Unknown Artefact (or artifact) Community Thread - The Canonn

[George Thargoid]

For Sap 8 missions, the comment is made that they think it may be a map. Have we tried:

Just having one in a cargo hold and then opening our galactic map to see if anything is highlighted or the like?

Have 1 Sap 8 and 1 UA in the hold and open the map to see if anything is marked?

Have 6 Sap 8 in the hold and open the map to see if any system is pinpointed?

 

[slartybartfast]

A lil question, when peeps have driven into UA's do they tumble through the air like a normal canister or are they more like a nav beacon that stays where it is?
well that's if it don't just blow up that is.

 

[RedWizzard]

Just a thought that occurs to me...

I was flicking through the Gamescom broadcasts the other day and amongst all the hype for CQC and Horizons, one thing that stood out was the occasional reference to AIs in E: D history. DBOBE in particular made a reference to them and the background on them (on the first stream, if I remember correctly - am at work so can't hunt out the exact link right now).

Now, my thinking is this: a lot of folks seem to have latched on to the idea that the UAs are somehow related to the Thargoids, but what if they're actually something to do with the AIs? This could go some way towards explaining why and how they 'know' morse despite looking so alien. I'm not sure how this hypothesis would be tested, but if anyone out there has a strong grasp of the lore and can think of any links back to the AIs in lore then could this be a new avenue of investigation?

(Also, if they are AI in origin, and based on my vague recollection that AIs were considered 'bad' and outlawed in E: D's history, this could also provide an explanation why they're corrosive to human tech.)

Apologies if I'm bringing up an avenue that's already been explored, but I can't see anything related to it on the wiki and don't remember it being mentioned in either this or the original thread.

If it's a human-created AI then why would it communicate with morse rather than something more obvious like voice or text chat?

 

[Rauminen]

A lil question, when peeps have driven into UA's do they tumble through the air like a normal canister or are they more like a nav beacon that stays where it is?
well that's if it don't just blow up that is.

They tumble all right. But it's space or it should be. Although it does act like air in every way apart from canopy breach really

Check out this collection of videos: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Unknown_Artefact/List_of_recordings

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If it's a human-created AI then why would it communicate with morse rather than something more obvious like voice or text chat?

Doh, there wouldn't be a mystery then. Remember how long it took to crack that?

 

[RedWizzard]

A lil question, when peeps have driven into UA's do they tumble through the air like a normal canister or are they more like a nav beacon that stays where it is?
well that's if it don't just blow up that is.

They get bumped around like normal cargo.

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Doh, there wouldn't be a mystery then. Remember how long it took to crack that?

Sure, but if the morse is just there because of its difficulty as part of the mystery then it's not a clue that the UA is AI related, is it?

 

[Cmdr Delmonte[VR]]

@Delmonte - no offense mate, but could you do something with that screenshot sound in your vids?
- set shadowplay to game sounds only
- set your screen capture software to be silent
- use different software (or just the default system functionality) that doesn't have any sound
- since you're recording a video, take screenshots of the video, at a later point in time

No offense taken Yes have done already, its my Roccat grid "Screen capture sound" only got my new rig a few weeks ago still working out shadow play
never used it before ! Never had a rig powerful enough !!!! but think I have it sussed now (Hopefully !)

 

[SNaomiScott]

If it's a human-created AI then why would it communicate with morse rather than something more obvious like voice or text chat?

I can think of a number of reasons, all derived from a basic sense of self-preservation. My thinking is that humans see the AIs as 'bad' for some reason, the AIs know that humans are their enemy, so why even try communicating with humans at all? Admittedly, this would also preclude the idea of them using morse, but perhaps that could simply be a hold-over from their original genesis. The honks and purrs, and all the other sounds the UA emits, could arguably be the AI's 'native' language, derived as a means of keeping their communications hidden from their human persecutors.

In my experience, in almost every sci-fi case where AIs are presented as some sort of historical threat that's generally considered dead and gone, they almost always reappear to cause mayhem and chaos, and the impression I got from DBOBE's comments in the Gamescom feed was that they're not as dead and gone as the lore might suggest. Of course, I'm not as familiar with the lore as others, so I may be getting the wrong end of the stick here, but from a story-telling point of view it would fit.

 

[Cmdr Delmonte[VR]]

A lil question, when peeps have driven into UA's do they tumble through the air like a normal canister or are they more like a nav beacon that stays where it is?
well that's if it don't just blow up that is.

Watch "Death of a UA" https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6qsf525u5cc1z8n/AAAjajIzhxbJPeLmFN4kk2Ksa?dl=0

I cant look !!!!!!!! :-(

 

[slartybartfast]

They tumble all right. But it's space or it should be. Although it does act like air in every way apart from canopy breach really

Check out this collection of videos: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Unknown_Artefact/List_of_recordings

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Doh, there wouldn't be a mystery then. Remember how long it took to crack that?

