UAs, Barnacles & More Thread 5 - The Canonn

[Iridium Nova]

On regards to fixed POI's...

If they want us to find them, they need to be in some places that make sense. No point placing them in the middle of a plain without any nearby reference, or it won't ever be found.

I think that whatever location they choose, we will spot it already from orbit, like a really cool looking canyon or crater, but in any case there will be a very interesting geological or geographical location there or nearby.

That of course doesn't count for the RNG ones...

In any case, from now on I'll just drop down from orbit on interesting land formations, at least I'll be taking home nice views.

You have a point, but this has been the strategy so far for the last few weeks and we have nothing to show for it. A more focused search is called for. You don't have to participate, you can do whatever you like. But I think at least some of us should start using more linear, more thorough methods. I will be. Every grid I search I will post here. Hopefully it will get recorded somewhere other than on my notepad. If I can edit the meta-alloys page on the wiki I might just do it there, at least until someone tries to stop me or I find a better way to make these results public. I just wish I had the kind of time I did earlier in the week when I could spend 5+ hours a day scouring these rocks.

Also, as far as I'm aware, there are no POI's you can spot from orbit. At least, my idea of orbit is the area above glide altitude, which I guess varies by planet.

 

[RedWizzard]

MB confirmed that these are randomly spawned, however some have been placed in static locations on certain planets. MB has confirmed this.

Crashed ships like Anacondas are also static, and do NOT trigger your scanner for a POI, however they CAN be seen from a significant distance.

This would lead me to believe that those that have been placed, will not trigger the POI indicator, and you will in fact be able to / have to see them while flying around.

When I get back to human space, I will drop my Anaconda for my clipper for it's non-SC flight speed and good cockpit view.

I've been thinking the same thing. I'm expecting barnacles to be visible while in flight, with no POI showing up.

 

[KRONFROMGALVATRON]

On regards to fixed POI's...

If they want us to find them, they need to be in some places that make sense. No point placing them in the middle of a plain without any nearby reference, or it won't ever be found.

I think that whatever location they choose, we will spot it already from orbit, like a really cool looking canyon or crater, but in any case there will be a very interesting geological or geographical location there or nearby.

That of course doesn't count for the RNG ones...

In any case, from now on I'll just drop down from orbit on interesting land formations, at least I'll be taking home nice views.

I think this is a reasonable way to proceed and it's what I spend the evening doing in merope. I'm trying to look around with the mindset of "where would I have stuck one of these?"

Haven't found any yet but flying around in canyons at night is a whole lot of fun. In the DK2 my stomach sometimes drops when I pass over a drop off into a canyon or hole. I'm starting to fully appreciate what a technical achievement Horizons really is; the landscapes and features are just amazing. However they do the terrain and color generation, it's brilliant.

 

[RedWizzard]

32 pages and nothing new.

Awesome.

Yee who is in charge of the first page information, should reflect this.

You want Rizal to update the first page each day to say "X pages and nothing new found"? Surely the fact that the first page doesn't mention anything new should be sufficient to conclude that nothing new has been found? I don't think it's reasonable to expect Rizal to go to the trouble of updating the first page when there has been no change.

 

[Iridium Nova]

I think this is a reasonable way to proceed and it's what I spend the evening doing in merope. I'm trying to look around with the mindset of "where would I have stuck one of these?"

Haven't found any yet but flying around in canyons at night is a whole lot of fun. In the DK2 my stomach sometimes drops when I pass over a drop off into a canyon or hole. I'm starting to fully appreciate what a technical achievement Horizons really is; the landscapes and features are just amazing. However they do the terrain and color generation, it's brilliant.

At least the nice planets do make the grindy task of grid searching tolerable. I would have given up days ago if I stopped finding interesting terrain features in what otherwise looked like a boring, flat stretch of land from orbit. It's funny how smoothly everything scales and you end up finding neat little hills, canyons, and stunt-jumps in the middle of nowhere. Yes, I love my jump jets. And SRV repairs. Those are fun too.

