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Weekly Update Message Discussion [BWU - 6/6/08]

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 7:27 am
by DHalo
Changed Both Titles to distinguish one discussion over another - Unr3alChi3f

Moved DHalo's post into its own topic so that it's easily accessible. - Avateur

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx ... &cid=14034

New stuffs!
LOG: QUERIED ADJACENT FACILITIES
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility [alpha, beta, gamma, epsilon, zeta, and kappa sites] have all replied [systems normal] within expected constraints. This would tend to signify that the containment failure was purely mechanical in nature; perhaps a manufacturing flaw. As no [outside agent] has accessed [delta site] in the past [874068942 hours, 4 minutes, 46 seconds]—[allowing for a 61360 hour, 54, minute, 2 second margin of error]—sabotage would seem unlikely.

LOG: REQUEST UNANSWERED
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] is currently being held at [.01 atm] / [184K]. Local maintenance and security hubs have failed to reply within expected constraints. [Bumping maintenance and security request up] to [quadrant oversight].

LOG: REQUEST UNANSWERED
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] is currently being held at [1 atm] / [278K] as atmospheric seals were showing signs of stress. [Quadrant oversight] has failed to reply within expected constraints. [Bumping maintenance and security request all the way up] to 2401 [PENITENT TANGENT].

LOG: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO FACILITIES
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] emergency [slip stream space] transportation conduits have been accessed by unauthorized parties.

LOG: FILED COMPLAINT TO INSTALLATION 00
2401 [PENITENT TANGENT], monitor of Installation 05, has been lax in the areas of maintenance and security. Requests for aid in said areas have gone unanswered by both 2401 and [subservient] systems well beyond expected constraints.

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:15 am
by Samusaaron3
Interesting stuff. I wonder why Delta Halo failed with the containment protocol? I doubt the given suggestion that it was just a random mechanical error is the answer; I sense something much more sinister.

Anyone have any ideas?

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:50 am
by Avateur
I'm going to analyze each section as I go, but first I'll begin with some math:

LOG: QUERIED ADJACENT FACILITIES
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility [alpha, beta, gamma, epsilon, zeta, and kappa sites] have all replied [systems normal] within expected constraints. This would tend to signify that the containment failure was purely mechanical in nature; perhaps a manufacturing flaw. As no [outside agent] has accessed [delta site] in the past [874068942 hours, 4 minutes, 46 seconds]—[allowing for a 61360 hour, 54, minute, 2 second margin of error]—sabotage would seem unlikely.


[874068942 hours, 4 minutes, 46 seconds] divided by 24 (hours in a day) = 36419539.25 (days).

36419539.25 (days) divided by 365 (days in a year) = 99779.55 (years).

Of course this is only an approximation.

[allowing for a 61360 hour, 54, minute, 2 second margin of error] divided by (24 hours in a day) = 2556 (days).

2556 (days) divided by (365 days in a year) = 7 (years).

Also an approximation. So, this appears to be referring to shortly after the time that the rings originally were activated.

Now for an odd observation. We know that in HALO: CE we landed on Alpha Halo, and in H2 we landed on Delta Halo. I find the order in which the rings are listed alphabetically to be suspect.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Zeta, and Kappa

A, B, G, E, Z, K. Awesome. I wonder where Delta fits in there alphabetically. I believe I know where, and I believe I know why they aren't in alphabetical order. Read the next section for the answer to this and more!

Now onto the actual analysis of the first section. One can assume that this analysis happened some time around that 300 years or so from the first Weekly Update post that "something" went wrong on Delta Halo. If Alpha Halo was able to be queried, we know that we haven't been there to blow the ring to Hell yet. I would like to know why "[outside agent]" is in brackets, but oh well.

Whatever is monitoring Delta Halo appears to rule out sabotage. I'd like to keep sabotage ruled in. I think that Gravemind got ahold of 2401 Penitent Tangent and started to play around with the systems on Delta Halo. There may have also been malfunctions, too, seeing as how the third section of this Weekly Update message mentions atmospheric seals showing signs of stress.

LOG: REQUEST UNANSWERED
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] is currently being held at [.01 atm] / [184K]. Local maintenance and security hubs have failed to reply within expected constraints. [Bumping maintenance and security request up] to [quadrant oversight].


Assuming "[.01 atm] / [184K]" means "[.01 atmosphere] / [184Kelvin]" then we have some more fun math!

184 (Kelvin) - 273 (being the number you must add to the degrees in Celcius in order to obtain Kelvin) = -89 (degrees Celcius).

[-89 (degrees Celcius) multiplied by 1.8] + 32 = -128.2 (degrees Fahrenheit).

I assume that the "[.01 atm]" means that Delta Halo has been completely sucked dry of its atmosphere. The Flood obviously don't seem to give a damn about that, though. If you all recall, the Flood forms seemed to have been fused with machine and metal parts throughout Delta Halo in H2. The "[quadrant oversight]" part really tickled the inner-geek in me. Anyone here ever watch Star Trek? Something clicked when I read that and made me recall the quadrants as listed in Star Trek, which destroys the need for the Installations to be listed in alphabetical order. From Wikipedia:

"In the television series Star Trek and its spin-offs, Galactic quadrant refers to an area of the Milky Way Galaxy. In the original Star Trek, it referred to an area interchangeable with a sector, but in the spin offs created in the 1990s, a system of four Galactic Quadrants, designated by the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, has been used."

Bungie appears to have added more quadrants to suit their purposes. The "[delta site]" that has been referred to during the past two Weekly Updates does not only signify the actual Halo Installation, but a "quadrant" of the galaxy that it covers when fired.

