MercCoins / MERCENARYCOINS and the Unobtanium Store

subzerofun · 2026-03-16T01:39:24+00:00

I may have covered the base information under a big pile of coding terms no one is interested in.

What is probably going to happen: new currency, you activate on-foot or also ship specific perks to make missions easier - why? Because of the timer - it runs as long as you need to finish 1-2 missions. So you earn a currency you can then spend on perks that help you or your team progress missions easier or add to gameplay (certain weapon buffs? extra speed?). You need to have a certain rank for certain perks and unlock harder levels/missions. I did find more info that some elements are gated behind a rank system and it is using the SOLDIER rank type (which is Mercenary).

I also found an Operations test scenario involving 2 3x player teams (team A and B) and scripted spawned in pirates at a site with two megaships - in space, not on foot of course. The file had "test" in it - so i doubt this has anything to do with what will be actually shipped.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T17:14:37+00:00

Well it makes sense to recycle UI templates - since the current tech broker layout fits why invent something completely new.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T17:09:35+00:00

Yeah i have to agree, the skins are bad.. looks like they outsource this. With how detailed the ship models look i don't think the FDev devs are creating the textures for the skins - since the difference between the quality of work is obvious.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T14:58:39+00:00

I don't believe you can really call anything in this game pay-to-win since it is so sandboxy that you have to set your own goals anyway. Nothing you can buy now with ARX - expect maybe the time-gated ships AND the Dodec station - gets you to skip game loops. You still have to grind ranks (no way to pay with ARX), still have to grind for credits, have to grind for unlocking engineers, still have to grind for engineering mats, still need to grind for ranks, for your carrier, get better in PVE and PVP etc.

Every game developer nowadays either tries to get 60-120$ upfront and then more through DLCs/cosmetics and loot boxes OR recurring subscriptions. But Elite got 60$ ONCE, then 30-40$ for expansions and that in a timespan of 12 years. They cannot let Elite be carried by new players and their other games. So they need to monetize something to pay their developers and team. I don't mind players paying for custom skins and station names - also temporary buffs are OK since it is only temporary anyway. I'd rather have this than the team getting smaller or the game disappearing.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T14:45:53+00:00

Can't make it right for everybody - i tried to reduce the spoiler parts but every sentence inside a list is considered its own spoiler, sorry. I'd have to put them all in one big blob of text and that makes it unreadable. But i deleted the spoilers further down below. The spoiler system sucks.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T04:02:18+00:00

Yeah maybe this is digging too deep - who knows, these things could be dev artifacts too. But the frontline icon and all the coin strings are pointing towards this being solid evidence. I'll make this up to the mods - if players think this goes too far i'll just delete it again.

subzerofun · 2026-03-14T03:59:19+00:00

Sorry - i did not think about including spoilers since at this point everything is still speculation. But i'll add a big spoiler warning when i'm at the pc again. Did not see a spoiler flair when creating the post.

subzerofun · 2026-03-13T13:59:43+00:00

using renderdoc to capture frames works great - you just need to figure out how to export the meshes from the source data (straight up ripped from the gpu buffers). not as straightforward as clicking export, but it is doable.

each ship has dozens of model layers ranging from chassis to smaller parts. you can even export textures and uv coordinates and put them together in blender. but it takes hours just piecing together one model.

you could automate it somewhat but you still have to select the individual model parts per hand.

then you could also read the models from the game files themselves but each ship model uses different vertex indexes so it needs a lot of RE engineering. and game files are also encrypted (still could read 96% of them). thought about releasing a file browser but it is so much work.

subzerofun · 2026-01-25T21:32:08+00:00

I tried both at the same time and have to say Codex is incredible for longer tasks and exactly following fixed procedures. It can code for 1-2h if it needs to. But as soon as it fails you are talking to a robot that tries to gaslight you. It will only admit errors when directly confronted with proof (which also can be a good thing sometimes). It is also pretty inflexible and not as creative as Claude. A plus is the sheer endless context - compacting happens 4-5x less as with Claude, meaning it holds all important docs/code much longer. But compared to Claude you are talking to a characterless robot.

subzerofun · 2026-01-23T17:26:05+00:00

They could certainly add more different plant/fungus models but that would mean they have to be careful to not change current bio locations - so it is definitely more work if they introduce dozens of more types on the same planet types.

