Morse code message in Sol Newspaper

[Jackie Silver]

Has anyone seen one of these before?

As far as I can make out by shakily copying it into a decoder, that's a distress call saying "freighter under pirate attack, we've gone down on Charon at -45(S), -80(W)."

Me and Pipsimouse checked out those coordinates at great length but found nothing, then tried +45(N), +80(E) just in case, also nothing and the client crashed on both of us.

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

Thargoids. It's them Thargoids..

 

[dognosh]

Swap numbers, try that ?

 

[BEKTOP 3APEMOB]

I translated it as:

MAYDAY. THIS IS TRANSPORT 8629 MAYDAY. WEVE BEEN ATTACKED BY PIRATES AND WERE GOING DOWN. ALL HANDS HAVE EVACUATED. OWR POSITION IS SOL, CAHRON, LATITUDE -45, LONGITUDE -80THIS ISCAPTAIN BROOTAS SIGNING OFF.I REPEAT, WERE GOING DOWN. MAYDAY. ...MESSAGE ENDS...

 

[stocko1111]

Found it. Or at least I think it's it. Took me about an hour but all I found was this crashed wreck guarded by 2 sentries. After destroying them, I got 2 battle weapons from the wreck. I also noticed the ship's cargo rack was showing on my scanner. I couldn't scoop it so shot it and got 1t of Vanadium (or something like that) out of it. Worth the hour's searching? Not really, although Charon is a nice looking planet....

 

[dognosh]

Seen similar POIs like that before, not sure that is it

 

[Jackie Silver]

Not really, although Charon is a nice looking planet....

I saw a nice Pluto-rise at one point (or at least, Pluto was just over the horizon) that was quite dramatic. Very hilly down at -45, -80; the opposite area at 45, 80 was quite flat. I was having great difficulty trying to get up and down the hills in my SRV, and had to keep dismissing and recalling the ship when it either wouldn't land anywhere accessible or it would land but the hatch would be obscured. Eventually (seventh or eighth time of asking) I got back into the ship by managing to drive underneath it while it was landing!

 

[Kancro Vantas]

Have you guys seen a similar message but instead of morse, it has numbers... something like 154 160 140 132 158 160 158 215 258....

Not in the bubble at the moment so can't take pic, but was wondering what does that one meant? How to decipher it? (I tried ASCII but doesn't really translate to anything)

 

[bitstorm]

I think this is bugged.

The site is a crashed Anaconda, there's a cargo rack there (and a bunch of canisters) but every single time I shoot the cargo rack to get at what's inside the ED client hard crashes.

I shoulda stayed grinding merits instead of responding to the distress call.

Coords are in the below image if anyone else wants to have a bash, would advise a smaller ship, you're unlikely to find an Anaconda sized spot near the site.

Spoiler

I submitted this bug report : https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=217317

 

[Asp Explorer]

Maybe it's mainframe

Try EBCDIC instead of ASCII

Except, that still doesn't translate to anything meaningful, and 258 is out of range.

Maybe it's wrong endian or nibbled.

 

[bitstorm]

Maybe it's mainframe

Try EBCDIC instead of ASCII

Except, that still doesn't translate to anything meaningful, and 258 is out of range.

Maybe it's wrong endian or nibbled.

What are you trying to decode, the morse?

 

[Kolato]

This is really cool!

 

[Jackie Silver]

Coords are in the below image if anyone else wants to have a bash, would advise a smaller ship, you're unlikely to find an Anaconda sized spot near the site.

Brilliant. I'm there now, and I can't even find a spot to land my Cobra!

(Landed now, driving around the wreck. I won't go investigating any Leathery Eggs.)

 

[Cmdr Frawd Digger]

Thargoids. It's them Thargoids..

I think Cdr Voorheez is using autofill forum-fill software...his last three posts have been these words

He is too busy doing xmas stuff to attend the forums...

Frawd

 

[Cmdr Frawd Digger]

Have you guys seen a similar message but instead of morse, it has numbers... something like 154 160 140 132 158 160 158 215 258....

Not in the bubble at the moment so can't take pic, but was wondering what does that one meant? How to decipher it? (I tried ASCII but doesn't really translate to anything)

It could be something like FD's seed based on the Fibonacci sequence (as per TED talk Braben gave)...if you take the last three digits of each number in the Fibonacci sequence (as long as they are three or more digits) it gives a non-random random number generator

e.g. starting from Fibonacci # 17 (which is the number 1597) you get 597, 584, 181, 765, 946, 711...etc.)

Frawd

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Brilliant. I'm there now, and I can't even find a spot to land my Cobra!

(Landed now, driving around the wreck. I won't go investigating any Leathery Eggs.)

Now wouldn't it be fun if you did find some large leathery eggs...

Frawd