Post making contest 6.0

This is puzzle #3: Dispatches From The Outer Cosmos

CLUSTER 2016/17
BRIGHTEST STAR: F2IV/V
NOTEWORTHY PLANETS:

• This planet is often overlooked in favour of a potentially habitable Earth-sized world orbiting four and a half times further out, but this one's the largest in the system. On the other hand, it's home only to a trio of animals, one of whom is constantly seeking to expand its menagerie ménage à trois...
  
• Not much is known about this planet - it takes just 94 hours to complete an orbit (semi-major axis 4.5 million miles) about its rotationally variable parent star, and is the smallest of three. Its natives however, disseminated throughout the galaxy, are notorious for getting het up over simple card games, and are thus very much known about.

CLUSTER 2017
BRIGHTEST STAR: F5IV/V
NOTEWORTHY PLANETS:

• Remarkably, the planets of this system all orbit in the same plane, aligned with the rotation of its K-type star. The inhabitants of the outermost (which, actually, is only out at ~0.5AU) are very serious about two things above all else: consensual sex and constant questioning. Their development of interstellar travel caused no end of headaches...
  
• Orbiting a metal-rich red dwarf every five days, this "mini-Neptune" has a radius roughly two and a half times that of Earth's. One of its moons is a dedicated psychiatric hospital for strangely-disguised squirrels, run by the sole remaning member of the native species.

CLUSTER 2016
BRIGHTEST STAR: K3III-IV
NOTEWORTHY PLANETS:

• This lava world found fame in its hellishness; being so close to its parent star, it zips around it in just eight and a half hours and has a surface temperature of ~2500K! Its inhabitants place great value in cold things, which is somewhat understandable, and some partake of a peculiar ritual involving frozen hydrogen, which really isn't.
  
• Orbiting around 73.5 million miles from a Sun-sized star, this Neptune-esque planet was long ago the cradle of a race that lived in sophisticated constructions towering above its solid core. Nowadays, a religious sect from a neighbouring star sail about its atmosphere in search of these...

CLUSTER 2015b
BRIGHEST STAR: K3III
NOTEWORTHY PLANETS:

• Here's a planet orbiting a star that's ascending the red giant branch - in other words, it's expanding and will engulf this planet in about 55 million years. In light of this, its entire population has dedicated itself to what they hope will be their legacy: an explosive that will tastefully rearrange at least two rooms of your house. Well, it keeps them happy...
  
• This planet has a circumbinary orbit about its parents, despite doing so rather closer than what should have been inner limit for planet formation about a binary star. Being roughly half gas and half rock and ice, it's not the most liveable of places (especially not at an average temperature of 188K!), and indeed its residents refrain from grumbling only because of the ballistic devices (assigned by the government to each and every individual) that keep them very much in line...

CLUSTER 2015a
BRIGHTEST STAR: A1
NOTEWORTHY PLANETS:

• Another gas giant with a circumbinary orbit, this about a pair dwarfs. What sets this one apart is just how wobbly it is, with the tilt of its spin axis varying by about 30 degrees every eleven years or so! The two lovers that staff the research ship in its atmosphere constantly bicker about the future of their feline companion, with one of them hopeful it might join a posse... the other is not so sure...
  
• This planet does not exist. In this system, there's a planet at 5.7 million miles, another at 10.5, and then... nothing. Certainly not another three more planets, that's for sure. And yet, legend has it that, once upon a time, at the fringes of this system lay a world in the grip of a biomechanical empress, whose literal iron fist prevailed for thousands of years. Upon her inevitable corrosion, a monument was erected both to and from her in perpetual polar grimace... but, in the absence of the relevant planets, surely this can only be myth?

End of message.

I have determined with absolutely no hand-holding that the answer to this puzzle is NICOLAUS COPERNICUS.

NICOLAUS COPERNICUS passes rule 3! Fun fact: if I graded this exact post again it would pass rule 3 again, and again once more. Thanks to our good friend Nick.

i helped

Passes rule 2

nose bleeds are unpleasant

Passes rule 2

This is update #293.

• so previously I got the first ending(s) and now it's time to get the others - I'd call them "bonus" endings, of a sort, but endings don't really occur in this game. Anything I'm calling an end is just the culmination of an overarching set of puzzles...
  
• This next ending requires you to visit every teleporter location that appeared in the main series of games, starting from 551. You also need to complete the 051 branch, which I did at the start of this playthrough. Strictly speaking you don't need to explore the 051 branch at all in order to reach 291, but because of the sequence break mentioned earlier it's kind of convenient to do so
  
• (let's get really involved - the sequence break was clearly intentional, and I reckon it's because it leads you to 806, a location that appeared in the original games at a point when its teleporter was broken; consequently, you do indeed visit all the teleporter locations from the original game whilst working towards this ending...)
  
• so here's a mystery from the series that the Submachine Universe did actually solve - peeps wanted to know what was behind the door in 747, so Mateusz cheekily obliged...
  
• OKAY THERE'S A NEW THING IN 728
  
• IT'S A PUZZLE THEN A PORTAL THEN A PUZZLE and now I need to backtrack oh my goodness
  
• *squealing*
  
• SO THAT'S HOW YOU GET TO THAT LOCATION
  
• it's just as beautiful (by which I mean "purple") as I expected it to be *sniff*
  
• Mateusz why is there a machine here with thirteen toggle switches
  
• well woohoo I found some of the new stuff now back to business
  
• oh yeah bells exist I need to ring those
  
• I continue to appreciate how Mateusz included the secret location in 552 from its original appearance in sub5 but left it absolutely empty, just to bemuse
  
• this series is entirely responsible for my aesthetic appreciation of plumbing (for example: kar)
  
• one slight hitch with the whole "revisit locations from previous games" schtick is that you latch on to it very quickly and thus basically know where to go already - the game deals with this by basically branching paths as often as possible so that you only have to visit like three of these locs to get the coordinates for two-thirds of the revisits... it doesn't exactly work...
  
