Thargoid Data Gathering Effort: We need your help!

[Louis Calvert]

I think reading the Canonn page is the easiest thing to do https://canonn.science/codex/unknown-probe/ so we're all talking about the same thing, I'd assume it's the most current research on the TP's. We just need to check if that page is 100% up-to-date before we make any awesome plans

Merope 5C has been searched a lot yes, and it was checked when the POI bug was about and there wasn't anything there - but, it's still a focal point, and one of the only tools we have is searching for more stuff

AFAIK this is "everything" that's known about Merope: The probe signals are beamed there - for some reason -and the Merope system as a whole is shown in the device spectogram along with Col70..etc. So, it's significant. What's odd is that it's really... insignificant... no barnacle forests, alien bases, no NHSS afaik? No Capital ship attack sites. It's like a dead zone, except for a barnacle site and that signal being sent there. Is that right? That's everything?

One final thing for now. I was looking through the stuff on Probes and things and I noticed something. I made a post here (other thread) because it's not really relevant to this topic at this point - however, in the tinfoil bit at the end, I speculated on the origin of the probes and if I'm even slightly close to the mark then it might be significant to the Merope question (I'm almost certainly wrong!).

EDIT: Jorki write his at the same time as this post, apologies for duplications!

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Well. If we are going to search Merope 5c I think I have a way of getting EDCM to help track progress and avoid duplicated effort.

If we do find anything we can use the screenshot event or the landing event to accurately log coordinates.

Im thinking we could split the planet into search zones and each commander gets allocated a zone when they drop out of supercruise. When they have finished their search they can fill in an exit form to declare that they have completed their search.

We can have a progress meter that shows us how many zones have been searched as a percentage.

There was discussion ages ago about creating/modifying a tool to assist surface searches with planetary markers, grid lines etc, but it couldn’t be progressed. Do we now get surface coordinates in journal events? Any assistance would be tremendous!!!!!!!

what we could really do with is a tool that monitored a ship’s track over the surface and built up an “area searched”map overlay, the width of the track being defined by the ship height/speed and a rating of the pilot’s eyesight/concentration. Might even be offset to one side so could concentrate on just one window....

 

[Louis Calvert]

but there is a very large crater on 5C (its most obvious feature)- what if that is passively receivng the signal and reflecting it to another part of the Merope system? Goids (FD) are sneaky!

YES! I bet the rest of the Merope system hasn't been searched quite as thoroughly, might be all sorts of other stuff there! I still also like the "out of the system" search idea. Especially since the device image shows a flower ship outside the system (it might literally represent "out of the system").

On this image I've circled and colour coded the bits that appear in both (as Jorki said, the "more code" like elements, which idk what that is, they don't spell anything really?)
And the possible similaries (black lines) between the "signal" lines on the device image and the partial "signal" lines on the Probe image - they're not quite right, note sure.

But the thing that's got me is that funny little partial circle next to the Merope sun (marked in white) that seems similar to the partial circle on the Probe image. That's a deliberate thing, what does that mean?

Also --l and l-- both appear on the Probe image, and only --l appears on the Device image, is that the same thing mirrored, or is it significant there's two?

Spoiler

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

The Canonn page, updated May this year, says:

"On August 20, 3302, the Thargoid Probe transmission was fully decoded and revealed to contain planetary data such as radius, surface temperature, gravity and atmospheric composition. This transmission was directed at an unknown receiver on Merope 5C. In addition, the transmission included distance data that, when triangulated, was found to have been measured from the star system Col 70 Sector FY-N C21-3, which is within a group of permit-locked systems that players cannot currently access. It is believed Col 70 Sector FY-N C21-3 may be the origin point of all Thargoid Probes, and contain the home world of their creators.

However the audio image has not been decoded to this day:"

Obviously the website may be incorrect. If it's done then we can ignore it and not worry, if it's not, it might be relevant to Volgrand's new plan.

You think the page is not up to date Jorki? I mean it does make sense since the probe signal is about scanning planets and various planetary data, so just eyeballing the image I can totally see how the two are related now we know the solution to the probe signal. Just want to make sure we're 100% sure there's nothing left in the old clues.

I think that statement on the Canonn page “[FONT=&quot]However the audio image has not been decoded to this day[/FONT]” is rather misleading since the discussion above that statement clearly shows that it has been decoded, and probably is an editorial error, unless there was another aspect of the UP sounds that wasn’t decoded (but I think the only sound signal that hasn’t been decoded is that at the Guardian sites). But as I say there was some doubt at the time over its full veracity against the “morse/binary” symbols at the periphery of the sonogram “globe”, but they should be rechecked against the later diagram which shows the UP/UA/UL and two flowerships- forgotten where that diagram came from! I suspect the “morse/binary”symbols might represent those devices.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

YES! I bet the rest of the Merope system hasn't been searched quite as thoroughly, might be all sorts of other stuff there! I still also like the "out of the system" search idea. Especially since the device image shows a flower ship outside the system (it might literally represent "out of the system").

