So you want to know about the Formidine Rift? (Part 3)

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

But previous clues have really been as direct, but less specific. Many of the complications that have come about have been of our own making. Also many things we have taken as subtle clues might not even be clues but simply cryptic or descriptive language being used for no other reasons but effect/drama.

Eafots is still a large region of space and even surrounds the heart nebula/heart sector in it's entirety. It still doesn't conclusively tell us the secret of the rift or what we might find.

Also, I would like to point out that I also occasionally try the think of other meanings of the message, and if anything else were to come to mind that I felt fit with the puzzle I would definitely share or act on it. However, as things stand, the idea the message trying to direct our attention to EAFOTS fits too well to ignore.

My personal feeling is that while this may tell us the 'where' (or at least A where) it tells us nothing about the 'what' or the 'why'.
Consequently, I've felt no inclination to run off to EAFOTS to look for who-knows-what - I'll stay here in the Bubble, hunting for more clues to inform the search.

 

[Astirian]

I can't help but think now that the golden crown is gone, the earrings are next (Ishtar). Some sort of duality in the nebulae perhaps? Two patrols, two base camps... But will she abandon them? I am starting to think this is more to do with immortality than anything else. What greater quest is there? This is the Elite Holy Grail for some...

OTSEAF is EAFOTS split in two and made whole again, re-assembled backwards... Watch your six (look back toward the galactic core?). Things should be LESS nebulous now. The RR line leads to the nebulae, perhaps looking back at the galactic CORE through the COR will give us a new heading into the rift.

Maybe I'll keep an eye on the Ishtar local news for a while.

P.S: Tin-foil hat addendum; I could have sworn I found a trail of blue stars leading out of the center of the nebulae, pulling backwards from the bubble into the MYOIE (sp?) sector. Perhaps they were all O types?

 

[James Helios]

Did you think I was saying the stickman asterism was the answer to the mystery of the Rift?

Of course not. I only used it in that sorry excuse of a story cause i liked the way you presented it. You also reminded me of my obsession with NGC 457 some months ago. You see, NGC 457 is also known as E.T., stickman, owl or kachina doll cluster.

As for the rest of your post, i tend to agree being around 2.5kLY from the GRAEH sector and moving towards it. See you there. o7

 

[Helfar]

As of last night I was following the information from the book. I noticed that the EAFOT system star density begins to thin towards the Myosin(apologies if thats not the spelling but not online right now) sector, and the woman mentioned the stars beginning to thin out as you crossed the rift, so am going to go through as many of those as I can, but that still gives a large number of stars to check. Once I am home tonight and can log in I will continue through this area, and have noticed very few have already been visited, and mostly those that have, look to have been honked with only the earth like/water worlds having been scanned. The distance between stars in this area is often above 14Ly so would also fit in with the suggestion that jump range is important.

Will update you if i find anything.

 

[Atebits]

This may be nothing else other than a bug, but this showed up on my Galaxy Map today with a bookmark over it. It does not show up on my bookmark list: http://imgur.com/a/1RUXg

I passed through that region a few weeks ago, but about 2000 ly wide of it. I don't image this is relevant to anything at hand, but I thought I'd post it here just in case the game had an accident. I've seen in other games where when something gets updated or something is added sometimes the game decides to notify everyone: a hold-over from when the devs left something on at their end that shouldn't be on this end. Anyway, it can be targeted but flown to that I can see.

 

[Saool]

Or is it both?
There's no reason why the 'real' message couldn't be masked by the EAFOTS misdirection.

Either way, it doesn't help to shut down discussions of alternatives, which was my main reason for commenting in the first place.

You are right in that there is no reason why that might not be the case, but I have to say I am on the 'Occam's Razor' side of things: to my mind it is a pretty blatant statement of EAFOTS and nothing more.

The counter argument is that if you were right, but everyone ignores that possibility, then it would never get found.

The counter counter argument is that we have seen time and again the community at large get bogged down in irrelevant minutia and dead ends. Indeed I totally skipped a whole UA thread, more or less as it just seems to be people finding theories in random back ground noise of a picture and not just focusing on the obvious bit.

Ultimately it is best that someone is thinking of these things and exploring them, however I think it becoming a central line of focus would be a mistake and ultimately I think, it just serves to eliminate them from consideration.


