Hi, my first post on forums and i dont know if iam posting in right thread or if i should create a new one. But what the hell...
Last 4 days a i had a total blast, one of the best times in my gaming "life"! Bought ViPER IV, fited it for explo/mission - i call it my universal fit and headed towards Merope. 2 hours after my arrival a found my first Barnacle, accidentaly the persistent one on 5C.
I found the barnacle in its "minned" state (which i did not know in that time). So i made a lot of screens, shared them with friends and headed to Merope 2a to see those Faraguts hovering above Barnacles.
1 hour latter i found the Faragut with its escort and 30mins after that i found the barnacle. What a surprise, when i saw that barnacle is guarded with "drones". Also this was the first time i realized that this barnacle is different, that its "secondary roots" are bigger, sharper. So i rode back to my ship, took down the drones in my Viper and went back to my SRV. What happened in the next 30 minutes was probably the best experience in Elite so far for me. I saw "the blooms", tried to shot them, opened cargo and harvested them. Found a lot of minerals/metals this way. But then i saw some kind of "Big Bloom". Did the same, but got Meta Alloy. And then it got me like blow into the head. What if UA's, Barnacles, UP's work in nearly the same way as Tiberium does in Command and Conquer series?
1)Probes are traveling through galaxy, looking for suitable worlds for terraforming and then transfer the signal "home" to Merope, where is some kind of "gateway" to Witchspace or wherever are they coming from.
2)The probes with "seed pods" come to those suitable worlds and send/plant their pods in the soil.
3)After a while main barnacle comes to life and grows. Barnacle starts to harvest various minerals and metals that are needed and organically transforms them (from the description of meta alloys) into the form of Meta Alloy. This results in the growth of secondary barnacle roots where small and big blooms grow. And later possibly in reproduction of said "primary barnacle" into more barnacles and basically colonising the whole world in coming months/years.
4) Its one huge living organism/plant/fungus that spreads this way.
5) The fact, that we found those 3 Alien objects is kind of logical. Probes are small, hard to spot. The same thing applies to vessels with seeds. What is "easier" to spot are Barnacles, which are bigger and on the same spot. So "they" were in our space long before we actualy found them and were already spreading, probing and scouting our space. Then the Barnacle on Merope 5C sprouted and things went crazy.
So what if - "they" are terraforming worlds to their needs so they can live on them?
PS: english is not my native lang. big greetings from Czech Republic!
PSS: kudos to those that to the hard work with probes and spectograms!