On this image I've circled and colour coded the bits that appear in both (as Jorki said, the "more code" like elements, which idk what that is, they don't spell anything really?)
And the possible similaries (black lines) between the "signal" lines on the device image and the partial "signal" lines on the Probe image - they're not quite right, note sure.

But the thing that's got me is that funny little partial circle next to the Merope sun (marked in white) that seems similar to the partial circle on the Probe image. That's a deliberate thing, what does that mean?

Also --l and l-- both appear on the Probe image, and only --l appears on the Device image, is that the same thing mirrored, or is it significant there's two?

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/E4Ack3n.jpg

Thats the other diagram I was thinking of, so --| means “UA”, -|- means “UL”, and -|| means “UP”.

The UP was said in a Newsletter to be “the key” so the UP sonogram is telling us how to understand /interpret the other diagram (but actually seems to be the other way around!)

 

[LCU No Fool Like One]

There was discussion ages ago about creating/modifying a tool to assist surface searches with planetary markers, grid lines etc, but it couldn’t be progressed. Do we now get surface coordinates in journal events? Any assistance would be tremendous!!!!!!!

what we could really do with is a tool that monitored a ship’s track over the surface and built up an “area searched”map overlay, the width of the track being defined by the ship height/speed and a rating of the pilot’s eyesight/concentration. Might even be offset to one side so could concentrate on just one window....

You get lat/long on takeoff and landing and when you take a screenshot from SRV.

If we had a process where you land. Then takoff and fly to another point and land then we could calculate coverage automatically.

We could do a bearing based approach assign commanders a bearing to follow?

Or we could look at surface features and search them first

Keep giving me ideas

We have requested that fdev include it in orbital cruise too. If I has the time and inclination I might have a go at pulling coords out of the directx buffer and then using OCR. Its been done before.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

You get lat/long on takeoff and landing and when you take a screenshot from SRV.

If we had a process where you land. Then takoff and fly to another point and land then we could calculate coverage automatically.

We could do a bearing based approach assign commanders a bearing to follow?

Or we could look at surface features and search them first

Keep giving me ideas

We have requested that fdev include it in orbital cruise too. If I has the time and inclination I might have a go at pulling coords out of the directx buffer and then using OCR. Its been done before.

Be careful. Someone did come up with a really useful tool but it was frowned upon be FD as breaking the EULA and sadly died a death...

 

[Louis Calvert]

Thats the other diagram I was thinking of, so --| means “UA”, -|- means “UL”, and -|| means “UP”.

The UP was said in a Newsletter to be “the key” so the UP sonogram is telling us how to understand /interpret the other diagram (but actually seems to be the other way around!)

Hmm, then is the 4th symbol on the UP image just a reversed --l (if so why?) or is it something different? (A 4th artefact???!!) And why is there two of them?

Does the placement on that image mean we need to take 1 Probe, 1 Link, and 2 Sensors and place them around Merope 5c? (or 1 probe, 1 link, 1 sensor and 1 unknown thing(?)

Seems odd that the Probe image would show the -l- symbol for the Link - since it would be what? Over 2 years before the Link would come into the game, so before the Link, and the image generated from the device on the surface sites, it would have been impossible to understand the meaning of the Probe image...

So, maybe there's merit in examining that again now that we have the key, as you say the device sonogram seems to be the key to understand the probe sonogram.

The image seems to indicate signal emitting from the probe towards the planet - that's consistent with what we know of what the probe does.

I mean, has anyone tried getting a Probe, 2 Sensors and a Link and dropping them in orbit of Merope 5c?

That part-circle around the top-left quadrant of the planet, it's very much like the symbols used to depict "signals"... What if this is showing that if you drop those devices, the moon itself emits a signal (towards the Link)?

Maybe the radial line and the two odd like lines on the perimeter are some sort of alignment guide - as you said there's that odd crater.

P.S. Should we be doing this discussion elsewhere? I'm aware it's straying from "Thargoid Data Gathering"

 

[Louis Calvert]

You get lat/long on takeoff and landing and when you take a screenshot from SRV.

If we had a process where you land. Then takoff and fly to another point and land then we could calculate coverage automatically.

We could do a bearing based approach assign commanders a bearing to follow?

