Passive scan: Oldest scanner mode and dependent on body type and distance from the body. Passive happens any time you fly close enough but only gets orbital parameters. As you fly close to stars, planets, moons, stations, installations, and fleet carriers initial data will be added into navigation computer (if not present).
Worth noting: Oldest scanner mode has a very noticeable hexagon that looks suspiciously like the icons from Active Guardian Obelisk (made up of many smaller triangles). This further happens with SRV composition scanner, Odyssey bio-scanner, discovery of new materials (ship, SRV, on foot), and when stepping out of ship in Odyssey.
 
XO5qYft.png

Weird stuff in the Merope Bubble...

Edit: Trading beacon still want's beer
mmm, could be a reference to Thargoid Sensors/Barnacles etc? There are so many system descriptions that appear to be potential clues...

Just bought a temporary DBScout & jumped back to Charick Drift & tried flying down into the WD cone (in case that's the Omphalos) but far too violent motion. I'd say its impossible. ALso tried to reach the core again but fsd dropped out as usual. Giving up on this hypothesis!
 
Here's my current understanding of scanning in Elite Dangerous presently operates in light of all the updates and expansions.

We have essentially have two modes for system scans: passive and active scans.

Passive scan: Oldest scanner mode and dependent on body type and distance from the body. Passive happens any time you fly close enough but only gets orbital parameters. As you fly close to stars, planets, moons, stations, installations, and fleet carriers initial data will be added into navigation computer (if not present).

Active/non-FSS: Target body and fly there. This will only work when the initial round of system data has been submitted to Universal Cartographics.

Active/FSS: Fly in honk the system, slow velocity to slowest supercruise speeds, load FSS. Works all the time but still only get you orbital parameters. Will detect stations installations, and fleet carriers. Installations may have to be within 1000 LS for detection. Actively, inhabited sites scanned in.

Active/DSS: Fully detailed surface scan. Anything that isn't inhabited or operating at lower power states get detected: POI (lore), crashes, various human and non-human signals.
So which are Level 2 scans and which are Level 3 (as per the CMDR stats in your Codex)?
 
Just tried Saturn/Tethys (sounds like Thetis (gen ship)) as it has Odysseus the largest crater in the solar system ( according to Wikipedia ) which gives it the appearance of the Death Star, but found nothing at the coordinates of its centre, and cant actually see anything resembling it, so guess FD didnt feel the need to be realistic...
 
So which are Level 2 scans and which are Level 3 (as per the CMDR stats in your Codex)?
Level 1 - passive scanning whilst flying through a system (targeting body not required). Details will appear mid-screen. This amounts to loading it into navigation panel if first discovery and loading orbital lines (if enabled).

Level 2 - FSS scanning or targeted passive scan (non-FSS). You know this is happening when the animated hexagon appears and there is several seconds of humming as scanner gets details. If you have EDDiscovery voicepack enabled and option set body details are read out. Includes composition and atmospheric details.

Level 3 - DSS scanner which gets details beyond basic orbital parameters and inhabited POIs. Also used for locating geologic and biological POIs.
 
Just tried Saturn/Tethys (sounds like Thetis (gen ship)) as it has Odysseus the largest crater in the solar system ( according to Wikipedia ) which gives it the appearance of the Death Star, but found nothing at the coordinates of its centre, and cant actually see anything resembling it, so guess FD didnt feel the need to be realistic...
Read entry on Wikipedia on Saturn rings. Several of those are Shepard moon that should exist between the rings. You can probably only visually locate it. It's not impossible just hard. I have landed at lore POIs without DSS scanner. They are visible from dark side of body.
 
Re the “infinite range” Advanced Scanner-could be. Can’t figure out when that was actually introduced into the game. I thought it was before Lavecon 2017, when MB was supposed to have uttered that statement in a closed Q&A, but I could be wrong on that. And of course even after it was introduced an early explorer might just have had basic or intermediate scanners.

v2.1 "The Engineers" & v1.6 - 26th May 2016​

  • Ability to scan a Nav beacon to get that system's exploration data added
Was it part of that change?
 
