Solving the Jaques Mystery

MadDogMurdock · Jul 29, 2016

Yes, Jaques was found but not the way FD intended.

Buried in local news feeds are messages like this:

Fusang Herald and Ngolibardu Herald - 24 June

Wendigo Herald - 24 June

Edenapel Herald (and Kala) - 24 June

When Cmdr Cly figured out how to find Jaques using the Galaxy Map, he went there and found a whole bunch of log entries in the Jaques system Herald:

Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 Herald - 03 June

Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 Herald - 07 June

Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 Herald - 13 June

Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 Herald - 16 June

Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 Herald - 21 June

Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 Herald - 24 June

We can see how the Fusang Herald item from 24 June matches the 13 June Jaques Herald item:

The start of the second paragraph is the garbled message fragment:
....y...hope ......one ...piece ...all...gether ...help
'My only hope is that someone can piece all this together and send help.'

How does the rest of the Fusang message either help to reconstruct that message or provide some other clue?

0:5:7,1,1:9,1,1,1,2,1:9,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1:9,1,1,7,5,3,6,1,
5,3:9,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1:9,1,1,1,2,1:9,1,1:7,1,1,1,1:5,1,1:1,
1,1:,1,1:1,1,1,1:1:1,1,1:0:1:0:1:0

The Wendigo Herald message matches the 3 June Jacques Herald message:
Artefact ...Threw me...witch space...No idea...ong I was....time..fluctu...ent...ture all togeth...remember...ferent syst...only for....sec. n..bul..one...then gone....sing...Artefacts...find you.
The Artefacts caused some kind of overload in my engines, threw me into witch space. I've no idea how long I was in there, time seemed to fluctuate. Past, present, future...all mingling together. I remember appearing in different systems, but only for a few seconds. Nebulas, blackholes...there one minute then gone. Logs storing key location data. They sing, the artefacts. I thought that was some crack pot ranting, but when you're out there they sing and then they find you.

How does the Wendigo Hex code provide a clue?

8017A: D5767: 22E871: 10326: 7EC5: 53B5DCDD3E:
6D8D3174E05: 2559100C4E9: 2A999C30062:
444F6C265D6: 5CC1E80C397: 2144681647E2

Why look at a mystery that has already been solved?
To get an idea of just how hard FD make it to locate a system that could be anywhere in the galaxy.
We have the answer to the mystery - we know the clues are hidden in the local news - let's figure out the chain of clues and how they give us the answer.

If you want to help, please look at the local news from the start of June at every station you go to and post any entries similar to the Fusang Herald one.
Please post a screenshot of the news item and the distance of the system to Jacques in Eol Prou RS-T d3-94

I don't know if the 'System Herald' is FD's consistent news outlet for mysterious signals but if it is then that will be a clue that this news item is more interesting than the usual stuff.

System Map:

B1rdy · Jul 31, 2016

Very interesting find. The trouble is, how can we know if we have all clues?

Keybuk · Jul 31, 2016

My guess is that it's exactly what the original text of the message said... the system map, in a weird encoded form.

There are 6 gas giants in Eol Prou RS-T d3-94, and there are 6 occurrences of ":9,..." in the text. Prior and after the 6 gas giants are planets, and you have a ":7,,," either side of the 9s. Everything else could be descriptions of the moons, the belt, and noise.

B1rdy · Jul 31, 2016

Since he didn't know where he is, he could only describe the system. But how can we possible find the system with this information alone?

TiberiuS · Jul 31, 2016

Nice compilation of the different clues.

And still interesing if we can decode the message, now that we know the answer.

MadDogMurdock · Jul 31, 2016

TiberiuS said:
Nice compilation of the different clues.

And still interesing if we can decode the message, now that we know the answer.

The point is we don't have all the clues - the Fusang Herald is only one of them.
I'm thinking that there's not quite enough in the full logs to find Jaques although the system references do get more specific as you go through.

The question is - is the numbering there only to help fill in the gaps in the text or does it contain extra information.
Finding more of the garbled messages would help.

B1rdy · Jul 31, 2016

The coordinates of Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 are: -9,530 : -911 : 19,810
Jaques describes his location:

My current location is on the edge of a purple gas giants, six in total I think and Im orbiting the smalles one, from what I can tell.

And we obviously have a delay of 11 days for the messages to appear in local news in the "bubble".

MadDogMurdock · Jul 31, 2016

B1rdy said:
The coordinates of Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 are: -9,530 : -911 : 19,810
Jaques describes his location:

The trouble with that location description is that you'd never be able to identify a system with that clue.
You'd only know that by being there.

B1rdy · Jul 31, 2016

Right.
If both messages (13th and 24th June) are identical. Why are there numbers in the message received on 24th?

MadDogMurdock · Jul 31, 2016

B1rdy said:
Right.
If both messages (13th and 24th June) are identical. Why are there numbers in the message received on 24th?

The numbers are the clues. They either help to fill in the message or give clues to the location.

Based on the full log messages, the only clues that would help to search for Jaques are:
- edge of a 'purple' nebula
- F-class star

Parts of the system name seem to be hidden in that last message but I'm not sure how you'd reassemble it.

The 16 June entry says that a system map is attached to all of the messages, maybe that's what the numbering is.

MadDogMurdock · Jul 31, 2016

Keybuk said:
My guess is that it's exactly what the original text of the message said... the system map, in a weird encoded form.

There are 6 gas giants in Eol Prou RS-T d3-94, and there are 6 occurrences of ":9,..." in the text. Prior and after the 6 gas giants are planets, and you have a ":7,,," either side of the 9s. Everything else could be descriptions of the moons, the belt, and noise.

Good place to start but how does a system map help to find Jaques?

SheepDip82 · Aug 1, 2016

*bump*

Think this thread deserves a bit more attention.

Might seem fruitless to solve, but really think it could help with other mysteries.

Stumped, myself!

nosscar · Aug 1, 2016

Does this somehow tie in with the UP message, maybe we were supposed to find the UP first, and the image in the message was picked up from Jaques and relayed to us in the bubble via the UP, maybe this was it's purpose in the first place.
Does the circle and symbols in any way relate to where Jaques is now.

dynamicbob · Aug 1, 2016

weve covered this on the main thread in depth, still no concrete middle ground yet, for now we are working on the 2 CGs, some barnacle hunting and dss scanning as well as mining and selling as many metals and minerals for background simulation and Fdev metric reasons.

knowles2 · Aug 1, 2016

B1rdy said:
Since he didn't know where he is, he could only describe the system. But how can we possible find the system with this information alone?

We also know from clues that he was in a purple nebula with a F type star, that narrow down the search area substantially.

The numbers are probably some other clue to narrow down the area of the galaxy, there a fair few nebulae which contain F-type star, but personally I would have just chosen a purple nebula with a F type star and started my search there.

Cosmos · Aug 1, 2016

Sometimes it feels like we need to be Alan Turing to play this game.. lol

MadDogMurdock · Aug 1, 2016

B1rdy said:
The coordinates of Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 are: -9,530 : -911 : 19,810
Jaques describes his location:

And we obviously have a delay of 11 days for the messages to appear in local news in the "bubble".

I'm wondering if the delay could somehow be used to triangulate his position or at least figure out a rough distance.
More garbled Herald messages needed for that though.

Without more of those messages, there's not much to work on - check Local News please.
I've noticed that boring news is only retained for about a month, but Herald items stay for longer than that.

So, if nothing else comes out of this, I think we've figured out which news channel is interesting in local news.

B1rdy · Aug 1, 2016

Checked Goldstein Port, Lembava ->nothing regarding Jaques in that time frame.

TiberiuS · Aug 1, 2016

MadDogMurdock said:
I'm wondering if the delay could somehow be used to triangulate his position or at least figure out a rough distance.
More garbled Herald messages needed for that though.

Without more of those messages, there's not much to work on - check Local News please.
I've noticed that boring news is only retained for about a month, but Herald items stay for longer than that.

So, if nothing else comes out of this, I think we've figured out which news channel is interesting in local news.

11 days delay is odd.
For waves at light speed that's of course too short by far.
How does he send messages to the bubble anyway? Do we know about hyperspace/subspace communication in Elite lore?

B1rdy · Aug 1, 2016

Since in-game time = real time, the message would take longer than actually flying by spaceship. That doesn't make sense.