The Thargoid War: System States Clarifications

[DemiserofD]

Maybe a galnet article to let non-forum players know what's going on? Something like...

GALNET 3308 - THARGOIDS REINFORCE ATTACKED SYSTEMS

Reports from invaded systems indicate that Thargoid forces have received reinforcements.

"We thought we were finally pushing them back, but suddenly a new wave came out of nowhere!" AX Pilot Demi Seraph said, interviewed in the midst of fighting a thargoid interceptor. "I had hoped - die, bloody heart! - That I could defend one of the outlying systems, take some pressure off the main targets, but if this keeps up, I'll have to move to HIP 23716 or Imeut and support the main fleet. Maybe if we can push them completely from a system before their reinforcements can arrive, we can actually make a difference in this thing!"

Official reports reveal that much of the reported progress has been undone, and worries have arisen that this may occur again in another week. Representatives from the Anti-Xeno Initiative are currently re-evaluating, but with the invasion still fresh, it may be some time before precise predictions of Thargoid behavior and battle plans can be made.

 

[bbome2014]

• If the progress bar is filled at the end of a week, the state will be pushed back and Thargoids will be defeated in that system. If not, the bar is reset for the next week. Players have as long as the time stated in the above to defeat the Thargoids.

We currently have record number of players for the recent history of Elite and a VERY big portion of those people are in the systems being targeted. Most are following the coordination given by AXI, and despite this, the one system that AXI coordinated nearly all their efforts towards only made it to halfway defended this week. There are 10+ systems that were targeted by invasions alone.
Granted this could easily be a result of the AXCZs bugging out and the interceptors coming in invisible, soft locking the instance and wasting potentially hours of progress, something that is supposed to be getting fixed in the current patch (servers are down as we speak), but even despite this something is definitely wrong with these numbers. With the surge in players and coordination on one system, it should NOT still fall this week. Way too much effort was put into that system and we didn't even save that.

So either the deal with the Invasion AI being automated is actually still on rails and there is no hope for the currently targeted systems or there's something going wrong with the progress numbers and something needs to get fixed.

 

[Kathryn Kando]

Greetings Commanders,

We wanted to take this opportunity to clarify some details about system states within the Thargoid War:

• The UI provides time in weeks: this is how long the system will remain in a given state. If the state isn't pushed back it will progress (Alert to Invasion or Invasion to Controlled).
• If the progress bar is filled at the end of a week, the state will be pushed back and Thargoids will be defeated in that system. If not, the bar is reset for the next week. Players have as long as the time stated in the above to defeat the Thargoids.

With these points in mind, a number of systems are currently liable to remain under attack as progress resets with the weekly tick on Thursday. However there is still time to win them back!

O7

Fighting back Thargoids in a system within in a week, with several retries depending on total weeks given? That’s just cruel. Let the bubble burn then (slowly).

 

[Andrew Gaspurr]

Question is: Will the system population of 1,8 million people get adjusted to zero once we evacuated them all? What about systems with billions of people?

 

[Phill P]

This is our first time simulating a real-time galactic war. We'll adjust things from the original estimates as time goes.

How many wars, fictional or otherwise, do you know of that reset every week?

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

something that is supposed to be getting fixed in the current patch (servers are down as we speak)

It's a "known issue" not fixed yet.

 

[Ashnak]

there is no hope for the currently targeted systems

Pretty much this. If my guess is right, then at least for the time being and the remainder of this year. Or, to quote O-Ren Ishii: "You didn't think it would be this easy, did you?"

 

[ubermick]

Wow. So even with the might of the ENTIRETY of the AXI and the majority of other commanders focusing their attention on the Thargoids in HIP 23716, the progress bar barely got above halfway, and tonight during the server downtime it's going to be reset back to zero. Over 160 THOUSAND Thargoids killed, and more than 1.6 million rescues. All the effort will be for naught.

That's a mighty oul' kick in the teeth, and I can see a lot of people being disheartened over this. (That said, I can understand that Frontier don't want this war over in a fortnight, we're supposed to chew on it for a while. But still...)

