I forgot to ask: Where did you take these?
[Canonn Science Report] Generation Ship Thetis investigation.
- Thread starter M. Volgrand
- Start date
What game ;-)
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(start the sound application and select "main mix" as recording source. I don't know whether this is possible on all systems, I run Linux/PulseAudio)
I took sound in the game. A thargoid probe react with discovery scan and the other it's a sound broadcast by small station in space.
I have come back to Elite to test the alpha after almost two years on earth, and found that you guys are still investigating this and resurrecting this thread.
I am amazed. Thanks
I may have to fully come back...
I am amazed. Thanks
I may have to fully come back...
I recently discovered Thetis, captured the sound of log 5 and try to find somethings in it. if you look close at it in your sound application you can clearly see somethings who seems to be a voice (after a lot of "denoise" things), i can't tell what it says and my knowledge of sound application are very limited but maybe someone with more experience could clear correctly the log to identify the message, or somethings (from what i've hear, it does not sounds like "kill them all" but a part of it sounds like "i need to get of that ship" somethings like that, maybe it's just a kind of "pareidolia" but with sound)
I don't know how to do it in-game, but one way I can think of is like this.Looking at the 9th generation thing...In Greek Mythology, Leto the 9th child or Coeus and Phoebe...banned by Hera from giving birth on land, had to find an island that floated on the sea.
Hyperborea..Which is a system. Not in my ship right now, so I can't look it up. Probably not even related, It just struck me because of the 9th gen thing and the fact that the Devs seem totally addicted to Greek myths
A question though, how does someone get a star map and plot a straight line through it?
I went to the Thetis and just chose a system vaguely in the direction of Earth at 15LY and started casting around nearby ones...I have no idea how to just plot lines on the galactic map, any help would be appreciated.
1. Use EDSM to find all systems within 15 ly (probably slightly larger, say 16 ly) of Nefertem.
2. Check if the system is roughly on the direction from Nefertem towards Sol. This can be done by checking the angle between the vector Nefertem -> Sol and vector Nefertem -> the system need to be checked.
These systems are within 16 ly and 30 degrees from Nefertem to Sol.
Code:
RY Sextantis, Dala, LFT 698, Hlocidirus, LFT 709, LHS 274, Fasti, Shapash, LHS 2069, Ross 439, LP 788-24How I got the list.
Python:
import numpy as np
# change the following two values if you want to check other systems
# cos(30°)
cos30 = np.sqrt(3.0) / 2.0
# radius from Nefertem to search
radius = 16
# get system info from EDSM
def get_info(url, params):
req = requests.get(url, params=params)
if req.status_code != 200:
exit("Sever Error")
else:
return req.json()
# EDSM API
system_info = 'https://www.edsm.net/api-v1/system'
sphere_systems = 'https://www.edsm.net/api-v1/sphere-systems'
params = {
'systemName': 'Nefertem',
'showCoordinates': 1}
nefertem = get_info(system_info, params)
# vector Sol -> Nefertem
nefertem_coords = np.array(list(nefertem['coords'].values()))
# norm of vector Sol -> Nefertem
dist_nefertem = np.linalg.norm(nefertem_coords)
params['radius'] = radius
# find sphere
sphere = get_info(sphere_systems, params)
for i in sphere:
# the list contains Nefertem itself, ignore
if i['name'] == 'Nefertem':
continue
# coordinates of target system
target_coords = np.array(list(i['coords'].values()))
# vector Nefertem -> target
vec = target_coords - nefertem_coords
# norm of the vector
dist_nefertem_target = np.linalg.norm(vec)
# angle between the vectors
cosa = np.dot(vec, nefertem_coords) / dist_nefertem_target / dist_nefertem_target
# check if the angle is within 30°
if -cosa >= cos30:
print(i['name'])
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Since this thread is being necroed yet again, I'll make a contribution I made in another thread on the topic.
The Thetis is in Nefertem now, but it is extremely unlikely that the event that killed off the crew, happened in Nefertem. So searching for the source planet 15 LY from Nefertem is futile.
