And the three headed dog from hell.
Unknown Artefact (or artifact) Community Thread - The Canonn
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And the three headed dog from hell.
Hey, you did do something really important.
I like it.
Any of these items added in 1.2?
It will off course only confirm that it wants to go to Tau Ceti ;-)
3 more Cerberus plague CGs now. And in the one I tried (Bast) there are no tiers, just success or nothing. It seems to me they're set up to fail, so to move the story along.
3 headed dog... plagues coming 3 systems at a time. Does "3" have any significance to the UAs, other than the having 3 rows of those fin thingies? (sorry if this has all been covered before)
p.s. careful with the plague systems. Once docking is revoked, any ships stored there can't be retrieved. I was taking part in one and hope the CG doesn't end prematurely and end up with a stranded ship you can't get to.
3 headed dog... plagues coming 3 systems at a time. Does "3" have any significance to the UAs, other than the having 3 rows of those fin thingies? (sorry if this has all been covered before)
p.s. careful with the plague systems. Once docking is revoked, any ships stored there can't be retrieved. I was taking part in one and hope the CG doesn't end prematurely and end up with a stranded ship you can't get to.
no I don't think so, a few have been 'unlocked' but have been in game since launch/early update last few to have been found are Ophiuch Exino Artefacts and Ltt Hyper Sweets, check here for full list and pics from recent finds:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=63119&page=156
Here the full list of rares and what they are/do:
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Rare_Commodities
Checking them...
EDIT: What about listening to the UA after a taste of OnionHead?
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Rare_Commodities
Checking them...
EDIT: What about listening to the UA after a taste of OnionHead?
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Being one of the mewling many without a UA to our name, I got to thinking, can I simulate some of the behaviour of one to give me something to do to feel somehow useful? Well, no. Can't find any Toxic Waste to simulate the systems degradation. In any case, is the UA truly 'Toxic!' or is this simply the only/best way that a ship's computer has of translating data for the pilot, much as us 'hearing' Morse code and purring and so forth?
Anyhow, all this led to a notion which I do not believe has been explored but could be tested without fear of destroying an Unknown Artefact.
The Unknown Artefact will degrade various ship systems, knocking down the percentages. This got me to thinking... What else does something like that? This behaviour is reminiscent of our ships' Reboot/Repair facility. After all, the UA does not chew up the other cargo - reserving its toxic spite for operational ship systems.
About the last thing I would be thinking of doing had I a UA chewing up my ship would be to let it do it for hours. But, having sounded the basic notion off on Wishblend it seems not to be something which has been actively tried to date.
Soooo... some ideas that I hope to try out myself (Soon) or might find their way onto either of the current UA Bearers' schedule if agreeable...
1-- Could a ship containing a UA effectively 'feed' a UA over long enough a period as to actually give it (enough of) the components it is trying to appropriate for its own purposes?
1b-- Which components (fitted Modules) would or could better service a UA? Would not an Auto Repair Unit be the best 'picnic' of broadly compatible parts?
2-- Has a ship undergone Reboot/Repair while containing a UA? They know Morse; perhaps they are also compatible with our systems in this way.
TLDR: UA systems degradation an attempt at Reboot/Repair?
Anyhow, all this led to a notion which I do not believe has been explored but could be tested without fear of destroying an Unknown Artefact.
The Unknown Artefact will degrade various ship systems, knocking down the percentages. This got me to thinking... What else does something like that? This behaviour is reminiscent of our ships' Reboot/Repair facility. After all, the UA does not chew up the other cargo - reserving its toxic spite for operational ship systems.
About the last thing I would be thinking of doing had I a UA chewing up my ship would be to let it do it for hours. But, having sounded the basic notion off on Wishblend it seems not to be something which has been actively tried to date.
Soooo... some ideas that I hope to try out myself (Soon) or might find their way onto either of the current UA Bearers' schedule if agreeable...
1-- Could a ship containing a UA effectively 'feed' a UA over long enough a period as to actually give it (enough of) the components it is trying to appropriate for its own purposes?
1b-- Which components (fitted Modules) would or could better service a UA? Would not an Auto Repair Unit be the best 'picnic' of broadly compatible parts?
2-- Has a ship undergone Reboot/Repair while containing a UA? They know Morse; perhaps they are also compatible with our systems in this way.
