Community Event / Creation Turning the Wheel

[Cryptography]

Taken from the Standing orders on the Elite Week Discord https://discord.gg/Wtgnsbq

Orders 04-05 July 3306

Day 4 of 5-7 for our active expansion - just a few more days!
And our work in LP 855-34 has payed off nicely - well done!

So, today, we focus on boosting TDW in Shinrarta Dezhra.

Bounty Hunting & Combat:

• Bounty Hunting in LFT 926. hand in only TDW bounty vouchers into any station in Shinrarta Dezhra.
• Scenarios at installations or megaships in LFT 926 generate TDW bounties that can be handed in to any station in Shinrarta Dezhra.

Commodity Trading:
- run profitable trades to TDWs planetary ports in SD 'Neumann Camp' and 'Puleston Arsenal'

Missions & Passengers:
- Lots of TDW missions in Shinrarta Dezhra

Exploration Data:
- Sell to TDWs planetary ports in SD 'Neumann Camp' and 'Puleston Arsenal'

Unfortunately, all of this requires access to Shinrarta.
If you don't have that access, you can still support by bounty-hunting for TDW in LFT 926, and saving a nice stack of bounty vouchers for later on.
They will become quite handy once our expansion concludes. (alas, you'd have to fly a bit safer for a few days, to make sure you don't blow up and lose the vouchers )
Or, ofc, you can focus on getting an Elite rank, and gain the ability to support TDW in Shinrarta.


To assist us with monitoring the expansion, please fly around the local systems with EDMC or similar tools active. This feeds data to the third party sites which then update the tools we use.

Keep Spinning The Wheel, Hamsters!

 

[Cryptography]

No additional special missions today. There is a tiny bit of activity to be had on the discord Rabid Hamsters group. We are on target to expand into the correct system via an invasion conflict.

 

[Dutchman141]

Call me daft but is possible to expand a faction like TDW into a permit locked system like Sol or not?
I read different opinions about that so I'm still in the dark about that.
Btw Sol did get a new faction added not to long ago "Aegis Core" aka "INRA", another suspicious faction under the control of "the Club" imho.

 

[Psyral]

Call me daft but is possible to expand a faction like TDW into a permit locked system like Sol or not?
I read different opinions about that so I'm still in the dark about that.
Btw Sol did get a new faction added not to long ago "Aegis Core" aka "INRA", another suspicious faction under the control of "the Club" imho.

As are we.
This will be tested. If any permit locked systems are expandable into by TDW because of something special then we will know when the expansion happens and we end up in Hodak. We are hoping that we don't end up in Hodak this expansion. The other theory is that certain "key" systems like Sol may be expandable into by special factions like TDW.
We are playing with something that for a long while people said was impossible. If you check the forums, many people have said for years that TDW couldn't even enter a state of expansion. ... yet we have.

The "We" is you, me, the many squadrons and player factions assisting, and independent Cmdrs who just pop in and do a few missions a day to nudge the needle more favorably in a better direction.
There is a "They" too. The factions connected to The Club. While it may seem that we should be actively working against those factions, we need to hold off on active opposition to those in the area of expansion from LFT 926 until it is done. Not because we like them, but because the delicate and sometimes volatile and fragile nature of BGS during a targeted expansion can be sent into chaos if a system that we don't want ends up with a retreat in it at the wrong time.
This is why it is a good idea to keep EDMC running while traveling around the LFT 926 expansion area. Even if you are not big on doing a lot of missions, this is still doing Recon for the project. It keeps the BGS numbers up to date.

...

Of a side note but somewhat related, I have been in contact with The Hammers of Slough. If you don't know about them, they have been helping in Turning The Wheel and do weekly streams on Sunday. They are also the famed hosts of the Sidewinder Demolition Derbies. After this expansion, in celebration, we are hoping to put together a Sunday (not this Sunday... maybe next) live streamed Demolition Derby at Slough Orbital hosted by the Hammers of Slough.. If you have never participated in one, they are really fun. I participated in one during one of @drew 's Lore Tour episodes. I now always keep a "Sloughwinder" parked at Slough Orbital.

Spoiler: My Sloughwinder

 

[Cryptography]

This is of course the million credit question.

All permit locked systems are very hard if not impossible to get into. Sol, Shinrarta and the faction capitals, Colonia and a few others are especially difficult because they have a special lock on them above and beyond the normal. There are examples where factions have got into permit locked systems, but these all long predate the current BGS rules.
The only way I believe it is possible for a normal faction, (PF or NPC), to get into a permit locked system is for them to have already exhausted all possible expansion and invasion options within their expansion cube. For most systems in the Bubble, this is around 100 systems! While probably not technically impossible, it is impossible under any sensible time frames.

We hope and have some indications to believe, that The Dark Wheel, as a lore-important faction, may trigger an exception to these rules.

