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

[crushdepth]

For gameplay metric reasons, if CoR want an outpost out there, they should begin shooting the unnamed security forces at alpha base. or hire some mercs to push the background sim a few thousand blown up police ships (they are lawless and unnamed) might actually prompt some internal metric of xpoliceshipsdestoryed and lead to additional content.

I wish the listening posts could have a simple outpost installation. Just somewhere to land. Would be so much better.

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

I tired applying the latin alphabet checkerboard against "Good luck, and ... right on," using "Commander" as the key, but wasn't very succesful in pulling coords from it. I have to admit, cryptography is not my strong suit.

There are a couple of free crypto courses on offer from Stanford University via coursera.org. I did the first one, it was a lot of fun. And it will definitely help you with solving the in game puzzles, as the exercises are basically how to leverage weaknesses to break things.

You need to dust off your high school maths, is the hard part. For me it had kind of been a while.

 

[CMDR Poet Starwind]

Thanks for the guidance. I will have to look into that!

 

[meznaric]

Was there a hint we received about bright stars?

 

[CMDR Poet Starwind]

The coordinates are at the end of the message, so has anyone decrypted the message end yet?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I feel sorry for Hassan - he saves Kahina from being Octavia's meat-puppet and then gets written out of the story. He's probably rotting in an Imperial gaol cell somewhere wishing he'd left the ungrateful <redacted> to die.

I mean, he knows the coordinates too, but nobody gives a rat's posterior.

#FreeHassan

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

The coordinates are at the end of the message, so has anyone decrypted the message end yet?

I presented a possible solution a while back, see https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/252932-So-you-want-to-know-about-the-Formidine-Rift-(Part-3)?p=4326057&viewfull=1#post4326057 & related posts. My solution didn't generate much interest, & I got diverted from the search by the Engineers update. I did go back out & completed my search by surveying the Phaa Ain OO-X systems, but there was nothing of interest so I'm confident that the asterism I spotted in my Phaa Ain NO-X survey was the solution of the Old Lady's clue.

I think you have to remember that Drew Wagar has admitted to liking wordplay & that is the way to interpret the old lady's words from Reclamation. At the time of my search I was focused on the potential greek mythological link of the word "Formidine" to the Graeh sector, however that sector has apparently been explored & nothing was found. The pointer stars in the asterism I found appeared to point towards the Eafots sector, & that ties in with the later Galnet clue of an EAFOTS signal from the Cobra interred in Tionisla graveyard. The R-R line runs through the edge of the Eafots sector so I suspect that's where the Rift mystery lies. Cmdr Macklin_Fox posted that he'd run an analyis of systems within 6ly or so from the R-R line which identified a cluster of around 10 Eafots systems.


Here is his list of that Cluster

Eafots JO-Z d13-41
Eafots OG-V b57-3
Eafots EU-Y b55-0
Eafots EU-Y b55-3
Eafots UH-C b54-2
Eafots KB-B c27-11
Eafots UH-C b54-3
Eafots TH-C b54-1
Eafots TH-C b54-2
Eafots OB-E b53-2

I can't get back into the game at the moment (RL commitments) but if I were then I'd be heading off to search those 10 systems & their vicinity!

 

[Crazy_Harvey]

I presented a possible solution a while back, see https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/252932-So-you-want-to-know-about-the-Formidine-Rift-(Part-3)?p=4326057&viewfull=1#post4326057 & related posts. My solution didn't generate much interest, & I got diverted from the search by the Engineers update. I did go back out & completed my search by surveying the Phaa Ain OO-X systems, but there was nothing of interest so I'm confident that the asterism I spotted in my Phaa Ain NO-X survey was the solution of the Old Lady's clue.

I think you have to remember that Drew Wagar has admitted to liking wordplay & that is the way to interpret the old lady's words from Reclamation. At the time of my search I was focused on the potential greek mythological link of the word "Formidine" to the Graeh sector, however that sector has apparently been explored & nothing was found. The pointer stars in the asterism I found appeared to point towards the Eafots sector, & that ties in with the later Galnet clue of an EAFOTS signal from the Cobra interred in Tionisla graveyard. The R-R line runs through the edge of the Eafots sector so I suspect that's where the Rift mystery lies. Cmdr Macklin_Fox posted that he'd run an analyis of systems within 6ly or so from the R-R line which identified a cluster of around 10 Eafots systems.