EDIT: for my own part, I crossed from MYOIDEAU to HYPOAE AESCS to HYPIAE AESCS to SPONGAEA and now DRYAEA AIRG. I am still heading out, but only for another 2Kly. I have not found any further cases of Ammonia worlds on the edges of systems with Earth-likes, on odd orbits. Certainly not enough to move it from random chance to something by design.

I do however have a new idea that I came to after a long study of the galaxy map using various filters. I'll be starting to look at that today but am not going to go into any detail unless I find something far more concrete to work with.

 

[Siranui]

P.S: Tin-foil hat addendum; I could have sworn I found a trail of blue stars leading out of the center of the nebulae, pulling backwards from the bubble into the MYOIE (sp?) sector. Perhaps they were all O types?

Probably not: I've spent quite a while using the star filtering and looking for Type O systems in the vicinity. I'd have gone rushing if I'd noticed six of them next to each other!

That said, using the star filter to try to notice rare, filtered systems is not a precise science and it is very easy to miss things.

 

[Atrox Lux]

I'm an ISF calibrator, and I think you're on to something - most people don't touch their contrast/brightness settings, and by default, they are usually set up very badly (too much contrast, not enough brightness) to make whites very bright, and black... Well, black. Except, this will cause you to lose details in the whites and greys that are not totally black, and the greys that ar enot totally white, and the result is, as you posted, missing details (this happens for games, movies, TV shows etc).

Probably worth it for most people to find a pluge, and Google how to use it to set up your screen. It will take about 5 minutes, including learning how to do it (if you're not paying attention whilst you do it, even faster if you focus), and will be of benefit to the user in just about every way.

Setting colours would be the next step, but very few people have the equipment required to do it, the contrast/brightness can be done easily though with no equipment.

A good greyscale chart is handy too, for, though find one with 256 steps, if you can.

Z...

You're totally right on the general set up most people use. Mine is done for ease of use, so the black of space ends up being as we expect. FD like to have depth and layers in everything, right down to audio and the starry backdrop is no exception. It has a hell of a lot going on which we never see.

For my image I altered the contrast using GIMP, but I can do the exact same thing using my TV remote and switching between the custom settings. Using GIMP just means I don't have to stare into a screen with the same luminosity of a car headlight! So it's not breaking the "external software" exclusion zone surrounding this puzzle.

I do think if screenies are taken, after dropping out of supercruise, far from the jump in point of a system, that we might get something.

It should give us a lead, if nothing else. Drew said we could see aspects of it this way, but not the whole thing. My mind is boggled as to what this could be!

 

[Siranui]

Then I guess we're just going to disagree

The way I read it is this:

Q: Does it require A, B, C, D or E?
A: It doesn't require A

It's hardly being 'deceitful', and there's no law which says Drew has to answer every question fully and in detail - otherwise we could just ask him for the name of the star(s) we need to look at.

It would most certainly be deliberate misdirection to omit but infer otherwise. Colloquially we often reply to only the first part of a listed question, which infers wider assent.
Someone wishing to communicate clearly would say 'It is not A but could be any of the others'. Speaking in a manner contrary to the common linguistic trend AND not clarifying - hence deliberately allowing others to assume the colloquialism and thus infer incorrectly - is most definitely in the realm of politicians and linguistic deceit.

Logically, you may be correct, but it is not typically the manner in which normal people converse. I would very much hope that in reply to an open and honest question which was essentially saying:
"Are a load of us wasting hours upon hours of our time looking for something we have no hope of finding because of some arbitrary and seemingly irrelevant pilot gender choice, or similar, because we are putting a lot of effort into this, and we will be really, REALLY annoyed if that is the case?" we were being a "no", rather than a hidden "Yes: Yes you are. And I'm going to make you think the answer is 'no', so you carry on doing so. Mwhahahaha".

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You're totally right on the general set up most people use. Mine is done for ease of use, so the black of space ends up being as we expect. FD like to have depth and layers in everything, right down to audio and the starry backdrop is no exception. It has a hell of a lot going on which we never see.

I don't run it myself, but doesn't SweetFX help bring out the colours better? Running it would be an easier solution than loading screenies into GIMP, perhaps.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Of course we can't shut down all avenues, but we can narrow some down - I'm going on the Galnet post which is:

'transmitting a repeating sequence of curious characters. This continued for a few minutes until a power failure silenced it. The message read "OTSEAFOTSEAF"'

Several minutes of repeating OTSEAFOTSEAF means it was OTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAFOTSEAF and etc, but did it begin with O? Is it SEAFOT? Are we looking for a planet with a SEA Far Out There?