The ship would have travelled more or less in a straight line from Earth, so the event had to have happened somewhere along that line. The source planet is going to be not far from that straight line. And there are really only two options for systems in a straight-ish line between Sol and Nefertem:
Which one of these two is more likely depends on how long you define a "generation". First, some definitions: the "first generation" of crew were the people who boarded the ship. The first "second generation babies" would have been born not long (probably within a year) after ship launch - they might even have encouraged pregancies to happen while the ship was still accelerating. As the logs record the birth of "the first" ninth-generation baby, this would logically have been on the early end of possible procreation for each generation; I guessed an average of 21 years between generations. So, eight generations at 21 years apart gives 168 years.
Generation ships cruised at about 0.2 c. So, 168 years after launch puts the Thetis at 33.6 LY from Earth. Searching for a system 15 LY "behind" them at 33.6 LY distance along the Earth-Nefertem line gives only one possible result: Gendalla. Gendalla is currently inhabited, but would have been uncolonized back in the generation-ship era as there's no ELWs or terraformables in the system. The ship would have been just past the Abrogo cluster when the event happened, meaning the dead Thetis then coasted at 0.2 c for an extra 100 years / 20 LY before the ship's autopilot decides to stop in Nefertem - which was presumably not the original intended destination of the ship, given that Nefertem doesn't have any ELWs or terraformables in it either.
As for "whodunnit", I have my own theory: the signal came from another, crashed, generation ship.
Hypothesis: an early generation ship (not the Thetis, but one of the 70,000 other generation ships launched from Earth) is launched with a lethal flaw: a death-meme message, planeted in its computer systems. Who put it there we don't know, maybe a rival generation-ship-launching company trying to cause a horrible accident. This generation ship goes ghost not long after launch, as the meme kills everyone aboard. The derelict ship drifts outwards at 0.2 c and eventually crashes into one of the planets in the Gendalla system. An automated distress beacon activates, but the meme has buried itself in the beacon's signal.
Some years later, the Thetis passes by Gendalla and picks up the wreck's signal with its buried death-meme, which gets stored in the comms computers. 75 years later, the message escapes, and wreaks havoc on the Thetis.
Invoking aliens seems out of place; if they wanted to kill everybody aboard, surely just blowing up the ship would have been much more certain than transmitting a signal and hoping that one day everybody dies because of that signal. Blowing up a generation ship is ridiculously easy: just park a few big rocks in its flightpath.
Not that we're likely to find any wreckage, ruins or signal transmitter in Gendalla, or anywhere else. I think it unlikely that FD's story writers who wrote the Thetis script would have had any idea where in the bubble their ship was going to be placed, when they wrote it. Equally unlikely that FD's coders would have said "Hey, this story says there should be some kind of signal generator planted on a planet somewhere, we'd better give ourselves extra work and go create that".
The Thetis is in Nefertem now, but it is extremely unlikely that the event that killed off the crew, happened in Nefertem. So searching for the source planet 15 LY from Nefertem is futile.
The ship would have travelled more or less in a straight line from Earth, so the event had to have happened somewhere along that line. The source planet is going to be not far from that straight line. And there are really only two options for systems in a straight-ish line between Sol and Nefertem:
- Gendalla.
- the Abrogo cluster, comprising three star systems: Abrogo, LHS 2149, and Yin Sector GW-W c1-26.
Which one of these two is more likely depends on how long you define a "generation". First, some definitions: the "first generation" of crew were the people who boarded the ship. The first "second generation babies" would have been born not long (probably within a year) after ship launch - they might even have encouraged pregancies to happen while the ship was still accelerating. As the logs record the birth of "the first" ninth-generation baby, this would logically have been on the early end of possible procreation for each generation; I guessed an average of 21 years between generations. So, eight generations at 21 years apart gives 168 years.
Generation ships cruised at about 0.2 c. So, 168 years after launch puts the Thetis at 33.6 LY from Earth. Searching for a system 15 LY "behind" them at 33.6 LY distance along the Earth-Nefertem line gives only one possible result: Gendalla. Gendalla is currently inhabited, but would have been uncolonized back in the generation-ship era as there's no ELWs or terraformables in the system. The ship would have been just past the Abrogo cluster when the event happened, meaning the dead Thetis then coasted at 0.2 c for an extra 100 years / 20 LY before the ship's autopilot decides to stop in Nefertem - which was presumably not the original intended destination of the ship, given that Nefertem doesn't have any ELWs or terraformables in it either.
As for "whodunnit", I have my own theory: the signal came from another, crashed, generation ship.
