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Xenon?

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 00:14
by Naferius
Are the Xenon some kind of robots like Cylons from battlestar galactica or something. They seems really mysterious :xenon: I have seen some of them eject and the astronaut in the suit is Unknown entity pretty strange...

edited cuz i missed "few" words :oops:

Re: Xenon?

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 00:30
by Gazz
There are definitely some strange life forms in this universe.

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 00:59
by yourpowersareweakoldman
I think they are just computers in X3.

Whenever I have seen them "Eject" there is never an Astronaut.

I think it's cause one of your shots got lucky and disabled the ships central processor. Or at least that's what I tell myself as an excuse to capture Xenon ships.

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 02:16
by Naferius
I didn't do a screen back then :oops: But anyway I was checking this topic: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=206237

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 07:49
by pjknibbs
If you ever see an astronaut left behind after a Xenon ship bails, it's a bug--that's not supposed to happen.

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 09:44
by SVAndrei
Here's a good one: If the ship is commanded by a Computer, how come it has a cockpit? I doubt the Xenon just put it in there just in case their ship gets captured.

That is why i never use Xenon ships as personal ships.

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 09:49
by nman
SVAndrei wrote:Here's a good one: If the ship is commanded by a Computer, how come it has a cockpit? I doubt the Xenon just put it in there just in case their ship gets captured.

That is why i never use Xenon ships as personal ships.
Maybe you just automatically rip out the cooling units for the main Xenon computer, and put in windows (the clear see-through stuff, not the OS), life support, a cockpit, comms, artificial gravity, targeting software, etc...

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 09:55
by jordan kirwan
Maybe you just automatically rip out the cooling units for the main Xenon computer, and put in windows (the clear see-through stuff, not the OS), life support, a cockpit, comms, artificial gravity, targeting software, etc...
yeah im sure you do
Here's a good one: If the ship is commanded by a Computer, how come it has a cockpit? I doubt the Xenon just put it in there just in case their ship gets captured.
i read i another post that the xenon dont have enough self awareness to realize they dont need a cockpit

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 10:00
by SVAndrei
nman wrote:
SVAndrei wrote:Here's a good one: If the ship is commanded by a Computer, how come it has a cockpit? I doubt the Xenon just put it in there just in case their ship gets captured.

That is why i never use Xenon ships as personal ships.
Maybe you just automatically rip out the cooling units for the main Xenon computer, and put in windows (the clear see-through stuff, not the OS), life support, a cockpit, comms, artificial gravity, targeting software, etc...
And you do all his while out in your space suit, and in a few seconds too? With no assistance from a shipyard, as well. :D

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 10:22
by beyer_garratt
Windows XP -> Windows Vista -> Skynet -> Xenon1.0 -> Xenon OS we know today.
Xenon was a self-aware OS designed to run advanced autopilot operations on par with human pilots that went wrong, killing its creators and replicating itself into the secret prototype ships we now identify as Xenon, which were the ships the original tests of the OS were conducted in.

Xenon knows exactly what materials are required to build each ship, and it also contains information on how to make advanced materials such as alloys, which were stored in data banks in the original prototypes.

Incidentally, Xenon is a single entity, a computer operating system, thus saying 'The Xenon' is a bit of a grammatical faux pass. :wink:

The reason Xenon ships all have cockpits is because the OS was designed to operate with one, an attribute Xenon has not 'bred' out yet. In fact, Xenon builds its ships to the exact same blueprint that it 'ran away' with, hence all ships are equipped with fully functional cockpits.

Also, despite not having had a human in their ships for many jazuras, every Xenon ship is built with fully functioning space suits, which were included in the original blueprints for the Xenon test ships. What the opening poster describes is one of these suits being ejected by Xenon itself, which was built with automatic pilot ejection upon system failure/damage etc.

The suit is pressurized with oxygen, hence the reason it seems to maintain its shape even in space.

You know you have way too much spare time when you make the effort to think things like this through thoroughly.

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 10:34
by Gazz
Wow! That's a fine piece of technobabble!

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 13:27
by SVAndrei
The scary part is that it actually makes perfect sense. :lol:

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 13:37
by Shadowbourne
Egosoft should employ you as a press/community relations officer (spin doctor) to come up with good reasons for all of their 'undocumented features' :D

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 14:37
by jordan kirwan
Windows XP -> Windows Vista -> Skynet -> Xenon1.0 -> Xenon OS we know today.
Xenon was a self-aware OS designed to run advanced autopilot operations on par with human pilots that went wrong, killing its creators and replicating itself into the secret prototype ships we now identify as Xenon, which were the ships the original tests of the OS were conducted in.

Xenon knows exactly what materials are required to build each ship, and it also contains information on how to make advanced materials such as alloys, which were stored in data banks in the original prototypes.

Incidentally, Xenon is a single entity, a computer operating system, thus saying 'The Xenon' is a bit of a grammatical faux pass.