It can go a million different ways, but why is this THE clue? It could have been found before without this, so why is this a necessity to getting closer?

I might be missing something, but since when did the Latin alphabet contain 'curious' characters.
To be honest, the last sentence seems bolted on, suggesting a last minute toning down of the difficulty of this particular clue.

 

[Gypsy12]

THIS IS GYPSY HERE.

EXCITING NEWS EVERYONE!

WOULD ALL COMMANDERS STAND BY. (Just in case!)

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.


I am in the EAFOTS UW-J B36-0 System... This system is DIRECTLY ABOVE FZ PERSEI of the Chi Persei Cluster. (A Sea of Topaz and Amethyst suns from the poem)

The Heart Nebula is in front of me. On the bottom part of the Heart Nebula is a more concentrated "Blob" of gas. (The Heart of the Heart and Soul)

ALMOST Framing this Gas Concentration PERFECTLY from behind - Is the IC 1805 Cluster - I just have to travel upwards from the Galactic plane a little...

Beneath this conjunction of objects is a Necklace of bright stars running down.

Im soooo close. I can feel it in my ol' bones.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

It would most certainly be deliberate misdirection to omit but infer otherwise. Colloquially we often reply to only the first part of a listed question, which infers wider assent.
Someone wishing to communicate clearly would say 'It is not A but could be any of the others'. Speaking in a manner contrary to the common linguistic trend AND not clarifying - hence deliberately allowing others to assume the colloquialism and thus infer incorrectly - is most definitely in the realm of politicians and linguistic deceit.

Logically, you may be correct, but it is not typically the manner in which normal people converse. I would very much hope that in reply to an open and honest question which was essentially saying:
"Are a load of us wasting hours upon hours of our time looking for something we have no hope of finding because of some arbitrary and seemingly irrelevant pilot gender choice, or similar, because we are putting a lot of effort into this, and we will be really, REALLY annoyed if that is the case?" we were being a "no", rather than a hidden "Yes: Yes you are. And I'm going to make you think the answer is 'no', so you carry on doing so. Mwhahahaha".

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I don't run it myself, but doesn't SweetFX help bring out the colours better? Running it would be an easier solution than loading screenies into GIMP, perhaps.

If you crank up the Gamma to max, you get the same effect that star clouds are 'everywhere'.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

THIS IS GYPSY HERE.

EXCITING NEWS EVERYONE!

WOULD ALL COMMANDERS STAND BY. (Just in case!)

THIS IS NOT A DRILL.


I am in the EAFOTS UW-J B36-0 System... This system is DIRECTLY ABOVE FZ PERSEI of the Chi Persei Cluster. (A Sea of Topaz and Amethyst suns from the poem)

The Heart Nebula is in front of me. On the bottom part of the Heart Nebula is a more concentrated "Blob" of gas. (The Heart of the Heart and Soul)

ALMOST Framing this Gas Concentration PERFECTLY from behind - Is the IC 1805 Cluster - I just have to travel upwards from the Galactic plane a little...

Beneath this conjunction of objects is a Necklace of bright stars running down.

Im soooo close. I can feel it in my ol' bones.

Just stop. Claim to have news when you actually have news. Jeez, you're a million times worse than FD's marketing department!!

 

[Siranui]

I'm soooo close. I can feel it in my ol' bones.

Sure it's not gout?

Sounds promising, though.

Only 1.2KLY.... I'll e there in 30 mins.

 

[Gypsy12]

If you crank up the Gamma to max, you get the same effect that star clouds are 'everywhere'.

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Just stop. Claim to have news when you actually have news. Jeez, you're a million times worse than FD's marketing department!!

Borings boring!

 

[Gypsy12]

ALMOST THERE!

Just need to go down a tad.

 

[Gypsy12]

OH...

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[Jorki Rasalas]

Looks like something the dung beetle rolled home. Now I know where all that biowaste I hauled from Sothis ended up.

Giant dungbeetles confirmed!

 

[Siranui]

Giant dungbeetles confirmed!

...For Season 4!

We are offering player storage by allowing every player to own a ball of space dung, and they can move it between systems by rolling it. A variety of Beetles are available for Commanders to choose from, allowing them to roll their own trail!

 

[Gypsy12]

 

[Helfar]

Looks very odd, but is this what we are looking for? (watches screen for updates)