96 hours to locate a base...? SHENANIGANS!!!!

Not saying it was them this time - seems the guy who gave the original tip-off based on "intuition" was kicked out of Canonn some time ago for looking inside game files.

In *this* particular case, I don't believe that is true. I'm pretty sure it was looking into the files, as the guy that had the initial "intuition" was reportedly kicked out of Canonn for digging thru the gamefiles.

As a Canonn councillor, I need to set the record straight. He was not kicked out due to looking into game files. He was kicked out because he made some vague allegations against Canonn members, refused to back those allegations up with evidence, and continued to argue about it with councillors until one of us got annoyed enough to boot him.
 
Same dude who found the scout found the planet with the base?

Sounds like someone at FD is feeding him info. Nice job.

The Thargoid scout was found because of the POI bug. Someone was checking out Victoria's Song, and scanned the narratives from that ship. This revealed the "Thargoid Scout" POI in the planet Victoria's Song orbits. Since the logs on Victoria's Song relate to a discovery (although if you read closer, it does explicitly mention a different system), and the pilot assumed it was the wreck on the ground. That's how it got found, same as the barnacle forest.

Just on the file-diving stuff.. it's worth noting that in the past, things were human-readable. Filenames related to things in-game e.g wrecks, barnacles etc (prior to the first barnacle discovery, people were experiencing CTDs... it was believed to be because in the files the barnacles were called barnicles. But this was unrelated). Today if you look, all filenames are (at least) obfuscated, as well as their contents.

While there was a grey area around looking at this stuff in the past, now you'd need to do some elements of reverse-engineering, which is most definitely against the T&Cs of the game.
 

Rafe Zetter

Banned
That is a baseless accusation that I would suggest you reconsider.

and YOU can prove it's baseless how exactly? - do you A) work for FDev, B) are part of the "inner circle" of top devs and decision makers and C) know for absolute certain that this sort of drip feeding leaks is something FDev has never done.

Seriously that's about as fanboi as it gets - you might as well have a placard saying "I do not and cannot believe that FD would *leak* minor bits of information in order to divert attention to new Thargoid stuff and AWAY from the borked Thargoid stuffs".

Your statement that it's a "baseless accusation" is just as baseless in certainty and therefore - meaningless; do you use a bendy straw and a sippy cup for that coolade?

96 hours is an awfully short time to find something legitimately on the surface of a planet, on an unknown planet, in an unknown section of space.....

I also agree with whoever said about the 400 billion stars and yet all the good stuff seems to be within easy reach of the bubble.

Either there's other major stuff out there that's created and all ready to go that FDev are just waiting for someone to stumble upon - or...... the rest of it is as empty as we think.
 
As people are asking what went on, this, as best as I can tell, is what happened. (Worth bearing in mind that quite a few people involved aren't native English speakers so there is a distinct language barrier at play throughout.)....