 

[relayer]

Theory time: The possible barnacle things in the trailer glowed. They do have an organic look to them and we might consider what they use to produce their greenish light. Which made me think about bioluminescence, yet another thing I am not an expert in. What I can garner from wikipedia page is that ontop of a specialized enzyme you need magnesium ions, calcium ions, and/or ATP (adenosine triphosphate) ... I'm fairly sure calcium is not present as a material, unsure about magnesium (ive yet to find any if it is), but have seen plenty of phosphorus. Phosphorus is also fairly common so that lead may not help us narrow anything down. Is there a resident bioluminescence expert lurking around this thread by any chance, I'll pay you in space biscuits for your help with this theory

Welllll... what you are theorizing about is carbon-based life chemistry. In RL we have the (somewhat recent, somewhat surprising) discovery of sulphur & silicon-based life at the edges of deep-sea geological fault planes (the Vents/Trenches). We also know that there's at least one other chemistry in E|D, those "ammonia-based life" gas giants. I wouldn't stick to a carbon-based life theory for an alien organism...

 

[slashgoh]

I have a question due to my absence from the thread:
if you put one or more UAs into Merope system, where they orientate themselves? do these point the Merope star or a particular planet?
Does someone tried this?

 

[Cynaqq]

I have a question due to my absence from the thread:
if you put one or more UAs into Merope system, where they orientate themselves? do these point the Merope star or a particular planet?
Does someone tried this?

They point to the star.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

To be fair I couldn't replicate that (the lining up when rolling) with further testing. Might have just been luck and the alignment of the ground the first time.

It IS a complete pain in the butt to get them rolling in the same direction in the first place though.

Sounds like a hypothesis refuted; shame that one would have been really useful in the Barnacle Hunt!

 

[Dielos]

You have a point, but this has been the strategy so far for the last few weeks and we have nothing to show for it. A more focused search is called for. You don't have to participate, you can do whatever you like. But I think at least some of us should start using more linear, more thorough methods. I will be. Every grid I search I will post here. Hopefully it will get recorded somewhere other than on my notepad. If I can edit the meta-alloys page on the wiki I might just do it there, at least until someone tries to stop me or I find a better way to make these results public. I just wish I had the kind of time I did earlier in the week when I could spend 5+ hours a day scouring these rocks.

Also, as far as I'm aware, there are no POI's you can spot from orbit. At least, my idea of orbit is the area above glide altitude, which I guess varies by planet.

Sorry if this was understood as a giving up post, wasn't the intention and it's not the case at all. It's just that I only have 30min to 1 hour play time a day, and scouring the surface for POI's is not viable for me.

The thought here is that from a dev perspective you probably want these hand placed barnacles to be in interesting places, and these interesting places are detectable for orbit, like canyons, spider canyons, interesting mountain formations with a crater in the middle, etc... You won't see the POI from orbit, but I try to drop into areas where I think the chances are higher of finding something.

Just trying to optimize my time... If I get more time in a day, I will surely help out with grid searching!

 

[dynamicbob]

Sorry if this was understood as a giving up post, wasn't the intention and it's not the case at all. It's just that I only have 30min to 1 hour play time a day, and scouring the surface for POI's is not viable for me.

The thought here is that from a dev perspective you probably want these hand placed barnacles to be in interesting places, and these interesting places are detectable for orbit, like canyons, spider canyons, interesting mountain formations with a crater in the middle, etc... You won't see the POI from orbit, but I try to drop into areas where I think the chances are higher of finding something.

Just trying to optimize my time... If I get more time in a day, I will surely help out with grid searching!

Frontier rely on massively multiplayer grinding to create content that lacks depth.

 

[CmdrZaratan]

Sounds like a hypothesis refuted; shame that one would have been really useful in the Barnacle Hunt!

On the other hand they do sing one whale song each when together rather than alternating between the two whale songs. Makes me wonder if barnacles can sing.

I'm currently at the known position of a crashed Anaconda (the one on Orrere 2b) to see what I can learn about fixed PoIs. I might bring a couple of UA's with me on the way back.

 

[Four Muffins]

Does anyone know of a way to plot peaks of RGB values from a video against time? When placed up against a surface in the dark, UA's show three distinct light emitters, and they pulse rhythmically. I've recorded a UA, and I've got the RGB's displayed in Adobe Premiere Pro, and I'm going frame by frame recording the millisecond timing of each pulse of light.

So far, it seems that the pulses in blue last .20 milliseconds, 1 second, and 1.5 seconds, and the gaps between the pulses are the same. My understanding is that Morse is built out of these ratios. The problem is, my computer is old, and there are frames missing, so it's sometimes hard to tell precisely when a pulse begins and ends, and there are gaps in my maybe-Morse. A graph would make this much easier, but I'm having trouble finding software capable of it. Plenty can show the RGB of a frame, but not averages over the whole file.

