"The Stones"

Bob_H

B

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Fiskerstrand

F
They also hinted at other "ghost" ships out there during the livestream.. this led to me playing a bit around with various OR/XOR as well as pattern identification based on the dots (based on the weird social media posts). The one I tried working with was Madness and Ghosts 5/5 from Nefertem that seemed to fit the pattern, but there might be others out there that can provide a key, perhaps. Not that I've been able to come up with anything
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
TheBlackCat said:
I had the same thoughts after listening to all of the logs in-game.

If it was a Faraday Cage then I would have expected the head scientist to call it such by name. The lower-case and single word "cage" being used twice in the logs to me indicates and actual cage to contain a living thing.

That it was breaking down materials also indicates to me it was covered in or exuding the Thargoid corrosive green goo.

To me, I think they recovered a hurt or dying Thargoid pilot.
Click to expand...
Possibly, but I can't see anything that it was an actual Thargoid - there's certainly nothing 'giant insect'-esque in the descriptions. Personally I'd expect that to come out from the descriptions if it was.

How they describe it:
  1. an object
  2. unclear if it's the pilot, the cargo, or an organic part of the ship itself
  3. inert
  4. breaking down the strongest bulkheads (apparently despite being inert)
  5. it became noisy (and they suspect noisier in frequencies below the range of human hearing)
  6. it causes EM interference
(A note on B - I think it's worth us bearing in mind that the lack of clarity can be put down to them taking into account that wht they've found is alien, and so they've got no idea what the form of one of the actual aliens would be.)

There's a lot of stuff there that doesn't particularly match what we know of actual Thargoids, but does match what we know of Thargoid tech. So it seems more likely to me that they found a specific bit of Thargoid tech rather than an actual Thargoid.
 

Maelstrom5K

M
Zen2a said:
Why take more fuel and the mercenaries without knowing their future secret mission?
Click to expand...
Fuel is obvious. Why would you leave the bubble without enough fuel to return? The GalNet article in Chukchan says it was just enough to reach the LP. Especially true, if you need some kind of special, refined material as fuel.
Thus I assume a stop en route to the LP was already planned when leaving Chukchan, for fuel, further orders (take fuel, go to the LP, maintain comm silence, forget we ever met) and some kind of a key. Or maybe rather not "go to the LP" but the local contact provided "I have been told you will need mercs, additional fuel and this key", but didn't know where to use the key either (more secure, because the guy with the key doesn't know where it will fit).
The mercs are a mere speculation, because form the crashed Sidewinder log the mercs are obviously not part of informed the core crew as in "provided by the client".
 
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The Mac is Back

T
With FDrv posting about Gen ships, has anyone looked into the mysterious alien signal that drove one ship mad?

"Generation Ship Thetis was discovered by CMDR Rhaider on April 28, 3303. It is located in Nefertem, orbiting the planet Nefertem 6 A.
Shortly into the Thetis's ninth generation, passengers began reporting whispering sounds coming from comms units. The sounds, a digital signal being picked up by the ship's comms array, drove passengers homicidally insane, resulting in the loss of whole decks. The signal was found to have originated from an uninhabited planet that the Thetis had passed 15 lightyears earlier."
 

G4RY

G4RY
The Mac is Back said:
With FDrv posting about Gen ships, has anyone looked into the mysterious alien signal that drove one ship mad?

"Generation Ship Thetis was discovered by CMDR Rhaider on April 28, 3303. It is located in Nefertem, orbiting the planet Nefertem 6 A.
Shortly into the Thetis's ninth generation, passengers began reporting whispering sounds coming from comms units. The sounds, a digital signal being picked up by the ship's comms array, drove passengers homicidally insane, resulting in the loss of whole decks. The signal was found to have originated from an uninhabited planet that the Thetis had passed 15 lightyears earlier."
Click to expand...

Oohhhh :eek: i remember visiting that one! Log 5 = brown pants time!

Where is this info about 15ly prior?
Edit : its in the logs 🤦‍♂️ nevermind!!
 

crispience

C
I tested the LP ciphertext against any simple rotation/reverse style subtitution (e.g. rot13) without success.
Here's my python program in case anyone wants to take it further.
Iterating over every permutation of A-Z0-9 isn't feasible.

[EDIT: I updated it with some more fine-grained reversing of the character set]
[EDIT: bug fix]
[EDIT: new version with even more fine-grained reversing -- still no joy]
Python: 
#!/usr/bin/python3

import string
import itertools
import math
import time

def reverse(s): return s[::-1]
def rotate(s): return s[1:] + s[0]

CIPHERTEXT="8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-:F563-21-574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y- 45TG4.BTJ-Y.6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234"

CHARSET = string.ascii_uppercase + "0123456789" + " +-.:"

SENTINELS=[ "MUSCA", "CHUKCHAN", "COALSACK", "ADAMASTOR", "THARGOID", "AZIMUTH", "CARVER" ]

def testmap(mapping):
    plain = CIPHERTEXT.translate( str.maketrans(CHARSET, mapping) )
    #print( "%2d: %s\n" % (i, plain), end='')
    for txt in SENTINELS:
        if txt in plain:
            print("\n\n\nFOUND!\n\n\n\n")
            print(mapping)
            exit(0)

def permset(charset_bits):
    # permute every part of charset_bits
    global COUNT
    for perm in itertools.permutations(charset_bits):
        mapping = ''.join(perm)
        if COUNT % PRINT_EVERY == 0:
            print("%9d %s" % (COUNT, mapping) )
        testmap(mapping)
        COUNT += 1