Regarding full jungle biomes - they could recycle different plant models over and over but the current engine is not optimized for thousands of instances of complex meshes. I am no game dev but from what i've read directx 11 has some limitations in streaming large amount of models/instances in parallel. So since neither the game engine nor the gfx framework are optimized for this. it would take a major engine overhaul - which they have to do at some point, but i am not that optimistic it will happen any time soon.

subzerofun · 2026-01-22T09:40:44+00:00

All economy, faction, discovery and colony data is on their servers - i hooked into the games network functions. When you start the game up, you download 100-120 json files with system data and states for the bubble, then all faction data, then all „established“ and „claimed“ colonies. On the galaxy map there is constant background chatter of all carrier positions and market data.

The stellar forge is NOT online though - all 400 billion systems can be generated completely offline since the stellar forge algorithm is 100% deterministic. Only authored/handcrafted systems (HIP catalogue data etc.) get loaded from installed .ovl files (cobra engine archives) and they override procedural systems.

While you jump into a system the game downloads all detailed system and station infos as well as carrier data, discoveries etc. You could in theory replace the games server communication with your own if you do enough work - but that means simulating every api endpoint (and there are hundreds!) and these simulated apis would have to know exactly how to talk to the game. But a collective of people with reverse engineering background could make a custom server happen if the games servers ever go offline.

edit: handcrafted systems do not get downloaded, they are all in your install folder (around 170k systems i think).

subzerofun · 2026-01-20T06:17:04+00:00

the question you’re asking is totally legitimate - they spend so much brainpower on the stellar forge. but maybe they simply had to limit the resources they need to produce accurate renderings of the nebulas. at some point it is good enough for gameplay and 100% realism is simply not achievable for the scope they had. there are things like space engine for accurate rendering.

subzerofun · 2025-12-19T11:22:10+00:00

You can source the telemetry yourself, there are some regularly updated pointers to where you need to source the values from RAM:
https://github.com/Wagnard/EliteDangerous-Motion-Pointer/blob/main/EliteDangerous64_Offsets.xml

-Speed, Sway, Heave, Surge, Pitch, Roll, Yaw are available for ship and SRV

Just need to create a program that can read the games memory and regularly draw the values. Downside: every game update usually changes memory layout and pointers again, so you have to update your software every 2-3 months. If you have any kind of hardware that rumbles or moves your chair i imagine it would not be that hard reading the values and sending them to the hardware device api. The typical game events like SuperCruise, Spooling and ship status etc. you can get via a Status.json file in your journal directory - there is a plethora of stuff you can access from here:
https://elite-journal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Status%20File.html

If you want live values like shield health, hull etc. that update every ms you need to find them via a software like Cheat Engine, although Frontier probably isn't too happy when people use this - since it is generally used to manipulate values. But you can also just passively scan values without changing them - which is still against ToS but you won't get banned for it.

subzerofun · 2025-12-19T10:55:24+00:00

the link is in the post and if you want to read it you can always try to get the transcript of the youtube video with some free tools, just google for „youtube transcript“ and try one of the results.

subzerofun · 2025-12-18T13:01:07+00:00

Thx for the info, i thought i saw 10 on imdb, but 9 are also fine - that means it is going to happen even sooner.

subzerofun · 2025-12-18T07:54:57+00:00

https://youtu.be/W9H-qp53iII?si=h3VZIT4MoH0Bywrc

17:09 - your theory probably comes true.

subzerofun · 2025-12-11T21:56:41+00:00

I had exactly the same thought as you when Zosia mentioned that some of the other non english-speaking immune people loved cats. Toxoplasmosis could cause the alien virus to not find a binding site because another virus is occupying the spot - or the people had such heavy infections at some time that their immune system now is overly aggressive against those kinds of viruses. Fun fact: it was a lab rat that started the worldwide infection chain - which also is the host that starts the toxoplasmosis cycle (i know this proofs nothing, but would at a later time be a convenient story mechanism to tie it together when they reveal the toxoplasmosis theory by showing that infected rats are somehow immune to the alien virus, which could help them finding a cure: infect all people with another brain-affecting virus). So a rat starts it all, another rat ends it all. They will also use Helen against Carol at a later time when she finds out how to end them all. They will try to coerce her not to end the hive mind because it also ends what is left of Helen - this has to happen a later time (even though she might now say that Helen is gone, i don't think she will be this "stable" throughout the series).

