UAs, Barnacles & other mysteries Thread 7 - The Canonn

[Iridium Nova]

Now that's an impressive spreadsheet :O

Impressively cumbersome in my opinion. I wish there was a way to change the actual headers on the columns and rows. When you scroll the spreadsheet it can become confusing because you see the spreadsheet's column/row headers instead of the ones relative to the planet. The only way I've found to work around this if you're mapping the southeastern sections of the planet is to click the header for your first coordinate, then ctrl-click the header for your second coordinate and scroll to where they meet.

We really need a better system. Man, how cool would it be if we could actually use the in-game planetary maps to do this?

 

[RonkerZ]

I have made my Merope 5C map editable by anyone,

Good initiative, just be aware of people who sabotage google sheets, it has been happened before and I got banned because of sharing a link that got sabotaged afterwards.
[h=1][/h]

 

[Saool]

Because everyone is a volunteer it can be hard to get assistance with a theory. There's really no way around that. All you can do is prove it yourself or propose some sort of organised approach and hope you can inspire some other people to join in. This is often most effective if you set up a spreadsheet for data collection and start collecting yourself first. If you're looking to the Canonn council to help organise something the best plan would be to put together a proposal and then contact someone prominent such as Lord Zoltan, Patau82, or Rizal. Obviously we're more likely to get excited about a proposal from a Canonn member, but who knows...

As for feedback, In your case I think you're not getting a lot of feedback because (IMO) your theory is reasonable and not really disprovable as far as I can see. Personally I don't find it particularly compelling simply because I have yet to see any evidence that barnacles are spreading versus simply being discovered for the first time, but that's just me being skeptical really.

Just going to put this out there then... Yesterday I went to Pleiades Sector JC-U B3-2 2, 49.5347, 102.0792 as it was mentioned you can get Yttrium from it. When I got there it was already mined. However there was a second Barnacle about 1km or so away. This one was not mined.

I don't know if this was the twin spawn bug but it did not look like the screen shots I have seen. They were quite distinctly separate, but close by to one another.

Unfortunately I did not get a screen shot as I thought nothing of it at the time.


EDIT: for clarity, both were targetable.

 

[CMDR Random]

I have made my Merope 5C map editable by anyone, so you can add your survey results to it by coloring the squares you search as follows:

Green - Barnacle Present (confirmed)
Red - Ground Search Conducted
Blue - Aerial Search Conducted
Purple - Both Ground and Air searches have been done here
Number - number of searches that have been performed here
Name - for green squares, the name of the commander who discovered the Barnacle

So for your first flyover you'd make the coordinate blue and put a 1 there. If someone else also visits there (either becuase they are verifying your survey or just didnt know someone else was already there, they add 1 to the number, so it'd be 2). Red and Blue make purple, so where there have been both aerial and ground searches the color should be indicative of that.

If you find a Barnacle, make it green and put your name on the square (might not fit, but we'll deal with that when the time comes). If you find something else, something that's not ordinary that is, well we can jump off that bridge when we come to it. Maybe a nice Teal? Or orange?

Might be worth making it a few sheets rather than 1 since at the moment it is a bit unwieldy when trying to find coordinates.

 

[TheOneWithNoLife]

I personally believe that we will find a crashed alien ship in Merope 5C. Maybe the barns caused it to crash just as the anacondas. Maybe it brought the barns to the nebula. Though MB(Megabyte i guess) said that UAs don't point to merope because of the barns. Well I guess its all just speculation until someone actually find something. That said... Happy hunting to everyone at 5C. I will join a couple of hours later to help with the search.

 

[Patau82]

Just going to put this out there then... Yesterday I went to Pleiades Sector JC-U b3-2 2, 49.5347, 102.0792 as it was mentioned you can get Yttrium from it. When I got there it was already mined. However there was a second Barnacle about 1km or so away. This one was not mined.

I don't know if this was the twin spawn bug but it did not look like the screen shots I have seen. They were quite distinctly separate, but close by to one another.

Unfortunately I did not get a screen shot as I thought nothing of it at the time.

there should be a total of 5 barnacles in that area

 

[Iridium Nova]

Good initiative, just be aware of people who sabotage google sheets, it has been happened before and I got banned because of sharing a link that got sabotaged afterwards.

Yeah, this concerns me as well. I just dont want to make it even more difficult for people to use it. In the past I used a system where you'd have to submit your reports via the commenting system and then I'd add them to the map when I read them. It puts more work on me, but it might be safer.

Might be worth making it a few sheets rather than 1 since at the moment it is a bit unwieldy when trying to find coordinates.

That is a good idea. I'll see about how I might implement that.

