This is what I don't understand.
Firstly let's discount the POI's for the moment, and just assume we are trying to locate a persistant, static Barnacle. Now, consider that the size of them is likely to be smaller than a settlement / city. Settlements are barely visible from very high up - just a few pixels in size. People have stated that the crashed persistant Anaconda's can be seen from around ~15km up, that also suggests they can't be seen beyond ~15km on a horizontal view (landscape allowing). And that's when you known where to look for them. No way then that a Barnacle can be seen from very high up if they are Anaconda sized.
So on a planet that is Earth sized, you have 510,072,000 km squared. The object you are looking for cannot be seen beyond ~15km distance. That makes the odds of discovering a persistant wreck very, very small even on a single planet. People are even having trouble finding persistent downed Anaconda's when they have the sites coordinates (and from experience I can say they are not easy to find). Throw in an entire nebula full of planets and possibly moons (we don't know if we are limited to just planets of a certain type / size after all), and it starts to seem more than a little crazy.
Barnacles in POI are a different story perhaps, as those spawn dictated by whatever parameters Frontier set - so that is just a case of getting the right POI when in the right location. Maybe...perhaps. Possibly...
It's these facts that are making me think we shouldn't just be "combing the desert" as it were, but instead should be searching and following up on any leads that may result in a clue about a more accurate location of at least one barnacle. I'm following up the Peregrina angle, I haven't seen confirmation that anyone has checked the stations there for news articles and hung around to see if anything interesting happens. Places that Galnet has mentioned in relation to the UAs might be good, Palin was investigating under the Federation and maybe there is something there to give a hint, and just checking every local news source of every station you dock at might be a good idea incase you stumble across anything.
Also there could be something left to decipher from the UA's.
If we carry on just looking blindly we could very well spend hundreds of hours each with no success and end up giving up on the whole thing when if we'd spent some of that time searching around for answers we might have come to the solution far sooner.
I personally plan to become Command Squiggsy: Ace Detective and have me some fun
I think it's clear this is a monumental task. One look at my planetary survey data (
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f4LX9dMGuudvOmFvQBr-8f32VSqxzzwS_XnhrUAebBA) shows you just how much we have to do with the information available. If we are checking every blue POI, that takes time. Granted, only two CMDR's have contributed to my survey so far (and one of them is me), but it's still a tremendous amount of real estate left uncovered. I spent all day yesterday, and added in results from earlier in the week, to this survey (the ones I could find). It's still just a small amount of ground, and as we have more data added, it'll get more complicated to track. It'd be nice if we could make some detailed maps of these planets, and I have some ideas for how to do that - but the sheer volume of work necessary is daunting.
This is the sort of thing that will very quickly burn us out. I think, in lieu of further hints, what we need to do is just step back, take some time off, let the newer explorers take the work load, and just relax. The threadnaught is chugging along at full speed and that take time just to catch up - I must have spent at least 50% of my time on this search just reading these threads. That's only constructive if it helps someone else find what we're looking for, which so far hasn't happened, and that means the threadnaught hasn't earned its keep yet. But it's also too early to make that judgement. And that's it right there, in my opinion - it's too early. The mystery we've set out to solve is a big one. In real life, many mysteries can take years to solve - some never get solved. We're expecting this to be solved in a matter of months? Some of the newest details in this mystery only came out within the last few days. Maybe this is going to take time. We need to refresh and maybe even just wait for more clues to appear in Galnet. Sirius Corp is still analyzing the Antares wreckage. Maybe they will discover something that will help us? Who knows? We've been juggling alot of resources in this research. One thing we haven't been managing so well is time. That's not to say we should stop, but just maybe pace ourselves. I know that means it will take that much longer to find it, but maybe that's what we need. Time off can make a world of difference.
In any case, my survey project will remain available and I will continue to add entries to it as they are submitted. My mission has expired, but I stopped caring about those credits days ago. I could have made 10 times what they were paying me in the 6 days I spent investigating this. The only reason I kept doing this investigation long past its worth in credits is because I was actually enjoying it. I still am - just in a way I never really expected. And I think it's important to not get burned out. Time brings many gifts, among them clarity and peace of mind. I'm not saying stop if you're having fun, or if you just started. By all means, enjoy the search, but if you feel you're getting burned out or sick of it, go do something else for a while! There's no harm in taking a break - in fact, it's probably what your mind is telling you to do.