- Trailer is shown and INRA base is seen (I think we all know that. I certainly saw it and even said "INRA confirmed" in the livestream chat there and then.)
- Alex and the other French guys start looking for the base. They do this around Alioth because of lore from Frontier First Encounters.
- They post what they're doing on the forum
- Cookie offers to help. Confusion and semi-argument temporarily ensue. In amongst that Cookie says:
.....- He doubts the site will be findable and that their only chance is if they stumble on a listening post
.....- That finding the site through the skybox would not be possible as there's nowhere near enough to work from in the clip from the trailer.
- Cookie says that INRA never went a huge way out of the bubble and that he reckons it'll be in independent space
- Alex explains why they're searching around Alioth
- Cookie decides to start looking for odd systems around Alioth. He reasons that it must be an unpopulated system in order for the base to have remained undiscovered for so long. He also seems to think that it would be a named system - it's not worded very clearly though.
- There's a bit of debate about whether it would still be in an unpopulated system, or whether the system might have been settled after the base was built.
- Cookie says that it would be stupid of INRA to have built the base in a populated system as they don't want it finding, and so it would be an unpopulated system. He doesn't actually directly respond to the point about whether it might now be populated.
- Cookie asks what colour the planet is in the clip, and whether others think it's white and maybe therefore an ice planet.
- Alex makes a beige joke. Also posts a 4k version of a screenshot from the livestream, with luminosity and contrast boosted.
- There's a bit of debate over whether it might be looking around the California nebula as there's the Turner research base, and the Turners are linked to the events in FFE. Consensus is it's too far out to fit with FFE lore.
- Cookie reports that he's finding a lot of Convoy signal sources in his current system, which he thinks is weird as the system is unpopulated.
- Cookie posts a picture of a planet from the system which he thinks looks like the one from the trailer, in the sense that it has ravines <clarification point - one can be seen in the background in the screenshot from the trailer> and it all looks to be the right colour.
- <Clarification point - I was reading this all after the site had already been found, and I was a bit dubious about the above point as EDSM showed 3 planets in the system, all of which looked to be a match, but no - checking in the system map shows the is just 1 planet in that system whose colour matches the screenshot.>
- Cookie says he's going to take a look and asks if anyone wants to join.
- Cookie vaguely agrees with someone else's argument that checking the California Nebula for Aegis research sites is what everyone should be doing, but says he wants to search the planet a bit more though he doubts he'll find anything on his own as the planet's too big.
- Alex can't go himself due to RL, but passes the info on to the rest of his group.
- Alex reports various cmdrs are on their way.
- There's a bit of debate over whether the Pleiades can be seen in the screenshot from the livestream, and a joke about INRA being on Raxxla.
- Alex reports EfilOne is on site and has found something.
- EfilOne posts a screenshot, along with a link to the logs and the site co-ordinates.
- Alex thanks Cookie for his help and says it was very good intuition. <Clarification point - there's no sign at all of Cookie himself saying it was intuition. Nothing in the discussion to that point seems to have revolved around intuition either, so this may have just been a lost in translation moment.>
- Excitement, and lots of posts ensue. Some people ask for an explanation of how it was found.
- EfilOne posts an explanation of how he found the site on the planet. Summary:
....- he says it was all skybox matching at first
....- he says he then circled the planet several time until he thought he was close enough. <Clarification point - language barrier going on, but he appears to mean close to the right area, not close enough to the planet.>
....- he says he then glided to the surface into the canyon that was below him, followed it for a bit, chased various POIs but only found system defence force ships, saw a few things that turned out to be nothing, and eventually saw an object which was creating some aliasing with some heavy contrast in the middle, which he headed towards and that turned out to be the site.
....- he then explains he's spent a huge amount of hours doing planet searches in the past and so knew how to approach it well.
....- he then runs through the graphics settings he uses for planet searches and gives other tips on how to do it.
- People misinterpret EfilOne's post and start asking how it's possible the planet could have been identified through skybox matching when there's so little to go off.
- Confusion starts going into overdrive. People start saying they can't see any explanation of how the planet was found. People start asking for proof of how the planet was found via skybox matching. Other people start saying that the skybox matching would have been impossible and the first accusation of file dipping is made.
- EfilOne edits his post to clear things up. He says (with "IMPORTANT NOTE:" as a prefix) that he doesn't know how the planet was found, was just told about the lead by Alex and that the skybox matching was only once in orbit.
- A few more accusations fly but things are pretty civil for a while
- A few (seemingly) light hearted comments get a bit misread, and talk starts about favouritism and so on and so forth. People are still wanting to know how it was worked out. Cookie hasn't commented and all the demand for answers starts going to Alex. Alex gets increasingly asked to explain Cookie's side of things. Alex obviously can't. People just ask him more. Tempers start to fray.
- There's an amusing aside where the meaning of 'handbags' has to be explained.
- Very bizarrely, some people who've been on the thread from the start begin throwing accusations around about skyboxing the planet, despite having been there for the through the bit where the planet was identified.
- One of the other guys from Alex & EfilOne's group does a post on ideas of how to proceed now that this site has been found.
- Everyone ignores that post and continues throwing more and more accusations around.
- Despite the entire contents of the rest of the thread, people start accusing Alex of refusing to reveal any of how the site was found.
- Things get worse. If it's not datamining, it's tip-offs. FD are accused of being in on it, people start demanding that the Devs reveal what really went on.
- People start saying they don't want to play the game anymore if the only way to do anything is through cheating.