Or we could look at surface features and search them first

Keep giving me ideas

We have requested that fdev include it in orbital cruise too. If I has the time and inclination I might have a go at pulling coords out of the directx buffer and then using OCR. Its been done before.

**Apologies if this is gibberish, I know very little about programming so this may be nonsense!**

Here's my idea based on your "bearing based approach":

I drew this illustration, because I tried to type it and it's just waffle.

So this shows a "Search Line" that you would be assigned just like your Patrol Route plugin.

Imagine you've flown to Merope 5C, you check the EDMC plugin and it says "Fly to 20,100 and proceed to 50,100, report any findings using the form. When you reach 50,100 press the button for the next Search Line in your area".

Spoiler

It's easy to fly lines like this, all you do is hit the start coordinate, orient your ship at either 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees (depending on which coordinate you want to change) and just fly a straight line.

All this would take (all, lol), is working out what height to tell people to fly ("keep your ship at 3-4km above the ground at all times"), and how to sub-divide the long-lat grid into these patrol routes.

In my example for ease I've just shown increments of 10, but it might be that we figure out that making the lines 5 degrees apart is acceptable, or 50, I don't really know.

I literally don't know if I'm being insane suggesting this, and there may be much better ways to do it!

EDIT: This presumably would be usable on any planet, by anyone, so it could also be used for the INRA base searches without having to coordinate groups using spreadsheets etc - just like your patrol route works, you don't have to agree systems with anyone, you just go where it tells you! (which I love!).

 

[Assimilator1]

At the example of 3-4 km up, your visual range is very limited, so 50 deg separation would be far too much, 5 deg is more likely, but I don't know as I haven't experimented at that level.
In my search for new TS sites (see link in my sig), I found that on small moons (500-800 km radius), & checking from an altitude of 250 km, 35 deg latitude steps were ok, 30 deg for ~1500 km moons, still at 250 km alt.
The trouble is we don't know what we're looking for, so we don't know what height to be at, unless we just carry out a very time intensive search at ~3km altitude & be pretty sure we won't be missing anything ..... unless it's tiny!

You get lat/long on takeoff and landing and when you take a screenshot from SRV.

If we had a process where you land. Then takoff and fly to another point and land then we could calculate coverage automatically.

We could do a bearing based approach assign commanders a bearing to follow?

Or we could look at surface features and search them first

Keep giving me ideas

We have requested that fdev include it in orbital cruise too. If I has the time and inclination I might have a go at pulling coords out of the directx buffer and then using OCR. Its been done before.

Just a thought on this, requiring cmdrs to land & take off could add a lot of time to the search, especially if searching from high up. Also, I don't see why we'd need to land, the lat & long is shown once you go into orbital cruise level (or did you mean it's only shown in the journal when landing?), & when you drop out of SC.... or OC rather .

 

[M. Volgrand]

Just added some edits to my post above...there was some doubt that the UP sonogram was fully decoded because of the “morse/binary”marks around the periphery, however I think if you matched those marks against the later diagram it might clarify the misgivings.

Merope5C has been searched, but we don’t know how thoroughly, and we know what surface searching is like-just because nothing was found doesn’t mean there is nothing to be found! However a thought has occurred-the UP tight beam signal (carrying a probe’s target ammonia world parameters) is directed toward 5C and it was therefore assumed that there must be a hidden receiver there, but there is a very large crater on 5C (its most obvious feature)- what if that is passively receivng the signal and reflecting it to another part of the Merope system? Goids (FD) are sneaky!

When the UP spectogram appeared a theory said that maybe it was a map in Merope 5c, so I started the project to map the planet.

The tool I developped in google drive was a form that, once completed, will update a "coordinates grid" with all the information. You can see the result here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...JQnCk9r4TQwzwBIrIoYjM3kCY/edit#gid=1602234729

However I think there must be an easier way. As LCU said before, if we could automate this process with EDMC it would certainly give us a lot of data (plus, the INRA research team would love us forever if we could develop a planetary survey tool!)

 

[M. Volgrand]

YES! I bet the rest of the Merope system hasn't been searched quite as thoroughly, might be all sorts of other stuff there! I still also like the "out of the system" search idea. Especially since the device image shows a flower ship outside the system (it might literally represent "out of the system").

On this image I've circled and colour coded the bits that appear in both (as Jorki said, the "more code" like elements, which idk what that is, they don't spell anything really?)
And the possible similaries (black lines) between the "signal" lines on the device image and the partial "signal" lines on the Probe image - they're not quite right, note sure.

But the thing that's got me is that funny little partial circle next to the Merope sun (marked in white) that seems similar to the partial circle on the Probe image. That's a deliberate thing, what does that mean?

Also --l and l-- both appear on the Probe image, and only --l appears on the Device image, is that the same thing mirrored, or is it significant there's two?

