UAs, Barnacles & More Thread 6 - The Canonn

[Jmanis]

Does this mean they are ALL permanent and placed automatically by the PG galaxy according to a rule like Jmanis is finding, or that the permie ones we're finding are hand placed but there are others we've not seen that are non-permanent? Or is the Merope one hand placed and the vast majority of others according to the rule and all permanent?

That's kinda where I was leaning. Pleione 11a is also a bit of an outlier; I didn't realise that til I saw that spreadsheet.

The specific thing I'm looking at is the Rock/Metal contents. While I've been out in Soul, it's been really hard to find something that matches perfectly, I did find one that was like Merope 5c, but found nothing (granted, at a casual glance). I haven't found one like JC-U B3-2 1 or 2 yet though.

Going a bit deeper, and "broadening" the definitions a bit... rather than looking specifically at the gravities, maybe we just call them all "Low Gravity" since you get the warning when you exit on any of those planets. Gravity is also dependent on other factors like Earth masses, radius etc so they can be ruled out as having an impact (in the world according to Jmanis... this can be easily argued down).

Similarly, the surface temp can probably be a bit variable, we know a range of surface temps seems to work. What's got me puzzled though is the rock/metal quantities. The "sector" systems are way too close to be "random", while Merope and Pleione's are completely different. There are other stats that are also way out, but they're way out across all the barnacle finds, so I don't know if they matter.

I dunno, just data dumping, I've got nothing solid to reinforce all that. But yeah... maybe Merope and Pleione are actually handcrafted (and there could be more), while others, while persistent, are actually generated by the algorithm.

 

[ilo]

That's kinda where I was leaning. Pleione 11a is also a bit of an outlier; I didn't realise that til I saw that spreadsheet.

The specific thing I'm looking at is the Rock/Metal contents. While I've been out in Soul, it's been really hard to find something that matches perfectly, I did find one that was like Merope 5c, but found nothing (granted, at a casual glance). I haven't found one like JC-U B3-2 1 or 2 yet though.

Going a bit deeper, and "broadening" the definitions a bit... rather than looking specifically at the gravities, maybe we just call them all "Low Gravity" since you get the warning when you exit on any of those planets. Gravity is also dependent on other factors like Earth masses, radius etc so they can be ruled out as having an impact (in the world according to Jmanis... this can be easily argued down).

Similarly, the surface temp can probably be a bit variable, we know a range of surface temps seems to work. What's got me puzzled though is the rock/metal quantities. The "sector" systems are way too close to be "random", while Merope and Pleione's are completely different. There are other stats that are also way out, but they're way out across all the barnacle finds, so I don't know if they matter.

I dunno, just data dumping, I've got nothing solid to reinforce all that. But yeah... maybe Merope and Pleione are actually handcrafted (and there could be more), while others, while persistent, are actually generated by the algorithm.

hold on, why would Pleione be handcrafted?

 

[marx]

I'm curious as from MB's hints I got that there were some permanent hand-placed barnies and the others would be RNG based - yet it seems everything we've found is permanent.

Does this mean they are ALL permanent and placed automatically by the PG galaxy according to a rule like Jmanis is finding, or that the permie ones we're finding are hand placed but there are others we've not seen that are non-permanent? Or is the Merope one hand placed and the vast majority of others according to the rule and all permanent?

It could also be that whenever a barnacle gets spawned, the servers take note of it and make a new permanent one where it is. If it's feasible with the engine, it's how I would do it.

Also, about the Unknown Probes: anyone else out there looking for them? I've been trying to locate artefact convoys in Bunda based on a rumour I've heard, and I noticed a few interesting things. Convoy dispersal pattern SS-es appear quite frequently around Bunda 1, while they are quite rare in deep space or shipping lanes. If the SS is threat 2, it's a medical transport convoy with chatter- one Python and four Vultures, carrying medical research. If it's threat 3, it's usually a silent system defence force convoy, one T9 guarded by two Anacondas, carrying military stuff and rare valuable goods (like Antiquities). I only saw one Threat 4 SS so far, but I got interdicted by an NPC before I could enter it and failed to evade the interdiction.
Has anyone else seen threat 4 convoys, and if so, what were they like?

 

[Jmanis]

hold on, why would Pleione be handcrafted?

No good reason that I can back up with any facts, just circular logic and occams razor. Pleione 11a doesn't fit because it's handcrafted, it's handcrafted because it doesn't fit.

However, if I had to throw around baseless ideas, the UAs point to Merope. Theory running around for a while went "something something seven sisters" which pre-dated Horizons. Merope and Pleione are part of the "seven sisters", and so it would "make sense" to handcraft some barnacles in the seven sisters for us pilots to find.

Meanwhile, it would also make sense to then have an algorithm to randomly generate based on the sector surrounding a nebula, so, Pleiades Sector, California Sector, for example.

Thing is, the planets in Pleiades and California we've been finding them on all fit a particular mold. Just my opinion again, but Merope and Pleione don't fit that mold nicely. Disregarding them doesn't really impact the fairly good idea of what sort of planets barnacles will spawn on anyway. We don't have enough to planets to form a statistically significant sample space to rule out Merope and Pleione either.