Finishing off in Atlas, @Jorki Rasalas let me know if you want me to try anything.

View from Atlas to the Maia system.
L8gSY3W.jpg


Ah, yes, also Tanaga exploded after getting hit with a caustic missile...
I am still waiting for the realization to hit the player-base about the Pleiades and the kinds of stars you had to search for during Ram Tah's mission. Keep in mind, also Palin should not have gotten sick during Cerberus Plague. Read the damn codexes. We are being mislead and it's OBVIOUS. Start at the star type types in Pleiades then look at the surface temperatures of the planets.

We really shouldn't be attacking the aliens that came to the Bubble. We have a common enemy that is far more dangerous and it has been playing humans for fools.

P.S. - Not trying to insult anyone. Propaganda sucks and it is hard to detect. I really need you all to start paying attention before we have to sacrifice the whole Bubble. This will at least make updates interesting but damn. It boils down to there is Technetium in Delphi and all the systems inhabited by "Thargoids". The problem those aren't Thargoids. They are Guardians. WE ARE FIGHTING THE GUARDIANS. The system Delphi has one of the highest concentrations of Technetium possible (about 0.8%).

 
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We are killing the Guardians. I am not joking, either. Delphi has Technetium. Atlas has Technetium. That should not exist there if those were Thargoids. The systems of the Pleiades are wrong star types for Thargoids. The surfaces of most planets are hot. We are being used to exterminate a sentient race. Whether we have a choice at this point, I don't know but none of this adds up to what we were told was the case.

Screenshot_20221213-073041~2.png


Screenshot_20221213-1213162.png


Delphi has one of the highest concentrations of Technetium. We are being used by something to kill the Guardians who may be the only group that has answers.

 
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We are killing the Guardians. I am not joking, either. Delphi has Technetium. Atlas has Technetium. That should not exist there if those were Thargoids. The systems of the Pleiades are wrong star types for Thargoids. The surfaces of most planets are hot. We are being used to exterminate a sentient race. Whether we have a choice at this point, I don't know but none of this adds up to what we were told was the case.

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Delphi has one of the highest concentrations of Technetium. We are being used by something to kill the Guardians who may be the only group that has answers.

This may be a misinterpretation. Thargoids Device surface sites are within tolerances for Thargoids (freezing - boiling temperatures for ammonia). Still, wasn't expecting them to also be tied to asymptotic giant branch stars. Thargoids may still exist. This isn't nearly as earth-shattering as I thought. It does, however, make things a great deal less clear. So, now are they basically the same species? Guardian logs suggested their limbs were similar. Great. No clarity. You think you are finally going to make headway. Yes you make some but it very much two steps forwards followed by one step backwards. Non-clarity we meet again. Well, maybe we get some idea of if Oresrian vs Klaxxian is a legit thing. I swear this game's lore is something else.

{deep sigh}
 
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your theory is very old and most likely wrong and irrelevant.
it is a time travel twist, it is possible...but does it matter? We are here, this point in time.
Many moons ago I thought the guardians being into biology and peaceniks with nature etc...and that maybe that was the key to how the Thargoids came about, long story, the thread is buried somewhere.
made little sense when I originally typed it, even less sense now.
But fighting an eternal war between themselves thanks to history repeating itself...and neither side realising the past is the future
not new either, The Doctor has been to this place, there are at least 2 Doctor Who stories that are this....

love the way excitement melts some people.

fwiw, technitium and other mats we know, tend to spread around the galaxy via meteorites, hence the whole farming of mats by shooting at meteorites...
from that alone, my take on anything in maps about stars and planetary(heavenly bodies) materials is 100% meaningless and has been since day 1.
any other take on this is a waste of time, reality vs lore.

as for that and then this temperature thing...yes, another person said it too...
we live and we travel in space.
so do Thargoids
ships keep us warm and air around us.

from what I see, Thargoids have not changed too much and the insects they are, live and fly where they want to.
lore is meaningless in all this.
they have weapons that generate toxicity, electricity, heat, other fun things...
we can hit them with heat or electricity, etc...they seem to like it....

