UAs, Barnacles and other mysteries Thread 8 - The Canonn

[Niamhy]

yeah, but the trail is Pleidies > California Nebula > Witchhead Nebula, thats like a 5000 ly trip,

we really need a clearer version of the "map/message". There must be a way of clearing it up, particularly the left panel.

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I like puzzles but this has sucked all the enthusiasm I had for it. We haven't even worked out what the image represents let alone know what we are supposed to do with it. Just give us some help, you can use interpretive dance or what ever if you want.

I'm with you. Send me the answer FD, I'll sign an NDA, give you my kidneys, whatever you want. I just need to know that I'm not going *insane*

 

[Queex]

Hypothesis:

The anomalous orbital characteristics of Merope 5C are down to it not being a natural body, but a megastructure. It wasn't captured by Merope 5, it was parked there. As the amount of time needed for such an object to develop a 'normal' surface; either it is spectacularly old, designed to resemble and ordinary planet, or a planet that was converted into a mobile megastructure. We know that things as large as stations can be sent via jumps with human tech, so it's not impossible that a superior tech could move something that large. Although that is very scary.

However it was made, meta-alloys are an important part of its construction. The barnacles there, rather than being related to its creators in any way, are an unrelated organism capitalising on the presence of meta-alloys to thrive or excreting the meta-alloys as unusable.

 

[Emmdee]

What if owners of unknown probe and unknown artifact are simply interested in Merope 5C cos they found barnacels like we did.
They established perimeter around this system, a shel 150ly radius in hope that the creators of barnacels will show up. So unknown artifacts scan every space craft they encounter but our ships clearly aren't the thing they are looking for so they remain dormant.
Unknown probe looks like orbital probe. It have instructions to find Merope 5C and establish orbit around it then scan activity in the vicinity of the planet. Nothing more. They aren't interested in us at all. We could probably use reverse engineering and crack those instructions to find it's origin. But it may be imposible.
Now the real question is why there are no uknown probes in orbit of Mereope 5C? There are so many people flying in this sytem. Surely someone would found some till now.
So we also have those Farragut class ships in the system. Could it be that feds captured all of them? Maybe activity of capital ships in nearbay systems is a clue where to look? Have anyone chcked that?

I've been thinking along the same lines whilst lurking (no time to play recently).
Like no doubt numerous others way before me, my hunch (or more accurately serious of hunches are):

1. The UA shell is arranged as some kind of perimeter/boundary/demarkation/net either in reaction to us finding barnacles; OR something 'they' (Paul/INRA/Missing/Others) expect to find related to them (but for this to be true the barnacles in other nebulae may need another explanation - which Occam's Razor doesn't like very much - unless they just spread?)

2. The UP is hunting for something, and Merope 5C is just the first place it looks (see point 1) but maybe that is because that is where we found a barnacle first and the convoy captured ones we have access to so far are now expended or 'locked' in some way; Speculation: maybe 'wild' free floater UP will have other/further instructions where to look (i.e. different pointing behaviour or a different/variable message) - although I'm not convinced MB's comments exactly support this idea

3. That although the old lore is now in question, I can't help suspecting Pleione due to it's previous connections to Thargoid ships/wrecks; also Pleione 4 in particular is a very cool looking location (which I know was searched during the hunt for barnacles, but still); I have searched the system a couple of times but not exactly extensively. No I can't come up with a theory that makes the UP message lead there, and in any case that would be bad science!

4. That the resistant cargo racks and KEY hint suggest the UP will need to be taken somewhere to trigger/enable something at some point. Eg. Honking a wild UA while carry an UP to get a new message (I give that about a 1:100 probability of working, hopefully something more interesting)

None of this is new, clever or novel thinking, (or really helps at all), but hoping tomorrow will bring something new to the mix...

 

[taiidan]

Food for thought.

Thinking of the "missing" made me remember an older game called Homeworld. In it, a crashed ship is found on a civilization's desert planet with the "guidestone" onboard, with a basic map from Sol to their current planet, like a reference so they could get back home. Probably unrelated, but just a thought. Also, Homeworld may still be one of my favorite games of all time.