Again, this is just brain dumping... I wouldn't hand-on-heart say Merope and Pleione are 100% guaranteed handcrafted, just my spider-sense is tingling.

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Has anyone else seen threat 4 convoys, and if so, what were they like?

One was the full anaconda/vulture/dropship/T9 with hafnium that i dropped into.

 

[ilo]

No good reason that I can back up with any facts, just circular logic and occams razor. Pleione 11a doesn't fit because it's handcrafted, it's handcrafted because it doesn't fit.

However, if I had to throw around baseless ideas, the UAs point to Merope. Theory running around for a while went "something something seven sisters" which pre-dated Horizons. Merope and Pleione are part of the "seven sisters", and so it would "make sense" to handcraft some barnacles in the seven sisters for us pilots to find.

Meanwhile, it would also make sense to then have an algorithm to randomly generate based on the sector surrounding a nebula, so, Pleiades Sector, California Sector, for example.

Thing is, the planets in Pleiades and California we've been finding them on all fit a particular mold. Just my opinion again, but Merope and Pleione don't fit that mold nicely. Disregarding them doesn't really impact the fairly good idea of what sort of planets barnacles will spawn on anyway. We don't have enough to planets to form a statistically significant sample space to rule out Merope and Pleione either.

Again, this is just brain dumping... I wouldn't hand-on-heart say Merope and Pleione are 100% guaranteed handcrafted, just my spider-sense is tingling.

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One was the full anaconda/vulture/dropship/T9 with hafnium that i dropped into.

Why don't just ignore the shell? I mean it seriously. The trailer features california nebula (relating to the UAs), not Pleiades, there seems to be only one shell, it happens that points to Merope, but barnacles are all over the Pleiades. What if the UAs is something else related to Merope but nothing to do with the barnacles nor the barnacle distribution (regardless Merope barnacles being handcrafted or not) ?.

I'll add this: dropping an UA in Merope keeps pointing to the star, it doesn't point to Merope 5 C

 

[frostypaw]

re: Convoys and places to search - assuming I can resist any more engineer nonsense the next plan was to slow fly from xi Persei to Atik and scan everything/ship/person/smallfurrycreaturefromalphacentauri on the way.... hmm *looks at date* damn CNE tho!

 

[Han_Zen]

I'm curious as from MB's hints I got that there were some permanent hand-placed barnies and the others would be RNG based - yet it seems everything we've found is permanent.

Does this mean they are ALL permanent and placed automatically by the PG galaxy according to a rule like Jmanis is finding, or that the permie ones we're finding are hand placed but there are others we've not seen that are non-permanent? Or is the Merope one hand placed and the vast majority of others according to the rule and all permanent?

MB have bean quit clear (for a change) on this.

- All barnacles are permanent.
- Some are manually placed by devs. We don't know which.
- The rest are spawned by procedural generation.

This means that the procedural barnacles have a set of conditions that has to be fulfilled, before they are allowed to spawn (like UAs, that only spans in the shell).
Narrowing down these conditions as much as possible, would make searching for them a little less frustrating.
The problem is that manually placed barnacles, may exist outside the conditions required for procedural barnacles. We don't know this and it makes our data unreliable.

In essence, Jmains should be allowed to remove suspicious data point from his statistical model, without loosing his biscuit rations.

 

[TheOneWithNoLife]

I am currently in witch head nebula. I am searching the systems there, thinking of heading towards cone head nebula if I don't find anything. Hope FD aren't just adding them to a single new nebula every patch, because that would be kinda dull. Having to search the same systems over again.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Why don't just ignore the shell? I mean it seriously. The trailer features california nebula (relating to the UAs), not Pleiades, there seems to be only one shell, it happens that points to Merope, but barnacles are all over the Pleiades. What if the UAs is something else related to Merope but nothing to do with the barnacles nor the barnacle distribution (regardless Merope barnacles being handcrafted or not) ?.

I'll add this: dropping an UA in Merope keeps pointing to the star, it doesn't point to Merope 5 C

this is good thinking, but we have been over it before in previous instalments of the threadnought. The problem in this hypothesis (& I personally like it!) is that nothing else has been found in Merope other than the barney on 5C. I believe 6 has a high orbital angle suggesting it may have been captured from elsewhere & is not native to Merope, but that seems to be the only special feature and lots of people have searched the system; and in-system UAs point to the star not planet 6. Of course absence of proof is not proof of absence, but ...

Anyone had a good poke around in Merope since 2.1? (just in case something new has been recently introduced there)

 

[Dommarraa]

MB has said that the Pointing aspect of the UA is NOT related to Barnacles. The shell surely IS related to the Pointing.
Not saying that UA and Barnacles are not related, but the Pointing and therefore Red's Shell is not.

There is more to Merope than we have yet discovered (or probably can discover).

 

[ilo]

this is good thinking, but we have been over it before in previous instalments of the threadnought. The problem in this hypothesis (& I personally like it!) is that nothing else has been found in Merope other than the barney on 5C. I believe 6 has a high orbital angle suggesting it may have been captured from elsewhere & is not native to Merope, but that seems to be the only special feature and lots of people have searched the system; and in-system UAs point to the star not planet 6. Of course absence of proof is not proof of absence, but ...