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/E4Ack3n.jpg

There are some parts that are already decoded, or at least have been interpreted.

The yello and green circles on top (-I- and -II) are actually an Octal heading to help understand the data (010 and 011).
The line you circled in white is actually an indication of atmosphere. If you look in the lower image, the system at left is actually Merope 5 (merop 5 having atmosphere and the moons around).
The two markings in teal below are understood to be a measurement of distance -and deoding the code, which helped to find th exact systemin COL 70, seems to correlate with this).

The yellow circle, for logic, could be read as "010", and also as an identifier for the Thargoid Link.

**Apologies if this is gibberish, I know very little about programming so this may be nonsense!**

Here's my idea based on your "bearing based approach":

I drew this illustration, because I tried to type it and it's just waffle.

So this shows a "Search Line" that you would be assigned just like your Patrol Route plugin.

Imagine you've flown to Merope 5C, you check the EDMC plugin and it says "Fly to 20,100 and proceed to 50,100, report any findings using the form. When you reach 50,100 press the button for the next Search Line in your area".

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/SaFgILI.jpg

It's easy to fly lines like this, all you do is hit the start coordinate, orient your ship at either 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees (depending on which coordinate you want to change) and just fly a straight line.

All this would take (all, lol), is working out what height to tell people to fly ("keep your ship at 3-4km above the ground at all times"), and how to sub-divide the long-lat grid into these patrol routes.

In my example for ease I've just shown increments of 10, but it might be that we figure out that making the lines 5 degrees apart is acceptable, or 50, I don't really know.

I literally don't know if I'm being insane suggesting this, and there may be much better ways to do it!

EDIT: This presumably would be usable on any planet, by anyone, so it could also be used for the INRA base searches without having to coordinate groups using spreadsheets etc - just like your patrol route works, you don't have to agree systems with anyone, you just go where it tells you! (which I love!).

I think this could work, however we need as well a way of indicating "hot zones". I believe this could be done via a google spreadsheet in which you can write the coordinate of "search zones". Then the program may be able to create search routes around those points unil the team is happy that there is nothing else to find there.

 

[M. Volgrand]

I'm going to share with you a real experience I had during the survey of Merope 5c. This was reported to frontier, however we never got a clear answer. It did look like it was not a bug, but it was something that activated at the wrong time. Expect some role play narrative.

Spoiler

The constant hum of the ASP Explorer, the "Golden Firefly" filled its cabin, making M. Volgrand's job a bit... dull. When the Unknown Probe did reveal a hidden map, or something like that, he proposed to fully explore Merope 5c. He even developed some tools that would help coordinate the commanders efforts for this task.


After more than 12 hours dedicated to this mission, he was wondering if they would ever locate anything. Volgrand was flying his ship at low orbital altitude, just a few kilometers over the limit where his ship would enter in a controlled glide towards the planet surface. He maintained his course just over the line that separated day and night, hoping that the long shadows would reveal... anything. Really, at this point anything at all would do. An alarm did cut off for a second the music that was ringing inside his helmet.


"Computer, send message to the Canonn Institute: 'Sector 32/-120 to 35/-125, low orbital survey: Nothing to report'."


A few seconds after sending the message, there was an static sound as another commander sent his own message.


"Still nothing new, Volgrand?"
"Nay" he answered, "some crashed nav points, smugglers hiding spots, but nothing alien".
"I´m wondering if we will even find some..."


The communication was cut off by a sudden interference. Volgrand identified it immediatly as a distress signal.


"Computer, isolate the signal, clean and amplify"
"Yes, commander".


An instant later, the signal was being broadcast by the Golden Firefly's radio.


"Mayday, mayday! This is cmdr. Valerian from the Canonn Institute! My ship is damaged, modules failing, engines are dead! I don't know what is going on! I repeat, engines dead, I am falling in Merope 5c!"
"Commander Valerian, this is Commander M. Volgrand. Report your position, what are your coordinates?"
"Thank God! My coordinates are 135/-63. I'm crashing down, ejecting, eject...!"


The communication went into static. There was a dreadful silence in the communications system until Volgrand spoke again.


"This is Commander M. Volgrand, I am moving to rescue Commander Valerian from the crash site."
"Received commander, shall we join you?"
"Nay, I'll be fine. If he ejected he'll be alive, otherwise..."
"Always the optimistic kind, aren't you".
"Just the realistic one. I'll report if I find anything unusual".


After that, he cut the communication system and headed towards the last known position of Valerian. Just a few minutes later, the Golden Firefly descended and entered in a controlled glide towards Merope 5c. The coordinates were located at a huge plain with no other geographical assets rather than a few craters. That was lucky, his sensors should be able to pick up the crash site and, from there, locate the emitter of the escape pod.


