Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?

[Disemboweled Ego]

Collector limpets from above are surprisingly effective at sensing materials and cargo!

Is this in any way affected by the supposed new limpet AI that avoids asteroids better?

I've been doing it in a SRV 8-10 at a time and it's pretty quick. I guess from the sky I could hit multiple coral sites in one run so that's tempting. Though with less than 200 cargo in a limpet ship you might be more constrained by limpets than flak ammo (compared to meta alloys with a cutter/T10). Getting a full cargo rack ship in/out of the system/site is quite risky too.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Is this in any way affected by the supposed new limpet AI that avoids asteroids better?

Unlikely; those limpets made no attempt to avoid anything, so they can be destroyed by folds of terrain while outbound or by demanding a perpendicular path while inbound, both of which are solved with more altitude. It impressed me a bit that they can approach and collect an item on the ground without crashing immediately, and indeed quite reliably!

As it happens I had a Universal multi-limpet, and using around three Collectors worked nicely to continue gathering other items while observing the one which keeps crashing.

 

[Kira Goto]

I thought I saw a structure glow briefly but could not be sure, then later the on-foot Commander thought the same but could not be sure either.

I can’t say I have noticed a structure glow when I visited one two days ago - but I did see a faint green fog above the site on the night side of a planet, much like at other Thargoid sites or old, destroyed facilities, though less thick/intense.

 

[Zador]

Had some success last night gathering materials at a new site from the air using remote release flechettes and collector limpets. Gathered over 100T before my ammo ran out. Used around 60 limpets to do so.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

It impressed me a bit that they can approach and collect an item on the ground without crashing immediately, and indeed quite reliably!

The thargoid balls actually sometimes (rarely) teleport above ground on top of the trees randomly which could help the limpets out immensely.

 

[Zador]

Are there any thargoid war systems with evacuation missions at the moment? Been to four stations around Taranis "under repair", and despite the stations being under attack when I get there, the only missions I've seen are sightseeing ones.

 

[Starsong]

Are there any thargoid war systems with evacuation missions at the moment? Been to four stations around Taranis "under repair", and despite the stations being under attack when I get there, the only missions I've seen are sightseeing ones.

Alerts are where you want to go for evacs.

 

[Zador]

Alerts are where you want to go for evacs.

OK thanks. Seems odd that... alerts have no icon; in recovery systems stations under repair are actually under attack; people in stations under attack want to go sightseeing...

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Are there any thargoid war systems with evacuation missions at the moment? Been to four stations around Taranis "under repair", and despite the stations being under attack when I get there, the only missions I've seen are sightseeing ones.

Ports under repair will be in Recovery systems; if anything they ought to offer missions to transport staff back in. Any residual Conflicts there are due to an error from prior to update 16, and will disappear next time the system is "won", potentially including the Recovery ending.

For evacuations, try any of those inhabited Alert systems I mentioned; HIP 25679, Khwal, Col 285 Sector ZE-P c6-11 (long Supercruise), Paitra, or HIP 116360. Note also that you can find these quickly from the Galaxy map using the Thargoid War Information on the left:

Some of those entries will be empty systems though; choosing one will open a system-specific panel on the right which reveals whether it is Human-controlled, and the action list will include "Assist evacuation efforts".

 

[MVBanks]

Alerts are where you want to go for evacs.

Yes, but when alerts are completed, they lose all missions, the mission board is completely empty.
This is not good also for players who like ax restoration, because they can no longer find their favorite missions.
By the way, let me ask, have any of you noticed, when you leave TBM, exit the mass-lock zone and start FSD, the message about disruptive mass, factor 45? Then that factor decreases with distance, but it exists up to about 15 km high? I checked contacts, but nothing was visible.

 

[Zador]

Ports under repair will be in Recovery systems; if anything they ought to offer missions to transport staff back in. Any residual Conflicts there are due to an error from prior to update 16, and will disappear next time the system is "won", potentially including the Recovery ending.

