Can you tell us if Smear Campaigns are in game yet? Anyone find one with the update?

just in case it's of interest - I was looking at some of the surface POI today to see if they had different spawns in different systems.

tl;dr - they don't.

So
  • an Irregular Markers/T1 will always drop some of : Patrol Routes / Maintenance Logs / Surveillance Logs / MI / Operational Manual / Blacklist / Ballistics Data / Conflict History / Settlement Defence Plans
  • an Impact Site/T2 will always drop from : MI / Operational Manual / Stellar Activity / Topographics / Atmospheric / Radioactivity Data / Stellar Activity Logs / Mineral Survey

I checked across 3 systems with different governments / states / security levels / superpowers. ofc it only takes one find to disprove this :) Otherwise I don't see them hiding Smear Campaigns this way as it would be super-weird to have the only difference between some set of states be a super-rare drop. But hey - this is fdev 🤷‍♀️

I didn't find any surface POI with data points apart from Irregular Markers / Impact Sites. One interesting case I might have missed is that I found an Impact Site/T3 with the Satellite (the one with solar panels) but the Impact Sites T1 & 2 were all Comms Beacons. So I do wonder if there is a Comms Beacon T3 combo? (Also the Impact Site T3 had different drops to the T1/2 - but I only found 1 example : Surveillance Logs / MI / NOC Data / Operational Manual / Blacklist Data)
I can confirm this.
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I have kept a list from the beginning for the Odyssey loot including locations.
In the Loot Find List (Google Sheet Find Locations = german Fundorte) are only the things needed for unlocking and upgrades/mods of the engineers.
I have never seen smear campaigns plans.

PS. the Sheet is in German and exists since 28.05.2021.
My Sheet
 
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Pretty much same stuff as Factabulous mentioned.

I remember in the alpha there were some surface POIs: some energy source and human signals. Are those in the game? I haven't seen them after release.

Apart from that, I used Inara to find some settlements in election. Had few opinion polls but no sign of SCP so far.
 
Pretty much same stuff as Factabulous mentioned.

I remember in the alpha there were some surface POIs: some energy source and human signals. Are those in the game? I haven't seen them after release.

Apart from that, I used Inara to find some settlements in election. Had few opinion polls but no sign of SCP so far.
I've seen few "Active Energy Source" ones and every time I went to them it was just some kind of turret defense system and no data ports or maintenance panels to scavenge...
 
just in case it's of interest - I was looking at some of the surface POI today to see if they had different spawns in different systems.

tl;dr - they don't.

So
  • an Irregular Markers/T1 will always drop some of : Patrol Routes / Maintenance Logs / Surveillance Logs / MI / Operational Manual / Blacklist / Ballistics Data / Conflict History / Settlement Defence Plans
  • an Impact Site/T2 will always drop from : MI / Operational Manual / Stellar Activity / Topographics / Atmospheric / Radioactivity Data / Stellar Activity Logs / Mineral Survey

I checked across 3 systems with different governments / states / security levels / superpowers. ofc it only takes one find to disprove this :) Otherwise I don't see them hiding Smear Campaigns this way as it would be super-weird to have the only difference between some set of states be a super-rare drop. But hey - this is fdev 🤷‍♀️

I didn't find any surface POI with data points apart from Irregular Markers / Impact Sites. One interesting case I might have missed is that I found an Impact Site/T3 with the Satellite (the one with solar panels) but the Impact Sites T1 & 2 were all Comms Beacons. So I do wonder if there is a Comms Beacon T3 combo? (Also the Impact Site T3 had different drops to the T1/2 - but I only found 1 example : Surveillance Logs / MI / NOC Data / Operational Manual / Blacklist Data)
What about active power sources, some of them have beacons with a data port on them. Or have they been removed?
 
Well, it should be. One of the engineers with 2 unique mods is still locked and no one have idea where to find the required items almost a month after the release.
There's a lot of worse problems than having to wait a few weeks for an engineer to go from 'very OP' to 'very very OP' 🤷‍♀️ But if they fix it I would not complain :)
 
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I can confirm this.
-----------------------
I have kept a list from the beginning for the Odyssey loot including locations.
In the Loot Find List (Google Sheet Find Locations = german Fundorte) are only the things needed for unlocking and upgrades/mods of the engineers.
I have never seen smear campaigns plans.

PS. the Sheet is in German and exists since 28.05.2021.
My Sheet
Thanks for that! I guess I'll move on to some other theories. And I'll have to find something to spend all these MI on ;)
 
A small update:
A CMDR on inara pointed me to a system LHS 278 where SCP was found between 2nd and 6th. The settlement in question is controlled by Democrats of LHS 278 and by that time was in civil liberty state. In the same period I saw that there were 2 factions in elections. I do think that the settlement is mistaken and we are probably looking for settlements in election, indeed. I will check the civil liberty trail too.
 
me and many others checked that - election was not the winning card
Yeah, I might have not seen the proof. Maybe it is civil liberty or it is extreme rare drop.

BTW, do you remember if the settlement was only in election state when you checked as other states such as boom can be overwriting it?
 
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If your friend checked ownership of the settlement in the left (nav) panel, that information may be incorrect. The nav panel shows what faction has jurisdiction over the planet, apparently, rather than the settlement.

So it's possible this settlement was one of those controlled by LHS 278 Holdings and LHS 278 Bridge Limited, who were in an election at that time. Neither one seems to have been in any other state(s). Each one showed as "Happy" during this period, with a break to None on the third, for LHS 278 Holdings, and a similar break to None for LHS 278 Bridge Limited between the third and the fourth.

Unfortunately they each own a pretty wide variety of settlements with Agricultural, Industrial, and Tourist economies. I'm not sure we can narrow that down much more with what we have.

If your friend downloaded Smear Campaigns, then even if they were sold there would be a record of the download in the CMDR's journal. That would at least tell us exactly when and where.
 
If the drop rate really is "vanishingly tiny drop rate from outposts in an election state" it may be worth calling out the specific locations you're checking. I'm planning on spending some time in Marana; Galaxy Express and Lem Future Tech are in an Election state and between them have 29 of the 50 settlements across the system. I figure if I'm going to be grinding engineering mats from missions I may as well do it in a place where I can double dip on "in an election state" installations; doubly so if you take missons from those installations and re-check data points when you go back to turn them in.
 
What if it's Election state between factions from different superpowers? Fed vs Emp, Fed vs Alli, Emp vs Alli?
It'd be a first, that's for sure. Only time I've ever seen that sort of thing matter is in Conflict Zones, when it's two factions from the same superpower at war (in which case, Capitals won't spawn.... obscure edge case for FD to pick up on but whatever)
 
I would like to think that it's not something as esoteric as "an election for system control between two democracies of two opposing superpowers in an undermined system with binary suns and 3 other factions present with names starting with the letter A" and we're just talking about something comparatively straightforward but an aggravatingly low drop rate, but who knows for sure.
 
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