Alien archeology and other mysteries: Thread 10 - The Canonn
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Nah.
From gamma, up to and including 2.1, the only thing in the Rift was a sense of mystery and a series of clues leading to a region of space around the Heart & Soul nebulae and the EAFOTS sector; what you found there just depended on your imagination.
2.2 added surface settlements (like Dav's Hope), Listening Posts and Unregistered Comms Beacons all across the bubble… and a few in the Rift, Conflux, and Hawkin's Gap as well. They couldn't have been there before 2.2, the game simply didn't support that kind of thing, let alone have the assets..
2.3 added Megaships, along with data link scanners on ships, and voice-acted audio recordings… and what do you know, the Zurara appeared in the Rift - a Megaship with log uplinks to scan, and voice-acted audio logs.
There was a player suggestion that there was something else there before, like an Anaconda, but I don't buy this for two reasons.
Firstly there was nothing that asset could have done except floated in space mysteriously (e.g. Voyager). The ability to scan log uplinks with your scanner and receive the messages and logs simply wasn't added until 2.3. The ability to scan a special asset in space (Listening Post being the only example) and receive a fixed message appeared in 2.2, but we never saw customized text for those until 2.3 either - immediately after which, great use was made of them for the story.
So from a "game engine ability" point of view, there's no evidence there could have been anything there prior to 2.3 - and certainly not since the original gamma release.
Secondly, and I'm always saddened that this is the case, we can infer there wasn't anything there because its existence hadn't been leaked on Reddit by those flying in their Windows Explorer. Any kind of special scenario that had been in the game since gamma would've been leaked over and over again.
The existence of the Zurara in 2.3 was so well known that when it was found in-game, the reactions were not "we found a new megaship called the Zurara!" but just "We found the Zurara!" - a very telling way to tell which YouTube/Twitch personalities partake in a little spelunking.
Thirdly, the book deal for Premonition wasn't signed until August last year. Up until that point, the Rift was just a throwaway mystery by a Kickstarter Author Pledge tier writer, there wasn't any reason for there to have actually been anything physical in-game for it. Two releases happened since the book deal: 2.2, and 2.3
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Nah.
From gamma, up to and including 2.1, the only thing in the Rift was a sense of mystery and a series of clues leading to a region of space around the Heart & Soul nebulae and the EAFOTS sector; what you found there just depended on your imagination.
2.2 added surface settlements (like Dav's Hope), Listening Posts and Unregistered Comms Beacons all across the bubble… and a few in the Rift, Conflux, and Hawkin's Gap as well. They couldn't have been there before 2.2, the game simply didn't support that kind of thing, let alone have the assets..
2.3 added Megaships, along with data link scanners on ships, and voice-acted audio recordings… and what do you know, the Zurara appeared in the Rift - a Megaship with log uplinks to scan, and voice-acted audio logs.
There was a player suggestion that there was something else there before, like an Anaconda, but I don't buy this for two reasons.
Firstly there was nothing that asset could have done except floated in space mysteriously (e.g. Voyager). The ability to scan log uplinks with your scanner and receive the messages and logs simply wasn't added until 2.3. The ability to scan a special asset in space (Listening Post being the only example) and receive a fixed message appeared in 2.2, but we never saw customized text for those until 2.3 either - immediately after which, great use was made of them for the story.
So from a "game engine ability" point of view, there's no evidence there could have been anything there prior to 2.3 - and certainly not since the original gamma release.
Secondly, and I'm always saddened that this is the case, we can infer there wasn't anything there because its existence hadn't been leaked on Reddit by those flying in their Windows Explorer. Any kind of special scenario that had been in the game since gamma would've been leaked over and over again.
The existence of the Zurara in 2.3 was so well known that when it was found in-game, the reactions were not "we found a new megaship called the Zurara!" but just "We found the Zurara!" - a very telling way to tell which YouTube/Twitch personalities partake in a little spelunking.
