GalMap oddities investigation

Qohen Leth · Saturday at 11:27 AM

I'm currenty working on the Expeditions History poster v2, and after compiling as many publicly advertised expeditions as I could, I'm left with many oddities on the ED Astrometrics map. So, I'm reaching out to the wider audience, in the hope that someone, somewhere, might know who, what, when, what for, for any of the signaled oddities.

Any help would be greatly appreciated (with no guarantee that I will be able to include these on the map, with over 230 expeditions already).

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL IMAGE (too large to be displayed on the post)

marx · Saturday at 12:47 PM

The vast majority of those were (or are) various surveys, often boxel-based (or sector-based), sometimes distance-based (so, spheres). They can be centered around, well, anything: planetary nebulae, or even large ones (like 8), NSPs (like 13, 27), places where someone anchored their carrier (like 20), people wanting to find some POIs for waypoints, or maybe even just a sector which's name they liked (like 12: Wizz)... a lot of possible reasons, really. Some of these are incomplete, as evidenced by their shapes (usually the lines) - perhaps still ongoing, perhaps abandoned.

Anyway, in many cases it's also not one concerted effort, but several players doing stuff independently. Pretty sure that there were plenty of people exploring independently around nebulae, NSPs and the like.
Many of the others seem to have been stuff like singular D boxels surveyed, which can often be done by just one Commander.

Qohen Leth · Saturday at 4:49 PM

Well, I'm interested in the concerted efforts, precisely. The fewer the better for me, tbh.

marx · Sunday at 1:17 PM

Come to think of it, I doubt that many, or even any, of these were from organised group efforts. (Not to mention publicly available.) Leaving out the NSPs, nebulae and the like, where Commanders would congregate by themselves, the rest often look like they were done by one player, or sometimes maybe a few.
For example, let's take the Vulcan Gate part that you circled. That certainly looks like the trail of one: see the Eofairg sector from May 8 this year. Then the final well-explored part is at the DSSA carrier.

So, I doubt any of those map parts that you circled were from expeditions and such. Of course, if I'm wrong on any of them, someone please correct me.

Jackie Silver · Sunday at 4:32 PM

I believe number 24 there is Phleedgoea ("Phloogy" and "Phlegmgooey" to its friends) - CMDR Taen and yours truly did an extensive survey of that sector. "D" boxels if I remember rightly.

Taen · Sunday at 5:26 PM

It was the E boxels. I'm pretty sure we would have given up if it were the D's resulting in a space cube that somewhat resembles the second Death Star.

DjVortex · Sunday at 5:49 PM

Even more interesting than the bright spots are the strange voids. For example 26. It's like everybody is going around a spherical area of space there.

marx · Sunday at 6:18 PM

DjVortex said:
Even more interesting than the bright spots are the strange voids. For example 26. It's like everybody is going around a spherical area of space there.

Those are the permit lock spheres, so yes, you're right: everybody is going around a spherical area of space there.

Qohen Leth · Sunday at 6:37 PM

marx said:
Come to think of it, I doubt that many, or even any, of these were from organised group efforts. (Not to mention publicly available.) Leaving out the NSPs, nebulae and the like, where Commanders would congregate by themselves, the rest often look like they were done by one player, or sometimes maybe a few.
For example, let's take the Vulcan Gate part that you circled. That certainly looks like the trail of one: see the Eofairg sector from May 8 this year. Then the final well-explored part is at the DSSA carrier.

So, I doubt any of those map parts that you circled were from expeditions and such. Of course, if I'm wrong on any of them, someone please correct me.

That's probably the case for most, tbh, but it doesn't hurt to ask

DjVortex · Sunday at 6:54 PM

marx said:
Those are the permit lock spheres, so yes, you're right: everybody is going around a spherical area of space there.

There are permit-locked systems that far north?

marx · Sunday at 9:16 PM

DjVortex said:
There are permit-locked systems that far north?

Yep. Six in that cluster: PRAEI1-6.

PilotB · Sunday at 9:20 PM

You need to overlay the DSSA carriers they explain a lot of the random deep space dots. Commanders found some cool systems parked their carriers deep out in the black to help other commanders who went out without a carrier rest, repair and if required respawn. A player service that unfortunately colonisation hasn't rendered obsolete.

Qohen Leth · Monday at 7:42 AM

PilotB said:
You need to overlay the DSSA carriers they explain a lot of the random deep space dots. Commanders found some cool systems parked their carriers deep out in the black to help other commanders who went out without a carrier rest, repair and if required respawn. A player service that unfortunately colonisation hasn't rendered obsolete.

Already done, but even then, that would be a guess.

Qohen Leth · Monday at 7:45 AM

DjVortex said:
Even more interesting than the bright spots are the strange voids. For example 26. It's like everybody is going around a spherical area of space there.

26 is the thick line next to the permit-locked cluster, not the cluster itself.

PilotB · Monday at 9:22 AM

Qohen Leth said:
Already done, but even then, that would be a guess.

Everything is a guess until the commanders doing the various searches chime in. Points with multiple travel lines are current or historical carrier locations. In some cases they're landmarks but mostly carriers. The boxes and lines are boxel searches and there are commanders who've just sat out in the deep black and never come home.

Qohen Leth · Monday at 9:27 AM

PilotB said:
Everything is a guess until the commanders doing the various searches chime in. Points with multiple travel lines are current or historical carrier locations. In some cases they're landmarks but mostly carriers. The boxes and lines are boxel searches and there are commanders who've just sat out in the deep black and never come home.

Yes, I'm precisely posting this thread and its doppelganger on Reddit, hoping that the authors would chime in

PilotB · Monday at 9:28 AM

Best I can offer at this stage is that you can probably use Spansh to check what they're actually finding most explorers who work in squares have tools.

athulin · Monday at 9:47 AM

Qohen Leth said:
Well, I'm interested in the concerted efforts, precisely. The fewer the better for me, tbh.

Somewhat off topic, then:

I hope any gamers who know the history about any completed or semi-completed non-expedition not catalogued elsewhere, will post info or pointers. These blocks might provide data that could be used for raw or heavily sampled statistics, and that could be useful if they have been posted to EDDN or the logs have been kept. (One thing they may be useful for is to estimate how much data gets lost when posted to EDDN. I have found one system that a) was fully logged by one web service, b) was partially logged by another, and c) not logged at all (or perhaps deleted for incompleteness) by a third.)

For anyone curious, I'm responsible for most/all of point 8, an Electricae Radialem exobio inventory, and some of the small 80^3 blocks 'south' of it which were done during preparatory testing. I have seven subareas to complete of the main inventory (≈70 days), then a project report may be expected.