Thanks for the link very handy.
whilst watching on of the vids the jump range test and noticed that it was in range of a permit system are they all next to permit systems are peeps able to jump to those places with UA on board?

 

[bitstorm]

For Sap 8 missions, the comment is made that they think it may be a map. Have we tried:

Just having one in a cargo hold and then opening our galactic map to see if anything is highlighted or the like?

Have 1 Sap 8 and 1 UA in the hold and open the map to see if anything is marked?

Have 6 Sap 8 in the hold and open the map to see if any system is pinpointed?

In that mission they say "we have the coordinates, but just now need to figure out the context". (paraphrased)

It's all rather infuriating because nowhere does it say what the coordinates actually are, never mind the context. =/

"Oh you have the coordinates? Great well what the chuff are they then!"

It all just seems unfinished.

Take for example the military convoys carrying the UAs, they talk incessantly about the presence of the UA and to "stay sharp", yet when the UA drops out of the ship they don't even notice, just carry on endlessly with the same "this thing in the cargo hold is freaking me out".

It's a broken script, they ABSOLUTELY SHOULD say something else at that point, even if it's just an expletive.

C'mon Frontier... =(

 

[Tallsword]

If it does spread the virus, betwixt the bearers on this thread, half of known space should be plagued. Beyond that, the station the UA was crushed in & the station it was sold in (Nimoy), should be plagued. Neither show any signs of anything. I'm not saying the UA is not related the plague, but we don't have any strong connections.

I doubt it has much to do with the plague, I expressed m doubt there. I just wanted to make the most out of the assumption, in what way could it make sense...

I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, but what tests do we do in regards to it? It distorts everything (planetary bodies, ships, the space background, etc), we have no tools/scanners that do anything with light, no way to record it in-game.

Wasn't there a missing planet that's supposed to be connected to dark things? Some1 even posted a picture. I'd visit that system and would look around in a 360° from and through the cloud, see if the cloud can reveal dark things.

I've personally done a wing of 4 with the UA in the hold & with it in normal space. No obvious changes (including all sounds when up close).

Rizal is really suspecting something and so am I.

UAs have been found in all three game modes. They've been found in Open & I've found them in both Private Groups & in Solo. I'm not sure what you're driving at here.

It was meant to be a reply to the person who said he doesn't think it has anything to do with wings and the wing-test with Rizal would be a waste of time. They were found in Solo, but that does not mean you can solve it alone as well... You could switch between the server modes anytime, so that alone doesn't rule out the wings-solution suggested by Rizal. Also, I suggest 8 people because octagons are very mainstream in the style of space-stuff (if it's Thargoid 6 might be enough).

Here's a recording right by a capital ship - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IprRDdT-0. I'm not sure if it Morse-d out "Warrior" or the planet (& can't check right now).

It didn't use FSD... My guess is that it needs to use the FSD to see any change. We can luckily force them to jump! Kerrash also replied the succeed or not after I sent out this idea. I'm not suggesting a connection, but it might not be a coincidence... Since it's not the easiest thing to do and we might not succeed... But it would make sense only encouragement-wise.

 

[Popov Le Magnifique]

I agree with you as always, LordZoltan.

But let me say that the Purrs thing is still a work in progress: I don't think that it will reveal the mistery, but there are many evidences that the purrs are related to the number of ships that are close to the UA. I'm sorry that you skipped the last posts about that, because they are very interesting.
CMDR DelMonte recordings are unique in every way: three ships > two purrs, then Two Ships > three purrs.
That make me assume that the magic number is 5 ships at least.
And could be that ship's mass is a thing too.

We are still trying to totally eliminate the Purrs with the next tests we are planning to perform in the coming days, with DelMonte's Gang help.
Perhaps, when all the purrs disappear, something interesting will trigger. Or perhaps not. But we must rule it out.

It seems that the UA is counting the close ships, and canceling a purr for each...

Yes, mrTree did similar tests with a wing of four, but I've seen them and the 4 ships were not any close to the UA.
They were just there, around, far from it.

If you see DelMonte's small video, there are 3 ships almost touching the UA...

I really think that the purr is just put ON TOP of another sound (or mixed with it), to hide it. If all the ships record their part of the audio, as Ratking and Zenith did, we might be able to have a full complete message, with the proper sounds to decipher, without the purrs. Does that make sense?

But yeah, proximity plays a strong role in the number of purrs. The debug camera cannot be taken into account as a "proximity" item; a ship or a specific canister can.