I just saw Psyral's post covering much the same thing. Yes, its a long shot. We are testing the bounds of the possible. There will be inevitable failures but as shown by our expansion out of LFT 926, some successes too.

 

[Ashnak]

Just an aside... if you like thrashing ships and want a short (20 minutes or less, and that includes the trip) break from pushing the BGS, why not hop over to Lave in a small or medium ship, for the LaveCon and of course the Rush Job buckyball race (see my sig)? Unofficial sources state that we have at least one ship wrecked for every entry on the podium so far, and with the averages creeping down, that number can only rise...

 

[Dutchman141]

There are actually player factions/groups in favour of The Club?

It's great to see what's happening, I can't recall that working with TDW has been done on such scale and I've been playing since GPP, I could be wrong though.
TDW going actually in expansion is a good sign and very exciting.

I don't know why I didn't notice this event sooner, I realy like the idea and it gives me a new purpose to play ED again.

Let's show The Club they're not almighty.

 

[Dutchman141]

Just an aside... if you like thrashing ships and want a short (20 minutes or less, and that includes the trip) break from pushing the BGS, why not hop over to Lave in a small or medium ship, for the LaveCon and of course the Rush Job buckyball race (see my sig)? Unofficial sources state that we have at least one ship wrecked for every entry on the podium so far, and with the averages creeping down, that number can only rise...

Is that primarily for pc players? I'm on Xbox.
Besides that, I'm not that good at combat, I'm an explorer first and when I'm not out in the black I love running missions.
When TDW expands they'll probably end up in a war situation, I like killing some NPCs in a CZ or HazRes but that's about the only combat I do, and the eventual interdictions of course.

Thanks for the offer though.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Call me daft but is possible to expand a faction like TDW into a permit locked system like Sol or not?

Broadly speaking, it shouldn't be possible to expand TDW into Sol. There are three possibilities, though:
1) TDW behaves identically to all other factions and cannot expand into a conflict-locked system (or - as would be tested in Phase 2 - while it can expand into certain systems that other factions can't, Sol isn't one of them)
2) TDW has a special lore exception allowing it to expand into conflict-locked systems: the first expansion from a system near Sol sends it there.
3) TDW has a special lore exception allowing it to expand into conflict-locked systems but does not have any special exemption from the rules about expanding to permit-locked systems: as Sol is both, it can expand to Sol but only if all other alternatives are exhausted. (This would IMO be a bug, if so, but it seems very unlikely to be the case)

Ruled out back in late 2018 was a 4th possibility that TDW had special behaviour and unlike all other factions was not allowed to expand. As Psyral says, many people kept raising this theory long after it was disproved by events.

A 5th exceptionally unlikely possibility is that TDW has special rules that allow it to expand normally as it did in 2018, but not by invasion as it will likely be required to now. That will be tested and probably disproven very shortly.

Possibility 1 is of course by far the most likely in pure BGS terms. So far there's no evidence that TDW behaves any differently to any other Social Democracy in terms of BGS causes and effects. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that attempting it won't cause something to happen outside the pure operation of the BGS.

 

[Ashnak]

Is that primarily for pc players? I'm on Xbox.
Besides that, I'm not that good at combat, I'm an explorer first and when I'm not out in the black I love running missions.
When TDW expands they'll probably end up in a war situation, I like killing some NPCs in a CZ or HazRes but that's about the only combat I do, and the eventual interdictions of course.

Thanks for the offer though.

Any platform. The Virtual Lavecon runs on out-of-game platforms (all of them, it seems), the race is independent of your platform or gaming mode in any case - although the chance of meeting another racer on the course increases with the number of participants, so PC/Open is usually your best bet for that. But there's also an XBox pilot already up there on the scoreboard.

 

[Nikephorus Phocas]

I am going to go do some bounty huntin for TDW. Gives me an opportunity to use my recently engineered "Imperial" Corvette to bring down the pain. Will turning in bounties aid in my rep?

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

Call me daft but is possible to expand a faction like TDW into a permit locked system like Sol or not?
I read different opinions about that so I'm still in the dark about that.
Btw Sol did get a new faction added not to long ago "Aegis Core" aka "INRA", another suspicious faction under the control of "the Club" imho.

You will read many different opinions on all sides by people who "KNOW" one way or the other but the fact is that there is only ONE Minor Faction "like" TDW and that is TDW. And NOBODY has ever put it within 20 ly of Sol so the fact of the matter regardless of what side they are on ANYONE who tells you that they are absolutely 100% sure of what will happen is either a Frontier employee making a first official statement ever on the matter or a liar or someone who is so arrogant as to count their untested beliefs as facts. This my friend is the entire point of this phase of the experiment. None of us can possibly know what will happen until we try. There are many opinions and some of them quite well thought out with good reasoning but the fact is that nobody can KNOW outside of Frontier until someone does it.