So there you go, that, as far as I can tell, is what happened.

Reddit did what it does at some point in amongst all of that. This thread got started up at some point too. I only came to the original thread in question pretty late in the day, but have waded through pretty much all of it. Not going to read through all this thread and reddit too.
 
Last edited:
and YOU can prove it's baseless how exactly? - do you A) work for FDev, B) are part of the "inner circle" of top devs and decision makers and C) know for absolute certain that this sort of drip feeding leaks is something FDev has never done.

Seriously that's about as fanboi as it gets - you might as well have a placard saying "I do not and cannot believe that FD would *leak* minor bits of information in order to divert attention to new Thargoid stuff and AWAY from the borked Thargoid stuffs".

Your statement that it's a "baseless accusation" is just as baseless in certainty and therefore - meaningless; do you use a bendy straw and a sippy cup for that coolade?

96 hours is an awfully short time to find something legitimately on the surface of a planet, on an unknown planet, in an unknown section of space.....

I also agree with whoever said about the 400 billion stars and yet all the good stuff seems to be within easy reach of the bubble.

Either there's other major stuff out there that's created and all ready to go that FDev are just waiting for someone to stumble upon - or...... the rest of it is as empty as we think.

Doesn't the burden of proof fall on the person making the accusation though?

If the person doesn't have proof to back up their accusation, it is baseless isn't it, by definition?

Someone makes a statement
Some else says they have no proof
You are then demanding what proof the second person has the the first person has not proof.

If all that is need to make something true, the I assert Rafe Zetter defrauds the elderly of their retirement funds, and it is up to you to prove I have no proof myself to make that accusation and until you can I shall stand by it.
 
TDLR : A tiny thing as large as 9 diamond backs landed in a 3x3 grid found in a few hours of planet searching, on a planet that looks like billions of others, in a system that has a name like many near it. All found by matching a skybox from a different base in a different system.



I have just read every post in all the threads, here and on Reddit, related to this. In context, which the summaries here don't capture, the posts by people involved in the discovery seem VERY suspicious. The most suspicious thing is the skybox matching claim. This was the first explanation given for the way the planet was found. When it was found later that it was a different base than in the trailer and the skybox matching was impossible the claim was changed.

The discover (not of the planet but the site) is aggressive in their attempts to shut down accusations. They don’t simply show the evidence, they tried to tell people to stop asking questions. Very very odd in a community of people who do research.

Then the claim of the way the system was found just does not hold up. The claim of it being a named system, so interesting, is at odds with the number of named systems in that region.

Then we have a base as large as 9 diamond backs landed in a 3x3 grid being spotted from low orbit only a few hours after the planet was somehow mysteriously identified.


IF I was FD I would look at the logs (server side). I am assuming there are breadcrumbs to this base which if the discoverer genuinely used would be in said logs. FD must be tracking the hidden items in game and when visited I am certain they get fingerprinted so FD know someone has found the thing.

If the discoverer just logged in and flew straight to the system in question then cheating would be easy to spot.
 
Last edited:
As people are asking what went on, this, as best as I can tell, is what happened. (Worth bearing in mind that quite a few people involved aren't native English speakers so there is a distinct language barrier at play throughout.)....

