They aren't here to kill us (an overly-long analysis of Thargoid behaviour)

[Kira Goto]

The stated numbers in GalNet or other sources are millions of captives on the Titans, with - supposedly - a few hundred thousand rescued. Can’t tell if the latter is a pre-determined number rather than based on player activity(probably), but, it’s there.

And I’m pretty sure they don’t “recycle” the wounded, whatever that means. The pods contain some sort of substance similar to an amniotic fluid which would encourage cell regeneration/healing. So yeah.

(I’m of the opinion that they have done something to them even if it’s not obvious yet, but whether that purpose is actually nefarious… we’ll see. I’m not entirely convinced that they would go through all that trouble just to use them as expendable war assets. Or disease carriers.)

 

[Phill P]

The stated numbers in GalNet or other sources are millions of captives on the Titans, with - supposedly - a few hundred thousand rescued. Can’t tell if the latter is a pre-determined number rather than based on player activity(probably), but, it’s there.

My point was that we would never have to do them all anyway, regardless of the numbers. We only have to do enough for the story to say ok that's a good enough effort, on to the next spectacle. From recent events and Arthur's comments on the livestream it's obvious that this war is being presented to us as a series of spectacles, and all that actually matters is if we are judged to have done enough for the next one.

(I’m of the opinion that they have done something to them even if it’s not obvious yet, but whether that purpose is actually nefarious… we’ll see. I’m not entirely convinced that they would go through all that trouble just to use them as expendable war assets. Or disease carriers.)

Plus it's too obvious. Let's be honest, all the stuff about them being sleeper agents, Thargoid zombies or any other malicious purpose has been invented by people's own paranoia because "it's what we would do", and for no reason at all beyond that.

 

[Kira Goto]

With the megalomaniac muppet Salvation as one of them and armed with weapons neither us nor the Thargoids have a counter to?

It's crossed a few minds, yes.

I would add that it’s going to be another of his great plans which is absolutely going to backfire even more horribly than the Proteus Wave did.

The question is more whether he’ll be “friendly”, at first, pretending to be the great Salvation against the Thargoids (again…), until the Constructs say ‘Nah, your pals aren’t quite as nice as you made them out’ and all hell breaks loose, or…

From recent events and Arthur's comments on the livestream it's obvious that this war is being presented to us as a series of spectacles, and all that actually matters is if we are judged to have done enough for the next one.

Fair enough, then.

And I’m going to go out on a limb and stick to my (possibly more recent) theories that the abducted may or may not - either serve as a connection point to the Thargoids, or are just kept on the Titans so we don’t all kill ourselves in our own idiocy.

Hell, or maybe they were just supposed to be a (further) discouragement from attacking the Titans directly, but that implies they have an understanding of our brains/psychology which we have no(t enough) evidence for. Or actually a complete lack thereof… maybe misunderstanding. Because we’re idiots and they’re totally going to end up showered in the projectiles of Ram Tah’s Guardian weapon.

(This is just me from the ‘lore/RP’ perspective. Gameplay wise it’s quite obvious the Titans were never going to remain immune forever and Frontier wants people to go have fun with whichever gameplay loop was built around that.)

 

[Phill P]

Fair enough, then.

Um, you seem to take things I say and apply them to things I wasn't referring to in order to say things I didn't mean. At no point did I say that because we are being led by the story that it's not important what the story is.

 

[Kira Goto]

Um, you seem to take things I say and apply them to things I wasn't referring to in order to say things I didn't mean. At no point did I say that because we are being led by the story that it's not important what the story is.

I don’t think I said that either?

I’m also not exactly sure where I took your words and put them on something else rather than express my own views about some other related things. If the story wasn’t important, I wouldn’t be here. But I’ll have to review that post later if you need more explanations because I’m a bit sick and feeling really sleepy from that.

Edit - well my thoughts came together a bit anyway. What I was saying is, I agree with you that we’re being guided by the story for the things that we are(/should be?) doing, and the specifics of it don’t always matter. EG the pod rescues where, as you said, once that was/is done enough Frontier moves things along with that plot line. (… a little bit, at least.) And the specific number of pods that we rescued is not as important, nor were we ever supposed to retrieve all the captives.

If that’s still wrong, go ahead and correct me.

 

[Phill P]

I don’t think I said that either?

