In Drew Wagar's recent stream in which he spoke at length about the mystery of Raxxla, he posited his theory that there may be a clue hidden in the systems that Frontier chose to hand place in Elite Dangerous from the original game. He states that as far as he could tell, the only systems that appear to be in Elite Dangerous from the first game are the core worlds and ones that are mentioned in The Dark Wheel novella, which sets up the Raxxla mystery. He adds that Elite and Elite Dangerous are the only two entries in the franchise that mention the mystery of Raxxla.
Drew's video below:
So far, so good, right? It's just as good a theory as any other where Raxxla is concerned.
At one point in the stream, someone in the chat asked the question of whether anyone had ever done a cross-reference of all the systems from Elite (1984) compared to Elite Dangerous to have a definitive list of those systems that were incorporated from the first game. Drew's answer was that as far as he knew, no one had done so.
Until now...
And I can tell you exactly why no one has done this before now: it is a task that is tedious beyond reason.
Suffice to say, I took on this problem in my naivete, believing it to simply be a case of grabbing the galaxy map from the first game, and checking the systems against Elite Dangerous. Well, yes and no - I'll run you through how I accomplished this so that you can, if you feel so moved and you know of a better way, replicate or adjust my methods:
Method
At first I installed Elite from the Frontier website, no harm since it's free. I opened the first Galactic Chart, and I split it into regions so that I could make sure I had all systems covered, and I scrolled through noting down each and every system.
I then opened EDDB.io, reasoning that since we were dealing with hand-placed systems with distinct names (in Elite Dangerous) that are also in the Bubble, all the potential systems would be listed in the database.
I cross-referenced the first Galactic Chart, and there were a LOT of systems to go through. Then it occurred to me that to carry on with this method I would have to play through the whole game in order to get the other seven Galactic Charts, which would be far too time consuming, so I scoured the internet instead for them.
I came across the planet list and galactic charts for Oolite on its wiki, and it said quite clearly on there that the maps contained also apply to Elite (1984) - brilliant!
So I made a spreadsheet, and copied and pasted all the system names - 256 per chart - then set about checking EDDB.io for them and noting down a Y against all the systems that matched.
It's taken a very, very long time. And it was boring as all hell. But, it's done.
Results
So, here is the list of systems that are in both Elite (1984) and Elite Dangerous:
Aona
Arexe
Arines
Aten
Atius
Atius
Diso
Ededleen
Ensoreus
Erlaza
Isinor
Larais
Lave
Leesti
EDIT Legees - thanks to Emperor for pointing this one out
Leoned
Orerve
Oresqu
Orrere
Quator
Qube
Qucerere
Qutiri
Ra
Rain
Reorte
Riedquat
Ritila
Teorge
Teveri
Tianve
Tibionis
Tionisla
Uszaa
Zaerla
Zaonce
Zarece
Note: There were two queries in the list that I wasn't sure whether they would count or not, as they could very easily have been typos (Zaerla/Zearla and Arines/Arine), and there was one duplication which crossed two different charts (Atius - Galaxy 2 and 3)
That's a total of 36 systems
It breaks down to:
- 31 in Galaxy One - including the 10 Core/Old Worlds
Note: It is entirely possible that the one in Galaxy Eight (Rain) is a coincidence, since all the names in the first game are procedurally generated, whereas I don't believe that the named systems in the Bubble in Elite Dangerous are procedural. It's possible that this could be the case for the one in Galaxy Six as well (Aten) - a thousand monkeys, a thousand typewriters and all that.
The one in Galaxy Three is the Atius duplicate.
Conclusion
So, what does this tell us? Not much really - there are a LOT of systems in the first game, so 35-ish systems chosen out of over 2000 could be a small enough number to constitute a clue to the Raxxla mystery as Drew proposes, especially since a high number of them are ones from out of The Dark Wheel. But on the other hand, 35-ish is a very high number for a clue.
Michael Brookes had this to say when asked about it in 2014:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...lite-Dangerous?p=996878&viewfull=1#post996878
So, I leave this open to your interpretation for those of you trying to figure out the Raxxla mystery, and for the simple interest of those who aren't.
