I didnt know that. I spent hours on that planet... There are other things people dont know. The thread is growing quite fast. Someone should make a summary of ideas and status quo like every 5 pages because the startpost is not up to date and wont be on a regular basis. Right now I have no idea what you guys are talking about that "... Quest" ship. It really is annoying that one has to know the lore of the older games to figure out certain things. So please veterans, dont talk in tongues, explain things.
So that HIP 17125 is off the list, where do we go now?
Yep it's almost a full time job keeping up isn't it!
Hope this helps:
The "Quest ship" is almost certainly entirely irrelevant to finding more INRA bases. It's the special super-ship granted (or not) to the player towards the end of Frontier First Encounters (FFE) the previous game. There is some crossover to FFE, so a lot of people look through all the FFE missions and info for clues to things like INRA base locations etc. The discussion about the ship was just some discussion relating to which particular version of the FFE storyline is considered canon in ED (there were several endings), so safe to ignore that for now unless you want to get into the nitty-gritty.
In my opinion, the most promising lead from FFE is the Mycoid Vaccine Store, which is located on a planet called Hotice 1 in the Hotice system, somewhere in/near Alliance space.
However that system doesn't seem to appear in Elite Dangerous.
Some more info:
The last INRA base found in ED talked about how the Mycoid Vaccine was being moved somewhere else - and that's where the trail went cold, there was no info on locating the new one. People have been scouring all the objects at the base looking for clues, trying to read text on signs etc.
Another (possible) clue dropped to us by Fdev has been what appeared to be an old ship wreck with the number JJ-386 visible. It's considered to be old because some people believe it's an old-model Cobra MKIII (they were more angular before ED). This means it could be a reference to something in the past. In the clip we also see what appears to be a beacon or black box next to the wreck, many people think this will contain clues or more info to continue the narrative.
The best explanation for this clue (in my opinion) comes from Han_zen (iirc) who said that the PC port (386) of FFE was done by a guy whose initials are JJ. So, JJ-386 seems to be an homage to that - and one interpretation of that is that we need to look to FFE to find clues.
Since the video with this JJ-386 clue was shown at the FX17 expo, and the first INRA base was found shortly after apparently using clues from FFE, it's possible that we've already cracked the JJ-386 clue already by using FFE to find INRA bases.
It's also possible that finding the crash itself will lead to more discoveries - we just don't know. However, many people (myself included) would love to find the crash just to see if it really is an old-model cobra! I'm not sure it is a cobra, I can't personally see the right panel-line shapes but many people seem to think it is, so here's hoping! We know it's blue though, if that helps!
So - From here, looking for the JJ-386 crash is a possibility, although all we know for sure is that it's on a beige planet (or a beige part of a planet)!. Brute-force searching for more INRA bases is possible too, that's how the first was found (literally just flying low over planets and hoping to find something). Searching for Hotice is a possibility, it might be out there just renamed, I made a post on this
here which may/may not be helpful.
Personally - I think keeping your eyes open for listening posts and things like that in/around Alliance space is a good way to go. They often tend to lead to new stuff and it's a known way Fdev leave us clues to find things.
Other people may well have more ideas, that's just mine.
Good hunting!
