Horizons NEW Mission: Decoding the Anciant Ruins

DNA-Decay

DNA-Decay
Guardian Pron :

Apparently the last words of this dying race were: "Delete my browser cache!"


(Spoiler containers a spoiler)
I've seen other screen grabs with 15/21 as the data number.
22833x1315.jpg


More than the 100M Cr I want to see this cache.

Given that another of these data messages states that the ruins are a
network hub
I rather imagine that if it can be activated, we're going to see
the Trump "Moscow hotel tapes".
"I, for one, welcome our new lizard overlords."
 
Last edited:

Cybindis

C
Monk said:
I wish I knew I was buying a puzzle adventure game when I backed ED. ;)
Click to expand...

So far my experience of the "Puzzle" isn't that puzzling.


I was super hype that there was an actual mystery to solve. So hype that I dropped everything jumped a total of 300LY in my Corvette with 18LY range to go and switch to my Anaconda to get to the ruins and get started as fast as I could.


When I got there and did a bit of exploring I was even more eager to fire up the old braincell and do some lateral thinking, problem solving, and generally puzzling.


And here's where it turns bad.


No indication whatsoever of any kind of logic with this "Puzzle". It's an archaeological site, meaning you need to study it, however you actually need to destroy artefacts to acquire materials to churn out hundreds of different permutations until you happen across the right one.


I was expecting markings, and garbled data, and specific layouts and indications, building foundations, ground shadows etc. etc. etc.

Stuff I could spend a bit of time trying to piece together and figure out, you know like a puzzle, something that requires logic and lateral thinking.




The only logic in this "puzzle" is to try everything with everything until something works, and that's not solving a puzzle or picking a lock, that's brute-forcing.

It's exactly like creating a program to try every single computer password, and then leaving a computer on to run through all the combinations until the password is accepted, except at the ancient ruins you can't just send a robot to try out the combinations you have to do it yourself.


Now if I can remember this all correctly (And please correct me if I'm wrong) there are 5 items you need. This is 5! -> 5! = 120, 120 different ways to arrange the items. This would be bad enough if you could carry 5 items in your SRV but we're limited to 2, also you don't have to do all 120 because most of them will be mirrors which you can exclude. But it's still a lot of combinations just to try. 27 in fact if the spreadsheet I'm looking at is to be believed (It may be out of date)

27 x No. of obelisks = 405. 405 combinations that are complete trial and error.


I don't mind doing trial and error, but I'd rather do trial and error after deducing a hint of logic, creating a hypothesis and then testing it out, and using the data I then gathered from the success or failure to then influence subsequent attempts.

However it seems that at the moment it's all about brute force, and to be honest that's not fun, and I simply do not have the time, even though I may have the patience. Which means I have to rely on the community.

I like the community, you're a great bunch of guys, but I want to solve a puzzle off my own back, possibly with some discussion with commanders to discuss results, instead of throwing artefacts at things randomly and checking with a database of people who got lucky enough to find a combination that works and then putting it on a spreadsheet and then following that spreadsheet instead of my nose.


Hopefully this trial and error is the initial step, and we'll later discover a clue that actually requires some puzzling instead of throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks.
 

lokvette

lokvette
CMD SHERDON said:
Has anyone completed the mission and received the 100,000,000 Cr or is that just the hook to get CMD to go looking at the ruins?
Click to expand...

Well it hooked me, not that I need the cash, ok I might need it but I'm not one for going anywhere fast in ED.

I went, I saw, I drove about a bit, got frustrated, got even more frustrated when I had two of what ever those things are in my cargo as now old whats his face is telling me I only need one, drove about some more, remembered why I hate driving the SRV at the best of times even with an controller, got even more frustrated when I couldn't call me ship back, hit the self destruct, fly home and carried on what I was doing before hand.

For those who like this sort of thing, hey I'm sure its all good and dandy. For me I gave it a go still have the mission on but not sure if I ever want to go back, was never really into the whole thing in the first place but 'll give anything a go once.
 
Last edited:

Clanga

Clanga
Cybindis said:
No indication whatsoever of any kind of logic with this "Puzzle". It's an archaeological site, meaning you need to study it, however you actually need to destroy artefacts to acquire materials to churn out hundreds of different permutations until you happen across the right one.


I was expecting markings, and garbled data, and specific layouts and indications, building foundations, ground shadows etc. etc. etc.

