Unknown Artefact (or artifact) Community Thread - The Canonn

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I see that flashing ship lights along with the UA's lights has been tested, but has anyone tried flashing lights in Morse to it? Maybe "Hello" or "SOS"? Nothing is stated on the wiki about it. Been searching for one the past 5 hours to test for myself (with no luck) so I've had plenty of time to think between SSS drops.

We know this thing emits morse, so why not see if it can decipher our messages in morse?

Was sitting here thinking about the devs stating we could in fact figure this out in-game without any outside tools, and that it's apparently in front of our faces. So besides comms, what else do we have that we can communicate with? Our lights. Also just trying to take a step back and think what would be the first thing someone would try to do if they encountered something "alien", and I would guess that would be to try and communicate with it.

Apologies if this has been tested already, nothing is on the wiki page regarding flashing messages with the lights, only matching the lights from the UA.
 
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I see that flashing ship lights along with the UA's lights has been tested, but has anyone tried flashing lights in Morse to it? Maybe "Hello" or "SOS"? Nothing is stated on the wiki about it. Been searching for one the past 5 hours to test for myself (with no luck) so I've had plenty of time to think between SSS drops.

We know this thing emits morse, so why not see if it can decipher our messages in morse?

Was sitting here thinking about the devs stating we could in fact figure this out in-game without any outside tools, and that it's apparently in front of our faces. So besides comms, what else do we have that we can communicate with? Our lights.

Apologies if this has been tested already, nothing is on the wiki page regarding flashing messages with the lights, only matching the lights from the UA.

Yes I recall someone saying that they did it.
 
I see that flashing ship lights along with the UA's lights has been tested, but has anyone tried flashing lights in Morse to it? Maybe "Hello" or "SOS"? Nothing is stated on the wiki about it. Been searching for one the past 5 hours to test for myself (with no luck) so I've had plenty of time to think between SSS drops.

We know this thing emits morse, so why not see if it can decipher our messages in morse?

Was sitting here thinking about the devs stating we could in fact figure this out in-game without any outside tools, and that it's apparently in front of our faces. So besides comms, what else do we have that we can communicate with? Our lights.

Apologies if this has been tested already, nothing is on the wiki page regarding flashing messages with the lights, only matching the lights from the UA.

Done. No effect
 
Morning All..

rizal72, we will try to hold the UA until you return, if Nicolas is willing, (He holds the UA) I will keep my word and hand you the UA :)

Our plan is to run a Rare's Trade route for the next few night on the "Must have list" are Tauri Chimes and Vacuum Krill........ any other ideas ? My plan is to jettison the UA at the same time as 2 or 3 Rare's, destroy the rare (Thus releasing the content) and see if we get any change in behaviour. Collect UA on board, wash rinse repeat.......

I also plan to run again in Timaconi on Sunday 5:30 onwards, Re run of the barrel method. Any one wishing to Wing is welcome (In Mobius)

For me being around the NAV beacon about 10 to 20ls away from it causes the higher SSS spawn rate. The number in the wing also seems to increase the SSS Spawn rate
also Both the Tim UA's (Sunday and Last night) were found by Anaconda's ??????

I believe Nicolas was about 100 out from the Nav beacon when he dropped on his SSS and found the convoy, He dropped the shields of the T9 I popped the hatch and bagged the UA
Sorry no Vid :-( Still getting the hang of shadow play and the settings only had my new rig a few weeks. I have put up some vid from last night and edited my previous vids.
I will also put them on the Wiki when I can

Once again team effort well done one and all :)

Fly Safe.....

Hello CMDR!
If you like, I will be at home for at least two days/nights, before leaving again for Tuscany.
I'll be at home tomorrow (13), and the day after (14).
So, if you and Mr Powell will agree, we can arrange something in those days ;)
As I'm the moderator/keeper of the Italian ED forum, it will be easy for me to arrange tests that imply the presence of a lot of CMDRs ;)
 
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Hello CMDR!
If you like, I will be at home for at least two days/nights, before leaving again for Tuscany.
I'll be at home tomorrow (13), and the day after (14).
So, if you and Mr Powell will agree, we can arrange something in those days ;)
As I'm the moderator/keeper of the Italian ED forum, it will be easy for me to arrange tests that imply the presence of a lot of CMDRs ;)

It will be best to organise it in a private pm between you guys and not on the forums considering the now bigger bounty for the UA.
 
Just a thought that occurs to me...

I was flicking through the Gamescom broadcasts the other day and amongst all the hype for CQC and Horizons, one thing that stood out was the occasional reference to AIs in E: D history. DBOBE in particular made a reference to them and the background on them (on the first stream, if I remember correctly - am at work so can't hunt out the exact link right now).

