UAs, Barnacles & More Thread 5 - The Canonn

[Ozric]

It would be good to add more data regarding planets that have been found within this temperature range, even if no barnacles have been found on them (yet), because it would produce a better fitting curve and make the search for barnacles more efficient. I can't at the moment since I'm not at home, but if you PM me I can add the data.]

I've been out in the Crescent Nebula, I only landed on 1 small planet within that temp range:

Crescent Sector DL-Y D32

Star Type: A
Star Temp: 8,094k
Planet distance from star: 2,225.02Ls
Planet Temp: 201k

No barnacles (that I found) there are obviously going to be a lot more planets in the range there, but I've moved on.

 

[Gypsy12]

Wow. I and I thought my art skills were crap!

 

[Iridium Nova]

Barnacle Discovery Mock-Up Experiment

Given the trouble we had finding the first Barnacle, and not knowing what to look for, I decided to run a discovery mockup test around the original Barnacle site - what I like to call Site Octo. My experiment was to determine whether the Barnacle is easier to detect by air or by ground. To start with, I did flyovers of the site from several directions and at a multitude of altitudes. While the Barnacle is technically visible from beyond 1km up, it is so small it is very hard to see (I had to lean in close to my monitor just to see it from 600m!). This may just be my bad eyesight, but if it was hard for me to spot it, it's the sort of thing that could have been easily missed by a number of people. The next experiment involved landing a considerable distance away, and then see if I can locate the barnacle with the SRV's wave scanner, and differentiate it from the myriad other things that spawn and get detected by the wave scanner.

This experiment was more interesting. Initially, I did a few wave scanner tests around the Barnacle at different disances in order to get an idea of what it would sound like. It does produce a distinctive howl which is just slightly different from other, manmade objects. It almost sounds like a ufo. Following this, I landed my ship far enough away that the wave scanner could not detect the Barnacle. I deployed my SRV and proceeded to drive around randomly in the general direction of where I thought the Barnacle was. Along the way, I found some minerals and a crashed drone and then picked up the distinctive ufo-like howl of the Barnacle. I drove to the cliff face overlooking the Barnacle valley and could not see anything where the Barnacle should be. But the wave scanner was detecting it.

I made my way in that direction and still could not see the Barnacle until I was actually quite close, though much of that had to do with the terrain. But the Wave Scanner never lost the signal. Along the way I picked up another wreck site and was able to compare the Barnacle's scanner sound to the manmade site scanner sound, and there is a distinct difference.

I think this information will be helpful in the future, should we need to locate alien objects again. We know that they will sound different, though the differences can be subtle. It seems the wave scanner is far more useful than one's own eyes, even from the sky - it can detect things quite far away and once you are familiar with it could be potentially far more useful than an aerial flyover.

I recorded the SRV experiment. It's a good 25 minutes, most of which is not very interesting, but those of you who are die-hard Barnacle Hunters may find this video informative.

[video=youtube_share;3nSGJdu2Slw]https://youtu.be/3nSGJdu2Slw[/video]

Video index:
12:30 - First distinct Barnacle detection on wave scanner (audio only: faint ufo like howl with no visual signal)
20:05 - Comparison of wave scanner audio: Barnacle and drone wreck
22:30 - First clear visual of Barnacle from drone wreck

 

[_Dastardly_]

I think the sounds the barnacles make is the alien equivalent of this...

 

[TR7]

So I will probably be heading back from this trip to my old parts in the ALD territory and reunite with my combat Python. IIf it wasn't for the bud maybe I'd try to locate other barnacles. Also I think that it is all for now, we have to wait until FD decide to come with another part of the story, I assume the barnacles will do something they don't now. Currently they're simply - in terms of gameplay - a good source of a lot of materials in one place.

I have 8 Meta alloys in cargo bay. What do you think would be the best thing to do with them? Selling - ok, I'd regain what I spent on this trip more or less but if it is around 700K then it's equivalent of spending some 20-40 minutes in a good RES. So if there are more interesting things to do with them I'd go for it.

Selling them at the "affected" stations? I am rather sceptical it would have any effect, I agree with those who believe the whole story is already written and this probably won't change anything.

The mission connected to them?

Anything else we know they can be used for?

 

[cygnusa]

So I will probably be heading back from this trip to my old parts in the ALD territory and reunite with my combat Python. IIf it wasn't for the bud maybe I'd try to locate other barnacles. Also I think that it is all for now, we have to wait until FD decide to come with another part of the story, I assume the barnacles will do something they don't now. Currently they're simply - in terms of gameplay - a good source of a lot of materials in one place.

I have 8 Meta alloys in cargo bay. What do you think would be the best thing to do with them? Selling - ok, I'd regain what I spent on this trip more or less but if it is around 700K then it's equivalent of spending some 20-40 minutes in a good RES. So if there are more interesting things to do with them I'd go for it.

Selling them at the "affected" stations? I am rather sceptical it would have any effect, I agree with those who believe the whole story is already written and this probably won't change anything.

The mission connected to them?

Anything else we know they can be used for?