Stuff I could spend a bit of time trying to piece together and figure out, you know like a puzzle, something that requires logic and lateral thinking.

Hopefully this trial and error is the initial step, and we'll later discover a clue that actually requires some puzzling instead of throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks.
Click to expand...

There is some logic that emerged from trying out all the possible combinations. So I do think that doing that braindead thing was only the first part of the puzzle.
 
Last edited:

wwwchucknorris

W
Cybindis said:
So far my experience of the "Puzzle" isn't that puzzling.


I was super hype that there was an actual mystery to solve. So hype that I dropped everything jumped a total of 300LY in my Corvette with 18LY range to go and switch to my Anaconda to get to the ruins and get started as fast as I could.


When I got there and did a bit of exploring I was even more eager to fire up the old braincell and do some lateral thinking, problem solving, and generally puzzling.


And here's where it turns bad.


No indication whatsoever of any kind of logic with this "Puzzle". It's an archaeological site, meaning you need to study it, however you actually need to destroy artefacts to acquire materials to churn out hundreds of different permutations until you happen across the right one.


I was expecting markings, and garbled data, and specific layouts and indications, building foundations, ground shadows etc. etc. etc.

Stuff I could spend a bit of time trying to piece together and figure out, you know like a puzzle, something that requires logic and lateral thinking.




The only logic in this "puzzle" is to try everything with everything until something works, and that's not solving a puzzle or picking a lock, that's brute-forcing.

It's exactly like creating a program to try every single computer password, and then leaving a computer on to run through all the combinations until the password is accepted, except at the ancient ruins you can't just send a robot to try out the combinations you have to do it yourself.


Now if I can remember this all correctly (And please correct me if I'm wrong) there are 5 items you need. This is 5! -> 5! = 120, 120 different ways to arrange the items. This would be bad enough if you could carry 5 items in your SRV but we're limited to 2, also you don't have to do all 120 because most of them will be mirrors which you can exclude. But it's still a lot of combinations just to try. 27 in fact if the spreadsheet I'm looking at is to be believed (It may be out of date)

27 x No. of obelisks = 405. 405 combinations that are complete trial and error.


I don't mind doing trial and error, but I'd rather do trial and error after deducing a hint of logic, creating a hypothesis and then testing it out, and using the data I then gathered from the success or failure to then influence subsequent attempts.

However it seems that at the moment it's all about brute force, and to be honest that's not fun, and I simply do not have the time, even though I may have the patience. Which means I have to rely on the community.

I like the community, you're a great bunch of guys, but I want to solve a puzzle off my own back, possibly with some discussion with commanders to discuss results, instead of throwing artefacts at things randomly and checking with a database of people who got lucky enough to find a combination that works and then putting it on a spreadsheet and then following that spreadsheet instead of my nose.


Hopefully this trial and error is the initial step, and we'll later discover a clue that actually requires some puzzling instead of throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks.
Click to expand...





Have to agreed with you there. To give the benefit of the doubt though, maybe frontier are just buying a bit of time with a mundane intro into a more interesting part of the game. Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity though, the ruins site gave the impression of a really good puzzle to be solved. Maybe I missed the logic in the whole scanning bit but would appreciate it if someone could explain.
 

Cybindis

C
Clanga said:
There is some logic that emerged from trying out all the possible combinations. So I do think that doing that braindead thing was only the first part of the puzzle.
Click to expand...

Yeah I intend to go back, and check the updates on the research spreadsheets, but it's still disappointing that it was something I couldn't figure out on my own instead needing an inordinate amount of time just to chuck stuff at it.

Before I logged off last night I reloaded the spreadsheet for a final check and saw something posted by another commander that I'll have to look over and consider. So there's that to keep me occupied in the meantime.

wwwchucknorris said:
Have to agreed with you there. To give the benefit of the doubt though, maybe frontier are just buying a bit of time with a mundane intro into a more interesting part of the game. Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity though, the ruins site gave the impression of a really good puzzle to be solved. Maybe I missed the logic in the whole scanning bit but would appreciate it if someone could explain.
Click to expand...

Yeah I hope so too.

As above I saw something in the spreadsheet about how certain groupings of obelisks had different meanings, but I was logging off and going to bed so I didn't check it fully.