 

[RedWizzard]

I can think of a number of reasons, all derived from a basic sense of self-preservation. My thinking is that humans see the AIs as 'bad' for some reason, the AIs know that humans are their enemy, so why even try communicating with humans at all? Admittedly, this would also preclude the idea of them using morse, but perhaps that could simply be a hold-over from their original genesis. The honks and purrs, and all the other sounds the UA emits, could arguably be the AI's 'native' language, derived as a means of keeping their communications hidden from their human persecutors.

In my experience, in almost every sci-fi case where AIs are presented as some sort of historical threat that's generally considered dead and gone, they almost always reappear to cause mayhem and chaos, and the impression I got from DBOBE's comments in the Gamescom feed was that they're not as dead and gone as the lore might suggest. Of course, I'm not as familiar with the lore as others, so I may be getting the wrong end of the stick here, but from a story-telling point of view it would fit.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally expecting hostile AIs to turn up at some point; devs have hinted as much well before Gamescon. But I don't see any obvious connection between AIs and UAs, in fact the (apparently) organic appearance of the UA is far more suggestive of Thargoids or another alien race.

 

[Kyp Shard]

Agree with most of this - out of rep, tho

Please remember as you read this post - this is my opinion, and I project it as such. I have no more authority on this than anyone - I'm just sharing my thoughts.

I do think there's a good chance of a specific location being important. But... I know, I know: where!? I wish I knew! But that Morse is more than just something interesting - it's a clue in and of itself I think.

I personally think the Mayan theory is, although nice, a complete dead end.

I also believe the purrs to be a dead end - there's nothing there - not a single test focused on the purrs has reliably produced the same result in all cases for all CMDRs under the same conditions. I skip all posts mentioning purrs now.

I think all attempts to partner the UA with any other type of cargo in free space or in a hold are also dead ends. And no justification I've read compels me to think otherwise.

I think triangulation is a dead end - they're found in convoys - who knows how far the convoy(s) are 'supposed' to have travelled by the time they spawn for you?

The 'let it expire' is a dead end - they have, on more than one occasion, and nothing has happened.

Also, all the fanciful ideas about plague carrying/cure neglects the morse, and therefore human, angle (unless a conspiracy theory involving CIEP or INRA or whatever is entertained - which I have not ruled out in my own head).

The hidden VID8 Morse thing - that's a dead end. Too nebulous, not corroborated by enough people.

SS1 was not carrying a UA. Simple as. It was an assassination job, possibly by the new Pres - possibly by the DW or whatever. Whomever is the culprit, I have a strong suspicion they are also the puppetmaster behind the Emperor's assassination. There's wheels within wheels in that story I think, and there might be a UA connection, but that's not what we're supposed to discover if there is.

The UA doesn't cause a misjump. It would have happened by now.

Pretty much every method of interaction at our disposal has been tried - in terms of what our ships can do - and nothing. So that's a dead end.

My own personal scepticism about the merits of listening to him aside - Kerrash reckons the feeling is that there are 'enough clues' out there already. Galnet and licensed fiction are our primary sources for this - so there must be something in these that links to the UA or, more likely, links to some other event or story that is linked to the UA.

After struggling with the narrative style a lot, I've started on reading 'And Here the Wheel' - because that's also been hinted at by Kerrash (damn you), and there's nothing else I can do at the moment. There are already some links between one or two Galnets and the contents of this book - suggesting a strong link to the events in that book and contemporary events in-game.

Like everything else it'll probably end up being a dead end(tm) - but will see.

Remember - if I've just rubbished your idea - it's just my opinion; and it certainly isn't personal. As far as I'm concerned, all of you are awesome(tm).

Excellent post as always LordZoltan. I think it's really useful to have a list of what we consider to be duds as opposed to what we consider to be leads, helps narrow the focus.

I agree on all your points pretty much. On the purrs, for a while I thought there may be some kind of binary/other base code in them but really it's too slow. The morse is quick and concise, so I think any other layer of meaningful data would be also.

I think Mayan stuff is too tenuous, and there doesn't seem to be any support for it in any lore. The patterning could be important and it could contain information, but I don't think it's mayan.

So, considering what you (and me, and anyone else) consider to be duds - what does that leave us?

LordZoltan, could you perhaps make a section on the wiki of likely dud leads that we could all add to (or some other centralised place we could all reference). That would make it much easier for us to go forward with this. (I'd do it myself, but I thought it better/more polite to ask you since it's your post that lists the duds so comprehensively - wouldn't want to take liberties with your wording and logic

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CMDR DelMonte recordings are unique in every way: three ships > two purrs, then Two Ships > three purrs.
That make me assume that the magic number is 5 ships at least.
And could be that ship's mass is a thing too.

I think it's likely to be 4 ships in a wing because, well, wing mechanics. As in mrTree's test but closer, as you say.

