Temporal Alignment (or more precisely, Coincedental Alignment of the Cross-Temporal and Spatial Qualities of Plinths)Are you laughing yet? I hope so!
What it's supposed to mean is "putting a plinth in the same place across time".
I tried this about two weeks ago. It failed to produce any results. I'm recording it here in case there is something in this of interest to other theorizers.
What I did was to put the Charlie Plinth in the center of Tayari Plaza (aka Dare's crash site) site during CM:TP. When the mission ended, I was naturally brought back to Mombasa Streets in D05 inside of the building overlooking TP. I grabbed Echo Plinth and pushed it to the
same spot that I had pushed Charlie in CM:TP. My idea was that having the same plinth type (Type 1) in the same area (Tayari Plaza) at two different points of time (day and night) might unlock a secret. I was inspired by the
Eclipse Sign When I did this, the sword appeared and music starting playing and... well of course that's a lie. Nothing happened- you already knew that.
If there's any merit to this theory, the fault with my execution of it is probably my choice of space. I could just as easily picked a place in D08 or another in D05.
Is this possible with other missions?
So far, Charlie is the only plinth we've found outside of CM:MS. The question is really "Where might we find plinths in other missions that coincide with places we can get to in CM:MS?" To answer this, we need to look at what districts we encounter in each mission:
Prepare to Drop: Takes place in our drop pod. Fat chance.
Tayari Plaza: Yes. Charlie is there, but is there another one hiding somewhere?
Uplift Reserve: No. The zoo is inaccessible in CM:MS
Kizingo Blvd.: Yes. You begin in D03, travel through D04, then finally into D10.
ONI Alpha Site: Sort of. At the beginning of the mission you can cross the bridge back toward the streets and reach the ONI area. All of the interesting areas of this mission are unavailable to us in CM:MS because the bridge is down. Whoops.
NMPD HQ: Nope. Can't climb buildings.
Kikowani Stn.: No. Sunken City is off limits.
Data Hive: No again. (See a pattern here?) Unless you're a really good digger.
Coastal Highway: Maybe Tepec will open the DDs to D01 for us, but until that time- no.
The short answer is that only CM:TP and CM:KB feature districts that we know and love from CM:MS. These are D03, D04, D05, D06, D08, and D10. (You can also include ONI... but there really doesn't seem to be anything in there beside the clue item.)
Let's call these six districts our "core districts". Of the core districts, we have found at least one plinth in half of them (D04, D05, D06) within CM:MS. If you include Charlie then you can also include D08. This flags D03 and D10 as "prime hunting grounds" for new plinths in my book.
We haven't talked yet about D09 or D00. These two districts are on extreme opposite ends of the Hub. "Fringe Districts", if you will. What makes them unique is that they never appear in a playable fashion within any other mission. This means that if you can't get inside one of their buildings during CM:MS, you're not getting in there! There are also "fringe areas" within core districts, since most of the districts you encounter in CM:TP and CM:KB are partially locked down with dark areas.
The majority of D08 is a fringe area. On its southern edge (between D0809-B and D0809-C) is a rather large building complex I call "Building 86". All three street-level doors are locked, unbumpable, and ungooseable. The second-level balcony door is equally as impenetrable (
Kenji's Goose Launching Service helped prove this the other night.) The assualt on Bldg 86 shall continue, but that's another topic.
So what have we learned here?
- Temporal Alignment hasn't produced jack.
- There are "core districts" and "fringe areas"
- Only two missions beside CM:MS contain core districts
- Some buildings are impenetrable, and one even has a name
- The Doctor is a Mad Doctor
- Kenji has a Goose Launching Service
Class dismissed!