Standard Surface Survey Procedure (SSSP) consisted on flying at about 2km over the surface so the ship's sensors could detect any unusual signal on the ground. The place was on the light side of the planet, so Volgrand was expecting to find the ship with his own eyes, if nothing went wrong, of course. Many years travelling through the galaxy had taught him that anything could go wrong at the most strange places and moments.


The first alarm went off when the Golden's chaff launcher was activated without reason. Volgrand observed the sparks, confused.


"What the...?"
"Module malfunctioned."
"Computer, what is going on?"
"Powerplant integrity at fifty percent"
"WHAT THE HELL?"
"Module malfunctioned"


A quick look to his right panel confirmed that all the systems of the ASP explorer were taking damage... form nowhere! A sudden explosion filled the cabin with sparks and fire, the shields failed, the cargo hold breached, the FSD shown an integrity of just 5%.... Everything was getting destroyed at an alarming rate! Volgrand acted by instinct, pointed his ship upwards and hit the boost. Whatever was causing that, it had to be on the surface! The acceleration joined to the planet´s gravity made him lose all the air from his lungs but, after a few seconds, he realized two things:


Whatever was causing that damage, it was gone.


And the second one was...


"Thrusters malfunctioned"
"Oh, hell"


A fast calculation was enought to know that he had about 3 minutes before crashing against the surface. He peered his right panel: All systems, weapons included, had dropped their integrity below 10%, many of them showing a full 0%. The powerplant, however, had only taken a 50% of damage. But the atmospheric processor had failed as well, so Volgrand was on his reeserves. If the crash didn´t kill him, the lack of oxygen would. Simply great.

"Computer, emergency reboot sequence protocol"
"Commander, the ship is in free fall towards the surface, it is not advised to..."
"ACKNOWLEDGED, OVERRIDE, EMERGENCY REBOOT NOW!!"

All lights went off in the cabin, all terminals were turned off and soon the sequence of commands filled the top right information panel. The ground was approaching fast... 3 km.

"System reboot sequence successful. Thrusters offline"
"Damn it! EMERGENCY REBOOT!"

Again, all systems went off as Volgrand did pray to Randomius for his thrusters to be repaired.

"System reboot sequence successful, thrusters online"

1 kilometer.

"Power to engines, power to engines!"

The Golen Firefly's groaned and protested as the badly damaged thrusters tried to stop the ship. The gravity force became inmense, but Voglrand would not budge as he tried to save his life and his own ship. He was not going to let the Golden be destroyed! Finally, the thunderous sound of the thrusters went to a calm humming, and the commander dared to see the altitude in his console.

250 meters.

"Holy cow! That was close! Computer, what was that, what caused the module malfunction?"
"Unknown, commander. An scape pod has been detected on the surface, 3 kilometers away."
"Activate collector limpets, let's pick it up and try to make it back to Obsidian orbital. Canonn Institute will be very interested on this..."

Yeah, all this story happened literally that way. Including the commander sending a mayday in open chat becase his ship had gone dead. And, up to date, we still don't know what caused the damage to the ship. Whatever it was, it may prove that there are is still more to be discovered in Merope 5c

EDIT: Here the report we did https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/275157-Module-damage-while-exploring-merope-5c

 

[Louis Calvert]

Awesome I mean not for you guys crashing... what's the plan then? Fly over that area to see if the system damage/failure happens again?

 

[M. Volgrand]

Awesome I mean not for you guys crashing... what's the plan then? Fly over that area to see if the system damage/failure happens again?

Not much plan yet. For now I plan to go to the area and see if anything unusual happens, and then maybe try to fly in straight line towards the COL 70 system and see if there is anything in there.

 

[Assimilator1]

I'm going to share with you a real experience I had during the survey of Merope 5c. This was reported to frontier, however we never got a clear answer. It did look like it was not a bug, but it was something that activated at the wrong time. Expect some role play narrative.

Spoiler

The constant hum of the ASP Explorer, the "Golden Firefly" filled its cabin, making M. Volgrand's job a bit... dull. When the Unknown Probe did reveal a hidden map, or something like that, he proposed to fully explore Merope 5c. He even developed some tools that would help coordinate the commanders efforts for this task.


After more than 12 hours dedicated to this mission, he was wondering if they would ever locate anything. Volgrand was flying his ship at low orbital altitude, just a few kilometers over the limit where his ship would enter in a controlled glide towards the planet surface. He maintained his course just over the line that separated day and night, hoping that the long shadows would reveal... anything. Really, at this point anything at all would do. An alarm did cut off for a second the music that was ringing inside his helmet.


