UAs, Barnacles and other mysteries Thread 8 - The Canonn

[Belthize]

In any case, I hope that sharing this might at least encourage everyone to think further outside the box! MB did say that a lot of our assumptions were wrong, so I wanted to see if I could challenge as many of our assumptions as possible and think like the puzzle designers (english sound/music nerds). I still believe that the answer to this puzzle lies in information we already have, and that it doesn't have to do with scouring the surface of any desolate moons or trying to pick out precise angles from this diagram. It's gotta be something simpler that we're just not seeing yet. I'll keep poking around with musical ideas. Good luck cmdrs!

I wish I could get my 82 year old dad interested. I recently ran across some papers of his from back in the 60s or 70s relating music theory to number theory. Thinking back on them they map surprisingly well to what you're proposing. Maybe I can get my brother to look at it, he inherited the music gene in the family (and he plays ED).

 

[Menenhetet]

I've been pondering if we the players have done things in an order FDev didn't expect. I wonder if the original idea of them was to point towards MC5 simply because it had barnacles on it. We find the Artefacts pointing towards Merope and nearby [which is what we are looking for now] there well may have been Probes. We's have found a probe and took it there and gone oo look Barnacles.

But my heads been fuzzy for days and probably have forgotten something that makes the above complete balderdash.

I have also thought this. The sighting of the barnacles came after the UA pointed towards Merope. People went to search the system, finding barnacles. The discovery was rather sudden, not seeming to evolve from a story arc, in retrospect at least. That the probes point to Merope 5c may have been their original, primary purpose. If you recall, the UP did not "wake" until a period of time after it had been found. The UP was, however, already pointing to Merope 5c. I think, perhaps, that the UP was "repurposed" by fDev to give further data than originally planned. After all, within this line of reasoning, why have a story asset put in the field if its primary function has been negated by tenacious Commanders? Why not give it a new job? The UP was given a cryptogram image. The solution is difficult to achieve because the reward would be great. Frontier doesn't reward easily. Look at The mission system. They pay well for long hauls, big kills and big data. They don't give it away, though. There are very simple facts to consider. I don't like to wear the tinfoil.
1. The UP points toward Merope 5c.
2. The UP released a cryptogram.
3. Cryptogram is difficult to solve.
4. More data is needed to solve, unless more can be gleaned from the cryptogram AS IS.
5. The only real data, aside from the shapes, that can be reasonably inferred as correct is the interpretation of the binary symbols.

I think everything should be scaled down to the binary symbols and how they relate to the rest of the image. I will admit that it's beyond my knowledge base, but I do know that science requires very concrete methods which seem to have gone out the window in favor of postulations and conjecture. We must test, observe and record. When that is done, the answer may be screaming at us.

 

[CMDR Ofan]

Maybe it isn't instructions to go somewhere but how it views the system generally.

If the probe is looking at 5c, perhaps the image is something we need to understand rather than decode and is simply an inside view into their language/description method and we are to use it as a rosetta stone on another system down the line.

Perhaps the big circle is 5c and the other glyphs simply represent the neighbourhood, planets, moons orbits, rings etc

Maybe down the line we get another image and then have to use the description of Merope as a key to find it.

After all the morse drawings of our ships were just information dumps without any real purpose, perhaps this is the same

 

[Erid]

But then what does this actually tell us about the information the image is giving us? What does the Image, which was the subject of my comment, decode given this info?

From the looks of things you decoded the green colour of the 'key' text, not the UP image.

You want too many

 

[Allant Doran]

You want too many

I'm afraid I don't follow.

 

[Menenhetet]

Maybe it isn't instructions to go somewhere but how it viewsph the system generally.

If the probe is looking at 5c, perhaps the image is something we need to understand rather than decode and is simply an inside view into their language/description method and we are to use it as a rosetta stone on another system down the line.

Perhaps the big circle is 5c and the other glyphs simply represent the neighbourhood, planets, moons orbits, rings etc

Maybe down the line we get another image and then have to use the description of Merope as a key to find it.

