Why not use Telepresence for Conflict Zones?

[DemiserofD]

When I consider doing Odyssey content, I always do some quick math; would I rather wait 5+ minutes to fly to a conflict zone, or close down Elite and boot up Battlefront or any other FPS game? The answer is almost always obvious; the one I can play sooner.

The single biggest annoyance of Conflict Zones is the prolonged ride to get to them, to even start fighting. Who likes hopping in a vulture and flying for 5+ minutes with absolutely nothing to do? Nobody.

Further, the way death works in Conflict Zones makes NO sense in the rules of the universe. We have a semi-hard system whereby sufficient damage to a ship or person puts them in an escape pod which is rescued and healed. That works just fine for ship-based combat(for the most part), even for exploration or missions, but it makes zero sense in an active conflict zone. How do you get out? How do they heal you quickly enough to go back in again? It makes no sense.

Especially since we already have an in-universe justification to alleviate BOTH these issues completely: Telepresence, combined with the humanoid robots we see ads for occasionally.

Here's how it would work. You arrive at the station like normal, but when you join the Conflict Zone, you get into a nearby simulator pod. You then instantly telepresence into a ship orbiting the planet where there's the fight. This ship deploys dropships that carry you down and deploy you in about 30 seconds. You are not there in person, but rather are inhabiting a combat robot, equipped with your gear.

When you die, you simply lose contact with the damaged robot and respawn in a new one in orbit, which is then deployed in the same manner.

Not only does this solve the 'dying' problem, AND solve the travel problem, it even solves the problem of why they have a few hundred troops but only deploy them 6-12 at a time! You're only fighting 6-12 people, NOT hundreds.

Bam: Lore problems solved, Time problems solved, and we have a game I might actually play now and then rather than ignoring entirely.

 

[Weps]

No please, the word telepresence needs to be struck out of anything Elite lore related. I was actually hoping that FDEV realized it was a mistake and this is why the concept hasn't been reused since.

Regarding the prerequisite of travelling to some place to partake in an activity - this has been discussed many times before. It always falls on "space is big" and "this is Elite and that's why it's special". For the record I agree with that.

But I agree with your opening argument: it takes less than a minute to find a match in a modern shooter. There should be a faster way to chain on-foot CZs in Elite too, instead of traveling back and forth between a station. I understand there was an option to relog (I wasn't playing back then) and FDEV nerfed it / took it out.

Ultimately it comes down to the development effort that would go into building a new mechanic. Not that I expect FDEV to work in this direction, but maybe a cheap compromise would be to have the Frontline Solutions Vulture stay in orbital cruise after pick-up, with the option to drop again into a new instance of the CZ or fly to the station via menu. Of course I can think of other grandiose stuff like a new class of capital ship stationed around / above CZs, which the player can dock and pick up CZ scenarios from, that also needs to be supplied periodically, and can actually act as a CZ itself and get routed.... yeah let's not kid ourselves.

 

[Astrnn]

Well, the main thing is that you can teleport from the ship to the surface. Because walking around the ship is boring and nobody needs it. If someone thinks he needs it, he's wrong. But flying to the conflict zone is very fun and interesting, so this immersive game mechanics is very important and has been fully realized in all realistic details.

And seriously - I like the idea. But without the fighting robots. Just a teleporter without any explanation. ED has a lot of game conventions. One more one less.

 

[DemiserofD]

Regarding the prerequisite of travelling to some place to partake in an activity - this has been discussed many times before. It always falls on "space is big" and "this is Elite and that's why it's special". For the record I agree with that.

But I agree with your opening argument: it takes less than a minute to find a match in a modern shooter. There should be a faster way to chain on-foot CZs in Elite too, instead of traveling back and forth between a station. I understand there was an option to relog (I wasn't playing back then) and FDEV nerfed it / took it out.

One way or another, there needs to be a compromise to make this game more appealing, compared to shutting down this game and booting up a different one. Like it or not, Telepresence is canon now, and it makes too much sense not to use it.

 

[Jack Winter]

Of course travel time and access to Frontline give some added twists to BGS wars and where people might fight.

Possibly they could make nearby staging points where you could land your ship, and then take a drop ship as long as the conflict is active.

 

[Ronzer]

No please, the word telepresence needs to be struck out of anything Elite lore related. I was actually hoping that FDEV realized it was a mistake and this is why the concept hasn't been reused since.

Telepresence is exactly like Midichlorians. Noone wants to know about it, hear about it, but it is undeniably how things work. So at some point, you just need to accept it and move on. Was it a mistake in both franchises to bring it up? Possibly! But just because it's not a fan favourite, doesn't change that it's how it is.

