As far as the Club and earthlikes, that was part of CMDR Salomé’s post mortem message about the club and their contingencies iirc.
The Quest To Find Raxxla
- Thread starter Macros Black
- Start date
It is actually a good idea to go inside the ball with the external camera.
Anyone think it is significant that the far right hand side of the FSS spectrum is the only part that is not labeled? Check this out for yourself. Honk the system, open up your FSS and tune the scanner to the far right hand side of the spectrum. You’ll notice that, unlike the left-hand side, there is no label for the farthest right hand portion of the signal spectrums. The “gas giant” label doesnt extend over the farthest right hand side of the FSS.
Could this be where signal sources for “exotic” stars or “rogue” planets might appear? I.e., could this be a way to find Raxxla?
Could this be where signal sources for “exotic” stars or “rogue” planets might appear? I.e., could this be a way to find Raxxla?
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That would be interesting. It's that or they messed up and it's a glitch and it should be slid to the right more. I've noticed some things need you to have it all the way too far to the left potentially are off the side at times. Either way potentially. Since most things seemed to be centred correctly. Unless I'm missing something. Not sure if that is a bug or intended. I also might be remembering it wrong.
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Considering they still haven’t fixed the “planet already scanned” bug with the DSS, and the FSS had some fun times with repeating evey scan of an asteroid cluster, my money would be on a bit of a bug 
Considering they still haven’t fixed the “planet already scanned” bug with the DSS, and the FSS had some fun times with repeating evey scan of an asteroid cluster, my money would be on a bit of a bug
Yeah that’s something I wish would be changed. When you honk a system with a ton of asteroid belts in it you get the 5 min roll of ‘discovered belt system blah blah’ over and over and it’s not like it’s small. Perhaps stick them in the little notification panel to the right like the old ADS used to.
Considering they still haven’t fixed the “planet already scanned” bug with the DSS, and the FSS had some fun times with repeating evey scan of an asteroid cluster, my money would be on a bit of a bug
Just tried to submit a bug report on this to see if they responded with the “working as intended” message. Unfortunately, the page won’t load when I try to create a new ticket. The bug page is now bugged.
Hey dawg, I saw you like to report bugs, so we bugged the bug report page to let you submit a bug report bug report.
This is what Raxxla or the Omphalos Rift may look like, based on the thumbnail displayed in the Codex.
The positives:
The negatives:
Suggestion to explorers seeking Raxxla: Keep an eye out for signal sources very close to the star. These should be discovered automatically due to close proximity and appear at the top of the ship's navigation panel.
- A hexagonal dotted line is appropriate for depicting a portal since a portal is not made out of solid material, is temporary, and could be transparent.
- The Codex entry on Raxxla also mentions a portal: "Several versions of the Raxxla story mention an alien artefact, the Omphalos Rift, described as a gateway or tunnel through which parallel universes can be accessed."
- A circle with a dot in the middle is the alchemical symbol for the sun, a star.
- Interpreting the circle with a dot as a star is fitting for the context of a portal. Creating a portal requires a massive energy source and stars emit huge amounts of energy.
- The funnel-shaped form fits the function nicely. The back end is larger thereby increasing surface area for collecting energy from a star, and the front end is smaller thereby concentrating said energy.
- The six pieces also fit together in three dimensions and doing so closes the front, allowing for the necessary function of shutting down the portal by physical means.
The negatives:
- The three segments around the circle with a dot remain open to interpretation and are not present in the model in any way.
- What is holding the six pieces together? Any force exerted by the portal would set the pieces adrift in space.
- Spatial dimensions cannot be inferred from the two-dimensional drawing. The size is unknown and the shape could be a lot longer, shorter, tapered, or less tapered.
Suggestion to explorers seeking Raxxla: Keep an eye out for signal sources very close to the star. These should be discovered automatically due to close proximity and appear at the top of the ship's navigation panel.
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Dark wheel station confirmed? Canonn NDA chat confirmed https://imgur.com/gallery/nMZVO1X
The guardian gateways already potentially fit that.
Did anyone realize the guardian gateway parts look like a gun. A german leuger and something else?
https://imgur.com/a/M3fRZ05
There are multiple parts that are clearly simply guns. Why is 1 million year old tech modelled after ww2 area weapons?
Blimey. I'd forgotten about that.
It's been a long road, getting from there.... ahem. Yes. When I put Raxxla in those fan novels I was trying to figure out a way to have Raxxla be a portal and a planet (as per description in the Dark Wheel) which had somehow not been found despite decades of searching. I figured it had to be meta-physical in some manner, hence the wierdness/witchspace implementation in Mutabilis. I'd do it differently now (not that I have anything to do with Raxxla in ED I hasten to add), but that sort of slightly ethereal, magical, otherworldness struck me as quite a good way of realising Raxxla.
Oolite was true to the original game Elite, where we had different 'galaxies', galactic hyperspace and other conventions now long abandoned by ED. Whatever they do with Raxxla in ED, it will be different.