 

[Omategomatete]

We really need a better system. Man, how cool would it be if we could actually use the in-game planetary maps to do this?

I agree, currently planetary maps are good for nothing, they are just balls we can rotate and they all look the same. However I'm sure FD has something planned for them.

 

[Bungalo]

I try to keep up and stay active in this thread and mostly my theories are ignored. Im cool with that, most of them are bogus anyway haha. It just seems you guys are pretty set on what you believe and how you do things, and don't like ideas that conflict with your own. This way of thinking has you chasing your own tails and missing obvious in game and forum hints.

The whole mystery has gone from being a community driven event to a Canon driven event. The story has multiple paths it could potentially go down, but it is no longer in the hands of the community as a whole.

You share only specific information, that which you find to be relevant. Try requesting details on a specific test and I am ignored or told to not bother pursuing that line of thought for no other reason than it is unlikely. Someone comes up with a theory or a test to try that hasnt been done and does not personally have the ability to do it themselves. You would think there would be someone here that would say "actually i am pretty sick of flying around staring down at dirt, maybe I will try that". Instead the person with the idea has to either try it themselves or forget about it, potentially missing a key piece of the puzzle in the process. With the most prolific group using these methods it sends a poor message to the rest of the community on what is important and what to do with specific items.

So people end up shooting things or repeating irrelevant tests over and over trying to get different results, then scratching their heads when they cant work out what's going on. And they call it science.

We are missing out and going to miss out on really cool stuff because of a Neanderthal approach to science. We also have no chance of changing things now because the the people who promote this approach have gained too much publicity. This irritates me greatly, for I feel like a huge choice has been made for everyone, but not everyone gets a say in the final outcome. One of my favorite things about this game is the incredible amount of choices a player has, and I dont want someone else making them for me.

I just have one request to the powers that be. If possible, please make it so that any consequences for the atrocities committed to the barnacles are relevant to each CMDR. I know I am not the only one who has treated the barnacles humanely, observing and recording rather than and destroying. Myself and those similar should not be punished for crimes committed by others. It wont surprise me if all humans are targeted. I understand the barnacles are sentient but I don't know if they are smart enough to distinguish one hairless ape from another, or if they will even care...

If that's the case then let me sign up to offer my services to the barnacles now. If I am given the choice I will join with the barnacles, I will help them eradicate humanity. Our species has gone too far this time and I am ashamed...

Lets start at the beginning. Ecthelion is not a member of the Canonn. Patua and I and certainly many of the commanders involved are but that's because, surprise, we were the ones putting in the time to get an UP. I know Canonn Commanders who have stayed up for days straight trying to find a convoy. There is no magic "Omg im canonnz lolz" that means we get a probe. It means we put in the time and worked together to get it, no dev handed Pat his UP.

As far as sharing information I have bent over backward to give people the SPECIFICS of what we tested and what we found. Ecthelion has posted all the videos we have and I've tried to explain to everyone involved what we tested, where, why, and what the results were. Those tests were cut short thanks to a UP recovery glitch with the SRV but in THIS thread I have posted literally everything I know. In fact I was reading this thread to try to answer any questions that had popped up when I stumbled across your post.

If there is legitimately anything I can do to help out more so than I am let me know. I am trying to share what we found with the UP with everyone as they are rare enough as is.

EDIT: And, after catching up, I'm sorry if I am over reacting a bit too. I am sincere in doing whatever I can to share. I know you weren't targeting me but I get a bit defensive of the Canonn as a whole. I have removed the last sentence as it served no purpose and was my emotional response. I realize some of the post remains a bit "cutting" as I am only targeting part of what you said. I'm leaving this up because I feel its very important to understand (at least as far as the UP goes) that I as a Canonneer have tried my very best to share everything. I hate it when groups hold onto information or don't share as the community is poorer for it.

Part of where this stems from is I've seen Lord Zoltan take slack because of some supposed "special treatment" the Canonn is getting. He had to bend over backward to get what he did, everything he did was things ANY other player group has available to them. FD has never offered us anything special, nor should they have.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Impressively cumbersome in my opinion. I wish there was a way to change the actual headers on the columns and rows. When you scroll the spreadsheet it can become confusing because you see the spreadsheet's column/row headers instead of the ones relative to the planet. The only way I've found to work around this if you're mapping the southeastern sections of the planet is to click the header for your first coordinate, then ctrl-click the header for your second coordinate and scroll to where they meet.

We really need a better system. Man, how cool would it be if we could actually use the in-game planetary maps to do this?