Thirdly, the book deal for Premonition wasn't signed until August last year. Up until that point, the Rift was just a throwaway mystery by a Kickstarter Author Pledge tier writer, there wasn't any reason for there to have actually been anything physical in-game for it. Two releases happened since the book deal: 2.2, and 2.3
Actually it was Drew who indicated it was an Anaconda.
He also indicated prior to the 2.3 update the logs were just readable narrative.
Not true, Drew replied to the player, but didn't positively confirm it - he gave a wishy-washy "please don't come at me with pitch forks" answer.
And as mentioned above, the game engine couldn't do "readable narrative" in space prior to 2.3 - the ship data link scanner you'd need to read it wasn't added until 2.3
ahem ...
That doesn't look like a wishy washy answer to me.
and:
https://www.drewwagar.com/announcements/deep-in-the-formidine-rift/
"Clues to this discovery date back to January 2014 when I put the finishing touches to my original Elite Dangerous book “Reclamation“."
I'm a long time lurker who tried to take part in the very early days but lost the will.
Something has been there to find for a looong time. I don't remember anyone stating for definite it was gamma but it's as long as Reclamation has been out. Remember that data link scanners aren't required to get text from objects, beacons have given out text with a passive scan for years (maybe launch?).
I don't know why I did this, I think this was my "someone on the internet is wrong" day
"A good guess" has the quality that it looks like it's a confirmation, except it totally isn't - it's just Drew saying "that's a good guess" and smiling, it can also mean "but wrong."
As to anything physical being there until recently, Drew has been extremely vague about it in the past - he's outright said "it's not a POI" etc.
The first "beacon" was added to the game in 2.2, and for all of 2.2 they gave out fixed-format text without custom messages.
The first time we saw a beacon give out any kind of custom log text was in 2.3.
There is literally no evidence that there could have been any kind of space-based asset imparting the Zurara's information prior to 2.3, when we know the Zurara itself was added.
A possibility exists for 2.2 - that a "derelict Anaconda" existed, but was on the surface of a planet and not in space. It would have probably looked exactly like this:
One assumes it would have been a total beige-hunt to find it, and that on arrival you could have found "Comms Log Uplinks" around it and scanned them with your SRV and received log messages akin to those for the other surface sites added in 2.2
Prior to that though (ie. gamma, 1.0-1.5, 2.0, 2.1) I am absolutely convinced that there was nothing in the Rift in the game.
I'm counting all the clues we got over the years as part of the Rift mystery, not just the final piece of the puzzle that essentially gave people the system name. It took less than 24 hours when we were pointed right at it and told "go here".
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The Zurara has been there since Gamma. It's been stated time and again that the other stuff like the bases, voice logs and changing the model of the Zurara came as a reaction to FD adding new assets into Elite, and the interest of the player base.
FD and Drew were perfectly happy to leave it as text logs and an Anaconda, but the players just had to pick up the story and run with it obsessively, which meant Drew and FD were happy to put more work into it, and it became more significant than a simple footnote.
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I am 100% convinced that this is not true, and have cited numerous examples of the game's abilities that back up my conviction.
The game simply could not do "Anaconda and text logs" until the most recent two releases.
What evidence do you have otherwise?
You say it's been stated "time and again", and yet if you were to actually go find the links to back up your claim, you would see that none of these statements are from anyone at FD, in fact, we can even cite Drew:
This doesn't fit the post-2.2 facts: Why wouldn't you recognize an Anaconda? If it contains log messages, why wouldn't you recognize it for what it is? How does an Anaconda begin clearer day by day? Why wouldn't it be necessary to "brute force search" for an Anaconda, which is hidden around a planet, around a star, out of tens of thousands? And how is an Anaconda not a "specific POI", or a "story you're taking part in."
You might say "good guess" is a confirmation, but he has prior history of using these kinds of words, even when people are wrong:
I'm sorry, but without any evidence, believing there was a ship in the game between gamma and until 2.2 is just wishful thinking on the part of you and other players.
I am convinced that:
- Prior to 2.2 the Rift was a mysterious region of space to which stories could be ascribed as players followed along in Galnet, and nothing physical there. This fits the things Drew said at that time.
