On a different note, does anyone have a timeline for which sectors started permit locked, and which ones gained a permit lock/we noticed it/it was bugfixed to be locked?
I am wondering if there is a pattern to the locks; if we can tease some new insights out of our known unknowns...
So, I was under the impression that *before* a bunch of the permit lock regions disappeared (can't remember which patch it happened in, maybe Wings?), the Barnard's Loop sector (as well as Horsehead Nebula) were permit-locked. Barnard's loop sector isn't permit locked anymore.
Unfortunately my google-fu is weakened by the fact that every man and his dog talks about "Barnard's Loop Region Permit Lock" these days :/
Just curious also, are there any systems where Barnacles have been found besides Merope/Pleione that actually reside inside a nebula, or have they all been "around" the nebula? Just because the bunch of sectors permit-locked around Barnard's loop would be good candidates for searching for barnacles there... although I think not everything is permit locked around BL?
Also still running with the idea that Merope/Pleione are outliers to what we're looking for. Could just be confirmation bias but the things that don't fit to-date are:
- Merope or Pleione / Not Merope or Pleione
- Inside Nebula / Not Inside Nebula
- Variable Rock+Metal content / 66% Metal 33% Rock +/- 1%
- Volcanism / No Volcanism (I *could* be wrong on that one, don't have all info)
- MB said these were harder to find / MB didn't say anything about these^
Other stats are variable. This doesn't rule out confirmation bias... we're having luck finding them in out-of-nebula planets with those stats, so we keep doing it. If someone found a barnacle literally *inside* the Witch Head / California nebula (not just the sector) it's one strike against the idea that these aren't part of the typical model. I get the feeling by discovering the Merope/Pleione ones first, we applied our own confirmation bias and defined search criteria that fit them. But now they aren't starting to fit the rest of the pattern.
Unfortunately I'm not the one to look for them as frankly ^ the difficulty of finding a barnacle to begin with, which was literally just fly around til you stumble on them, and therefore equal for all barnacles. The fact it was mentioned the Merope one was a "harder to find" one doesn't sit right one bit with me.