UAs, Barnacles & other mysteries Thread 7 - The Canonn

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I hope you all are joking: any shell 135-150 ly around Merope 5c is the same to that around Merope, people.
But I think you are joking, aren't you?

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NO it doesn't scan ships.

I never said a hypothetical shell around Merope 5C was 135-150 ly around Merope 5c, that'd be stupid. I mean there may be signal sources around Merope 5C which contain UP freefloaters, that's all.
 
So I was randomly thinking about the names: Unknown [Artifact, Probe]. It's unknown from our perspective. But artifact implies something that was lost and then found, probe implies something looking.

So possibly the artifacts were lost by some civilization, maybe a transport gone awry. That began telegraphing information regarding their location and surroundings. That implies that the probes are here to look for them and they may well be transmitting data in preparation for whatever will be sent to retrieve them.

Alternatively the UA's were traveling away from Merope to announce the barnacles were ready to be harvested, Astropithicus come along and muck things up, so they send probes to see what's going on. Astropithicus once again mucks things up so ....

Admittedly not very interesting conjecture since it doesn't lead anywhere obvious.
 
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Hi guys ... just wanted to check something. So a while back someone asked a question of FD concerning whether the next bit of the story was already in the game or whether they had yet to put it in. Michael Brookes responded that it was already there. My question is, was this before or after the UP's were found. Because if it was before then it seems entirely possible that the UP's were the thing that was already in the game and that there may not be anything else to be found at the moment.
 
Hi guys ... just wanted to check something. So a while back someone asked a question of FD concerning whether the next bit of the story was already in the game or whether they had yet to put it in. Michael Brookes responded that it was already there. My question is, was this before or after the UP's were found. Because if it was before then it seems entirely possible that the UP's were the thing that was already in the game and that there may not be anything else to be found at the moment.

I think it was before UPs were found but not before they were known to exist (Illegal Commodity). So I think there are still things yet to be found with the UP.
 
Here's my thoughts about the Unknown Probe and all this.

Firstly, I think the best analogy is that if the Unknown Artifact is the flower, then the Unknown Probe is the fruit. The smaller end of the Unknown Probe looks to be roughly the same size at the head of the UA while the back half is larger and more swollen looking. Somehow a UA gets "fertilised" and becomes a UP, possibly? Indeed, the back end of the UA with the stalk and the pods coming off it could well be the pollen and the petals respectively. This may also explain why the UP doesn't appear to send images of your ship or the name of the place it is in, because it doesn't need to attract whatever fertilised it because it's already been fertilised. Instead it might need to be planted somewhere. Has anyone tried dropping it onto a planet surface?

Secondly, I tried listening to it. There was a cycle of short and long "blurb" noises in between two metallic "screech" noised. Morse code maybe? I came up with KCKUK from the video.

Thirdly, barnacles in Witch Head, barnacles in Pleiades, and barnacles in California make a triangle which points straight at the Soul Nebula. I think that may be a place worthy of investigation.
 
I said this back during the original Barnacle Hunt and it seems it may be time to say it again: If you are getting burned out or tired of searching, go do something else for a while. This is indeed a monumental task, but as with anything, moderation is key. Take a day off, or a few. You don't have to be the first to discover something new. This isn't a good way to get external validation. We will all be able to put more effort in and achieve more if we DON'T do marathon sessions. Sometimes all you need is a little time off to feel inspired and motivated to get back out there and put wheels on the ground. Even if it is the same grey, featureless ground you were looking at a day ago.
 
Is it worth checking near orbit on merope 5c as we do when hunting mission uss for things (the blue ones) ?

I think it is. I'll eat a sock if there aren't any UP freefloaters to be found in-game.

I said this back during the original Barnacle Hunt and it seems it may be time to say it again: If you are getting burned out or tired of searching, go do something else for a while. This is indeed a monumental task, but as with anything, moderation is key. Take a day off, or a few. You don't have to be the first to discover something new. This isn't a good way to get external validation. We will all be able to put more effort in and achieve more if we DON'T do marathon sessions. Sometimes all you need is a little time off to feel inspired and motivated to get back out there and put wheels on the ground. Even if it is the same grey, featureless ground you were looking at a day ago.

Great tip, can't rep though. Guys, hasn't it ever happened to you that you've been working on a problem for 8 hours without succeeding in finding an answer, then you suddenly have an urge to pee and while you're letting your fluids go out of your body you have this eureka moment? It happens to me all the time while coding.
 
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So I've started my Linear search at the -90 pole.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qJi6r5jiFt8GHyRnr6OnnagJyX0BSJfhFTb4gprw2os

The first thing I've noticed is that the bearings are messed up, even away from the pole itself.

Flying towards heading 0 which I thought would be North decreases latitude all the way to -90 which I think of as the South pole.
Flying towards heading 90 which I thought would be East decreases longitude from 0 to -180 which I think of as West.

Am I going nuts?
 
Here's my thoughts about the Unknown Probe and all this.

Firstly, I think the best analogy is that if the Unknown Artifact is the flower, then the Unknown Probe is the fruit. The smaller end of the Unknown Probe looks to be roughly the same size at the head of the UA while the back half is larger and more swollen looking. Somehow a UA gets "fertilised" and becomes a UP, possibly? Indeed, the back end of the UA with the stalk and the pods coming off it could well be the pollen and the petals respectively. This may also explain why the UP doesn't appear to send images of your ship or the name of the place it is in, because it doesn't need to attract whatever fertilised it because it's already been fertilised. Instead it might need to be planted somewhere. Has anyone tried dropping it onto a planet surface?

Secondly, I tried listening to it. There was a cycle of short and long "blurb" noises in between two metallic "screech" noised. Morse code maybe? I came up with KCKUK from the video.

Thirdly, barnacles in Witch Head, barnacles in Pleiades, and barnacles in California make a triangle which points straight at the Soul Nebula. I think that may be a place worthy of investigation.

We dropped it onto the surface of Merope 5c. Nothing special happened. It was twitching for me, but not for Bungalo who dropped it. I think that was due to instancing issues - we had some on the planet were some people couldn't see the other.

Here's the video:

[video=youtube;D2uiUuVWLZU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2uiUuVWLZU[/video]
 
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Merope 5c has a radius of 1478km. If my math skills have not deserted me, this means a diameter of 2956 km, so a pole-to-pole route would be 2956 * Pi/2 km or about 4643 km long. The top speed of an SRV is about 35 m/s, so this would take about 1.5 days of round-the-clock driving time if we can keep top speed all the time. If we hit rough terrain (and Merope 5C has a lot of that), the speed will be lower. My gut guess is that the average speed is maybe a third of the top speed, so we are talking about 4.5 days. However, there is one show-stopper: At the equator, you would have a distance of 2956 km * PI / 36 = 258 km between SRVs, so we would miss stuff.

My estimate is that the scanner has a range of maybe 1 km. To ensure that we really cover everything, we need to place the SRVs 1 km apart at the equator, and then all drive to the pole, return to the equator, and repeat the procedure for the second half. We only need about 9300 commanders for this.

Piece of cake.

Instead of doing following longitude lines you'd be better able to keep your vehicles the same distance apart by following latitude lines. SRV's could be 2kms apart, so you'd only need 2321 commanders. And, since those nearest the poles would finish first, you can have them move down to the next lower latitude to join the commander below them, shortening their time, so it should take a lot less than the 9 days it would take to circumnavigate the equator.
 
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