Alien archeology and other mysteries: Thread 9 - The Canonn

[Owsla]

Hmm, interesting... So more indications that hyperspace may be different in some places. With the reports coming in of the mottling in hyperspace near Colonia as well, I thought the most likely thing was that it was just something to do with being outside of the bubble. However, having thought about it with your additional info, another idea occurs... Anyone got any idea just how many UAs Jacques was bombed with and presumably carried to Colonia?

Looking at the encounter videos during the hyperindiction the Yellow Mottling is drastically increased at the point where we lose control.
I think perhaps the increase of Yellow Cloud, could be directly related to the unknown craft having been present in areas of Hyperspace, and our ships malfunction.

Without over thinking too much hopefully, this Yellow Mottling of Hyperspace, if in some way engineered by the unknown ship, could spell big problems,
if it were to increase to a high level we may no longer be able to jump in those areas of space without hyperspace becoming unstable.
If that were to happen & began to spread inside the bubble we would slowly become cut off from each other.
Together we stand...Divided we fall.

 

[Thatchinho]

Well I am in the bubble, have been since this started. And it 'seems' to me there is more of the mottled orange clouds than there were before. Possibly something has changed in hyperspace. It could be just random variations in the jump sequence, or maybe I am just more attuned to it than before.

It's also very possible it was always like this. Some jumps produce more and some less. It may just be randomized on each jump and confirmation bias has us seeing it as being more frequent because we're specifically looking for it. Darn, it's so hard to tell without someone really really patient going through and analyzing old videos or something.

All useful info, and good points. Rest assured I try to take into account confirmation bias etc. as much as I can. You'll have probably missed my initial post where I reported the change in hyperspace colouration so I'll run through what happened again and why I'm pretty confident it was a genuine effect.

I'd seen the reports of the first two encounters and watched the videos. Notably these were from xbox players. In the videos I'd seen that hyperspace looked different to what I was used to, but I hadn't actually played the game for a few weeks and heard there'd been a server update, so figured it was just probably as a result of that. I started the game and set of from the bubble heading towards the second encounter site (in the Aries Dark Region) and made my first jump expecting to see the new hyperspace graphics. To the contrary the graphics were exactly as I remembered them being. Same for the next couple of jumps and I concluded that the different hyperspace graphics must be due to the videos being from the xbox version and that it must have different hyperspace graphics to the PC version. Then as I kept going, to my surprise, the orange mottling started to appear. There wasn't tons of it but it was clearly there. I jumped around a few times to try and get an encounter then got ganked and had to do a re-buy and set out again from the bubble. This time I headed into the Pleiades. Again hyperspace was I remembered it when I set out and then the mottling crept in and increased as I got closer to and then deeper into the Pleiades.

So I'm pretty confident that what I saw was genuine and not an artefact of my unconscious biases, but whether its a common effect to everyone, and what it's actually related to is still completely open!

RevLogos, are you near any stations that have been UA bombed by any chance?

- - - Updated - - -

Looking at the encounter videos during the hyperindiction the Yellow Mottling is drastically increased at the point where we lose control.
I think the increase of this Yellow Cloud could be directly related to the unknown crafts presence in areas of Hyperspace, and our ships malfunction.

Without over thinking too much hopefully, this Yellow Mottling of Hyperspace, if in some way engineered by the unknown ship, could spell big problems,
what if it increased to such a high level we could no longer jump in those areas without hyperspace becoming unstable.
If that begins to happen & then increases inside the bubble we would slowly become cut off from each other.
Together we stand...Divided we fall.

Now that would be a potentially epic plot development!

 

[Crusina Luachra]

Looking at the encounter videos during the hyperindiction the Yellow Mottling is drastically increased at the point where we lose control.
I think the increase of this Yellow Cloud could be directly related to the unknown crafts presence in areas of Hyperspace, and our ships malfunction.

Without over thinking too much hopefully, this Yellow Mottling of Hyperspace, if in some way engineered by the unknown ship, could spell big problems,

YES THANK YOU!

I've been saying the same thing!

All four of my interdictions as well as every interdiction I've seen I've seen either a patch of green nebula just as the interdiction started OR you could see a "wall" of the green/yellow clouds coming ahead.