TLDR: UA systems degradation an attempt at Reboot/Repair?
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I am not sure which theory you are referring to, but if the shoe fits... don't let me stop you.
The problem is that some people come up with all kinds of weird ideas that:
a) Aren't testable.
b) Don't have any basis in the game mechanics.
c) Don't have any basis in the universe's lore.
d) Don't take into account that it's a deliberately designed puzzle.
...and they're usually convinced that they have it all figured out and that their crazy idea is the only true path to wisdom and enlightenment.
Take the "it's a translator" idea. Okay, sure, but how will we test it?
If we ever want to get somewhere with this, we'll have to be more empiric.
Not really; the gist of my "Bokers" line was to point out that Kerrash' was saying that some theories here are just "way out there", not to give us a hint with the babelfish line. And seriously, the way that was latched on to? Talk about q.e.d.
Mind you, I do not actually have any problems with "crazy ideas" themselves - if there is even a slight, tiny, miniscule chance that it will lead somewhere. A good example of such a "good" crazy idea is trying to decode the patterns as Mayan numbers. The babelfish thing would be an example of a bad "crazy idea".
Isn't the Wiki page a repository of things that have and have not been tested?
As someone who originally suggested that there might be a 'scaled scarcity' of UA spawns based on how many are in the wild, I have to say that I'm no longer convinced of this - the mechanics of doing that, at a programming level, would be unique to the UA, as no other spawnable object does this, and I just can't see FD putting it in for this alone. This argument isn't mine, btw, but came from another member of the group who I'm sure I repped at the time, if I could
There is also no reason whatsoever to limit the number of UAs in such an absolute way, and good reasons not to. Again, this is a deliberate puzzle. What if you limit it to two and the owners just stop playing with the things in their cargo hold?
A limited spawn rate, combined with making it easy to lose the UA, suffices to keep the UAs from becoming an every-day item.
Yes and no; they only spawn inside those convoys. So we don't actually know where they originate.
I do think the "game mechanics" thing ought to be in people's minds.
If they had built in a mechanic that an object/ship would behave differently based on the contents of our cargo hold, we'd have seen it used for other things.
If they had designed one specific type of rare goods as a "translator", we'd have seen that too.
Stations behaving differently because of things dropped outside? Missions triggering or becoming available because things were sold? Game-wide events changing because something "expired" in space?
The only thing we know that the UA does in itself is morse out the name of the nearby "thing". I'm pretty convinced that in one instance (and probably lore-based) it's going to use a name different to the name we know - especially as it's a) easy from a coding point of view and b) doesn't involve complex game mechanics that we simply haven't seen the game "do" ...
Kerrash is right with the aquarium...
If they had built in a mechanic that an object/ship would behave differently based on the contents of our cargo hold, we'd have seen it used for other things.
If they had designed one specific type of rare goods as a "translator", we'd have seen that too.
Stations behaving differently because of things dropped outside? Missions triggering or becoming available because things were sold? Game-wide events changing because something "expired" in space?
The only thing we know that the UA does in itself is morse out the name of the nearby "thing". I'm pretty convinced that in one instance (and probably lore-based) it's going to use a name different to the name we know - especially as it's a) easy from a coding point of view and b) doesn't involve complex game mechanics that we simply haven't seen the game "do" ...
Kerrash is right with the aquarium...
It is more rare than an uncooked steak at the moment
So, ^^ both of these things - the absolute cap is completely unworkable within the game mechanics, let alone difficult to implement. As a long-time developer myself I can say it is, however, trivial to create, using a prng, an event that is exceedingly unlikely to occur, even from simple random number generators.
Example - generate a random number up to 2048 bits long and check if it's prime - a standard calculation used in asymmetric encryption (SSL is such a thing). This gives a rough probability of 1/617, if you use the rough estimate of 1/log(x) as the probability of a number being prime up to a maximum number x.
The probability halves if you use a number up to 4096 bits in length which, again, is a routine size used in cryptography systems that use primes.
How long would it take all the UA hunters here to go through 1230 signal sources? A couple of days?
And yes, I know that's a simplistic view of the probabilities - but sometimes it'll be shorter odds, and sometimes it'll be longer odds. No sine waves, no praying to the UA gods - just established methods of generating randomness that's controllable, unpredictable, and can be used to seed lots of things, like UA spawns as well as wedding parties
...
