Hi all,
tldr; I didn't find it yet, but I think my logic is solid, and I need your help to find the exact system. Also, here's an Imgur gallery of this post.
In the codex, I noticed there's a screenshot that goes with "The Dark Wheel", which appears to be a real station or ship orbiting a real star in-game. To me, this feels like a concrete hint as to the whereabouts of The Dark Wheel. It's not a vague "rumour", it's a real in-game screenshot, so I decided to try to find this station.
About a month ago, someone posted a screenshot of a penal ship, and I noticed it had rotating rings on the back, sorta like ship in the Dark Wheel codex screenshot. From the wiki, I got the list of penal ships, and looked through all of them on eddb.io, to try to find one that appeared to fulfill the following criteria I deduced from the screenshot:
- Must be orbiting a planet very close to a star
- Star must be a red-looking class (?)
- The system must have a penal colony ship in it.
Lo and behold, only one system matched these criteria, and googling it turned up only two discussing mentioning it in passing: Stuelou AT-J c25-24
This system has a couple other interesting properties: It's right on the way to Colonia, about 2/3rds of the way there. It shows a zero population, but has a penal ship. It's immediately adjacent to an inhabited system, Gandharvi. As a bonus, it also has an unnamed gas giant with 8 moons.
So I high-tailed it out there, made it to Penal Colony Omicron, and took some screenshots for comparison. I scanned the 8th moon, found nothing interesting, and scanned the planet beside the ship (there's some geological sites but I didn't find any surprises. I didn't search all of them though.)
I made a gallery for your comparison here: https://imgur.com/gallery/iQ0RFpQ
Conclusion: This is not the system in the screenshot, but it's the right idea.
By comparing the codex screenshot and my screenshots of Penal Ship Omicron, I can conclude the following:
1) The star we're looking for needs to be much redder than the K-type star in this sector. What's a redder star class?
2) The relative scale of the planet and star are wrong. Either the planet needs to be much smaller, or the star must be much larger than the ones I found in this sector. (The planet is much smaller in the codex screenshot than the ones in mine, meaning either the distances are off, or the relative scale of the two is different. I don't believe the orbits of the planets and station would change that much.)
3) The penal colony ship is the wrong type of ship. So what type of ship matches the codex screenshot?
Any feedback on these points would be greatly appreciated! Let's try to keep this thread on-topic and focus on concrete evidence as much as possible.
Thanks,
CMDR Hax Murderer
tldr; I didn't find it yet, but I think my logic is solid, and I need your help to find the exact system. Also, here's an Imgur gallery of this post.
In the codex, I noticed there's a screenshot that goes with "The Dark Wheel", which appears to be a real station or ship orbiting a real star in-game. To me, this feels like a concrete hint as to the whereabouts of The Dark Wheel. It's not a vague "rumour", it's a real in-game screenshot, so I decided to try to find this station.
About a month ago, someone posted a screenshot of a penal ship, and I noticed it had rotating rings on the back, sorta like ship in the Dark Wheel codex screenshot. From the wiki, I got the list of penal ships, and looked through all of them on eddb.io, to try to find one that appeared to fulfill the following criteria I deduced from the screenshot:
- Must be orbiting a planet very close to a star
- Star must be a red-looking class (?)
- The system must have a penal colony ship in it.
Lo and behold, only one system matched these criteria, and googling it turned up only two discussing mentioning it in passing: Stuelou AT-J c25-24
This system has a couple other interesting properties: It's right on the way to Colonia, about 2/3rds of the way there. It shows a zero population, but has a penal ship. It's immediately adjacent to an inhabited system, Gandharvi. As a bonus, it also has an unnamed gas giant with 8 moons.
So I high-tailed it out there, made it to Penal Colony Omicron, and took some screenshots for comparison. I scanned the 8th moon, found nothing interesting, and scanned the planet beside the ship (there's some geological sites but I didn't find any surprises. I didn't search all of them though.)
I made a gallery for your comparison here: https://imgur.com/gallery/iQ0RFpQ
Conclusion: This is not the system in the screenshot, but it's the right idea.
By comparing the codex screenshot and my screenshots of Penal Ship Omicron, I can conclude the following:
1) The star we're looking for needs to be much redder than the K-type star in this sector. What's a redder star class?
2) The relative scale of the planet and star are wrong. Either the planet needs to be much smaller, or the star must be much larger than the ones I found in this sector. (The planet is much smaller in the codex screenshot than the ones in mine, meaning either the distances are off, or the relative scale of the two is different. I don't believe the orbits of the planets and station would change that much.)
3) The penal colony ship is the wrong type of ship. So what type of ship matches the codex screenshot?
Any feedback on these points would be greatly appreciated! Let's try to keep this thread on-topic and focus on concrete evidence as much as possible.
Thanks,
CMDR Hax Murderer