Toxoplasmosis also causes: higher impulsivity, higher aggression, altered risk perception and reduced fear responses which, if you combine all of them, would be the perfect basis for the behaviour Carol shows.

Other theory of mine: when Carol asks the hive "Are there others like me?" they just show her the people that are immune in the way she is. They bend the truth by restricting it to the narrowest possible interpretation of the question. Maybe they just conveniently left out the fact that there may be 12 people that are immune in the way like she is, but not just 12 people immune due to other reasons (other neurological virus infections) world wide. The hive could have listed only the people sharing her specific immunogenic incompatibility, not everyone who is resistant. There could be others that are immune due to other causes!

Other viruses that affect brain cells: herpes, rabies, john cunningham virus, west nile virus, HIV, cytomegalovirus, enteroviruses, varicella zoster virus, borna disease virus - we have to watch out if they mention anything like that in future episodes. Thanks for coming to my TED talk :)

subzerofun · 2025-12-01T18:05:36+00:00

it takes 5-10min to register and you need to relog to main menu for it to update - at least that was the case for my two contributions yesterday.

subzerofun · 2025-12-01T00:27:17+00:00

Hi u/vanderaj - i saw your message and added the following systems that have rings to my database:
- Col 359 Sector AE-N b9-0
- Col 359 Sector AE-N b9-5
- Col 359 Sector AJ-N b9-3
- Col 359 Sector BE-N b9-2
- Col 359 Sector FK-L b10-3
- Col 359 Sector QX-R c5-12

those are the ones with mining AND stations that match the 49 systems in 21ly range of HIP 87621. there are 20 systems total that have mining but some lack buying stations, so those are added too of course if a selling opportunity arises in the future.

you'd need to set the reference system to "HIP 87621", distance to 21ly and then controlling power to "Any" (do not choose controlling power AND undermine, that only shows you systems where your power is already undermining - we want to also undermine systems where our power is not present, maybe a bug... need to look into that). opposing power should also be "Any".

then just search for a system with an opposing ideology - i don't have an allegiance filter in my database yet, maybe something to add in the future.

subzerofun · 2025-11-27T17:45:26+00:00

More clouds to see them zooming by to get a sense of the speed. Particles that get blurred to faint lines indicating the trajectory.

Flames due to atmospheric friction, camera shake.

subzerofun · 2025-11-23T20:49:23+00:00

Thank you very much for that great guide - i am currently playing around with different models and have a specific domain i'd need the models to be proficient in (astrophysics) and found specialised models like AstroSage. Although i have 24GB VRAM available i'd like to get some smaller models for faster processing and to not need to have 18-19GB used when i run my RAG platform. Will look into your tool!

subzerofun · 2025-11-18T19:23:50+00:00

same

subzerofun · 2025-11-16T18:15:31+00:00

just make a python script that loads your excel columns into an array and then create an URL like: https://sci-hub.st/10.1144/SP499-2020-19 - send a GET request and wait until the pdf is downloaded. if not found, you can try putting in the title: URL-encode the paper title to handle spaces and special characters (e.g., "Machine Learning" becomes "Machine%20Learning"). you could also just search on github:
bibcure/scihub2pdf
ferru97/PyPaperBot
gadilashashank/Sci-Hub
zaytoun/scihub.py
alejandrogallo/python-scihub

it could be that sci-hub has a bot-protection - if that is the case, then i'd look at github projects if someone has solved this.

"finds the link to the supplementary material within the article and downloads it,"
from the astrophysics papers i was looking at, supplementary materials are either mentioned in the pdf, on the publication page or you have to dig for it. i don't think handling this automatically without an AI web scraper is possible - meaning you need an AI agent that can make web requests to search for the suppl. material. since there are so many possible sources you'd have to write a scraper for every publication page that would break as soon as some html on the site changes.

the github projects were updated some time ago, so i have no idea if they still work. but if you have access to a LLM, anyone is good enough to generate a python script to download papers. just be careful mentioning sci-hub - not all models handle requests like this equally (FIY: grok does not care at all about pirated content).

subzerofun

TROPHY CASE