I think Fdev quiet rightly are trying to achieve a balance of a credible Thargoid war which folks can get involved in, whilst not destroying the bubble too much for those still just wanting to trade and do the normal missions.
O7
First look: THE SCYTHE!!! (New Thargoid ship)
O7
The transient signals (not permanent POIs) are completely useless for wing-fighting - when the first person who dropped in jumps out, the entire contents of the instance disappears. Damaged ships, debris, interceptors all just go poof to anyone still in it.
That's fair, but the bubble has ~20,000 inhabited systems and encompasses a substantial number more uninhabited ones. It could lose 90% of those with no noticeable effect on trade and missions (if the remaining 10% were chosen reasonably carefully). It could certainly lose well over the <1% the Thargoids had at their peak without any problems at all.
At their original rate of advance, it would have taken the Thargoids somewhere over 20 years to take out the entire bubble, and at least 2 years before they got as far as threatening - and it would just have been threatening, there's no way the players would have sat back and let them have it - any system of more than local importance (engineers, rares, etc.).
Following the first major rebalance (which still left invasions and so on present), that was adjusted to well over a century to take out the bubble, and at least a decade to get as far as threatening the first important system. In practice, with the system strength reductions further out, they probably would have taken considerably longer than that and might have stalled out entirely at about 40 LY after five years or so.
Obviously, any timescale of "five years or so" or "at least a decade" is likely irrelevant. Five years ago the Thargoids were very slowly skirmishing a few bubble systems (and even then, were "allowed" to attack more interesting ones - Deciat and Kamadhenu were both on the menu at times, though of course heavily and successfully defended by players), Colonia had no engineers, the Hydra hadn't shown up yet, the Witch Head enclave hadn't been established, etc. Ten years ago the only people who'd played Elite Dangerous were a few devs at a minor games company.
There was never any risk of the Thargoids destroying too much of the bubble to make any significant difference to players uninterested in the content.
It's not at all clear what Frontier think the Thargoid war is for:
- if it's to introduce some safely-contained Thargoid content so that people who like AX can have permanent and reliable access to it with a wider variety of scenarios, then the current situation isn't great for that (because too many of them are tied to Invasions), and the Pleiades would have been a better place for it. The entire automated strategic layer was basically a complete waste of time for that objective. Sure, it makes a minor difference around the edges, but the people who don't care about the strategic details don't need them to be there, and the people who do care need them to be more significant than exactly where the stalemate line is.
- if it's to have an automated system which can replace a lot of the hand-managed content like CGs (and it clearly has replaced them), it needs to be capable of generating more interesting situations than "permanent stalemate at the 20LY line a long way from anything anyone other than a few BGS-oriented groups cares about", and they need to commit to their hype of "this could theoretically make a noticeable difference to the galaxy depending on aggregate player actions" a little more than now.
- if it's to have a more dynamic background and in-game participation to a planned Thargoid war plot, and we're currently at the "humans appear to be pushing back the Thargoids, and then..." stage, fair enough but they need to deal with the details around the way "winning", even on a temporary level, is less interesting than "losing".
Something new to sample to death. Enjoy.
Fdevs own words were "the bubble will burn "? The war is a numbers game with fdev fiddling the totals to make it work . Once they have run out of war narrative we will be victorious or at least hold our own against a technological superior force cos we are humans and we do this regularly.
IIRC Aftermath was intended as a 2 year arc. We're about a year in and the war may well be only a part of what the arc encompasses.
The assumption that it would be permanent seems misguided.
I suspect that we would be pushing elsewhere as the the Maelstrom regions are reclaimed. Col sector 70 might be what the next year holds.
The assumption that it would be permanent seems misguided.
I suspect that we would be pushing elsewhere as the the Maelstrom regions are reclaimed. Col sector 70 might be what the next year holds.
Thargoids are getting more new ships than us...
Who would say that the thargoids get more than what the community has been asking for for years
@angusmadmac1
Did FD actually say that? I know that parts of the community certainly pushed that but all i can remember was them saying that Colonia wasn't off the table.
Is there a source for that?
Did FD actually say that? I know that parts of the community certainly pushed that but all i can remember was them saying that Colonia wasn't off the table.
Is there a source for that?
I'm trying to locate the source , I thought I had heard it on a stream that the bubble could burn if no one did war stuff ? And that even colonia wasnt safe . But if anyone finds the source please feel free to post . If not then I will apologise and edit original post .
Ok the nearest I got was a post on the 3rd December in the forums https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-it-or-lump-it-about-the-thargoid-war.611412/. Still trying to get an actual fdev employee saying that will take longer
@angusmadmac1
There'd be no need to apolgize.
I'm just as interested as you are in what they actually said.
There'd be no need to apolgize.
I'm just as interested as you are in what they actually said.
If I'm wrong then I will put it out there i would rather put out the proper info Even if doesn't suit my train of thought .
They did not exactly use the words "the bubble will burn", but it was on stream in a dev segment where one of them (I think it might have been Derin) said something akin to that the Thargoids will spread all over the bubble if the players just stand by and watch. Must have been one of the streams before U13.
Edit: Ninja'd. And it was Tom. And U14.
Edit: Ninja'd. And it was Tom. And U14.
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Thanks I was watching the old streams . Much appreciated
Technically all true. At their original pace, in the complete absence of opposition, they could have cleared almost every bubble system within a couple of decades. Maybe as quickly as a decade - we never did figure out how their original target prioritisation worked. At that hypothetical point, Frontier would have probably given them a way to go for Colonia slightly faster than 10 LY hops.
By a coincidence of timing, the point at which we finally got confidence that there wasn't an exponential term to their expansion that would make it quicker was also the point that Frontier made a very visible change to make it even slower.
So, more a "could" rather than a "will".
That's what i thought.
Good to know anyway.
.
That's what i thought.
Good to know anyway.
.@Ian Doncaster
Maybe their intention was not to take over the bubble, entirely.
Maybe your species is more interesting to them than that?
Maybe their intention was not to take over the bubble, entirely.
Maybe your species is more interesting to them than that?
Now hang on a minute, sonny, this is The Internet … you can’t come moseying on in here with reasonable opinions like that!!