Here is his list of that Cluster

Eafots JO-Z d13-41
Eafots OG-V b57-3
Eafots EU-Y b55-0
Eafots EU-Y b55-3
Eafots UH-C b54-2
Eafots KB-B c27-11
Eafots UH-C b54-3
Eafots TH-C b54-1
Eafots TH-C b54-2
Eafots OB-E b53-2

I can't get back into the game at the moment (RL commitments) but if I were then I'd be heading off to search those 10 systems & their vicinity!

I'm currently headed to the rift for my first deep space exploration mission. I'll be sure to check out those systems when i get there and report if i find anything.

 

[CMDR Poet Starwind]

I presented a possible solution a while back, see https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/252932-So-you-want-to-know-about-the-Formidine-Rift-(Part-3)?p=4326057&viewfull=1#post4326057 & related posts. My solution didn't generate much interest, & I got diverted from the search by the Engineers update. I did go back out & completed my search by surveying the Phaa Ain OO-X systems, but there was nothing of interest so I'm confident that the asterism I spotted in my Phaa Ain NO-X survey was the solution of the Old Lady's clue.

I think you have to remember that Drew Wagar has admitted to liking wordplay & that is the way to interpret the old lady's words from Reclamation. At the time of my search I was focused on the potential greek mythological link of the word "Formidine" to the Graeh sector, however that sector has apparently been explored & nothing was found. The pointer stars in the asterism I found appeared to point towards the Eafots sector, & that ties in with the later Galnet clue of an EAFOTS signal from the Cobra interred in Tionisla graveyard. The R-R line runs through the edge of the Eafots sector so I suspect that's where the Rift mystery lies. Cmdr Macklin_Fox posted that he'd run an analyis of systems within 6ly or so from the R-R line which identified a cluster of around 10 Eafots systems.


Here is his list of that Cluster

Eafots JO-Z d13-41
Eafots OG-V b57-3
Eafots EU-Y b55-0
Eafots EU-Y b55-3
Eafots UH-C b54-2
Eafots KB-B c27-11
Eafots UH-C b54-3
Eafots TH-C b54-1
Eafots TH-C b54-2
Eafots OB-E b53-2

I can't get back into the game at the moment (RL commitments) but if I were then I'd be heading off to search those 10 systems & their vicinity!

If the bright star/underworld clues are real, then one on that list stands out. If not, at least its something to verify and report on. Thanks!

 

[RepleteEagle]

I presented a possible solution a while back, see https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/252932-So-you-want-to-know-about-the-Formidine-Rift-(Part-3)?p=4326057&viewfull=1#post4326057 & related posts. My solution didn't generate much interest, & I got diverted from the search by the Engineers update. I did go back out & completed my search by surveying the Phaa Ain OO-X systems, but there was nothing of interest so I'm confident that the asterism I spotted in my Phaa Ain NO-X survey was the solution of the Old Lady's clue.

I think you have to remember that Drew Wagar has admitted to liking wordplay & that is the way to interpret the old lady's words from Reclamation. At the time of my search I was focused on the potential greek mythological link of the word "Formidine" to the Graeh sector, however that sector has apparently been explored & nothing was found. The pointer stars in the asterism I found appeared to point towards the Eafots sector, & that ties in with the later Galnet clue of an EAFOTS signal from the Cobra interred in Tionisla graveyard. The R-R line runs through the edge of the Eafots sector so I suspect that's where the Rift mystery lies. Cmdr Macklin_Fox posted that he'd run an analyis of systems within 6ly or so from the R-R line which identified a cluster of around 10 Eafots systems.


Here is his list of that Cluster

Eafots JO-Z d13-41
Eafots OG-V b57-3
Eafots EU-Y b55-0
Eafots EU-Y b55-3
Eafots UH-C b54-2
Eafots KB-B c27-11
Eafots UH-C b54-3
Eafots TH-C b54-1
Eafots TH-C b54-2
Eafots OB-E b53-2

I can't get back into the game at the moment (RL commitments) but if I were then I'd be heading off to search those 10 systems & their vicinity!

Eafots EU-y b55-3 also seems to have the same Y coord as the RR line, at least its very close.

 

[lorrad]

I presented a possible solution a while back, see https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/252932-So-you-want-to-know-about-the-Formidine-Rift-(Part-3)?p=4326057&viewfull=1#post4326057 & related posts. My solution didn't generate much interest, & I got diverted from the search by the Engineers update. I did go back out & completed my search by surveying the Phaa Ain OO-X systems, but there was nothing of interest so I'm confident that the asterism I spotted in my Phaa Ain NO-X survey was the solution of the Old Lady's clue.

