EXPLOITATION: DANGEROUS

Elite is frequently described as a sandbox or set piece for the players to make their own stories. We play our characters in our groups, we play at space faring Explorers, Miners, Pirates, First Responders, Reavers, and more, and our squadrons and groups reflect this. But in the end, it's a game, and we've also come together to build a massive community with vast community resources dedicated to helping players better themselves and learn.

For those without simulator experience, Elite has a steep learning curve. The new tutorials and starting area help a bunch, but, that's only so much.

But even then, I'm sure you remember when you were new to Elite. When a lot of controls and abilities weren't readily spotable, even finding something like the self-destruct wasn't guaranteed.

Even figuring out how to fly, without wrecking yourself, felt like an epic adventure. You were in space! this was your ship!

There's seemingly so much to do, so much to see, so many ships to fly! But, you need to get credits to get better modules and ships.

And hey, there's this group of players who are willing to help you, they'll give you money, and help you get to a great mining spot.

Heck, they even have carriers, multiple of them! They help set you up with an excellent mining build, they told you a Keelback is one of the best early miners, and while you only have a 2ly jump range with the build they made you use, you're riding in the carrier, it'll be fine.

You go with them, and mine void opals. It's kinda fun, but kinda monotonous too. You sell the opals to them, they're making a bit to pay off the few million they gave you, but they let you keep most of the profit, buying opals off of you at 100k credits, a really high price according to them

One of the players they were scamming figured out what was going on, he was stuck in a system he couldn't jump from, over 800ly from the starter system, unable to jump to any nearby systems. Exploited him into mining for pennies, while they pocketed the real value.

He reached out to several player organizations, and individual players from those groups were more than willing to help. Carriers were brought in to shuttle them back to the bubble, purchase orders were set up at 600k (approximately galactic average), and players on Xbox (where this took place) did their best to reach these players in the various chats.

But really, aid is crippled because TOS says these slavers can't be named/shamed because while they're definitely pretty dirty, they aren't breaking any rules.

Their moving to a private Group compounds the problem of physical intervention.

So, why this post?

Well, with Odyssey around the corner, or in the next country over and around the corner (depending on your game system…), there is sure to be an influx of new players. A lot of new blood the game can always use, and finding a greeting like this is sure to be a turn off.

For some of us, helping other players is why we even play the game. Space ambulances, repair men, tankers, cargo services, etc. Combating this behavior is a good enough reason in itself.

These are the three carriers and current systems at time of this recording, only IDs to respect elites TOS, namely naming and shaming, in addition to the purposes we figured out they serve [system names will be spelt out loud]

1: V2G-58T selling platform: current system: Timbalderis, Mining system: WREGOE GT-G D11-2

2: V1B-05T operation control vessel: current system: Nervi

3: XFB-12L hostage transport vessel: current system: Exphiay

Please, get the story out, warn new players of this danger, educate yourself.
This is the only way we win.