I sold a load at a high population high tech world for ~90k credits each ton. I kept 1 ton on hand in the event I run across the ever elusive Meta-Alloy mission. Otherwise it seems there isn't much point to them (yet) other than credits. At least as far as we are aware. I tried to go to a few affected stations to sell them to hopefully help with repairs, but their commodity markets were toast. I even tried selling to the same faction at other stations in the same system or nearby systems. They didn't buy either in those cases. So, I went to a nearby high pop high tech, and they had high demand with some 90-91k creds per ton. Sold. I'll head back out and get more if it turns out to help in some manner, otherwise the profits don't seem to balance out well with the time invested. I'd personally rather goof around with missions or do some bounty hunting. After many hours of hunting for barnacles, I need to freshen up the credits account a bit.

 

[NecoMachina]

Snip

This is good work, trying to determine what's the "best" way to find barnacles. IMO some work needs to be done on the new Horizons stuff by FD. It's all so inconsistent. My ship scanner can detect a crashed SRV and give me a blue area to search, but it can't detect a much larger crashed Anaconda. The blue circle works at 1.5-ish km and above, but disappears below that. A cheap, disposable SRV can detect a barnacle, but my multi-million credit ship sensors can't. It seems so haphazard and ill-thought-out to me. Personally I'd like to have my ship's sensors be able to have the same scanner mode as the SRV while planetside.

 

[TR7]

I sold a load at a high population high tech world for ~90k credits each ton. I kept 1 ton on hand in the event I run across the ever elusive Meta-Alloy mission. Otherwise it seems there isn't much point to them (yet) other than credits. At least as far as we are aware. I tried to go to a few affected stations to sell them to hopefully help with repairs, but their commodity markets were toast. I even tried selling to the same faction at other stations in the same system or nearby systems. They didn't buy either in those cases. So, I went to a nearby high pop high tech, and they had high demand with some 90-91k creds per ton. Sold. I'll head back out and get more if it turns out to help in some manner, otherwise the profits don't seem to balance out well with the time invested. I'd personally rather goof around with missions or do some bounty hunting. After many hours of hunting for barnacles, I need to freshen up the credits account a bit.

Hey, thanks for that. It's a shame we can't store cargo outside of our current ships, I'd keep all 8 in case they become useful in some way.

I'll read about those missions. If the reward is sensible I may try to look for them. But then again if the missions are rare it would really have to be in the region of 5M per unit to make it worth looking for the missions itself.

 

[cygnusa]

This is good work, trying to determine what's the "best" way to find barnacles. IMO some work needs to be done on the new Horizons stuff by FD. It's all so inconsistent. My ship scanner can detect a crashed SRV and give me a blue area to search, but it can't detect a much larger crashed Anaconda. The blue circle works at 1.5-ish km and above, but disappears below that. A cheap, disposable SRV can detect a barnacle, but my multi-million credit ship sensors can't. It seems so haphazard and ill-thought-out to me. Personally I'd like to have my ship's sensors be able to have the same scanner mode as the SRV while planetside.

-This- I agree completely. A complete lack of night vision is also quite silly. A 20th century fighter pilot is far better equipped for proper situational awareness. It'd be nice if the scanner beam could be narrowed or widened to affect sensitivity for ground operations. What about ground-hugging radar to assist with maintaining a stable altitude while on search/rescue missions? Your old 1970's fighter jets had this capability. Oh well. No wonder we have puffy colorful letters and numbers on our dashboards. Our cockpits are more like childrens bouncy seats than spacecraft LOL

 

[Szyslak22]

Given the trouble we had finding the first Barnacle, and not knowing what to look for, I decided to run a discovery mockup test around the original Barnacle site - what I like to call Site Octo.

Good work Commander! I'll watch this later, but do you have an estimate for how far away you could detect the barnacle audio in the SRV?

 

[CMDR Runcible Shaw]

Anyone remember the Corrupted Blood plague in Warcraft?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

What do I look like... a nerd?

 

[Iridium Nova]

So I will probably be heading back from this trip to my old parts in the ALD territory and reunite with my combat Python. IIf it wasn't for the bud maybe I'd try to locate other barnacles. Also I think that it is all for now, we have to wait until FD decide to come with another part of the story, I assume the barnacles will do something they don't now. Currently they're simply - in terms of gameplay - a good source of a lot of materials in one place.

I have 8 Meta alloys in cargo bay. What do you think would be the best thing to do with them? Selling - ok, I'd regain what I spent on this trip more or less but if it is around 700K then it's equivalent of spending some 20-40 minutes in a good RES. So if there are more interesting things to do with them I'd go for it.

Selling them at the "affected" stations? I am rather sceptical it would have any effect, I agree with those who believe the whole story is already written and this probably won't change anything.

The mission connected to them?

Anything else we know they can be used for?

My intention is to carry them around, looking for Meta Alloys missions to sell them at. You can get 400k+ for them per mission. I've heard rumors they can go even higher, like into the millions, though I've never seen it. I don't run cargo, but I like to have a cargo hold just in case I come across something I'd like to hold on to for a while, or for just padding my income with some liberated tea from time to time. I probably wont find too many meta-alloys missions but right now I only have 2 meta alloys, and that doesn't really take up much space.

