As people are asking what went on, this, as best as I can tell, is what happened. (Worth bearing in mind that quite a few people involved aren't native English speakers so there is a distinct language barrier at play throughout.)....
- Trailer is shown and INRA base is seen (I think we all know that. I certainly saw it and even said "INRA confirmed" in the livestream chat there and then.)
- Alex and the other French guys start looking for the base. They do this around Alioth because of lore from Frontier First Encounters.
- They post what they're doing on the forum
- Cookie offers to help. Confusion and semi-argument temporarily ensue. In amongst that Cookie says:
.....- He doubts the site will be findable and that their only chance is if they stumble on a listening post
.....- That finding the site through the skybox would not be possible as there's nowhere near enough to work from in the clip from the trailer.
- Cookie says that INRA never went a huge way out of the bubble and that he reckons it'll be in independent space
- Alex explains why they're searching around Alioth
- Cookie decides to start looking for odd systems around Alioth. He reasons that it must be an unpopulated system in order for the base to have remained undiscovered for so long. He also seems to think that it would be a named system - it's not worded very clearly though.
- There's a bit of debate about whether it would still be in an unpopulated system, or whether the system might have been settled after the base was built.
- Cookie says that it would be stupid of INRA to have built the base in a populated system as they don't want it finding, and so it would be an unpopulated system. He doesn't actually directly respond to the point about whether it might now be populated.
- Cookie asks what colour the planet is in the clip, and whether others think it's white and maybe therefore an ice planet.
- Alex makes a beige joke. Also posts a 4k version of a screenshot from the livestream, with luminosity and contrast boosted.
- There's a bit of debate over whether it might be looking around the California nebula as there's the Turner research base, and the Turners are linked to the events in FFE. Consensus is it's too far out to fit with FFE lore.
- Cookie reports that he's finding a lot of Convoy signal sources in his current system, which he thinks is weird as the system is unpopulated.
- Cookie posts a picture of a planet from the system which he thinks looks like the one from the trailer, in the sense that it has ravines <clarification point - one can be seen in the background in the screenshot from the trailer> and it all looks to be the right colour.
- <Clarification point - I was reading this all after the site had already been found, and I was a bit dubious about the above point as EDSM showed 3 planets in the system, all of which looked to be a match, but no - checking in the system map shows the is just 1 planet in that system whose colour matches the screenshot.>
- Cookie says he's going to take a look and asks if anyone wants to join.
- Cookie vaguely agrees with someone else's argument that checking the California Nebula for Aegis research sites is what everyone should be doing, but says he wants to search the planet a bit more though he doubts he'll find anything on his own as the planet's too big.
- Alex can't go himself due to RL, but passes the info on to the rest of his group.
- Alex reports various cmdrs are on their way.
- There's a bit of debate over whether the Pleiades can be seen in the screenshot from the livestream, and a joke about INRA being on Raxxla.
- Alex reports EfilOne is on site and has found something.
- EfilOne posts a screenshot, along with a link to the logs and the site co-ordinates.
- Alex thanks Cookie for his help and says it was very good intuition. <Clarification point - there's no sign at all of Cookie himself saying it was intuition. Nothing in the discussion to that point seems to have revolved around intuition either, so this may have just been a lost in translation moment.>
- Excitement, and lots of posts ensue. Some people ask for an explanation of how it was found.
- EfilOne posts an explanation of how he found the site on the planet. Summary:
....- he says it was all skybox matching at first
....- he says he then circled the planet several time until he thought he was close enough. <Clarification point - language barrier going on, but he appears to mean close to the right area, not close enough to the planet.>
....- he says he then glided to the surface into the canyon that was below him, followed it for a bit, chased various POIs but only found system defence force ships, saw a few things that turned out to be nothing, and eventually saw an object which was creating some aliasing with some heavy contrast in the middle, which he headed towards and that turned out to be the site.
....- he then explains he's spent a huge amount of hours doing planet searches in the past and so knew how to approach it well.
....- he then runs through the graphics settings he uses for planet searches and gives other tips on how to do it.
- People misinterpret EfilOne's post and start asking how it's possible the planet could have been identified through skybox matching when there's so little to go off.
- Confusion starts going into overdrive. People start saying they can't see any explanation of how the planet was found. People start asking for proof of how the planet was found via skybox matching. Other people start saying that the skybox matching would have been impossible and the first accusation of file dipping is made.
- EfilOne edits his post to clear things up. He says (with "IMPORTANT NOTE:" as a prefix) that he doesn't know how the planet was found, was just told about the lead by Alex and that the skybox matching was only once in orbit.
- A few more accusations fly but things are pretty civil for a while
- A few (seemingly) light hearted comments get a bit misread, and talk starts about favouritism and so on and so forth. People are still wanting to know how it was worked out. Cookie hasn't commented and all the demand for answers starts going to Alex. Alex gets increasingly asked to explain Cookie's side of things. Alex obviously can't. People just ask him more. Tempers start to fray.
- There's an amusing aside where the meaning of 'handbags' has to be explained.
- Very bizarrely, some people who've been on the thread from the start begin throwing accusations around about skyboxing the planet, despite having been there for the through the bit where the planet was identified.
- One of the other guys from Alex & EfilOne's group does a post on ideas of how to proceed now that this site has been found.
- Everyone ignores that post and continues throwing more and more accusations around.
- Despite the entire contents of the rest of the thread, people start accusing Alex of refusing to reveal any of how the site was found.
- Things get worse. If it's not datamining, it's tip-offs. FD are accused of being in on it, people start demanding that the Devs reveal what really went on.
- People start saying they don't want to play the game anymore if the only way to do anything is through cheating.
So there you go, that, as far as I can tell, is what happened.
Reddit did what it does at some point in amongst all of that. This thread got started up at some point too. I only came to the original thread in question pretty late in the day, but have waded through pretty much all of it. Not going to read through all this thread and reddit too.