Telepresence, either via a clone or something, is how you fly your ships now. So there are levels they're not really telling folks about.

But I agree with your opening argument: it takes less than a minute to find a match in a modern shooter. There should be a faster way to chain on-foot CZs in Elite too, instead of traveling back and forth between a station. I understand there was an option to relog (I wasn't playing back then) and FDEV nerfed it / took it out.

It's best to have an SRV, park it near the ground CZ, and hop into it and relog. When you log back in, you're in your SRV ready to go. If your SRV blows up, you have to recall your ship, which also works. But also, you can outfit your ship to house more SRV's. I do this in case I get killed or disconnected while not in the SRV (which causes the SRV to blow up) and I'll recall my ship, hop in another SRV, then relog. I have 4 SRV's in my ground CZ hopper (a Viper).

I'd recommend doing the high intensity ground CZ's that can get you 30 million space bucks or more. That way, you dont mind the time it takes to get there quite so much.

Here's how it would work. You arrive at the station like normal, but when you join the Conflict Zone, you get into a nearby simulator pod. You then instantly telepresence into a ship orbiting the planet where there's the fight. This ship deploys dropships that carry you down and deploy you in about 30 seconds. You are not there in person, but rather are inhabiting a combat robot, equipped with your gear.

I was going to rant about how FDev already pampers us time wise, but robots? We'd essentially inhabit battle droids? Ok! Can I spend ARX on that? FDev should literally just have a brainstorm session and be like "can folks spend ARX on it?" and if the answer is yes, put it into the game and let its income let it thrive or if noone buys it, let it flounder lol. I'd buy some onionhead markings for my droid for sure!

 

[metatheurgist]

Telepresence was created for entirely pragmatic reasons. If you use an SLF you can die easily in it. This used to mean losing an Elite NPC that you spent months training (because no one is going to wait however long for an SLF to dock while their Commander is about to eat a rebuy). Eating a rebuy because you got careless in an SLF is also crap. So they invented this "Telepresence" nonsense to remove that risk.

Now that you can recover NPCs and you can be rescued by the rangers, Telepresence should be erased from the game. The only place it should live is in the turret of the SRV.

The idea that you can be patched up immediately is no more strange than the idea that insurance can replace my G5 engineered Corvette in seconds. Really, that's even more stupid. And you can't even invent nonsense like Telepresence to get around that.

If you don't want to fly 5 minutes in a Vulture to a CZ, fly to it yourself.

That said, yeah, CZs could work better. I'd prefer if there were a FOB that you spawned from instead of just appearing and dropping from the sky. You could then either fly or take Frontline to this base instead of flying from the station every time. Then again, if we're having fantasies, we should have Vulture interiors and I get in and out of the ship instead of teleporting from the second seat into a drop bay.

 

[Jack Winter]

Or ways to tell the footie CZ level from a distance in a ship..

 

[DemiserofD]

The idea that you can be patched up immediately is no more strange than the idea that insurance can replace my G5 engineered Corvette in seconds. Really, that's even more stupid. And you can't even invent nonsense like Telepresence to get around that.

That's not particularly ridiculous; we're already 3D-printing stuff now, I can only imagine what we'll be able to do in 1200 years. Especially given they hold hundreds of thousands to millions of tons of resources inside, while the biggest ship in the game only weighs like 2000 tons at most.

Especially since we already have canonical fighter bays able to synthesize new fighters from materials in a matter of minutes. If a 180 ton Keelback can manufacture a new 5 ton fighter in 60 seconds, a 180 million ton station can absolutely synthesize a 2000 ton T10 in even less time.

But if we have the tech needed to instantly rebuild a human body, after having taken a rocket launcher to the face, everyone should be immortal, assassinations should be impossible, and a host of other things which clearly aren't the case.

Honestly, it's very odd to me that people find the technology of...radio remote control to be unrealistic, in a universe with interstellar travel and extradimensional aliens.

 

[metatheurgist]

It is ridiculous when you compare it to the effort required to G5 a ship. How does insurance do all that? Why can't I just go to those guys and pay for a G5 ship?

The SLF nonsense has already been debated to death too. Why can we print SLFs but not SRVs? Where is all this mass to print that many SLFs stored?

No one is saying remote control is unbelievable. What we want is a credible game universe. You want to be Altered Carbon? Then the universe should work that way. We should be buying sleeves instead of ships. There should be no passenger ships, it's much easier to just transfer people around. You wouldn't just want to remote a form because jamming would be an easy counter. So if you're going into combat or anything risky you must be prepared to lose that form and any XP gains permanently. That would actually be a pretty good game (possibly better than this one ) but that game would be Altered Carbon, not ED.

Really, it's the inconsistency in the universe that ticks me off, making up more bulldung to facilitate "ease of play" is not improving the situation for me. Telepresence was definitely one of those situations but I accepted it at the time because at the time losing an NPC just because you'd rather jump than wait for the SLF to dock was pants. I also accept getting a G5 ship back in seconds because the alternative is horrible. But those should be exceptions, not the norm.

 

[Schmack]

No please, the word telepresence needs to be struck out of anything Elite lore related. I was actually hoping that FDEV realized it was a mistake and this is why the concept hasn't been reused since.

Regarding the prerequisite of travelling to some place to partake in an activity - this has been discussed many times before. It always falls on "space is big" and "this is Elite and that's why it's special". For the record I agree with that.

But I agree with your opening argument: it takes less than a minute to find a match in a modern shooter. There should be a faster way to chain on-foot CZs in Elite too, instead of traveling back and forth between a station. I understand there was an option to relog (I wasn't playing back then) and FDEV nerfed it / took it out.

Ultimately it comes down to the development effort that would go into building a new mechanic. Not that I expect FDEV to work in this direction, but maybe a cheap compromise would be to have the Frontline Solutions Vulture stay in orbital cruise after pick-up, with the option to drop again into a new instance of the CZ or fly to the station via menu. Of course I can think of other grandiose stuff like a new class of capital ship stationed around / above CZs, which the player can dock and pick up CZ scenarios from, that also needs to be supplied periodically, and can actually act as a CZ itself and get routed.... yeah let's not kid ourselves.

I feel like it's geared more towards protecting the PMF than giving players a combat scenario. No doubt in popular systems PMFs get pounded and have complained relentlessly about someone doing so many CZs in a short amount of time.

 

[DemiserofD]

It is ridiculous when you compare it to the effort required to G5 a ship. How does insurance do all that? Why can't I just go to those guys and pay for a G5 ship?

The SLF nonsense has already been debated to death too. Why can we print SLFs but not SRVs? Where is all this mass to print that many SLFs stored?

No one is saying remote control is unbelievable. What we want is a credible game universe. You want to be Altered Carbon? Then the universe should work that way. We should be buying sleeves instead of ships. There should be no passenger ships, it's much easier to just transfer people around. You wouldn't just want to remote a form because jamming would be an easy counter. So if you're going into combat or anything risky you must be prepared to lose that form and any XP gains permanently. That would actually be a pretty good game (possibly better than this one ) but that game would be Altered Carbon, not ED.

Really, it's the inconsistency in the universe that ticks me off, making up more bulldung to facilitate "ease of play" is not improving the situation for me. Telepresence was definitely one of those situations but I accepted it at the time because at the time losing an NPC just because you'd rather jump than wait for the SLF to dock was pants. I also accept getting a G5 ship back in seconds because the alternative is horrible. But those should be exceptions, not the norm.

How is remote control not credible? We can, right now, control drones on the other side of the globe and use them to missile terrorists. It's not scifi, it actually exists! And jamming, while occasionally an option, isn't enough of a threat to be a major hindrance. In 1200 years, with the exact same FTL communications that offer Galnet, I cannot see any problem with telepresence that wouldn't just be made up for the sake of convenience.

I get picking at other flaws in the universe, but telepresence is absolutely not one of them. It's one of the few things that actually makes 100% sense. Not only that, it's something that can make the game exponentially better and more accessible.

There's literally zero reason not to use it.

 

[DemiserofD]

I feel like it's geared more towards protecting the PMF than giving players a combat scenario. No doubt in popular systems PMFs get pounded and have complained relentlessly about someone doing so many CZs in a short amount of time.

Bear in mind, the defending player would see the same benefits. Assuming equal effort on all parts, it wouldn't change the results at all, it would just remove a few hours of wasted time each week.

 

[metatheurgist]

How is remote control not credible? We can, right now, control drones on the other side of the globe and use them to missile terrorists. It's not scifi, it actually exists! And jamming, while occasionally an option, isn't enough of a threat to be a major hindrance. In 1200 years, with the exact same FTL communications that offer Galnet, I cannot see any problem with telepresence that wouldn't just be made up for the sake of convenience.

I get picking at other flaws in the universe, but telepresence is absolutely not one of them. It's one of the few things that actually makes 100% sense. Not only that, it's something that can make the game exponentially better and more accessible.

There's literally zero reason not to use it.

I never said it wasn't credible. I said you'd have to change the whole game to make it credible in ED. Which would make it a totally different game.

Why would there be passenger ships? Why would anyone physically fly a ship? Why are there no stocks of sleeves?

Why would there even be data courier missions? Just transmit it with the 'unjammable' ftl magic tech.

It's hard to jam a missile because it's moving at supersonic speeds and it's hard to jam a drone when you don't know when it's there. But if you know for sure someone is remote piloting something you can sure as hell 100% effectively jam them. Which is what I'd be doing all the time in any combat situation if I was smart with the limitless power ships generate.

FTL comms doesn't actually exist in ED, we accept that we can communicate in game at FTL speeds because it would be difficult to police players communicating in real time. I think the game would be a much more interesting universe if that limitation could be applied but it can't. This would mean no instant market data, there would be more interesting economic situations (no galaxy wide prices for a start). The problem is players would be able to communicate a better price from 500LY away and trade for $$$ while the NPCs 5LY away still are pretending they don't know what's happening and buying stuff at sucker's rates. The game just ignores that for inconvenience, not because it's lore.

ED has enough nonsense without adding more.

 

[DemiserofD]

Why would there be passenger ships? Why would anyone physically fly a ship? Why are there no stocks of sleeves?

Because people want to actually GO places, not just remote control a robot there? What exactly do you mean by 'sleeves'?

I think you're dramatically over-stating what I'm asking for, here. Basic combat robots that can run and shoot. That's it. Not some sort of bizarre bioengineered human mimicry, not clones, just basic, remote controlled robots. That's it. Exactly like we currently have on earth.

Why would there even be data courier missions? Just transmit it with the 'unjammable' ftl magic tech.

Unjammable doesn't mean uninterceptable. If you need to keep something secure even today, we often hire couriers instead of transmitting it. The exact same reasoning is the only thing that makes sense, given we clearly have FTL coms.

FTL comms doesn't actually exist in ED,

Of course it does, we see evidence of it in virtually everything we do ingame. Galnet is just the most obvious example, but there are countless others, from messages from mission-givers mid-flight, to market data, to BGS and Powerplay, to ANY info from Colonia.

Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make any sense in the game we have. Either you have to pretend that 9/10ths of what we see ingame isn't the actual universe we're playing in, or FTL coms exist - simple as that.

It's hard to jam a missile because it's moving at supersonic speeds and it's hard to jam a drone when you don't know when it's there. But if you know for sure someone is remote piloting something you can sure as hell 100% effectively jam them. Which is what I'd be doing all the time in any combat situation if I was smart with the limitless power ships generate.

That's not true at all. Even with the best jamming tech on the market, it's almost impossible to jam US Military drones, and that's with non-FTL coms. Pretending they 'must' be jammable is just handwavium to pretend it's impossible, it has no basis in reality.

Seriously, what's your REAL problem with it? All of this feels like justifications you've made up to justify your distaste for it, not your real reason you don't like it in the first place.

 

[St0rmFury]

What exactly do you mean by 'sleeves'?

"Sleeves" is a term used in Altered Carbon (novel & TV series) referring to cloned or synthetic bodies where you can upload your consciousness/memories into.

Probably came from card sleeves.

 

[Hellrider]

I love idea.
Let's add even more "telepresence", or just fast travel, like in skyrim (but wihout this stupid rule "you have to go here at least once"), who needs wasting time for travel.

No, seriously but no, thanks. It's terrible idea. I also don't buy "but modern games are soo speeedy that you can find match in minute". Cool, but elite never was speedy game for people which cannot wait more than 60 seconds.

 

[Northpin]

The Telepresence is a concept that should never made it in game.
It feels absolutely wrong and defeats the purpose of big galaxy - vast distances - planning travel accordingly

 

[angusmadmac1]

Isn't it just BTL ( better than life) we sit in a pod somewhere and just turn up ?? But don't lose your mats but do lose your cartography. It was a meh idea but people just played along and it's "canon" or just accepted, imagine the cries if we just lost everything ? Or do we have to go back to the location of our death to pick up everything ?
It's just easier to accept it and play along

 

[Darrack]

and we have a game I might actually play now and then rather than ignoring entirely

So you want us to change the game because you don't like it?
Terrible idea, completely against any Telewhatever ideas, its a rabbit hole we don't want, what's next? Fast travel between stations?
Space in ED is huge, massive, realistic, for one game at least lets keep it that way.

O7