generation ships disappeared or moved along?

[zandru]

Hey Ladies and Gentlemen,

I made a tour to the generation ships this evening, following the instructions from canonn. I had some amazing impressions and even planned the route utilizing the travelling salesman problem solutions. But I also had to realize that the generation ships Hyperion and Pleione aren't at the designated locations anymore. Is it possible they moved along and we have to search them again? Or are their locations some kind of broken?

 

[Flimley]

Yes that’s correct. Some jump along pre determined routes. Oh, when I say ‘some’ I was referring to science vessels.

Flimley

 

[Sapyx]

Generation ships shouldn't move to other star systems, since they're all abandoned hulks. And, since they're fixed POIs, they don't move within a star system, unless they're manually edited by FD.

What we think has happened is this: the ships themselves are still exactly where they were when they were added to the game. But the reference planets that people have used to find them have moved.

Take the Pleione, in the Hez Ur system. It was found by flying to the planet Hez Ur 5, then setting course for Teuten. When the ship was added to the game, that system worked, because Hez Ur 5, the Pleione, and the Teuten system were all in a line. But Hez Ur 5, being a planet, has moved in its orbit since then, so the three objects are no longer in a line.

Likewise, in the Lalande 2966 system, the planet Lalande 2966 4 which is used as the waypoint has moved in its orbit since the records were made, meaning the planet, the Hyperion and the Yemaki system are no longer lined up.

Both Hez Ur 5 and Lalande 2966 4 are cold, slow outer planets, so they don't move much... but they do move. Hez Ur 5 has an orbital period of 12.9 years - meaning that in the last year, it has travelled 1/13th of the way around its orbit. Likewise, Lalande 2966 4 has an orbital period of 14.2 years, so it's travelled 1/14th of the way around its orbit in the past year.

Ideally, we should locate good navigational guide-stars (to replace Teuten and Yemaki) with reference from an immovable object, such as the central star or a beacon "orbiting" the star, and use those as our navigational references instead of movable objects such as planets.

 

[varonica]

Ideally, we should locate good navigational guide-stars (to replace Teuten and Yemaki) with reference from an immovable object, such as the central star or a beacon "orbiting" the star, and use those as our navigational references instead of movable objects such as planets.

Ah yes the old hikers problem. When you ask the farmer for directions and he says, "follow the road down to where the abandoned tractor used to be...."

Not all stars have beacons so it's best to settle on the one rather than either/or so use the central star, of course they still move but over stellar distances that's not going to make much difference for a decade or more, then it's just a matter of finding out which star lines up with the object...that may present some...challenges....

Of course there are extra-galactic objects which in human terms will never move against the background, I'm not sure if that would be easier or harder though since you can't select them.

 

[Jackie Silver]

Oh, this sounds like an interesting challenge! It should be possible to back-track to where the planets used to be.

 

[zandru]

Okay thats a good point. And tricky to relocate them.

So the Lycaon can still be found because Alaunus 10 has an immense orbital period.

On the other side the messages from listening posts referring to the Hyperion and Pleione wouldn't do much sense anymore do they?

 

[Sapyx]

...of course they still move but over stellar distances that's not going to make much difference for a decade or more...

In real life the distant stars would indeed slowly move relative to each other, but in the ED galaxy, stars (or rather, star systems) never move. Every star system has a fixed XYZ co-ordinate location that never changes; I don't think FD can make changes to stellar co-ordinates without disturbing the stellar forge seed and thus destroying the entire procedurally-generated galaxy.

So the Lycaon can still be found because Alaunus 10 has an immense orbital period.

On the other side the messages from listening posts referring to the Hyperion and Pleione wouldn't do much sense anymore do they?

Yes, but even the Lycaon's location isn't safe. Alaunus 10 has an orbital period of 157.2 years. It might take a couple more years before the planet, the Lycaon and the Horae system are no longer in a line, but it will happen eventually.

I strongly recommend a new guide-star for the Lycaon be determined ASAP, while that ship can still be found. While a solo pilot could do it by trial and error, you ideally need a wing of two or three people: one to fly out to the Lycaon and park next to it (to act as a beacon ship for the wing), the other ships in the wing to wait at the central star until the beacon is in place, then start clicking on candidate stars and testing out the candidates by supercruising towards the candidate star.

I haven't checked to see if it was important in the generation ship systems, but if the central star is a giant star, there's the additional problem of starting location: if the star is so big that it's arrival sphere diameter is greater than 1000 LS, whether you find the ship or not by supercruising out from the central star would depend on where on that sphere around the central star you arrived at. In such cases you would then also need to designate a specific star to arrive from, for the navigation to be consistent. I had the same problem trying to find the tourist beacon in the VY Canis Majoris system.

 

[varonica]

In real life the distant stars would indeed slowly move relative to each other, but in the ED galaxy, stars (or rather, star systems) never move. Every star system has a fixed XYZ co-ordinate location that never changes; I don't think FD can make changes to stellar co-ordinates without disturbing the stellar forge seed and thus destroying the entire procedurally-generated galaxy.

Of course, understood, we in fact live in a snapshot galaxy, forever unchanging so stars would be the ideal guide for locating unmarked objects, as long as the unmarked objects don't move of course.

 

[Ezzy]

Re-discovered!

Noticed this post regarding these three temporarily "lost" ships and decided to find out if someone had found new reference systems for their discovery.

