NB Astronomy resumes..

And that would be our first recorded Ardoris siege in Feb.

Speaking of which.. data is coming in.. Resolute sieges so far..

Feb 2.. Dawn..
Feb 5.. Dawn
Feb 8.. Dawn through Dusk

So while I have screenshots every 10 minutes.. the first two sieges appear in only 1 each. (~10 to 20 minutes) The Feb 8 siege was over by 'Evening' lasting between 40-50 minutes or 4 screenshots.

So my cool, new, exciting theory I had when I went to bed last night already seems to be blown out of the water when I got up this morning. Next siege.. dawn Feb 11th?

Edit: RIGHT! Switching screenshots to 5 minutes! Had I not happened to look up while eating breakfast I would have missed..

Feb 10.. Midday

And it lasted less than 10 minutes. It spawned after the last screenshot and disappeared before the next was going to happen.. (though I did catch it by getting a shot manually)

I will speculate here that siege durations last in multiples of 7.5.. why 7.5 you ask? (aside from the fact that it's less than 10 minutes). 7.5 is 1/8 of 60. or in other words.. 1/8 of an hour.

Edit 2:

Further observation..

Feb 10: Dusk..

Yes another one.. the midday siege disappeared during the afternoon and a new siege has begun.. however.. now.. the Red planet can be observed rising. However, if this is a factor I am still bewildered as how the Midday siege is predictable.

Perhaps there are multiple sets of conditions for sieges to appear? Constellations being only 1. The Dusk siege appears to be lasting longer than the others. We'll see how long it goes..

Edit 3:

Siege ended Feb 11 "late night" lasting about 23? minutes. About 7:45 to 8:08a CST (pretty darn close to a multiple of 7.5.. different can be accounted for if my computer clock is slightly off from Portalarium's servers).

Noting also there's a 'Red' eclipse.. (can't take anything for granted now it seems).

Edit 4:

Feb 11: Dawn.. siege is back on baby.

Theory: Related planet must not be in 'New' phase (eclipse)?

Ok so if the constellation 'enables' sieges.. what turns them on and off? what the bloody.. it disappeared again! 8:20a CST.. (and it's still dawn btw)

 

Feb 11: Dusk.. til Dawn (Feb 12) in fact the siege de-spawned about 9:19:30a CST

Time to go to work..

 

Ardoris Siege Feb 12 508PC

 

Ardoris Siege Feb 26 508PC



If sieges happen this often to the City of Love, I'd hate to see what the other city sieges would be like

note: the siege disappeared a minute or 2 after I posted the message.

 

Well the February data for Resolute looks like a mess of sieges mostly beginning at dawn, midday and a couple at dusk. Half of which are only about 5 minutes long.. only 1 lasts for over an hour.. and the last one going days into March.

I almost feel like they have regular potential start times with mostly random durations but that's not quite right. I've looked at moon phases and when planets are visible and none of those seem to matter. So at the moment I'm at a loss as to what 2nd and 3rd potential factors might be.

I did however confirm that the schedule is NOT identical from year to year.. as the previous data shows a siege Feb 21 and this round has none on that date. I can't imagine right now how what I'm seeing is by design.

Also, with the update later I'm going to miss several hours worth of data for March and likely some for April due to patches.

 

Logged in to find Ardoris under siege March 24th, 508 (right now).

 

*sigh* don't know how but I didn't get any data last night. That really bites.

 

Well AHK just wasn't up to the job.. so I got something else running on my laptop so I can actually play and not lose data. (I hope).

So.. some basic observations on Resolute.. the behavior of the sieges seems to change. At least during February the sieges are very short lived but also very regular.. usually starting during the times of dawn and midday.. and occasionally dusk. This is one of the few behaviors that is regular. So far I haven't been able to pin down any kind of actual pattern.. but 3 distinct start times is interesting.

Although I lost a good chunk of time in March.. sieges went from quick and sporadic to near full on non-stop siege starting late Feb 28th straight through March 10th.. There's about a "week" with some short sieges then a long one starts and.. well huge gap.. The start times in March though seem to be dawn, midday and afternoon. Mostly midday and afternoon. Ok that's not so different from Feb..

Data picks up again about half way through April 1st. So far sieges in April are starting midday and afternoon. So far it looks like large sieges with very short ones in between.

I have no working theories to test at this time. Every idea I think of seems disproven very quickly. From planetary positions and phases to influence by multiple planets. Regular/semi-regular start times is the only clue I have.. and you might recall when I recorded Jaanaford for a night the start times were different.

I keep coming back to 8s and related virtues somehow. For example.. the day is broken into 8 times.. Courage goes into Valor, Sacrifice and Honor.. 3 primary start times.. etc

So does each 'virtue' have its own start time? Kinda reminds me of moon phases. Since the moon's phase determined which moongates were open and where they lead to.. you could argue that a moon's phase was also tried to a virtue. So for awhile I was exploring the idea of planet phases somehow being part of it.. but then if that were the case shouldn't there be more regular patterns of frequency and duration?

 

So I've finished with Resolute for now and am currently recording data for Jaanaford. Unfortunately, I thought Jaanaford started a month later than it actually does and missed the first 8 'days'.

Before I get into any really in depth analysis I will say that for awhile there I was unsure just how much of the sieges where based on rules vs how much may be random. Well thanks to one observation I made looking at Resolute.. I'm all but convinced now that there is nothing random about these sieges.

