UAs, Barnacles & More Thread 5 - The Canonn

[Tesla3E]

Something to do with ammonia in nebulae ?

Going back to my (extended) hypothesis
large barnacle -> release UA seed pod -> release spores -> grows in to barnacle spike -> grows in to large barnacle.

If this is the case then in order for the UA seed pods to get where they are they need a lot of energy to get them to where they are now. They would have to travel faster than light which implies some sort of frame shift. This could either occur within the UA (there is evidence of some odd distortion when they expire) or within the large barnacle. If in the large barnacle, the process would probably destroy it when the energy is released to propel the seeds to their destination.

Our FSD drives need hydrogen to provide the power and one of the main constituents of nebulae is hydrogen.
Anywhere too close to a star would be too hot for meta alloys to survive, but in a suitable spot in a nebula on a planet without an atmosphere, but with enough gravity to pull in hydrogen it could possibly be harvested. It would probably take a long time before sufficient is available eject pods.

Thinking about the UA behavior they could be looking for a mate from a different barnacle source before releasing mature spores. Taking one into a ship might prematurely trigger the spore process.

All this is pure speculation

 

[CHOPP3R]

Ok so i've been browsing back over past clues and posts. This post stood out to me




What we know:
• We all know there are manually placed barnacles and rng barnacles.
• We also know the game uses heavy use of procedural generation.

Ok so as someone who's played countless hours of Minecraft and working with spawn farms, it's just a matter of finding the correct spawn conditions (for the rng poi's). From his post it sounds like when you get that magic formula correct, bam you will get spawns. We need to make a spreadsheet with details on every failed planet (planet composition, gravity, tides, temp, size, poles searched, equator searched, etc.). That way we can start narrowing down what conditions we've already searched. So if you jump into a system and find a planet and it has the same qualities of an already failed search, you can move on to something different.

FYI: When MD made that comment he was responding to this:

I did indeed say they are exceedingly rare - much rarer than UAs. ALthough unlike the UAs there are some that have been physically placed by us, although they are generated in certain areas of space.

Michael

Mike already hinted at plural in an earlier post. Its not specifically Seven Sisters.

True - although I know for certain that there are some placed in that nebula.

Michael

When you say "placed", do you mean that if you show up in that particular place you are 100% sure to see one, or is there still a random element to whether it will actually appear or not when you arrive?

You are guaranteed to find them if you are in the right location.

Michael

Which was a conversation about the hand placed barnacles that MD confirmed are in the Pleiades rather than ones that may generated by anything else going on, if there are any non-persistent ones. Just because they haven't been hand placed, they may still be permanent POIs that are just placed according to some sort of procedural generation, or "seed" if you want to use the Minecraft terminology .

If this is the case then it shouldn't matter about whether it's foggy at the time or dark, but other rules may be followed as far as composition of the planet or system that they're hand placed or generated on perhaps. One factor we know is important is that it has to be related to a nebula, apart from that all we know for sure is that they're on a planet and are very large.

 

[LordZoltan]

Right, I am out. Time to head out for the DWE.

Good luck hunting, I will be passing through many many Nebulae on my journey, and I fully intend on searching the hell out of them. I just hope I am not the first one to find anything, you dont want to travel 100,000ly to pick some up.
I may still drop in to add some logic to the tin-foil-hat brigade, but logic hasn't helped us so far.

I leave you with a quote from The Martian "In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option, I'm gonna have to science the out of this"

Best of luck, Domm have fun, one and all

 

[piranha9]

Tempting - there should be a statue to the elder gods on every street corner

Michael

Please Michael, no more hints here on the forum!
We surely need one to successfully find the barnacles, but only if it is a ingame hint.

 

[rizal72]

Elimination would be a good way to go. Maybe it would appropriate to compile on the OP a list of environmental variables that didn't produce any success?

Good idea IMO.

-v

Sorry but no.
Tell me how can you be sure about a planet not having the Barnacles on it, with current game mechanics.
And, even if you was sure about persistent POIs (very unlikely), you could still be finding the RNG ones on it.