Took a while, but I found some very recent posts on Youtube and headed out after the original instructions had failed me. The listening post messages these ships were originally found from, reference planets in said systems and it's been a ~year, so that was probably a bit of an oversight from FDev.

Tested these last night and they work fine.
Someone (Canonn?) might come up with longer lasting reference systems, if they're managing a database of POIs. These use the main stars as point of origin:

Generation Ship Hyperion - Lalande 2966 - Target Lyncis Sector EL-Y C8 and supercruise for ~8,500 ls. As per usual, it'll pop up in you nav panel within 1000ls.
Generation Ship Lycaon - Alaunus - Target COL 285 Sector RP-L B22-7 and go for ~30,000 ls.
Generation Ship Pleione - Hez Ur - Target Teuten, go 9,000 ls, stop, then head slowly towards Njana (maybe 2-5k ls, was too late I didn't pay attention to distance).

Enjoy. o7

Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHKoOn6QsEoSDehunHtfLkA/videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwexKA85UAaaDVanUxpI2Uw/videos
http://www.en.sektion20.de/missing/

 

[Kanenas93]

Hey guys. Regarding to Hyperion ship.... Im out visiting Generation ships also by using the Canon research. I'm right next to the planet it supposed to be but it's nowhere to be found. I read the whole thread you've made here but it isn't helping with the 3.3 update. The FSS should be able to spot it of it's in the system. But the FSS can't find anything and I'm very disappointed reading more ships have this problem. I also found another ship that has disappear. The Atlas generation ship is orbiting a white dwarf. You can't miss that. It should be right after the drop point. But it's also nowhere to be found. Any ideas?

 

[GreyAB]

Glad im not the only person who cant find the Atlas, flew out to Charick Drift and its nowhere to be found. oh well guess ill have to move to the others and if there are any others that have gone awol. It appears that Phobos has vanished as well, dropped into Coelachi and it isnt there. Guess ill give this up and try again later, hopefully they will be back by then.

 

[Sapyx]

Sounds like the FSS may not be seeing them, and you have to still find them "the old fashioned way" by getting within 1000 Ls of them. Which will be a pain; I had hoped/assumed the FSS would aid in finding any Generation Ships not yet found.

What is odd is the Epimetheus was found using the FSS during the beta. So if they're not turning up in the FSS now, it's either a bug, or FD never intended finding Gen Ships to be that easy and made them invisible again.

 

[Sunyavadin]

On XBox at least we've definitely bugreported them not showing up in the FSS at all the way that we were able to find at least one documented instance of them doing on PC from the Beta forum, and days upon days of attempting to replicate that has had no success.

 

[Catalyser]

Ditto, searched for 3 generation ships without any luck. Went to Virudnis 6 where the Lazarus Expidition was meant to be in orbit. No luck there either. Will try your FSS suggestion, Sapyx, thanks mate.

 

[Factabulous]

Of course, understood, we in fact live in a snapshot galaxy, forever unchanging so stars would be the ideal guide for locating unmarked objects, as long as the unmarked objects don't move of course.

Which of course they do. I've had success before tracking these down by heading out the correct distance and then following approximate orbit paths to where they now are. Fun if you are off the right mindset

 

[Sunyavadin]

Sounds like the FSS may not be seeing them, and you have to still find them "the old fashioned way" by getting within 1000 Ls of them.

From what we've been able to determine so far, from what was explained when stuff was asked about this in the beta, that 1000ls seems to now be supposed to be the range at which they show up *within the FSS*, however nobody's been able to get them to show up in the FSS since early in the beta, when someone managed to have one appear within it.

 

[Sapyx]

I can get gen ships I've already visited to show up in the FSS, even from 100,000 Ls away. They also appear in the Nav panel at that range now, too.

Will be visiting an as-yet-unvisited-by-me gen ship later today, to see how "findable" they are now.

 

[Sunyavadin]

I can get gen ships I've already visited to show up in the FSS, even from 100,000 Ls away. They also appear in the Nav panel at that range now, too.

Will be visiting an as-yet-unvisited-by-me gen ship later today, to see how "findable" they are now.

Make sure it's not one in orbit around a planet, those have been confirmed to show up in your navpanel as soon as you probe the planet (and likewise do not show up in the FSS even after being discovered). The only ones nobody's been able to find yet are the ones where you follow the directions given within the listening outposts.
Supposedly they're supposed to show up in the FSS, though nobody on the forum's yet come forward to say they've found one that way outside of the beta, or demonstrate what it would look like in the FSS.

With the previously discovered ones you say show up in the FSS for you, can you tell us what they are categorised under, what the icon within the FSS interface says (Like the "Notable stellar phenomena" for lagrange clouds)?

 

[Sapyx]

The one I mentioned was indeed in orbit around a planet (the Achlys, around an ELW at HIP 114458 A 2). It's described as "concentrated signal sources".

Some pics:

I haven't been to the Venusian yet, and I'm in Kitae now and am not having any luck finding it. It "should" be about 2500 LS from Kitae, in the direction of Zephyrus. Been out to 21,000 Ls and haven't seen any blips yet. I'm going to pop over to the listening post that's allegedly in LP 855-10 and see if the text there's been edited. If not, I'd reckon that as evidence for a bug.

 

[Sunyavadin]

Yeah, I've scanned every last CSS in three systems trying to find those systems' genships. Same goes for the couple I eventually found by probing their planets.

There have been bugreports about this since day one so hopefully it'll be looked into after they get back in the new year.