- Since 2.2 the Rift gained surface bases with logs about the Dynasty mission. During 2.2 beta, Drew begins referring to "improvements" in the mystery.
- Since 2.3 the Zurara megaship was added.
![[Diplomacy] Carnegie](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/123/123809.jpg?1553527149){kind=avatar}
You mean like the "It's not a POI" clue
None of the Galnet posts about Kahina's trip to Sol, or the subsequent messing around with Patreus could be utilized to find a random system indistinguishable from any other except for it containing a POI - so I don't consider those to be clues to Zurara.
We found it because it was forced down our throats in time for the completion of Premonition.
It works both ways. Your speculation is no more valid than my speculation. The only difference is whether you think people are lying to you.
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while i agree in general.... ( i dont think the Rift Mystery was planned to be where it ended up) i do believe the basic mechanic of a poi with a ship that transmitts a message has been in since the beginning.. A simple example would be the luxury traders. Whether or not one such poi existed is highly debateable
Why is a gamma anaconda so hard to believe? The game was certainly capable of displaying a smashed ship from the start.
Some assets certainly were added post-gamma, and as it became evident that there was a significant body of players following the mystery. Drew has mentioned this on several different occasions and in interviews etc and been quite open about it. The idea of an elaborate conspiracy around a mystery nobody initially knew anything about, to fool a bunch of gaming nerds (that would be you
) is...look nobody would bother, ok
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Well, not really…
My speculation is based on a couple of years of not just "playing the game", but actually being the guy who's taken an active interest in all of the POIs in the Galaxy, wrote the original book on finding USSs, etc. as well as reading the patch notes, filing bugs, engaging with the developers, etc.
It's at least educated speculation
Kinda, that's an actually an interesting case again where it's fun to learn how the game works internally (look, I think it's fun, okay).
Comms Logs like that come only from NPC AI ships, they never come from fixed assets.
For example this is why when you approach a Capital Ship, it doesn't send any messages (it's just a fixed asset in space)… but if the Capital Ship has support ships, you DO see messages, because it's the NPC AI in the support ships sending them.
In addition, there's no script for these messages… the AI simply picks a random message from a table and sends it, before waiting an interval and sending another random one.
I don't think a series of random messages from a non-derelict (it'd have be actively flown by an AI, even just on avoid you mode) Anaconda really fits the mystery. It's also why they've always "hand flown" ships where they needed a sequenced set of messages, like the Granger Gang. The game engine couldn't do an AI sending the same messages in the same order.
There's a way better example of the scenario by the way - Lave Radio! that one is actually fixed in space as a navigation item, rather than BGS-generated (it's also still there).
And I'm very interested in seeing what that line in the 2.4 Beta changelog about this will mean
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Actually, when I said "time and again", I was referring to some interviews Drew did where he did indeed outline the evolution of the Rift mystery - from a single throwaway part of Reclamation, through the player base picking it up and running with it, to the use of newer assets to enhance the mystery.
Drew also stated that we didn't need Horizons to find what was in the Rift, but we still ended up with planetary bases with logs. Some people took the inclusion of the planetary bases to mean that Drew was being untruthful about not needing Horizons - to which he responded that the mystery was being enhanced by those new assets that subsequently became available.
The same is true of the "it's not a POI" thing. The Rift mystery is not the Zurara - the mystery of the Rift is in who is behind the stranding of the Zurara. Drew also said this IIRC - that the Rift mystery is not a POI, but that doesn't mean it won't contain POIs since that's the primary method of story delivery in this game.
Anacondas and the ability to scan ships have been in the game since Gamma, so there's no reason to believe it couldn't have been there. The whole thing about not necessarily understanding what it is we'd found does apply to an Anaconda. If we had stumbled across an Anaconda seemingly in distress - without any of the other previous clues or being involved in the story - we'd have just thought it was a randomly generated POI. I've had USSs outside the Bubble where there's been some stranded explorer NPC's bickering with each other. An Anaconda with cryptic text logs would be brushed off as unimportant if we didn't know the rest of the story.