The reason Xenon ships all have cockpits is because the OS was designed to operate with one, an attribute Xenon has not 'bred' out yet. In fact, Xenon builds its ships to the exact same blueprint that it 'ran away' with, hence all ships are equipped with fully functional cockpits.

Also, despite not having had a human in their ships for many jazuras, every Xenon ship is built with fully functioning space suits, which were included in the original blueprints for the Xenon test ships. What the opening poster describes is one of these suits being ejected by Xenon itself, which was built with automatic pilot ejection upon system failure/damage etc.

The suit is pressurized with oxygen, hence the reason it seems to maintain its shape even in space.

You know you have way too much spare time when you make the effort to think things like this through thoroughly.
wow :o
that is a pice of amazing BS

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 16:22
by BeavelGuy
its been a while since I played the first game...
Spoiler
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but dont the Xenon have their roots in the original terraformer fleet sent out by the Earth to prepare planets for colonisation, which subsequently went rogue, and started a war with Earth (which was only saved by Nathan R. Gunne's last-ditch feint drawing the terraformer fleet through a jumpgate into the current X universe, spawning the argon race and the goner religion)?
if so it would make sense to say that the Xenon havent quite realised that cockpits arent technically required in spacecraft, although you would think that anything they designed from the ground up would have omitted them :) maybe all xenon ships are based on the work of their own designers... or maybe Egosoft just thought it would be cool to let us fly them :twisted:

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 16:32
by Shadowbourne
BeavelGuy wrote:its been a while since I played the first game...
Spoiler
Show
but dont the Xenon have their roots in the original terraformer fleet sent out by the Earth to prepare planets for colonisation, which subsequently went rogue, and started a war with Earth (which was only saved by Nathan R. Gunne's last-ditch feint drawing the terraformer fleet through a jumpgate into the current X universe, spawning the argon race and the goner religion)?
if so it would make sense to say that the Xenon havent quite realised that cockpits arent technically required in spacecraft, although you would think that anything they designed from the ground up would have omitted them :) maybe all xenon ships are based on the work of their own designers... or maybe Egosoft just thought it would be cool to let us fly them :twisted:
I've never quite understood that, roughly how long ago in years (or jazuras if you prefer) did this event occur, relative to the time period of X2/X3? And why are the goner beliefs regarded with such suspicion, despite the overwhelming evidence for earths existence (The AP Gunner, and more Xenon than you can shake a stick at!)?
Spoiler
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Until the discovery of the gate to Earth at the end of the X3 plot.
Do the argon simply not record recent history?

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 16:54
by BeavelGuy
argh so tempted to reinstall X-BTF :) i think it took them a long time to recover after the war, centuries or even millenia (though I cant remember the official number)... and during this time they had to catch up with their original technology which culminates in the X-prototype which is what jumps the main character in X-BTF out to the current X-universe, by chance.
Spoiler
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I also have a sneaking suspicion it was meant to have been Earth which built the original jumpgate network but then got cut off from it when they had to destroy the Earth gate, and being cut off from their colonies/etc was what caused their technology to decline after the war
so obviously in all this time history becomes legend and its only the "crazies" known as the Goners who actually still believed it was all true. But you're right, it does seem like it was pretty glaringly obvious... maybe the Argon are an extra suspicious race :P

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 17:19
by Poobah
Spoiler
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So far as I recall it had been 500 years between the war and the launch of the X-Perimental Shuttle and the people of earth had not created the gate network, but had worked out how to create gates. I believe they had thought to use the technology to colonise the galaxy and had sent one gate off through space to Alpha Centauri when they discovered other energy signals, belonging to other gates and locked on to one of those those, adding Earth to the network, or possibly found other gates at Apha Centauri. It's been a while and I'm not sure I remember where I read that; lemme check my XBTF manual.

EDIT:

Alright, the XBTF manual says that the gates were made 'through man's ingenuity' and that it took 'over 500 years' to recover from the war with the Xenon.

The story 'Farnham's Legend' in the X2 manual agrees that man could create gates and indeed did create a number of them - several small ones on earth during the testing phase, then one to the moon and one to Mars and finally one was launched towards Alpha Centauri (but would have taken 3 generations to get there). During that time man discovered that a gate network already existed (what they had previously thought to be black holes) and they learned to 'tune in to it' (the gate network) and set out exploring, discovering only uninhabited planets in the entire network.

Not sure that I'm allowed to paraphrase the story so I'll leave it at that.

Posted: Sun, 10. Aug 08, 22:04
by SVAndrei
Google up Argonopedia. There is a time line there, that explains everything.

Posted: Mon, 11. Aug 08, 01:50
by Naferius
I want to lean more about the Xenon and the wars (X-BTF) so I will go get the game. So far i have played x2 and x3 and never tried the 1st part of the collection. Graphics maybe crappy, but I think the classic game will be nice to play. Is it hard?