Which is kind of a shame to be honest, I'd expected to piece together meaning from the get-go instead of (me and other people) getting lucky and working backwards. And as with a lot of games based on RNG and other things I'm not really a lucky chappie.
 

Siranui

S
straha20 said:
And from the looks of how things are currently unfolding, even after it has been solved, it is going to be time consuming with very precise orders of a lot of different things. Again, and even after it has been solved, it will likely not be worth it to people who think in terms of credits per hour.
Click to expand...

Luckily, pretend money doesn't motivate the entire player base. :)
 

amysteriousstranger

A
straha20 said:
In time, we will find the additional sites, but not before a steady stream of commanders seeing promises of riches. I will say though that the 100 mil reward for this does seem right in line with the rest of exploration...if you are in it for the money, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
Click to expand...


I don't believe that the 100million is the only reward, I am certain you will get unique data entry or materials for finishing this, probably something you can only get from this mission that is later used in engineering. Just because it doesn't show as a reward doesn't mean collecting all the data won't lead to something
 
Last edited:

space voyager

space voyager
Ok, so what do we have... Relics, totems, caskets... I sketched myself a plan of the site, no huge revelations. Except that the aliens loved geometrical shapes, the base being a hex, most features inside being triangles, rectangles and circles. Perhaps the only exception is a plateau that is outside the hex.

I fear that in the end there will be no logic associated to the site. Somebody will post which combination of items for what shape of obelisks and that will be it, no real revelation.
 
Last edited:

Cybindis

C
space voyager said:
Ok, so what do we have... Relics, totems, caskets... I sketched myself a plan of the site, no huge revelations. Except that the aliens loved geometrical shapes, the base being a hex, most features inside being triangles, rectangles and circles. Perhaps the only exception is a plateau that is outside the hex.

I fear that in the end there will be no logic associated to the site. Somebody will post which combination of items for what shape of obelisks and that will be it, no real revelation.
Click to expand...


The shape looks like an orbit line with a sun in the middle being the big circular structure, and the other smaller one being the planet that the other ruins is located on.

Because the big circle is quite big with a few lines I guessed that this could be a star that is supposed to be bright.

I went to the two nearest O class stars and there wasn't anything of not there, or at least I didn't find anything on a few brief flyovers. Which is okay I guess, you can't really see the ruins from space anyway especially when the lighting is wrong.

So then I thought there was some meaning in the numbers of obelisks and the main ridgeline.

I assumed that the number of obelisks on the left hand side of the main ridge added together and multiplied by the number of obelisks inside the main circle would give rough galactic co-ordinates, and those on the right hand side would be the other co-ordinates.


So I spent an hour or two flying to all different combinations of co-ordinates that I could make from the obelisks, and only found one system that was both a binary, had 9 planets (Which I assumed the main ridgeline was pointing to to indicate that the 9th was where another ruin was located. It was an icy body, and from my flyover of the day side of the body I couldn't see anything that indicated anything.

So trying to make sense of the ruins without anything in the ruins themselves pointing to any sort of lateral thinking it's going to be hard.


Yesterday I also noticed that each relic holder has 3 shrouds that cover the floating relic. I shot them all off carefully so just the relics were floating, this was to try and maybe link them all, it wasn't too far fetched to think that because you could remove them and they were containing something there might be some beam of light that goes between them when they are released.

Nope, no such think. Got all of the relics clean in the open and honked them all in turn multiple times but no results. I then noticed that they were flickering periodically. So I tried the only morse code I know to try and see if it was something that would respond to me flashing my lights, but no, it wasn't. I then timed each of the flickering cycles and they all seemed to just be a standard effect that's mainly to make them look pretty.

And that was about all I did before I logged off.



It's a shame, I want to be doing some real puzzle solving/archaeology.


When they were digging up Egyptian tombs they looked at all the symbols on the walls and figured out meaning. I've looked at all the groundwork and all the obelisks and all the little triangle things and it's all the same texture and at first when I thought the markings might relate to the urn or the totem I got no reaction when I placed them around or in the structures.

What seems to have happened with most "puzzles" before is that you can't do it in game.

People rip out the audio files and analyze them in specialist software, turn it into barcodes and then that turns into a binary message which yadda yadda yadda.

Granted that's how it's done in real life but these guys aren't solving the mystery by actually studying the ruins in the game in real time, they're spending most of their time tabbed out in their computer directories and other programs besides elite.