"Computer, send message to the Canonn Institute: 'Sector 32/-120 to 35/-125, low orbital survey: Nothing to report'."


A few seconds after sending the message, there was an static sound as another commander sent his own message.


"Still nothing new, Volgrand?"
"Nay" he answered, "some crashed nav points, smugglers hiding spots, but nothing alien".
"I´m wondering if we will even find some..."


The communication was cut off by a sudden interference. Volgrand identified it immediatly as a distress signal.


"Computer, isolate the signal, clean and amplify"
"Yes, commander".


An instant later, the signal was being broadcast by the Golden Firefly's radio.


"Mayday, mayday! This is cmdr. Valerian from the Canonn Institute! My ship is damaged, modules failing, engines are dead! I don't know what is going on! I repeat, engines dead, I am falling in Merope 5c!"
"Commander Valerian, this is Commander M. Volgrand. Report your position, what are your coordinates?"
"Thank God! My coordinates are 135/-63. I'm crashing down, ejecting, eject...!"


The communication went into static. There was a dreadful silence in the communications system until Volgrand spoke again.


"This is Commander M. Volgrand, I am moving to rescue Commander Valerian from the crash site."
"Received commander, shall we join you?"
"Nay, I'll be fine. If he ejected he'll be alive, otherwise..."
"Always the optimistic kind, aren't you".
"Just the realistic one. I'll report if I find anything unusual".


After that, he cut the communication system and headed towards the last known position of Valerian. Just a few minutes later, the Golden Firefly descended and entered in a controlled glide towards Merope 5c. The coordinates were located at a huge plain with no other geographical assets rather than a few craters. That was lucky, his sensors should be able to pick up the crash site and, from there, locate the emitter of the escape pod.


Standard Surface Survey Procedure (SSSP) consisted on flying at about 2km over the surface so the ship's sensors could detect any unusual signal on the ground. The place was on the light side of the planet, so Volgrand was expecting to find the ship with his own eyes, if nothing went wrong, of course. Many years travelling through the galaxy had taught him that anything could go wrong at the most strange places and moments.


The first alarm went off when the Golden's chaff launcher was activated without reason. Volgrand observed the sparks, confused.


"What the...?"
"Module malfunctioned."
"Computer, what is going on?"
"Powerplant integrity at fifty percent"
"WHAT THE HELL?"
"Module malfunctioned"


A quick look to his right panel confirmed that all the systems of the ASP explorer were taking damage... form nowhere! A sudden explosion filled the cabin with sparks and fire, the shields failed, the cargo hold breached, the FSD shown an integrity of just 5%.... Everything was getting destroyed at an alarming rate! Volgrand acted by instinct, pointed his ship upwards and hit the boost. Whatever was causing that, it had to be on the surface! The acceleration joined to the planet´s gravity made him lose all the air from his lungs but, after a few seconds, he realized two things:


Whatever was causing that damage, it was gone.


And the second one was...


"Thrusters malfunctioned"
"Oh, hell"


A fast calculation was enought to know that he had about 3 minutes before crashing against the surface. He peered his right panel: All systems, weapons included, had dropped their integrity below 10%, many of them showing a full 0%. The powerplant, however, had only taken a 50% of damage. But the atmospheric processor had failed as well, so Volgrand was on his reeserves. If the crash didn´t kill him, the lack of oxygen would. Simply great.

"Computer, emergency reboot sequence protocol"
"Commander, the ship is in free fall towards the surface, it is not advised to..."
"ACKNOWLEDGED, OVERRIDE, EMERGENCY REBOOT NOW!!"

All lights went off in the cabin, all terminals were turned off and soon the sequence of commands filled the top right information panel. The ground was approaching fast... 3 km.

"System reboot sequence successful. Thrusters offline"
"Damn it! EMERGENCY REBOOT!"

Again, all systems went off as Volgrand did pray to Randomius for his thrusters to be repaired.

"System reboot sequence successful, thrusters online"

1 kilometer.

"Power to engines, power to engines!"

The Golen Firefly's groaned and protested as the badly damaged thrusters tried to stop the ship. The gravity force became inmense, but Voglrand would not budge as he tried to save his life and his own ship. He was not going to let the Golden be destroyed! Finally, the thunderous sound of the thrusters went to a calm humming, and the commander dared to see the altitude in his console.

250 meters.

"Holy cow! That was close! Computer, what was that, what caused the module malfunction?"
"Unknown, commander. An scape pod has been detected on the surface, 3 kilometers away."
"Activate collector limpets, let's pick it up and try to make it back to Obsidian orbital. Canonn Institute will be very interested on this..."