Anyone had a good poke around in Merope since 2.1? (just in case something new has been recently introduced there)

I just did the poke today on the system, not the planets tho.. if there is any change it is in ground level

 

[TheOneWithNoLife]

This might be considered spam, but i just had to post it. I was reading ancient lore about Pleiades. Wanted to see if there is a clue in mythology. So i stumbled upon this jewel:

"The Monache people tell of six wives who loved onions more than their husbands and now live happily in "sky country"". I guess they got high on onion head or something. We should bring some to a barnacle site

 

[Aesculon Phaia]

Someone was asking a few days ago and I forgot to post it; this is a screenshot of CMDR Wobblytickle's original California Nebula Barnacle, taken from about 200km up.

Spoiler

My wake is pointing at the end of the canyon where the barnacle is.

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This might be considered spam, but

In THIS thread? I think you're safe [wacky]

 

[Han_Zen]

This might be considered spam, but i just had to post it. I was reading ancient lore about Pleiades. Wanted to see if there is a clue in mythology. So i stumbled upon this jewel:

"The Monache people tell of six wives who loved onions more than their husbands and now live happily in "sky country"". I guess they got high on onion head or something. We should bring some to a barnacle site

I didn't find anything about the onion wives in the link, but I see that the Monos are into acorns. Both barnacles and Elite comes with an acorn flavor. People linked to onions, acorns and the Pleiades will always have a place in this thread.

Here is the legend, by the way: http://www.uexpress.com/tell-me-a-story/2014/8/24/the-wild-onion-wives-a-monache

The six wives and a little girl = Pleiades

The six husbands that tried to follow = Taurus

Nice story.

 

[Tomtom]

Thing is, the planets in Pleiades and California we've been finding them on all fit a particular mold. Just my opinion again, but Merope and Pleione don't fit that mold nicely. Disregarding them doesn't really impact the fairly good idea of what sort of planets barnacles will spawn on anyway. We don't have enough to planets to form a statistically significant sample space to rule out Merope and Pleione either.

Putting Pleione aside for a moment, the fact that Merope doesn't fit the barnacle-spawning mold does make some sense. If you recall, back when the first barnacle was found on Merope 5c, Michael did comment something along the lines that it was "one of the harder ones to find." Nobody really knows for sure what he meant by that, but it had been surmised that he was referring to the fact that this may be a hand-placed barnacle rather than a PG one. This also fits beautifully into a theory that I've had floating around my head for a while.

I have one other teensy thing that nobody seems to have latched onto. It is mere speculation, but I think that Michael may have been dropping a cryptic clue when he confirmed that some barnacles are PG and some are hand placed: I suspect that the "hands" he was referring to may not necessarily have been human ones...

(anybody got a spare tin foil hat I can borrow?)

 

[LordZoltan]

It seems to me that regardless of the fact that the UAs don't point to Merope *because* of the Barnacles (as has been clarified/intimated a few times now); it was always going to be more likely that the Merope 5C barnie would be found early, if not first - because Merope is indicated as a singular system of interest by the UAs.

But the secondary effect of that is to call out the Pleiades also of course,

I wholeheartedly agree with Domm that the reason for this pointing behaviour is as yet undiscovered or undiscoverable. Bit concerned about it now in fact. Still, won't keep me away from the Pleiades.

Also, it's great that the California Nebula has finally given up a couple of Barnacles. For me, this is enough to say that the UAs and Barnacles are i extricably linked somehow, I'm just not convinced that they're 'the same'.

 

[ilo]

one last tinfoil-ed question.. how much true could we say about barnacles only appearing on nebulae? one thing is 'it is a great place to hide things', another is, 'it is the only place to do'. I guess no one looked enough for barnacles in the bubble. What if..

 

[Dommarraa]

one last tinfoil-ed question.. how much true could we say about barnacles only appearing on nebulae? one thing is 'it is a great place to hide things', another is, 'it is the only place to do'. I guess no one looked enough for barnacles in the bubble. What if..

I think the original concept was that Barnacles are filter feeders, and feed of Nebula gas. This may be horse-hooey.
They may not ONLY appear near Nebula (many of the current ones are not in the visible gas cloud), but they are associated with nebula as discussed with MB.

 

[CookieJarviz]

one last tinfoil-ed question.. how much true could we say about barnacles only appearing on nebulae? one thing is 'it is a great place to hide things', another is, 'it is the only place to do'. I guess no one looked enough for barnacles in the bubble. What if..

I just question why the UA is poitning at Merope. Like. WHY? I mean I dont think it makes sense. I think were missing a peace of the puzzle... but what? Maybe we ALL need to find an unknown probe. or at least help look for one.

 

[Dommarraa]

I just question why the UA is poitning at Merope. Like. WHY? I mean I dont think it makes sense. I think were missing a peace of the puzzle... but what? Maybe we ALL need to find an unknown probe. or at least help look for one.

What would you suggest is the best way to look for them that is more valuable than what people are doing now ? The rest of us have zero clue.
I am carring a cargo scanner, so I can check every Convoy I see.