Drifter Hive Anomaly Analysis

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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Greetings fellow pilots,

As you may be aware, from time to time Project Compass, along with Eve Travel, engages in extended scientific analyses of various phenomena throughout New Eden and beyond. In this vein, it has long been a goal of mine to examine the various anomalies present in the Drifter Hive systems and, after putting it off for far too long, I’ve finally managed to assemble my analysis and (after figuring out the updates to GalNet), I’m happy to present the results of my analysis here for your review.

The Drifter Anomaly Analysis is a descriptive report that incorporates basic background of the sites and a close examination of all known data for each of the 25 anomalies. The report also engages in some speculation as to the purpose of the anomalies while also drawing on other known works in the field.

As always, I would welcome any and all feedback on this report and I hope it proves a useful addition for my fellow academics.

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Thanks a lot Mark726 for this huge work on anomalies.

Thanks to you we have a good document to work on to know better Drifter Hive Anomalies.

For my part, after spending time into Barbican, I believe that what you call “The Battery” is the “Gate” to a place where weather we shouldn’t be invited to or should be protected from… If it makes any sense how I say this :slight_smile: We just need the “key” to go there. The name is going this way at least I analyze it like that (of course not saying that’s the truth, pure speculation).

As for the crystals and different kind of “wormholes”, could they be linked ? blue and orange, I didn’t check if they’re specific to any type of spatial rift.

Again, thanks for the job you’ve done.

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Tl;dr?
I mean, can I get a synopsis/conclusion?

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@Che_Biko last three pages.

Great analysis, Mark and a good read.

These areas of scientific research suggest that these systems may indeed be core systems of the Sleepers, as any rational civilization is unlikely to establish scientific research facilities in territory that they do not feel is secure. That being said, however, the various system names certainly cut against that hypothesis, as they suggest that these systems are instead outlying outposts and picket systems to look for future incursions into more central space.

I still lean towards these complexes being the outlying outposts.

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It’s extremely unlikely these systems represent the core systems of the Sleepers/Drifters. They show no evidence of any kind of significant industrial capability, certainly not sufficient to build the armada seen in the exploration footage from the recover of Tukoss’s remains, in the amount of time we know the Drifters to have been active.

These are outposts for staging incursions into k-space, and like the k-space connections, the connections made with their ‘core systems’ are probably done via wormhole generator, from the inside (ie: from those ‘core systems’). They’re probably fairly short-lived, too. No reason to keep an invasion route open, after all.

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My apologies in any delayed responses; I had to go planetside for a few days.

I think the various spatial fissures represent different stages of testing for recreating static gates. Spatial anomalies are probably the earliest stages (see, e.g. the RiftHole), where there’s a hint that the anomaly may be artificially generated. Spatial rifts (see, e.g., RiftHenge) is a later stage of development. It’s unclear where exactly a violent wormhole falls, but given its connection to known transits of Sansha vessels, they may represent a still later stage of development.

I too did not keep track of crystal colors, but it may well be worth looking into.

I quite agree that these are almost certainly not the core systems of the Sleepers or Drifters. What I think they may represent, however, are the hinterlands of Sleeper or Drifter space. Not necessarily anything heavily colonized, but areas in which they may nonetheless feel fairly secure. As I state in the analysis, I find it difficult to believe that they would establish critical scientific testing facilities in areas that they feel may be vulnerable to attack or are on the borders of their territories. That said, anything may be possible, I suppose, and whoever established these bases may well have different priorities.

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As Jaret said, analysis and conclusions can be found on the last few pages of the report. To briefly summarize, however, I believe that the Drifter Hive systems represent areas of heavy scientific research, where some race (either the Drifters or the Sleepers; it’s a little unclear) is attempting to reverse engineer the Talocan Static Gate technology. Most, though certainly not all, of the sites appear to revolve around different spatial fissures, with machinery surrounding the various types of fissures in attempts to stabilize them.

A few other areas seem to represent either battlegrounds or attempts to colonize various areas. Exactly who was attacking what, unfortunately, seems to be lost to time, but clearly something tried to interrupt the research. It’s unfortunate that many of the sites appear to be fairly old, and that more detail was not available.

I hope this helps, and of course, if you’re interested, please feel free to peruse the full report.

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It helps. Thank you.

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It was end of life…

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After my analysis of Mark’s data - who I must thank after multiple conversations has brought me up to speed - I find that many of the sites are experimental in nature, there isn’t much of a cohesive trend between them other than a desire to create wormholes.

To what end - other than connection to New Eden - is unclear, besides the multitude of locations with experimental designs using modern tech. It feels like a man trying to make a raft to cross the sea, when all he has is wreckage and whatever else he can find.

Of course, the Sleepers are much more advanced than that, but they have limited resources across all of these sites, which suggests that they had the basic understanding of how to formulate a wormhole, but they didn’t know the exact structure or design of a gate, hence the various sites scattered everywhere.

My guess is that these systems had traces of Talocan technology, and instead of quarantining the ruins like Sleepers typically do, they decided to examine the relics or data that they recovered, and discovered that they could create pathways to gather more resources from other systems, or link up with other enclaves and join strengths.

Why else would there be so many Drifter Hives, all divided into different systems, if wormholes don’t link to the same location often enough? And why else would there be so many spacial anomalies across all of them?

Now again, we do not know much about the Sleepers’ motives, except for these key factors:

1: Sleepers are human in origin.

2: Sleepers require raw materials to fabricate parts to maintain their facilities.

3: If resources are scarce in a region, and sub-light travel to another system to gather more is impractical, the AI would develop a means to reach those locations faster, in a more optimal form.

4: In order to do so, they would be allowed to salvage any less-vital technologies, go any length, to reach the above goal, when no other options are available.

These are the basics for an AI: it exists to solve a problem. It will do everything it can to solve that problem, no matter how difficult, unless it is not optimal.

This could also explain why the Sleepers and Drifters are allied, if they aren’t directly linked. The Sleepers find Drifter protection beneficial, and the Drifters probably use the Sleeper workforce for labor in producing the Hives.

Do we know any of this for certain? No.

But whatever the Drifters are, whatever the Sleepers are, they are a result of humans, one way or another, and that helps us quite a bit in determining motives.

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