UA Mystery thread 4 - The Canonn

[AlexVII]

Experiment "Trojan ship". Log 03.

Quince - Millerport. Docked with 10 UAs. Day 12.

For 12 days, i've been sitting here with a reward on my head. Many pilots in the bar no longer hide that they want to kill me. I don't blame them. The reward of four million credits is extremely rare. Even for Anacondas it's rarely up to one million.

However, the station did not have any malfunctions.

I'm going to spend the remaining time in the imperial apartments. At least there are no drunk pilots who throw themselves at me and get a bullet in the head! Sorry about that. It happened three times this week...

 

[King Sancho]

This is pretty much what I think, too. The one thing I'd add is that perhaps one of the deciding factors for which stations get picked is mentions here and wherever else FD monitor. There were definitely people saying "why Warkushnui and not 49 Arietis?" when the first mention of all of this happened on Galnet. And then 49 Arietis was in the second batch.

I wholly agree.
In fact, I think we need to start taking into consideration that the Devs are "rolling with it", where they have an idea of where the story is to go, but not how they will get there.

If true, then it is great that the players can inspire and provide ideas.. but a negative is that there is no solid story for us to solve, and that the devs are only a half step ahead of us storywise, but behind in story related game mechanics.

Just my thoughts.

May we all bask in the truth that is The Empire.

 

[X2Eliah]

Those are buttermilk dinner biscuits, and yes, you put sausage gravy over them for a really great taste Its an American thing

So you're combining a buttermilk thingy with a sausage gravy. Yeah. Okay.

That sounds so gross. Dude. Yuck. Yuck!

 

[RedWizzard]

But there is also:
-Fixes for missing mission text

The "eye" messages now have a subject line of "Log entry". I guess that's what this change is referring to.

 

[KellyR]

So you're combining a buttermilk thingy with a sausage gravy. Yeah. Okay.

That sounds so gross. Dude. Yuck. Yuck!

You're right. It does sound gross, but it is absolutely delicious. And it is indeed an American thing. I'm an American and you won't find many, if any restaurants that serve breakfast that don't offer biscuits and gravy. Even McDonald's does although you get your gravy in a cup with a lid on it and have to pour it over the biscuit yourself. It's still mighty tasty.

 

[X2Eliah]

Regarding the station impact, maybe we shouldn't be looking so closely at the stations at *are* impacted but making a closer inspection of other stations in the same systems that *aren't* having malfunctions. Are there any trends? I don't know. Honestly not sure where anything can go now until Horizons.

Seems like that could easily boil down to "station 1 has a black market, station 2 does not". Or are the effects supposed to spread beyond the point-of-sale?

 

[AlexVII]

And by the way, anyone have any ideas about what to do with UA on the ground, when the horizon will be released?
I need something to do with my 10 UAs, and I do not want to just throw them away.

 

[simulacrae]

Interestingly enough ... Popped open one of those Rare Artwork Canisters

found this in it ...

[video=youtube_share;nvfON8gR8sE]https://youtu.be/nvfON8gR8sE[/video]

 

[LordZoltan]

There a few things should look at to see if there a pattern

a pattern in the stations locations (bet someone already done this)
The time of each station announce they are affected
The factions that control each station
the type of star they orbit
the planet they orbit
the population size of each system,
products and services each station provides
whether they are industrial, agricultural


Done a spreadhttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BO2Oti9-SHfE0ssrM3iqIuHPDNVC8pAyXq0UV4AEICc/edit?usp=sharing

Added all the systems and the date their infections first appeared.

Nice, thanks

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Seems like that could easily boil down to "station 1 has a black market, station 2 does not". Or are the effects supposed to spread beyond the point-of-sale?

No 'spread' confirmed yet - pretty sure every affected station has a BM, meaning that the most obvious link is that it's possible to sell UAs at them.

 

[Han_Zen]

Okay, so on the UAs and station malfunctions, here's what I think, plus a question.

