The Thargoid War: System States Clarifications

[zimms]

well, it is partly about difficulty - which was already adjusted and probably will see even more adjustments

and i'm not defending their communications skills - but then again, they never really communicated much about game-mechanics either and players had to discover by themselves how things work

and not at last, cmdrs dived in, head first, into this war without proper researching, and yea - we got bruised

I give you that. There's a lot of different opinions and I'm sure for many of them it's about difficulty. But for me, and I assume many others, the problem is the reset. All effort that has been put in last week is null and void. Might as well not have bothered at all.

Adjusting the values won't be easy, I'm sure participation will be down this week. I know I'll probably wait with rejoining the war until I know I/we can actually achieve something.

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

With the overwhelmingly negative response you have received to this post. I suggest the following immediate action plan:

1: Whoever designed the Reset Progress every week mechanic - Warmly thank them for their efforts and tell them they've been a joy to work with, but regretfully their time with Frontier has come to an end, wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

2: Restore the progress deleted on Thursday (claim it was a glitch in the progress bars or something, and put it back.

3: Apologise in a tangible way to the ENTIRE player base - 30,000 ARX would be a good start

4: Focus on fixing the bugs and eliminating repetitive grind mechanics before you make any new additions to the game. Finish the things you started and walked away from, like On-foot VR, ship interiors, New ships, New tech, more landable planets.

5: Try to come up with some realism. The Thargoids have massively powerful weaponry and a huge military - Who was that built to fight? the Guardians have been gone for millennia, and we're just Ants to them, what was their motivation to develop all that tech and equipment? Nations on our own planet that have been unaffected by wars due to isolation etc, have not developed weaponry beyond basic self defence and hunting. Those constantly at war with others have the most advanced weapons. If the Thargoids have been at war with other races that drove all that tech development, whare are those other races?

This is the best doom post I've seen in a while.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

and i'm not defending their communications skills - but then again, they never really communicated much about game-mechanics either and players had to discover by themselves how things work

Pretty much everything about the new thargoid war mechanics is already in the pilot's handbook. What the states mean, how they transition, what the consequences are - with one very notable omission that any progress for systems is reset at the beginning of each new cycle. That's why this came as such a surprise, it seemed logical that if we were given "X weeks Y days until invasion" we would have that full amount of time to oppose it instead of X attempts to complete a 1 week campaign.

 

[Northpin]

I know I'll probably wait with rejoining the war until I know I/we can actually achieve something.

Well, i dont really care much about me "wasting" last weekend in game (although i could have spent my time doin exobiology and get the ranks before the nerf)
I didnt expected a win at all.

But not being able to win a single CZ ? that sux
Every single one of them was stuck at some point

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

now, if FD could manage to fix instancing so we can actually win some CZ or else to make sure winning CZ is not a factor in winning the week

It's an alert system so that isn't required. Invasion systems have the additional task of "Support human ships in CZs" (may not be the exact wording but it's something like that).

 

[[VR] Chris]

We'd very likely see a win if folk stopped their boycotts.

Maybe in HIP20485 which would remove threat of invasion.. if they have rebalanced they should outright say they have, this in game lore stuff is great but its actual player feelings that have been hurt and they kinda deserve an actual response, because without that i feel i am just wasting my time like last week

 

[Northpin]

with one very notable omission that any progress for systems is reset at the beginning of each new cycle.

definitely

but then again, they always used to count the beans every Thargday, during maintenance.
and bgs, pp and thargoid war was always a turn-based game (daily or weekly)

 

[galahad2069]

well, it is partly about difficulty - which was already adjusted and probably will see even more adjustments

That's not gonna make things any less terrible tbh, beause:

• 1st week: all sense of achievement wiped because of the reset
• 2nd week: same thing, because even if players win in a system, that will be only because the goalposts have been moved by fdev.

and i'm not defending their communications skills - but then again, they never really communicated much about game-mechanics either and players had to discover by themselves how things work

What exactly is there to discover if the mechanics keep changing anyway?

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

definitely

but then again, they always used to count the beans every Thargday, during maintenance.
and bgs, pp and thargoid war was always a turn-based game (daily or weekly)

No they didn't. Incursions were updated in almost real-time with the current state shown in Galnet and the station news. Many incursions were cleared out while pilots were in the middle of fighting in AX CZs. And they definitely did not reset back to full blown incursions at the Thursday tick.

 

[Northpin]

That's not gonna make things any less terrible tbh, beause:

• 1st week: all sense of achievement wiped because of the reset
• 2nd week: same thing, because even if players win in a system, that will be only because the goalposts have been moved by fdev.

What exactly is there to discover if the mechanics keep changing anyway?

for the moment the mechanics have not changed (or so it seems)
only the number of points required to move the bar seems to have been lowered

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

That's not gonna make things any less terrible tbh, beause:

• 1st week: all sense of achievement wiped because of the reset
• 2nd week: same thing, because even if players win in a system, that will be only because the goalposts have been moved by fdev.

What exactly is there to discover if the mechanics keep changing anyway?

It won't be the same thing in week 2 as week 1 if the System is successfully defended. The reset won't happen and the state will change.

 

[Northpin]

And they definitely did not reset back to full blown incursions at the Thursday tick.

the point still stands (there was an obvious cycle - incursion, station burning, station getting into repair state) and things moved during thargsdays maintenance
and back then they didnt have a maestrom to fuel the invasion

 

[St0rmFury]

I wonder, lets say we managed to take back control of a system from the thargoids.