Hypothesis: an early generation ship (not the Thetis, but one of the 70,000 other generation ships launched from Earth) is launched with a lethal flaw: a death-meme message, planeted in its computer systems. Who put it there we don't know, maybe a rival generation-ship-launching company trying to cause a horrible accident. This generation ship goes ghost not long after launch, as the meme kills everyone aboard. The derelict ship drifts outwards at 0.2 c and eventually crashes into one of the planets in the Gendalla system. An automated distress beacon activates, but the meme has buried itself in the beacon's signal.
Some years later, the Thetis passes by Gendalla and picks up the wreck's signal with its buried death-meme, which gets stored in the comms computers. 75 years later, the message escapes, and wreaks havoc on the Thetis.
Invoking aliens seems out of place; if they wanted to kill everybody aboard, surely just blowing up the ship would have been much more certain than transmitting a signal and hoping that one day everybody dies because of that signal. Blowing up a generation ship is ridiculously easy: just park a few big rocks in its flightpath.
Not that we're likely to find any wreckage, ruins or signal transmitter in Gendalla, or anywhere else. I think it unlikely that FD's story writers who wrote the Thetis script would have had any idea where in the bubble their ship was going to be placed, when they wrote it. Equally unlikely that FD's coders would have said "Hey, this story says there should be some kind of signal generator planted on a planet somewhere, we'd better give ourselves extra work and go create that".
Although the final Comms Log says "Kill Them All", I'm not convinced the final audio message is saying that. To me it sounds like "Relive their horror".
There isn't enough information in the Comms Logs to determine where the signal came from. Without knowing the exact date the Thetis was launched, how fast it was traveling, or where it was when the signal was identified, we are looking for a needle in a haystack. It's a fun diversion but I really don't think we are meant to find anything else.
There isn't enough information in the Comms Logs to determine where the signal came from. Without knowing the exact date the Thetis was launched, how fast it was traveling, or where it was when the signal was identified, we are looking for a needle in a haystack. It's a fun diversion but I really don't think we are meant to find anything else.
Sadly, i think the same and not only for the Thetis but for almost all the game content. I think they put that kind of thing just to be visit once. The mystery part are not in the game, until the FD add a new part of course (Galnet), like the Adamastor and the Hesperus, otherwise it's a dead-end, all of them. This game it's only a sim space piloting/fighting/selling/mining game, no more.
I have mixed feelings about it. It seems the content is seeded with some initial assets, and if there's enough community engagement FDev can be moved to expand on it. Still, running around in the black pretending to investigate things in the hopes the devs will throw us a bone is less than ideal.Sadly, i think the same and not only for the Thetis but for almost all the game content. I think they put that kind of thing just to be visit once. The mystery part are not in the game, until the FD add a new part of course (Galnet), like the Adamastor and the Hesperus, otherwise it's a dead-end, all of them. This game it's only a sim space piloting/fighting/selling/mining game, no more.
Turning the Wheel is a big test of this sort of inductive approach to Elite's mysteries, so I'm curious to see if it goes anywhere.
Excellent write up, but I think you are overthinking things.
Applying that logic, surely this would add a new meaning to death metal?
Incidentally, starting in this gives us a few systems that are ~15LY from Nefertem and closer to Sol than Nefertem , those are LHS 2259 & Hlocidirus - has anyone done some sniffing around them for listening posts / comms beacons etc?
Since this thread's been necro'd anyway, I just had a thought: what if this signal is Thargoid related? Back in the previous war, we used the mycoid virus to almost completely wipe out the Thargoids. What if the signals the Thetis and Delta 69 heard were Thargoids experiments for a similar "virus"?
We know the bugs abduct people: they scoop up occupied escape pods and the logs at the Coalsack outpost noted them beaming up people directly. They could use these people as test subjects and "infection vectors" like the body found at D69. Their mastery of witchspace might allow them to open portals small enough to move a body through without detection, and they might even be able to send signals through as well, explaining the gravitational anamoly. If the former is true, they could also abduct the rest of the outpost without leaving a trace like the recovery team reported.
Their focus on essentially brainwashing and audio signals could be due to their assumed hive-mindedness. If they are indeed a hive mind, they could believe that humanity functions similarly. Thus, they could be attempting to sever our "hive mind" via audio signals embedded in our "collective consciousness" (as in our comms arrays). Of course this all would rely on them being unable to comprehend non-gestalt consciousness.
