Fair warning; Multi-quote coming up!
So...a hypothesis. At the moment the only UP's we are able to find are those from the T4 Convoy. The convoy states that it's done its testing at Alpha site, and is now progressing to Beta site.
No! When followed the UP Convoy goes to the Alpha Site first, then completes the test and moves to Beta Site. This was reported by mykl atrum on June 24 and is in the notes for the "Wake Scan" info on the UP Locator Spreadsheet. So, "we" find them before they have done any tests.
As far as I know, UP convoys have only been found by Elite pilots or wings of several pilots.
No! Again, check the spreadsheet. mykl atrum was solo on June 24 and he is/was Master at the time.
Wouldn't [the UPs] being in a bigger bubble defeat the purpose of being a finer probe? Expanding the bubble would just be brute-forcing.
Now, I'm not saying they're neither, and if they are a fine probe, and they seem to be, we need to find their target.
and
It seems logical [the UPs] would be in merope but the sheer volume of commanders in the system means if they were surrounding a planet we would likely have found them by now.
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I think there is merit in searching systems around Merope and specifically searching around planets (not within orbital cruise because of the previous comment from MB). I will be focussing around those areas over the weekend but thats my train of thought at the moment.
I made a note of this earlier, and I'll emphasize it again. We have so far found four locations in Federation space that spawn UP Convoys (Ross 47, G 99-49, Wolf 294 and LTT 1935). From the first sightings in Federation space there seemed to be a tangible reference to Sol and/or Sirius, as they were all close to these systems. With LTT 1935 that changed however, as that is 65-70LY away from those two systems. LTT 1935 does however fall neatly into a 365 (+/-2)LY distance from Merope that the other three were as well. So, we have four UP Convoys in Federation space some distance apart, and they all are almost the same distance from Merope. It's strange to me if that is a coincidence.
The "anomaly" is the unconfirmed UP Convoy found in Alliance space Wolf 504. That system is about 460LY away from Merope.
Either way, if there is some logic to where these UP Convoys show up (and really, really hope they are not RNG like everything else), then here's what makes sense to me.
If you find a UP and it points to Merope (and even if you think it's a UA, that also points to Merope), why would you pick it up and travel
away from that system to do tests on it? I believe the first test that was made by players was to find out exactly where it points, hence bringing it closer to it's "target".
The conundrum here is that the UP shows a more "focused" behavior, in that it points to a specific planet, not just the main star in the "target system." Logic would then indicate that it should be closer to the target system as it focuses more. You don't move away from an object to get a closer look at it.
When I am done with the oh-so-joyful Palin grind (Lvl 1 Qwent incoming), I am going to head on out and search between the distance of the Fed Convoys and the Alliance Convoy. That means 360-460LY from Merope, and I will focus on non-inhabitated systems. If they were showing up in inhabited systems, there would be a lot more surfacing on the NPC side atleast.
It's what makes sense to me. YMMV.