Something that's not explained to new players is just, "oh, ok, free spaceship? So is this some kind of indentured servitude deal or… wait that's it? It's just mine, and I have a pilot's license, and I can just… leave? And now I can get enough credits within a few hours to be set for life?"
On that last point, I read somewhere that 1 credit equates to the equivalent purchasing power of 50 contemporary dollars. So, as soon as you have 20,000 credits you could just retire something comparable to a millionaire…
Why don't more people do this? Or do they? The game doesn't really give me a sense of what percentage of humanity are commanders.
The only explanations I can think of is that, do humans, due to technology, have crazy long or infinite lifespans which makes most people extremely risk averse? Is space travel, rightly or wrongly, just seen as very dangerous or scary?
I mean, if space travel was more like 40k where every time you went faster than light you risked getting exposed to the horrors of hell, I guess that would make sense, but Elite Dangerous space travel seems almost uneventful.
What am I missing?
