u/National_Progress_90

Many of the analysis I have seen have focused on the Goodbye Lara's message as viewed through the actions of the title character, and while that does come into this, I feel that an important point has been overlooked: Mari is a person in her own right.

Someone once said that these were just fictional characters, but the ability to convince us that they are people is what separates a good story from a bad one. And for the purposes of interacting with the story, suspension of disbelief calls for treating the characters as if they are people.

Otherwise this is all just an exercise in futility.

Put bluntly, Goodbye Lara pushes Mari down the stairs and then steps on her on its way past: Before the series even starts, her mother is killed. Over the course of the series, Mari is held responsible for Lara's antics, close to the end of the series Grace is also killed, and finally just before the ending, Mari herself is killed and her cherished memento of her mother is destroyed.

This brings up a rather striking question, and it is "Why was Lara capable of preventing Nikolai's death, but not Mari's?"
Obviously Lara managed to resurrect Mari, but she literally died to protect Nikolai, proving that she did have the ability to do the same for Mari and didn't.

The only reading I can take away from this is that Lara ultimately views Mari as disposable.
That sounds harsh, and it is. But it's supported by other things in the show. For example, Lara takes Mari for granted for much of the series, and at the end of the series, Lara leaves Mari.
Regardless of if Lara rejected thee concept of true love, or fell in love with the surface, or humanity, one thing does not change, and that is her treatment of Mari being appalling.

The very last end card shows Mari carrying Lara home on her back, and the very last scene is Mari standing on the station platform looking like the star contestant in a "Hide the pain Harold" lookalike contest. Taken together, these things are such an incredibly on the nose depiction of someone using someone else that it is almost impossible to engage with it seriously.

I absolutely do not think this is deliberate, by the way. I think that it's the result of the writers - Just like much of the fandom and Lara herself - viewing Mari as disposable.

Ever since Worlds dramatically changed the planets I had colonized, I've operated out of my freighter for the most part. I do have a truly massive Corvette, but it's entirely for fighting; It's not really "home." And I've abandoned planetside bases for the most part.

Thoughts?

There are several things about this separation issue that just get skipped over, and it's driving me nuts.

The first: No-one asked for this. The threshold that these idiots had to reach was ten percent of the last election's turnout, which was 60%, so these people MAY have gotten 6% of the province to sign their petition. I say "may" because the signatures are deeply suspect, all things considered. Even viewed charitably, that's a rounding error.

The second: The referendum is non-binding. If the UCP are just going to do whatever anyway, WHAT IS THE POINT? This is just a waste of taxpayer dollars to appease a group of people who are, as previously stated, a rounding error.

The third, and the biggest: IT CANNOT HAPPEN. They might as well be asking if we wanted to physically relocate the province to Mars. Treaty land, the clarity act, the 7/50 formula - Any ONE of those things would doom a referendum. The whole thing is ridiculous - And while I absolutely agree that the separatists need to be defeated even if just to make a point - it's enraging that we're being forced to have this vote when the outcome has about as much real-world effect as would electing Godzilla.

My point is this: Even if those idiots win, we are not obliged to roll over and let this happen. That will be when we need to be loudest that none of this had any legal standing whatsoever.
Because it doesn't.

EDIT: I appear not to have made this clear enough in the initial post, so I'll say it again: I agree that we need to defeat the separatists. It needs to be CRUSHING. It's just that the whole situation is ridiculous and I'm sick of having to humor these idiotic traitors.

I have touched on the subject of multitool weapons before, and endorsed the Pulse Splitter at that time.

I have since become a Boltcaster convert, and the reason why is finding out that all Sentinel Upgrades are NOT created equally: They function like X-Class upgrades. Most of them are weak, but some are INCREDIBLE. And they stack with regular upgrades.

Even fully boosted, the Boltcaster isn't as powerful as the Pulse Splitter. But it's got at least twice the effective range. It's incredibly accurate and I've used it to take out sentinels from outside their firing range. It also doesn't burn ammo anywhere near as quickly as the Pulse Splitter does.

Recently I switched from my S-Class Starborne Runner to an A-Class Interceptor, and while the Interceptor has nowhere near the turning ability of the Starborne Runner, the damage difference is completely unreal.