def rotate_reverse_bit( head, tail):
    #print(">>>" + str(head) + str(tail))
    if tail:
        tail = tail[:]  # copy
        bit = tail.pop(0)
        if len(bit) > 2:
            for i in range(len(bit)):
                rotate_reverse_bit(head + [bit], tail)
                rotate_reverse_bit(head + [reverse(bit)], tail)
                bit = rotate(bit)
        elif len(bit) == 2:
            rotate_reverse_bit(head + [bit], tail)
            rotate_reverse_bit(head + [reverse(bit)], tail)
        else:
            rotate_reverse_bit(head + [bit], tail)
    else: # end  of recursion; do it
        #print(head)
        permset(head)
        return

def count_perms(bits):
    bcount = math.factorial(len(bits))  # base number of permutations
    for bit in bits:
        if len(bit) > 2:
            bcount *= len(bit) # rotations
        if len(bit) > 1:
            bcount *= 2 # reversal
    return bcount



PRINT_EVERY = 10000
COUNT = 0

BITS = ["ABCDEFGHIJKLM", "NOPQRSTUVWXYZ", "0123456789"] + list(" +-.:")

print( "Permutations = " + str(count_perms(BITS)))
time.sleep(4)
rotate_reverse_bit( [], BITS )
print( "COUNT = " + str(COUNT))
 
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Crassus

Crassus
Coming back to what befell the Lycaon: there are notable stellar phenomena in Alaunus: purpureum and flavum crystals. Log 1 says, that a scientist named ,,Gottlieb´´ got his suit breached, taking a mineral sample of a nearby asteroid. So this could mean, the virus that killed all people in the Lycaon developed from one of the crystals.
 

SalyutRising

S
crispience said:
I tested the LP ciphertext against any simple rotation/reverse style subtitution (e.g. rot13) without success.
Here's my python program in case anyone wants to take it further.
Iterating over every permutation of A-Z0-9 isn't feasible.

[EDIT: I updated it with some more fine-grained reversing of the character set]
[EDIT: bug fix]
Python: 
#!/usr/bin/python3

import string
import itertools

def reverse(s): return s[::-1]
def rotate(s): return s[1:] + s[0]

CIPHERTEXT="8BFGTY4PLU67-RTYO06.45:GN63-74PHGJI E67-:F563-21-574.9 ER34.6-DER8+WEST U.5 -RTG10 RTH8-4 6T.WR4564-21 +G134.2 RT55.4 GDW THE42.1LY 764.2Y- 45TG4.BTJ-Y.6ORT437.1D341-67.Y5DS 243 45TY-3234"

CHARSET = string.ascii_uppercase + "0123456789" + " +-.:"

SENTINELS=[ "MUSCA", "CHUKCHAN", "COALSACK", "ADAMASTOR", "THARGOID", "AZIMUTH", "CARVER" ]

def testset(charset):
    map = charset
    i = 0
    while i < len(charset)-1:
        map = rotate(map)
        i += 1
        plain = CIPHERTEXT.translate( str.maketrans(CHARSET, map) )
        #print( "%2d: %s\n" % (i, plain), end='')
        for txt in SENTINELS:
            if txt in plain:
                print("\n\n\nFOUND!\n\n\n\n")
                print(charset)
                exit(0)

def permset(charset_bits):
    PRINT_EVERY = 1000
    i = 0
    for perm in itertools.permutations(charset_bits):
        perm = ''.join(perm)
        if i % PRINT_EVERY == 0:
            print(perm)
        testset(perm)
        i += 1


permset( [string.ascii_uppercase,  "0123456789"] + list(" +-.:") )
permset( [reverse(string.ascii_uppercase),  "0123456789"] + list(" +-.:") )
permset( [string.ascii_uppercase,  reverse("0123456789")] + list(" +-.:") )
permset( [reverse(string.ascii_uppercase),  reverse("0123456789")] + list(" +-.:") )
Click to expand...
I hope FD are taking note that people are resorting to writing their own little programs to help. That is dedication. Well done. :D
 

whothe

W
Thatchinho said:
Possibly, but I can't see anything that it was an actual Thargoid - there's certainly nothing 'giant insect'-esque in the descriptions. Personally I'd expect that to come out from the descriptions if it was.

How they describe it:
  1. an object
  2. unclear if it's the pilot, the cargo, or an organic part of the ship itself
  3. inert
  4. breaking down the strongest bulkheads (apparently despite being inert)
  5. it became noisy (and they suspect noisier in frequencies below the range of human hearing)
  6. it causes EM interference
(A note on B - I think it's worth us bearing in mind that the lack of clarity can be put down to them taking into account that wht they've found is alien, and so they've got no idea what the form of one of the actual aliens would be.)

There's a lot of stuff there that doesn't particularly match what we know of actual Thargoids, but does match what we know of Thargoid tech. So it seems more likely to me that they found a specific bit of Thargoid tech rather than an actual Thargoid.
Click to expand...

Idk, seems to me quite likely that what they found is indeed an actual Thargoid. I know we're probably all envisioning the preying mantis looking thing from some of the artistic impression drawings we saw this summer, but it's also quite possible that thargoids have more than one form/type. And that a 'pilot' may be some kind of hybridized form more suited to hyperspace/witchspace travel? Possibly the 'artifact' is some kind of regenerative pod, that the tharg is inside of, for the moment. Perhaps after an injury going dormant while cellular regeneration takes over, giving the appearance of being 'inert' and at some point after healing, waking up and causing a .. ruckus in HIP 69200? Carver says the 'cage' won't be strong enough. That word imo suggests a creature more than some object. The yelling and shooting, why assume everyone has gone mad and turned on each other, Carver hasn't, panicky but not mad... but if the crew is shooting AT something...
 
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