 

[Gimi]

The mission to find meta-alloys says they're associated with the 'alien entities' known as Large Barnacles. Primitive alien life is common in the ED universe, so that's not surprising on its own, and probably why it's so casually mentioned in the mission description. The question is, are they simple plant-like creatures that give us a useful material, or are they intelligent? Or at least, made by an intelligence.

Good point, the mission does point to something living. Maybe primitive living metal harvesters used to produce meta-alloy then.

 

[RCKJD]

i might have said it before, but I think we might need maps of the planets, that way we can leave remarks like "searched latitude 0 from longitude 10 E to 45 E", otherwise hundreds of commanders are searching the same spot while other parts of the planets remain unexplored.
Might not even need a map for that, just a plain grid...

 

[caffeinefueled]

Let's not forget that the planets are 1:1 scale here, so my guess is that if we are expected to find a manually placed barnacle it will be in either one of two ways:

1) A hint will be revealed in game that will help pin down the coords on a particualar planet, or
2) On landing on the planet(s) with the hand placed barnacles something will change atmospherically to make it obvious that there is something different.

Otherwise, the odds for finding it are next to impossible. As such (given i'm not aware of any further hints at this time) I've changed my search pattern to planet hop and briefly check each planet rather than spending hours on a given planet.

 

[rizal72]

@Rizal....

Can you please put up a Front page request for information on high gravity worlds in or nearby the Pleiades Nebula?
A "Barnacle" shape is perfect for high gravity environments. Doing so should vastly limit the candidates for exploration.

I strongly believe that this is the most obvious clue to their whereabouts that we have.

Their shape!

So far the highest I have found so far is HR 1185 A4 @ 4.12G

Excluding all the other planets without any evidence so far?
Sorry but, no.

Next one, pleeeeeease.

 

[Jean Michel Marijt]

My thoughts about these UA's and barnacles!

Here are my recent thought about these UA's and barnacles.
Somehow many of us think these things are alive?
What i thought off resently is that this is not so.
can it be that the UA's are some sort off alien nav beacons just like the nav beacons humans use or used to navigate in space and that the socaled barnacles is an alien mining site.
if you look in the horizons trailer the greenish light's seem to be on some sort of metal structure just like on those automated mining sites humans have and that piramid is a structure like those on human mining sites.
<br>
just a thought i had to share with you people.
has anyone thought about this?

 

[urmom306]

Sorry but no.
Tell me how can you be sure about a planet not having the Barnacles on it, with current game mechanics.

Rng POI's have to have certain spawn parameters. If they didn't they would be spawning all over the place. One we already know is they spawn in or around nebulas. It's just a matter of comparing everyones data. If we have 1300 cmdrs searching metal rich, hot, tidally locked planets (for example) and no one is finding anything...then that is leaning towards we have something wrong in the spawn formula.

 

[Han_Zen]

Right, I am out. Time to head out for the DWE.

Good luck hunting, I will be passing through many many Nebulae on my journey, and I fully intend on searching the hell out of them. I just hope I am not the first one to find anything, you dont want to travel 100,000ly to pick some up.
I may still drop in to add some logic to the tin-foil-hat brigade, but logic hasn't helped us so far.

I leave you with a quote from The Martian "In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option, I'm gonna have to science the out of this"

Good luck out there. It has been a pleasure to have you involved.

 

[TFW Primus]

Hello everyone! I’m kind of new to the whole world of Elite, but I must say that I love so much where and how this game going. Let me be clear, I personally sure that we all became a witnesses of an alien invasion. But not this clumsy ridiculous and pathetic invasions with some giant alien ships jumping out of nowhere shooting lasers pew pew pew, “the Universe at danger!!!” and this kind of stuff from other games. No. The smart one, with many thoughtful stages. How do I see this?

1. Stage one: Infiltration. Their agents are among us. Look, death and disappearance of the many main political figures, discovering some strange parasite at nerve centre that is look harmless for now, but then the phage plague.
2. Stage two: Reconnaissance. Unknown Artifacts for me are clearly the recon probes, that were launched to scan future arrival area. They scan all the nearby objects and send the image of it.
3. Stage three: Ground base preparation. They need some sort of launch base for future operations. So now its Large Barnacles work to prepare the suitable world or maybe a necessary amount of meta-alloys.
4. Stage four: ???