Now, my thinking is this: a lot of folks seem to have latched on to the idea that the UAs are somehow related to the Thargoids, but what if they're actually something to do with the AIs? This could go some way towards explaining why and how they 'know' morse despite looking so alien. I'm not sure how this hypothesis would be tested, but if anyone out there has a strong grasp of the lore and can think of any links back to the AIs in lore then could this be a new avenue of investigation?

(Also, if they are AI in origin, and based on my vague recollection that AIs were considered 'bad' and outlawed in E: D's history, this could also provide an explanation why they're corrosive to human tech.)

Apologies if I'm bringing up an avenue that's already been explored, but I can't see anything related to it on the wiki and don't remember it being mentioned in either this or the original thread.
 
It will be best to organise it in a private pm between you guys and not on the forums considering the now bigger bounty for the UA.

Absolutely.

Has the Canonn group been already formed? I was planning to do all the UA things in Mobius, but if the Canonn group already exists, we can definitely use that!
It's a "controlled" group, so only the people that sent the PM to Derthek could be allowed, isn't it?
 
So, for funsies I took the [ ... ] I have no idea if it's significant, but thought it might be helpful to someone.

Interesting angle, I put them into a sketchup a little while ago including the ill fated Halsey route, and I think simulcrae added the plague systems too, as far as could see there was no obvious relation, but keep going it could be something I'm not seeing.

Has the Canonn group been already formed? I was planning to do all the UA things in Mobius, but if the Canonn group already exists, we can definitely use that!
It's a "controlled" group, so only the people that sent the PM to Derthek could be allowed, isn't it?

AFAIK its not a group in game, more a motley friends group. The only benefit of a private group is to prevent player pirates collecting a bounty for being a sandcastle kicker, and that can already be found in Mobius. Plus you have the benefit of meeting UA Hunters who aren't in the inner clan.

One idea I had, which I'll now float here, is to use the Inara.CZ/wings feature. I use Inara already, so it seems like an obvious choice, but I don't know if anyone else does..?
 
Its not that special

Just a "feet on the ground" message in an attempt to refocus on possibly more realistic ideas.

The UA is not at all special (burn him hes a witch!)

Apart from the few days spent on the pretty A/V of the object, it doesn't do anything new. Add a Toxic Canister (decay of ship, cloud graphics, fancy death) to a Nav Beacon (emits morse), and you have all the discernible properties of a UA. No extra coding within the game required. Expecting the UA to have secret unique coding that allows it to crack open to reveal a troupe of dancing girls, merge with a nearby crate of Albino Quechua Mammoth Meat to turn into an Elephantine Artefact, for it to make your ship sprout horns and fly through stars, or... or... anything new is preposterous on so many levels. There is no evidence or hint in game or out that is might do and from a commercial and coding PoV it is utterly bonkers. The UA will almost certainly use known functionality for its purpose. There is slight room for as yet unseen functionality to be involved, but it would have to be some very generic that would have long term use.

All I have is :

1. The UA has more Information that we have yet to decode in the AV (no special circumstances, just plain looking and listening) - The Maian thread shows a little promise, but IMHO linking it so directly with that specific encoding system seems a little arbitrary, I would rather consider it Maianish.

2. Its presence in the cargo hold of a ship, in the correct system may trigger a scripted NPC (e.g Pirates when you have high value cargo, or Mission variants, but lets hope it a Thargoid eh ?). Where that location might be is the eternal doozy. Some room for the tinfoil hat brigade to raid Galnet and Elite Lore for locations.

If you have other ideas based on existing functionality, lets hear them. However, I dont care if you think it is made out of paper-mache, or if you believe its favourite food is lasagne, you may be correct, but it really doesnt help.

Hunt, Examine, Test
 
On the game mechanics front, I agree. The thing I do expect to happen is either something is noted on the FDev side and this triggers a Galnet article. Or there might be another undiscovered asset (like voyager) that commanders might find. Or it might trigger a mission on the bulletin board/ through comms in space. Those would fit in the game design, not require a huge update and is (relatively) easy to implement in the game.

As for the Maian encoding/biscuit barrels having a marking, I'm doubtful. If it was a marking, I would have expected only one or two. Instead each marking is present 24 times. That is overkill for something that should be a message. So that seems to point more towards a pretty texture than an actual clue. However, I wouldn't mind to be proven wrong here. :)
 
On the game mechanics front, I agree. The thing I do expect to happen is either something is noted on the FDev side and this triggers a Galnet article. Or there might be another undiscovered asset (like voyager) that commanders might find. Or it might trigger a mission on the bulletin board/ through comms in space. Those would fit in the game design, not require a huge update and is (relatively) easy to implement in the game.