I think its reasonable to think the unknown probes or artifacts are related to the missing. They have had plenty of time to engineer or create different 'alien' looking technologies since leaving earth.

http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Guidestone?file=Guidestone.png

 

[CMDR_Mogriax]

Hypothesis:

The anomalous orbital characteristics of Merope 5C are down to it not being a natural body, but a megastructure. It wasn't captured by Merope 5, it was parked there. As the amount of time needed for such an object to develop a 'normal' surface; either it is spectacularly old, designed to resemble and ordinary planet, or a planet that was converted into a mobile megastructure. We know that things as large as stations can be sent via jumps with human tech, so it's not impossible that a superior tech could move something that large. Although that is very scary.

However it was made, meta-alloys are an important part of its construction. The barnacles there, rather than being related to its creators in any way, are an unrelated organism capitalising on the presence of meta-alloys to thrive or excreting the meta-alloys as unusable.

All very nice and a complex hypothesis but what does this mean? Merope 5c is artificial and has no other purpose other than to confuse us. Honestly if i take a load of sticks and point them to the dog poo on the sidewalk all from different directions.. will they tell me what dog did it and why? same goes for the UP for telling why they are pointing at merope 5c

 

[Dreadp1r4te]

you're right, the spectrogram isnt' something particularly outlandish or complicated. But "the message" is. In other games it would point to a picture, or location, or whatever. Ours is a puzzle hidden within an ultra-rare object hidden within a rare spawn hidden within a huge galaxy etc. All those variables are enough, the "message" should give us an answer, not another puzzle.

I really agree with this. Given the sheer complexity of our 400 billion star galaxy coupled with FDev's infamous penchant for RNG dependence, this puzzle has passed from the "fun and challenging" to the "boring and tedious." I've actually given up on the UP for a while and have focused on Engineering my ship, that's how tedious the UP puzzle has become. The entire thing is entirely too cryptic, and while FDev claims the puzzle is solvable, I have to wonder if they had someone test it who didn't already know the answer... correlations are always easier to draw once you know the solution.

 

[CMDR John Casey]

Now that MB confirmed that the UP soundglyph is a key, I'm betting my credits on the lock being something related to the tip-off messages mentioned by DB some time ago.

 

[MyklAtrum]

I dont think that story line has been thought out much. Looking for them would be pointless.

Kind of like looking for decoder rings right?

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yeah, but the trail is Pleidies > California Nebula > Witchhead Nebula, thats like a 5000 ly trip,

Maybe they went to Pleiades and then split off in the two directions?

 

[Queex]

All very nice and a complex hypothesis but what does this mean? Merope 5c is artificial and has no other purpose other than to confuse us. Honestly if i take a load of sticks and point them to the dog poo on the sidewalk all from different directions.. will they tell me what dog did it and why? same goes for the UP for telling why they are pointing at merope 5c

It might imply that other barnacle planets are rich in meta-alloys - perhaps they are other remnants of the builders, or there is something else of interest to be found on or near them?
Also, if Merope 5C jumps somewhere new or the big crater irises open and thousands of Thargoids spill out, I claim bragging rights.

 

[Redden Alt-Mer]

Hi Michael,

thanks for your pointers, I'm afraid we are in great need of them not to get too lost

To this purpose, is there anything beside logic that we can use to find potential free floating UPs (e.g., can the sonic image key be used anyhow to infer their location)?

 

[Colonel Kenney]

COL 70 is going to be the missing human colonies but have they changed much? Will they hate us? Will they embrace us? Will they be wanting to come home and take us over? Will they be part of power play? Will there be all sorts of new ships and new stations?

My imagination is going wild

 

[bmwalter68]

I really agree with this. Given the sheer complexity of our 400 billion star galaxy coupled with FDev's infamous penchant for RNG dependence, this puzzle has passed from the "fun and challenging" to the "boring and tedious." I've actually given up on the UP for a while and have focused on Engineering my ship, that's how tedious the UP puzzle has become. The entire thing is entirely too cryptic, and while FDev claims the puzzle is solvable, I have to wonder if they had someone test it who didn't already know the answer... correlations are always easier to draw once you know the solution.

I think it's going to come down to the right people looking at the right things in the right place. I think the choke point is that there aren't enough UP's available to allow for that. So, like the rest of the planet that has never seen a live UP, I'm reduced to throwing my (usually bad) ideas out for others to discuss, discount or god forbid try on one of the few UP's we still have available to the group.