Other than that it just seems to be trial and error, so at the moment apart from a quick few scans to try my luck I'm waiting until other commanders brute force all the trial and error combinations because that's all it is, brute force, not puzzle solving.
 

FS Jake

F
the first time i saw the alien ruins, i thought that site A reminded me of the laser from the death star at first glance, now finding out it is part of the "monolith network" i think that site A is what transmits whatever kind of signal they used in a directional method, if you position your ship in the middle of the triangle on the raised platform, and face vertical, there are 3 systems nearly directly inline with you almost forming a triangle, within a single jump range, i've only checked a couple of times so not sure if the systems will move about and it was pure coincidence they lined up.

the systems that lined up were;
synuefe DJ-F A93-4
synuefe DJ-F A93-2
synuefe DJ-F A93-0

this is my first post and not sure if this has been noticed and discussed before, but i am adament there is another site somewhere nearby, ram tah himself says in the mission bio "please explore as many ancient sites as you can find"
 

UnholyCharles

U
A Theory of mine, somewhat confirmed

My theory is goes like this:

It's currently bugged, sadly. So we may have to wait after a patch to fully try this.

There are more than 15 obelisk that activate. On estimations of the reward pool of 100Million I suspect there are 100 obelisks that activate at certain times.

Certain obelisks activate at certain times based on what I believe to be the Orbital Period, location of the planet to it's star, and rotation, the time of day (day and night).

The reason I believe this is well, a transmission tower must be pointed in the right direction to recive a signal. This would also account for the time provided to fully complete the mission of at least 1 month.

I do not know if the Orbit around the system Star that is jumped into is its star or the dead star with the rings around it. Nor do I know how long it takes for a planet to Orbit around its star. With the obelisks being bugged there is no way to fully test this if you ask me.

GLHF Good Huntinng.

I've somewhat confirmed this in my dealings with it. The real problem is the glitches, bugs or lag caused by the update, event itself, or again too many people in one place. This has made it difficult in fully testing my theory.
 

Gaffa

Gaffa
G'day all,
I tend to agree with you all, the site does not provide adequate understandable clues with will enable the every day Cmdr to solve the puzzle in front of him.
Not all of us are rocket scientists and understand how to use "off game " scientific equipment to solved a mirad of sounds , light flash, ect that may or may not be clues.
I dont know how many Cmdrs have spent countless, and I do mean countless hours to come up with basically nothing.

I do feel that ED needs to understand they need to provide clues that are obvious for us to workout what/ where/ how the site relates to the game.
The clues need to be of the level that need a bit of logical thinking, like a jigsaw puzzle...but those clues need to be in front of you at the location to solve the puzzle.
The puzzle of the ruins needs to be able to be solved by any Cmdr in a reasonable amount of time by himself, so are you going to drag this out , how long has it been now that Cmdrs have been trying to solve this. It's been months and months , your have to understand ED, we all don't have the ability to sit 24 hours a day on here. I want to solve this puzzle myself, not go elsewhere and pick up clues from the investigation of others.

Sorry ED, read my lips, I honestly believe your got this puzzle of the ruins wrong, and your driven me and, and i'm sure many other bright and intelligent Cmdr's, frustrated, crazy, and angry.
Makes me want to ask you, have you or any of your staff, tried to rearly solve the ruins?
yours aye
Cmdr D38
 

Simian

S
UnholyCharles said:
My theory is goes like this:
It's currently bugged, sadly. So we may have to wait after a patch to fully try this.
Click to expand...

I have to log out of Solo mode and log back in again to get the powered nodes to re-power and half of the time the mission messages announce but don't show up in my log. It's bad enough having to grind but to grind without proper feedback half the time is infuriating. I'm cutting my losses.

I believe the planet's days are about 6 earth days long, so I don't fancy waiting around for the sun to see if that changes anything.

Also, the site is virtually invisible until you get really, really close - so without knowing it was here at these coordinates I don't know how anyone would have found it. So if there are other sites somewhere, I doubt we'll find them any time soon without at least a little hint.
 

trilathon

trilathon
Is there anyway of offloading some of the scans to Ram Tah prior to completing the whole mission ?

I have about 100 alpha - epsilon scans from the ruins, many are probably duplicates etc but i don't wan to just dump them and lose the good ones, whilst I have a break from the puzzle and do some more pleasurable stuff ?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom