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

[Edelgard von Rhein]

I keep coming back to the size that this thing is supposed to be and that it's categorically not a POI. Oh, and you should be armed. And was in-game pre-horizons and PP.

There's a good chance that people have sailed right past it and not realised what it was. I conclude from that, the visible thing is an in-game asset and that is out-of-place. In my mind, that has to be limited to, odd configurations of star-systems or containing celestial objects - maybe odd descriptions. This would only be identifiable by the most diligent explorers, as for those who have done even a little bit of exploring, there is so much variation and "quirks of stellar forge" things that could be out of place are extremely common.

Then add to the vast search area, even if you limit to yourself to 200ly around the CG, that's still a lot of places to look for the unknown. My expectation (foundless) would be some breadcrumbs that lead into a higher frequency of the issue spread over multiple star systems. This is why I started trying to find "dead ends" around the CG area, where the star was over 20ly away from most neighbours (20ly because that's the max range for the nav panel, and also a sensible long range for a Cobra). But there seem to be a few pockets of these "dark patches" around that don't seem to line up anywhere, and before bookmarks, it would have been impossible to work out any pattern.

I've also been keeping an eye on my nav panel to see if any non-generated names crop up. And periodically searching for non-main-sequence stars in the hope that I stumble across a rogue planet or something - which would be awesome.

But in conclusion, I'm stuck. I need to abandon my brief search to get my data to COR before time is up.

Some good thoughts here.
My personal suspicion is that what we are looking for are one or more stars that can be seen in the skybox but not in the Galaxy Map or nav panel (and which we cannot therefore travel to, yet). This would match everything I have heard of that describes the puzzle (e.g. not a POI, reading between the lines, having possibly been seen already and noticeable by a single commander). To present this as 'solved' would require identifying those stars that can be seen but which have been removed from the Galaxy Map, presumably by the superpowers to prevent us being suspicious of permit locks in the region.
.
To attempt to identify those stars, I have queried Simbad for all objects within 30 arc minutes (half a degree) of the Heart Nebula and gone through the resulting list of almost 1300 objects for the brighter stars, excluding those in the 2MASS catalogue which are mostly in IC 1805, where it would be most difficult to identify a star as being present in the skybox but not the Galaxy Map. It is my intent to check which of these are findable by searching the Galaxy Map, which allows those to be excluded, and to then focus my efforts on trying to find the others in the skybox, that are not findable in the Galaxy Map but which should be in the Formidine Rift area.
Here is the preliminary list, which I have yet to check through in-game:

Spoiler

HD 15558
HD 15570
HD 15629
HD 15557
HD 15851 (Simbad also lists HD 15851A and HD 15851B separately)
HD 15522
V1166 CAS
KM CAS
MWC 50
BD+60 501
BD+60 505
BD+60 506
BD+60 500
BD+60 499
BD+60 498
BD+60 496
BD+60 508
BD+60 512
BD+60 513
BD+60 509
BD+60 497
BD+60 493
BD+60 518
BD+60 519
BD+60 483
BD+60 482
BD+60 510
BD+60 520
BD+60 503
BD+61 427
BD+61 430

Note that the distances will need to be worked out from the parallaxes but this should not take too long once the list has been whittled down a bit.
.
If all these stars are findable in the Galaxy Map search, then there are other stars from other catalogues but it becomes harder to trace, as I mention above. I would probably assume that I am wrong if that turns out to be the case. If I am right, however, then there are one or more stars amongst these that, similarly to the 'test lights' near Sol, can be seen visually but not selected or travelled to. If these can be identified, then the way forward would be to write up a Galnet article detailing the find and asking why Universal Cartographics records have been tampered with.
.
It may be a couple of days before I get out to the region to check this myself, as I'm still feeling rather tired after recently visiting Hawking's Gap and doing various other things that have left me in need of a break, both in-game and irl, so I might not even be on again for a day or two. Good luck to everyone searching the Rift and I hope you all get back safely (and in time for the CG).

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Some good thoughts here.
My personal suspicion is that what we are looking for are one or more stars that can be seen in the skybox but not in the Galaxy Map or nav panel (and which we cannot therefore travel to, yet). This would match everything I have heard of that describes the puzzle (e.g. not a POI, reading between the lines, having possibly been seen already and noticeable by a single commander). To present this as 'solved' would require identifying those stars that can be seen but which have been removed from the Galaxy Map, presumably by the superpowers to prevent us being suspicious of permit locks in the region.
.
To attempt to identify those stars, I have queried Simbad for all objects within 30 arc minutes (half a degree) of the Heart Nebula and gone through the resulting list of almost 1300 objects for the brighter stars, excluding those in the 2MASS catalogue which are mostly in IC 1805, where it would be most difficult to identify a star as being present in the skybox but not the Galaxy Map. It is my intent to check which of these are findable by searching the Galaxy Map, which allows those to be excluded, and to then focus my efforts on trying to find the others in the skybox, that are not findable in the Galaxy Map but which should be in the Formidine Rift area.
Here is the preliminary list, which I have yet to check through in-game:

Spoiler

HD 15558
HD 15570
HD 15629
HD 15557
HD 15851 (Simbad also lists HD 15851A and HD 15851B separately)
HD 15522
V1166 CAS
KM CAS
MWC 50
BD+60 501
BD+60 505
BD+60 506
BD+60 500
BD+60 499
BD+60 498
BD+60 496
BD+60 508
BD+60 512
BD+60 513
BD+60 509
BD+60 497
BD+60 493
BD+60 518
BD+60 519
BD+60 483
BD+60 482
BD+60 510
BD+60 520
BD+60 503
BD+61 427
BD+61 430

Note that the distances will need to be worked out from the parallaxes but this should not take too long once the list has been whittled down a bit.
.
If all these stars are findable in the Galaxy Map search, then there are other stars from other catalogues but it becomes harder to trace, as I mention above. I would probably assume that I am wrong if that turns out to be the case. If I am right, however, then there are one or more stars amongst these that, similarly to the 'test lights' near Sol, can be seen visually but not selected or travelled to. If these can be identified, then the way forward would be to write up a Galnet article detailing the find and asking why Universal Cartographics records have been tampered with.
.
It may be a couple of days before I get out to the region to check this myself, as I'm still feeling rather tired after recently visiting Hawking's Gap and doing various other things that have left me in need of a break, both in-game and irl, so I might not even be on again for a day or two. Good luck to everyone searching the Rift and I hope you all get back safely (and in time for the CG).

I have a few comments.

1. FDev have done well at recreating an accurate galaxy (plus procgen) but there are numerous systems that are misplaced and/or lost - ask Jaiotu about CassA, or search the Galmap for Beta Phoenicis, for example - so a star missing from Simbad doesn't actually prove it's a Rift-related issue.
2. Assuming you find something in the skybox that isn't Galmap, how does that tell us anything useful? Unless you can find a way to get to the object, it's just a dot in the sky. I'm not sure that a Galnet article is going to achieve anything - again, ask Jaiotu...
3. There are bugs in the skybox rendering - for example, Heart (or Soul - I forget which) nebula disappears in certain locations.

Nonetheless, good luck

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

I have a few of comments.

1. FDev have done well at recreating an accurate galaxy (plus procgen) but there are numerous systems that are misplaced and/or lost - ask Jaiotu about CassA, or search the Galmap for Beta Phoenicis, for example - so a star missing from Simbad doesn't actually prove it's a Rift-related issue.
2. Assuming you find something in the skybox that isn't Galmap, how does that tell us anything useful? Unless you can find a way to get to the object, it's just a dot in the sky. I'm not sure that a Galnet article is going to achieve anything - again, ask Jaiotu...
3. There are bugs in the skybox rendering - for example, Heart (or Soul - I forget which) nebula disappears in certain locations.

Nonetheless, good luck

All perfectly valid points.
1 and 3) My approach would certainly be invalidated by this kind of inconsistency. I think Jaiotu is doing the right kind of thing with the Cas A expedition, however, and I am tempted to join up, only my play time is a bit too inconsistent right now and I often have to play on my laptop, which means in non-Horizons mode until its terrain generation problems are sorted (even trying to bring up the system map hangs the game in Horizons atm).
2) True - I would be limited to submitting a Galnet article to attempt to progress the storyline from such a finding. If I'm right, however, that should be the only trigger that I need to pull outside of the game. Ideally, the mystery would be solvable completely in-game but I've already crossed that line by checking Simbad. This is the main thing that concerns me about my hypothesis.
.
Thanks for the constructive feedback!

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

All perfectly valid points.
1 and 3) My approach would certainly be invalidated by this kind of inconsistency. I think Jaiotu is doing the right kind of thing with the Cas A expedition, however, and I am tempted to join up, only my play time is a bit too inconsistent right now and I often have to play on my laptop, which means in non-Horizons mode until its terrain generation problems are sorted (even trying to bring up the system map hangs the game in Horizons atm).
2) True - I would be limited to submitting a Galnet article to attempt to progress the storyline from such a finding. If I'm right, however, that should be the only trigger that I need to pull outside of the game. Ideally, the mystery would be solvable completely in-game but I've already crossed that line by checking Simbad. This is the main thing that concerns me about my hypothesis.
.
Thanks for the constructive feedback!