I hope they come up with something compelling, but, whatever they do, it's going to be very very tough to make it live up to 30+ years of expectation and also makes it more than one person going "here it is" and everyone else watching it on Youtube. Tough one.
Cheers,
Drew.
How can we know more?
Sounds fishy. How can a station orbit the dark side of a moon that orbits a gas giant?
The gas giant is not a light source. You would need a very peculiar set of orbital resonances to keep the station in eternal shadow form the moon.
The station in the codex would be brightly lit by the red star. It also looks to close to the star to fit a gas giant, in addition to the moon in the picture. I don't think the picture is of the actual Dark Wheel station. At least if the eight moon thing is true.
This chat is nothing special. It's just a weak interpretation of the Codex entry.
Edit (to be more constructive):
- Finding TDW stations makes Raxxla hunt easier | This is pretty obvious to me. As I played dozens of games over 15 years and solved mysteries with my guilds and myself. My personal experience tells me so.
- Orbiting the 8th moon of a GG, already known. It could've been orbiting permenant dark side of the moon and the planet, with moon being at the L2 of the planet and the station being at the L2 of the moon, but that wouldn't have given us the codex screenshot as we would've seen the planet in the background too.
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The double L2 configuration could work i theory but with seven moons orbiting between the gas giant and the moon, it doesn't sound very stabile.
I've been taking a break from ED for the last two weeks or so but haven't stopped reading this thread or thinking about Raxxla. My thinking has been changing a little, mostly due to alternative interpretations of the Alleged Toast of The Dark Wheel. Apologies for the long explanations but here's the TL; DR:
1: I believe there is potentially another POI related to Raxxla, maybe even two (one close to the Bubble, the other very remote).
2: I believe that at least one past member of The Dark Wheel found Raxxla but used the Alleged Toast to promote the mystery, rather than give an exact location. Whether The Dark Wheel knows, or is able to reach, Raxxla's location themselves is uncertain but it may be a dangerous, risky journey.
I'm assuming that the essence of what was in The Dark Wheel novella is still canon. Risky, certainly, but with so little known I am loath to dismiss it entirely.
When I once more feel like playing ED (probably not long, having been playing other games they seem shallow in comparison) I will want to test these ideas. One thing I can do is visit The Void and look for the brightest stars or other standout systems - it is quite desolate so Wolf-Rayet and O type stars will stand out, as will supergiants/giants. Another is to try and guess where Jason Ryder might have found his evidence. He seems to have been based around Tionisla or the Old Worlds, so perhaps searching 'up' from the Galactic Plane might yield something, although how he found the evidence is another matter - the question of where he might have been looking requires more thought, yet.
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FWIW, I suspect The Dark Wheel requires its members to be triple Elite but that does not automatically mean that one needs to be triple Elite in order to find Raxxla. I doubt superpower rank is required for either (and at the start of the game, the top ranks were Post Commander and Marquis, iirc, so the current max rank ought not to be required if it was).
1: I believe there is potentially another POI related to Raxxla, maybe even two (one close to the Bubble, the other very remote).
2: I believe that at least one past member of The Dark Wheel found Raxxla but used the Alleged Toast to promote the mystery, rather than give an exact location. Whether The Dark Wheel knows, or is able to reach, Raxxla's location themselves is uncertain but it may be a dangerous, risky journey.
I'm assuming that the essence of what was in The Dark Wheel novella is still canon. Risky, certainly, but with so little known I am loath to dismiss it entirely.
My thoughts often go back to what was said in the The Dark Wheel by Robert Holdstock. The key details are 1) that Jason Ryder claimed (according to Rafe Zetter) to have found evidence for the real existence of Raxxla and 2) that Jason Ryder wanted to put an expedition together to find it. This means that he did not find Raxxla himself, despite having encountered that evidence, so the evidence either did not give a sufficiently accurate location for him to find it solo or reaching it was likely to be so difficult that a group effort was required. The evidence that Jason Ryder found would have to be close enough to the Bubble for him to have located it in his souped-up Cobra MkIII. This evidence is something that might be in-game.
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I have been thinking more about the nature of Raxxla, both from an in-Universe and meta perspective. What DJ Truthsayer said in the recent livestream with Obsidian Ant about only David Braben, Michael Brookes, one 3D person and one sound person tells me that Raxxla is a custom asset, or includes custom assets as part of the mystery, and that Raxxla, or those parts of the mystery that use the custom assets, are probably in a POI, like the Zurara. Thinking about how to make Raxxla impressive, both in lore and in the game, I have been increasingly of the view that it is a two-way wormhole or gate to a distant location. From this perspective, I can see two possibilities: 1) that the 'far side' can only be reached from the near side, either because it is permit-locked or in an unreachable location and 2) that the 'far side' can be reached independently of the 'near side' but is a long journey, albeit granting the possibility of reaching the 'near side' without needing to solve whatever problems/clues lead to that location. This may mean that the 'far side' can be found more easily! From the wording of the Alleged Toast, I can believe that the two sentences that begin with 'To the...' might be referring to the two sides of the gateway. One side would then be 'the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies' and the other 'the siren of the deepest void'. One of the FD-named regions of the Milky Way is 'The Void'. It is possible that this distant region could harbour the 'far side' of the gateway, allowing quick access to a system that is special in some way, and certainly allowing for faster travel to and ease of exploitation of that region. There is also another possibility, based upon something Michael Brookes once said on a livestream with Ed Lewis a long time ago, about the view of the Milky Way being spectacular from distant star clusters. It is possible that the 'far side' could be in one of these clusters, providing a spectacular view and access to an otherwise unreachable star cluster. (There really are stars in ED way outside the Galactic Plane but unless you know their names you cannot zoom out far enough to select them and even if you do know their names, the camera does not stay on them for long).
