UAs, Barnacles and other mysteries Thread 8 - The Canonn

[Dommarraa]

Just out of curiosity, is there a possibility that free-floating UP's are not in signal sources at all? Or at least not in Anomaly signal sources? Could they be in the cargo holds of pirate ships for example, or just free-floating above a planet or star outside of OC? I guess the reason I'm asking is that we seem to have made an implicit assumption that we're looking for USS to find free-floating UP's and I'm wondering if that's really the case.

Also, my understanding is that some UA could be found on planet surfaces, correct? MB has said that UA/UP is solvable with 1.6, so we've sort of fixated on USS as their source. What if the convoys are the method for 1.6 folks to obtain UP, but the easiest/best way to find them is on planet surfaces?

There was a FD comment that said they were space based. Sorry, dont have the quote.
I would certainly hope that Wild UP hunters are going into all (or nearly all) USS types and not just waiting for a Anomaly. I know I am. Cant say I would investigate every single Weapons Fire Detected, or Distress Call, but all the others I inspect religiously.
They have to be in some sort of USS, or they really would be impossible to find

 

[Mr.Loma]

Not sure if anyone though of this, but does the Unknown artefact remind anyone of an organic version of an ocellus station?
I had that thought yesterday , so I'm going to leave that here ^^.
The little things flying around it could be tiny ships, trying to attack their agressors with explosions, not strong enough for our shields, but resulting in it damaging you cargo hull ...
Don't know what the point would be of tiny aliens but hey ^^

 

[Arguendo]

Just out of curiosity, is there a possibility that free-floating UP's are not in signal sources at all? Or at least not in Anomaly signal sources? Could they be in the cargo holds of pirate ships for example, or just free-floating above a planet or star outside of OC? I guess the reason I'm asking is that we seem to have made an implicit assumption that we're looking for USS to find free-floating UP's and I'm wondering if that's really the case.

They have repeated the "Convoy Pattern" from the UA (TL3) to the UP (TL4). It would therefore makes sense that they repeated the USS for the UP as well. I swear to god if they have put the UP in "Degraded Emission" or "Encoded Emission", heads need to roll!
If they haven't put them in USSs, how are we then supposed to find them? Just randomly drop out of SC anywhere and hope for the best? Keep doing that every 10LS on all directions? That gives even more options than searching all the systems for USSs. So you have 400 billion times infinite possibilities. We don't have enough commanders for that!

Like others have said, I am also nearing the end of my patience. It's a fun mystery, with spectograms, EMPs, pointing behaviour, etc etc. But due to the lack of progress, theories are presented that require you to have a PhD in advanced sound analysis. We are missing some essential parts to the mystery, and all the hints in the world from MB won't help. They just make it worse, because the only place they appear as "helpful hints" are in MB's head. For me atleast, they just add lots of ink to already muddy waters.
For the Free Floating UPs, they are so well hidden that we are searching at random. In a galaxy with 400 billion systems! Again, their "logical location" is currently only logical in MB's head. We have no known information in-game that would help us find these, which there should be. It shouldn't be random, especially when we know that the UAs form a shell, but with the amount of searches out there, they are. And if someone says that the spectogram shows a map of the UP locations, I will demand a shrubbery!!

Sorry for the rant, but like I said earlier I believe this is the current situation:
[UP mystery here] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> [current position of theories]

So, I'm taking a slight pause from the UP search and whatnot, and will do some lowkey trading or something. I'll still try to keep up with your efforts, and update the spreadsheet for the UP Convoys if some are found, but I won't be active in the endeavour for a bit. Good luck to those still actively at it. Hope you solve it before I can say "Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing!"

PS: All the above is void if something interesting comes out of Gamescon

 

[TheDayman]

I think we need to stop asking for hints and clue - personally I'd feel cheated if MB dropped a big hint and a day later it's solved. He's stated it's fairly obvious as to why & where, and that the assumptions we're making are incorrect. If we don't solve it in time, then Elite history will be written one way or another.

Back on topic, heading back to Merope from the Spirograph nebula today. I'll stop off at the Witch Head nebula to see if I can find anything there as well. I think I'm going to search the outer reaches of Merope... I know it's been done before but that's still a lot of space to cover. If I were an alien civilization trying to hide something in a heavily populated system, I'd drop it at the furthest reaches of that system as the chances of anyone finding it would be remote.

 

[dynamicbob]

I think we need to stop asking for hints and clue - personally I'd feel cheated if MB dropped a big hint and a day later it's solved. He's stated it's fairly obvious as to why & where, and that the assumptions we're making are incorrect. If we don't solve it in time, then Elite history will be written one way or another.