I think you have to remember that Drew Wagar has admitted to liking wordplay & that is the way to interpret the old lady's words from Reclamation. At the time of my search I was focused on the potential greek mythological link of the word "Formidine" to the Graeh sector, however that sector has apparently been explored & nothing was found. The pointer stars in the asterism I found appeared to point towards the Eafots sector, & that ties in with the later Galnet clue of an EAFOTS signal from the Cobra interred in Tionisla graveyard. The R-R line runs through the edge of the Eafots sector so I suspect that's where the Rift mystery lies. Cmdr Macklin_Fox posted that he'd run an analyis of systems within 6ly or so from the R-R line which identified a cluster of around 10 Eafots systems.


Here is his list of that Cluster

Eafots JO-Z d13-41
Eafots OG-V b57-3
Eafots EU-Y b55-0
Eafots EU-Y b55-3
Eafots UH-C b54-2
Eafots KB-B c27-11
Eafots UH-C b54-3
Eafots TH-C b54-1
Eafots TH-C b54-2
Eafots OB-E b53-2

I can't get back into the game at the moment (RL commitments) but if I were then I'd be heading off to search those 10 systems & their vicinity!

I'm there now detail scanning the systems and checking out the skybox. I'm having connection problems and keep dropping but the results will appear in EDDB as I go through them.

I'm finding EDMC more reliable sending info than EDD which if it's in some non-responsive state doesn't send the scan data out to EDDB. Running EDMC while exploring [add edd when its responsive] could prove really useful for searching for patterns in scanned systems since if you go to the API section you can get a dump and search eddb data any way you like.

What I think is your running man asterism is very faint from the R-R line side of EAFOTS. I'm not big on asterisms myself as it is literally connecting dots and seeing things, there's a lot of dots and what one can see is only limited by imagination and lsd.

What looks interesting to me "watch your six" more like a left hand-drive shoulder check is the look of the H&S from there, they look merged into one nebula http://imgur.com/a/ACOX2 and a little further along the R-R line the Heart would be right over the Soul. Going to check that area out after scanning these 10 systems connections allowing.

Re-reading TOW's two passages from Reclamation, she seems more stable and more business like in the holofac, but the first where she seems a bit loopy comes later so she may know more then than in the second because she provides more detailed information and may have recovered more memory. By the time of the C.O.R. story she, assuming it is she, is all business again so how she appears in the hospital is a deliberate performance.

Most have taken the R-R line as a general direction but the passage doesn't say that does it.

‘The Formid …?’
‘Edge of the galactic arm. Take a line from Reorte to Riedquat to the edge of the arm and … keep going.’ The woman grimaced. ‘Stars thin out, you can see the whole galaxy just hanging there. I took a fancy to going exploring after I lost …’ she paused, a sadness creeping across her face, ‘… had some time to spare. Quiet for the most part, until …’

The consensus is the rift is between the Perseus and the New Outer Arm and even narrowed to the red blob area west of Heisenberg Bridge,,,I don't think those assumptions are backed up by the text looking at it now. She's talking to someone now, about now, not about what may have been considered the edge of known space 100 years in the past which is what the Perseus Arm was. To boot she says it twice. I can't see now how she could mean anything other what she's actually saying than follow the R-R line to the edge of the galaxy and keep going.

Anyway back to scanning,,,

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I'm there now detail scanning the systems and checking out the skybox. I'm having connection problems and keep dropping but the results will appear in EDDB as I go through them.

I'm finding EDMC more reliable sending info than EDD which if it's in some non-responsive state doesn't send the scan data out to EDDB. Running EDMC while exploring [add edd when its responsive] could prove really useful for searching for patterns in scanned systems since if you go to the API section you can get a dump and search eddb data any way you like.

What I think is your running man asterism is very faint from the R-R line side of EAFOTS. I'm not big on asterisms myself as it is literally connecting dots and seeing things, there's a lot of dots and what one can see is only limited by imagination and lsd.

What looks interesting to me "watch your six" more like a left hand-drive shoulder check is the look of the H&S from there, they look merged into one nebula http://imgur.com/a/ACOX2 and a little further along the R-R line the Heart would be right over the Soul. Going to check that area out after scanning these 10 systems connections allowing.