I agree about the 'solvable in-game' aspect - but from memory Drew has said that external tools may make things easier, so using Simbad to isolate search candidates seems like a reasonable way to go.
Your hypothesis does have the benefit of being testable within a reasonable timescale - better than "fly to the Rift and look for weird stuff"


One of my theories involves looking for metal rich planets are high orbital distances - but without some method for narrowing the search, it's still needle-in-a-haystack stuff, and so will remain on the back-burner for now.

 

[stupesX]

A bit of a brain dump on the galnet article about the attack on Salome's prison convoy to kunt asylum or wotnot. I saw a few interpretations of the ship names for instance slipper and tiara were mentioned. These have more astronomical significance if run through a thesaurus. See below.

Tiara, diadem = coronet
Slipper = clog?
Veil was good
Jewellery = jewel box or necklace

And in general I was pointed to the southern cross and its constituents.

 

[TargetLost]

http://puu.sh/swFh0/9843865726.jpg
2 Days of jumping, decided to head on back.

Looks cool. Would like to see my route. Is this a self made tool?
Does anyone know a tool where I can load my Journals or netlog files and see my route?

 

[Dash]

I have a few comments.

1. FDev have done well at recreating an accurate galaxy (plus procgen) but there are numerous systems that are misplaced and/or lost - ask Jaiotu about CassA, or search the Galmap for Beta Phoenicis, for example - so a star missing from Simbad doesn't actually prove it's a Rift-related issue.
2. Assuming you find something in the skybox that isn't Galmap, how does that tell us anything useful? Unless you can find a way to get to the object, it's just a dot in the sky. I'm not sure that a Galnet article is going to achieve anything - again, ask Jaiotu...
3. There are bugs in the skybox rendering - for example, Heart (or Soul - I forget which) nebula disappears in certain locations.

Nonetheless, good luck

My initial thoughts were the same as Edelgard's, but these points you make are things that caused me to write off things like this.

Even with my "rift within the sector" musings couldn't go further than that. So there were big gaps in the galaxy map, unless systems appear on the nav-panel, then there is no way of getting to that big black gap. Unless you fly, and that would (a) take forever and (b) we already know it doesn't load a new system map.

Another idea on the skybox thing is to to organise screen shots facing Sol from around the area and see if something is visible on systems near H&S but not other systems - but again, that's pretty vague given how big the area is and how rapidly the skybox changes.

Applying deduction to the above and what we know of as "possible" in v1 of the game, it seems it has to be related to the makeup of the systems. Or, I guess, systems that don't appear on the galmap but do on the navpanel - although if that was possible, why did they leave Jacques visible near the core (might have been deliberate as there's a system in the California Nebulae with an economy that doesn't show on the gal map as so)

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Looks cool. Would like to see my route. Is this a self made tool?
Does anyone know a tool where I can load my Journals or netlog files and see my route?

EDDiscovery

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

My initial thoughts were the same as Edelgard's, but these points you make are things that caused me to write off things like this.

Even with my "rift within the sector" musings couldn't go further than that. So there were big gaps in the galaxy map, unless systems appear on the nav-panel, then there is no way of getting to that big black gap. Unless you fly, and that would (a) take forever and (b) we already know it doesn't load a new system map.

Another idea on the skybox thing is to to organise screen shots facing Sol from around the area and see if something is visible on systems near H&S but not other systems - but again, that's pretty vague given how big the area is and how rapidly the skybox changes.

Applying deduction to the above and what we know of as "possible" in v1 of the game, it seems it has to be related to the makeup of the systems. Or, I guess, systems that don't appear on the galmap but do on the navpanel - although if that was possible, why did they leave Jacques visible near the core (might have been deliberate as there's a system in the California Nebulae with an economy that doesn't show on the gal map as so)

The problem I see with stuff in the nav panel that isn't in Galmap is that you'd have no way of actually knowing, other than stopping after every jump and searching for everything listed in the nav panel - and without a significantly narrowed down search area (I'm not in the EAFOTS=Rift school) then it's not a hypothesis that can be realistically tested. Indeed, actually having Cmdrs visit every system beyond the Rift is not a realistic goal, even at jump/scan speeds.

So that means we need to take the clues we've been given and use them to figure out what we're looking for - which should help us work out where to look.

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Just a quick update on my progress:

• All the BD catalogue stars I listed before are not findable in the search function of the Galaxy Map. There are many other stars from this catalogue in-game, so I'm not sure if these were omitted or are part of this mystery. I'll check their distances tomorrow to see which are closest to the Heart Nebula / Eafots: these will be the stars I go looking for.
• HD 15557 sent me to HD 15558, in the IC 1805 cluster, otherwise all the HD catalogue stars are present; MWC 50 is also in IC 1805.
• V1166 CAS is in the wrong place: it's almost 2 KLY in the direction of Sgr A*, not in the direction of the Heart Nebula at all!

