So, this just happened... I drop out of SC in front of Pleiades sector RO-Q B5-0 planet #6 to do one more test on the UP and just as I position myself between the probe and Merope, a pirate NPC randomly drops into the instance without any usual prior warning you get in SC like a direct message. Demands cargo. I start thinking whether to blow him up immediately or scoop the probe back first, quickly deciding the latter is probably best and just as I open cargo hatch and move toward the UP, the sucker apparently scoops it up right in front of me. The probe literally just disappeared into thin air while he was still off to the side of the screen. I don't know if the whole thing took more than 15 seconds.
So after a minor expenditure of ammo on my part, I can proudly say I have successfully managed to trade in one brand new UP for one chemical processor and other low grade junk.
This game, sometimes...
The only useful experiment I did manage to do was compare the probe sequences between planet 7 where it was freefloating and #6. Sequence 4 was of primary interest to me so FWIW, hopefully I didn't mess it up:
Planet 7: WAIL, 4, 376, 1233.069, 82, 68.12, 136, 0.337
Planet 6: WAIL, 4, 135, 1262.428, 82, 62.447, 36545, 0.491
This pretty much disproves my thinking that the 3 floating point numbers are star system coordinates in some other reference frame - two planets inside the same system would obviously share the coordinates.
Also, curiously the binary representation for 376 and 135 is binary digit inverse, i.e. 101 111 000 vs 010 000 111.
THX a lot Cdr., quite interesting though,
if we look at
Planet 7: WAIL, 4, 376, 1233.069, 82, 68.12, 136, 0.337
Planet 6: WAIL, 4, 135, 1262.428, 82, 62.447, 36545, 0.491
maybe cartesian 3D vector angle rho,& phi ?