The Hesperus Search pt.2 - How the Proteus was found
14 Jun 2021Eeka
In continuation of the documenting work i started here, now i'm going to detail to you how the Proteus was found on 11 june 3307 by the group of commanders committed to the search.Again i remind you that you need to be aware of the basic context surrounding the Hesperus, Salvation and, in this entry, the previous search history mentioned above.
At the point when the beacon #17 was found, many commanders had already called the day to rest, as so much time and energy have been dedicated in finding the beacons. Considering the amount of work that would take to find Hesperus's secondary exploration craft a second initiative would be needed and it is safe to say that just a few commanders tried to find it before the second plan took place some hours later.
This time we had a different challenge in hands though. The beacons were deployed at about every 100ly, leaving a breadcrumb trail of a slow megaship. Now we had to locate a smaller, more mobile, exploration vessel that left the main ship in a hurry and had the range up to 300ly.
If you think about it, one of the bulkiest efforts put in place to find Raxxla is the Great Potato Hunt, that consists in a group of dedicated commanders working tirelessly to scan all systems in a 200ly radius of Sol. It is a year-and-a-half so far task that reached a total of 48% of their goal. We had a 300ly search area in hands.
The methodology now was to verify all systems up to a 300ly range. The respective data was added as a new tab in the already known spreadsheet. Our catalog had about 15k systems but some never visited systems were also expected.
With such colossal workload in sight, many commanders started looking for possible filters that could help pinpoint the location of the vessel while other commanders insisted that if everyone honored their share in the list, the 300ly bubble would be scanned in a few hours. This fueled the already existent, yet in lower intensity, segregation of mindsets in the group.
The experience we gathered finding the beacons allowed us to safely determine the scan method as simply DS+FSS systems with landable bodies, since we agreed to trust Salvation's information about a planetfall. Unfortunately, we weren't able to exclude systems with no landable bodies from the main spreadsheet, which would've greatly improved the search's efficiency. We also didn't have any level or macro organization such as dividing the search area in sectors and assigning them to groups.
Still, different theories started popping up in order to help prioritization of search areas. Did the craft went back to the Hesperus? Did they crash before reaching its maximum range? Did they leave the Hesperus before the #14's turn? and so on.
We clearly needed a more sophisticated strategy this time. Commander CodexNecro81 brought the idea of looking in systems containing ammonia worlds, starting at 150ly distance, since Lt. Kelemen mentioned the nonhuman artifacts their probes detected earlier and the interest of the scientific crew in continuing the mission despite Pharmasapien's attack.
Some commanders agreed with this plan, some others were looking towards the Hesperus final destination, yet the majority of us had much faith in the Random Dude God and were roaming randomly across the targeted area in hope to
I then scanned the surroundings of the closest ammonia world system i could find near a beacon, in this case the #14, which was also within the craft's range. I gathered from EDDiscovery all systems in a 20ly range of this system and filtered out all those that have been already checked in the main sheet.
With no success, i decided to change my location. At this point, after two days of focused energy in this task, so many possibilities already been discussed, friction between commanders and less than 15% of our raw goal covered, i opted to distance from the group and enjoy the beautiful vista we had around us. This led me to define a new search criteria: "If i were a FDev employee, where would i place such yearned place? It would have to be nice looking and remarkable for anyone that went through the effort to reach it".
Messier 78 is a small nebula resting right next to Barnard's Loop, like its crown's jewel. Trapezium Sector CB-W c2-9 was the target system in which i would filter out all already checked systems and cover a 30ly radius around it. And so i did. Then i took a brief break, only to be surprised by the information that the craft have been found.
On 11th june 21h56 UTC commander Namix announced he had found the AZB2/H002255/SC-01 craft, in the Trapezium Sector YU-X c1-2, body 1 a. As you can notice, it is tagged by an ammonia world.
The discovery was followed by a rush of commanders reaching the system to be shocked by what they were seeing. I'm not anticipating information on it as i'll also bring you a detailed report of the findings in this body soon.
At this point you may notice the system i picked to investigate lies 49ly from the finding. At 19h30 UTC i was in NGC 1981 Sector XP-W b2-0 as part of this sweep, which is 29.81ly from the finding. I humbly share with you my failure and frustration, in hope that when the same happens to you, you understand that it is part of a regular commander career and it should not be enough reason for you to give up reaching your own personal milestones. Fame is temporary and a lot of valuable lessons were learned in this journey, in which, of course, i'll share with you soon.
Here's the 3rd report: Surface findings.
o7