For evacuations, try any of those inhabited Alert systems I mentioned; HIP 25679, Khwal, Col 285 Sector ZE-P c6-11 (long Supercruise), Paitra, or HIP 116360. Note also that you can find these quickly from the Galaxy map using the Thargoid War Information on the left:

Some of those entries will be empty systems though; choosing one will open a system-specific panel on the right which reveals whether it is Human-controlled, and the action list will include "Assist evacuation efforts".

Thanks for the tips. I just arrived in HIP 25679 in my Anaconda rescue ship... and no starports lol, have to break out the Python.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

A few findings from visiting one of the new sites:

• For various reasons, these look designed for having two Commanders, ground and sky.
• On-foot or Scorpion attacks are good for protecting the starship above.
• If a Scout arrives it behoves the pilot to destroy it before it reaches the ground; two class 3 EAX multi-cannons are fine if targeted immediately.
• Coral Sap from destroying growths on the ground is corrosive and therefore inadvisable to store in a vehicle, however—

We thought that the AX reactivations would require 2 cmdrs early on, we later figured out how to deal with Revenants more effectively.
Scouts and interceptors ignore Scarab SRVs and cmdrs on foot. There is/was some sort of bugged interaction between a Scorpion and Scout which will cause an attack.
Once you're on the ground the ship can be dismissed and ships ignored.

Questions; Do you need to DSS the planet or do the sites appear in Nav list as you approach?
Do the scouts drop reinforcement revenants as per AX reactivation or is some other mechanic at work?
Does Coral Sap have any value?
Do Alerts within 20LY have missions to these?

 

[Aleks Zuno]

By the way, let me ask, have any of you noticed, when you leave TBM, exit the mass-lock zone and start FSD, the message about disruptive mass, factor 45? Then that factor decreases with distance, but it exists up to about 15 km high? I checked contacts, but nothing was visible.

I did not notice that, no—if something with a high mass-lock was present, it was already below an Imperial Cutter at factor 27 at the time. Then again, on one occasion I used a high-wake rather than a low-wake. I imagine this would be tested better using a much smaller vessel; unfortunately whenever I approach something new or unknown, I buy another Cutter for it!

Questions; Do you need to DSS the planet or do the sites appear in Nav list as you approach?
Do the scouts drop reinforcement revenants as per AX reactivation or is some other mechanic at work?
Does Coral Sap have any value?
Do Alerts within 20LY have missions to these?

A completed DSS mapping is required to see the Navigation marker from orbit, and it appears only for that Commander. I was uncertain whether it appeared for the ground Commander in the end, but some guidance from above was still needed to find the site from the ground after having landed around 10 kilometers away and deployed a Scorpion.

Indeed those Scouts carry Revenants down to the ground! Revenants also seem appear spontaneously and patrol around the site, but the Scouts seem to try deliberately to place them next to an on-foot Commander.

Coral Sap has a galactic average price of 31986, though interestingly it seems to have no Fleet Carrier entry for trading it. I know of no purpose for using it, though others may do!

I know of no missions related to the new surface sites, although awaiting such missions would be an interestingly quick way to discover the sites, so that seems unlikely. It seems unlikely also because all of these sites are in empty systems thus far!

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Any residual Conflicts there are due to an error from prior to update 16, and will disappear next time the system is "won", potentially including the Recovery ending.

Assuming they can go into conflict again; HIP 8825 has erroneous CZs around its stations and is likely to be stuck that way forever.

 

[MVBanks]

I checked TBM site with ICourier, here it is:

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

I've been doing it in a SRV 8-10 at a time and it's pretty quick. I guess from the sky I could hit multiple coral sites in one run so that's tempting. Though with less than 200 cargo in a limpet ship you might be more constrained by limpets than flak ammo (compared to meta alloys with a cutter/T10). Getting a full cargo rack ship in/out of the system/site is quite risky too.

Tried harvesting balls with flak/limpets now and it worked ok.

