How did the Nomai never find the Stranger?

[hamcon]

Playing the DLC, and from what I have seen, the Nomai were in the system for a good while considering what we find. Yet it seems during all that time, they never found the Stranger cloaked within the system. Where thet just to preoccupied to finding the Eye of the Universe to see if anything else was in the system?

[Quillithe]

It is pretty difficult to find due to the cloaking. In particular, you only see evidence from getting the Stranger between you and the Sun - but with how the Nomai travel they were unlikely to spend much time that far out in orbit, and they had plenty of mysteries to keep them busy for however long they were in system (which seems like only one Nomai generation at most, although we have no idea how long that is).

[Aperankityal - Levana]

The Stranger is in a rather odd position- you'd only find it if you built something to look *inwards*, which if you're looking for the Eye you're not doing.

[ReverendTed]

The Stranger is out of plane of the solar system, so it would be very unusual to accidentally come across it. That the Hearthian probe's orbit happens to allow the Stranger to eclipse the sun is an incredible coincidence.
The Nomai spent most of their efforts searching for the Eye by its signal - using the signal detector on the Attlerock and Quantum moon locator on Ember Twin, and later the Observatory on Brittle Hollow.
The Orbital Probe Cannon might have slammed into it eventually, but the Stranger's Cloaking field blocks communication in and out, and the OPC wasn't ever asked to fire until the Nomai had been gone for nearly 300,000 years anyway.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by ReverendTed:

The Orbital Probe Cannon might have slammed into it eventually, but the Stranger's Cloaking field blocks communication in and out, and the OPC wasn't ever asked to fire until the Nomai had been gone for nearly 300,000 years anyway.

Funny to think about that it's likely they'd never know even if it did get hit by the probe - the probe's only set to stop the loop in the event of malfunction or finding the eye, so it would probably hit the stranger, notice it's not the eye, and then loop again. Otherwise it's far more probable you'd get pulled out of the loop by the probe finding the stranger and never find the eye at all.

[ReverendTed]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by ReverendTed:

The Orbital Probe Cannon might have slammed into it eventually, but the Stranger's Cloaking field blocks communication in and out, and the OPC wasn't ever asked to fire until the Nomai had been gone for nearly 300,000 years anyway.

Funny to think about that it's likely they'd never know even if it did get hit by the probe - the probe's only set to stop the loop in the event of malfunction or finding the eye, so it would probably hit the stranger, notice it's not the eye, and then loop again. Otherwise it's far more probable you'd get pulled out of the loop by the probe finding the stranger and never find the eye at all.

The OPC doesn't stop automatically. It was expected to be monitored by a Nomai in the Probe Tracking Module, and they would report the successful finding to the ATP who would stop the loop.
In that case, they might see the probe path abruptly stop, and get curious. They'd have to decide if it was worth stopping the project, though, since the OPC was only designed to fire once, and they might not remember the probe stoppage because of when the memory statures start working.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by ReverendTed:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Funny to think about that it's likely they'd never know even if it did get hit by the probe - the probe's only set to stop the loop in the event of malfunction or finding the eye, so it would probably hit the stranger, notice it's not the eye, and then loop again. Otherwise it's far more probable you'd get pulled out of the loop by the probe finding the stranger and never find the eye at all.

The OPC doesn't stop automatically. It was expected to be monitored by a Nomai in the Probe Tracking Module, and they would report the successful finding to the ATP who would stop the loop.
In that case, they might see the probe path abruptly stop, and get curious. They'd have to decide if it was worth stopping the project, though, since the OPC was only designed to fire once, and they might not remember the probe stoppage because of when the memory statures start working.

But the other statues don't turn on unless it finds the eye (or malfunctions in some way apparently, we don't get to see this). You can find a note about this - the probe is specifically linked to a statue for this purpose so that no Nomai needs to experience 300+ years of constant looping. Nobody actually was going to remember what happened until after the probe found the eye.

I guess they would see the data, but they would a hard time responding.

[ReverendTed]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

But the other statues don't turn on unless it finds the eye (or malfunctions in some way apparently, we don't get to see this). You can find a note about this - the probe is specifically linked to a statue for this purpose so that no Nomai needs to experience 300+ years of constant looping. Nobody actually was going to remember what happened until after the probe found the eye.

I guess they would see the data, but they would a hard time responding.

Exactly!
Until the Eye is detected, each time the Orbital Probe Cannon fired, it would feel like the first time. Though they'd feel like it was the first time firing, they'd see all the old tracking data, just like we do.
So, for Privet, waiting in the Probe Tracking Module, the OPC would fire for the first time and (provided she survived the RUD) she would see it abruptly stop in an unusual point in the solar system.
Then, the decision: do we stop the ATP to explore this strange anomaly, because if you don't stop, you won't remember and "another you" may or may not notice the abnormality in the "prior launch" data in a later loop. But if you do stop the ATP, the OPC has been destroyed and will need to be rebuilt to restart the search, and you have less than 22 minutes to decide, because the sun station needs to trigger the supernova in time if you want to keep the loop going with an intact OPC.
Would there be a way to send back a "DO NOT FIRE OPC, INVESTIGATE ANOMALY" command with the next supernova? Would there be a way to manually trigger the statues at that point?
Upon reflection...probably?

On the other hand, the other planets don't appear to "cast a shadow" in the tracking data, (doesn't the probe just travel through planets?) so I'm not sure the Stranger would even produce an anomaly.

[lieutenantkirtar]

With the canon destroyed and the tracking module sunk beneath the ocean, could they have even seen a mystery crash and send word to stop the loop?

But besides that it seems unlikely they would stop the loop considering how much effort they have put into finding the eye.

[ReverendTed]

Originally posted by lieutenantkirtar:

With the canon destroyed and the tracking module sunk beneath the ocean, could they have even seen a mystery crash and send word to stop the loop?

Privet was expected to be in the tracking module, and we see that it (and the projection pool) are still functioning in the center of Giant's Deep, so the main question is whether Privet would have survived the event.

Originally posted by lieutenantkirtar:

But besides that it seems unlikely they would stop the loop considering how much effort they have put into finding the eye.

If they were able to send a "DO NOT FIRE" message and activate the memory statues at will, then they could prevent the cannon from firing on the next loop, investigate, and then restart the loop at will. Again, providing the Sun Station had actually worked. And the Interloper didn't kill them all.