The Quest To Find Raxxla

[RaNaketh]

@Filthymick420 I hear you man. But who knows what it really takes to get an invitation for TDW!?

In my travels I did stumble across what I think could be a good possible candidate for the TDW station location. I received a mission for Zarece, and whilst in-system I thought I'd check it out a bit as it had enough bodies to make me sniff around. I was also suspicious as this is one of the original systems from Elite, so could be a good spot for an old station to reside in!

So I checked around Zarece BC 1 (34,969 ls) which is the 8th moon/body in the system (according to EDSM - https://www.edsm.net/en/system/bodies/id/16598/name/Zarece).

In my casual exploring I noted that BC1 orbits exceptionally close to Zarece C (M Class) which is 34,962 ls, and Zarece B which is 34,959 ls. This image captures 'C' orbiting between 'B' and 'BC1' with 'B' providing the halo effect around 'C'. So I checked it out in more detail, but couldn't spot any stations, which I suspect might only become 'visible' when you get the invite.

The colours don't really match The Dark Wheel codex entry, but then that could easily be enhanced for visual effect.

Anyway, it snared my interest, and little things like this keeps the game fun!

/ Ra

 

[Six6VI]

What do we know at this point, that might be related?

FDev removed the 'fluff' writers from Galnet because the community went chasing after some 'clue' they accidentally dropped, and moved them, where? Feedback on the Enclave II was pretty good compared to the first one too, so maybe FDev have finally noticed that a good story goes a long way with players?

It seemed like legs were on the doorstep back when the Dura-Drive and Torq things were in the news, as they could make interacting with the terrain on foot a thing but alas, that story came and went. Is it still going to be a thing though, maybe in 2020 but the narrative got way ahead of the development progress?

If we ever get access to this tech it won't be "new" any more, although the MkIII we do eventually get may be functionally superior after the bugs and design defects of the MkI and II are fixed 'off-camera'? Raxxla could be suffering similar issues, due to it being way too easy to stumble across in it's current location?

Palin's, and now Chloe's 5000Ly from start requirement doesn't bring any kind of justification with it, why exactly is that a thing and couldn't they have given us an elegant fools errand like collecting a petal of the unobtanium tree that only grows on some remote planet that just happens to be precisely 5000Ly away?

It could have been a wreck, with scan data to prove you were there, or a tourist beacon far enough away from both, now all three start locations. Maybe there will eventually be engineers in the bubble that you can't access without a tip-off from one in Colonia? The point is, that creates journeys in a specific order.

The Galnet writers have shown they can influence player attention, the II's could benefit from more player engagement and if that's where they're moving to we might start to see some awesome narrative driven content? Can they help with mission dialogues? What about for rank missions and permit unlocks?

If time could be invested in a story arc that ties these disparate objectives together...

 

[RaNaketh]

Update: Operation Less Than Three

The Quest To Find Raxxla

I believe Galnet reported that the Martian Artifact was no larger than a child’s hand. If that is true then it can’t be any of the Guardian artefacts that we are currently aware of. Well there is no valid description of these artifacts based on size and weight. It would be to easy of a clue if...

forums.frontier.co.uk

This is more of an FYI post for those interested in TDW 'invitation' way of finding Raxxla, so stop reading now if that's not your style.

<snipped for easier reading>

/ Ra

A few more points of interest.

1. I haven't ever seen a 'Founder or Elite' mission for a wing in TDW faction, it's always solo missions only.
2. Founder or Elite missions aren't just isolated to The Dark Wheel faction, each faction from JM can give missions ranked as such. I'm just choosing to focus on TDW.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I've never seen a founder mission at all

 

[RaNaketh]

I've never seen a founder mission at all

Really? Hmm, that's interesting...

So nothing like this from Jameson Memorial, TDW?

I am not a Founder.

/ Ra

 

[Jaiotu]

FDev removed the 'fluff' writers from Galnet because the community went chasing after some 'clue' they accidentally dropped, and moved them, where? Feedback on the Enclave II was pretty good compared to the first one too, so maybe FDev have finally noticed that a good story goes a long way with players?

What we really need is for Frontier to go back and curate all of the old Galnet stuff and provide us with a definitive list of which articles are significant. As it is I've completely thrown out my "murder board" of Galnet articles that I thought might be significant. Everything seems completely irrelevant now. I haven't dusted off my HOTAS since finding out that the whole Gan Romero plot line was pure fluff. I'd always assumed that everything in Galnet (the official stuff not the player submitted stuff) was significant to the game in some way, even if the payoff wasn't immediate.

 

[alexzk]

What is the history with Thargoids? How did they get image ?
I just recorded "voice" of Crab Pulsar ...Pretty hear there Thargoids & human voices, but maybe just ordinal NS though.