they are cockroaches that evolved into very big space faring cockroaches, as such they can live in a ketchup bottle, in soup, probably bathe once a decade in certain stars.....
We DON"T Know squat about squat, except they are very adaptable Insects, seeming intelligent, a really bad mix.

focusing on clues in lore that are made totally useless from daily interaction is a lack of focus imo.
like trying to point out to the world why red dye #4 is unhealthy, when it is 1000 years after and everything is red. pointless.

everyone's theory is good, as long as they like it and they check it out.

there are days when all I see are the guys sticking post-its to monitors.


then a big one, the changes to absolutely everything, between Odyssey and Horizons is soo great and so messed up, that any planetary info seems to be totally useless, wrong, handwavium.
And even if any theory regarding any is correct, the devs have made such a joke out of materials, I would not expect to find dirt on earth.

Something HUGE would have to happen in order for me to take any space, star, planetary data info serious, or as true.
Because IMO fdev went out of their way to show us words and numbers are 100% meaningless when it comes to materials and where to find them and what percentages exist., not ever once even close to correct, unless we all failed math and only fdev understands depleted and % and moregood, lessgood, etc
I was here for the release of Horizons, when we had no numbers, no words on bodies. just land and drive around and see whats there, then write it down for future reference.
I have a very large notepad file that is just that.


I would suggest that time travel is a thing. Guardians most likely mastered it long ago, and the rumor came from that. why not, just as valid as any other theory.
It is a game, I see no reason why this cannot exist.
TBH, my take on Raxxla is that it is Guardian and that it is Humanity's only hope to survive. and that it IS very much from the Guardians in their safe peaceful future watching us.
If nothing else, it is at least the idea.
 
The reason Technetium is special is all isotopes are radioactive and thus exists at best a few millions of years unless it is being produced. It is one of those things that is very rare on Earth itself but found in space a bit more frequently (just checked EDSM and a lot of bodies have it in Sol). Also, made a mention in "...And Here the Wheel". I thought it was going to be weird enough edge case that we could put the Thargoids lore to a test. Sadly, it appears both have some connections to asymptotic giant branch stars. I just wasn't exactly expecting the possibility that both species were linked to those stars. The only good thing, is we now have a very solid case for M-K class stars that are 2-8 solar masses and long-period variables (especially if they possess an orbiting brown dwarf as per "..And Here the Wheel"). Sometimes science works on testing theories and other times it just proves you still need better information. Back to the drawing boards.
 
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Because IMO fdev went out of their way to show us words and numbers are 100% meaningless when it comes to materials and where to find them and what percentages exist., not ever once even close to correct, unless we all failed math and only fdev understands depleted and % and moregood, lessgood, etc
I would not say that. It is just that combining lore, descriptions, and a bit of knowledge can have unpredictable results. It, however, is one of the few pathways which on occasion can produce ideas that solidly put the odds in our favor. Even the occasional failures can be valuable learning experiences. Just checked and the only naturally occuring isotope of Technetium is Technetium-99 with a half-life of 211,000 years. Every other isotope known must be made in a lab and has significantly shorter half-lifes. The only other element known that has no stable isotopes is Promethium. Technetium is atomic number 43 and Promethium is atomic number 61. Technetium is the lightest known fundamentally unstable element.
 
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Well. I'm still very slowly reading through Premonition for the first time since it was published.

With all that I now know about the Lore and all this stuff we've been doing with the Raxxla hunting and stuff - it certainly seems like even just the first few chapters I've read are loaded with useful info.

For context: I was very interested in Premonition specifically since this was written after Elite was launched and Drew got to see some (more) secret info that helped him shape the plot for the novel. This was also during/after he'd worked with Fdev to create the Dynasty mystery.

Some things that got my attention follow, for your consideration:


Polaris​

Rebecca is reminiscing about her investigation:
What she had found were only footnotes, vague references and anecdotes. She had found little that substantiated her findings, just some strange and unconfirmed rumours of the Alliance being involved ... and remnants of information regarding a mysterious ship.

Polaris?

The system was still permit locked, and it wasn't the only one that was impossible to reach.