How long will it be before the they make another attempt at the system?

 

[galahad2069]

for the moment the mechanics have not changed (or so it seems)
only the number of points required to move the bar seems to have been lowered

The value of the target variable is part of the mechanics.

It won't be the same thing in week 2 as week 1 if the System is successfully defended. The reset won't happen and the state will change.

By "same thing" I meant the lack of sense of achievement (for a different reason this time).

 

[Ian Doncaster]

We'd very likely see a win if folk stopped their boycotts.

The numbers we're seeing so far suggest that the boycotts are negligible in actual impact, so I'm not worried about that.

Equally, no-one is obliged to take part in the war effort. If people find the activities intrinsically fun, then will do them even if the system is going to be lost anyway, and it's the job of "organisers" to encourage them to have their fun in strategically valuable systems. If they don't find them intrinsically fun, then there's no point in them burning themselves out doing them anyway to maybe add a possibly irrelevant fraction of a percent to a progress bar somewhere, when in the big picture it's going to make little difference to what the bubble looks like in three months time.

That's not gonna make things any less terrible tbh, beause:

• 1st week: all sense of achievement wiped because of the reset
• 2nd week: same thing, because even if players win in a system, that will be only because the goalposts have been moved by fdev.

If they're constantly adjusting the thresholds every week, sure.

If their first guess was wildly out (and it was always going to be, short of extreme luck) adjusting it a little in weeks 2 and 3 is just a bugfix.

There might plausibly not even have been a manual adjustment - the total number of systems affected by Thargoids has slightly more than doubled, the difficulty per-system seems to have roughly halved based on how the progress bars are going, those two facts might not be unrelated.
(Needs more data ... but if that's true, it has very interesting strategic implications in a few months time, and would be a smart way for Frontier to ensure that their initial guess couldn't actually be "wrong" as such)

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

The value of the target variable is part of the mechanics.


By "same thing" I meant the lack of sense of achievement (for a different reason this time).

It won't be though. You'd have stopped the Thargoid invasion for that week.

 

[Jabo Zerstorer]

The numbers we're seeing so far suggest that the boycotts are negligible in actual impact, so I'm not worried about that.

Equally, no-one is obliged to take part in the war effort. If people find the activities intrinsically fun, then will do them even if the system is going to be lost anyway, and it's the job of "organisers" to encourage them to have their fun in strategically valuable systems. If they don't find them intrinsically fun, then there's no point in them burning themselves out doing them anyway to maybe add a possibly irrelevant fraction of a percent to a progress bar somewhere, when in the big picture it's going to make little difference to what the bubble looks like in three months time.


If they're constantly adjusting the thresholds every week, sure.

If their first guess was wildly out (and it was always going to be, short of extreme luck) adjusting it a little in weeks 2 and 3 is just a bugfix.

There might plausibly not even have been a manual adjustment - the total number of systems affected by Thargoids has slightly more than doubled, the difficulty per-system seems to have roughly halved based on how the progress bars are going, those two facts might not be unrelated.
(Needs more data ... but if that's true, it has very interesting strategic implications in a few months time, and would be a smart way for Frontier to ensure that their initial guess couldn't actually be "wrong" as such)

Well if Alba Tesreau was correct (I realise this was written by FDev) then the more Thargoid Maelstroms appear, the easier it will get for Commanders to fight back. That could have been already factored in from day one and indeed may not have been a manual adjustment. It maybe part of the war mechanic.

Also if that is true, then it's actually pretty good coding and all very deliberate.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Well if Alba Tesreau was correct (I realise this was written by FDev) then the more Thargoid Maelstroms appear, the easier it will get for Commanders to fight back. That could have been already factored in from day one and indeed may not have been a manual adjustment. It maybe part of the war mechanic.

Yes - I assume that Galnet is giving us a hint about the mechanics.

Also if that is true, then it's actually pretty good coding and all very deliberate.

It'd be odd - since Powerplay has them and the Political BGS indirectly has them - for there not to be some cost to the Thargoid BGS for them holding wider territory.

Needs a few more weeks of data to be sure, naturally.

 

[[VR] Chris]

Well if Alba Tesreau was correct (I realise this was written by FDev) then the more Thargoid Maelstroms appear, the easier it will get for Commanders to fight back. That could have been already factored in from day one and indeed may not have been a manual adjustment. It maybe part of the war mechanic.

all it needed was an out of universe explanation such as .. when the thargoids are deploying they will be extremely difficult to defeat.. i have on the whole enjoyed my time so far but find myself extremely deflated at the prospect of more crushing defeats before fdev find the balance narratively or gameplay wise,

 

[CMDR Charybdis]

There might plausibly not even have been a manual adjustment - the total number of systems affected by Thargoids has slightly more than doubled, the difficulty per-system seems to have roughly halved based on how the progress bars are going, those two facts might not be unrelated.
(Needs more data ... but if that's true, it has very interesting strategic implications in a few months time, and would be a smart way for Frontier to ensure that their initial guess couldn't actually be "wrong" as such)

That's an interesting thought... each maelstrom generating a level of resource that can be spent on expansion, much like CC in PowerPlay. It would reduce the expansion to a more linear one rather than an (assumed) exponential.

We lost part the first day due it being patch day, as well as the time for folks orienting themselves and taking up the challenge. The levels of resource commitment aren't quite the same for a fair comparison with last week, I would suggest. Definitely needs more data.