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Thinking about the Alleged Toast, it is important to remember that it is Alleged, and should be treated with some caution. Finding The Dark Wheel station will hopefully clear up whether it is accurate. If it is accurate, the implication is that someone in The Dark Wheel is giving out clues to Raxxla, or at least keeping the other members thinking about it. It seems unlikely that anyone would want to give away an exact location in a toast ('To systemname ab-c a100' would be rather dry language!) but rather promote mystery. It does imply that something is or was know about Raxxla's location, even if no one who made it there ever returned to confirm it. If Elite pilots are not returning, though, I wonder how dangerous it might be!
.
I have been thinking more about the nature of Raxxla, both from an in-Universe and meta perspective. What DJ Truthsayer said in the recent livestream with Obsidian Ant about only David Braben, Michael Brookes, one 3D person and one sound person tells me that Raxxla is a custom asset, or includes custom assets as part of the mystery, and that Raxxla, or those parts of the mystery that use the custom assets, are probably in a POI, like the Zurara. Thinking about how to make Raxxla impressive, both in lore and in the game, I have been increasingly of the view that it is a two-way wormhole or gate to a distant location. From this perspective, I can see two possibilities: 1) that the 'far side' can only be reached from the near side, either because it is permit-locked or in an unreachable location and 2) that the 'far side' can be reached independently of the 'near side' but is a long journey, albeit granting the possibility of reaching the 'near side' without needing to solve whatever problems/clues lead to that location. This may mean that the 'far side' can be found more easily! From the wording of the Alleged Toast, I can believe that the two sentences that begin with 'To the...' might be referring to the two sides of the gateway. One side would then be 'the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies' and the other 'the siren of the deepest void'. One of the FD-named regions of the Milky Way is 'The Void'. It is possible that this distant region could harbour the 'far side' of the gateway, allowing quick access to a system that is special in some way, and certainly allowing for faster travel to and ease of exploitation of that region. There is also another possibility, based upon something Michael Brookes once said on a livestream with Ed Lewis a long time ago, about the view of the Milky Way being spectacular from distant star clusters. It is possible that the 'far side' could be in one of these clusters, providing a spectacular view and access to an otherwise unreachable star cluster. (There really are stars in ED way outside the Galactic Plane but unless you know their names you cannot zoom out far enough to select them and even if you do know their names, the camera does not stay on them for long).
.
Thinking about the Alleged Toast, it is important to remember that it is Alleged, and should be treated with some caution. Finding The Dark Wheel station will hopefully clear up whether it is accurate. If it is accurate, the implication is that someone in The Dark Wheel is giving out clues to Raxxla, or at least keeping the other members thinking about it. It seems unlikely that anyone would want to give away an exact location in a toast ('To systemname ab-c a100' would be rather dry language!) but rather promote mystery. It does imply that something is or was know about Raxxla's location, even if no one who made it there ever returned to confirm it. If Elite pilots are not returning, though, I wonder how dangerous it might be!
.
FWIW, I suspect The Dark Wheel requires its members to be triple Elite but that does not automatically mean that one needs to be triple Elite in order to find Raxxla. I doubt superpower rank is required for either (and at the start of the game, the top ranks were Post Commander and Marquis, iirc, so the current max rank ought not to be required if it was).
Blimey. I'd forgotten about that.
Yes. When I put Raxxla in those fan novels I was trying to figure out a way to have Raxxla be a portal and a planet (as per description in the Dark Wheel) which had somehow not been found despite decades of searching. I figured it had to be meta-physical in some manner, hence the wierdness/witchspace implementation in Mutabilis. I'd do it differently now (not that I have anything to do with Raxxla in ED I hasten to add), but that sort of slightly ethereal, magical, otherworldness struck me as quite a good way of realising Raxxla.
Oolite was true to the original game Elite, where we had different 'galaxies', galactic hyperspace and other conventions now long abandoned by ED. Whatever they do with Raxxla in ED, it will be different.
Hi Drew! The reason I reference those books is that we can still found many small pieces of those events and universe in the game right now as unconnected fragments copied 1 on 1, so I believe they are still used as one of the sources for FD inspiration.
I have no words to describe Your passion to do such a huge work for free. Thanks for all the effort and fun You made us with those books.
The only major reason I could think of for excommunication of those books is *insert conspiracy theory here*.
Oops I see this idea has already been given my bad Sry Prorokpl.