That said, I'm not sure that what the UP has done so far is going to lead us toward finding free-floating UP's... As MB said, it's 'obvious in retrospect' so I imagine most of us will have red palm-prints on our foreheads for months after it's figured out. I think 'step back and look at the big picture' thinking may be the key to that, so taking a break may help. Once there are more UP's in our CRCR's, the answer will likely come much quicker.

 

[Erid]

I really agree with this. Given the sheer complexity of our 400 billion star galaxy coupled with FDev's infamous penchant for RNG dependence, this puzzle has passed from the "fun and challenging" to the "boring and tedious." I've actually given up on the UP for a while and have focused on Engineering my ship, that's how tedious the UP puzzle has become. The entire thing is entirely too cryptic, and while FDev claims the puzzle is solvable, I have to wonder if they had someone test it who didn't already know the answer... correlations are always easier to draw once you know the solution.

I'm sure puzzle has simple logic and several steps. Some steps was solved and some not

 

[Dark_Helmet]

Kind of like looking for decoder rings right?

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Maybe they went to Pleiades and then split off in the two directions?

I mean, if the two lines in the spectrograph line up with the witchhead and california nebulae, that would give a bit of meaning to that part of the image...but at the available speeds they had when they left they would be up to maybe 500LY from Merope? Maybe an idea to take the lines from merope to those nebulae and search approx 5-600ly into the journey?

 

[Queex]

That said, I'm not sure that what the UP has done so far is going to lead us toward finding free-floating UP's... As MB said, it's 'obvious in retrospect' so I imagine most of us will have red palm-prints on our foreheads for months after it's figured out. I think 'step back and look at the big picture' thinking may be the key to that, so taking a break may help. Once there are more UP's in our CRCR's, the answer will likely come much quicker.

What do you send probes out for? To either look at things, or find something.
Maybe the probes' creators are trying to find the 'lost' planet Merope 5 C.
They design the probes to point at it if they are close enough to detect it.
Is there a distance from Merope so large that the probes stop pointing towards it? In which case, we have a lower bound on the distance to the probes' creators space.

 

[Scorprox]

Hello Commanders. I am new to here and I have a question. As this threadname includes "other mysteries" I decided to try it here.
I a lonesome space cowboy, who made his lonely way to that interesting jacques station (i wonder if anyone of you is around here?). After a couple of days of mining for the community goal I started SRVing the systems landable planets/moons. Nothing interesting so far.
But I found something strange in the galaxy map. As I have not noticed that before I wanted to ask if this is considered a bug or if it might be possible that there is a kind of ghost star appearing in the direct neighbourhood of EOL PROU LW-L C8-197 B
I have recorded a short clip of my galaxy map issues. What do you think? Bug? [video=youtube;QD6X0dDs0TY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD6X0dDs0TY[/video]

 

[Niamhy]

could try that with an Artifact, they are plentyful. Grab a couple and head out to Barnards loop or Heart and Soul, see if it still points to Merope. (I dont have an uber-cargohold, or I would)

-- edit: has anyone taken then to Jaques? Do they still point to Merope?

 

[mach10]

Forget about wandering randomly around the universe trying to find a needle. Unless you have some truly revealing information on the search area, your time is better served trying to read the image. Assuming that the probe is linked to the lost colonizers is also another link that isn't implied anywhere, only supposition.

First part to solve is the reference point to start. The UP points to Merope 5C, verified and state by MB. Merope 5C is the first reference point, but where is it represented in the image? Is Merope 5C the sphere in the image or is the the smaller circle in the middle? This is the first thing that we must solve.

 

[PaderIcon]

could try that with an Artifact, they are plentyful. Grab a couple and head out to Barnards loop or Heart and Soul, see if it still points to Merope. (I dont have an uber-cargohold, or I would)

Plentyful? I never found ONE... searching right now in Hind and nothing...

 

[woodhouse]

Now that MB confirmed that the UP soundglyph is a key, I'm betting my credits on the lock being something related to the tip-off messages mentioned by DB some time ago.

This reminds me of Kerrash saying in a video that we're supposed to find alien ships following tip offs but somehow we have managed not to find them...
Part of the clue may not be obvious from the key and won't be clear until we've seen whatever is to be unlocked.