After all the mode drawings of our ships were just information dumps without any real purpose, perhaps this is the same

Now I like this thought! What if the UA is the key to what these things scan? The UA scanned us and gave us a result that turned out to be a rough vectoring of our ships. Armed with that knowledge, we may be seeing what the UP draws when it is looking at Merope 5c. This may only be the next step in learning how they view the galaxy in general. The next bit of data may come by different means and we will have to use our understanding of how they view things to guess WHERE we must turn in order to get to the next step. As I have said before, I think more data is needed.

 

[aelemental]

I've been pondering if we the players have done things in an order FDev didn't expect. I wonder if the original idea of them was to point towards MC5 simply because it had barnacles on it. We find the Artefacts pointing towards Merope and nearby [which is what we are looking for now] there well may have been Probes. We's have found a probe and took it there and gone oo look Barnacles.

But my heads been fuzzy for days and probably have forgotten something that makes the above complete balderdash.

Same here, but i really hope we are wrong

Perhaps one way of testing this is to drop the UP in another system with Barnacles, perhaps in that setting it would point to that planet and create a related image pointing to the POIs on it ? That would suggest their function to be just scanners or planets looking for a specific thing (like all the good probes humans built do ..)..

(i do read the front page every day unfortunately : ) sorry if i missed this experiment)

This is driving me crazy, in a good way, thank you FD!
IMHO this is a game-changer gameplay so far ahead of the classic and the current game puzzles ..
Pulling that puzzle out of the game and into the hands of gamers creating a loop of research between in-game actions and real life concepts (which makes so much sense in a game as realistic as this**. The best social experiment and out-of-game engagement i ever had (and i do play plenty, its my job and passion)

<3

 

[lord_welsh]

GALACTIC POST
Latest news: Since the latest discovery of a message recieved from the mysterious unknown probe
many cmdrs have worked tirelessly to decode the image recieved in the message, Top of the list are the research group called cannon, their members have searched for clues to alien life since the first discovery of the unkown artifacts then the strange barnacles and more recently the unknown probe of which the message was recieved from after being scanned, many theories have been suggested as to what the image in the message means, a recent representative of the cannon group claims that a fellow cannon member has decoded part of the image and also claims the image to be a "Decoder Ring" when asked by a fellow cmdr if the findings would be shared yet his response was "Yeah its not sharing atm. I think hes making sure that everything is 100%." this has led to a backlash of cmdrs demandin proof of the current findings from the cannon representative who recently seems to have dissapeared and has made no further comment..... more to follow








(im jus playing guys dont take it to heart lol)

 

[SpaceWalkerEx]

I dont know if it leads to something useful. But if you do a google image search for 'radar screen', it looks very much like the sound image...

 

[Layne Vakarian]

So as usual feel free to ignore my ramblings (as if you needed my permission )
Still, here's my latest. Given that the UA points to Merope, and the UP to Merope 5c, and gives us a 'picture' with which we've yet to do anything much - apart from science the heck out of it - how about the UP's pointing behaviour being purely to say 'stand here', so to speak. That get anyone's brainbox grinding into gear?

**edit** I should also point out that 'stand here' doesn't necessarily mean on the surface of the planet.

 

[Menenhetet]

GALACTIC POST
Latest news: Since the latest discovery of a message recieved from the mysterious unknown probe
many cmdrs have worked tirelessly to decode the image recieved in the message, Top of the list are the research group called cannon, their members have searched for clues to alien life since the first discovery of the unkown artifacts then the strange barnacles and more recently the unknown probe of which the message was recieved from after being scanned, many theories have been suggested as to what the image in the message means, a recent representative of the cannon group claims that a fellow cannon member has decoded part of the image and also claims the image to be a "Decoder Ring" when asked by a fellow cmdr if the findings would be shared yet his response was "Yeah its not sharing atm. I think hes making sure that everything is 100%." this has led to a backlash of cmdrs demandin proof of the current findings from the cannon representative who recently seems to have dissapeared and has made no further comment..... more to follow








(im jus playing guys dont take it to heart lol)

Hahahahahahahaha right up to the end I was gripping my chair with white knuckles. I'm sure everyone else did the same thing. Cheeky monkey, you. spot on 07

 

[CMDR Ash]

Oh my! I think i'm being followed guys! just tried to activate my system map and got zapped by a beam!