 

[Han_Zen]

Finding Raxxla goes through TDW. The part a tiny little bit obvious.
What the point of the invite, if not ?

TDW is it's own mystery as well as part of the Raxxla mystery, isn't it?
Getting a TDW invite has value in it self.

As TDW still hasn't found Raxxla, an invite is only one step towards it. It could be a required step, like 'We know it's in Bovomit. We can hack you a permit. Good luck' or it could be a set of myths that has to be interpreted. Hopefully those myths make more sense to us than they do to TDW.

Reading the codex makes me think that the way to get an invite, is to first find the station. There may have been plans for other routs when the old missions were about, but now it seems the station is the key.

We have no info for how long the station has been in game. It could be a relatively new addition, for all we know.

 

[Han_Zen]

One possible perspective we might not have looked into with parts of the toast.

Ex. The Parent's Grief

At this point all I can think is we looked into the parents themselves we never did a search on the name of the person/god they are grieving over.

I think The Parent's Grief refers to to the previous generations of TDWers and their grief that they were unable to locate Raxxla.

There could be a double meaning though.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

To me it seems like you are searching a point that has the same distance to each of three given points just by brute force, assuming that the solution must be in the cube between the two point created from the dimension's mins and maxs. Can that be taken for granted?

My 1st idea would have been to try some algebra. That should be more efficient.
…The more I'm thinking about it I get the impression that the equations won't be trivial to solve… My math lectures were a long time ago! Does anybody know the solution??

Whoops, seems that I'q quite late

The centroid of a 3D coordinate triple is (x1+x2+x3)/3, (y1+y2+y3)/3, (z1+z2+z3)/3

 

[Han_Zen]

What we really need is for Frontier to go back and curate all of the old Galnet stuff and provide us with a definitive list of which articles are significant. As it is I've completely thrown out my "murder board" of Galnet articles that I thought might be significant. Everything seems completely irrelevant now. I haven't dusted off my HOTAS since finding out that the whole Gan Romero plot line was pure fluff. I'd always assumed that everything in Galnet (the official stuff not the player submitted stuff) was significant to the game in some way, even if the payoff wasn't immediate.

I don't think the Gan Romero story is just fluff. I think it's a 'primer' for the next phase in the Guardian story. It has obvious links to Halsey's story, that was meant (according to the codex) to lead to the first ruins.

I Halsey's case, it took quite a while from the story, to actual in-game assets.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Regor sector
Bovomit sector
All the other locked Col sectors apart from 70

Alternatively, it may be a system that doesn't show up on Galmap until you're told about it.

This is why I'm not looking for Raxxla. I'm looking for the key.

Look underneath the sofa cushions!
Keys always end up there,
something mystical about the role of sofas in the universe
Quantum key entanglement!!!

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

I think The Parent's Grief refers to to the previous generations of TDWers and their grief that they were unable to locate Raxxla.

There could be a double meaning though.

If you google “Parents’ Grief” you’ll get “death of a child”

 

[Han_Zen]

If you google “Parents’ Grief” you’ll get “death of a child”

Jason died. It was the ultimate blow for his parent organization.

 

[alexzk]

The centroid of a 3D coordinate triple is (x1+x2+x3)/3, (y1+y2+y3)/3, (z1+z2+z3)/3

This is "mass center". This point can have any distances to A-B-C.
We wanted the center of circumscribed circle which is equaly remote from A-B-C by Radius.

 

[Six6VI]

TDW is it's own mystery as well as part of the Raxxla mystery, isn't it?
Getting a TDW invite has value in it self.

As TDW still hasn't found Raxxla, an invite is only one step towards it. It could be a required step, like 'We know it's in Bovomit. We can hack you a permit. Good luck' or it could be a set of myths that has to be interpreted. Hopefully those myths make more sense to us than they do to TDW.

Reading the codex makes me think that the way to get an invite, is to first find the station. There may have been plans for other routs when the old missions were about, but now it seems the station is the key.

We have no info for how long the station has been in game. It could be a relatively new addition, for all we know.

We may not get access to the TDW station until we can use our Elite feet to explore it...

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Been thinking...Storywriters were told Raxxla was off limits as something that should play out on the game, whole Lore has been Retconned but not changed (Jameson ship chronoogy is still current), so what has changed? Most of the stuff about Raxxla, why? Because it was too hard to retro-fit something into the old idea that was never planned to be anything in the first place? Why retconn it at all if it doesnt 'exist' physically in the game, far simpler to leave it as was.

The Codex etc hints that it does exist, the fact that they have changed the lore around it suggests its for a reason other than just plain background.

GalNet - I always thought Gan Romero etc although 'meant to take place off-camera' could still have hints or backup to other areas of the lore or game. So the dreams etc may be linked to other dreams just to back up one actual physical storyline later on that does involve dreams maybe, rather than just a 'fairytale' bit of fluff to make the galaxy seem lived in or there'd have been more surely.

