Sylvassi Cyphers

"'Sylvassi technology leaves many mysteries to be solved. It's a great shame that so much of Sylvassi history has been lost to time.' - Comdo"

Mission
The mission Sylvassi Cyphers is given at the Sylvassi Cypher Lab by Ika. The objective requires that the player returns with four Sylvassi Tablets, found after completing a cypher. Upon completing the quest, the player receives 5,000 credits, the Cypher Lost Colony Data Fragment (increases ship program slots to 12), the Ancient Sylvassi Suit, and Cypher Master Achievement. The remaining tablets can be sold for 750 credits.

Layout
Apart from the large main room, there are four smaller adjoining rooms where buttons can spawn inside. The back-left room with gold-spiraling lines requires the jetpack to reach the buttons at the top of it. Upon completing a cypher at the bottom of the main chamber, an Ancient Sylvassi Tablet will spawn. One of the bottom two rooms will spawn a ball of smoke that drifts around the chambers and deals a medium amount of damage if touched. The ball of smoke is unable to be damaged in any way. A cypher can spawn and only require a purple button press.

Mechanics
A purple button will rotate a ring forty-five degrees clockwise, whereas a yellow button will turn a ring forty-five degrees counterclockwise. Each ring is connected to just one purple and one yellow button, which do not necesarily need to be in the same room. At the bottom of the main chamber are a number of floating green lights that indicate how many mistakes are allowed. Turning a ring in a way that moves it further away from correct alignment counts as a mistake. If all green lights disappear then the cypher locks and turns red. Once a cypher is locked, it is locked permanently. An older game save will need to be reloaded to attempt it again. A failed cypher is not a big problem, since the mission requires only 4 solved cyphers, with 10 cyphers in total being available in the galaxy.

When a host loads a planet containing a cypher for the first time, the amount of button rooms is determined by how many player crew members there are, the galaxy seed, and the planet type.

Approaches
There are two ways to solve a cypher. A safe approach and an approach that requires some knowledge of the finished cypher to work reliably.

Attention: As of now, the cypher you see may differ from the cypher the other crew members see. They still require the same turns to be solved, but the patterns are different or tilted differently. This poses no hindrance to solving the cypher, but it can confuse newer players.

1. The safe approach: One person stands as a coordinator in the middle chamber and watches the ring movements. The crew members (or that person itself, if playing solo) press one after another all but one purple buttons and all but one yellow buttons. The coordinator notes down (e.g. with pen and paper) which ring moved when each button got pressed. The remaining yellow and the remaining purple button can then be attributed to the rings that had no such button assigned to them yet. It is recommended to align the rings from the middle to the outside, to assure proper alignment. This method will yield 2-4 mistakes, depending on how many buttons need pressing.

2. The brute-force approach for experienced cypher solvers: With the knowledge of the complete pattern (see images below) it is determined in which direction each ring needs to turn. Then the direction/colour is chosen that will yield the least wrong turns when aligning all rings this way. One player is in the middle room and coordinates the cypher solving. The other players either search all purple or all yellow buttons. A button is pressed until the corresponding ring is properly aligned. Then the next button is pressed, and so on, until the cypher is solved. This method requires considerably less time than the first method, but mistakes can happen more easily. If done correctly this method most often uses fewer wrong turns than the safe approach. In some cyphers and with some player numbers it does not matter which colour is picked, the amount of green lights is sufficient to run either colour brute-forcing.

Patterns
There are three patterns that are rotated in different starting directions.

Locations
There are currently only ten planets with a cypher called cypher planets.