Okay CMDRs, I've got a theory. It's a bit nuts, but it's plausible, it's pretty easy to test, and, most importantly,
it drastically constrains the search area.
As I outlined
here, the mist we see on airless worlds isn't static - it comes and goes with exposure to sunlight, and disappears completely at night. As such, places that are both dark and misty are what I'd call exceedingly rare (pun intended) - you pretty much only find them during eclipses.
This got me thinking about a few things:
- The meta-alloys description refers to Large Barnacles as "alien entities" - one way or another we're hunting a life form.
- IRL barnacles are filter feeders - they extrude a filter-thing out into the water when the water conditions are right, scoop desirable things (plankton) out of the water for nourishment, and extrude a protective shell around themselves. They can dry out and rehydrate with the tide, and be just fine, up to a point.
- FDev are clearly pretty proud of this mist - Braben showed it off in an early youtube video of horizons, and has taken the time to explain it to people at least once.
- This mist rises and falls like tide - on a closely orbiting moon, or a closely orbiting binary pair, misty conditions would form, and then the light would disappear in an eclipse, at least once per orbital period.
My theory is that these barnacles are in some way dormant until the right conditions emerge. I think the right conditions are inside nebulae, in the presence of volatile mist, when the sun has just been obscured, so that they're safe from too much heat, but not so safe that there's no mist to consume. If I were right, we'd either find 1) they're somehow more visible when they're "happy" or 2) the spawn rate of the randomly generated ones is higher in the right conditions.
In order to test this idea, I hunted around the Pleiades, checking out the orbital characteristics and positions of various moons (FDev system orrery view plz!). Turns out eclipse conditions don't happen that often.
Eclipse conditions are so rare, in fact, that I was not able to find any anywhere within the nebula cloud of the Pleiades earlier... but there's one about to happen:
On Merope 1B, sometime in the next hour, Merope 1A will eclipse Merope, turning this very foggy crater I'm sitting in into a very dark foggy crater. (And yes, it's moving in the right direction, I made sure before posting.) If I'm right, one of these moons will eclipse part of the other's misty surface every ~9 hours, for... I have no idea how long. At least an hour? Two?
I'm thinking that if the mist reliably shows up in a short enough time period, then there's an eclipse, and the barnacles never spend too much time "dry", you've got somewhere that you can find barnacles. This would constrain the search to places like Merope 1A/1B, and allow us to rule out entire categories of planets (such as Metal-rich and Icy, which I don't think have any mist).
So uh... anybody want to come throw a foggy eclipse rave on Merope 1B? Bonus points for bringing UA disco balls.
I may be totally crazy here, but the scenery should be cool, and we're probably only gonna be dealing with about 10% of one moon at a time, instead of half a dozen systems - and constraining the search area, at this point, is my primary concern.
P.S. Writing this took long enough that the eclipse has started! Will be back with screenshots later, if possible.