What is the observation you ask? Well you remember in an earlier post I mentioned how sieges seems to start at certain times of the day? Well those times seem to 'drift'.. and not randomly but very slowly and consistently.

It would seem there is not just one or two influences.. but potentially several. And so in looking at the data more closely I'm going to look at pretty much everything I can think of.. positions of the plants.. what phases they're in.. and see what matches up. I'm still working on how I'm going to present the data once it's all compiled. I will probably start a new thread or two.

I'm not ruling out possible bugs in the system.. but I'm hopeful there will be enough data to determine intent vs actual behavior.

 

For reference, the 8 Obsidian Cabalists and their anti-virtues

Source https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=69566#more-69566

Dolus: The Cabalist of Deceit who causes confusion in the ranks, whose symbol is the Two Faces of Deceit.

Temna: The Cabalist of Despite who turns allies against each other, whose symbol is the Torn Heart.

Nefario: The Cabalist of Dastard (Cowardice) who strikes terror into those who dare oppose him, whose symbol is the Raised Arms of Capitulation.

Nefas: The Cabalist of Injustice who causes enemies to beg for mercy, whose symbol is Imbalance.

Avara: The Cabalist of Punishment who inflicts huge amounts of damage that lingers for long amounts of time, whose symbol is the Flail.

Indigno: The Cabalist of Dishonor who generates large clouds of poisonous gas, whose symbol is the Poisoned Chalice.

Corpus: The Cabalist of Carnality who forces opponents to “disrobe”, therefore losing all their defensive protection, whose symbol is Intercourse.

Fastus: The Cabalist of Vanity who mesmerizes opponents, whose symbol is the Vortex of Self Absorption.

 

Unfortunately, that is Dev+ info right now... Berek will take it down if he sees it before it's officially public.

 

It's part of the latest update

 

Oh the Friday update? Which I obviously haven't looked at yet.

Well in that case allow me say also that Darkstarr basically confirmed my suspicions that the planets share their names with the cabalists.

 

I can't quite figure out which virtues Avara and Temna are deadset against. Corpus, I think, is the one besieging Ardoris since carnality seems to be the opposite of love. The rest are fairly straightforward.

 

They're listed in the same order the virtues are traditionally listed in.

Truth, Love, Courage
Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, Humility
Dolus, Temna, Nefario, Nefas, Avara, Indigno, Corpus, Fastus

The one vs Love/Compassion is Temna. Symbol is the torn heart.. Corpus being the opposite of spirituality. Another way to think of Corpus would be worldliness.

It's nice to see the new symbolism which I believe is new or mostly new to the anti-virtues.

 

I have a feeling I'm probably forgetting something I already observed that invalidates it but my current working theory goes something like this..

In addition to a particular constellation being visible.. likewise a planet in question must also be visible.. or at least unobstructed. If it passes behind a planet for example a siege will end. This includes Daedelus.

I'm just barely getting into my analysis of Resolute but so far it matches the theory. The first siege is only brief at dawn on Nov 2. I don't have the images ready so I'll just describe what's going on.

At midnight, Nov 1st we assume sieges become possible.. but during the year 508, Nefario (aka Red) is at zenith but so is Daedelus which Dolus (Blue) and Tenma (Yellow) also very close. It isn't until around Dawn on Nov 2 that Deadelus should be pulling away from Nefario.. and the siege begins.. however, Nefario is catching up to Dolus and begins passing behind it.. siege ends.

At this time all 3 planets are setting

I could be wrong I suppose.. I suspect Nefario will take the next couple of hours passing Dolus.. become visible again on Nov 5 and then next couple hours passing Tenma. Which I'm just throwing out there as I don't have the time right now to work the numbers as I need to get going to work. However, various alignments are the only events in the sky short enough and frequent enough to explain the seemingly erratic siege behavior.

 

Well I was right.. that I was wrong.

I've started a new thread specifically for analyzing siege related data called Siege Tracking. It's not pretty but you can see what I'm looking at. And what I noted that breaks my latest theory (that I didn't remember before) is the Resolute siege of Feb 8th.. where Nefario is not only below the horizon.. but is also blocked by Tenma. So obviously there is no need for the primary planet in question to be visible.

So I've posted the month of Feb for Resolute.. the remaining 6 I'll post together. The first month is just to make everyone's heads explode. But maybe before that happens someone will spot something before I do.

 

Since sieges are kind of defunct now, lets get back to NB Astronomy! There was a bit of discussion in the Release 37 Postmortem:

First was that the name of the sun was not set, as it just wasn't important to the story yet. However, they would take suggestions for this. (My vote would be for Sosaria.)

The second was that the new dev on the team has some background in astrophysics, and suggested that there is probably a micro black hole in the system, opposite the sun. New Britannia and her satellites are the only known planetary bodies in the system. This would stabalize some of the geocentric concerns, as well as account for time dilation. Very interesting concept.

 

Alright, we have town 11 ! Apparently in my route to check every town I managed to miss this one every single time! *eyeroll* So I passed right by without even looking (cause I completely forgot about it apparently) no less than about 56 times! *hangs head in shame* The town..

Point West

 

It's going to be interestng to see at what point the number and benefits of the devotionals are outweighed by the number of sieges that take place. I'm also interested to see if certain months are worse/better for specific devotionals re:sieges.