Yes indeed, that was the choice to be made, and look where we are now
I've got no qualms for supporting the Empire then.
Galnet & Twitter: "an unknown vessel needs our help!"
- Thread starter StuartGT
- Start date
I've got no qualms for supporting the Empire then.
So... done before leaving work as predicted?
There wasn't alot to 'do' really. No real clues to work out unless there is still something left to find (which i'm hoping there is!) Its a nice place to go and have a look around though....
The partial message quoted in both GalNet articles is actually the beginning of the fist paragraph of Gabriels final log.
Read it through and they both match up word for word only the log entry has the full message and details of events that followed.
I doubt this is the end of it though and a lot of things seem very suspicious to me...
Serene Harbour is a secret military prison. It's just outside the bubble and no names are used for prisoners or prison staff and all names are automatically scrubbed from transmissions.
"Theta Seven" probably built the Enzyme Bombs. He's apparently an "engineering genius, despite being covered in corrosive scars".
"Theta Group" are no mere terrorist cell. The prison logs mention they were harder to crack than any other Marlinist inmates they've had before and that "they had an advanced workshop hidden in LTT 1935, a Federal System".
The prison staff were told that the "Theta Group" prisoners needed to be kept in good condition for "public execution" so they couldn't use the presumably "usual methods" of torture and extreme interrogation.
The prison security systems all shut down at the same time the supply ship landed. The prisoners were all locked up until their cell doors opened remotely and outgoing transmissions were possibly being jammed.
"Theta Group" remained calm throughout the duration of the prison riot as if it were all part of the plan.
"Theta Seven" never left his prison cell and waited for the combat squad assigned to the supply ship. He knew that supply ship was coming to rescue him and his team.
The combat squad was clearly a covert extraction/clean up team as they massacred all the witnesses and escorted the "Theta Group" prisoners "back to the ship like they were senators!"
"Theta Seven" is potentially some sort of Special Forces/Black Ops. He never broke under interrogation, he knew an extraction was coming and he returned to the prison commandants office with one other person carrying the Neurosensory Amplifier (steel box marked "fragile").
Gabriel De Luca almost certainly had the Neurosensory Amplifier used on him by "Theta Seven", possibly to find out how much he knows from interrogating the other members of the "Theta Group"/NMLA.
The whole thing smells like an Imperial Intelligence Clean-Up Operation from start to finish and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions about who the "Theta Group" are, why they were operating in Federal Space and who is sponsoring them?
Time to crack out the tinfoil?
"Theta Seven" probably built the Enzyme Bombs. He's apparently an "engineering genius, despite being covered in corrosive scars".
"Theta Group" are no mere terrorist cell. The prison logs mention they were harder to crack than any other Marlinist inmates they've had before and that "they had an advanced workshop hidden in LTT 1935, a Federal System".
The prison staff were told that the "Theta Group" prisoners needed to be kept in good condition for "public execution" so they couldn't use the presumably "usual methods" of torture and extreme interrogation.
The prison security systems all shut down at the same time the supply ship landed. The prisoners were all locked up until their cell doors opened remotely and outgoing transmissions were possibly being jammed.
"Theta Group" remained calm throughout the duration of the prison riot as if it were all part of the plan.
"Theta Seven" never left his prison cell and waited for the combat squad assigned to the supply ship. He knew that supply ship was coming to rescue him and his team.
The combat squad was clearly a covert extraction/clean up team as they massacred all the witnesses and escorted the "Theta Group" prisoners "back to the ship like they were senators!"
"Theta Seven" is potentially some sort of Special Forces/Black Ops. He never broke under interrogation, he knew an extraction was coming and he returned to the prison commandants office with one other person carrying the Neurosensory Amplifier (steel box marked "fragile").
Gabriel De Luca almost certainly had the Neurosensory Amplifier used on him by "Theta Seven", possibly to find out how much he knows from interrogating the other members of the "Theta Group"/NMLA.
The whole thing smells like an Imperial Intelligence Clean-Up Operation from start to finish and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions about who the "Theta Group" are, why they were operating in Federal Space and who is sponsoring them?
Time to crack out the tinfoil?
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So, it makes me wonder if there's going to be more stuff trickle fed over the course of the week. I appreciate an 80Ly (31Ly) search radius seems large for an individual, but for a coordinated group, it's not a big task.
But yeah... while the first one had way too much lead in which meant it was rapidly resolved, but had a good amount of content, this has replaced content with searching... unless there's more in the pipe.
One of the things Arthur talked about having taken on board from the Adamastor event was the speed in which it had been solved (in the sense that they were surprised how quickly it was done).
I’d like to think that means we’ve just seen the first part so far, but equally I don’t know if any of the current CM team have been around long enough to be able to know just how quickly something like today’s was going to be done.
The Galnet article giving co-ords is a bad sign as well. In pre-3.3 days that would have made the whole thing do-able but still taking a considerable amount of time even with a mass community search.
Whether this was all or just the first step -- I'm glad I didn't waste more time on it this afternoon than I actually did. I flew all over the landable planet in the first system looking for clues / signals for a while, and when there weren't any, I said f it and went home. At the time I thought I was just too daft to find the clue.
There being no more effective way for solving this than brute-forcing a search of over 4500 systems -- can it get any lamer than that?
There being no more effective way for solving this than brute-forcing a search of over 4500 systems -- can it get any lamer than that?
The details contained in the prison logs allude to some very conspiratorial goings on.
