UAs, Barnacles & More Thread 5 - The Canonn

[Cynaqq]

I have something to ask about the UA morse messages.

The ship drawings they broadcast don't seem to have any purpose other than flavor. Something to wonder at and discover but it doesn't seem to have another purpose.

Is this likely? From a game design and a story telling point of view, putting in an element which have no other purpose than being cool is not a very wide spread practice among writers other than enthusiastic teenagers. This is one of the qualities which distinguish good writers from bad ones actually.

Now, I can't bring myself to believe MB and his mates at FD are bad writers so both the drawings (and the usage of morse) and the pointing to Merope should serve a purpose.

Let's say Merope was chosen to indicate the Pleiades Nebula in general but they had to use a star so they chose Merope.

Why does the UA have to broadcast the drawing of the ship? Does it send the drawing to Merope and we happen to overhear or is it trying to communicate to us? It also knows the human names for celestial bodies because we also know it can broadcast these. Without metagaming, I can't come up with a reason. However, I can't come up with a reason for every star in the galaxy to be pre named and we still discover them too so we can let it slide.

All in all, I think we still are missing something from the behavior of UAs but I also feel like I'm overthinking. Their purpose for now can be to indicate the nebula as a point of attraction, with another purpose to be revealed later related to their 'shell forming' nature.

 

[EAGLE 5]

Ok so I have an interesting theory based on an observation I've had now repeatedly on a few occasions. I'll need to test this further to prove/disprove it but here it goes.

Caveat: this may or may not be barnacle related but it would be an interesting development if it was.

A few days ago another commander reported losing his/her ship due to what felt like malfunctioning controls. I chalked that up to bad flying but then I dropped out of OC at the proper speed but almost out of control and barely managed to put the ship down without having a crater named after me. This has now happened to me on a few occasions with different degrees of severity. Last night in Maia I managed to replicate the issue but being high up enough I decided to let it ride and see if the problem would sort itself out.... it kind of did in a most curious way. The ship seemed to sway very much like the needle of a compass, wobbling left and right until it found its magnetic north so-to-speak. In my Maia example the dot (navigational point at the front of the hud for mouse users like me) seemed to hover almost exclusively in a canyon region one of the brightly colored yellow ones that stand out against the reddish backdrop almost like it was magnetically pulling the ship there. I won't go into the sound I heard in roughly the same place (the ticking that got louder/faster) but if this is true our ships made out of metal on fully/mostly metal worlds are acting like compass needles. What else would be causing that sort of behavior? the moons/planets are airless so it's definitely not turbulence from an atmosphere so it has to be something else tugging at the ship.

That said I have not found barnacles yet but it is definitely all interesting stuff that I'm discovering as a result of having to fine tune my sense to look for these things.

It would be nice if FD can confirm if this is indeed a behavior of the game... if it is, I really won't be able to stop speaking volumes about FD's attention to detail.

Going forward I'm going to try and test different planets/moons for this behavior and record which ones are more likely to generate it. If I was to guess I'd say metal planets with active volcanism should by far be the most likely to cause this while icy worlds probably won't do anything. I'll keep a notepad nearby.

 

[TFW Primus]

All this searching for barnacles has me thinking of "dodecahedrons" and "Shimmering Balls". Not sure if anyone will get that reference. Spent a lot of time scouring planet surfaces in that game as well. Of course, before the internet was a thing all the clues had to be in-game. I'm not sure if that was better or worse.

 

[jgm]

Theory: It seems a bit hopeless to search moons and planets with no direction other than "Pleiades". Even if you narrow the search down to low lying craters and canyons that have vapor fogs it is a ridiculous amount of area to cover.

Maybe there are special Unidentified Signal Sources in systems that could potentially harbor Barnacles and Meta-Alloys... and if so there could be NPC's in the USS's that have dialogue related to potential locations for the Barnacles and Meta-Alloys.

I started looking for some in Maia this morning but, no luck.

Has anyone been attempting this? Red herring?

