[Mongoose]

Damn...this one really makes me feel stupid in retrospect.  Even a few days ago, Goober gave me the hint that led me to track down exactly what Amentep was from, but I don't think I properly followed it up beyond figuring out his flagship.  The archives aren't at Deneb...but Amentep was.  I haven't played it in a while, but checking out the mission files confirms that Shrouding the Light took place almost entirely in the Deneb system.  If I had followed up on the campaign angle and looked at exactly how CHARIDED was being used in that first instance, I might have had this a few days ago.  I wonder...was that page always meant to be a seeming dead-end, or was there originally something there that Goober yanked away after a short while?  Either way, andreas.rybak doesn't work on the Holonet login using "Harakhti" for a password (not that I'd expect it to, since he didn't have anything to do with this to begin with).  So now what...

(Oh, and there was one more thing I meant to mention a few days ago but forgot about.  Goober gave away the meaning of one of the few remaining unknowns in the private message he sent to faxi.  As he said, "I suggest trying to rewrite the entire yosterbah using everything that you already know or can figure out."  So apparently, yosterbah means "letter" or "message.")

[Black Wolf]

The page is a bit of a disappointment, though. What it suggests to me is that we need to get into Andreas Rybak's Holonet account.
His login should be [email protected] and his password is probably Harakhti.

What it suggests to me is that we've taken too long and Goob has removed whatever was up there, so we'll have to wait until ST:R is released to see it

[Mongoose]

If that is the case, I kind of feel like he hasn't been very fair in doing so, especially considering the fact that we all got back on this thing and started making progress again.  It's true that we may have been able to solve this faster, but hindsight is always 20/20, and what is now pretty darn obvious certainly wasn't beforehand.  To dangle this puzzle in front of us for so long and then not give us any reward at the end kind of bites.

But what do I know...I'm just a peon.

[Alan Bolte]

If he gave me the answer, then he wouldn't have given me a star. 

Anyway, I didn't think too hard about it. I knew we were looking for a location, and so I just looked at the Wiki Universe page, under Stars and Planets. There it was, the only cannon planet with three in the name! It wasn't the first thing I tried, but I can sorta see why he thought it was obvious.

[faxi]

If he gave me the answer, then he wouldn't have given me a star. 

The reason for my stupid comment was that I had misinterpreted the statement that we took too long as meaning that Goob had maybe hinted something to speed things up. If Goob was indeed annoyed with our (lack of) speed and pulled back the page that we were meant to see, then this would explain, why there was no new message from Adarsh.

Anyway - good idea with Deneb and ... nice star

[Mongoose]

After a certain conversation I had the other day, I feel comfortable retracting what I said in my previous post.  The whole purpose of all of these puzzles is for us to have access to all sorts of goodies before anyone else sees them, and Goober isn't about to yank away material we haven't yet had the chance to see.

Now, not giving us any material at the end of a puzzle...that's a whole other story.  In the words of the man himself, "Take a look back at the first post in the thread."  Or, perhaps...the title of the thread itself?  I think we were meant to be bamboozled from the beginning. 

[Nuclear1]

*epic facepalm*

[faxi]

Reading the Vasudan letter again, it sounds as if the "recordings of a battle" that half-myriad-guubers made could be the actual, finished campaign (for example, in a password-protected zip-file).

"Take a look back at the first post in the thread."

Hmm, the first thread was "Can anyone hear me".

 I only notice this:
"And if you're an engineer, you're going to want proof.  Not that any engineers have Ash's chance in Shiva of stumbling across the obscure, obsolete corner of the holonet where I have to hide this, but if I'm going to be a fool, I might as well be a fool who makes sense."

We have probably found the "obscure, obsolete corner of the holonet". The word "Shiva" is weird in that sentence, but that could  very well be a substitute for the word "hell", just to add flavor. But who would Ash be? Possibly one of the beta testers?

Of course, one could just explain that the campaign had been at this locationm yet the GTI pulled the file before we could reach it. But what kind of happy end to our quest would that be ...

So... Any idea who Ash could be?
_____

Alternatively, if it he really means the first post in this thread. then that would be MikeRoz's comment "You've got to be kidding me." Or, of course the title of this thread could be meant - we are "always one step behind"...

[Mewgen1]

"Mayday, this is Lieutenant Ash Terran patrol, Wing Gamma, 39 reporting.  Requesting immediate fighter cover and rescue."

Unless i miss my guess Lieutenant Ash was the poor guy who got splashed by the shivans in the FS1 intro.

[Mongoose]

Goober meant the first post of this particular thread, and I took that to mean more specifically the title of the thread.  And I agree with Mewgen about the Ash reference...poor redshirt wound up becoming a figure of speech.

The cool thing about this whole puzzle is that we're still getting Vasudan words, even after we know what the letter means.  We now have enough to fully translate the header.

[faxi]

If Ash is the guy from the FS1 intro, then we are indeed screwed and were probably meant to be from the start . The Holonet seems to have gone into sleep - no new words anymore since a few days. The word "Office" is already like 3 days old or so.

I still wonder what the password would be for that is mentioned in the Vasudan letter and which battle would have been "recorded" by goober. For me, the Vasudan letter sounds as if it either speaks about the whole campaign or some preview mission that Goober has "recorded" for the Vasudan historical department.

But anyway - very nice puzzle altogether   .
I hope that the process was not too frustrating for Goob - it was fun but sometimes it can take a long time to figure out some things, even if things seem obvious in retrospect .

[Grizzly]

have we tried to reverse the audio messages to see there is anything extra hidden, the beetles style?

[Rick James]

have we tried to reverse the audio messages to see there is anything extra hidden, the beetles style?

The retro music fan within me would like to point out that there never were any reversed messages in any song that the Beetles made. I doubt Goober or anyone would be cruel enough to put something that inane in any of the stuff we've seen thus far.

[Topgun]

*jumps into thread*
ok, I just got here and I am not going to bother reading the last threads / pages.
but I have found this out so far.
you can go here
http://holonet.hard-light.net/

and this is the file name for the vasudan letter thing.
yosterbah.png

[Topgun]

    
Total Time Spent Online:    2 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes.
Aadarsh

[Topgun]

HELIXEXAD/ 3\NIKAPAX  YOREKCHAROR.
LOSINKAH  GABUR  CHOGAH  JUUVAKAT  ROKUBRIKOL  ADOL
KOYALAPOS.

HELIXDAD he wants to access deneb (CHARIDEDAH) III
losinkah is password.
what does Gabur mean?

[Mongoose]

If you go back and read the rest of the thread, you'll see that we have a good working translation for the vast majority of the message, and someone managed to figure out exactly what it's referring to (unfortunately, as this thread's title suggests, there were no materials in the location we found).