- Trailer is shown and INRA base is seen (I think we all know that. I certainly saw it and even said "INRA confirmed" in the livestream chat there and then.)
- Alex and the other French guys start looking for the base. They do this around Alioth because of lore from Frontier First Encounters.
- They post what they're doing on the forum
- Cookie offers to help. Confusion and semi-argument temporarily ensue. In amongst that Cookie says:
.....- He doubts the site will be findable and that their only chance is if they stumble on a listening post
.....- That finding the site through the skybox would not be possible as there's nowhere near enough to work from in the clip from the trailer.
- Cookie says that INRA never went a huge way out of the bubble and that he reckons it'll be in independent space
- Alex explains why they're searching around Alioth
- Cookie decides to start looking for odd systems around Alioth. He reasons that it must be an unpopulated system in order for the base to have remained undiscovered for so long. He also seems to think that it would be a named system - it's not worded very clearly though.
- There's a bit of debate about whether it would still be in an unpopulated system, or whether the system might have been settled after the base was built.
- Cookie says that it would be stupid of INRA to have built the base in a populated system as they don't want it finding, and so it would be an unpopulated system. He doesn't actually directly respond to the point about whether it might now be populated.
- Cookie asks what colour the planet is in the clip, and whether others think it's white and maybe therefore an ice planet.
- Alex makes a beige joke. Also posts a 4k version of a screenshot from the livestream, with luminosity and contrast boosted.
- There's a bit of debate over whether it might be looking around the California nebula as there's the Turner research base, and the Turners are linked to the events in FFE. Consensus is it's too far out to fit with FFE lore.
- Cookie reports that he's finding a lot of Convoy signal sources in his current system, which he thinks is weird as the system is unpopulated.
- Cookie posts a picture of a planet from the system which he thinks looks like the one from the trailer, in the sense that it has ravines <clarification point - one can be seen in the background in the screenshot from the trailer> and it all looks to be the right colour.
- <Clarification point - I was reading this all after the site had already been found, and I was a bit dubious about the above point as EDSM showed 3 planets in the system, all of which looked to be a match, but no - checking in the system map shows the is just 1 planet in that system whose colour matches the screenshot.>
- Cookie says he's going to take a look and asks if anyone wants to join.
- Cookie vaguely agrees with someone else's argument that checking the California Nebula for Aegis research sites is what everyone should be doing, but says he wants to search the planet a bit more though he doubts he'll find anything on his own as the planet's too big.
- Alex can't go himself due to RL, but passes the info on to the rest of his group.
- Alex reports various cmdrs are on their way.
- There's a bit of debate over whether the Pleiades can be seen in the screenshot from the livestream, and a joke about INRA being on Raxxla.
- Alex reports EfilOne is on site and has found something.
- EfilOne posts a screenshot, along with a link to the logs and the site co-ordinates.
- Alex thanks Cookie for his help and says it was very good intuition. <Clarification point - there's no sign at all of Cookie himself saying it was intuition. Nothing in the discussion to that point seems to have revolved around intuition either, so this may have just been a lost in translation moment.>
- Excitement, and lots of posts ensue. Some people ask for an explanation of how it was found.
- EfilOne posts an explanation of how he found the site on the planet. Summary:
....- he says it was all skybox matching at first
....- he says he then circled the planet several time until he thought he was close enough. <Clarification point - language barrier going on, but he appears to mean close to the right area, not close enough to the planet.>
....- he says he then glided to the surface into the canyon that was below him, followed it for a bit, chased various POIs but only found system defence force ships, saw a few things that turned out to be nothing, and eventually saw an object which was creating some aliasing with some heavy contrast in the middle, which he headed towards and that turned out to be the site.
....- he then explains he's spent a huge amount of hours doing planet searches in the past and so knew how to approach it well.
....- he then runs through the graphics settings he uses for planet searches and gives other tips on how to do it.
- People misinterpret EfilOne's post and start asking how it's possible the planet could have been identified through skybox matching when there's so little to go off.
- Confusion starts going into overdrive. People start saying they can't see any explanation of how the planet was found. People start asking for proof of how the planet was found via skybox matching. Other people start saying that the skybox matching would have been impossible and the first accusation of file dipping is made.
- EfilOne edits his post to clear things up. He says (with "IMPORTANT NOTE:" as a prefix) that he doesn't know how the planet was found, was just told about the lead by Alex and that the skybox matching was only once in orbit.
- A few more accusations fly but things are pretty civil for a while
- A few (seemingly) light hearted comments get a bit misread, and talk starts about favouritism and so on and so forth. People are still wanting to know how it was worked out. Cookie hasn't commented and all the demand for answers starts going to Alex. Alex gets increasingly asked to explain Cookie's side of things. Alex obviously can't. People just ask him more. Tempers start to fray.
- There's an amusing aside where the meaning of 'handbags' has to be explained.
- Very bizarrely, some people who've been on the thread from the start begin throwing accusations around about skyboxing the planet, despite having been there for the through the bit where the planet was identified.
- One of the other guys from Alex & EfilOne's group does a post on ideas of how to proceed now that this site has been found.
- Everyone ignores that post and continues throwing more and more accusations around.
- Despite the entire contents of the rest of the thread, people start accusing Alex of refusing to reveal any of how the site was found.
- Things get worse. If it's not datamining, it's tip-offs. FD are accused of being in on it, people start demanding that the Devs reveal what really went on.
- People start saying they don't want to play the game anymore if the only way to do anything is through cheating.