I've tried various signal sources, distress beacons and salvage sites in Maia and Merope over the past day with nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[AH_ImADot]

Debug camera is a nice way to look around - I have bind it to F1 and can switch it fast on/off.

Yeah, the debug camera is good if I want to hover low for a detailed look around. Otherwise I use ctl-alt-g (or whatever the combo is, as I use VA and can't remember what I programmed in), so I can keep flying around while looking for "interesting" stuff.

 

[eberkain]

Theory: It seems a bit hopeless to search moons and planets with no direction other than "Pleiades". Even if you narrow the search down to low lying craters and canyons that have vapor fogs it is a ridiculous amount of area to cover.

Maybe there are special Unidentified Signal Sources in systems that could potentially harbor Barnacles and Meta-Alloys... and if so there could be NPC's in the USS's that have dialogue related to potential locations for the Barnacles and Meta-Alloys.

I started looking for some in Maia this morning but, no luck.

Has anyone been attempting this? Red herring?

I am still on the special condition kick, one of the questions that MB responded to was this....

05/01/2016, 6:15 PM
Q: Soo, does this mean we don't need the mission to find them?
Or any other special requirements (like an UA in the cargohold)?

Originally Posted by Michael Brookes
No mission needed.


Michael

To me it seems like he dodged the second part of the question, which means a special condition may be required to make barnacles show up. I just have no good idea on what that could be, going to go back and re read all the galnet posts.

 

[hawkjon]

Yeah, the goliath POIs are a bit more rare than some others but pretty standard unfortunately. Also, if your ship isn't well armed (or even if it is) it is much easier to lightly tap into the goliath with the front of your ship than it is to shoot at it. They just pop like a bubble.

 

[unrealization]

Does anyone here know of an orbit simulator?
Where I could put in the data of Merope's planets/moons and see the orbits at a faster pace?

How about Universe Sandbox? There's another one, but I forgot its name.

 

[Peter Drakon]

I noticed that in surface flight, the ship slows to a halt when you switch to debug cam, which is different behaviour than in space.
I was trying to cruise at about 2km and have a good look around and after a while I realised I wasn't moving.

It's not constant, most of the time my ship doesn't stop moving, but when I turn off the cam, the ship stops. Then, something happens (hidden bug?), and the ship stops as soon as I turn on the camera. Loggin off and back again, or going SC/jumping fixes it I think.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Theory: It seems a bit hopeless to search moons and planets with no direction other than "Pleiades". Even if you narrow the search down to low lying craters and canyons that have vapor fogs it is a ridiculous amount of area to cover.

Maybe there are special Unidentified Signal Sources in systems that could potentially harbor Barnacles and Meta-Alloys... and if so there could be NPC's in the USS's that have dialogue related to potential locations for the Barnacles and Meta-Alloys.

I started looking for some in Maia this morning but, no luck.

Has anyone been attempting this? Red herring?

I was doing a bit of that in Merope until I got ambushed by scurvy NPC dogs!! Escaped relatively unscathed that time.

 

[FoxKyong]

I got an idea. When I was at Pavlou keep and scanned the tower I got something like Intel telemetry updated. It is the only structure showed on planetary map. But I already found another one on another moon. Si it is possible that there are more of them. And according to description after scanning, what if we need to finf at least 3 on one moon (or moons) and the we the coordinate of barnacles on some moon will show up?

 

[MadDogMurdock]

It's not constant, most of the time my ship doesn't stop moving, but when I turn off the cam, the ship stops. Then, something happens (hidden bug?), and the ship stops as soon as I turn on the camera. Loggin off and back again, or going SC/jumping fixes it I think.

Cheers, I'll try it again without touching the throttle.

 

[Jorge]

I looked up barnacle in naupilus stadium. They look similar to the UAs. But the head is the head. Not around. So forget what I assumed. They do orientate towards the surface. To the sun.
So why do UAs think merope is the surface? Why is it the only sun they see?

That's a really good question, and one that no one has been able to figure out yet.

I've travelled to Merope a bunch of times. Spent last night exploring its moons for clues. But no luck.