I've locked the first row and column so that the coordinates are always visible.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

It would be beyond helpful if the previous states of barnacles were still available, so far I have been relying on myself checking and rechecking barnacles and it is a long process for one CMDR. Although I have only a small test group of them to go by so far these are my findings;

Previously "destroyed" barnacles are now in a "ripe" productive state. (suggests regeneration, previously I thought they would die completely but I admit I was wrong there)
Some previously ripe barnacles are still ripe (suggests renewable harvesting practices, not so much traffic etc.)
Some previously ripe barnacles are destroyed (suggests      harvest, too many harvests etc.)
The only one double barnacle I went to was previously ripe, now destroyed. (again suggests too much harvesting)
I have not been able to find a previously ripe barnaclethat is now in a double (reproduction?) state. (too much harvesting? Needs more data for thus)

Nothing concrete and still mostly speculation but to me there it seems there are obvious states the barnacle can be in, and player interaction is what decides the state. I obviously need more evidence to claim this as fact and I will endeavor to get it when I can.

Edit: Correction for above, (some?) previously destroyed barnies are ripe now, but have defenses. Not sure if this is always the case, but I did take note of it at least one site I can recall off the top of my head

Just a couple of thoughts- as LZ said you may have thought of a very difficult experiment to do as Canonn should respect it but some griefers might take pleasure in spoiling it for you. Defences may put some off harvesting, but not all by any means.

However I would have thought if the MA seed pods are ripening naturally rather than being harvested then the secondary spikes are likely to remain intact.

Someone posted on thread 6 about a week ago a video of a pod dropping off with a loud crack with no visible cause. May have been the visual effect of being harvested in a separate instance? or may be the natural process?

 

[Iridium Nova]

I've locked the first row and column so that the coordinates are always visible.

Thanks! I can't believe I didn't think of that. I was looking all over the damn thing for something that would let me do that and couldn't find it. This will make the spreadsheet easier to use I think.

I did do the math on breaking it down into multiple maps, and it is possible to do by breaking the planet up into 36 sectors, each with their own map. I could then have a "big map" with links to each sector's map. It would make the whole thing alot easier to manage, I think. But it will be alot of work for me, and if the rows and columns are locked now we may not need to do that. Let's see how this works for now, and if necessary then I can put the time into making a sector-based map system.

 

[RonkerZ]

Let me know if you need help, I have experience with google spreadsheets.

 

[Bungalo]

RonkerZ in response to your questions:

• Does the cargo bay get damaged when carrying an UP? A: Yes unless you have a corrosion resistant cargo rack. Possible 8 meta alloys may work as text from the fed convoy seems to imply that is why their ship isnt taking damage.
• What is the behavior of the UP near an UA? A: Nothing special as far as I could tell, Ecthelion has a video of it posted
• What happens if you drop both UP and UA near the intact/not intact barnacles? A: I would love to know that to, the UP sadly glitched out upon scooping it with my SRV before we could take it to a barnacle
• Is there morsecode? A: Ask Rizal
• What about the meta alloys, does the UP interact with (uncanistered) Meta Alloys? A: See the answe to 1 as thats all I know for sure on that side. I only had a UA and a UP in the hold together, no MAs im afraid
• Has the UP been scanned with different types of scan or weapons? A: I didn't scan it with my SRV before the glitch
• Does the UP point to 1 direction, on the surface of 5C? A: It seemed to but this is very anecdotal on my part.
• Does the UP point to a different direction if it is taken far away from merope? A: In merope it points one direction despite where it is, we did not test it in other sites in the pleaides but I think that would be interesting to see. Possible something to test after we test it at a barnacle as the UPs are buggy
• The UA points to Merope, UP points to 5C, Is there another alien object that will help us find an specific location? A: I bet we will find out SoonTM

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Yeah, I agree. Thing is, when I made this mapping system back in January I did it based on the fact that those grid squares are huge. If you're flying about 2km up and you're in the middle of your current coordinate space, you can see the entire 1x1 grid space, but just barely. And you may not be able to see things in mountains and craters. Even at my 1x1 scale, it's incredibly easy to miss something. Add to that the fact that the barnacles are almost impossible to see, even if you're only 1km up and directly overhead and I came to the realization that even though my 1x1 scale map was cumbersome and way too big for a single screen, even that probably wasn't detailed enough to be accurate.

Ideally, the search will have commanders spaced out liberally across the planet. The map only aids in telling us which spaces have already been searched so that we can direct our searches away from the others. Your map and mine both accomplish the same thing, yours just does it on a single screen, which is at least easier to read at this stage.

As I discovered later, the SRV wave scanner has quite a great range compared to the human eye (or monitor), and can detect Barnacles from over 2km away if you know what to listen for.

