You guys... I have 4 or 5 PM in my inbox (perhaps even half a dozen) requesting that I set up a private server
The server is in place for those who wish to use it. I didn't want people to feel left out so I also sent invites out to those who have no intentions of using it.
If you contacted me to join the friends list you also received an invite to the server.
What was I supposed to do? Say no to the few who wanted one because the majority weren't going to use it?
If you don't want to use it, don't use it. No one is forcing you.
Doh, out of the blue - we've taken one of these guys to Jackson's Lighthouse, right? (0 pop system, no starports, but aligned to Federation, ominous description, mentioned in Galnet recently)
Jacksons lighthouse is a pulsar type star. It plays a significant role in the book Elite : Wanted by Gavin Deas.
There is no specific link to thargoids, alien artifacts, the disappearance of any large ships in the book from what i can recall.
Doh, out of the blue - we've taken one of these guys to Jackson's Lighthouse, right? (0 pop system, no starports, but aligned to Federation, ominous description, mentioned in Galnet recently)
Edit: I can't find it in the wiki, but from memory I think I saw a mention of this a few hundred pages back.... can anyone confirm for 100% please?
This is not to detract from ongoing wing-ups, such as those Delmonte and others have mentioned and invited people to join in with. (Good luck, all.) But it is offered up as an opportunity for those who prefer to schedule limited time well in advance to join with those commanders who are getting a daily fix of eighteen hours, and all commanders in between.
With the possibility of Kitty the UA being successfully sacrificed... er, I mean subjected to destructive testing before then, and assuming satisfactory results in that, this Barrel is not to snag a UA for destructive testing.
The hope** is for us to cooperatively acquire a UA which shall be used for open-ended testing. My own view is that testing with a focus on locations would be an excellent way to employ such a UA - allowing for some swifter 'tick offs' from the excruciatingly long Maybe List.
As before, it's quite simple at heart. Get in, wing up, look out, dive down, scoop up, get away. If it's not the right kind of Strong Signal Source, just leave. Please ensure your UA intentions are agreeable to your wingmates. Free bar and biscuits.
If you've not participated in one of these events before, it is likely that others there on the day will have and shall be happy to explain successful tips. And general UA and game gossip as well.
As ever, I shall be happy to assist participating commanders with problems or queries on the day.
Oh, and I'm in talks with this event's sponsor - Shiva DiGrassi Salons of Vega, "Where Ugly Gets Its Marching Orders!" - to arrange a prize of 50t of Palladium each to any wing beating the 25m record.
But you won't. Or will you..?
* To be confirmed, but currently recommended
** Other hopes are available. Some of them float.
The change of venue from Timocani is in hope of reinforcing the theory that winging up is the true root of Barrel-related successes to date. If we have comparable success, supporting the inestimable Me Myself McPowell's theory that what counts is winged-up mass-camping in a system known to have spawned UAs before, then that will be of very useful note for us all.
Should it be required, I shall be happy to hold onto a UA temporarily while a preferred Bearer arranges rendezvous for a hand-off. I have no driving desire to maintain Bearer status.
The only time I ever came close to a UA was in 109 Virginis. Me, Zulu Romeo, Psychofish, and Wishblend were in a wing we all were chasing different signals and I found a convoy carrying one after two or three strong sources.
Could be that we had 4 pilots combing through the system so naturally the spawning of sources and us identifying them was sped up significantly but that is the only time I ever found one and I've ran into 100s of SSSs since then (all of them by myself). Winging up has to be the key also why put it in the wings trailer?
You guys... I have 4 or 5 PM in my inbox (perhaps even half a dozen) requesting that I set up a private server
The server is in place for those who wish to use it. I didn't want people to feel left out so I also sent invites out to those who have no intentions of using it.
If you contacted me to join the friends list you also received an invite to the server.
What was I supposed to do? Say no to the few who wanted one because the majority weren't going to use it?
If you don't want to use it, don't use it. No one is forcing you.
A new PG made sense because it meant that people could get joined up quickly without awaiting approval to join Möbius, and also to guarantee that any other player you see will likely be happy to wing up to help. With the coordination going on here, people should be able to know in advance if they want to be open or in a particular group. It's fine
I think some people are concerned that it's setting a precedent to set up more - but I don't see that happening. Some will stay open or solo (lone wolves have proven successful at UA liberation as much as wings, just perhaps not as fast!); and I'm sure many will continue to use Möbius, or the new group.