Back on topic, heading back to Merope from the Spirograph nebula today. I'll stop off at the Witch Head nebula to see if I can find anything there as well. I think I'm going to search the outer reaches of Merope... I know it's been done before but that's still a lot of space to cover. If I were an alien civilization trying to hide something in a heavily populated system, I'd drop it at the furthest reaches of that system as the chances of anyone finding it would be remote.

the tip off system could have some involvement on the side as well

 

[TheDeathsHead]

Ah yes, its been a while since I've seen the firefly "theory".


I wonder if we cant grow or synthesize our own UP's

Maybe its meta plus unknown frags. Meta's are "green" Any one check to see if something shows up in the Synthesis menu?
I know the UA/up are space based but others are not, maybe this is the other aspect of it?

I know MB said the sonic image was the key but maybe it shows us how to cook up more up's, that kinda sounds dumb now that i typed it. /gamescon cloak on

 

[Highhead]

Hi!

As some commanders are looking for "freefloaters" within the Merope system now, i am re-quoting a test that I suggested 2 weeks ago and which was simply buried in the threadnaught at that time (it was moving several pages per hour at that time). I know that Merope has already been searched quite intensively since the UA discovery, but I assume not that much since there are UP in game.

Ad. Freefloaters... Building on the Hypothesis that...

a. UPs might be found within the shell (reasons given) and

b. that UA and UP cannot travel at hyperspeed (at least noone seemed to have encountered any of them charging their friendship-drive yet)

=> the following test may be worth a shot:

Move to Merope 5C and align with a system thats within the shell (or even better in the shell directly and visible). Dont jump, but go in that direction in supercruise below 100c as far as you can (at least 15-30 mins) and check for USS. They might be really far out and ofc very rare.

If already done just skip it, but if not this theory could be ruled out pretty quickly. would have checked myself but 8kly out and on RL holidays.

have a save trip!
o7

PS: When I am back from Jaquces I will ofc do it myself (if not disproven until then).

 

[BluWolve]

Ah yes, its been a while since I've seen the firefly "theory".


I wonder if we cant grow or synthesize our own UP's

Maybe its meta plus unknown frags. Meta's are "green" Any one check to see if something shows up in the Synthesis menu?
I know the UA/up are space based but others are not, maybe this is the other aspect of it?

I know MB said the sonic image was the key but maybe it shows us how to cook up more up's, that kinda sounds dumb now that i typed it. /gamescon cloak on

Yes I actually was thinking the same thing. Synthesis that only shows up in the menu when you have the correct items. UA and fragments, and something else. Wasn't galnet talking about polymers in an article recently?

If not synthesis then maybe an engineer blueprint?

Would have to try every item combo to rule it out... Makes an even bigger pile of hay to search through :/

 

[Anjin]

You've decoded part of it, but not everything it contains.

Michael

I wish we knew if this meant we haven’t figured out how to use what we’ve found in the spectrogram or that we haven’t found everything in the spectrogram yet.

---

On another note, I’ve been analysing purrs again, specifically SocraticMammal’s transcription of bitstorm’s recording a little way back.

I haven’t listened to UA or Barnacle purrs for a while, but they definitely didn’t follow the no-three-pitches-in-a-row rule before. Can anyone confirm that this is the case now, or this behaviour unique to UPs?

Of course this means that there are only 4 ‘patterns’ in the purrs: a single low, a single high, two lows and two highs. 0 or 1 or 00 or 11. And they have to alternate between low and high.

Like SocraticMammal, this smacks to me of a line code, or self-clocking signal. I considered various systems on Wikipedia, but couldn’t find one that met the criteria satisfactorily

The only other thing I could think of that had an alternating sequence, with values of 1 and 2, was some types of barcode. So I stretched out the sequence, red lines are the 'unknowns':

Well, it certainly looks like a barcode, but I couldn’t read it. There are still some interesting patterns in there. Maybe someone can see something in that I can’t.

It still could be that the purrs are a low pseudorandom noise. The lack of meaningful pattern and it being different every time it’s sampled suggests that. However: what if the purrs represent an advancing sequence? Like a clock, ticking forward.

 

[LordZoltan]

This is pretty solid science, and it reflects my thoughts.
But as others have said, the UP could be floating around another planet in Merope, where 5c is the reference point for the drawing, to find this other planet. All inside the System.

I don't know... It does make sense and it's not the first time it's been said, including by me - but where? Numerous pilots have been all over the system and found nowt.

And if they're probing inside the Merope system itself - then there's two things there that we've missed, despite thousands of people trawling the system...

Which would mean they're found in places in the system where very few people ever go.

 

[dynamicbob]

Yes I actually was thinking the same thing. Synthesis that only shows up in the menu when you have the correct items. UA and fragments, and something else. Wasn't galnet talking about polymers in an article recently?

