Thanks @Jaiotu for the chronological summary. Reading that through, even with missing parts from the as-yet-undiscovered missions, it is enough to give some insights into their purpose and also raises a few questions. The questions it raises are more important than their purpose but I'll explain why at the end.
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I think the crewmember who thought that they were conducting a deep space survey was partly correct. These teams were devoted to travelling out farther than had been done (also note the quote
'even the explorers have not been out this way before', which becomes important later) and laying a series of beacons/satellites/artefacts in
specific locations. This behaviour, to me, suggests a combination of early warning system and reconnaissance station: someone wanted to know who or what was operating in these locations. They may even have been a lure, baiting any intelligent civilisation with signals to get them to wander into the reconnaissance 'net'.
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The key questions that arise from this are:
- If no explorers had been that far out before, what was the motivation for sending the expedition to those specific locations?
- Was the timing of the mission important? One of the crewmembers thinks they were in a great hurry - was this just to reduce the mission duration?
- Who knew about and funded the mission?
- What technology do the beacons employ?
- Was any of the reported hyperspace phenomena real? Was the reported hyperdiction by the same civilisation that is now operating in the Pleiades?
Some possible, speculative answers:
- Information about those regions existed prior to the mission. If this did not come from explorers, then perhaps someone manged to decode navigational information from a crashed/captured alien ship?
- I do not know if any event was anticipated but it feels like this was being done 'asap', possibly at short notice. Their crew selection and training, not least psychological conditioning for the rigours of a long-duration mission, was lacking. I suspect that it may have been arranged as a result of either a discovery elsewhere, or in anticipation of the rapid development of fast hyperdrive technology, although the latter should have allowed them plenty of time so I favour the former: something happened around 3269-3270 that provided the motivation for the mission.
- The crews were partly acquired through regular advertisements on bulleting boards. That's a very public place: the superpowers would have known about the existence of the mission. If they were not arranging it themselves, they would have had plenty of opportunity to place agents aboard to monitor it. I suspect that potentially all three superpowers had a hand in it, although ultimate responsibility and funding could have been from any one or any combination of them.
- The beacons are clearly employing faster-than-light communications to report back but also send coded short-range transmissions. It is unclear if any Unknown Artefacts were present: none have been found at the bases, yet, nor in orbit - only the beacons. They look like human technology but the nature of their transmissions might have been inspired by something else. It may be telling that they are placed in numbers: a group of four beacons would be able to triangulate the location of a detected signal in 3D; this technique might also explain why three missions were sent - locating the origin of signals on a galactic scale (had any signals been detected previously from these directions, perhaps?).
- There is clearly some space madness but only one confirmed hyperdiction - in the Conflux. Other civilisations might have hyperdiction capability than the one we have encountered in the Pleiades, so no conclusions can be reached. One crewmember wisely reminds us that we know nothing about what hyperspace actually is and do not understand what we are seeing when we traverse it.
I would add that it occurs to me that the alien crash sites near the bubble only have Unknown Artefacts scattered where there is wreckage from human ships: the lone alien ship that was first discovered does not have any. Perhaps the Unknown Artefacts were being carried not by the alien ship but the human ships - perhaps they may even have been part of the same expedition? There's no telling how long they have been there. That could imply that the UA shell might even be of human manufacture!
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The reason why the questions are important here is that they imply that there are people in the bubble who have known or suspected for decades where they ought to be looking for signs of alien civilisation and activity. How they came by this information, we do not know. We do know, however, that specific regions of space have been permit-locked. I would remind people at this point that it is the Elite Federation of Pilots that is behind Galnet (
https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/29-JUL-3302 ) and which has the capability to lock off regions of the galaxy. Trust no one.
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A very well done to all those who have discovered the surface bases o7. That is remarkable work and I salute your dedication and your GPU capabilities!