 

[Fehler]

One point has been widely overlooked so far: As all the barnacles have a common mark (the "C" symbol, call it pleiades nebula or LMC print) it is quite obvious that we are dealing with a cloned or genetically designed lifeform.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

This is good work, trying to determine what's the "best" way to find barnacles. IMO some work needs to be done on the new Horizons stuff by FD. It's all so inconsistent. My ship scanner can detect a crashed SRV and give me a blue area to search, but it can't detect a much larger crashed Anaconda. The blue circle works at 1.5-ish km and above, but disappears below that. A cheap, disposable SRV can detect a barnacle, but my multi-million credit ship sensors can't. It seems so haphazard and ill-thought-out to me. Personally I'd like to have my ship's sensors be able to have the same scanner mode as the SRV while planetside.

The problem really is that Frontier want to force the players into specific ways of playing. They want us to drive the SRV, so to force us into that they disable the ship from being able to detect ground based objects in a reliable manner. This in the end is just a way to obscure the fact that they haven't really implemented any real incentive to drive the SRV in the first place (beyond the fact that it is awesome to drive, and that the planetary surfaces are wonderful to explore).

The entire game in littered with these types of design decisions.

Then they ask us to find the Barnacles in ways that are contrary to that design choice...

 

[Ozric]

One point has been widely overlooked so far: As all the barnacles have a common mark (the "C" symbol, call it pleiades nebula or LMC print) it is quite obvious that we are dealing with a cloned or genetically designed lifeform.

Why is that obvious? Could they not just be branded in the same way humans do with cattle, technology etc..?

 

[Iridium Nova]

This is good work, trying to determine what's the "best" way to find barnacles. IMO some work needs to be done on the new Horizons stuff by FD. It's all so inconsistent. My ship scanner can detect a crashed SRV and give me a blue area to search, but it can't detect a much larger crashed Anaconda. The blue circle works at 1.5-ish km and above, but disappears below that. A cheap, disposable SRV can detect a barnacle, but my multi-million credit ship sensors can't. It seems so haphazard and ill-thought-out to me. Personally I'd like to have my ship's sensors be able to have the same scanner mode as the SRV while planetside.

My head canon is such: The ship's sensors were designed to detect things in space, and a variety of factors (including physical geography and interference from your power plant) further reduces the ship's ability to detect things on the ground, which often seem to have a much weaker signature (almost everything on the ground appears as a grey dot on the scanner). The SRV is designed solely for surface operations. It uses what seems to be a phosphorus acid fuel cell (primitive but cheap, easy to maintain, and low-interference), and has a low-mass frame. It's kinda like the difference between using a telescope as opposed to a magnifying glass. The telescope is much bigger and much more powerful, but you don't use a telescope to see fingerprints or read the fine print on a tax document.

 

[rizal72]

So I will probably be heading back from this trip to my old parts in the ALD territory and reunite with my combat Python. IIf it wasn't for the bud maybe I'd try to locate other barnacles. Also I think that it is all for now, we have to wait until FD decide to come with another part of the story, I assume the barnacles will do something they don't now. Currently they're simply - in terms of gameplay - a good source of a lot of materials in one place.

I have 8 Meta alloys in cargo bay. What do you think would be the best thing to do with them? Selling - ok, I'd regain what I spent on this trip more or less but if it is around 700K then it's equivalent of spending some 20-40 minutes in a good RES. So if there are more interesting things to do with them I'd go for it.

Selling them at the "affected" stations? I am rather sceptical it would have any effect, I agree with those who believe the whole story is already written and this probably won't change anything.

The mission connected to them?

Anything else we know they can be used for?

You missed my point, then
When I said that the story is somehow already written, I meant we need to do some actions first: selling the meta-alloys to stations, to heal them first, to discover later that there was a price to pay...
Not doing it, will simply bring more and more stations to shut down...

 

[NecoMachina]

The problem really is that Frontier want to force the players into specific ways of playing. They want us to drive the SRV, so to force us into that they disable the ship from being able to detect ground based objects in a reliable manner. This in the end is just a way to obscure the fact that they haven't really implemented any real incentive to drive the SRV in the first place (beyond the fact that it is awesome to drive, and that the planetary surfaces are wonderful to explore).

The entire game in littered with these types of design decisions.

Then they ask us to find the Barnacles in ways that are contrary to that design choice...

Ya, it does seem like that, doesn't it? Kind of silly in my book - you still need the SRV to go down and collect the materials. For a game that does so much to try and use "real science" they make some strange design choices here and there. I understand that some concessions must be made for balance or "fun factor", but still.

 

[Fehler]

Why is that obvious? Could they not just be branded in the same way humans do with cattle, technology etc..?

Maybe, but definitely there must have been someone who "branded" it. So there actually was a "creator". Consequently, the most probable explanation for the barnacles presence in merope is that they were placed intentionally.

 

[GilliganTX]

Maybe, but definitely there must have been someone who "branded" it. So there actually was a "creator". Consequently, the most probable explanation for the barnacles presence in merope is that they were placed intentionally.

Why is that the most probable?