Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
- Start date
I find it curious/interesting that the invasions at Kurumanit and Chinas have so far been progressing at the exact required pace for their progress to be double and half of one another’s, respectively, so far.
Even though there’s probably nothing behind it, it’s… intriguing, how they are.
Even though there’s probably nothing behind it, it’s… intriguing, how they are.
It's notable yes, especially as they are much of a muchness. Kurumanit has the closer station and the rescue ship further away and Chinas is the opposite, the attacked port is further away and the two rescue ships are at half the distance. We only chose Kuru because we were there already from last week so the carrier was in place without jumping it.
Recurring bug that happens at least at the station in Chinas: Hydra phase suddenly ends (progress bars disappear) even though none was killed, and the Hydras don't despawn even when the instance is empty. I have no idea how long they actually do take to despawn / reset the instance.
That said, last night I soloed an entire instance, in the hopes of any other CMDR popping in at some point, but to no avail. (I was in the AXI PG bc Open was blocked by those Hydras.) It took me pretty much exactly 2 hours. Then I bailed when the Hydras arrived; my little FAS has no business engaging two of them.
That said, last night I soloed an entire instance, in the hopes of any other CMDR popping in at some point, but to no avail. (I was in the AXI PG bc Open was blocked by those Hydras.) It took me pretty much exactly 2 hours. Then I bailed when the Hydras arrived; my little FAS has no business engaging two of them.
Usually, they should just reset when every player has left, but I've seen some funky stuff in Open play where a player-free instance just stubbornly refused to dissolve.
I've seen that happen in my own PG. Funnily enough, when we continued to fight the Hydras a new conflict zone started after a few minutes - even with the Hydras from the last one still around.
There can be people sitting in the station on the pads that you can't see unless you get very close. The contacts history will always definitively show you if there's anyone else in the instance (look for anyone listed with "NOW" as the last seen time).
The thing about the scenario finishing before the hydras are killed (including awarding you with the bonus for their defeat) has been an ongoing bug for a while.
The thing about the scenario finishing before the hydras are killed (including awarding you with the bonus for their defeat) has been an ongoing bug for a while.
Oh, and another observation from DCOH: player involvement is virtually identical between Chinas and Kurumanit; around 15-16.000 kills were made in each system (I suppose this includes Scouts?), yet Chinas only has half the progress. How come this system is so much harder? Like, literally twice as hard?
Chinas is closer to a Titan, the activity tracking isn't all that reliable and both PDES and Op IDA (among others) are working in Kuramanit.
Chinas has plenty of time, it wouldn't be a bad thing if it went for at least one more week (ground stations would get attacked)...
Chinas has plenty of time, it wouldn't be a bad thing if it went for at least one more week (ground stations would get attacked)...
Yeah, I've only had trouble docking when another CMDR didn't hurry up.
Anyway, current state of Chinas: 83%. Just completed one instance each in Open and AXI PG, each with other players but not taking on the Hydras. I simply have no business taking on Hydras in my little modshard FAS, let alone two of them. I can only try to nip at its heels when proper Hydra-killers are around.
The problem is that the Hydras still don't despawn even when everyone has left the instance; this way blocking instances unless a "decent pilot" arrives.
@Aleks Zuno what does the projection for Chinas say? With so many new invasions in the pipeline for tomorrow, I really hope we can still finish this tonight.
Anyway, current state of Chinas: 83%. Just completed one instance each in Open and AXI PG, each with other players but not taking on the Hydras. I simply have no business taking on Hydras in my little modshard FAS, let alone two of them. I can only try to nip at its heels when proper Hydra-killers are around.
The problem is that the Hydras still don't despawn even when everyone has left the instance; this way blocking instances unless a "decent pilot" arrives.
@Aleks Zuno what does the projection for Chinas say? With so many new invasions in the pipeline for tomorrow, I really hope we can still finish this tonight.
Well if Chinas doesn't get cleared then at least one of the ground ports will be attacked tomorrow, which may make it more attractive for the casuals to join in. There will be a good half dozen Invasions on top of that tomorrow as well.
Alerts - we've managed to do some of them but without more people on it we're going to lose a few systems to Control. Nothing we can do about it. Whether the Control crews can take them back or take another system in a one for one scenario we'll have to see.