If not synthesis then maybe an engineer blueprint?

Would have to try every item combo to rule it out... Makes an even bigger pile of hay to search through :/

throw a single unit (tonne) of polymer into the cargo hold and then run the UP/UA scanning test again and see if theres any difference in the sound file. Thats the most obvious test at this point u might be able to get a different result than the EMP pulse.

 

[MyklAtrum]

Well lots of posts from MB about UA/UP pointing.

And whichever way I cut it, it just leads me back to the assumption that UPs can be found somewhere in the Merope system.

Since the UA points at Merope star, and given the UP points at Merope 5c.

IF the UA/UP are broadcasting information
Then the direction implies that the UA is intended to function at long distance
And the UP is intended to function at a short distance

alternatively

IF the UA/UP are trying to lead us somewhere
Then again it implies that the UA is intended as a pointer at long distance
And the UP is intended as a pointer at a short distance

Whichever way I look at it the difference in pointing behaviour seems telling:

- Pointing at a star is the behaviour of something that needs to function at a range where planets aren't discernible
- Pointing at a local body is the behaviour of something that functions at a range where planets are discernible

And the only conclusion I can come to is that UPs are somewhere in Merope

All of this is where logic leads us. So if we logically follow the clues we should find the free floaters, but we haven't. So how is it that the most basic of logic is failing us all?

The only suggestion I can offer, is that we are not supposed to know that the probe points to 5c to find free floaters. I could be wrong and the convoys were meant to be found first, but with how they keep saying those are the "hard" way, I can only assume we were supposed to find free floaters first.

So how do we find those? We go back to the beginning. Work from there. Discount everything we know about the probe. Use the data from the UA and maybe the barnacles to find the free floaters. The idea that the spectrogram is going to lead back to the free floaters is a bit far fetched to me. Its too circular of a puzzle. Find a probe, spectrogram, leads to a probe. Just doesn't seem logical. Only way that works is if there are many, many probes and we are supposed to follow a chain of them somewhere. (yes, I realize I'm countering my own arguments at this point.)

And to the people who are not concerned about finding the free floaters, and are just following what we know of the probe to wherever its supposed to lead us, all I have to say is this..

WHY would the probe point to Merope 5c, only then to lead us to somewhere in the same system? It could easily point to the planet it needs to point at. If Merope 5C is not where we find something, but is just a reference point, then it would make more sense to be a reference point in a puzzle using the system as a diagram to point us at something that is not going to be in that system.

An alien race (or humans) is not going to lead us on a search using overly complicated puzzles if it has the means to simply point and say "look here." Which is exactly what it looks like its doing to me. Pointing to Merope, then pointing to Merope 5c.

 

[LordZoltan]

Imagine if Frontier have a life sized UA (they look better than UP's) at Gamescom.

Imagine if it was *real* and DBOBE had actually made contact!

E.T. HYPEEEEEE!

 

[who?]

Imagine if it was *real* and DBOBE had actually made contact!

E.T. HYPEEEEEE!

Ooooh! Quick! I wanna stand in front of it and let it image me!

 

[simulacrae]

Well lots of posts from MB about UA/UP pointing.

And whichever way I cut it, it just leads me back to the assumption that UPs can be found somewhere in the Merope system.

Since the UA points at Merope star, and given the UP points at Merope 5c.

IF the UA/UP are broadcasting information
Then the direction implies that the UA is intended to function at long distance
And the UP is intended to function at a short distance

alternatively

IF the UA/UP are trying to lead us somewhere
Then again it implies that the UA is intended as a pointer at long distance
And the UP is intended as a pointer at a short distance

Whichever way I look at it the difference in pointing behaviour seems telling:

- Pointing at a star is the behaviour of something that needs to function at a range where planets aren't discernible
- Pointing at a local body is the behaviour of something that functions at a range where planets are discernible

And the only conclusion I can come to is that UPs are somewhere in Merope

Ya good "point" It seems like another off the ecliptic search might be in order

 

[LordZoltan]

All of this is where logic leads us. So if we logically follow the clues we should find the free floaters, but we haven't. So how is it that the most basic of logic is failing us all?

The only suggestion I can offer, is that we are not supposed to know that the probe points to 5c to find free floaters. I could be wrong and the convoys were meant to be found first, but with how they keep saying those are the "hard" way, I can only assume we were supposed to find free floaters first.

So how do we find those? We go back to the beginning. Work from there. Discount everything we know about the probe. Use the data from the UA and maybe the barnacles to find the free floaters. The idea that the spectrogram is going to lead back to the free floaters is a bit far fetched to me. Its too circular of a puzzle. Find a probe, spectrogram, leads to a probe. Just doesn't seem logical. Only way that works is if there are many, many probes and we are supposed to follow a chain of them somewhere. (yes, I realize I'm countering my own arguments at this point.)