Re-reading TOW's two passages from Reclamation, she seems more stable and more business like in the holofac, but the first where she seems a bit loopy comes later so she may know more then than in the second because she provides more detailed information and may have recovered more memory. By the time of the C.O.R. story she, assuming it is she, is all business again so how she appears in the hospital is a deliberate performance.

Most have taken the R-R line as a general direction but the passage doesn't say that does it.

‘The Formid …?’
‘Edge of the galactic arm. Take a line from Reorte to Riedquat to the edge of the arm and … keep going.’ The woman grimaced. ‘Stars thin out, you can see the whole galaxy just hanging there. I took a fancy to going exploring after I lost …’ she paused, a sadness creeping across her face, ‘… had some time to spare. Quiet for the most part, until …’

The consensus is the rift is between the Perseus and the New Outer Arm and even narrowed to the red blob area west of Heisenberg Bridge,,,I don't think those assumptions are backed up by the text looking at it now. She's talking to someone now, about now, not about what may have been considered the edge of known space 100 years in the past which is what the Perseus Arm was. To boot she says it twice. I can't see now how she could mean anything other what she's actually saying than follow the R-R line to the edge of the galaxy and keep going.

Anyway back to scanning,,,

As far as I'm concerned, the Old Woman's words are just a narrative device to link Reclamation to the game - they're not intended to be taken as gospel.
Remember, there were supposed to be co-ordinates, but obviously that's just Drew implementing a 'cliff-hanger' ending.

 

[CMDR Poet Starwind]

As far as I'm concerned, the Old Woman's words are just a narrative device to link Reclamation to the game - they're not intended to be taken as gospel.
Remember, there were supposed to be co-ordinates, but obviously that's just Drew implementing a 'cliff-hanger' ending.

But couldn't the end of the message be the coordinates encoded? I'm trying VIC cipher with RIGHT ON as the key but what is the encoded message? I tried "remember" as that word pops up all ovet the Salomé stuff, and the word "good" shows up all over TOW's second message.

"Remember" came back with a bunch of 51, 54,59, but while the length was right for coordinates they weren't even near the Rift (+5459???? thats north of Sol. not south - coreward not rimward)

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

But couldn't the end of the message be the coordinates encoded? I'm trying VIC cipher with RIGHT ON as the key but what is the encoded message? I tried "remember" as that word pops up all ovet the Salomé stuff, and the word "good" shows up all over TOW's second message.

"Remember" came back with a bunch of 51, 54,59, but while the length was right for coordinates they weren't even near the Rift (+5459???? thats north of Sol. not south - coreward not rimward)

Yes, it COULD be encoded, but there's nothing in Reclamation to.suggest that Salome and Hassan had to decrypt it - indeed, Salome says 'Shall we?', which suggests they know immediately.

Also, the book was being written before the game was completed, so Drew probably didn't even HAVE the coordinates.

And finally, it would render the Kahina Galnet posts redundant if the answer was actually in the book!


So, as I've said before, as long as we keep focusing on the Where, instead of the Why, we're not going to get any closer to the answer.

 

[hammerreborn]

Everytime I've logged on (Rarely of late), I can't help but think we're looking towards those 2mass systems below EAFOTS. Requires going through brown dwarfs (dark systems), looks like a giant rift in the sky, and if you take watch your 6 to be the direction of a clock, points straight down from EAFOTS.

I went there once and thought I looked at all the stars of the system but I clearly could have missed something. I also think its more likely unique features would be on named/known systems rather than on a randomly generated one.

 

[crushdepth]

Was there a hint we received about bright stars?

There was one comment that there are some visual markers (but no idea what). There was another in the AMA to the effect that if we've been visiting bright stars or similar things, we may have observed some aspects of it.

 

[hammerreborn]

There was one comment that there are some visual markers (but no idea what). There was another in the AMA to the effect that if we've been visiting bright stars or similar things, we may have observed some aspects of it.

Isn't the bright stars link almost exclusively from the supposed link between hawkings gap, rift, and pledies (barnacles)? And the barnacles are only found (so far) in systems with bright stars.

 

[crushdepth]

Isn't the bright stars link almost exclusively from the supposed link between hawkings gap, rift, and pledies (barnacles)? And the barnacles are only found (so far) in systems with bright stars.

I don't know. The problem is that bright stars aren't that rare. AFAIK the only seriously bright stars that are kind of unusual and actually stand out on the galaxy map, even as individuals, are type O (aside from the odd monster like Betelguese). I've made a habit of visiting those, just because I happen to like them, but of course I've found nothing.