But that doesn't help that much, we're still talking about searching an entire planet here. No matter how we organize this, it's going to be cumbersome. This may actually be the first time in history humans have done an exhaustive search of an entire planet. Even though it's all a game, we're still dealing with realistically scaled planets. It's not like trying to find a baseball in the neighbor's overgrown back yard.

The methods we come up with for doing this may end up being the basis for actual planetary search operations years from now. To think...

I suspect the objective of this search is not to find an RNG POI or a Barnacle but a Permanent POI. Do PPOI now show in the ship's scanner, or still not? I was thinking that it could be more efficient for people to do an aerial survey at 2.5 km & take screenshots of POI showing the coordinates, then a separate team could land & do the detailed investigation of each POI circle. Obviously not viable if PPOI don't show on the ship's scanner.

And a very simple thought - I assume there is still no navigation satellite in Merope that could be interrogated to find a search area as occurs in some missions?

 

[Patau82]

maybe this cmdr can help with setting up a mapping tool?

There are already a number of nice location/data tools around (like CMDR Entim's), but I've produced another (simple) one just to assist with navigating on planetary surfaces:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/99992395/EliteTools/PlanetaryCartographics.html

It sort-of replicates the planetary view from the system view map. The drop-down selects the planet to view, and it will show data and populate the sphere with known locations. The provided data file is just of confirmed Pleiades barnacle/crash sites so far from NetSlayer's spreadsheet. It's also easy to swap out the json data for other planetary data collections.

The most useful part is the navigation assistance. You can target points-of-interest on the locale tab (or click on their icons on the sphere) and/or enter free-hand way-points (which will all be visualised on the sphere) and then the bearing to travel between these points will be calculated.

---

I came across some old software-rendering stuff I did many years ago when the HTML Canvas control was new, had the idea, and then I kind of got carried away. It's was put together relatively quickly, so there are probably a number of bugs to be sorted out still. I haven't tested it on all browsers yet either, but I know the sphere rotating/zooming doesn't work properly on mobile Firefox.

 

[Saool]

there should be a total of 5 barnacles in that area

Ah cool. It will have been the middle two then. I thought they were solitary things. It was also night at the time and I could only see the faint bio-luminescence.

 

[RonkerZ]

RonkerZ in response to your questions:

• Does the cargo bay get damaged when carrying an UP? A: Yes unless you have a corrosion resistant cargo rack. Possible 8 meta alloys may work as text from the fed convoy seems to imply that is why their ship isnt taking damage.
• What is the behavior of the UP near an UA? A: Nothing special as far as I could tell, Ecthelion has a video of it posted
• What happens if you drop both UP and UA near the intact/not intact barnacles? A: I would love to know that to, the UP sadly glitched out upon scooping it with my SRV before we could take it to a barnacle
• Is there morsecode? A: Ask Rizal
• What about the meta alloys, does the UP interact with (uncanistered) Meta Alloys? A: See the answe to 1 as thats all I know for sure on that side. I only had a UA and a UP in the hold together, no MAs im afraid
• Has the UP been scanned with different types of scan or weapons? A: I didn't scan it with my SRV before the glitch
• Does the UP point to 1 direction, on the surface of 5C? A: It seemed to but this is very anecdotal on my part.
• Does the UP point to a different direction if it is taken far away from merope? A: In merope it points one direction despite where it is, we did not test it in other sites in the pleaides but I think that would be interesting to see. Possible something to test after we test it at a barnacle as the UPs are buggy
• The UA points to Merope, UP points to 5C, Is there another alien object that will help us find an specific location? A: I bet we will find out SoonTM

Thanks for the reply, I can sleep again

 

[CMDR Random]

Finding new barnacles on Merope 5c now. Picture added. -28.2450, -109.5219 http://i.imgur.com/KrdN0bH.jpg

This barnacle needs to be added to the spread sheet (would it be under -109 or -110?)

 

[Iridium Nova]

Let me know if you need help, I have experience with google spreadsheets.

Do you know of a way to zoom a spreadsheet in and out? Seems that might be useful but I doubt it would work.

maybe this cmdr can help with setting up a mapping tool?

That looks immensely useful if we can find a way to add our survey data to it in a detailed fashion.

This barnacle needs to be added to the spread sheet (would it be under -109 or -110?)

I typically round down. I seem to recall being able to find something fairly easily by just going to the general grid coordinate, landing, and then driving around a bit with the srv until the wave scanner picks it up. I'll admit, the exact coordinates are nice to have though. They just don't fit very well in the tiny space the spreadsheet gives for it. I guess it's ok if it spills out of the box a bit. The alternative is to make the spaces so large that the spreadsheet becomes basically useless.