Thargoid War Feedback

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Bruce G

B
Greetings Commanders!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope your enjoyed you holidays and are excited to be back fighting the good fight against the Thargoid menace.

The purpose of this thread is to collect feedback on the Thargoid War in one place. Thank you all who have already contributed your thoughts and ideas which we are also gathering. Now that the Thargoid War has been raging for some time, we're taking stock to inform potential changes.

We're aware of a number of things already, ranging from the specifics of AX combat such as the Xeno-Scanner range of 500m being too short given the instant hostility, to the overall way the war operates. For instance, there is no particular focused effort encouraged via the game itself leaving players to organise themselves if they want to save given systems.

Please let us know what you think about anything from the smaller details to the grand scheme, both the good and the bad. It's important for us to know what's going well so we can continue down those paths as well as what needs improvement more urgent reconsideration.

O7
 

Quillmonkey

Quillmonkey
Happy New Year, Bruce.
First off, a big thumbs up for how dev have handled the war implementation. I've never seen the community come together in such a united way before. It feels great to be part of and it makes a big difference that the narrative is being pushed by the players as much as from the dev side.
I would temper that with the number of issues, especially in CZs in open. The issues (stuck progression, invisible/invulnerable/sped up interceptors etc) seem to be on the tracker, so hopefully all bugs can be squashed soon (in all respects).
Roll on footgoids and new AX ships!
 

Riverside

Riverside
I returned to doing faction manipulation stuff after a two year hiatus wandering around the galaxy and have slipped back into a normal routine, the current Thargoid stuff adds nothing to my game.

Last time there was an invasion one of the systems I care about was invaded & I spent several months repairing the damage. It was not something I hoped would happen but it brought the local community together & I made some good friends & generally I have pleasant memories of recovering from a natural disaster because even on the days & weeks I was alone I felt I was chipping away at the goal of returning the station to full operation and I remember the final delivery & waiting for the next Thursday tick fondly.

This time it seems that unless I coordinate with the wider community to focus any effort on the correct system I may as well not bother so... I am not bothering.

IMO the current story is fine, the mechanism through which my Cmdr must interact is poorly thought out for my playstyle. If any systems I have an interest in are damaged this time I will likely just return to the black until it's settled down again, and if the bubble burns, so be it imo.

I have no interest in fighting Thargoids, other humans (hopefully not my Cmdr) are the bad guys here, if it were my decision any fighting would just stop. You don't fight a volcano or an earthquake, but their effects bring people together. This event in it's current form does not do that (imo) where the previous one did.

Looking forward to finding out more about the development work that builds on the foundations Odyssey laid down & enables my Cmdr to land on a wider variety of planets though.
 

nemolomen

nemolomen
Hi @Bruce G, welcome back.

Here are a few observations and thoughts...

I haven't been playing much lately due to the holidays and some changes to my normal routine.

However, when I did check in, it looked like we're (humanity) is cleaning up the mess rather quickly now after the "adjustments" made in mid December.

Or it could be due to a larger than normal number of commanders participating over the holidays and maybe AX activity will now diminish.

Very much looking forward to the interim patch, a few weeks after which, I think, this thread will be much more relevant...
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
AX CZs around coriolis stations have major issues.

Whenever a player enters/docks at the station, the interceptors outside start to orbit around the station in the direction of its rotation. To anyone outside attempting to engage them at the time, this gives the impression that they are flying away at high speed (almost too fast to catch depending on their distance from the station).

Thargon missiles can pass through the station's walls and hit/damage players inside who are attempting to dock.

Sometimes interceptors that spawn close to the station will be instantly enraged, causing their thargon swarms to immediately suicide-bomb nearby players with missiles.

Being granted docking permission gives immunity to the thargoid EMP/overload wave. Players are abusing this by requesting docking with no intention of landing, so they can avoid being shut down without using a neutralizer.
 
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Untilting

Untilting
> For instance, there is no particular focused effort encouraged via the game itself leaving players to organise themselves if they want to save given systems.
Click to expand...

Must admit I was expecting the superpower navies to take more of a lead in wartime - CGs where the Imps/Feds/Alliance would announce a system or three they wanted to retake - capital ship AX combat zones (like in HIP22460 back in the day).
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
Missions offered to kill thargoids have ridiculously low material / commodity rewards and the time limits are too short.

The maximum number of mats offered is a single unit, the maximum number of commodities is 2 units. For killing multiple interceptors, this is extremely inadequate.

Given there is no way of encountering the specific interceptors required for the mission (unless you go to far away areas such as the pleiades or coalsack), it can be difficult to get the required number of kills within the mission time limit (usually less than 24 hours).