And guess what color the warp thing they jump into is? Green/Yellow.

I think it's a solid theory that, that they reside in those areas of hyperspace and yank you out when you reach it.

Yeah I kind of thought you were overthinking the whole "taking stuff from our cargo" but this is a conclusion that I've seen with every video I've seen of this.

Of course it's just that, a theory and I have nothing beyond the observation of around 15 videos to prove it but hey...

 

[nazo]

All useful info, and good points. Rest assured I try to take into account confirmation bias etc. as much as I can. You'll have probably missed my initial post where I reported the change in hyperspace colouration so I'll run through what happened again and why I'm pretty confident it was a genuine effect.

I'd seen the reports of the first two encounters and watched the videos. Notably these were from xbox players. In the videos I'd seen that hyperspace looked different to what I was used to, but I hadn't actually played the game for a few weeks and heard there'd been a server update, so figured it was just probably as a result of that. I started the game and set of from the bubble heading towards the second encounter site (in the Aries Dark Region) and made my first jump expecting to see the new hyperspace graphics. To the contrary the graphics were exactly as I remembered them being. Same for the next couple of jumps and I concluded that the different hyperspace graphics must be due to the videos being from the xbox version and that it must have different hyperspace graphics to the PC version. Then as I kept going, to my surprise, the orange mottling started to appear. There wasn't tons of it but it was clearly there. I jumped around a few times to try and get an encounter then got ganked and had to do a re-buy and set out again from the bubble. This time I headed into the Pleiades. Again hyperspace was I remembered it when I set out and then the mottling crept in and increased as I got closer to and then deeper into the Pleiades.

So I'm pretty confident that what I saw was genuine and not an artefact of my unconscious biases, but whether its a common effect to everyone, and what it's actually related to is still completely open!

Oh don't misunderstand. That there is more of this "mottling" as people are calling it during the hyperdiction events is utterly undeniable. What I mean is the causes of the mottling during normal jump events may not have changed. Whether it's randomly generated, related to where you are in the galaxy (or maybe where you are relative to an alternate dimension on the other side of hyperspace, lol) is hard to say. The question of whether it has changed recently is the one that may be subject to confirmation bias. A very in-depth analysis is needed to really determine what most affects the likelihood of these appearing more. It may actually be a combination of variables and randomness. Or, maybe it is related to the aliens. I don't know if anyone has the patience to truly test this individually -- this is probably something we'll have to learn over time.

 

[RedWizzard]

While you are correct in the fact there are other possibilities, thinking in terms of game design I can't imagine them making the code THAT unintuitive. Just having three digit binary is interesting and complex enough.

The UP broadcasts a signal containing binary coded octal values that encode the atmospheric composition of the nearest planet and a bunch of other data relative to Merope 5c. That's way more complex and interesting and unintuitive than simply reversing the order (which they've done in codes before, btw) or choosing '-' to mean 1 rather than 0.

Also note that when Han_Zen said "they've drawn it up for us" he was (presumably) referring to the symbols in the UP's spectrograph. But those symbols don't correspond to an obvious ordering for the encoding he's suggesting:
-|- -||
|-- --|
which in his encoding is:
2 3
4 1
If the image is supposed to clue us in that these are binary coded octal then why aren't they in a natural counting order (as we did when we sent the Arecibo message)?

 

[Makaan]

I won't disagree that they would know we'd be "pushed." Like I said, it seems almost like they use spacial warping or something, creating distortions as they move that would affect nearby objects. I disagree that there is specific intent. In much the way we may step on small bugs when we walk, is taking a step intent to kill bugs? Do we refuse to walk? This doesn't even cause actual harm though. Just a slight inertial nudge -- not even an actual physical strike. It's much less than taking a step... Especially if, as I suspect, they just think we may be "dead" at that point in time.


By the way, speaking of them thinking we are dead... Their ships are biotech... When our ships shut down completely due to their presence and even begin to ice over, wouldn't they really truly think we're dead if nothing else because of that? The thing moving around inside may be nothing more than an "organ" that hasn't fully died out yet from their perspective (if they even notice that much...) When they reach out with that "scan" or whatever it may be and find something that in no way whatsoever responds, they would surely think we're dead. Their bio-tech ships would surely react completely differently to this even if something caused cascading failures like what we see.