LOG: REQUEST UNANSWERED
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] is currently being held at [1 atm] / [278K] as atmospheric seals were showing signs of stress. [Quadrant oversight] has failed to reply within expected constraints. [Bumping maintenance and security request all the way up] to 2401 [PENITENT TANGENT].


Forget math, but if I remember correctly, "[1 atm]" is equal to atmospheric pressure as it would be felt as sea level (on Earth, anyway). The Halos are very similar to Earth, so hey. Delta Halo is returning to normal, and that's either because Gravemind has managed to sabotage the place, or there truly has been a malfunction.

Also, notice how now the security request has been bumped up to 2401 Penitent Tangent? Well, during Iris the Servers opened "backwards," almost as if Server 1 was supposed to be the final Server, and Server 5 was supposed to be the first. Last week's Weekly Update appears to have possibly occurred after this week's Weekly Update message.

LOG: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO FACILITIES
LF.Xx.3273 research and containment facility; [delta site] emergency [slip stream space] transportation conduits have been accessed by unauthorized parties.


Assuming this message as a whole truly does take place before last week's Weekly Update, this [slip stream space] activity has nothing to do with humanity and the Covenant finding the ring all because Alpha Halo is still intact. This would appear to be well before Master Chief is even alive. So, what's going? Your guess is as good as mine.

LOG: FILED COMPLAINT TO INSTALLATION 00
2401 [PENITENT TANGENT], monitor of Installation 05, has been lax in the areas of maintenance and security. Requests for aid in said areas have gone unanswered by both 2401 and [subservient] systems well beyond expected constraints.


Last week at HBO (and pasted here) I took a shot in the dark and assumed that the Ark might be monitoring the events at Delta Halo. That thought might be correct if last week's Weekly Update message comes after this week's chronologically. The question is, who is monitoring this situation right now? Do I dare say AdjutantReflex, or would that just be silly?

I can't wait until next week!

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:30 am
by Rosco-128
My take on it was that the "quadrant" in [quadrant oversight] is refering to a section of the ring, not a section of the galaxy. Presumably, [quadrant oversight] is one of 2401's subordinates in charge of overseeing whatever part of the ring the problem is taking place on.

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:08 pm
by DHalo
Av, I don't understand how you can say that this message happened before the last.

The last message was the first alert of it, then said that 300 years had passed since.

Now we see that 100,000 years have passed since that event.

Doesn't that number ring a bell? It has been 100,000 years since the Forerunners activated the Halos. This tells me that the flood infestation has been crawling around since not too long after the original activation.

However, my guess is that their forces were bolstered not too long before the events of Halo 2...

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:10 pm
by Morpheus414
I think(dumbest post ever) that--most simply put--this could possibly mean new maps for Halo 2?

I don't know, I'm not too good on the smartness thing.


I think that it would have something to do with it, I'm not sure.

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:25 pm
by Avateur
DHalo wrote:Av, I don't understand how you can say that this message happened before the last.

The last message was the first alert of it, then said that 300 years had passed since.

Now we see that 100,000 years have passed since that event.

Doesn't that number ring a bell? It has been 100,000 years since the Forerunners activated the Halos. This tells me that the flood infestation has been crawling around since not too long after the original activation.

However, my guess is that their forces were bolstered not too long before the events of Halo 2...
99779.55 (years). If 100,000 years is to be taken literally, this number is clearly not 100,000 years (with a margin of error of 7 years). And the fact alone that it can check Alpha Halo to see if everything is in working order lets us know that this is before we've been there. Also, everything in this Weekly Update message is happening as a first observation, seeing as how last week's message actually states "REPORT: CONTAINMENT FAILURE" before each little section, implying an actual report to Installation 00 instead of observations as to the situation of what's taking place before making that kind of judgment call.

Either way, it's a theory whether it's a correct one or not. They could be happening at the exact same time, just broken into fragments for us for all I know. I'm just trying to cover all angles. And maybe this week's does happen after last week's, but it still seems slightly odd that it would take its time to report to Installation 00 that there's been a Containment Failure and that 2401 Penitent Tangent has gone AWOL.

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:29 pm
by Kiloh Ekim
One thing I notice here is that the system that is watching Delta Halo rules out sabotage because there was no outside agent accessing it. However, keep in mind that the flood was studied there, and therefore, wasn't an outside agent. But still, something happened on that ring to release the flood three hundred years before the Covenant set foot on it, what it was, though, remains a mystery.

What we have here is a protocol or program filing away report after report which literally spelled out what was happening to Delta site. Adjutant Reflex would have been smarter than to not realize what was happening. Therefore, the thing filing the complaints is likely a dumb AI (or 2 dumb AIs, the first being used for primarily for maintenance and the second for atmosphere control.)

We are not being given hints from an intelligent AI, Bungie is just being so kind as to shed light to a few unread files so that we can put it together ourselves and gain some details about a new map.

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:44 pm
by DHalo
Av, I'm very confused by your theory. The first message says the incident happened 300 years prior to the final log.

This message says that the incident happened 99,779 years prior to the log.

???????

What I will say is that it appears that this log may take place in 2200...possibly leading up to the 2500s?

Re: Weekly Update Message 2

Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:55 pm
by Ibeechu
Avateur wrote:A, B, G, E, Z, K. Awesome. I wonder where Delta fits in there alphabetically. I believe I know where, and I believe I know why they aren't in alphabetical order. Read the next section for the answer to this and more!
I just wanted to point out that, in maths, delta can mean either "the next in a sequence" or "a change." Delta Halo fits both of those. Alpha is the first, delta is a different one.