As for the Maian encoding/biscuit barrels having a marking, I'm doubtful. If it was a marking, I would have expected only one or two. Instead each marking is present 24 times. That is overkill for something that should be a message. So that seems to point more towards a pretty texture than an actual clue. However, I wouldn't mind to be proven wrong here. :)

I liked the New Mission idea for a while, but there are already "Available Missions", and "Unavailable Missions" listed. It is pushing it for there to also be a "Invisible Missions" section. Falls in my "There is slight room for as yet unseen functionality" catagory, as does Permit Unlocking. I would also like to include Dark Systems, but I think that is pushing too far.
 
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Just a "feet on the ground" message in an attempt to refocus on possibly more realistic ideas.

The UA is not at all special (burn him hes a witch!)

Apart from the few days spent on the pretty A/V of the object, it doesn't do anything new. Add a Toxic Canister (decay of ship, cloud graphics, fancy death) to a Nav Beacon (emits morse), and you have all the discernible properties of a UA. No extra coding within the game required. Expecting the UA to have secret unique coding that allows it to crack open to reveal a troupe of dancing girls, merge with a nearby crate of Albino Quechua Mammoth Meat to turn into an Elephantine Artefact, for it to make your ship sprout horns and fly through stars, or... or... anything new is preposterous on so many levels. There is no evidence or hint in game or out that is might do and from a commercial and coding PoV it is utterly bonkers. The UA will almost certainly use known functionality for its purpose. There is slight room for as yet unseen functionality to be involved, but it would have to be some very generic that would have long term use.

All I have is :

1. The UA has more Information that we have yet to decode in the AV (no special circumstances, just plain looking and listening) - The Maian thread shows a little promise, but IMHO linking it so directly with that specific encoding system seems a little arbitrary, I would rather consider it Maianish.

2. Its presence in the cargo hold of a ship, in the correct system may trigger a scripted NPC (e.g Pirates when you have high value cargo, or Mission variants, but lets hope it a Thargoid eh ?). Where that location might be is the eternal doozy. Some room for the tinfoil hat brigade to raid Galnet and Elite Lore for locations.

If you have other ideas based on existing functionality, lets hear them. However, I dont care if you think it is made out of paper-mache, or if you believe its favourite food is lasagne, you may be correct, but it really doesnt help.

Hunt, Examine, Test

Agree with most of this - out of rep, tho :)

Please remember as you read this post - this is my opinion, and I project it as such. I have no more authority on this than anyone - I'm just sharing my thoughts.

I do think there's a good chance of a specific location being important. But... I know, I know: where!? I wish I knew! But that Morse is more than just something interesting - it's a clue in and of itself I think.

I personally think the Mayan theory is, although nice, a complete dead end.

I also believe the purrs to be a dead end - there's nothing there - not a single test focused on the purrs has reliably produced the same result in all cases for all CMDRs under the same conditions. I skip all posts mentioning purrs now.

I think all attempts to partner the UA with any other type of cargo in free space or in a hold are also dead ends. And no justification I've read compels me to think otherwise.

I think triangulation is a dead end - they're found in convoys - who knows how far the convoy(s) are 'supposed' to have travelled by the time they spawn for you?

The 'let it expire' is a dead end - they have, on more than one occasion, and nothing has happened.

Also, all the fanciful ideas about plague carrying/cure neglects the morse, and therefore human, angle (unless a conspiracy theory involving CIEP or INRA or whatever is entertained - which I have not ruled out in my own head).

The hidden VID8 Morse thing - that's a dead end. Too nebulous, not corroborated by enough people.

SS1 was not carrying a UA. Simple as. It was an assassination job, possibly by the new Pres - possibly by the DW or whatever. Whomever is the culprit, I have a strong suspicion they are also the puppetmaster behind the Emperor's assassination. There's wheels within wheels in that story I think, and there might be a UA connection, but that's not what we're supposed to discover if there is.

The UA doesn't cause a misjump. It would have happened by now.

Pretty much every method of interaction at our disposal has been tried - in terms of what our ships can do - and nothing. So that's a dead end.

My own personal scepticism about the merits of listening to him aside - Kerrash reckons the feeling is that there are 'enough clues' out there already. Galnet and licensed fiction are our primary sources for this - so there must be something in these that links to the UA or, more likely, links to some other event or story that is linked to the UA.

After struggling with the narrative style a lot, I've started on reading 'And Here the Wheel' - because that's also been hinted at by Kerrash (damn you), and there's nothing else I can do at the moment. There are already some links between one or two Galnets and the contents of this book - suggesting a strong link to the events in that book and contemporary events in-game.

Like everything else it'll probably end up being a dead end(tm) - but will see.