And yes, precisely - they must come from somewhere before they get into a convoy. But I think the likelihood of that source being somewhere we can go and catch them 'in the wild' is next to nil.
The convoys are the delivery mechanism for these items into the sim. Their actual source is a story point - as much as I don't want that to be true, that's where my hunch lies.
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Sorry bartmoss but I do not agree with you, at all.
And tell me, what gives you the authority to decide what is crazy and what is not? Your wisdom? Your superior mind? Common sense? I call this arrogance.
The common sense is the killer of immagination.
Ok, I could agree with you about the non testable theories. They are just that, ideas, smart sometimes, but not ingame. they end there.
Let's talk about the babelfish:
I have thought about it long time before Kerrash unfortunately used that metaphor... there should be a post about that in the previous thread.
BTW, yes, it could seem crazy, BUT, you have e device that sings, howls, purrs, and chitter, that seems Alien, that seems to communicate.
Then you have some funny thing coming from an English Cult Novel, that you simply put in your ear and you immediately understand any other language around you.
It's a space fiction novel. Very famous. Why not?
It's obvious that we are not looking for the babelfish himself! But we could look for something that could "decode" or "understand" what the UA is communicating. It is even striving to produce a kind of weird morse.
So you should call it a very crazy idea, because to some "square" (no offence!) mind could seem like that, but don't tell us that it is not testable in game!
We've put every kind of rubbish around the UA
It's a game full of sensors, decoders, scanners of all sorts. One throws an idea that seems crazy to share with other people, then some other one give a better sense to it adding some detail that make it seem not crazy anymore. For example finding something in game that could do the trick.
An Orca? Yes, it's crazy. So? English people are famous for there "unique" sense of humour... To me it seems just some D.Adams/Monty Python easter egg.
what?! Flying fishes?!
I'm just asking again some disruptive mind and some lateral thinking.
And it could be funny too.
Jepp. Very much this.
The UA has an explosion animation, so I suspect it has animation when it does it's thing to.
The translator idea is dificult to see, but we may have over looked something obvious. I.e. A Class sensors.
Did you se something interesting out there?
We don't have enough information to even know the good ideas from the bad. Even those 4 criteria aren't "canon". Maybe Frontier added mechanics specifically for this. Maybe the item doesn't fit into traditional lore (hence the Galnet post about species diversity). Maybe it doesn't even have a solution. Is the UA a puzzle? Or maybe it's the location of the UAs. Or maybe it's the ships in the convoy? Or their destination? Maybe we should be listening to the ships? Maybe Frontier added a pretty alien-esque item to listen to, and not realised we'd go on such a galaxy-wide hunt for some meaning to it. Who knows?
All the good ideas combined have only lead us to discover the Morse, and that was - if I'm not mistaken - discovered some time ago, but IIRC at the time dismissed as originating from a Nav Beacon.
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Thinking back to the previous thread, wasn't there a comment from someone 'Official (tm)' that we didn't have enough information at the time to solve this.
Does anyone remember whose comment that was - and have we actually had any new clues since? IIRC, that comment was long after the "have you listened to them?".
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Exactly!
And let us talk about "game mechanics" for a minute. If the "mystery" should be solved only with game mechanics, as we are saying, even me, imagine this:
IT COULD BE DISCOVERED BY ACCIDENT, from someone who don't even knows anything about the UA. For him it is a canister like every other one, he find it, casually he finds himself in Leonard Nimoy, AND IT SELLS IT, because it is the thing you DO with canisters!
Seen under this light, even the "Sell it to LN Station" theory, becomes less less less juicy. So, if the Dev are smart enough, they should have thought about this possibility.
So, perhaps, there should be some "new/hidden behaviour", something that is "hidden" among the very complex game mechanics, that we don't know.
Or we simply do de correct connections. Some in-game object that has a "special" scope, we are not aware of. Could be?
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I believe that wiki state a UA have been found in one of the systems is in empire space. Will be on later tonight where I intend to visit all systems stated a UA have been found and then visit all plague systems. I think I will find at least one thing in common but I won't know until I visit them all. Not sure know that will lead us to through.
The UA has you now.
UA's have been spotted in Timocani when someone had one from there already. Screenshots have been posted here.
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