Hmmm I just think the entire encounter was intimidating and they did it like that on purpose.

I'm not saying it's hostile, this explains why there's no damage, but it's definitely not friendly and they had intent.

Plus they must be very advanced. If they can pull us from hyperspace, then they can tell we're alive and kicking in the cockpit....you'd think anyway.

 

[Nosa Fasu]

Okay so I've now seen a few posts here arguing over why the US' portal pushes us back and same for their engine trail.
I've probably missed somebody else's post stating the exact same thing I'm going to mention and my train of thought is a bit messy currently but hear me out.

The way supercruise works for us is by (to put it simply) wrapping our ship in a bubble and have that bubble move our ship around in space, now whether or not jumping works the same way, I have no idea and should probably look it up although I don't remember seeing this being mentioned anywhere.

What if the US does a similar thing, but the other way around?
"Normal" space is apparently harmful to them and/or their technology (or I misinterpreted a few things in this thread), maybe their way to protect their ship when leaving witchspace is to wrap their ship in a similar(?) kind of bubble.
Or maybe that "bubble" is residue from witchspace. What I mean by that is lets say you work around chemicals with a certain smell to them (perfume for example), when you go home after work, you're no longer exposed to said chemicals but your body/clothes are still emitting the same strong smell those chemicals have.

That could explain why the US pushes you once it's done "scanning" you and leaves. It's clearly not physically hitting your ship (no hull damage if you have no shields, clearly passes several meters away from you if you're in an Eagle), although FDev could possibly have the ship "physically" hit your ship without inflicting you damage etc. just for the script to make sense. It could also explain why their engine's "fumes" slow you down and why the portal pushes you back.
The US is enveloped by that residue "bubble", the residue "bubble" pushes your ship aside as it passes by. The engine's "fumes" is that "bubble" trailing and fading, it's not quite as strong and only slows you down. The portal is steaming that residue as if you were to open a window underwater, strong enough to push you back.

Visually it could also explain the distortion around the ship. Think Schlieren Optics.

Does that make sense at all? Please let me know. I'm sorry if it doesn't, I'm tired and English isn't my first language.

 

[Thatchinho]

Oh don't misunderstand. That there is more of this "mottling" as people are calling it during the hyperdiction events is utterly undeniable. What I mean is the causes of the mottling during normal jump events may not have changed. Whether it's randomly generated, related to where you are in the galaxy (or maybe where you are relative to an alternate dimension on the other side of hyperspace, lol) is hard to say. The question of whether it has changed recently is the one that may be subject to confirmation bias. A very in-depth analysis is needed to really determine what most affects the likelihood of these appearing more. It may actually be a combination of variables and randomness. Or, maybe it is related to the aliens. I don't know if anyone has the patience to truly test this individually -- this is probably something we'll have to learn over time.

Ah, I see what you mean. On that front, personally I have noticed differences in hyperspace before, but never definitely identified a pattern. I have looked, but not with any particular dedication, and without anything major to tie it to probably ignored any patterns anyway.

On the amounts in the hyperdiction, I had noticed amounts of mottling which seemed on a par with that in the hyperdiction vids but have not had a hyperdiction (much to my disappointment!).

 

[Esso]

I apologize if this has been said before, but i cant help but notice the deliberate wording Drew Wagar used when he updated his Thargoids lore page.

http://www.drewwagar.com/progress-report/elite-dangerous-lore-the-thargoids/

Particularly i cant help but notice this entry in the "What we know" section : "Thargoids have been in space for ‘Millennia’"
Notice how the word Millennia is both capitalized and in brackets? Also, it is common knowledge that Thargoids are from witchspace, so why use the regular word "space"?

What this one sentence tells me is that Thargoids have been in space (our space) looking for something called "Millennia". Which is plural for millennium which to me sounds a lot like a material or a substance. The fact that its both capitalized and in brackets tell me its definately not meant to be a description of time period but rather a thing or a place.