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Back to the earlier observation that the UA doesn't sound off while in the cargo hold, and doesn't decay. Perhaps this is just because our ships have no microphones in the cargo hold, but to rule it out: have we footage of a UA loose in a station? Does it make sounds in that environment?

 

[Tallsword]

Back to the earlier observation that the UA doesn't sound off while in the cargo hold, and doesn't decay. Perhaps this is just because our ships have no microphones in the cargo hold, but to rule it out: have we footage of a UA loose in a station? Does it make sounds in that environment?

Connections between stuff - not sure if mentioned, but 'least a bit of a refresher then:
The UA randomly degrades ship modules every about 30 sec. But the UA in outer space cannot degrade any module. Instead of degrading a module it lights up (the marks on the head and body) and "howls" one.
I believe the howl / lights are connected to ship module degradation, but not sure where to go with them.

Some random thoughts that may or may not help:
The UA lights up prior to the howl. That said, it most likely lights up inside the cargo bay as well. In the cargo bay instead of howling it degrades modules.


Random easy test:
CMDR 1 drops UA in a station.
CMDR 2 tries to listen to the UA outside the station.
CMDR 3 or CMDR 1 scoops / limpets up the UA.
Goal: see if metal stops the howl's sound or the UA simply "would like to" degrade something instead of howling. (something like "feed the UA or it'll cry")

Source:
Suspected some connection between it's own mechanics since the beginning, confirmed by Bob. Rip Bob!

Sidenote:
Doubt we have to use debug mode. Debug mode probably wasn't designed to use it on the UA, more tests within the cockpit could help imo.

Request:
Slow down Bob's death. I want to see it frame. By. Frame. #animalcruelty

Here, this was my way to test out if it's the metal blocking off the sounds or not. If it is because of the metal, we wouldn't hear it in the cargo bay either.

 

[Kyp Shard]

Good test Tallsword. I'd suggest CMDR1 could also verify if they can hear the UA from inside the station.

I wasn't thinking that the metal is blocking it (though that is a good idea). I was thinking about something said earlier about vacuum. Stations have atmosphere. It isn't definite whether or not our cargo holds do. So it could be temperature if not atmosphere (it's reasonable to think cargo hold is heated to a degree to protect some forms of cargo, but the hold doesn't need atmosphere because the containers are sealed. Hmm - side-thought: do slaves come in containers, or do we pump air in the hold for them?)

 

[Rauminen]

Good test Tallsword. I'd suggest CMDR1 could also verify if they can hear the UA from inside the station.

I wasn't thinking that the metal is blocking it (though that is a good idea). I was thinking about something said earlier about vacuum. Stations have atmosphere. It isn't definite whether or not our cargo holds do. So it could be temperature if not atmosphere (it's reasonable to think cargo hold is heated to a degree to protect some forms of cargo, but the hold doesn't need atmosphere because the containers are sealed. Hmm - side-thought: do slaves come in containers, or do we pump air in the hold for them?)

Container-sized stasis pods.... in my mind at least.

 

[RedWizzard]

Hmm - side-thought: do slaves come in containers, or do we pump air in the hold for them?)

Slaves are stored in suspended animation. Corpsicles, basically.

 

[Kyp Shard]

Makes sense. You could use a slave for 1000yrs or more that way if you keep em like that when not working them.

 

[clavain]

There are a lot more systems mentioned in the journals missing though. I've done some investigation and found that there are 133 different systems mentioned in the FFE journals. Of those, only 53 exist in ED. Missing systems include Veliaze which is mentioned in the very first "Thargoids - Truth and Fiction" article as first system Thargoids were seen in.

If anyone wants a list let me know and I'll clean it up and post it somewhere.

Methodology: I wrote a program that generates the 324,784 systems within 100 sectors of Sol in FFE. For each of those the program searched the 656 FFE journal stories from http://www.dream-ware.co.uk/first-encounters/journals/all/ to see if the system name was mentioned. For the 133 that were found, it then searched the EDSC data to see if they appeared in ED. For the 80 that weren't found in the EDSC data I did a manual search in the galaxy map just to be sure (none found except "Source" which is apparently an alias for Sagittarius A*).

Very cool. I would not mind a list. I thought there were quite a few more missing, but did not realize it was that many! I had noticed that some of the ones that were ported to ED have moved around a little bit or had other subtle changes made to them, often in updating the system for what might have happened in the past 50 years somehow. I have my suspicions that some may have had their names changed when brought into ED as well, so some of the ones that we can 't seem to find may exist in roughly the same part of space/similar coordinates, but under a different name.

Edit: Out of rep.

Edit2: Let's hope they did not make many typos while porting system names, or in the Journals.