I've also run a line from Merope through the center of inhabited space (Sol) and out the other side and followed it until I reached the same position where another UA shell would be if it had been "mirrored" around the center of the Bubble, Also no luck.

Other CMDRs have taken a UA to distant places to see if they could find somewhere where it would point in a different direction. This was to test the theory that perhaps there are other stars like Merope that "interest" the UAs, and if they are closer to one of those other stars than they are from Merope they would point to it instead. Alas, also no luck.

For the last point, it doesn't mean that those other stars don't exist, but that everywhere that it's been tested the UA has still pointed to Merope. There may be stars like that in a really far away system on the other side of the galaxy, but given that the UAs damage your ship, and that there are no bases to repair in uninhabited space, there's only so far people have been able to go before their repair modules run out.

So we are still looking for answers. If you haven't done so already and you want some idea of many of the things that have been tried, check out the 2nd and 3rd posts of this thread. Rizal has made us a nice compendium of the UA/barnacle investigation history thus far.

In any case, it's good to have another pair on inquiring eyes on this. Good luck CMDR o7

 

[CMDRRickdonNL]

Someone ever think about a link between The Antares and Thargoid's/Barnacles?

 

[commander splat]

thats the first golliath ive found in 10 days on the surface in my srv.there does seem to be a pattern, ive found 2 crashed t class ships one with golliath and one with 2 guardians. when i log in mobius i tend to find about 5 sites eg gold tea srv crash beacons and sattelites and then a nasty so the longer you drive in srv the better it gets.

 

[hawkjon]

I am still on the special condition kick, one of the questions that MB responded to was this....



To me it seems like he dodged the second part of the question, which means a special condition may be required to make barnacles show up. I just have no good idea on what that could be, going to go back and re read all the galnet posts.

It is interesting that he didn't address the UA part of the question.

 

[jgm]

Another bit of food for thought: I was playing with the planetary map (zooming in on a planet in the system map gives you this) and as you rotate the planet you can see background stars. I don't know if the background is accurate, or how it relates to the reality of the situation that the planets are in orbit, but could there be something there that acts as a clue as to where to look?

For example, if everything were static it would be possible to draw a line from Merope to each planet and look at the location where it hits to see if there was anything there. Obviously things aren't static, but is there something similar that could be worked out?

 

[Nelson]

A few days ago another commander reported losing his/her ship due to what felt like malfunctioning controls. I chalked that up to bad flying but then I dropped out of OC at the proper speed but almost out of control and barely managed to put the ship down without having a crater named after me. This has now happened to me on a few occasions with different degrees of severity. Last night in Maia I managed to replicate the issue but being high up enough I decided to let it ride and see if the problem would sort itself out.... it kind of did in a most curious way. The ship seemed to sway very much like the needle of a compass, wobbling left and right until it found its magnetic north so-to-speak. In my Maia example the dot (navigational point at the front of the hud for mouse users like me) seemed to hover almost exclusively in a canyon region one of the brightly colored yellow ones that stand out against the reddish backdrop almost like it was magnetically pulling the ship there. I won't go into the sound I heard in roughly the same place (the ticking that got louder/faster) but if this is true our ships made out of metal on fully/mostly metal worlds are acting like compass needles. What else would be causing that sort of behavior?

I agree its odd as it doesnt seem consistent, Ive just put it down to orbital forces that I am unaware of. Be nice if it was MR B Nacle related !

 

[Jorge]

Someone ever think about a link between The Antares and Thargoid's/Barnacles?

In short... yes

 

[Cynaqq]

Another bit of food for thought: I was playing with the planetary map (zooming in on a planet in the system map gives you this) and as you rotate the planet you can see background stars. I don't know if the background is accurate, or how it relates to the reality of the situation that the planets are in orbit, but could there be something there that acts as a clue as to where to look?

For example, if everything were static it would be possible to draw a line from Merope to each planet and look at the location where it hits to see if there was anything there. Obviously things aren't static, but is there something similar that could be worked out?

This is pretty interesting!

I'll check it out when I go home.