Interceptor kills do not register correctly for missions unless you or someone in your team gets the last damaging shot on the interceptor. This is despite still being awarded the Pilot's Federation combat bond for killing the interceptor.
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Hello Bruce!

On the tactical side of things:
- actually fighting or hauling in affected systems - I don't really have anything to comment on, being 22,000 LY away from the action for now. In general it does seem good that there are a range of contributory activities, though it does also seem to bias activity towards Invasion systems as those are the ones with the widest range of options. Maybe that's intentional; I'm not saying it's a problem as such.

On the strategic side:
- I don't think we've had enough time to see how it works yet to really make informed comment on the details (because we don't know the details), but it seems in general to be rolling out quite well with enough complexity to keep us busy wondering what the best strategy is and enough clarity that we can still achieve something. This would be a good thing to revisit in six months or so when we've more idea what's happening and the Thargoids have had a bit more time to spread out.
- In the long-term I think it might benefit from (numbers illustrative, not actual suggestion) the Thargoids attacking 10x as many systems per week but each system being 10x easier to defend, as at the moment it seems very focused on "big coordination". But ... it's possible that this will be a natural consequence of how the Thargoid simulation works anyway, or it's possible that other "major plot events" over the next year will change things up anyway so that it no longer applies, so this is only a vague feeling.
- I really like the overall concept of system-level actions and aggregation and can see it being used to enable other interesting things in future, too.

On the information side:
- it would be useful to have some in-game global display of "systems with the most progress" as you mention yourself. Something vaguely like the Powerplay control system lists, but for the Thargoids?
- the guidance for Recovery systems seems to be wrong - doing the documented actions even in immense quantities doesn't seem to speed up the recovery.
- having the Thargoid State of a system appear in the journal on FSDJump and related events would be nice for 3rd-party visualisations (even better if it includes the progress%)
- it might be nice - at least while the total numbers remain small - to have victories (and close defeats?) acknowledged in Galnet articles each week, a bit like the old automated "Thargoid station attacks" one.

On the very weird bugs side:
- there's a bunch of "invisible" Control systems (and occasionally invisible Alerts) around Leigong which show up in-system or on Leigong's right-panel totals on the galaxy map, but which don't show up on the map highlight mode or on the "all Maelstroms" left-panel total. Bit weird and might be symptomatic of something else more major.

Overall:
- I'm having fun trying to figure out how the strategic side of it works and what that implies, even without my CMDR being in a position to directly contribute to the action. For me it's been the most interesting update since 3.2 added the Colonia Engineers and their unique upgrade route. It's very different to anything that's been tried in ED's storyline before, but I think it's something which really plays to the game's strengths.
- It'd be nice to see more "consequential" stuff in CGs later - refugees fleeing to Colonia, construction of new warships, things like that which don't exactly change the war position but make it feel more like the defence is a defence "of something", and give room for plot elements which aren't directly about the Thargoid War to continue too. I did like the "long CG" pattern used for the Ryder-Nemo weapon projects, that was a nice tweak to the normal rules.
 

dciskey

dciskey
Allow last week’s progress in a particular system to make this week’s progress easier. I know it‘s probably not feasible to abandon the reset mechanism, but if players got a system half done one week it would be nice if the progress bar there moved a little faster the following week to reflect that these efforts weakened the Thargoids locally.
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
Some systems do not have the correct missions for their current war state.

Right now there are two systems in particular that don't seem to have the correct missions being offered:
  • HIP 18075 is in invasion state, but offers no missions to evacuate either wounded people or passengers at any of its stations
  • HIP 38235 is in invasion state and offers no missions at all (no evacuations, no supply requests, no thargoid missions).

In addition as mentioned by Ian above, there are "invisible" alert and control systems around the Leigong (HIP 8887) maelstrom where something appears to have gone wrong with the war simulation.
 
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millstonebarn

millstonebarn
I'm loving the new content and am very engaged with the war, working with others from sqaudrons/groups that I've not interacted with previously - so that's fantastic.

The biggest issue I have noticed is the weekly reset of progress. It actually discourages you from participating if you think a particular goal will not be achieved (Wednesdays can be a bit of a loss now whilst we wait). I know it's a design decision and probably not something easy (or willing) to change, but it's the most significant factor for me. I do love the long term objectives and the big-picture though.

Maybe, as an idea, if the progress was halved instead of reset (because the 'goids have rallied; hand wavy) then this would give us the incentive to continue to contribute. (In a similar way to how powerplay work decays.)

Keep up the good work.
 
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