Regional differences: amphora plants

As a side endeavour to my current journey, I've decided to look into what the regional differences might be, and here are some results pertaining to amphora plants.

First off, why those? Two main reasons: none have been found in the Inner Orion Spur (IOS, or just simply bubble region), and second, they have a bunch of restrictions. To recap, said restrictions are:
  • Planet must be Metal Rich (and landable, of course)
  • System must contain a class A star
  • System must contain any of the following: ELW, WL / W giant
Out of curiosity, I've asked Orvidius to run a query on his automatically updated copy of the EDSM databases and give me a count of how many such bodies there are there. He went farther, and was kind enough to send a whole per-body list instead. (Thanks again for this!) Turns out there were a bit over 8,000 - out of the 41 million bodies stored, in 32 million systems. Bear in mind that there are 120,000 ELWs logged.

With that in mind, I wondered about what spawn rates might be possible on such very rare planets. So, I set out to check candidates in three regions along my way. One of them contained a report of amphora plants, so I was wondering how many others there might be there - we only know there is one, after all.

Here are the results summarised:
  • Inner Orion Spur (no amphoras reported): 13 candidate planets checked, 0 amphora-bearing planets found
  • Norma Expanse (amphoras reported): 7 candidate planets checked, 6 amphora-bearing planets found
  • Norma Arm: (no amphoras reported): 7 candidate planets checked, 0 amphora-bearing planets found
  • Sanguineous Rim: (no amphoras reported): 3 candidate planets checked, 0 amphora-bearing planets found

The one planet in the Norma Expanse that was a candidate and didn't have any amphoras was also the only one there that didn't have any volcanism. There might be a hidden requirement that a candidate planet needs volcanism as well. (Wouldn't be the first time the Codex left something out.)

I should also note that in the Norma Expanse, the distance between the farthest POIs I've found was around 3,000 ly, so unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that they'd surround some specific areas of interest (like brain trees and barnacles do). Even if they were, a search radius of 1,500 ly would be far too wide to be of much use. There were no nebulae nearby.


So, in conclusion, I'd say that either amphora plants are not present in a region at all, or they are present on all the suitable candidate planets (once you factor in volcanism) - or I just had an extremely unlucky streak. The fact that the most well-travelled region has none reported even after more than a month leads me to suspect that it's not down to luck, but down to whether a region has the amphoras toggled or not. It doesn't look like they are confined to small areas either, unlike brain trees and barnacles, so I don't expect them to surround areas of interest.
And well, since the POIs themselves are boring, I don't plan on looking into them any more. Hope this was of some use to others at least.
 
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I think that was a good experiment to conduct, since it gives us some insight into how the new lifeforms are distributed. Even if it's only a mild insight, at least we can deduce that regional differences do exist, even for lifeforms that might otherwise seem like they should be common.

When I was up in the Empyrean Straits, I tried to look specifically for Bark Mounds since they weren't in the Codex for that region. I couldn't find any. So that's perhaps another example, since they're very widespread elsewhere.
 
As a side endeavour to my current journey, I've decided to look into what the regional differences might be, and here are some results pertaining to amphora plants.

First off, why those? Two main reasons: none have been found in the Inner Orion Spur (IOS, or just simply bubble region), and second, they have a bunch of restrictions. To recap, said restrictions are:
  • Planet must be Metal Rich (and landable, of course)
  • System must contain a class A star
  • System must contain any of the following: ELW, WL / W giant

Thanks to you (& Orvidius) on the info above, as I've yet to meet any of the Amphora plants I'll keep my 'eyes' open on the way back to the bubble from the Formadine Rift, I'm sure I can search a few A class stars on the way!
 
Thanks to you (& Orvidius) on the info above, as I've yet to meet any of the Amphora plants I'll keep my 'eyes' open on the way back to the bubble from the Formadine Rift, I'm sure I can search a few A class stars on the way!

Update - in my T10 miner (with no SRV!) I found my first Amphora plant yesterday - in an A class system, with WW and the only body with the plants had volcanism... In Hawking's Gap (A first discovery so I'll fill in the details after I hand in data) literally just over the border from IOS.

Looks like you are accurate so far marx :)
 
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in my T10 miner (with no SRV!) I found my first Amphora plant yesterday
So, using the composition scanner on the little plants in a big ship? That must have been fun :D

But yeah, I've been surveying Ryker's Hope myself. On the subject of amphora plants, three suitable candidates found so far, no bio signals on them. Will check for bark mounds as well, that won't take long - I fully expect they would have been found by now if they existed in the region. (And good riddance to them.)
 
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So, using the composition scanner on the little plants in a big ship? That must have been fun :D

It was, shall we say, interesting... but in it's defence the T10 is quite stable in normal flight, it was also helped by being a 1.5G body so it wasn't being too skittish!
 
That's pretty cool. How does yours get the data? It's odd that there are only 17 amphora plants found.
Would also be nice to have a map with the regions too.
 
That's pretty cool. How does yours get the data? It's odd that there are only 17 amphora plants found.
Would also be nice to have a map with the regions too.

Data is from EDSM codex, mashed onto the Canonn maps as I know how they work, even if they're not the most friendly. I need to check the latest version as the one I have is quite old, so maybe the regions are on by now.
 
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In Formorian Frontier ATM.
No Amphora yet found in Codex.
Checked nearest system with all requirements - nothing found :S
 
Ah, looks like I didn't bother to scan all the amphora plants I came across then. After a few, I just dropped in to signals, confirmed visually that they are amphoras, then moved on. Guess I should always scan them then, so they register on EDSM.

@ BaldEagle: Still good to know. After all, a specific region might just have them missing from the Codex because nobody checked yet - although I don't think that there'd be (m)any such places left by now.
And yeah, on my end, one more (previously undiscovered) candidate planet found in Ryker's Hope, with nothing on this one either.
 
I'm now in the Norma Expanse - been through a 'few' Class A systems recently, none with Amphora until tonight. The system 'wasn't' a candidate as no ELW/WW/WG bodies but behold, Metal rich 1st from star, 1.5G, Volcanism - Amphora plants!

As I'm still around 300 jumps from Explorers Anchorage I'll keep it 'secret' but will update soon with detals of all I may find!

Star density is starting to increase now so I should be able to filter my route to be more narrow with class choice very soon so expect to see a higher ratio of A's :)

Screenie :
Sorry - spoiler will have to open in a window as it won't display directly here.
 
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Bit of an update to this. I've been to the Sanguineous Rim, checked three possible candidate planets (all with volcanism), no amphora plants found.
 
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