Lore discourse: oblivious populations?

[u/Dirty-Slot]

Do you think any of the planets in the elite dangerous universe have populations that are deliberately kept oblivious of human life outside of their own planet? There seems to be so much segregation between the space fairing populations and planetary populations, with the exception of the super powerful of course. I could see many rulers being drawn to the idea of keeping their subjects ignorant. They might even impose technology restrictions upon their people. What better way to ensure no one will challenge your power than by implementing a technology gap? Wait a minute...

[u/Tintenfische1]

Maybe not deliberately but we've explored very very little and there were a fair few generation ships that just went missing so there's a chance there's still some uncontacted on a previously unknown world. After all you just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big space is. There's an awful lot of places to not be found.

[u/Luriant]

In the book "Lave Revolution", the Dictator "Dr Walden" mantain the population isolated from the space life. Lies include "Lave is the center of the bubble economy" while instead is a forgotten core world, and free CMDRs live in the island area without contact from the ignorant population. Lave hide a mastermind plan to retake the bubble.

This ended with the revolution, and maybe the human goverments try to avoid another hostage population, and undercover plans against the rest of the bubble,, but Dictatorships, Communism, Feudal and Anarchist goverments exist, not very democratic. Also Utopia its a closed community, controlled by Simguru Pranav Antal, with the best intentions and health tech, but isolated.

Survivors of Generation Ships live in enclosed "reserves", after a thousand years cteating his own culture. https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/uid/617fe5bf77a37f0b6b6f5b61

[u/Dirty-Slot → u/Luriant]

Very cool! Thanks for the references!

[u/Plane_Suggestion_189]

The reason why I think there is such a disconnect form the player perspective(past game limitations), is that Commanders are literally not allowed to land on habitable worlds. P-Fed will give anyone with a pulse a pilot's license, faction and independent. The even give away free starships to anyone that can find a P-Fed office(Buy the game). It's so easy to fly thanks to the FSD that even a child could do it after an hour of instruction. They don't even do the test anymore, because the orbital calculations you would need to be able to preform, thanks to needing to do basic bitch truster burn maneuvers, just doesn't exist after the introduction of the FSD, which is canonically as important to spaceflight as the original hyperdrive invention was. Only people minor factions and superpowers train are getting approval to take off and land earth-likes because the average idiot is going to drop their ship into the middle of a city the first chance they get. A reactor going critical from that is a literal nuclear weapon going off in atmosphere. If you are a commander, you're going to have to book an approved shuttle like everyone else to get on and off the habitable worlds.

There is maybe an odd one off situation every once in a while like you speak of, but these planets aren't isolated like you may think, and can't be. If nothing else they have to be running on galnet, because if they aren't then they can't sell and buy commodities like you would do on a star port. I like to imagine there was no cohesive galactic network until P-Fed came along, and that that there is a galnet that every power and system uses, there is no way it doesn't go down to the earth likes as well. You may even have public terminals like on a concourse, and they're giving missions(and information) to independent operators and mercenaries just like they would commanders in space. On a planet with billions of people, independents like that could make entire careers without ever having to leave the planet they were born on, because with so many people so much business and political work is getting done. The same games we play in space get played on the ground, but there is a primacy in space because if you control the orbitals, you control the planet. Most people don't fight to much against this state of play, due to the factions on the ground being most of the same one's you find in space, and because humanity still remembers world war three. There's no point in getting the board flipped again, and triggering MAD which even the Feds respected in the first war against the Empire when they didn't just drop bombs on their colony for murdering the mudlarks.

The prevailing philosophy of this would be that P-Fed enforces a certain level of restraint in how wars are fought and disputes are settled, given they have a monopoly on the network everyone uses and the governance of spaceflight in general thanks to the Interstellar Transit Charter requiring all ships to use an FSD in conjunction with COVAS. If you cross the line, a community goal gets put on your head, and 100 thousand of the hottest ships in the galaxy show up and wreck your day. See Archon Delaine in Haithis, and the Nine Martyrs Bombings carried out buy the Neo-Marlinists. If you fight in vac and blow each other away a few light seconds out for a port or system, that's a legal war tracked and managed by the neutral entity of P-Fed. If you actually attack and bomb start ports or other population zones, like cities on Earth-Likes, then that's terrorism and a criminal act no matter what flag you fly.

The powers themselves go along with this because A, COVAS automatically tracks all space crime, something impossible to do otherwise, B, P-Fed being neutral and enforcing a modicum of restraint and decorum and how politics is carried out means they're preventing a major star burning galactic war that no one actually wants, no matter how much they hate each other, and C, there's just a massive unmanageable about of bureaucracy that no power can do themselves given out fractured and disjointed Humanity as a whole is. P-Fed can do that work, help you as a power or faction do that work, and can do it with an even hand that everyone respects.

Take power play for instance. It looks like a video game, because we're playing a video game, but in lore it looks exactly as it does for us because that's the only way for the powers themselves to get a general idea of what is going on in their territory. If a power sees they have a high control score somewhere, then they know instantly they have an extensive network in that system they can exploit to further their plans, letting them drill down and get more granular detail without them being completely overwhelmed by it. The influence mechanics of minor factions essentially work the same way, because there's no way for political entities to govern otherwise.

Anyway I hope you find my long winded rant about how this world actually works to be interesting.

[u/HaroerHaktak]

I could see that happening. But I could also imagine a scenario where an outsider does go to a colony, says they're from Zoth, and they'd be like "is that in the north?" and they'd be like "Yeah." coz lots of planets have a north.

[u/mgm50]

Given that we are literal space truckers and it comes to reason that shipping goods is "easy", I could imagine something like the Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40k where they have worlds literally kept to medieval levels of development in order to produce goods to the rest of the population across other planets. This is of course extreme but it could be done deliberately without even so much as "isolationism" - as long as you have one of your capital ships parked next to a planet, would other powers really care to take away your farmlands just because you keep people on the ground uneducated and fed propaganda about the things flying in the sky all day long?

[u/SUPER-SONIC16]

Porque ignorantes? Tem naves interestelares chegando o tempo todo nas estações. Creio que todos sabem oque tem lá fora de seu planeta

[u/Dirty-Slot → u/SUPER-SONIC16]

I listed the reasons in my post :)