Help me make this make sense.

[Luminous Dark]

There are so many elements of this game that don't seem to make any sense within the framework of the story.

If you crashlanded on an alien planet, or had to evacuate your ship or station in a hurry, then it would make sense to not have brought much with you, but in a scenario where you were deliberately sent on a mission, and periodically return to the station, there are plenty of things that don't seem to make sense, such as:

1. Why don't you bring gear with you besides workshop gear?
2. Why don't you bring anything back to the station with you besides workshop gear so you can bring it back down again later?
3. Why do you "research" and "craft" workshop gear if it's all brand-name stuff? Why not just buy it?
4. Why do they always drop you far from where you have to go?
5. Why is it that they drop gear for you in a crate in the middle of nowhere instead of just giving it to you to begin with, and why is it that only after you've picked it up, they give you the option of calling in a cargo pod with a replacement?

I just want to make it clear that I am not asking about the reasons behind the mechanics. I am asking for creative answers or in-game lore that explains these behaviors.

I have an idea that explains the first three:

There is some material common on Icarus that has a dangerous interaction with some material on the station, so for safety reasons, you're not allowed to bring anything back with you except things that were manufactured on the station, or exotics, which have a safe facility for their processing. For example, the soil may contain tetrahydro-oxite-triphosphate-monoicaride, which disintegrates all the sealants used on the station, and if not identified immediately could decompress the entire place. The workshop items are, in fact, consumer goods manufactured by a company, and not something you invented. When you research them, you are just checking to make sure they don't contain any of the substances that interact negatively with the substances of icarus. Or maybe you need to dismantle them to remove any of the offending parts and replace them yourself.

I look forward to hearing what ideas the rest of you have to make the gameplay make sense.

[Rekal]

Why can't you bring something other the workshop gear up and down with you? You are on the right track for this. I believe the lore reason was fear of exotics contamination. Since exotics screwed up the terraforming so thoroughly they were afraid of how it would interact on the station if left unregulated. Anything from Icarus was considered to be contaminated. Obviously we're shipping raw exotics up cause everyone wants them but they're like you said in specially segregated safe shipping areas.

3. Why we have to research and then buy workshop gear? 3D printing schematics. We "research" the schematics which is really just buying the rights to the design and then it's cheap to just print off a copy. At least that's my lore reason - don't think they've actually stated that in game anywhere.

4. Why drop you far from your target? I guess it depends on what you consider far. Most mission drops are fairly close in the grand scheme of things. I think there was some lore about how the gigantic magnetic storms that ravage the planet screws up positioning data so trying a pinpoint landing without something already acting as a beacon on the ground is dangerous. So they pick the known safe landing places for human drops - several of the missions are literally to go scan for those landing spots. They're fine dropping unmanned pods willy-nilly which is why you have to go collect pieces from horrendous crashes so often.

5. Why not drop you with the gear you need? The orbital infrastructure you're using is not purpose built. It's a hodgepodge of decommissioned terraforming satellites. So my thoughts are if you are based out of a satellite station in low orbit, and Group 15 is sending you equipment from their geostationary station it makes more sense to meet on the ground than to try and match orbits for a transfer before heading down.

Just my ideas on things. Could be remembering the lore incorrectly though.

[Luminous Dark]

Thanks. That's all good stuff. So do you know what effects exotics have on things? Also, are all workshop items 3d-printed? The first level tools all explicitly say that they are, but the rest don't.

And another question I forgot to ask earlier: Where is everyone else? I'm clearly not the only person on Icarus. There are multiple factions trying to establish business on the planet, and certainly an economic incentive to do so. In one of the first missions, Sol says we've been on Icarus for two years now, the terraforming of Olympus seems pretty much complete, and there are multiple missions where you are tasked with setting up bases for one of the factions, as well as at least one Simple (or however it's spelled) mission where you have to find and repair an abandoned outpost, and yet, you never run into anybody from any of these factions.

Then there's the issue where multiple versions of you can exist simultaneously in multiple versions of the planet, but I'd prefer to think that's purely a gameplay mechanic and not actually part of the lore. If it were, however, it would explain why you never run into anyone else (aside from coop partners), since everyone who visits Icarus is in a different reality.