Something is being concealed. Proof might be thin on the ground, but I found some evidence. I found where they went. One day someone is going to figure this out. I've left the clues. When the time is right they will be found once more. I must prepare them for that, pass the torch...
This almost certainly relates to the Thargoids. The reference to the ship is likely the Quest, especially since a few chapters later we have Mahon himself confirm that Mic Turner is rumoured to have gone looking for Thargoids (if memory serves we also do get to see a Quest ship later too?) - all this is essentially connecting with the plot of Frontier First Encounters. For me, this puts to bed the idea that Polaris is anything related to Raxxla or the Dark Wheel - it's clearly linked here with the Thargoid/INRA/Turner plot as it was in FFE.


The Dark Wheel​

The Dark Wheel (or a faction thereof, most likely) are (some of) the ones working to conceal things from the Galaxy:
Rebecca: "Because it might reveal the truth? People might find out what you've been concealing all this time?"
Masked man: "The time is not right"
Rebecca: "The time is never right, is it? Was it the right time when Galcop collapsed? Nope. How about when the Alliance came to power? No, not then either."
Masked man: "Secrets last longer than lifetimes, longer even than yours. We operate on a timescale far longer than mere decades. The Wheel turns..."

Context note: Rebecca seems to be a renegade Dark Wheel member. The conversation with the masked man make it clear that she's essentially defying them, and the phrase "the Wheel turns" can't possibly be anything other than the Dark Wheel.


Links to the Raxxla Codex​

Despite my reservations about this; I think Drew might have written the Raxxla Codex - or - whoever wrote the Raxxla Codex is heavily hinting at Drew's writings. This idea is to do with language used and the fact that things written by Drew have exact or near-exact matches to elements of the Raxxla Codex entry, and I don't find these matches as closely related anywhere else in the written lore of the game. Also Drew himself in a livestream (which are on his Youtube channel) said he was very fond of Greek myth, which is why it appears so often in his writing:

In the 'Excerpt from recovered journal, circa 3302, author unknown' text:
"Only a few look beyond the artificial boundary that rings the edge of civilisation. ... Equipped with new vessels, those who can't resist the siren song of the unknown venture forth into the darkness."

"There are rumours, of course, stories that filter back from borderland trading outposts. Ships that return from long ventures in the void with crews gone insane, or ships that are found abandoned in the darkness. The tales tell of lost planets, lost civilisations, strange beacons, crashed vessels and drifting cargoes."
Rebecca is getting some memories back, the text reads:
"distant stars, a sunrise fading into blackness, the flash of spacecraft hulls against the dark. A calling... no, a yearning!"
Intro of Salome returning from her explorations:
Edge of the Frontier, two hundred light years from Sol

Myriad stars pricked the darkness of space. Not far away from here was the border, the boundary, the limit of known space; the edge over which only those who couldn't resit the siren song of adventure dared to go; those to which 'dangerous' was just a substitute for exhilaration.

They call it the Frontier.

Out here, against the slowly fading embers of red dwarfs, the sharp light of blue-white supergiants and the deadly peril of uncharted neutron stars, was the void....
The Club are having a meeting:
Society nodded. 'Yes, rather a law unto themselves. Quite what possesses them to head out into the void on a whim and a prayer is rather beyond me...'

Bear in mind my previous postings about the correlations between the Dynasty logs (specifically the Formidine Rift logs) and the language used the Raxxla Codex. Those logs were written by Drew, they include many of the same linguistic signatures as Reclamation and Premonition.


Humanity is definitely controlled​

In addition to the references above, there's also a large section of Chapter Four that explicitly spells out that a secret cabal controls humanity (the Club, of course). This seems to me to fit neatly with the Raxxla codex talking about a secret cabal controlling humanity - though of course it may be another secret cabal controlling humanity...