The site does seem very well set up for that:

• Most balls spawn high up in the trees so limpets don't have to go too close to the ground to get them if you're close enough. Unlike barnacles.
• The terrain is uneven bu doesn't have steep walls. Unlike Guardian Sites.
• The balls roll on their own after dropping to the ground so there's a chance if the first limpet fails it'll be in a better spot when a 2nd or 3rd limpet tries to pick it up even if you don't move your ship to get a better angle.
• There are a few sites on extremely low gravity planets (~0.05).

The only guaranteed fail pickups seem to be when the sap gets stuck inside the organic material sack.

Was able to fill up my 192 corrosive cargo conda in around an hour while getting the hang of it and using AX flak which required reloads by mistake.

 

[Starsong]

Ports under repair will be in Recovery systems; if anything they ought to offer missions to transport staff back in. Any residual Conflicts there are due to an error from prior to update 16, and will disappear next time the system is "won", potentially including the Recovery ending.

Reports from AXI scouting states that the CZs actually reappear when the tick happens and the system leaves Alert. Not that this is a bad thing, when it's our only source of port CZs for the forseeable future...

The measurement-preventing storm of Alerts continues—victories in 90 c1 Tauri, Muruidooges, Holvandalla and Hyades Sector NS-T c3-14! Five populated Alert systems remain.

I'm wondering - with such a surplus of even Alert activity, is blocking Alerts actually neccessary right now? In other words, it's the perfect time for something like Operation Redacted!

Yes, but when alerts are completed, they lose all missions, the mission board is completely empty.
This is not good also for players who like ax restoration, because they can no longer find their favorite missions.

As a combat pilot who liked Invasion port CZs, I am very much aware of the disadvantages of completing systems too quickly!

 

[Kira Goto]

Found a new barnacle matrix, at least according to this spreadsheet it is not marked yet. If anyone would care or be so kind to relay it to the appropriate places.

Maelstrom Indra, 21.92 ly from it.

Thargoid Spire Sites

docs.google.com

 

[Grimscrub]

Reports from AXI scouting states that the CZs actually reappear when the tick happens and the system leaves Alert. Not that this is a bad thing, when it's our only source of port CZs for the forseeable future...

Far as the report - I went personally to check on HIP 20948 post-tick now that the alert cleared, and, yeeeeahh...
Thursday at ~11:57 Servertime - second i dropped in so, missing the planets, but it tells enough of a story that the space CZs came back i think.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

I'm wondering - with such a surplus of even Alert activity, is blocking Alerts actually neccessary right now? In other words, it's the perfect time for something like Operation Redacted!

It is an excellent time for Operation Redacted! With Fleet Carrier queues as they are, it is quite infeasible to hold them true to that name and actually carry the fleet around as we have been doing, so it is well that our target-collapsing plus the AXI campaign at T. Taranis has made the four Titans on the loosely-Imperial side attack in a more balanced way. Along with a few other Commanders doing so, we have also poked a few gaps into Ts. Indra and Raijin which should soon mature into disrupting the problem of having so many inhabited targets come first. ISAR has been keeping T. Leigong manageable and SNPX has crippled T. Oya.

We did guard Wangakwan and Ildano, partially because they were close enough to share two of four attackers, and partially because they were our evictions originally and it feels bad to restore an inhabited system only for it then to enter the Alert list. Fotlandjera still feels a bit bad to me, but hopefully it is well that Putas is guarded and the attacks on itself, Bi Dhorora and Muruidooges are less frequent. I forget where I mentioned that before, though it was a bit of a concern around the time we were trying to sculpt cavities around Bagalya and Theemim, and getting a bit irked at the notion of doing a long open harvest at Almar without guarding it first.

That said, if those repelling Alerts—quite dominantly Operation Ida and PDES—would prefer that a specific system is guarded rather than having our eviction wing simply look over the target list and trim it here and there, please say so! Much relies on the completion of Alerts and it feels nicer if those doing so are happy with the manipulation of new attacks.

Found a new barnacle matrix, at least according to this spreadsheet it is not marked yet. If anyone would care or be so kind to relay it to the appropriate places.

I showed that to V while writing the above reply, and he has already marked it in our target list!