Let's just focus on securing more UAs and crossing off ideas
Ok, so... for the terminology:
- Howl is the big whale noise "starting a cycle" - it is the sound that is played when the UA lights up.
- Chittering follows right after the howl, and plays as long as the lights are showing - this is the Morse, the "data part" of the sound. I think it's about y=75 on your image.
(there is a sort of "encapsulating" sound curving up in pitch at the start, and down at the end - best heard about 300m out, most of my vids have this) This Morse code always spells out the name of the nearest astronomical object, regardless of you having cartographic data for it or not.
- Purrs are the trombone-like sounds, normally 2 types (hi-low) that play all the way, usually 4-6 in one cycle. They are sometimes present even during/under howls, and there's never 3 of the same type in a row ("rule of 2"). There has also been a mention of different pitched purrs, that seem to occur at the very beginning of the recordings, however I'm not sure if that took us anywhere.
There has also been work done transcribing these to a binary dictionary, it's in a spreadsheet somewhere. I would give credit because it's due, but my memory betrays me... halp?
- There's also a background noise, which again contains morse - always the same: VID 8 or HIB 8 according to people with better ear than mine.
In some videos, this background noise is gone, and the number of purrs per cycle goes down to 3 or even 2. This seems to happen with a lot of ships present, really close to the UA. This is an avenue we are still investigating.
NOW. What's interesting for me about the dynamic spectrum you made is that it's capturing more data than the ones I've seen in the higher regions. Question - can you confirm what's the sound around y=290 on your image? It also seems to "die off" about 2 cycles before the end. Weird.
I've repped you because you did a perfect recap of the UA sound.
I'd like to copy it and paste directly to the wiki!
EDIT:
Now that there is a 200M "offer" for an UA, let me say that Mobius is not "safe" at all...
So I totally support our Private Group "The Milky Way Galaxy", to do our UA "things", in a true safe and controlled environment...
There has also been a mention of different pitched purrs, that seem to occur at the very beginning of the recordings, however I'm not sure if that took us anywhere.
- There's also a background noise, which again contains morse - always the same: VID 8 or HIB 8 according to people with better ear than mine.
In some videos, this background noise is gone, and the number of purrs per cycle goes down to 3 or even 2. This seems to happen with a lot of ships present, really close to the UA. This is an avenue we are still investigating.
I think both those points are debatable. As in, for me don't think there is any VID8/HIB8 morse. Also the suppression of the purrs seems to be just RNG (I am happy to be proved wrong)
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*).
It doesn't have coordinates yet, I'll add that tomorrow. Just need to figure out the FFE scheme again. The "Sectors from Sol" column is the distance of the sector the system is in from sector [0, 0]. "Mentions" is the number of journal stories the system was mentioned in. There will be false positives, e.g. "Source" appear in the journals might not mean the system, "Rigel" is only mentioned as part of "Rigelian", etc. Also any misspelt system names won't have been found obviously (i.e. Ayethti, at least). Also, some systems haven't been found in ED due to spelling or capitalisation differences, e.g. Eta Cassiopeia which is now Eta Cassiopeiae.
I wonder if this list gives an indication of which FFE storylines are canon and which FD have discarded. Or is there another reason these systems have not been bought over?
I've repped you because you did a perfect recap of the UA sound.
I'd like to copy it and paste directly to the wiki!
EDIT:
Now that there is a 200M "offer" for an UA, let me say that Mobius is not "safe" at all...
So I totally support our Private Group "The Milky Way Galaxy", to do our UA "things", in a true safe and controlled environment...
Sure man, go for it. About the 200M bounty - I think he found one actually. But otherwise I agree, 200M is a lot of money even if he did not intend to pay it.
I think it's just the high pitches that increase but no-one has ever confirmed.
I think both those points are debatable. As in, for me don't think there is any VID8/HIB8 morse. Also the suppression of the purrs seems to be just RNG (I am happy to be proved wrong)
Ahmm, sorry I wasn't clear enough about the pitch, yes it's increasing over time, what I meant is - at the start, in some cases there's one, or two _completely different_ purr, so if you would mark the one we know as low as 1, and the other we know as high as 4, there are 2 and 3 in between pitch-wise. But they only appear at the very beginning of the recordings, and don't really repeat like the rest. Not sure what to make of this, but seems circumstantial. I mean if they had a meaning, they would repeat later.