Remember - if I've just rubbished your idea - it's just my opinion; and it certainly isn't personal. As far as I'm concerned, all of you are awesome(tm).
 
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The thing is.. UA is really a nice idea, it's really engaging to try and find clues/uses for the artefact. But I have a feeling that the "next step" isn't implemented so far, and we're just waiting for it to happen so we can move forward.

I recently stopped thinking about "tests" we can do, and instead started looking around for Bulletin Board missions and Galnet for more info. Right now I got some Dark Wings theory in my mind (Connected with both SAP-8 and some unknown system), and I'm going to try and find their ship and follow it to whereever it goes.

Let's just wait for one more clue I suppose.
 
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Agree with most of this - out of rep, tho :)

Please remember as you read this post - this is my opinion, and I project it as such. I have no more authority on this than anyone - I'm just sharing my thoughts.

*thoughts*

I agree with you as always, LordZoltan.

But let me say that the Purrs thing is still a work in progress: I don't think that it will reveal the mistery, but there are many evidences that the purrs are related to the number of ships that are close to the UA. I'm sorry that you skipped the last posts about that, because they are very interesting.
CMDR DelMonte recordings are unique in every way: three ships > two purrs, then Two Ships > three purrs.
That make me assume that the magic number is 5 ships at least.
And could be that ship's mass is a thing too.

We are still trying to totally eliminate the Purrs with the next tests we are planning to perform in the coming days, with DelMonte's Gang help.
Perhaps, when all the purrs disappear, something interesting will trigger. Or perhaps not. But we must rule it out.

It seems that the UA is counting the close ships, and canceling a purr for each...

Yes, mrTree did similar tests with a wing of four, but I've seen them and the 4 ships were not any close to the UA.
They were just there, around, far from it.

If you see DelMonte's small video, there are 3 ships almost touching the UA...
 
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I agree with you as always, LordZoltan.

But let me say that the Purrs thing is still a work in progress: I don't think that it will reveal the mistery, but there are many evidences that the purrs are related to the number of ships that are close to the UA. I'm sorry that you skipped the last posts about that, because they are very interesting.
CMDR DelMonte recordings are unique in every way: three ships > two purrs, then Two Ships > three purrs.
That make me assume that the magic number is 5 ships at least.
And could be that ship's mass is a thing too.

We are still trying to totally eliminate the Purrs with the next tests we are planning to perform in the coming days, with DelMonte's Gang help.
Perhaps, when all the purrs disappear, something interesting will trigger. Or perhaps not. But we must rule it out.

It seems that the UA is counting the close ships, and canceling a purr for each...

Yes, mrTree did similar tests with a wing of four, but I've seen them and the 4 ships were not any close to the UA.
They were just there, around, far from it.

If you see DelMonte's small video, there are 3 ships almost touching the UA...

I'm currently in Timocani, will do some more UA hunting in Mobius, but I gotta do some merit hunting today as well... If you roll out the test soon, I might be able to join in with my Python if you want me to.

Hope we'll achieve something with either four, eight or twelve people!
 
I agree with you as always, LordZoltan.

But let me say that the Purrs thing is still a work in progress: I don't think that it will reveal the mistery, but there are many evidences that the purrs are related to the number of ships that are close to the UA. I'm sorry that you skipped the last posts about that, because they are very interesting.
CMDR DelMonte recordings are unique in every way: three ships > two purrs, then Two Ships > three purrs.
That make me assume that the magic number is 5 ships at least.
And could be that ship's mass is a thing too.

We are still trying to totally eliminate the Purrs with the next tests we are planning to perform in the coming days, with DelMonte's Gang help.
Perhaps, when all the purrs disappear, something interesting will trigger. Or perhaps not. But we must rule it out.

It seems that the UA is counting the close ships, and canceling a purr for each...

Yes, mrTree did similar tests with a wing of four, but I've seen them and the 4 ships were not any close to the UA.
They were just there, around, far from it.

If you see DelMonte's small video, there are 3 ships almost touching the UA...

...I suppose 'skip' is a strong word - I 'scan' them - since people have the good manners to read what I write, then I make sure to do the same - I guess what I mean is I don't give them too much brain power (there's not an awful lot up here anyway!) ;)

And I am absolutely ready to be proven wrong - and it seems we'll know either way within a few days :)

I'll be the first to congratulate, rep, and invest thinking time if there's a positive result, rest assured :)
 
@Delmonte - no offense mate, but could you do something with that screenshot sound in your vids?
- set shadowplay to game sounds only
- set your screen capture software to be silent
- use different software (or just the default system functionality) that doesn't have any sound
- since you're recording a video, take screenshots of the video, at a later point in time
 
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