We know the bugs abduct people: they scoop up occupied escape pods and the logs at the Coalsack outpost noted them beaming up people directly. They could use these people as test subjects and "infection vectors" like the body found at D69. Their mastery of witchspace might allow them to open portals small enough to move a body through without detection, and they might even be able to send signals through as well, explaining the gravitational anamoly. If the former is true, they could also abduct the rest of the outpost without leaving a trace like the recovery team reported.
Their focus on essentially brainwashing and audio signals could be due to their assumed hive-mindedness. If they are indeed a hive mind, they could believe that humanity functions similarly. Thus, they could be attempting to sever our "hive mind" via audio signals embedded in our "collective consciousness" (as in our comms arrays). Of course this all would rely on them being unable to comprehend non-gestalt consciousness.
The Thetis predates any known Thargoid contact, so it's very unlikely that the Thetis audio signal was a hostile act by Thargoids, even less so that it was a retaliation for us hitting them with a mycoid plague.
The signal predates known Thargoid contact by several hundred years. Apparently, the Thargoids weren't around in our part of the galaxy when humanity left Earth. Which is probably a good thing; if the Thargoids had found us in our primitive generation ships and experimental hyperspace probes, the Thargoids would likely have squashed us before we could invent the tech to mount proper defenses.
And the Thargoids know perfectly well that humans are not a hive mind. It's why they've never bothered trying to make contact or negotiate a treaty - they know they can never trust us to honour a treaty, because they know there isn't a human hive-mind to rigidly enforce any such treaty on every single human. Humans are individuals, just like the Guardians were, and that means individual humans, and the human race as a whole, can never be trusted - just like the Guardians. The Thargoids have the tech to blow up our ships and sterilize our planets. If they'd wanted to kill us several hundred years ago, they wouldn't have wasted time with something as slow and unreliable as a death-meme.
What I understood so far: There are indeed images hidden in spectograms (CMDR Thorus) and web services providing stellar map data (Qualcomm). How amazing! Thank you all!!!
I agree 100%. Simply the possibility of the Thargoids doing such a complex scheme with a ship they could have easily wiped out of space is a theory worth of a tinfoil crown. However, I like the possibility that maybe the Thetis went through some sort of space-time disturbance that caused all this.
Oh darn! Hmm.
GALILEO ST?
ST GALILEO?
1. Station (ST), Galileo in Sol?
2. System 'Galileo' 1,325.34 LY from Sol. Unable to search the system in EDO. You can search by using the starforge-name 'Oochorrs NW-C b58-36'
But there is no STation in that system.
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I've denoised a little bit the 5th audio, speeded up x2 and changed the tempo, and finally I can hear a woman / girl voice whispering something like "6... blablabla.... 9", which might have something to do with Delta 69? I'm not a native english speaker, so maybe you guys can understand the word in the middle.
I've attached 2 audio files, but I'm not sure they've been attached correctly. Please, give me some feedback.
EDIT ON 21/09/2023:
I've listened to the original signal again and, depending on the speed, I can listen either "kill them all" or "6 whatever 9". So I think we can not discard there are 2 signals mixed in 1, like those audios which sound different if you play them in mono or stereo.
I also have inverted only 1 of the stereo channels, so that the same signal in the other channel is complete muted, and the spoken message disappears, however a set o beeps remain, which might be a encoded message, maybe an encoded binaryessage or even morse pulses.
I'll provide more info if I get something significant.
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Nice to see people working in the Thetis…. I was playing around with timelines for the Thetis a while back if it helps:
forums.frontier.co.uk
Trying to matchup log entries / generations / assuming coming from sol / predicted speed for gen ship / and the 15ly back… was fun
Edit: i think looking at this again…15ly back… the signal reaches them initially. They must have been traveling faster than i calculated.
The Quest To Find Raxxla
I think the idea of it being in or having some connection to witch space has merit. in the book I linked, it suggests that a place that is not a place is a margin between places. look at the circled line. a territory (door?) or provides entry into one (a key?)
Trying to matchup log entries / generations / assuming coming from sol / predicted speed for gen ship / and the 15ly back… was fun
Edit: i think looking at this again…15ly back… the signal reaches them initially. They must have been traveling faster than i calculated.
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