So maybe, just maybe, it is in the game this time.

TDW are still looking for Raxxla aren't they? Maybe they know who the people are, if anybody, who does know where it is if that bit of the old lore is still true about the formation of the DW in the first place and why.

DW station - disused station round an unnamed GG - how many stations in human history just got forgotten about? What was there that was wanted enough to build a station then used so quickly it just got forgotten? like an old west ghost town?

Surface Missions - sometimes you get a pickup job or a scan beacon job at a RNG base, you have to map the planet and it shows up within 4-5LS I think it was for me, real close. Raxxla could be a similar place, no need for different game mechanics....a journey each must take for themselves.

Right thats enough help from me, you now have all the info you need to find it, if its there, which I truly believe it might be this time.

I agree that Raxxla has been retconned. I don’t think it’s anything to do with a wandering planet (origin: Oolite fan-fiction?) or a planet with an alien gateway to other universes (origin: Holdstock’s TDW novella). TDW was retconned out; the only canon lore we now have on what Raxxla might be is the in-game Codex. DB said we don’t know what it is, so I think it’s going to be different from the ideas currently being stated.

We know it’s been in-game since the beginning because DB said so, and he isn’t going to blatantly lie to his player base, though he may not have made it easy to find. It should involve objects and mechanisms in-game from the beginning, so I rule out neutron jumps, and engineer acquaintances.

At first I treated the DW alleged toast as a routemap (to ..., to ...to ...) to be followed, which formed a personal journey, but that didn’t work, although I had an inexplicable CTD at the final destination which was not repeatable. Could it be that I didn’t have some of the places in that journey correct and the CTD was an FD hint?

At present I’m treating the toast as a set of bearings indicating the centroid of the three objects toasted; I assume the observer is standing on TDW’s dark orbis station. Three sightings to known objects gives three bearing lines which should indicate the observation point. Since no bearing angles are given then I reason it should indicate the centroid position, rather than an offset position. I’ve tried six centroid positions so far without result; checked 10kls above & below the ecliptic at each. However to work correctly as such a toast, those three objects should be visible; I’ve pootled around centroid positions involving Zeta Cass/ Alphekka (Gemma) and NGC 7822, and Gemma often is not visible due to interstellar dust clouds. May be a point worth pondering; would TDW toast something that wasn’t visible (apart from Raxxla itself, the final part of the toast)?

 

[Jaiotu]

I don't think the Gan Romero story is just fluff. I think it's a 'primer' for the next phase in the Guardian story. It has obvious links to Halsey's story, that was meant (according to the codex) to lead to the first ruins.

I Halsey's case, it took quite a while from the story, to actual in-game assets.

No. It was totally fluff according to this post from Community Manager Stephen Bannedetti:

Notice - GalNet changes

Meh. "Show, don't tell." Put another way, if Frontier are interested in world-building (as they should be imho) there are better ways of doing it than what we've been getting via GalNet.

forums.frontier.co.uk

"The Gan Romero storyline was always envisaged as an off-camera narrative. The fact that some people assumed it had an in-game component, and went searching for Romero, was for me further evidence that off-camera GalNet stories could be detrimental to the player experience, and cemented our desire to ensure that all GalNet content related to things that were actually in the game."

 

[Han_Zen]

No. It was totally fluff according to this post from Community Manager Stephen Bannedetti:

Notice - GalNet changes

Meh. "Show, don't tell." Put another way, if Frontier are interested in world-building (as they should be imho) there are better ways of doing it than what we've been getting via GalNet.

forums.frontier.co.uk

"The Gan Romero storyline was always envisaged as an off-camera narrative. The fact that some people assumed it had an in-game component, and went searching for Romero, was for me further evidence that off-camera GalNet stories could be detrimental to the player experience, and cemented our desire to ensure that all GalNet content related to things that were actually in the game."

Off-camera. Same as Halsey was. Nothing happened until there was a CG to locate the wreckage of SS1. That was more than a year later, I think.
Almost all stories in ED have started of as off-camera. Some have materialized into something, while others haven't.

 

[Jaiotu]

Off-camera. Same as Halsey was. Nothing happened until there was a CG to locate the wreckage of SS1. That was more than a year later, I think.
Almost all stories in ED have started of as off-camera. Some have materialized into something, while others haven't.

I don't want to get too deep into an argument but there is a different between something that occurs off-camera and eventually has an in-game element. I think Frontier is admitting here that the Gan Romero story never was never intended to have an in-game element. What they've said is that future Galnet content will actually be relevant to the game ... meaning that Gan Romero and his story arc simply weren't relevant at all. It was window dressing.