhaps the refocus on the Thargoid threat temporarily meant that those who keep the suffering and inequality lost track of their usual shenanigans, and everything went fine for a while. They are only now just getting back to handling everything at once.