 

[simulacrae]

A just slightly wonky survey area map for a portion of Merope 1D

Spoiler

... not the prettiest ... but if anyone thinks something like this might be usefull

 

[Turban]

Oh my God, I'm such a fool. I've been flying around for ages without getting a POI, then I read the suggestion above about adjusting the scanner range. Did so, and 2 POIs immediately show up, just outside the normal range the scanner's usual display range. D'oh!

And double-d'oh - the same applies in the SRV. It's so much easier to find the contact within the POI circle simply by zooming out the scanner. I'm such a dolt!

*********** ....... I'm such a bad noob....

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

You want Rizal to update the first page each day to say "X pages and nothing new found"? Surely the fact that the first page doesn't mention anything new should be sufficient to conclude that nothing new has been found? I don't think it's reasonable to expect Rizal to go to the trouble of updating the first page when there has been no change.

Especially as Riz said he's away from home for a long weekend- he's going to get a bit of a shock when he gets back! I read the final 40+ pages of the last thread yesterday, & am still trying to keep up with this latest spawn of the megathread. We are posting too much based on insufficient game time!!

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

Does anyone know of a way to plot peaks of RGB values from a video against time? When placed up against a surface in the dark, UA's show three distinct light emitters, and they pulse rhythmically. I've recorded a UA, and I've got the RGB's displayed in Adobe Premiere Pro, and I'm going frame by frame recording the millisecond timing of each pulse of light.

So far, it seems that the pulses in blue last .20 milliseconds, 1 second, and 1.5 seconds, and the gaps between the pulses are the same. My understanding is that Morse is built out of these ratios. The problem is, my computer is old, and there are frames missing, so it's sometimes hard to tell precisely when a pulse begins and ends, and there are gaps in my maybe-Morse. A graph would make this much easier, but I'm having trouble finding software capable of it. Plenty can show the RGB of a frame, but not averages over the whole file.

Interesting hypothesis; don't remember anyone has reported investigating the UA visual behaviour, but the Morse that everyone talks about on this thread was from the audible chirps. But carry on Cmdr- you're doing good science & may find something that has been overlooked!

 

[PanPiper.]

Back tonight to continue exploring high G world's.
HD 1185 has a nasty ringed metal at 4.1g. Nothing but a large ship crash found last night.

Useful tip for visual locating on high g,use debug cam rather than pitching down to look around below

 

[Zenith]

One thing that I do like about this megathread #5 is that it isn't all the "the usual suspects" posting. A lot of what's going on is from folks who weren't necessarily involved with the UA mystery early on and so have a fresh perspective. They aren't jaded or weary from answering the same questions that inevitably keep cropping up. We all suspect that UAs and Large Barnacles are related somehow and having new blood and new eyes looking from different angles can only be a good thing.

Right now we're in terra incognita WRT Barnacles. There is no right, there is no wrong. There's what we can try and what we can record. That means telling people what you're doing and where you're doing it.
To summarise, don't stop posting!

Myself, I'm roughly 1500ly from Maia and heading back in. I've been putting on a hard burn for the last couple of days to get back quickly.

 

[Nutter]

Just thought I would post this information, feel free to correct me but I believe these are the facts and the unknowns...

Barnacle Facts
1. Are they in the Game? - They are in the game
2. What Region of space can they be found? - Can be found in the region of the Seven Sisters nebula (Pleiades).
3. Where do they live? In the void of space or on a planet? – Planet
4. How will they appear? - Either a POI or a specific placed location.
5. How common are they? - They are exceedingly rare.
6. Has a player found a Barnacle? - No
7. Are they linked to the Meta-Alloys and Mission? - Yes

Barnacle Unknowns
1. What do they look like?
2. Do they show up as a blue circle while flying over a planet?
3. Are they only found with a crashed ship?
4. Are they only in the nebula or could they be near it?
5. Are they only found in dark areas of a planet (Craters or Trenches)?
6. What star type will the planet orbit?
7. What type of planet do they ‘live’ on?
8. Do they prefer cold or hot worlds?
9. Does there need to be volcanism of any type?

 

[Cmdr Edard]

Back tonight to continue exploring high G world's.
HD 1185 has a nasty ringed metal at 4.1g. Nothing but a large ship crash found last night.

Useful tip for visual locating on high g,use debug cam rather than pitching down to look around below

What sort of large crashed ship? A t9? Anaconda? If so did you catch the grid location?