• case in point 104 has four child locations HOW AM I MEANT TO PUT THIS INTO MY NOTEPAD
  
• still by the time you've mopped up all the splits and assembled the final light panel puzzle... you're eventually led to 001... you started in 000 so uh
  
• like if you were going to "blind jump" and just put in semi-random numbers 001 might have been rather plausible just saying
  
• admittedly you don't have the key to the lab unless you've done one of the 051 branches but then you can just go right instead? there's no real progress to be made in chr I suppose but whatever
  
• so yeah in the lab you can use a wisdom gem to get the clue for aforementioned 613... or you can be observant and find the hidden portal to jul - the former was in the game earlier, so I'll do it first
  
• 613 is literally a couple of yards from 614 except there's a fucking chasm in the way, and from this side you can descend a ladder into said chasm to find pretty much nothing but a theory and another clue...
  
• and now from the final location in this branch we get the other half of the clue from way back in 987... and it leads to "ending" #2 at 355 - technically 355 now clues 291 again, but this was really the last step of the 051 & 551 branch puzzles... except...
  
• two matters to attend to: first, the copper plate you pick up in 355 needs to be brought all the way back to 051, where it unlocks the karma portal to mlp. this isn't necessary for anything else. you just get to look at some horse statues because come on look at the loc name and sigh with me
  
• second and more interestingly, the hidden portal in 001 takes you to another place with delightful plumbing, which starts another branch whose puzzle has already been handled by this point (all the way back in 006, using the valve from 628), meaning you can just walk straight to ptl. there is no cake there, but as endings go it does have a rather more celebratory tone than its partner back at 355
  
• BUT WE'RE STILL NOT DONE
  
• there's another very well-hidden clue back at 232 that I forgot about on my first pass, and there's another "ending" when you follow that for a while (also it's where the Pyramid Key goes I'd also forgotten that wasn't new)
  
• and then with a whistlestop tour of the three locations that aren't clued anywhere in the subnet (easter eggs that you either blind jump to or make very educated guesses) and a quick check of the wiki to ensure that there are indeed only two new locations (for a total of 103), plus the two extensions of existing locations and there we go done and dusted
  
• (fun fact: I counted the loc files before I started and went in thinking there were three new locations - turns out there's a duplicate location file included in this release because Mateusz legitimately couldn't figure out which one he'd accidentally doubled up on, said "screw it" and just sent the game out like this)
  
• OH GOD THERE'S A TWO AND A HALF HOUR LIVESTREAM OF MATEUSZ PLAYING THE GAME AND MAPPING IT OUT WITH PROPER PEN-AND-PAPER NOTETAKING BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN SIX YEARS SINCE HE'D LAST HAD TO CONSIDER ITS OVERALL STRUCTURE
  
• anyone wanna talk a wild guess what update #294 is gonna be about

End of message.

Passes rule 3.

This is a trick.

Passes rules 1 and 2.

I have determined with absolutely no hand-holding that the answer to this puzzle is NICOLAUS COPERNICUS.

NICOLAUS COPERNICUS is the correct answer to puzzle #3! And yep, just to reiterate, absolutely no hand-holding was needed whatsoever...

-~-~-~-~-~-~

This is puzzle #4: Puzzler's Corner #????

pmcpuzzle4.mp3
(note: a complete transcript is not required to solve this puzzle, and you won't need to determine exact timestamps either)

Credits (not part of the puzzle):

SpoilerShow

"Axel Braxel's Laboratory" by Peggy Suave
"Awe" by Helios
340259 (blippy.wav) - kaboose102

End of message.

Passes rule 3, thanks to NICOLAUS COPERNICUS!

TEST POST, PLEASE IGNORE

Passes rule 2

<DragonFogel> Girth, sing a song about the Space Consortium.
<Manbot> the Space Consortium is supposedly crooked!
<Girth> Yeah, the Space Consortium is pretty clean, baby.
<Girth> Yeah, the Space Consortium is pretty weak, baby.
<Manbot> I always want to stare unblinkingly at the Space Consortium!
<Girth> In my opinion the Space Consortium isn't too mesmerizing!
<Manbot> the Space Consortium undeniably makes me want to sniff the Space Consortium!
<Girth> ...IN SPACE!
<Manbot> ...IN SPACE!
<Girth> Hold your horses!

Passes none of the rules.

<DragonFogel> Girth, sing a space song.
<Girth> His methods far too blunt
<Manbot> Little high, little low
<Girth> Carry on, carry on
<Manbot> Slowly growing canine teeth
<Girth> Join the triumph of the skies
<Manbot> O'er the hills we go
<Girth> Joyful all ye nations rise
<Manbot> The gene that drives the beast
<Girth> His methods far too blunt
<Manbot> The curse of double helix brings only racial wars
<Girth> ...IN SPACE!
<Manbot> You heard about me in the frontier wars
<Manbot> ...IN SPACE!

Passes none of the rules.

v

Passes rules 1 and 2

w

Passes rules 1 and 2