If only Alerts did not rely on signal sources to find scouts in then even with the increase it wouldn't be so bad, but to give you an example of what we've been up against take a look at this system in Thor:
With 4 stars and many bodies in all ranges you might expect an abundance of signals but three times we have dropped in and found none at all around the nearby bodies, and all of the signals have been at least 400,000 Ls away, so they are impossible to get to before they expire. There's only so much time you can spend trying as opposed to just getting on with another system where it's actually possible to interact with them.
So yeah, it's rough. Every time it takes a while to get a decent signal, we're conscious of that time running out. Morale has dropped like a stone and everyone is just fed up with being knocked back now.
Alerts - we've managed to do some of them but without more people on it we're going to lose a few systems to Control. Nothing we can do about it. Whether the Control crews can take them back or take another system in a one for one scenario we'll have to see.
If only Alerts did not rely on signal sources to find scouts in then even with the increase it wouldn't be so bad, but to give you an example of what we've been up against take a look at this system in Thor:
With 4 stars and many bodies in all ranges you might expect an abundance of signals but three times we have dropped in and found none at all around the nearby bodies, and all of the signals have been at least 400,000 Ls away, so they are impossible to get to before they expire. There's only so much time you can spend trying as opposed to just getting on with another system where it's actually possible to interact with them.
So yeah, it's rough. Every time it takes a while to get a decent signal, we're conscious of that time running out. Morale has dropped like a stone and everyone is just fed up with being knocked back now.
@Aleks Zuno what does the projection for Chinas say? With so many new invasions in the pipeline for tomorrow, I really hope we can still finish this tonight.
The last one-sixth for Chinas ought to be within completion when considering Invasions as a whole, which one could consider to be 11/12 complete versus a week which is 6/7 complete, although in this case it has been a bit uncharacteristically mild towards the end of the cycle. Definitely if the Cloudbase was already hovering opportunistically around Kurumanit earlier and helped it a bit at the start, it would unbalance that projection—such is the danger of aggregating only two cases!
Alone, Chinas is behind with 5/6 versus 6/7 of course, and adding weight-counts for the weekend only widens that gap. That said, it is also well beyond the one-third surplus threshold, so by all means join the party there! The quite sneaky INIV pilots report has been showing steady action there all week, although that is not necessarily combat nor open.
Conversely, one other factor which has been known to disrupt Alert projections in our favour is Operation Ida swooping in towards the end! For a while it was quite common to see the projected completions left alone and the trailing systems struck hard, where self-defeating the trailing projections actually is a quite clever way to operate. That is not to expect assistance, of course—those comments are merely a review of projections and what has happened in the past!
As an aside, we have a minor observation upcoming with T. Taranis expected to attack, although notably we need two more observation weeks after that before committing to a clearance operation:
- Week 56 will give a bit of insight into how Titans choose their attacks and indeed how many times they can attack.
- Week 57 may reveal a special Titan rule if we witness T. Taranis attacking consecutively or otherwise misbehaving.
- If not yet seen in week 57, week 58 will reveal what we really need to see—whether Titans continue attacking after they have a Control system back.
- Even if T. Taranis attacks everything it can in week 56 and precludes that observation, T. Leigong will be able to show us instead.
If the attacks continue then we are a bit stuck and simply awaiting a story development, but if they stop then we could try asking for Spire support and reducing M. Hadad down to having a few containment systems, perhaps only one system if everyone agrees to be good, careful Commanders and leave it alone.
Until then, it is Christmas break-time here!
A lot of the time it's been all of us in the Mode Alliance - us, Ida and whoever else joins in. For the last month we've still been doing systems up to 5-6AM. Some of that is also because people stockpile samples for multiple systems and hand them all in at once, giving the impression that it's all done at the last minute but has actually been worked on for two days.
@Phill P , yeah I see what you mean with systems like that -- I would say it's wisest to just write it off and let the goids bother with those quaternary hellholes.
Chinas ticked up 3% since I last wrote. Well if anything it's gonna be a close race.
Will next week's invasions also be that hard? As there's gonna be quite a few of them, we'd never be able to defend all of them at this difficulty.
Chinas ticked up 3% since I last wrote. Well if anything it's gonna be a close race.
Will next week's invasions also be that hard? As there's gonna be quite a few of them, we'd never be able to defend all of them at this difficulty.