However, there's a very interesting section that I think is worth considering further:
(Context: Society is complaining about us - independent pilots - getting in the way)
'Irritating parasites' Exo chimed in.
'How so?' Finance demanded. 'We make considerable currency off the back of their trading and bounty hunting exploits, not to mention taxes, tolls and ship and equipment exchanges. In fact, finding enough diversions for them to spend their credits on has proved something of a challenge.'
(discussion about explorers poking around)
'Indeed' Society replied. 'We've given them all sorts of financial enticements to stay away from any areas of interest, naturally. Community goals promising rich rewards seem to retain their allure for the most part. For the determined, we provide other enticements, luring them into areas where they can be ... embroiled in some unfortunate accident in the depths of space.'
This, to me, seems to heavily correlate to what we know of the Pilot's Federation information from Shinrarta beacons: Bounties, ship equipment, vast secret influence, etc. Seems to confirm that at least one member of The Club is highly-placed the Pilot's Federation and funding flows from the PF to the Club. Also Galnet is controlled and owned by the PF, so when Society here talks about CGs here, that's significant.

In the 'Excerpt from recovered journal, circa 3302, author unknown' text:
"While some strive to shine a light on the truth, others may work equally hard to keep that knowledge concealed. They might take the view that humanity isn't ready for those revelations, working in secret for hundreds of years, protecting humanity from itself. It could be they consider themselves above the hoi-polloi, above the factions and even beyond the remit of the Empire, the Federation and Alliance, concerning themselves with the enduring, not the ephemeral. If such people do exist, they would know all too well that truth is a dangerous thing."
Again confirming the 'secret cabal'. It may be that there's more than one, but there's nothing really indicating that in the text.
 
This, to me, seems to heavily correlate to what we know of the Pilot's Federation information from Shinrarta beacons: Bounties, ship equipment, vast secret influence, etc. Seems to confirm that at least one member of The Club is highly-placed the Pilot's Federation and funding flows from the PF to the Club. Also Galnet is controlled and owned by the PF, so when Society here talks about CGs here, that's significant
There is a shell corporation in First Encounters called J-Corp that the funding went through - details are as follows:

J-Corp

J-Corp is one of the mysteries of the corporate universe. It doesn't seem to do anything on the surface, and has been investigated a considerable number of time by the police, who are convinced that there's something funny going on. Large quantities of money arrive in the J-Corp accounts as cash, and then are broken up into many different investments. Identical quantities leave the main account after a short period, again as cash, and then are paid in as cash to banks run by other corporations. This money then comes out as cash, and is flown by courier to banks which, for some reason, always seem to be in highly unstable systems.

One such courier run was undertaken by a Commander Maharg Jr, and was followed by undercover agents in the employ of the major police forces. The courier went though a large number of systems, heading south. He was doggedly pursued by the agents all the way to Miphize, where the agents were considerably delayed by a large Tri-Alliance raiding party. By the time they landed at York Starport, they had lost track of Maharg, but they were told he was seen heading in the direction of the Bank of Miphize. They set off hot foot for the bank, only to witness a spectacular explosion as the Bank was hit by a burst of shellfire from the MLA forces who were trying to hit a CPM gunner on the roof. The agents gave up in disgust as the evidence went with the bank, and they returned to report to their employers.

No-one has managed to find out who owns the corporation, and it has been said that the key to finding that out is what the 'J' stands for. It has been suggested that the J stands for Jades, but this has never been proved. It could also stand for Janus, which may mean that J-Corp is an INRA front company. Whatever, the last journalist who tried to investigate in depth met with a quick end at the hands of the pilot of a heavily armed Boa, registered as BB-122.
Source: I believe this is buried in the manual for First Encounters. Jade's First Encounters site had easily accessible version at https://www.jades.org/whoswho.htm

My best guess is Jaques at this point as it appears he fakes his death at the beginning of Frontier/First Encounters (both ocurr from January 1st, 3200 to December 16th, 3300) while disguised as Peter Jameson and then makes a hasty exit from the Bubble to Colonia. If I ever get my hands on Jaques, he is being jettisoned whilst the ship is in supercruise.

Note: I believe there is a Janus Incorporated faction or something similar in Elite Dangerous. Oh, how cute, they are even based in Delphi system ( https://inara.cz/elite/minorfaction/76569/ ).
 

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