Maybe i am thinking too much into this, but Drew is a master of hints. What do you guys think?

 

[RedWizzard]

I suppose we could also toss out the standard model, quantum physics and the like as well. Your denial of schwarzschild wormholes and the existence of black holes, which utilize the same mechanics, is highly illogical.

You probably shouldn't draw too many conclusions about whether or not the alien ship is entering a wormhole based on out-of-game physics given that the in-game physics model is very simplistic and doesn't include things like the standard model, quantum physics, or relativity.

 

[nazo]

So, I ended up on a much much more detailed wiki article about the hyperspace technologies here: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace

Specifically:

In recent years it has been discovered that the Frame Shift Drive can be significantly enhanced by the injection of rare materials – a technique provided by various ‘engineers’ located around the core worlds. They can also be ‘supercharged’ by entering close proximity to the fierce emissions of White Dwarf and Neutron stars.

Has anyone messed around with any of this stuff within the "alien bubble" since the hyperdictions began? Not just simply injecting and jumping normally, but, doing things more extreme like making especially huge jumps on purpose for instance.

 

[fieval]

The CMDRS getting the Alien Encounter after scanning at Pleiades Sector KC-U B3-1 8 (An Ammonia World...)
Are you guys finding a UP in orbit, scanning it, picking it up and then jumping to Merope??
I've lugged my own UP there with no effect, just wondering if you are picking up a UP in orbit?

 

[Crusina Luachra]

I set off a UP before the ship departed. No effect. I think we can cross this off the list.

[video=youtube;3uVCraYUX0s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uVCraYUX0s[/video]

- - - Updated - - -

The CMDRS getting the Alien Encounter after scanning at Pleiades Sector KC-U B3-1 8 (An Ammonia World...)
Are you guys finding a UP in orbit, scanning it, picking it up and then jumping to Merope??
I've lugged my own UP there with no effect, just wondering if you are picking up a UP in orbit?

don't believe everything you read.

 

[RedWizzard]

I apologize if this has been said before, but i cant help but notice the deliberate wording Drew Wagar used when he updated his Thargoids lore page.

http://www.drewwagar.com/progress-report/elite-dangerous-lore-the-thargoids/

Particularly i cant help but notice this entry in the "What we know" section : "Thargoids have been in space for ‘Millennia’"
Notice how the word Millennia is both capitalized and in brackets? Also, it is common knowledge that Thargoids are from witchspace, so why use the regular word "space"?

What this one sentence tells me is that Thargoids have been in space (our space) looking for something called "Millennia". Which is plural for millennium which to me sounds a lot like a material or a substance. The fact that its both capitalized and in brackets tell me its definately not meant to be a description of time period but rather a thing or a place.

Maybe i am thinking too much into this, but Drew is a master of hints. What do you guys think?

I think you're reading too much into it. Drew's use of quotes in that article to me implies he thinks those terms are imprecise rather than literal (see his use of 'war', 'skirmish', 'ripped' etc). Plus his use of capitalisation is a inconsistent in at least one other case: witchspace is capitalised in the summary just above but not in other places in the article; and strictly speaking I don't think he should be capitalising thargoid all the time either.

 

[Owsla]

YES THANK YOU!

I've been saying the same thing!

All four of my interdictions as well as every interdiction I've seen I've seen either a patch of green nebula just as the interdiction started OR you could see a "wall" of the green/yellow clouds coming ahead.

And guess what color the warp thing they jump into is? Green/Yellow.

I think it's a solid theory that, that they reside in those areas of hyperspace and yank you out when you reach it.

Yeah I kind of thought you were overthinking the whole "taking stuff from our cargo" but this is a conclusion that I've seen with every video I've seen of this.

Of course it's just that, a theory and I have nothing beyond the observation of around 15 videos to prove it but hey...

I think it's a solid theory as well, certainly that the Yellow/Green Wall like cloud during hyperindiction is a major sign of their presence & possibly some sort of weapon, that disrupts hyperspace or more accurately our FSD drives,
it also does appear to be the same Yellow Cloud that exists during a normal jump which increases, rather than it suddenly just appearing out of nowhere.