- UAs sold at stations do cause the malfunctions
- there doesn't have to be a particular number sold- one is enough
- The malfunctions and shutdowns are not instigated by the BGS, but instead are managed by our game makers.
- They do this by checking a list of stations at which UAs have been sold, available to them courtesy of the data from the transaction server which records and validates all purchases and sales
- The price increase was a not-very-subtle act to encourage selling vs experimentation etcso as to give fuel for the fire, I.e. give them more stations to choose from.

That's the method,but I'm wondering if there isn't something else that unifies the affected stations. Something there that ensures it will become 'infected'. Could be a commodity held as stock at these stations; a particular political alignment or something. Could even be station type(s).

It feels like there's got to be something we can learn about why this occurs, outside of just a random choice.

Anyway, thought I'd post some actual thoughts for a change lol.

This is a good analysis. It's as close as we can get with the data we have so far.

I have not seen any particular common factor between the systems, except the Black Market.

In the two 'special' systems Warkushanui and Arawere all the stations have black markets. They are under Archon Delane's control. To me it looks like the biggest stations are affected in those systems.

The reason I call them 'special' is that they are far from the shell and had not been i public focus before the GalNet reports. Perhaps this is where Delaine sporter Commander Brookes has been selling his UAs

 

[Jmanis]

This is pretty much what I think, too. The one thing I'd add is that perhaps one of the deciding factors for which stations get picked is mentions here and wherever else FD monitor. There were definitely people saying "why Warkushnui and not 49 Arietis?" when the first mention of all of this happened on Galnet. And then 49 Arietis was in the second batch.

Agreed there. Interestingly, FD could easily "shut me down" in terms of my ideology that and push my secret station into this batch of failures, given that I've documented the UAs I've sold quite frequently, and any colelcted metrics could correlate that.

In my opinion, FD would have nothing to lose making my station fail. It's in the butt end of nowhere, is not a key part of any plots to date, and shutting it down would, regardless of our agency in the plot, at least add an amount of confusion and even some legitimacy to the idea of some mechanic. This is why I'm convinced it's not just sales but discussion as well.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

The separation of a common language. It's a wondefull thing isn't it?

What surprised me was that a couple of week ago we had a commander in this thread claiming to enjoy his Jack Daniels.
With the strong single malt bias in this thread, I was sure it was the start of a Whiskey vs Whisky war.

Nothing happened at all. Goes to show how much people care for their .

The JD remark was mine, and not intended to offend. I am not deeply committed to it, merely have a bottle in the kitchen cupboard at the moment (going own rapidly); I also have a reasonably priced litre bottle of Waitrose (an obscure outpost found in some off-the route system, I forget where) branded brandy (also going down rapidly -it gets cold in the cockpit during those long multi-hops). I am also partial to any form of single malt (apart from Glenfiddich, which is ok but over-marketed & overpriced), so if anyone would like to donate a bottle of Glenmorangie, Dalwhinnie, Glenlivet, Bunnahahbain or similar then I can be found just past the big red star on the left, down the comet alley & in the Asp with the black & yellow spotted exterior.

 

[LordZoltan]

This is a good analysis. It's as close as we can get with the data we have so far.

I have not seen any particular common factor between the systems, except the Black Market.

In the two 'special' systems Warkushanui and Arawere all the stations have black markets. They are under Archon Delane's control. To me it looks like the biggest stations are affected in those systems.

The reason I call them 'special' is that they are far from the shell and had not been i public focus before the GalNet reports. Perhaps this is where Delaine sporter Commander Brookes has been selling his UAs

Yeah those two have the smell of 'important to a future development' about them, and the Delaine link is interesting... Back story-wise, if the Canonn was pirating NPC convoys in the early days, then it stands to reason that 'the pirate king' would also have been doing so... Taking UAs and selling them back home might be coming back to bite him on the rear end.

Agreed there. Interestingly, FD could easily "shut me down" in terms of my ideology that and push my secret station into this batch of failures, given that I've documented the UAs I've sold quite frequently, and any colelcted metrics could correlate that.