 

[Northpin]

View attachment 336438

Seems like someone is playing the books for Matshiru rescues if they managed to rescue 218,000 people from a 1206 population system

 

[MDHansen]

By 3300 humankind needs a reset anyway. Heck, we're probably in for one in the 2100's anyway

 

[Phill P]

Wow. So even with the might of the ENTIRETY of the AXI and the majority of other commanders focusing their attention on the Thargoids in HIP 23716, the progress bar barely got above halfway, and tonight during the server downtime it's going to be reset back to zero. All the effort will be for naught.

That's a mighty oul' kick in the teeth, and I can see a lot of people being disheartened over this. (That said, I can understand that Frontier don't want this war over in a fortnight, we're supposed to chew on it for a while. But still...)

With two more maelstroms whose systems haven't even been addressed yet, and 5 more due in the next two weeks, it wasn't going away soon anyway. This is just ridiculous.

 

[Phill P]

Seems like someone is playing the books for Matshiru rescues if they managed to rescue 218,000 people from a 1206 population system

It was always that way even with the old rescues. Not uncommon for a system with a small population to have more evacs than the actual number of people there.

 

[MDHansen]

Seems like someone is playing the books for Matshiru rescues if they managed to rescue 218,000 people from a 1206 population system

It's the good ol' "rescue the population, send them back to rescue them again" ruse. Classic

 

[Blox_]

We'll adjust things from the original estimates as time goes.

Let's hope that the adjustment happens before any systems get reset.

 

[Astaran]

Well, I must say that the weekly reset mechanic is indeed rather disappointing. Unless you succeed, all effort and time spent(!) in the system are 100% wasted. With such a war mechanic, you cannot even "delay" the Thargoid advance in a system. A system will fall at a certain point no matter if the progress bar is at 0% or at 99%, no matter if it's after one, two or three weeks of fighting.

This isn't going to help with player retention after Update 14 or keeping players interested in the Thargoid War at large (no matter the "dramatic" narrative surrounding it)

 

[Fenyl]

Numbers of players active since U14 are already dropping, with 5 more Maelstroms on their way... Good luck, have fun.
Maybe if we let the galaxy burn they will annonunce Elite: Very Dangerous, with actual mechanics allowing for dynamic events?

 

[Andrew Gaspurr]

I think onionhead was somehow involved in all this...

 

[Blox_]

Well, I must say that the weekly reset mechanic is indeed rather disappointing. Unless you succeed, all effort and time spent(!) in the system are 100% wasted. With such a war mechanic, you cannot even "delay" the Thargoid advance in a system. A system will fall at a certain point no matter if the progress bar is at 0% or at 99%, no matter if it's after one, two or three weeks of fighting.

This isn't going to help with player retention after Update 14 or keeping players interested in the Thargoid War at large (no matter the "dramatic" narrative surrounding it)

Yup. If millions of evac'd civilians, thousands of smashed bugs, and hundreds of thousands of tons of donated cargo can just get wiped because of an arbitrary time constraint, who the hell is gonna keep fighting?

 

[St0rmFury]

I think onionhead was somehow involved in all this...

Zeta strain.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

yea, but check this:
View attachment 336434

Check the kills and rescues, and that is not enough to save that system as per today's threshold of actions required.
Thats far from rough guess

And probably somewhere of the order of 10x those numbers in practice, given normal amounts of 3rd-party tool usage. Fits with the "medium-sized CG" assessment of coordination a few of us had made elsewhere
(Cool report - hadn't seen that yet)

If you fail after the first and certainly the second attempt, why would people carry on banging their heads against a brick wall?

Sorry that doesn't make sense to me at all. I understand the mechanic, though it's not clear in game, but I don't understand why.

I guess there's still some benefit in that you could prioritise some systems for saving in week 1 of their invasion, but leave some others for week 3 because the stations being targeted in week 1 aren't as critical (and hoping that you don't get a different "must save in week 1" priority before then, naturally)

Or you could try and fail on your own in week 1, and then spend week 2 convincing a big group to help out for a successful attempt in week 3.

Obviously pending a threshold adjustment to the point where "saving a system" is possible at all, of course. Really depends where that's adjusted to as to whether not carrying over progress ends up mattering in the long run.