Thanks for pointing out I was overthinking before hand btw... because Yeah I was. lol

 

[Crusina Luachra]

I think it's a solid theory as well, certainly that the Yellow/Green Wall like cloud during hyperindiction is a major sign of some sort of weapon that disrupts hyperspace or more accurately our FSD drives,
and it does seems as tho it's the same Yellow that already exists during a normal jump that increases rather than it suddenly just appearing out of nowhere.

Thanks for pointing out I was overthinking before hand btw... because Yeah I was. lol

I agree.

And yeah, it definitely becomes denser like look a this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XzmdrVGj7c

You can literally see a wall of it coming towards you. Lots of other videos I can't see that wall but they always get interdicted near a nebula/cloud of green somewhere either just before or just as they get interdict.

Assuming we are correct, the questions we have are:

1. Is this where they "wait"?

2. Is this where they live?

3. Is this where they jump to after they finish...doing whatever it is they do to us after the interdiction?

 

[The_Sprite]

I apologize if this has been said before, but i cant help but notice the deliberate wording Drew Wagar used when he updated his Thargoids lore page.

http://www.drewwagar.com/progress-report/elite-dangerous-lore-the-thargoids/

Particularly i cant help but notice this entry in the "What we know" section : "Thargoids have been in space for ‘Millennia’"
Notice how the word Millennia is both capitalized and in brackets? Also, it is common knowledge that Thargoids are from witchspace, so why use the regular word "space"?

What this one sentence tells me is that Thargoids have been in space (our space) looking for something called "Millennia". Which is plural for millennium which to me sounds a lot like a material or a substance. The fact that its both capitalized and in brackets tell me its definately not meant to be a description of time period but rather a thing or a place.

Maybe i am thinking too much into this, but Drew is a master of hints. What do you guys think?

There are certain Rules when using speech marks.

Rule 1. Use double quotation marks to set off a direct (word-for-word) quotation. ...
Rule 2a. Always capitalize the first word in a complete quotation, even midsentence. ...
Rule 2b. Do not capitalize quoted material that continues a sentence. ...

He is both using a Direct Quotation and Capitalizing the first word within the quotation marks.
Also if that sentence was intended to be a Quote itself and then quotation marks are then required within that quotation, you should use single quotation marks.

 

[Thatchinho]

I set off a UP before the ship departed. No effect. I think we can cross this off the list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uVCraYUX0s

Top work! Can't rep you any more at the moment but have some virtual rep!

 

[Crusina Luachra]

Top work! Can't rep you any more at the moment but have some virtual rep!

Thanks! It took a lot of jumps and I messed up the 3rd interdiction but I did it the 4th time finally...

I'd love to set it off near the ship but that'd be virtually impossible.

Not only would it require exact timing on your part, but you'd have to BEAT the alien ship to where it is going to open the portal, start ejecting the prob before hand, activate the ADS, and honk and pray that someone you didn't go past 300 meters.

That's a virtually impossible scenario to pull off in the what...? 20 seconds or less you have before it departs? My point is, if FD wanted the probe to do something I highly doubt it would require the precision of a machine to pull off. So as I said, I think we can safely tick that off the list of things to try.

 

[nazo]

Top work! Can't rep you any more at the moment but have some virtual rep!

I can, so done for serious proper effort.

I do feel like it didn't go off until about the point they must have already initiated the jump and thus were probably not paying attention at all anymore though. If their systems have any of the limitations that ours do, they may not even be able to do things like targeting anymore at that point, much less analyzing anything going on. (Technologically they might be advanced enough, but perhaps just don't bother? Or, out of canon reason would be more like the game simply implements them like a ship just with advantages and simply has them follow similar rules in this respect.) Really, it's ridiculous how little time we actually have to try to do anything when this occurs before they're gone. More than anything else at all I think what humans in Elite need are systems that don't have cascading failures from the moment the hyperdiction begins. This is probably a job for the engineers at this time (and long term for ship companies to ultimately integrate.) The Federation and Empire should begin at once if nothing else for potential military importance.


If the devs intend for us to actually be able to do something, whatever it is, it must be possible within this timeframe though, so that's food for thought perhaps.