UAs, Barnacles and other mysteries Thread 8 - The Canonn

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IIRC, Barnacles were first found as a result of Galnet hints in the form of incomplete messages directing our attention to a specific planet or system. Others have since been found by looking around local nebulae but it was only because people knew where to look. When you don't know where to look, you're dependent upon chance. The crowd-sourced nature of the problem has seemingly been designed around a 'lottery' system, requiring someone to be very lucky. The logic required to solve it is clearly only going to be logical after the fact - so it's no good to us now. If we find, through luck or Galnet hints, a source of free-floaters, then we will (very quickly, I suspect) find more.
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The lack of UA activity around any nebulae other than the Pleiades does suggest that UPs will be found in its vicinity. Personally, I think we need to be looking near right kinds of planets - but what the 'right kind' are, will only become apparent after someone finds one. There are so many people around the Pleiades, the most obvious place I can think of to look that might have been missed would be the distant icy landables many people ignore... . But if we don't solve it or get lucky, it only means a different branch of the storyline, not a complete halt... (or we eventually get clues in-game).
 
So, anyone randomly stumble on a UP yet? Coz it really seems like that's what it's going to be right now... and I don't think there's going to be much more progress on the meaning behind UPs til that happens.

I'm checking Pleione now, I don't even had it scanned yet.. will spend the rest of the night here
 
I said to check the icy planets at the start of this thread... or maybe the last one... wait, what week is it? what DAY is it? gah...

anyway, I was told "'aint no-one got time for checking ice-planets".. which is probably why we're not finding them ;)
 
again not decoded the entire message. try again.
the first panel is decoded. the first panel is of the UP sending its signal. All 2 panes decoded, if you want a wild UP, you just have to be in Merope as explained.

I guess I'll be the only one with a wild UP today, I'll give a few out.
 

OMG! Of course! The Key is a key to open the UP! The UP is a delivery mechanism waiting for our curiosity to ship it to the right location, initiate the deployment sequence and rain un-human hell upon the innocent planet below :eek:

I beg you all, for the sake of mankind, STOP toying with the unknown!

(waits for post saying "I said that on page 127 and nobody took any notice" :D

Rob / CMDR Olias
 
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Following on from the assumption that, if the UP points to Merope 5c, then logically, free floating UP's should spawn in Merope system somewhere, I conducted a search of 5c's Lagrange points, as best as i could eyeball.
First I flew to a point where 5c eclipsed 5, and flew at minimum supercruise until orbital HUD popped up. This should have covered L2.
Then I flew toward 5, until I was satisfied that I had passed through L1
Then I continued past 5, until I was at the orbit line for 5c, and 5 eclipsed 5c.
After that I continued on the orbit line until distance to 5c and 5 were the same, on orbit line, on both sides of 5c. This should have covered L4 and L5.
Flying from L4 to L5, I also investigated a region I think is roughly 30 degrees forward and behind 5c on it's orbit (based on the 2 radial lines on left of UP symbol)

I also investigated L1 between Merope 5 and 6, and as best I could determine, L3, L4 and L5 for Merope 5 relative to Merope itself.

At each zone, I used the Discovery scanner, but at best I only discovered an Encoded Emmisions USS.

I still think if we are going to discover UP's free floating, it'll be in Merope system, as that would explain the specific pointing to a planet.
Maybe at Zenith or Nadir points?

You're correct that the UPs are available in the Merope system. Specifically in orbit around the large crater. UPs return to this location at a certain point in 5Cs orbit to report back then leave again.
 
So, anyone randomly stumble on a UP yet? Coz it really seems like that's what it's going to be right now... and I don't think there's going to be much more progress on the meaning behind UPs til that happens.

I keep coming back to the oft-repeated (and paraphrased) "There's easier ways to get them than Convoys".

Is there? Is there really? Because around a dozen or so finds in convoys and no finds elsewhere would beg to differ otherwise. Regardless of the fact if they're free-floaters just like UAs or not, if they really were easier, they'd have been found before convoy UPs. I'm sure once they're found, it'll be like a milk run, but that's kinda irrelevant if the sock you lost 2 years ago is in the drawer you left at the house you lived in 15 years ago.

UA's drew our attention to Merope because of their pointing* behaviour, which led to looking around in the Pleiades, which led to free floaters being discovered. And eventually that attention on Pleiades led to the discovery of Barnacles.

UP's point to a planet in Merope, and because of their pointing behaviour, and the amount of people in and around Pleiades is pretty substantial, and but sure enough, nothing. Occam's Razor would suggest they're not there, and somewhere else. But logical in hindsight? Pleiades is the only logical place, given how UA's, the shell and Barnacles have trained us to follow these leads. So frankly, looking anywhere else is pretty illogical. But reality is, they'd have been found by now if they were in the logical place.

Jacques "highlights" Eol Prou to us, but there's plenty of pilots there too, who haven't found anything despite active efforts. Barnacles highlight Witch Head and California, but nothing there. Heck, Formidine rift /EAFOTS stuff got highlighted, but apparently just the presence of players is impact enough, who haven't found anything.