So there you go, that, as far as I can tell, is what happened.

Reddit did what it does at some point in amongst all of that. This thread got started up at some point too. I only came to the original thread in question pretty late in the day, but have waded through pretty much all of it. Not going to read through all this thread and reddit too.

Huge thanks for posting that Thatchinho, much appreciated by me at least. It still seems a bit needle in a haystack but I'm prepared to believe it was a combination of intuition, dumb luck and clever use of high contrast graphics settings and planetary search experience/skill.
 
Just to put this out there...

Regardless of what tinfoil hattery you believe is or isn't going on, I thought for the sake of a little balance itd be worth pointing out that the guys who found the INRA base weren't the only ones that had been investigating the Hermitage system - I spent a little time in there myself last week, and for very similar reasons.

As a named, uninhabited system within a reasonable distance from Sol, I figured it might contain another lost generational ship.

Lamentably, I never looked at scouting the planet surfaces (and would likely never have seen it anyway - I find it hard enough locating stuff planet side with coordinates to aim at :( ) as I was more concerned with stuff happening a little further out of any gravity wells, but I'm sure I'm not the only person thats considered, and investigated, systems like Hermitage before.

I'm not saying that means that those guys were hacking or using leaked info, or anything like that, before you attempt to put the words in my mouth. What I mean is, that for almost every system in or around the Bubble, for every pilot that finds "something" there's probably a lot more who went looking in the same system, who missed it by not looking in the right place, or not doing an exhaustive enough check, or simply because of bad luck. Right now there are undoubtledly pilots examining systems with great scrutiny, hoping to find the next "something" and under that kind of scrutiny, things will turn up if they are there to be found, especially when people are given a clue about what to look for (ie, a base in a vid instead of a ship, etc)
 
The Thargoid scout was found because of the POI bug. Someone was checking out Victoria's Song, and scanned the narratives from that ship. This revealed the "Thargoid Scout" POI in the planet Victoria's Song orbits. Since the logs on Victoria's Song relate to a discovery (although if you read closer, it does explicitly mention a different system), and the pilot assumed it was the wreck on the ground. That's how it got found, same as the barnacle forest.

I didn't know that - thanks!
 
Jaques' finding seemed legit from my souvenir.
The rest : Data mining or help from FD.

If it was possible to extract the data by datamining Reddit would be bursting with spoilers, every single secret would be out as soon as they are added to the game. And not 96 hours later but immediately. Some of the potential dataminers would get their kicks from spoiling the game for all the rest. But this is not happening, so:

This leaves only one explanation - the info is being handfed By FD.
 
This thread needs more tinfoil.
At this point I doubt anyone would be satisified with a response from FD anyway...
 
If it was possible to extract the data by datamining Reddit would be bursting with spoilers, every single secret would be out as soon as they are added to the game. And not 96 hours later but immediately. Some of the potential dataminers would get their kicks from spoiling the game for all the rest. But this is not happening, so:

This leaves only one explanation - the info is being handfed By FD.

I agree that direct file dipping is probably a dead end in regard to this type of leak, but there are other methods like sniffing (not going to explain) which while technically quite different are just as reprehensible and are rolled up in the same poop-ball as far as most people (and the EULA) are concerned.

Most discoveries I am sure are legit, there have been 1 or 2 recently that were slightly dubious and could have involved sniffing, but this one is a sure-fire, nailed-on, 100% cheat.

I am not accusing all those involved in the "discovery", but it is easy for 1 dipper to guide the innocent without letting on that they have been cheating.
 
Top Bottom