About a week ago, jonesing for the Guardian FSD booster (which I now have and it's great), I got my first taste of Guardian treasure hunting. I visited two Structures, one large @ SYNUEFE EN-H D11-96 (sound familiar?) and a small one @ SYNUEFE NL-N C23-4. In the latter system I also visited 3 Guardian Ruins. At these sites I collected numerous artifacts, including (as I recall) a total of 5 Guardian Orbs. They were just sitting around the sites like interstellar soccer balls. I also read quite a few obelisks, as I had an inventory full of nearly every required artifact. I hopped back to the bubble for a Tech Broker, got my GFSDB, sold off the artifacts (after all they were easy to collect and tended to invite interdict attempts) and decided to look into the Guardian thing a bit deeper. That's when I learned about Ram Tah's mission, the Meene mission (or Mean Mission, as you will soon see). Sounded doable. I had a couple of Beacons yet to scan for new sites, plus some notes from various sources, decided to head back into the black and start working toward that 100mil payoff.
In the past two days I've visited three Guardian Structures, one large and new to me, one small and new to me, and the small Structure that I had visited on my first trip out to get the Module Blueprint, and where I had collected a number of Guardian Orbs. During this latest sojourn, I found about a dozen scannable obelisks, over half of which required an Orb to read the data. On the new small site, every single obelisk but one required an Orb. Yet, after thoroughly searching the sites (at least 1.5 tanks of Standard SRV fuel per site), this was my inventory when I logged off:
Notice the problem? A rather annoying and complete lack of Orbs. That means that more than half of the obelisks I found for the mission, I could not scan. Now I understand that spawning the Orbs in any predictable number is too much to ask for, RNG and all that, but zero spawns on three planets, on one of which I relogged and searched again to no avail? That's a total of four instances of Guardian Structures that yielded absolutely no Orbs, items necessary to complete the mission. I have begun to ask, is this some kind of vindictive programming at work? A deliberate, drastic reduction in Orb spawning once the mission is accepted? I'm tempted to abandon the mission to test whether Orb spawns are then greater, but don't know if I can pick it up again. I rather doubt it.
I'm also at a bit of a loss on how to monitor my progress, hampered though it is by the lack of Orbs. Transactions says naught, but where else should I look? I'd also like to know if the obelisk scans I did prior to accepting the Meene (Mean) Mission count toward the total number of scans done? I did accept a 50k payoff for Codex entries prior to getting the mission, but don't know if that is what is sought by Ram Tah. His message is a bit vague on that account. Do I look in the Codex for mission progress? It all seems a little scattered and haphazard at the moment.
In the past two days I've visited three Guardian Structures, one large and new to me, one small and new to me, and the small Structure that I had visited on my first trip out to get the Module Blueprint, and where I had collected a number of Guardian Orbs. During this latest sojourn, I found about a dozen scannable obelisks, over half of which required an Orb to read the data. On the new small site, every single obelisk but one required an Orb. Yet, after thoroughly searching the sites (at least 1.5 tanks of Standard SRV fuel per site), this was my inventory when I logged off:
Notice the problem? A rather annoying and complete lack of Orbs. That means that more than half of the obelisks I found for the mission, I could not scan. Now I understand that spawning the Orbs in any predictable number is too much to ask for, RNG and all that, but zero spawns on three planets, on one of which I relogged and searched again to no avail? That's a total of four instances of Guardian Structures that yielded absolutely no Orbs, items necessary to complete the mission. I have begun to ask, is this some kind of vindictive programming at work? A deliberate, drastic reduction in Orb spawning once the mission is accepted? I'm tempted to abandon the mission to test whether Orb spawns are then greater, but don't know if I can pick it up again. I rather doubt it.
I'm also at a bit of a loss on how to monitor my progress, hampered though it is by the lack of Orbs. Transactions says naught, but where else should I look? I'd also like to know if the obelisk scans I did prior to accepting the Meene (Mean) Mission count toward the total number of scans done? I did accept a 50k payoff for Codex entries prior to getting the mission, but don't know if that is what is sought by Ram Tah. His message is a bit vague on that account. Do I look in the Codex for mission progress? It all seems a little scattered and haphazard at the moment.