Drew's video below:
So far, so good, right? It's just as good a theory as any other where Raxxla is concerned.
At one point in the stream, someone in the chat asked the question of whether anyone had ever done a cross-reference of all the systems from Elite (1984) compared to Elite Dangerous to have a definitive list of those systems that were incorporated from the first game. Drew's answer was that as far as he knew, no one had done so.
Until now...
And I can tell you exactly why no one has done this before now: it is a task that is tedious beyond reason.
Suffice to say, I took on this problem in my naivete, believing it to simply be a case of grabbing the galaxy map from the first game, and checking the systems against Elite Dangerous. Well, yes and no - I'll run you through how I accomplished this so that you can, if you feel so moved and you know of a better way, replicate or adjust my methods:
Method
At first I installed Elite from the Frontier website, no harm since it's free. I opened the first Galactic Chart, and I split it into regions so that I could make sure I had all systems covered, and I scrolled through noting down each and every system.
I then opened EDDB.io, reasoning that since we were dealing with hand-placed systems with distinct names (in Elite Dangerous) that are also in the Bubble, all the potential systems would be listed in the database.
I cross-referenced the first Galactic Chart, and there were a LOT of systems to go through. Then it occurred to me that to carry on with this method I would have to play through the whole game in order to get the other seven Galactic Charts, which would be far too time consuming, so I scoured the internet instead for them.
I came across the planet list and galactic charts for Oolite on its wiki, and it said quite clearly on there that the maps contained also apply to Elite (1984) - brilliant!
So I made a spreadsheet, and copied and pasted all the system names - 256 per chart - then set about checking EDDB.io for them and noting down a Y against all the systems that matched.
It's taken a very, very long time. And it was boring as all hell. But, it's done.
Results
So, here is the list of systems that are in both Elite (1984) and Elite Dangerous:
Aona
Arexe
Arines
Aten
Atius
Atius
Diso
Ededleen
Ensoreus
Erlaza
Isinor
Larais
Lave
Leesti
EDIT Legees - thanks to Emperor for pointing this one out
Leoned
Orerve
Oresqu
Orrere
Quator
Qube
Qucerere
Qutiri
Ra
Rain
Reorte
Riedquat
Ritila
Teorge
Teveri
Tianve
Tibionis
Tionisla
Uszaa
Zaerla
Zaonce
Zarece
Note: There were two queries in the list that I wasn't sure whether they would count or not, as they could very easily have been typos (Zaerla/Zearla and Arines/Arine), and there was one duplication which crossed two different charts (Atius - Galaxy 2 and 3)
That's a total of 36 systems
- 35 if you take out the duplication of Atius
- 33 if you disregard the queries of Zaerla and Arines
It breaks down to:
- 31 in Galaxy One - including the 10 Core/Old Worlds
- 2 in Galaxy Two
- 1 in Galaxy Three
- 0 in Galaxies Four and Five
- 1 in Galaxy Six
- 0 in Galaxy Seven
- 1 in Galaxy Eight
Note: It is entirely possible that the one in Galaxy Eight (Rain) is a coincidence, since all the names in the first game are procedurally generated, whereas I don't believe that the named systems in the Bubble in Elite Dangerous are procedural. It's possible that this could be the case for the one in Galaxy Six as well (Aten) - a thousand monkeys, a thousand typewriters and all that.
The one in Galaxy Three is the Atius duplicate.
Conclusion
So, what does this tell us? Not much really - there are a LOT of systems in the first game, so 35-ish systems chosen out of over 2000 could be a small enough number to constitute a clue to the Raxxla mystery as Drew proposes, especially since a high number of them are ones from out of The Dark Wheel. But on the other hand, 35-ish is a very high number for a clue.
Michael Brookes had this to say when asked about it in 2014:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...lite-Dangerous?p=996878&viewfull=1#post996878
So, I leave this open to your interpretation for those of you trying to figure out the Raxxla mystery, and for the simple interest of those who aren't.
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