[Rekal]

What effects do exotics have on things? That's the rub, it's takes a lot of research to figure that out. It's a material that doesn't behave like we expect regular physics to behave and that's why it's so in demand. Figuring out new ways to use new types of physics is almost always a big money maker. Can't really say much beyond that - game mechanic wise it's just the McGuffin you're sent to pickup.

Where is everyone? It's a full planet right. Technically we've only got a few handcrafted maps which add to less than 200 square kilometres of space to play in but if you have a hundred thousand prospectors on an Earth sized planet (close to Earth gravity right?) you still have 5000+ square kilometres to yourself. I doubt there's anywhere near that kind of orbital infrastructure envisioned to handle 100k drop pods going up and down.

Plus Icarus is supposed to be super dangerous which is why so many missions involve stories of other people screwing up and getting eaten by the wildlife. So lore wise anyone who goes down tries to finish up and leave ASAP. You end up with a limited number of people willing to go down and those that survive spending as little time as possible on planet. Your chance of randomly running into one seems pretty low. Game mechanic wise it's hard to program reliable interact-able AI for NPCs.

The multiple versions of your character was just the result of the Dev's offloading the server load back to players. With the server responsibilities no longer on a dedicated server they had to give up on the one character one drop mechanic because if you dropped on someone else's map they could literally just log out and lock your character out for good. No alternate reality lore business involved so you can avoid this lore breach by just not doing it. /shrug

[william_es]

I think everything you buy in orbit is 3D printed. There's flavor text somewhere that they mine the raw materials out of the rings around the gas giants and the moons. the "research" is for purchasing the master program, and then there's a license fee for each copy you make.

Why you show up practically naked with no gear? I agree it's kind of goofy. I explained it to myself as your player character literally sold off, traded in, and hocked every single thing they owned for a ticket to icarus. I can only imagine it's astronomically priced. They liquidated everything. Probably couldn't afford gear other then the suit. Historically, there were tons of people who showed up for the klondike gold rush with NOTHING, but the clothes on their back. Many were city people, and they flat out died while trying to find gold in alaska.

As as strange as it sounds, it happens in real life. There's a pretty infamous case of a guy from england who paid for a trip to climb mount everest. He bought bargain basement everything. He showed up at the base camp wearing a short sleeved button up shirt, regular pants, and the kind of backpack a kid would take to school. He started his ascent at like 5 pm, shortly before the sun went down. He froze to death on the side of mount everest. He climbed past other groups wearing super high tech coverings with custom equipment, and other climbers were horrified. Another group of climbers got reamed in social media for not "rescuing" him. But they'd already reached a point of the climb where you're essentially already dying. You're dying in super slow motion. You struggle to support your own body. They idea of carrying someone down the side of the mountain is just pure fantasy. Aint gonna happen. His body is still there, frozen in a cave. The cave is called "greenboots" cave. Because there's ANOTHER dead body in a corner that's 90% covered in ice, with just a pair of greenboots sticking out. Look up "rainbow valley" on everest. Read about that.

So in short, people do weird stupid stuff. Anyone who comes to icarus has a screw loose. "normal people" stayed home with friends and family, played it safe. Our characters are not normal well adjusted people.

Originally posted by Luminous Dark:

Then there's the issue where multiple versions of you can exist simultaneously in multiple versions of the planet, but I'd prefer to think that's purely a gameplay mechanic and not actually part of the lore. If it were, however, it would explain why you never run into anyone else (aside from coop partners), since everyone who visits Icarus is in a different reality.

Not all the factions on icarus trust or work with each other.

On many of the missions where you see another human, they're dead. Killed by some big bad nasty thing. You'd imagine that whatever factions sent them there pulled ALL their other people out until the problem is resolved. You the player are the person "resolving" it. Ie, killing something.

Plus, the name of the game on icarus is exotics. Total gold rush. That's what everyone is there for. I can only imagine that groups coming to down to mine out exotics are pretty much keeping the location secret for security reasons. They don't want anyone jumping their claim and stealing exotics.

Plus it's a big planet.

and lastly... we don't have NPC's because the devs haven't added that yet. NPC's that behave in a believable way is a ton of work. I would personally say that they should avoid the whole issue. Being by yourself fits the whole explorer/gold rush vibe.

[Luminous Dark]

Good stuff guys.