And to the people who are not concerned about finding the free floaters, and are just following what we know of the probe to wherever its supposed to lead us, all I have to say is this..

WHY would the probe point to Merope 5c, only then to lead us to somewhere in the same system? It could easily point to the planet it needs to point at. If Merope 5C is not where we find something, but is just a reference point, then it would make more sense to be a reference point in a puzzle using the system as a diagram to point us at something that is not going to be in that system.

An alien race (or humans) is not going to lead us on a search using overly complicated puzzles if it has the means to simply point and say "look here." Which is exactly what it looks like its doing to me. Pointing to Merope, then pointing to Merope 5c.

But yeah - exactly - I'm just not convinced...

There is an equally logical argument for why UPs will not be found in Merope:

Consider the fact that from outside Merope, then UAs point toward it but are found in the shell.

UPs have identical pointing behaviour outside of Merope itself, so are also more likely to be found elsewhere.

And for those arguing their pointing behaviour is ultimately different in-system; well only where they point - they both point to specific locations within the system itself - it's just that one is landable for us.

That doesn't in itself lend any more weight to the idea that they'll be found in the system any more than pointing at the Merope star did for the UAs.

 

[BluWolve]

throw a single unit (tonne) of polymer into the cargo hold and then run the UP/UA scanning test again and see if theres any difference in the sound file. Thats the most obvious test at this point u might be able to get a different result than the EMP pulse.

Sorry CMDR but the whole sound analysis thing is way above my pay grade

 

[Stillsober]

One question MB,
does the UP point at Merope 5c because of the Barnacles.
Or is it pointing there for another reason.
I am in Merope and have found nothing at 5c
the strangest thing I have come across is the cap ships chatter saying something big took out this ship?

 

[bmwalter68]

There was a FD comment that said they were space based. Sorry, dont have the quote. I would certainly hope that Wild UP hunters are going into all (or nearly all) USS types and not just waiting for a Anomaly. I know I am. Cant say I would investigate every single Weapons Fire Detected, or Distress Call, but all the others I inspect religiously. They have to be in some sort of USS, or they really would be impossible to find

Yep, and the UP are in space in the convoys, but are they elsewhere too? I'm just wondering if we're assuming that since MB said it was 1.6 solvable that space is the only place to find them. Maybe I'm over-reacting to seeing that UA's can be found planet-side.

They have repeated the "Convoy Pattern" from the UA (TL3) to the UP (TL4). It would therefore makes sense that they repeated the USS for the UP as well. I swear to god if they have put the UP in "Degraded Emission" or "Encoded Emission", heads need to roll!

Agreed there... They have repeated those patterns, but if UA's can be found on planet surfaces then shouldn't that pattern be repeated as well? They have completely stumped us... There is clearly some place 'obvious in retrospect' from MB's description that we're not looking. My biggest fear is that it's a place we've excluded for an invalid reason. At that point, I think you start to smell-test the things you're calling facts.

Even though they repeated the patterns there is nothing that tells us which patterns are the best or most plentiful. CLEARLY some are non-optimal based on convoy frequency. It wouldn't be far-fetched to think that folks with the season pass could have been given an easier time to access UP's, and that could mean that some are ground based. The convoys could be the alternate method to obtain UP which could explain why FD was surprised we found them that way first.

If they haven't put them in USSs, how are we then supposed to find them? Just randomly drop out of SC anywhere and hope for the best? Keep doing that every 10LS on all directions? That gives even more options than searching all the systems for USSs. So you have 400 billion times infinite possibilities. We don't have enough commanders for that!

I'm not speculating on how/where, just that assumption is the enemy of fact. Along those lines, hanging free in space is a possibility, though I agree it's unlikely and would be very, very cruel. A shrubbery alone would not be enough. You would require a second one, on the other side, to give a nice bi-level effect...

 

[Niamhy]

no, it's not pointing to 5c because of Barnacles. There are barnacles on lots of planets in the Pleidies, and Witchead, and California nebula. It isn't after barnacles (although they *are* related to the puzzle).

We are told time and again "the reason they are interested in 5c is the puzzle", but like you, i've found nothing on the planet. I've flown around it twice (at 150m), driven over the bottom two qudrants, and orbital-cruised over most of the rest. Nothing. No crashed alien ship, no alien ruins, nothing. Certainly no UP hive. Which leads me to two conclusions 1) the "reason" ie thing we are looking for is in space, not on the ground 2) Frontier simply haven't "patched" in the thing we're looking for yet, despite saying it's there to be found. No, it's not.

Yes, FD, I'm calling you a liar. Prove me wrong (kidding, relax!)