This brings me to an uncomfortable realization: Interceptors are the best ship type.
And it's not close.

That in of itself is not a problem; The problem is that they are also hilariously easy to obtain. You just need a handful of radiant shards, a distorted mirror, and to go on a short trip to a pre-marked Alien Monolith.

For regular crashed ships, you need to repair not only their core tech, but also many of their inventory slots. Doing so frequently requires activated stellar metals, which can require a jump to an entirely different system, and braving the dangers of an extreme hazard planet.
Moreover, you have to have both many product recipes unlocked, and the materials to craft them.

All for a ship that pales in comparison to an Interceptor. I haven't even gone into how much easier it is to refuel an Interceptor than a regular ship, and the differences are already extreme.

The real clincher is that the Starborne Runner is an *exotic.* And it's one that starts out with something approaching a reasonable inventory size, unlike the ones found in the wild.
A ship an entire class below it should just not compare. And yet it's being surpassed by it.

Now, I'm not suggesting a nerf to Interceptors, because I oppose nerfs as a general rule. But I do think that other ship types need to be buffed substantially just to keep up, otherwise there will be simply no point to salvaging anything other than interceptors.

Whenever I'm sent to a planet where someone hasn't already done this, I find a sentinel interceptor and mark it with a base, labelled "_-Class Interceptor" so it will be easy to find for other travelers. Rather than wasting time with harmonic camps, I just kill sentinels until the it shows me where a ship is naturally.

What have you been doing to kill time?

Things I did not know before this expedition, despite being a player with six years and every expedition to this point under my belt:

1. Atlantiedum refines into pungeneum at a rate of 1:2, and pungeneum refines into nanites at a rate of 25:1. This is useful because the mission planets are frequently dissonant, so you are going to pick some of this stuff up.
2. Radiant Shards refine into nanites at a rate of 1:50. A full stack of 10 can therefore net you 500 nanites.
3. Flesh rope also refines into nanites at a rate of 1:50, and this is useful because many of the mission planets are infested.
4. When facing biological horrors, the important thing is to not panic. This is relevant because they show up when you target whispering eggs (which drop cores that refine into nanites at 1:50) and when engaging worm nests. Don't waste time trying to kill them, as they spawn endlessly. If you have to flee, get somewhere high up, though with a couple of decent defense system upgrades, they can largely be ignored.
5. Salvaged Data refines into nanites at 1:15, and while that doesn't seem great, getting it is much less dangerous than flesh rope or whispering eggs, and can be done on any planet. Also it stacks to a much higher point than the other things listed.
6. Atlantiedum and and pungeneum when refined together become runaway mold, which refines into nanites at 5:1. (Thanks to u/SteampunkChuckwagon for the heads up) This does require access to more than a basic refiner, however.

When it comes to what upgrades to buy, your first priority should be hazard protection (Because it allows you to operate in storms) and the second one should be defensive upgrades.

I got the game in 2020. I've played every expedition, including this one. And I actually like the "log in, do three missions, do something else" cycle. Even in NMS I have found other things to do; For example, being unable to copy a ship over meant that I had to trick out one I got on the expedition itself, and that's meant collecting nanites. I also stop by the space station in every system we're sent to, primarily to pick up the suit upgrade, but also to see what they have for sale. There being no expedition route also means that the player is free to just go wherever.

So the real problem isn't that. It's the bad behavior from the playerbase. And even then, I think that's overblown. Every time I've run into a base built near an objective, it was done in such a way to give whoever shows up a place to hide from the various hazards associated with the objective. One even had a "check PVP in settings" reminder com ball message.

I'm not a day-one player, but I've been around for six years. I've been a lurker on the reddit for those six years, and I was always amazed by how nice everyone was. I believe most people are still nice here. There are a few bad actors, and I think that the "competing factions" part of the expedition genuinely was a mistake, because this has never been that kind of game, and is in fact somewhere that many of us came to get away from that.

If you don't like the expedition, sit it out. The rewards this time around aren't anything super amazing, and if you absolutely HAVE to have them, you can just leave the doing of repetitive missions to those of us who don't mind it, and then jump back in for the end.

Try not to get caught up in factional warfare, and to remember the real spirit of this community: This is a game where people hand newbies insanely valuable treasure on the regular, and on expeditions, travelers help other travelers.