Yeah, all this story happened literally that way. Including the commander sending a mayday in open chat becase his ship had gone dead. And, up to date, we still don't know what caused the damage to the ship. Whatever it was, it may prove that there are is still more to be discovered in Merope 5c

EDIT: Here the report we did https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/275157-Module-damage-while-exploring-merope-5c

That's 1 cool story! And you were scarily close to be pancake flambé! lol. You've not been back to that area?? Man I would of gone over it with a fine tooth comb! In a cheap ship!

Curious that QA asked about barnacles out of the blue on your bug report thread......

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

Be careful. Someone did come up with a really useful tool but it was frowned upon be FD as breaking the EULA and sadly died a death...

This was the tool I was thinking of: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/241252-Sneak-Peek-Surface-Navigation

 

[LCU No Fool Like One]

**Apologies if this is gibberish, I know very little about programming so this may be nonsense!**

Not Gibberish at all

CMDR drops out of supercruise
App tells them to proceed to coordinates and drop to 2km ( click next ) or cancel
CMDR Reaches coordinates and clicks next
App tells the commander to change their bearing to X and fly in a straight line until they reach the end coordinates keeping 2km above the ground. (click next to submit report)
CMDR reaches objective and clicks next
Exit Poll appears in web browser
CMDR confirms that they finished the patrol and either found something or didn't or maybe their search wasn't all that thorough
App tells the commander to go to the next set of coordinates

I don't think we can ask that commanders circle the entire globe. If the search isn't broken down into short stretches then people might not finish them. If they are too short then they might get fed up of clicking on the form. We could use butting to submit the form without firing up a browser but I would be concerned that people could press the wrong button.

So what would be an acceptable flight time? 10 minutes might be about right? Assuming 250kms then each search path would be 150mm? That can't be right can it? The radius of Merope 5C is 1,478km so the circumference is 9,286km

Have to go so leaving this here

 

[M. Volgrand]

Not Gibberish at all

CMDR drops out of supercruise
App tells them to proceed to coordinates and drop to 2km ( click next ) or cancel
CMDR Reaches coordinates and clicks next
App tells the commander to change their bearing to X and fly in a straight line until they reach the end coordinates keeping 2km above the ground. (click next to submit report)
CMDR reaches objective and clicks next
Exit Poll appears in web browser
CMDR confirms that they finished the patrol and either found something or didn't or maybe their search wasn't all that thorough
App tells the commander to go to the next set of coordinates

I don't think we can ask that commanders circle the entire globe. If the search isn't broken down into short stretches then people might not finish them. If they are too short then they might get fed up of clicking on the form. We could use butting to submit the form without firing up a browser but I would be concerned that people could press the wrong button.

So what would be an acceptable flight time? 10 minutes might be about right? Assuming 250kms then each search path would be 150mm? That can't be right can it? The radius of Merope 5C is 1,478km so the circumference is 9,286km

Have to go so leaving this here

I think limiting the search time to 10 minutes is quite reasonable. Once again, we may need a way to implement "hot areas" (points of coordinates) so we can focus the search based on findings. For instance, let's say someone experiences again the module damage as I did in the story I told before: We may then need to add the coordinates where this happened as a "hot area" and coordinate search in it.

 

[Jorki Rasalas]

I'm going to share with you a real experience I had during the survey of Merope 5c. This was reported to frontier, however we never got a clear answer. It did look like it was not a bug, but it was something that activated at the wrong time. Expect some role play narrative.

Spoiler

The constant hum of the ASP Explorer, the "Golden Firefly" filled its cabin, making M. Volgrand's job a bit... dull. When the Unknown Probe did reveal a hidden map, or something like that, he proposed to fully explore Merope 5c. He even developed some tools that would help coordinate the commanders efforts for this task.


After more than 12 hours dedicated to this mission, he was wondering if they would ever locate anything. Volgrand was flying his ship at low orbital altitude, just a few kilometers over the limit where his ship would enter in a controlled glide towards the planet surface. He maintained his course just over the line that separated day and night, hoping that the long shadows would reveal... anything. Really, at this point anything at all would do. An alarm did cut off for a second the music that was ringing inside his helmet.


"Computer, send message to the Canonn Institute: 'Sector 32/-120 to 35/-125, low orbital survey: Nothing to report'."


A few seconds after sending the message, there was an static sound as another commander sent his own message.


"Still nothing new, Volgrand?"
"Nay" he answered, "some crashed nav points, smugglers hiding spots, but nothing alien".
"I´m wondering if we will even find some..."


The communication was cut off by a sudden interference. Volgrand identified it immediatly as a distress signal.