Spoiler

 

[Derthek]

GALACTIC POST
Latest news: Since the latest discovery of a message recieved from the mysterious unknown probe
many cmdrs have worked tirelessly to decode the image recieved in the message, Top of the list are the research group called cannon, their members have searched for clues to alien life since the first discovery of the unkown artifacts then the strange barnacles and more recently the unknown probe of which the message was recieved from after being scanned, many theories have been suggested as to what the image in the message means, a recent representative of the cannon group claims that a fellow cannon member has decoded part of the image and also claims the image to be a "Decoder Ring" when asked by a fellow cmdr if the findings would be shared yet his response was "Yeah its not sharing atm. I think hes making sure that everything is 100%." this has led to a backlash of cmdrs demandin proof of the current findings from the cannon representative who recently seems to have dissapeared and has made no further comment..... more to follow








(im jus playing guys dont take it to heart lol)

I've actually managed to get in contact with the cmdr who claims to have decoded the message and I can say with out a doubt in my mind it's a resounding "eh"

I can see what they did, and why, but it's very open to interpretation.

 

[Seeker]

What if its not trying to tell us where (Merope) but when....didn't DB say winter is coming....

 

[Arguendo]

I've actually managed to get in contact with the cmdr who claims to have decoded the message and I can say with out a doubt in my mind it's a resounding "eh"

I can see what they did, and why, but it's very open to interpretation.

Apparantly I can't rep you again, sorry. Go grab a biscuit instead!

 

[Derthek]

Apparantly I can't rep you again, sorry. Go grab a biscuit instead!

I'm going to wait for Exorian post his findings when he's confident enough in his theory.

 

[LordZoltan]

I've actually managed to get in contact with the cmdr who claims to have decoded the message and I can say with out a doubt in my mind it's a resounding "eh"

I can see what they did, and why, but it's very open to interpretation.

Unsurprising.

"I chopped out this bit and that bit, rotated that and mirrored it three times (because once wasn't enough), divided by 5.67 recurring and threw damp confetti at the screen while playing the noseflute... And it must be right because when I analysed the results, I got what I was looking for."

Of course it's best judged when the final solution is actually published.

For now, though, it's YARDS^*

* yet another rumoured definite solution

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Somewhere Michael Brookes is banging his head on his desk.

 

[Belthize]

I've actually managed to get in contact with the cmdr who claims to have decoded the message and I can say with out a doubt in my mind it's a resounding "eh"

I can see what they did, and why, but it's very open to interpretation.

Yep. So far every theory effectively translates to one of:

• I have mapped the solution to every point in the galaxy, I just need to find a starting reference to define which point is meaningful, or
• I have mapped the solution to every point on planet X (mostly Merope5c), I just need to find a starting reference to define which point is meaningful

Finding new ways to map the set of all possible solutions onto an equivalent set of all possible solutions is not really refining the problem.

Somewhere Michael Brookes is banging his head on his desk.

I suspect he's grinning like a maniac. If I were him I'd being taking a lot of perverse glee out of the bizzare hoops folks are forcing themselves through. Every suggestion for a methodical approach to the problem is rapidly drowned out by many many 'weird side of youtube' type tinfoil posts.

 

[who?]

I've actually managed to get in contact with the cmdr who claims to have decoded the message and I can say with out a doubt in my mind it's a resounding "eh"

I can see what they did, and why, but it's very open to interpretation.

That's the problem with the image itself, it's composed of such common, basic primitives (circle/sphere, radius, arcs, normals) that you can find real-life and in-game parallels everywhere. If you start talking about Morse, it's equally open to interpretation. Timing is crucial in decoding Morse; without that a Morse sequence can be interpreted many ways. So what typically happens is we find some sequence which could represent a word or part thereof and work backward from there.

That said, I'm pretty sure it's a bunny rabbit.