 

[CMDR Kai Zen]

DOUBLEPOST?

 

[Dutchman141]

You will read many different opinions on all sides by people who "KNOW" one way or the other but the fact is that there is only ONE Minor Faction "like" TDW and that is TDW. And NOBODY has ever put it within 20 ly of Sol so the fact of the matter regardless of what side they are on ANYONE who tells you that they are absolutely 100% sure of what will happen is either a Frontier employee making a first official statement ever on the matter or a liar or someone who is so arrogant as to count their untested beliefs as facts. This my friend is the entire point of this phase of the experiment. None of us can possibly know what will happen until we try. There are many opinions and some of them quite well thought out with good reasoning but the fact is that nobody can KNOW outside of Frontier until someone does it.

And that's one of the reasons this event intrigues me so much, besides the mystery part.
There are so many who claim to "know" how it's put together and yes some theories sound very valid but this time something gets actually done to find out so we will realy know what holds truth and what doesn't.
Taking on such an endeavour on your own is spoiled energy but with such a great group of enthousiastic people who knows what can happen?

I'm excited to see where this leads, in the worst case we'll know what doesn't work but I hope for more then that.

 

[Esteban]

Jafnhau they own a non-dockable surface base according to EDDB, which might need verifying in person in case it's just bad data there.

Couldn't resist the temptation to take a look!

Upon approach I learned right away that the data appears to be incorrect...

Ok. Maybe there's nothing there, but I noted perhaps a couple of interesting things...

My contacts panel didn't show the base; is this because it's not a facility that can be docked at?

The installation has a data point and nothing else.

Spoiler alert: For those of you who may like to do this yourself, I suggest that you stop reading this post at this point. Happy travels!

Spoiler: a data point? so what?

I managed to activate it and scan it...

...upon scanning the data point, I got a message...

It's interesting that this mission is given by...

...the CIA.

Is there a relationship between the Pan Galactic Mining Corp & the CIA?

There's also a downed probe not too far from Drumond that generates an Intel Package. I don't belive that I can do anything but sell/turn this in. Is that true? The probe is "guarded" by a (clean) skimmer owned by the PGMC, but is easily scanned, as is commonly the case.

I don't want to go too far afoot from this thread's purpose so I'll stop here. If you're interested in more, I'll happily add to this post.

Edit:
I neglected in my initial post to mention a couple of things.
1 the job offer arrives with a zero time to complete, so I can't select the <check> selection to accept it - that's disappointing!
2 When scanned, the data point emits some sort of background noise. It's an eerie, robotic, unintelligible-speak (perhaps) kind of noise.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Sounds like either there's a bug, or this is "unfinished content" you're looking at. Either way, good question to bug the devs about: what SPECIFICALLY does this mysterious "Job Offer" entail?

For all we know, the "CIA" could just be some kind of panic default state for broken mission handouts, like "If no other misison-giver, then mission-giver=CIA".
Either way, extremely interesting! Still going round the galaxy, but I can't wait to get back!

 

[Psyral]

Sounds like either there's a bug, or this is "unfinished content" you're looking at. Either way, good question to bug the devs about: what SPECIFICALLY does this mysterious "Job Offer" entail?

For all we know, the "CIA" could just be some kind of panic default state for broken mission handouts, like "If no other misison-giver, then mission-giver=CIA".
Either way, extremely interesting! Still going round the galaxy, but I can't wait to get back!

The CIA is a player faction. The Dark Wheel (actually, the Cmdrs supporting it) reached a diplomatic agreement with them regarding LFT 926. They have a presence in over 20 systems. They do NOT have a presence there, though. Not sure why that job would show up....

Also Inara reports that Drummond Base has not been updated since Aug 22 2019, 11:32am. ... is someone running around without EDMC running?

 

[The Golden Knight]

Well I don't use external tools, honestly. I just had faith that Frontier can track things internally.

 

[Psyral]

Well I don't use external tools, honestly. I just had faith that Frontier can track things internally.

That really would be nice.

Absolutely no requirement to use 3rd party tools. I've heard arguments of it being immersion breaking to switch out to desktop websites and back again. I, personally, like to think of Inara, EDSM, EDDB, etc as part of my ship's computer. But it would have been nice for ED to have the ship computer do the things that simple websites do.... I mean it is over 1000 years in the future. ... I going to blame The Club for suppressing technology that would have allowed us to have these things on our ships.

 

[Staarlord]

Funny, about the "base that does not exist," mystery and data point terminal. I once wondered if there was such a data point that we could access for TDW that might grant a permit, or rendezvous type mission--something. I drove all around Puleston Arsenal looking for one to no avail. I never did check their second base, as the game kept freezing every time I tried to leave the Surface. So I called it quits.