"Computer, isolate the signal, clean and amplify"
"Yes, commander".


An instant later, the signal was being broadcast by the Golden Firefly's radio.


"Mayday, mayday! This is cmdr. Valerian from the Canonn Institute! My ship is damaged, modules failing, engines are dead! I don't know what is going on! I repeat, engines dead, I am falling in Merope 5c!"
"Commander Valerian, this is Commander M. Volgrand. Report your position, what are your coordinates?"
"Thank God! My coordinates are 135/-63. I'm crashing down, ejecting, eject...!"


The communication went into static. There was a dreadful silence in the communications system until Volgrand spoke again.


"This is Commander M. Volgrand, I am moving to rescue Commander Valerian from the crash site."
"Received commander, shall we join you?"
"Nay, I'll be fine. If he ejected he'll be alive, otherwise..."
"Always the optimistic kind, aren't you".
"Just the realistic one. I'll report if I find anything unusual".


After that, he cut the communication system and headed towards the last known position of Valerian. Just a few minutes later, the Golden Firefly descended and entered in a controlled glide towards Merope 5c. The coordinates were located at a huge plain with no other geographical assets rather than a few craters. That was lucky, his sensors should be able to pick up the crash site and, from there, locate the emitter of the escape pod.


Standard Surface Survey Procedure (SSSP) consisted on flying at about 2km over the surface so the ship's sensors could detect any unusual signal on the ground. The place was on the light side of the planet, so Volgrand was expecting to find the ship with his own eyes, if nothing went wrong, of course. Many years travelling through the galaxy had taught him that anything could go wrong at the most strange places and moments.


The first alarm went off when the Golden's chaff launcher was activated without reason. Volgrand observed the sparks, confused.


"What the...?"
"Module malfunctioned."
"Computer, what is going on?"
"Powerplant integrity at fifty percent"
"WHAT THE HELL?"
"Module malfunctioned"


A quick look to his right panel confirmed that all the systems of the ASP explorer were taking damage... form nowhere! A sudden explosion filled the cabin with sparks and fire, the shields failed, the cargo hold breached, the FSD shown an integrity of just 5%.... Everything was getting destroyed at an alarming rate! Volgrand acted by instinct, pointed his ship upwards and hit the boost. Whatever was causing that, it had to be on the surface! The acceleration joined to the planet´s gravity made him lose all the air from his lungs but, after a few seconds, he realized two things:


Whatever was causing that damage, it was gone.


And the second one was...


"Thrusters malfunctioned"
"Oh, hell"


A fast calculation was enought to know that he had about 3 minutes before crashing against the surface. He peered his right panel: All systems, weapons included, had dropped their integrity below 10%, many of them showing a full 0%. The powerplant, however, had only taken a 50% of damage. But the atmospheric processor had failed as well, so Volgrand was on his reeserves. If the crash didn´t kill him, the lack of oxygen would. Simply great.

"Computer, emergency reboot sequence protocol"
"Commander, the ship is in free fall towards the surface, it is not advised to..."
"ACKNOWLEDGED, OVERRIDE, EMERGENCY REBOOT NOW!!"

All lights went off in the cabin, all terminals were turned off and soon the sequence of commands filled the top right information panel. The ground was approaching fast... 3 km.

"System reboot sequence successful. Thrusters offline"
"Damn it! EMERGENCY REBOOT!"

Again, all systems went off as Volgrand did pray to Randomius for his thrusters to be repaired.

"System reboot sequence successful, thrusters online"

1 kilometer.

"Power to engines, power to engines!"

The Golen Firefly's groaned and protested as the badly damaged thrusters tried to stop the ship. The gravity force became inmense, but Voglrand would not budge as he tried to save his life and his own ship. He was not going to let the Golden be destroyed! Finally, the thunderous sound of the thrusters went to a calm humming, and the commander dared to see the altitude in his console.

250 meters.

"Holy cow! That was close! Computer, what was that, what caused the module malfunction?"
"Unknown, commander. An scape pod has been detected on the surface, 3 kilometers away."
"Activate collector limpets, let's pick it up and try to make it back to Obsidian orbital. Canonn Institute will be very interested on this..."

Yeah, all this story happened literally that way. Including the commander sending a mayday in open chat becase his ship had gone dead. And, up to date, we still don't know what caused the damage to the ship. Whatever it was, it may prove that there are is still more to be discovered in Merope 5c

EDIT: Here the report we did https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/275157-Module-damage-while-exploring-merope-5c

I remember your report and trying to search around those coordinates but nothing happened, except at one point I was overheating but that has occured on other planets and I believe it was due to overenthusiastic boosting while concentrating on the terrain rather than the in-cockpit temperature readout.