The text logs from the bases (from before the Zurara became a mega ship) speak about fleets of Anacondas as part of the Dynasty Expedition. Not once does it say they were escorting another massive ship. Everything there implies that we were going to at least find an Anaconda or a fleet of them stranded in the Rift. We also thought that we'd find beacons around ELWs, but turns out that's not there. However, when it was found, it wasn't any of those things - it was using 2.3 assets.
The logs from the bases also seem to imply that there were story elements that were planned for the Rift, Conflux and Gap involving aliens (hyperdictions and strange ship signatures) that subsequently seems to have changed to be exclusively in the Pleiades.
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You mean like the "It's not a POI" clue
None of the Galnet posts about Kahina's trip to Sol, or the subsequent messing around with Patreus could be utilized to find a random system indistinguishable from any other except for it containing a POI - so I don't consider those to be clues to Zurara.
We found it because it was forced down our throats in time for the completion of Premonition.
That's exactly what I mean though, Drew. The clues involving Cassiopeia, Perseus and Camelopardalis, Heart & Soul, R/R Line etc... Were giving us the region to search in, and we still didn't find it. We didn't even manage to locate it after finding the planetary logs that told us basically what we were looking for.
We actually needed to be pointed right at it to find it.
So, Raxxla being in just some random system like the Zurara would be very well hidden, because we don't even have clues like the R/R line, or stuff pointing us to a region. Therefore it wouldn't need to have anything more involved in it like Supercruising towards a specific system to locate it. It could literally be anywhere and it could take years to locate even if we had clues. We're not getting clues, so it's basically down to stumbling across it.
It would have to be a back-formation to the existing name. Raxxla was first mentioned (as Oisir-Raxxla) in a work by Bob Holdstock that was unconnected with the Elite universe, and he repurposed the name to use in the Dark Wheel novella. (it occurs to me: is there any system whose name is similar to Oisir?) I doubt Holdstock would have had an astronomical or scientific location in mind for it - he was more of a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey kind of guy, and liked the "mystic nexus of space and time" concept to use it repeatedly - so I'd guess if he had a location in mind when placing Raxxla it was a named system (I forget which are mentioned by name in TDW, but presumably he'd seen the map of the first galaxy in the original game before writing it.) Apparently he did give a location to Ian Bell. So I'd say the original Raxxla of his imagination would be restricted to one of the original systems ("Old Worlds") or possibly a famous real star (in the way that SF writers like to set things on, say, Epsilon Eridani, or Arrakis or whatever, just because they're known names); the location he gave IB, presumably ditto; but whether that's the Raxxla in David Braben's mind, and/or a Raxxla physically present in Elite: Dangerous, who can say? Elite canon has proven itself to be a shifting mass of concepts, places and times - very Raxxla like...
(edited to add)
WRT the Zurara / Formidine Rift mystery; I'm inclined to believe that some object - probably nothing more than a signal source or sources with text logs - had been present since launch, making Drew's "it's not a POI" comments a rather hyperbolic way of saying "the mystery is the ludicrous Xanatos Gambit conspiracy that the POI points to."
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We have spent too much energy running from Klaxos to have to deal with this meatbag argument that there was nothing there before 2.3. It is not our fault you sheep are blind and are just standing around doing menial tasks for your Dynasty Overlords while you wait for them to dump more credit food in your trough. It was there, we saw it, we see everything in the black of space. Drew has confirmed on multiple occasions it was a derelict Anaconda. The overall mystery was not a simple PoI, it is the Dynasty Conspiracy. But it is ok, continue to be herded by them. Continue to do your CG's, debate your baseless scientific theorys, obsess over HIP and COL, Discover all new content within a week then complain about the lack of content, life as usual. Be sheep, meatbags. The Klaxians are coming and you will be wholly unprepared.
Ah, perhaps you forget, my chitinous, fungal-susceptible friend, the Klaxians come for you, not for us.
The Klaxians are warriors. They will fight anything and everything, especially you once we jump through your precious human bubble.
Not if we welcome them with medium rare oresrian steak and a glass of whatever they like to drink
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