As for the morse in the background... Rizal? Do you have the research material at hand? If there's doubt, we should confirm it! Either it's a morse or not, but we should know for sure!
(also just silently adding in parenthesis that if it's indeed a morse it could very well be the clue we're looking for but failed to decypher properly)
- Confirm that the green light on the "pods" changes with system - and if it does, how. In these videos I'm in Bast, the right second pod has a green light on it. In other vids I've seen it in a different position.
To clarify: Orient the UA in your head in a way you would place it on it's side on a flat surface. The "fin" in this case, looking up is the one set of pods which is aligned with the section of the head that is lighting up (has the "gills"). Then if you face it from behind - head is pointing forward in front of you - you have left and right set of pods.
Edit: I;m pretty sure I was hallucinating though, when I saw it in a different position in other vids. Also the left second pod is sort of green lit - but not completely, just on the side.
Edit2: I was trying to focus on it here
Sure man, go for it. About the 200M bounty - I think he found one actually. But otherwise I agree, 200M is a lot of money even if he did not intend to pay it.
Ahmm, sorry I wasn't clear enough about the pitch, yes it's increasing over time, what I meant is - at the start, in some cases there's one, or two _completely different_ purr, so if you would mark the one we know as low as 1, and the other we know as high as 4, there are 2 and 3 in between pitch-wise. But they only appear at the very beginning of the recordings, and don't really repeat like the rest. Not sure what to make of this, but seems circumstantial. I mean if they had a meaning, they would repeat later.
As for the morse in the background... Rizal? Do you have the research material at hand? If there's doubt, we should confirm it! Either it's a morse or not, but we should know for sure!
(also just silently adding in parenthesis that if it's indeed a morse it could very well be the clue we're looking for but failed to decypher properly)
- - - Updated - - -
Well, err, for your reading pleasure Murp:
Edit: I;m pretty sure I was hallucinating though, when I saw it in a different position in other vids. Also the left second pod is sort of green lit - but not completely, just on the side.
Yeah, that's my conclusion as well. Now that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep an eye on it. It's a detail that can be verified quickly in any video that is close up enough and the lighting is not ludicrously bright. If it DOES change at one point or another...
I think both those points are debatable. As in, for me don't think there is any VID8/HIB8 morse. Also the suppression of the purrs seems to be just RNG (I am happy to be proved wrong)
As for the morse in the background... Rizal? Do you have the research material at hand? If there's doubt, we should confirm it! Either it's a morse or not, but we should know for sure!
(also just silently adding in parenthesis that if it's indeed a morse it could very well be the clue we're looking for but failed to decypher properly)
About the VID8/HIB8 sound, as the "discoverer" I've always called it "pseudo morse" because it behaves indeed as morse code does, it was "decrypted" by two morse experts here in the forum, but as it seems to have no meaning at all, we could assume it could be just a background loop, that repeats each ~5 seconds, and perhaps it's a kind of noise and that's all. We don't know if it is morse or another kind of signal we was not able to decrypt.
BTW the sound IS THERE, and is produced by the UA without any doubt, as it's audible only pointing straight at it, and being close.
And it's indeed true that it disappears in some occasions, the ones Rauminen described so well.
So, it could be just a dead end, but it is part of the sound the UA does, and THERE IS A CLEAR PATTERN, that repeats itself in a loop, LIKE AN SOS WOULD DO.
Now, it's not spelling SOS, but it could be a similar thing, don't you think? Perhaps an "Alien" SOS, or a new SOS request of the 3300s...
About the VID8/HIB8, as the "discoverer" I've always called it "pseudo morse" because it behaves indeed as morse code does, it was "decripted" by two morse experts here in the forum, but as it seems to have no meaning at all, we could assume it could be just a background loop, that repeats each ~5 seconds, and perhaps it's a kind of noise and that's all. We don't know if it is morse or another kind of signal we was not able to decrypt.
But conversion from morse code isn't decryption, that's just translation. There is always the possibility that the message was encoded before it was translated into morse.
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