I dunno what the point of this post is, venting frustration that yet again, it's boiling down to waiting for a lucky roll of the dice, maybe an attempt to highlight logical places, and think of where else could be lucky? I'm one of "those guys" who hates how we get these drip feeds on the forums... can we maybe get something resembling a hint *in game* for once? I've listed the logical places, and the vastness of those search areas means we'll never really move on from them without a compelling region. If UPs aren't to be found at any of those places though, we're bent.

If I could, I would REP that post a million times. However, and even if stated otherwise by FD, we don't have much control on the actual "starting" of the events. We may influence how the story goes forward, but it WILL go live when they want it to go live. There's no "once you find freefloaters it'll activate a switch on the servers and aliens will be let loose!". Nope, it's "when 2.2 hits, aliens will come and tag "rek't" on the wreckage of your ship".

That's how it's always been and nothing will change that. Hell, for all we know the UP freefloaters' spawn rate could be as high as what it used to be for UA's before The Shell, so they may be easier to retrieve, at the end of the day, they are harder to find. And I think that's what MB and Zac meant when they said UP Convoys were the hard way to get them. It is indeed harder to get them, not to find them.

It's either that...Or they really meant UP freefloaters are easier to find based on what we can achieve when we group efforts, something we haven't really done in regards to UP freefloaters as some of us are still looking for UP convoys around the Peregrina systems. Careful, I'm not criticising anybody; it's way more fun to wing up with friends to kick a convoy's ass to retrieve a UP than it is to...find freefloaters. :|

UP freefloaters will probably be old stuff when 2.2 hits anyway...
 
again, excellent work Cdr. I think it helps a lot.

Had a quick workover on Your posted pic, just using imagination

https://uploadix.de/images/2016/08/17/imageclearertest1.md.jpg

the yellow numbers where a quick tinfoil, just was thinking if their chirality is not right but left, that case we read the triplets maybe wrong - tinfoil off

BUT
left hand table I would interprete as "honk the UP near a barnacle ( under a single star ? ) and the UP will transmit a very-long distance message" - 3 arcs
the green marked area might be a system map, until know as U mentioned, to much noise.
the cyan marked area (Frequency burst) seems to be a kind of triplet barcode or similar ? Again, might be random.

My proposal is, use different soundfiles from different occasions on separate channels, clip them to exact same starting point und mix em together to one channel with dubbing at around 5dB,
this way the single images should add up to be more sharp.... (i use the same for my digi astro-photography, takes out a lot of atmospheric disturbances)
The left side is a pictograph of the UP sending its signal, the middle is where in relation to M5C it does its data send, and the right side is when in M5C's orbit that this happens.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
So has anyone found anything in the first 0.5 seconds of the promo video yet? :D

It breaks into nothing. A few were destroyed on educating Ed.

I do think after checking my recordings that the sound it makes when it is shot is slightly different to when it naturally expired. Only subtly but there it was more pronounced at the start.
 
That dark-blue representation, while concept art (I guess?), apart from being freaky, haunts me that we've still missed some UP-like behaviour with the UAs...

Maybe, I'm thinking that's an early draft of the lighter blue-green colour we ended up with.

Although I do think colour is important. The fragments are red-orange when detached by destroying the UA which is maybe the 'malfunction' colour.
I'm wondering if we do the right thing with the UP, it'll be blue-green instead of orange.
 
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You're correct that the UPs are available in the Merope system. Specifically in orbit around the large crater. UPs return to this location at a certain point in 5Cs orbit to report back then leave again.

That's the crater that you get the 2 Magellanic Clouds and Merope 5 aligned on horizon almost exactly with the arc and two lines at left of symbol, if symbol is overlayed on crater?
I've been scouring all over that sucker, before I left the planet itself. I'm sorry, but I just don't think that's where we'll find them.

I am interested in why you think they'll be there at a given time though, and will loop back if you can give me a time window of an hour or so.
 
IIRC, Barnacles were first found as a result of Galnet hints in the form of incomplete messages directing our attention to a specific planet or system. Others have since been found by looking around local nebulae but it was only because people knew where to look. When you don't know where to look, you're dependent upon chance. The crowd-sourced nature of the problem has seemingly been designed around a 'lottery' system, requiring someone to be very lucky. The logic required to solve it is clearly only going to be logical after the fact - so it's no good to us now. If we find, through luck or Galnet hints, a source of free-floaters, then we will (very quickly, I suspect) find more.
.
The lack of UA activity around any nebulae other than the Pleiades does suggest that UPs will be found in its vicinity. Personally, I think we need to be looking near right kinds of planets - but what the 'right kind' are, will only become apparent after someone finds one. There are so many people around the Pleiades, the most obvious place I can think of to look that might have been missed would be the distant icy landables many people ignore... . But if we don't solve it or get lucky, it only means a different branch of the storyline, not a complete halt... (or we eventually get clues in-game).

IIRC the GALNET article was posted AFTER the first Barnacle was found in Merope, by a random CMDR, completely by chance.
 
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