Originally posted by william_es:

I think everything you buy in orbit is 3D printed. There's flavor text somewhere that they mine the raw materials out of the rings around the gas giants and the moons. the "research" is for purchasing the master program, and then there's a license fee for each copy you make.

I feel like it's more like you buy the license and then there's a production cost.

Why you show up practically naked with no gear? I agree it's kind of goofy. I explained it to myself as your player character literally sold off, traded in, and hocked every single thing they owned for a ticket to icarus. I can only imagine it's astronomically priced. They liquidated everything. Probably couldn't afford gear other then the suit.

This makes sense. I thought maybe you were a criminal who was sent there as an alternative to a long prison sentence, but a desperate volunteer makes more sense. I imagine you probably own your drop pod though.

Originally posted by william_es:

Plus it's a big planet.

Originally posted by Rekal:

Where is everyone? It's a full planet right. Technically we've only got a few handcrafted maps which add to less than 200 square kilometres of space to play in but if you have a hundred thousand prospectors on an Earth sized planet (close to Earth gravity right?) you still have 5000+ square kilometres to yourself. I doubt there's anywhere near that kind of orbital infrastructure envisioned to handle 100k drop pods going up and down.

I wonder if the station we inhabit between missions is in geosynchronous orbit, and that's why you always drop within a limited area. There would need to be at least three of the stations that prospectors can inhabit, to cover the two DLC areas, but there may be more belonging to the other factions, who are doing their own thing somewhere else.

I was curious about the gravity, so I did a little test. It seems you can just barely jump over a half wall, which I assume is 1 meter tall, and it takes about 1 second from the time you jump to the time you hit the ground. Doing a bit of basic kinematics, the gravitational acceleration is -8*h/t**2, where h is the max jump height, t is the time from start of jump to end, and **2 indicates squared. If h=1m and t=1s, that comes out to -8m/s**2, which is about 80% of Earth's gravity.
The radius of Icarus would then be 6h/(G*rho*pi*t**2), where rho is the density of the planet. Assuming it's the same as Earth's (which isn't necessarily a good assumption), that means the radius is about 5,189 km, and the surface area is 338 M square kilometers. Of course, all that is based on some pretty shoddy measurements of the maximum jump height and duration, and an assumption of the density. We also don't know how much of the planet is covered in ocean, or if people are searching the oceans for exotics too.

[Luminous Dark]

Hey, I just realized that there are multiple short films about Icarus on Youtube, that give a much deeper understanding of the lore than what I've been able to piece together from 10 seconds of dialogue at the beginning of each mission. It's mostly about the first cohort of prospectors, who seem to have been hired by the UDA, so our situation as late-comers might be slightly different, but they do explicitly confirm what william_es said about prospectors showing up with nothing. Sol says, "People always think we had a bunch of advanced tech out there, but we had nothing. We had spent everything just to get there. We were like cave people in space suits."

Also, Icarus is a moon of the gas giant Minos, not a planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIz-6-w_fxY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZyd1e51YMo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnQ0WyEdn6g

[william_es]

Originally posted by Luminous Dark:

Hey, I just realized that there are multiple short films about Icarus on Youtube, that give a much deeper understanding of the lore
Also, Icarus is a moon of the gas giant Minos, not a planet.

Oh! yeah, sorry man. I just assumed you knew about those. They're cool. Really nice production value, and they really set the tone for a lot of the game when it launched.

There's another point... it's not really spelled out. But I noticed that a lot of the people they interview are all quite elderly. They definitely weren't dropping 70+ year old people as mission operatives, so those interviews obviously happened MUCH later.

It says this no where, but I like to think those are former prospectors who _settled_ there on Icarus. Built a home, and maybe lived out the rest of their lives there. Once again, I'm just assuming this. Those interviews could have happened anywhere. But I noticed the homes behind them are all quite "rustic" looking. Nothing high tech shown. At all.

Civilization has a habit of creeping in. Icarus is wild and wooly right now, but eventually people will start to build permanent settlements. Even if it just starts as a research lab first, and then someone builds a landing pad next to it... and eventually someone will open up other businesses. And eventually, you get a town.

[Luminous Dark]

The old white guy in the interviews is the guy who tells you what your missions are in-game, so he's definitely still there.

But sometimes you also get a robot lady voice, which is the same voice as in Satisfactory, so I wonder if they're related, or if FICSIT and the UDA just use the same robot lady voice software.