In my opinion, FD would have nothing to lose making my station fail. It's in the butt end of nowhere, is not a key part of any plots to date, and shutting it down would, regardless of our agency in the plot, at least add an amount of confusion and even some legitimacy to the idea of some mechanic. This is why I'm convinced it's not just sales but discussion as well.

I totally agree that stations are being selected based on any names that might pop up here or reddit or whatever - possibly in an attempt to 'engage'.

There could be, in fact it's almost certain, that there's a good long list of potential stations to take down based on UA sales, including yours, and they're spoilt for choice - so yours just hasn't yet been selected because others (probably with fewer sales) have been selected ahead of it.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Random thought

At this rate we're averaging 5 threads a year... does it scare anyone else to think we'll be on thread 8 or 9 by this time next year? We've surpassed the Open/solo thread as well as a few other threadnoughts as well.

Yes, if we haven't found any more facts about UAs by then!!!

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

I wholly agree.
In fact, I think we need to start taking into consideration that the Devs are "rolling with it", where they have an idea of where the story is to go, but not how they will get there.

If true, then it is great that the players can inspire and provide ideas.. but a negative is that there is no solid story for us to solve, and that the devs are only a half step ahead of us storywise, but behind in story related game mechanics.

Just my thoughts.

May we all bask in the truth that is The Empire.

I thought I remember someone (MB in a video interview? LaveRadio discussion?) saying that there are 12 writers working at FD on storylines. Hope this is true- the enjoyment to be gained from trying to solve the UA puzzle has been immense, and has driven this megathread. To me Horizons is just a new set of tools to underpin the storylines and puzzles (multiple and, to a degree, intertwined) that can and should be found in the game- that will distinguish ED as a great game from lots of other also-rans.

 

[Dommarraa]

The Hypothesis that infection only occurs when it is discussed on Forums seems rather a flange. If FD were doing this, I would be more than a little disappointed.
I can appreciate that they may not want it to be fully automatic on every station that has UA sold. The use of UA as a PP bomb could be very destabilising, but they have no need to read the forums to pick target systems, they know perfectly well the POI in PP politics.

I have not noticed any more in game link between the stations, but I have not examined their markets in detail

Confused or Disappointed

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

This is a good analysis. It's as close as we can get with the data we have so far.

I have not seen any particular common factor between the systems, except the Black Market.

In the two 'special' systems Warkushanui and Arawere all the stations have black markets. They are under Archon Delane's control. To me it looks like the biggest stations are affected in those systems.

The reason I call them 'special' is that they are far from the shell and had not been i public focus before the GalNet reports. Perhaps this is where Delaine sporter Commander Brookes has been selling his UAs

If you plot them in 3D & look at the time sequence of incidents is there a pattern?

 

[Han_Zen]

If you plot them in 3D & look at the time sequence of incidents is there a pattern?

Not that I can see.

The two Ari systems went down early and they are closest to the UA shell.

I think we have to remember that only four station are really affected and have had station services closed down. Not all stations that are experiencing 'issues' are necessarily reported on GalNet.

If we are looking for a 'automatic' trigger level, I think we have to estimate how many UAs were sold at 49 Ari before it closed down. It could easily be 1000 units.

When it comes to Warky and Arawere I can only imagine that FD has set NPCs to sell UAs there. If a third station in that region is reported to have issues, we should stake it out to see if this is the case.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

When it comes to Warky and Arawere I can only imagine that FD has set NPCs to sell UAs there. If a third station in that region is reported to have issues, we should stake it out to see if this is the case.

I keep thinking about whether NPCs are being set to sell the things too. I suspect that if they are taking stations from discussions, it might be to set numbers being sold by NPCs based on where we are generally selling, but partly based on where they think it would be more logical to sell... or something like that. I don't think I'm managing to make the sense out of this post that I am intending

 

[Michael Brookes]

Dude, that's like... What!?

MB - what's your favourite Biscuit/Cookie?

Jaffa Cake

Michael