But I will point the Finger of Suspicion (which correctly guessed the first barnacle planet and second UP planet) at EAFOTS AA-A GO. It's in the right place, it passes the 'visual marker' test and it has an almost suspicious name. It contains three huge type O stars...and not a single rock or scrap of anything else. Hmm.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

I'm there now detail scanning the systems and checking out the skybox. I'm having connection problems and keep dropping but the results will appear in EDDB as I go through them.

I'm finding EDMC more reliable sending info than EDD which if it's in some non-responsive state doesn't send the scan data out to EDDB. Running EDMC while exploring [add edd when its responsive] could prove really useful for searching for patterns in scanned systems since if you go to the API section you can get a dump and search eddb data any way you like.

What I think is your running man asterism is very faint from the R-R line side of EAFOTS. I'm not big on asterisms myself as it is literally connecting dots and seeing things, there's a lot of dots and what one can see is only limited by imagination and lsd.

What looks interesting to me "watch your six" more like a left hand-drive shoulder check is the look of the H&S from there, they look merged into one nebula http://imgur.com/a/ACOX2 and a little further along the R-R line the Heart would be right over the Soul. Going to check that area out after scanning these 10 systems connections allowing.

Re-reading TOW's two passages from Reclamation, she seems more stable and more business like in the holofac, but the first where she seems a bit loopy comes later so she may know more then than in the second because she provides more detailed information and may have recovered more memory. By the time of the C.O.R. story she, assuming it is she, is all business again so how she appears in the hospital is a deliberate performance.

Most have taken the R-R line as a general direction but the passage doesn't say that does it.

‘The Formid …?’
‘Edge of the galactic arm. Take a line from Reorte to Riedquat to the edge of the arm and … keep going.’ The woman grimaced. ‘Stars thin out, you can see the whole galaxy just hanging there. I took a fancy to going exploring after I lost …’ she paused, a sadness creeping across her face, ‘… had some time to spare. Quiet for the most part, until …’

The consensus is the rift is between the Perseus and the New Outer Arm and even narrowed to the red blob area west of Heisenberg Bridge,,,I don't think those assumptions are backed up by the text looking at it now. She's talking to someone now, about now, not about what may have been considered the edge of known space 100 years in the past which is what the Perseus Arm was. To boot she says it twice. I can't see now how she could mean anything other what she's actually saying than follow the R-R line to the edge of the galaxy and keep going.

Anyway back to scanning,,,

Good luck!
Viewing Heart & Soul from a position on R-R line where they are superimposed would also address the "less nebulous" and "core of the problem" clues, so I for one would like to see some screenshots of that even if you don't find anything else of significance there!

 

[crushdepth]

So I goofed off a bit at work and looked into this vain queen / giraffe / daughter's hero stuff. And came up as everyone else did with Cassiopeia (bizarrely missing from the game), Camelopardalis and Perseus constellations. Now since these are all adjacent in the night sky, it would seem likely that's what the references refer to.

But what to do with it? It's not a small region of space. So I went looking for some imagery showing all three, wrote down the star catalogue names of standout features / nebulae in the roughly triangular bit of space in between these constellations and then googled them to find out what they were. And I found out that they were...hey, what's that noise...no...those things are a myth...aaaiiieeeeee....

I found out that the three labelled bodies were Heart Nebula, Soul Nebula and the Double Cluster (NGC 884). Facepalm...back to work.

 

[lorrad]

Good luck!
Viewing Heart & Soul from a position on R-R line where they are superimposed would also address the "less nebulous" and "core of the problem" clues, so I for one would like to see some screenshots of that even if you don't find anything else of significance there!

Guess what, you were right.
Found it!

Salomi "I shall send you out as sheep among wolves"
Drew "I hope a lone wolf commander finds it"
A lone wolf commander charted the far formidine in an asp [cant be possible can it]?
Autolycus is the wolf himself.
sure there's more wolfie references around,,,

skybox http://imgur.com/a/76CdT
enlarged a bit http://imgur.com/6CpfYG6

TaDa!

No?
Cancelling the caterers?

That's the view from Eafots TH-C b54-2 btw
Haven't finished scanning those 10 systems got one to go so this is preliminary, don't even know for sure what nebula that is, what the wolf is staring, or what rabbit its hunting but chasing it down that hole is next since i ain't got anything else better to do.

Sure looks like a wolf staring out from the darkness and even has a shiny nose.
I've had flashbacks that look just like it.

Wouldn't it be sad if this is what we were supposed to notice?