 

[Red Anders]

Did anything further ever happen about the mysterious location on Eafots LZ-H b10-0 D 1 where everybody was getting crashes to desktop? That's the last time I looked at this thread, I know it was bug reported and doesn't seem to have had any official interest one way or the other judging by the bug report thread here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...0-D-1-CTD-on-drop-to-normal-space-after-orbit

Is it just being put down to a random game issue now rather than a likely site of some relevant content that's bugged in some way?

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

Just a quick update on my progress:

• All the BD catalogue stars I listed before are not findable in the search function of the Galaxy Map. There are many other stars from this catalogue in-game, so I'm not sure if these were omitted or are part of this mystery. I'll check their distances tomorrow to see which are closest to the Heart Nebula / Eafots: these will be the stars I go looking for.
• HD 15557 sent me to HD 15558, in the IC 1805 cluster, otherwise all the HD catalogue stars are present; MWC 50 is also in IC 1805.
• V1166 CAS is in the wrong place: it's almost 2 KLY in the direction of Sgr A*, not in the direction of the Heart Nebula at all!

Be careful with BD stars - if I remember correctly I've seen them in-game as 'BD xx' and 'BD-xx', so double-check the search in Galmap.
Also, many stars have multiple IDs - Simbad does a good job of showing them (bottom of the page, I think) so they may be under an 'HR', 'HIP' or 'HD' designation.

I'm surprised you only got two wonky results

 

[Zeeman]

The problem I see with stuff in the nav panel that isn't in Galmap is that you'd have no way of actually knowing, other than stopping after every jump and searching for everything listed in the nav panel - and without a significantly narrowed down search area (I'm not in the EAFOTS=Rift school) then it's not a hypothesis that can be realistically tested. Indeed, actually having Cmdrs visit every system beyond the Rift is not a realistic goal, even at jump/scan speeds.

So that means we need to take the clues we've been given and use them to figure out what we're looking for - which should help us work out where to look.

And without the benefit of cut-n-paste, to add to the PITA factor...

Z...

 

[KRONFROMGALVATRON]

FYI, if anyone hasn't seen this, CoR is offering prizes to the top 3 community goal contributors:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...contributors?p=4821234&viewfull=1#post4821234

 

[GormDeGamle]

Finally I am back again!
After leaving the bubble somewhen in April or May I have just reached civilized space - and I am docked at Serebrov Terminal in the HR 6421 System.
When I realized yesterday evening I could possibly make it back from the Rift in time to hand over all of my exploration data to the Children of Raxxla I made a speed run tonight - and here I am.
Though I didn't find the big mistery that undoubtedly lies somewhere in or beyond the Formidine Rift I hope the CoR will make good use of all the data to aid the hopefully liberated CMDR Salomé in her quest.
Now it's time to sell the data, grab a beer and take a rest... [noob]

EDIT: Damn! No beer in the fridge! A Coke must be enough then...

 

[hammerreborn]

Did anything further ever happen about the mysterious location on Eafots LZ-H b10-0 D 1 where everybody was getting crashes to desktop? That's the last time I looked at this thread, I know it was bug reported and doesn't seem to have had any official interest one way or the other judging by the bug report thread here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...0-D-1-CTD-on-drop-to-normal-space-after-orbit

Is it just being put down to a random game issue now rather than a likely site of some relevant content that's bugged in some way?

Still CTDs. There's some features you can see before crash height (~60kms) that seem like they could possibly be of import.

 

[dynamicbob]

Still CTDs. There's some features you can see before crash height (~60kms) that seem like they could possibly be of import.

May need to attach a additional report to the bug thread and keep it active without excessive bumping, if many are reporting it individually then its something they should take a look at given the location

 

[hammerreborn]

May need to attach a additional report to the bug thread and keep it active without excessive bumping, if many are reporting it individually then its something they should take a look at given the location

I already posted in at least one of the bug threads. It's stupid. I want to turn in probably easily 1k+ scans for the CG but I don't want to miss "oh hey guys we fixed the thing that should never have been broken in the first place".

The least frontier should g do is acknowledge if something is there or not.

 

[dynamicbob]

I already posted in at least one of the bug threads. It's stupid. I want to turn in probably easily 1k+ scans for the CG but I don't want to miss "oh hey guys we fixed the thing that should never have been broken in the first place".

The least frontier should g do is acknowledge if something is there or not.

It would seem they are going to tie success to tiers reached, so all we can do is but push it towards succcess. And then afterwards encourage them to rectify in the future.

 

[crushdepth]

Still CTDs. There's some features you can see before crash height (~60kms) that seem like they could possibly be of import.

I brought a fighter with me on this trip. Do you think it woukd be possible to de-orbit on the far side of the planet and then fly around? Or does the whole planet crap out when you hit 60km?

I've read of people successfully approaching other CTD sites by landing elsewhere and driving in on the SRV.