So with all this in mind I tried to concentrate all my thoughts and my guess in one image:

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Spoiler

View attachment 94588

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So what I tried to say is…Elite is one of few if not the only one game that makes my think, learn and even dream. The trill, intrigue, mysteries, and even community are just amazing. Thank you so much for that feeling!

And sorry for long post and bad English.

One thing I love about the game is that it inspires stuff like this. Great job!

Side note: When I'm jumping through witch space I really feel like I'm traveling through the inside of a UA "bulb". Really feels like moving through a brain or something similar with neurons firing.

 

[v01i0]

Sorry but no.
Tell me how can you be sure about a planet not having the Barnacles on it, with current game mechanics.
And, even if you was sure about persistent POIs (very unlikely), you could still be finding the RNG ones on it.

The list does not need to be exlusive. This would just serve as information source for those wishing to try something different. Anyway, I admit that it would be difficult to establish and maintain in a reasonable manner, but the idea of the poster was actually rather good. Maybe I start keeping this list by myself

-v

 

[neliodv]

Rng POI's have to have certain spawn parameters. If they didn't they would be spawning all over the place. One we already know is they spawn in or around nebulas. It's just a matter of comparing everyones data. If we have 1300 cmdrs searching metal rich, hot, tidally locked planets (for example) and no one is finding anything...then that is leaning towards we have something wrong in the spawn formula.

Or searching the wrong place

 

[GameroftheBeer]

Do persistent POI's still show up with border when you are scanning above 2KM? Is it the same color? I am systematically eliminating Pleione 5 A by staying a specific degree of Longitude(+ or - .5 degrees) and running along going from -90 to 90 Latitude. Obviously this is a very arduous task.

After doing this for a few hours last night I have now explored 00.05% of the planet. Anyone interested in helping? In my honest opinion there should surface exploratory maps hosted to show where people have explored. Don't touch Longitude lines -27, or 164. and your good to go. Msg if interested.

 

[K M Butler]

Following up on the idea of barnacle -seeds being transported to other locations to become barnacle -clusters/trees/bunches/plurals, and that Merope is the centre of things, but not the best site in and of itself, then :
a: where do people most commonly jump to first upon leaving Merope?
b: which planet is most likely to be landed upon first upon leaving Merope?
c: If a bunch of CMDRs were to leave Merope together for a single within-the-nebula nearby planetfall, in a few days, say after the next maintenance/powerplay update injection, would that spot have an increased likeleyhood of a barnacle-garden?

 

[wedge_one]

This isn't just a "search mission": land anywhere, hope to be lucky, find the barnacles...

MB said we're guaranteed to find them "in the right location". It's a fixed POI, placed by hand.

There's a puzzle to be solved here, and in the puzzle we'll get the right coords.

We don't know for sure if the PR5 row 2 thing is related to the barnacles, but we also can't discard the possibility.

But what we know, so far:
- The UAs point to Merope;
- There's a whole mythology behind Merope;
- The UAs also have references to the Seven Sisters.

So let's dig on literature and eat everything we can about her myth.

And what are we looking for anyway? Tidally Locked planets? Do they live only in the dark? Big and dark craters? Mountains and valleys? (basically of everything every rock is composed of)...

 

[urmom306]

Or searching the wrong place

i would considering location a parameter yes. Poles, northern & southern hemisphere, equator, distance from sun, etc. All of those could be certain requirements for the spawn. To me is just makes sense to pool all our data.

 

[v01i0]

Or searching the wrong place

Either way. So let's assume the spawn formula functions as it should, then where should we look unless not Pleiades? And thousands of CMDRs roaming that particular part of infinity, it is a small miracle that no-one has been able to found one, even that there should be manually placed ones! As have been suggested, those should be in quite obvious places, but obviously we all have been unable to find out what obvious is

-v