The whole thing seems like an inside job or false flag type of situation after you’ve read through them carefully.
Either way I hope it leads to more lore & story lines to follow.
I keep seeing this statement from members of Frontier and keep thinking “But you basically GAVE us the answer before you launched the event!”
The binary posts were deciphered well in advance of the Ghost ship arriving and it then was a simple case of back tracking to Chukchan.
A lot of players (myself included) started with the answer and worked our way back to the question in a matter of hours due to the social media spoilers.
That event would have been much better without the binary posts or if they had at least pointed us to where the Adamastor finally arrived instead.
FD spoiled their own surprise in my opinion.
My thoughts exactly. When I saw that message about an 80LY radius and NOT ANOTHER SINGLE FREAKING CLUE, I pretty much noped it back to the Bubble. While having "puzzles" like this is better than a year-long drought of absolutely nothing, it would be nice if they made it so individual/solo CMDRs (with jobs, families, and lives outside the game) could solve them in a reasonable amount of time.Whether this was all or just the first step -- I'm glad I didn't waste more time on it this afternoon than I actually did. I flew all over the landable planet in the first system looking for clues / signals for a while, and when there weren't any, I said f it and went home. At the time I thought I was just too daft to find the clue.
There being no more effective way for solving this than brute-forcing a search of over 4500 systems -- can it get any lamer than that?
/end old-man-rant
EDIT: yeah, even with the additional clue in the 2nd Galnet message, it was still a bit too much "jump, FSS, look for possible candidates, jump, repeat ad nauseum".
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Yeah... that does feel a bit "left hand, right hand" which is usually par for the course.
And yeah, @CMDR D Noize , definitely interesting developments, not disappointed in that regard, just hoping this is step one of more to come
Yup... really happy they didn't do that on this occasion, but i just think they underestimated the clearance speed. Honestly, I was a little surprised too, until i ran the numbers and factored collective effort.
That search zone activity probably should happen at the end of a puzzle chain, and I'd even make it something like "somewhere in COL 97 Sector" or similar, rather than a radius- bound search.
But was happy there weren't social media giveaways.
Players can destroy campaigns faster than GM's can make them...
Tinfoil hat: It was ment to be found. (like super villain level of, I was here.)
And yeah, @CMDR D Noize , definitely interesting developments, not disappointed in that regard, just hoping this is step one of more to come
Yeah my pet theory is someone in the Empire has been using their own Black Ops team under the guise of the NMLA to set this whole chain of events in motion.
It all seems far to organised for a rag tag bunch of political dissidents simply looking for a little self governance.
And that “supply ship” incident seriously reminds me of the end of Alien 3 when they’re waiting for the “Evac Ship” and Ripley reckons it’s actually a clean up crew coming to extract her/the Xeno-queen embryo and kill all the witnesses.
Yeah, agreed, but first effort from the current CM team, it was pretty good overall, and it can't be expected that they'd get it bang on. And @Jmanis did do a very good job of putting forwards all the kind of stuff you mention in his feedback thread for the Admastor event, and I would like to think they'd read it. They certainly seem to have avoided the social media side of things this time.
Though having said that, there were definitely parts of the social media stuff I liked - the gradual build up, trying to work it out from limited parts, that kind of stuff. I'd like to see that kind of thing replicated in some way that didn't exclude people who play the game and don't follow the social media channels. And it leading to the start of things, rather than leading to the end and then people working back to the start.
I'm just slightly concerned that at the moment it looks a little bit like it's all gone the completely other way, and 'Good build up and clues, but to the wrong bit and out-of-game only' has been swapped for 'no real clues just pure in game brute force search'. We'll see though, maybe (and hopefully) there's more to come.
Yeah... they've certainly been dark on the social media this time, which is more preferred than "Give away the ending before the event" and less preferred than "build up some hype".
I mentioned words to this effect in my feedback thread, but using social media to build hype for this kinda thing is a good thing as far as I'm concerned ... where the binary included "COALSACK NEBULA" last time (the end of the event), it should have included "ADAMASTOR" or "CHUKCHAN" (the start of the event), or even just drop all references entirely and just put "THE STONES. HE KEEPS WATCHING THE STONES.". That would've built some hype for sure.
But yeah, it seems a common theme that, throughout virtually everything, whether it's mining balances, trade balances or whatever, FD seem to go to one extreme, realise it has problems, and instead of just backpeddling a little bit, they go to the polar other extreme. I guess we'll find out soon enough whether there's more coming or not... and see what Galnet article pops up, coz this is pretty big news.
I personally think this isn't necessarily an Imperial operator... rather I think this is some 4th party with tendrils in all of the Federation, Empire and Alliance, but with no allegience to any of them, fuelling the NMLA as a convenient front to operate with impunity.
Yes, but not as a calling card. Rather, this was clearly a covert detention facility which has impacted other operations before. I don't think this is a "We are still a threat" calling card, rather, it's more a leak-style "Fear your governments" move to sow discord, allowing whoever these people are (and I don't for one minute believe them to actually be NMLA) and provide more freedom of action. It's clear the superpowers collaborating is dangerous to this group, based on their actions to-date.
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And this is where we enter The X-Files/Syndicate level conspiracies and a potentially even more interesting angle.
Someone’s pulling some serious strings if that’s the case.
Something something "The Club" something something
(I have NFI about The Club, just that they're some mystical omnipresent unicorn)
And that the last CG allowed one suspected Club member to organize a peace summit between the superpowers...