[Space Rangers 2]Fact or Fiction?

[Stark]

NB - erm, yes, I had the urge to write fic about a bizarre, unknown, bad-Russian-translation game. What can I say? I was playing it and was thinking about 9/11 conspiracy nuts, and conflated the two. Please bear in mind it's not polished at all (I just spent five minutes writing it, before I 'lost' it) but I was curious if I was getting the immediate, poking-finger, arms-waving mood I was going for.


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Hey, Ranger! I've seen you around - out at Uphally, remember? We passed each other in the docking array. You said then you'd just changed your flightplan to avoid Taron, declared unsafe due to another Dominator attack. Ah, yes! You remember me now. Yeah, there have been changes - but you can't see the REAL changes since then. I gave you a tip then, and I'll give you another now.

The Dominators don't exist.

Oh, I've seen that look before! Hear me out, hear me! Yes, you've heard the stories, you've seen the wreckage, and maybe you've even funded the brave military or ingenious scientific community. But I'm telling you they don't exist, never did, and they're being used like the boogeyman to crush the people and profit the corporations. What corporations, you say? Well... let's get a drink.

You say there are no corporations anymore, that you deal in brandless 'goods' picked up at point A and delivered to point B. But you've never really THOUGHT about how you got to those points! That's right, you pick up a trade 'analysis' at a Business Centre. Let's talk about that for a second.

Business Centre 'Fatman' is going to charge you 250c for an 'analysis' to help you find a nice trade, right? And then maybe you'll pull out a loan from Fatman to raise extra capital, and then go trade from points Fatman told you about. You profit, you pay back the loan, and you think 'golly Fatman is very convienient, I will use their service again'.

250c a bargain, to make thousands profit, right? Wrong! There are maybe a dozen planets inside your trading range, right? And searching the net database costs 3c a throw! So you could get a full trade rundown yourself for less than a night on the town. But you paid 250c for the 'convienience'. What do you think Fatman does with the data they collect? Do you think they present it in a fair, unbiased manner in order to make YOU the most money? That's BULLSHIT. They *want* you to take out a loan - that interest is big profit. So they *select* which three viable trade routes they give you for your money, to encourage you to take a loan... and to control where you go! If it's in certain authorities' best interests that people avoid the Veles system, you can bet your life you'll never be told of an awesome trade in Veles system.

Good question - what DOES this have to do with the Dominators? Well, have you ever seen one? These big system-seizing, military-mashing fleets of doom that hover over us like a shadow? No? Of course not. And the only people who have are telling tall stories in bars just like this one. You know the type - older, once-successful Rangers many of them, telling it 'how it was' to try and recapture some of that glory. Well, I know why.

I bet you've seen the bulletins - Markab system under attack by Dominators! World in peril! And like a good little trader you stayed away - no profit there, you reasoned, and the Business Centre agreed. And what else is in the bulletins? Pirate infestations, say. Now, I can tell straight away you've been on the bad end of some piracy - so have you ever been attacked by a pirate and then realised your very system was listed in a bulletin? No, you haven't. I traded in and out of one sector for a year once, and the same three pirates sat on a nice fat Gaalian world, picking off traders. It never once got a mention in bulletins. So much for the 'police'.

So that's the 'stick' - what about the 'carrot'? You've seen the OTHER bulletins - the 'massive mineral deposit, cheap ores at Menecato', the 'war over, glut in weapons market'. Every starting trader sees those and their eyes light up with credit-cards. Easy money! What do you think they find when they get there to follow it up?

Oh that's right - it's not there. Locals will say the boom was over, other traders will say the profits have moved, the markets changed, and the government won't say a word. By now I'm sure you know what really happened.

Got it in one. There was never any 'mineral deposit' at all. No boom, no super-low prices, no easy money. SOMEONE wanted traders to go to Menecato, the same way they DON'T want them to go to systems that get attacked by the Dominators nobody ever sees. The spacefaring population is being herded - like sheep - between systems, trading in what best advantages the powers that be.

Oh no, it's not perfect. But you've got an economical mind - you know that it doesn't HAVE to be! Sure, some traders blast through 'Dominator' attacked systems, and trade with those worlds... bringing back incredible stories of massive battles, fire rolling through space, huge ships destroyed and bizarre chatter on the comms. But most traders - most of the big movers, the profit-hawks - they maximise reward, minimise risk. Maybe sometimes there really is a good deal on stims - when these mavericks or pirates drop their loads. But all the information all you Rangers, you traders, everyone in this bar uses to determine their movements, is being controlled. You're all being manipulated, and you're not going to like why.

[Ford Prefect]

Stark? Why are you in this subforum? Stark? STAAAAAARK!

And that was silly, though in a good way. They person presenting the narrative is clearly a nut.

[Stark]

That's right - I mean, SR2 is *about fighting the Dominators*. But it occured to me that the tools (like market analyses, bounties etc) are the sort of 'controlled information' conspiraacy nuts love to use, and I guess most of the SR2 population never sees Dominators at all. I stopped there, but I can wrap up pretty much everything players do in the game as part of the faceless corpo-nations controlling everything to maximise profits and build a huge military while drawing unorthodox to their dooms.

And yeah, don't think about SR2 in the shower, this is what happens. Hopefully you don't need to know anything about SR2 though - I tried to explain everything enough so no specific knowledge was needed. I figure tinfoil-hat people are the same everywhere.

[Ford Prefect]

I'd never even heard of this Space Rangers 2 before, but I wasn't really confused as such. It all made sense (in the way that it didn't, seeing as it's a silly conspiracy).

[Trogdor]

Interesting piece, I enjoyed it.

I'm not so sure about most people never laying eyes on the Dominators, though. All the people from worlds that the Coalition liberated and anybody with a ship who blundered into a contested system by accident have seen them.

Though that just makes the conspiracy more outragous and thus more amusing.