I’m also not exactly sure where I took your words and put them on something else rather than express my own views about some other related things. If the story wasn’t important, I wouldn’t be here. But I’ll have to review that post later if you need more explanations because I’m a bit sick and feeling really sleepy from that.

Sorry to hear that, get well soon.

It sounded like you were taking a comment I was making about the precise details of the amount of work to reach the next stage being unimportant and using it to imply that I was therefore concluding that the details of the story itself were unimportant. If that's not what you were saying then I apologise.

The opposite is true regardless. If we're going to be story led I'd like to see more imagination involved than in the mechanics so far. A bunch of tired old WW2 tropes in space about beachheads and supply lines until the equivalent of the bouncing bomb comes along to turn the tide. Could it be any more unoriginal?

 

[Kira Goto]

If that's not what you were saying then I apologise.

It wasn’t, but no offense taken. I (as per the edit above) agreed that the specifics of the actions matter less than the fact that we are doing those things Frontier want us to do, while the story gives them a purpose outside of the pure gameplay implications. But I can see how it might’ve been unclear.

(Although it’s not entirely obvious what purpose stripping a Titan of its spires has, yet. If it has one at all.)

 

[Phill P]

(Although it’s not entirely obvious what purpose stripping a Titan of its spires has, yet. If it has one at all.)

Not completely no, but cutting off the supply of resources which we are told the spires are sending to the Titans is logical on that level, at least.

 

[Broken_One]

The entire idea that Thargoids have an 'inherent vulnerability to guardian tech' is counter evolution. If anything it would be the other way around. But I am not here to ruin it for anyone.

Second,
Evolution has demonstrated that symbiosis is the way. Just look at a human body. As much as 75% of your cells do not contain human DNA.

The only real answer is that perhaps, the Thargoids are from another place/region of space that requires a certain set of traits that are different from what is necessary in the milky way. -- Of course this would mean threats GREATER than the guardians require them to keep these traits (that allow for the inherent vulnerability)

But that is just my realist brain talking. I love this game. I roll with it.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

There's no evidence that they do. No mention of any genetic tampering, implants, drugs or even surgery on the people rescued either. On the contrary they have been described as being physically fine.

Which is odd in itself. We're told billions have been abducted. How likely is it that out of all those abductees there wasn't a single broken bone, burn or other injury?

Scythes hang around Damaged Stations like vultures waiting for us to pick up critically wounded. Yet when we rescue them from the Titans they are all physically healthy.

So maybe the question shouldn't be "are they experimenting on them?" but "why are they healing them and not appearing to do anything else to them at all?"

IIRC the Martian relics, like the human AIs that have supposedly gone rogue and are still out there somewhere, are bits of old story that never got carried on. Pretty sure Drew mentions them as discontinued narratives in one of his lore videos.

Which doesn't exclude that at some point they could be retconned but as with all these things it works both ways - while there may be no reason to rule it out that also means there's no reason to rule it in either, or even to think it has anything to do with things at all.

You say that like it's a bad thing

Nothing we can do at the moment except speculate.

Such as the return of the Guardian AIs who have now had a million years to learn all about us and the Thargoids with the speed, perfect memory and recall facilities of a supercomputer? With the megalomaniac muppet Salvation as one of them and armed with weapons neither us nor the Thargoids have a counter to?

It's crossed a few minds, yes.

Their minds have been tampered with maybe.

 

[Groman]

I don't have much to contribute aside that while I would also enjoy a good twist, I believe the narrative might stick to some tropes as this is what most people enjoy (why we have so many action movies about the same stuff while truly original movies are harder to find).

From my point of view, I don't see the Thargoids as aggressors but then the game experience, especially for fighters, would be quite dull.

Here's to your cool theories and hopefully something cool nobody saw coming

 

[Phill P]

The entire idea that Thargoids have an 'inherent vulnerability to guardian tech' is counter evolution.

I wish that CG hadn't worded it like that, it's very flippant and misleading.

The guardians developed technology which specifically targeted anything with Thargoid engineering in it. Saying they have an inherent weakness to a technology, without mentioning the deliberately targeted part, is like saying we have an inherent weakness to bullets without mentioning that they were deliberately designed to kill us with. It's not a fair representation when the mitigating factors are left out.

From the Guardians Codex;
4/28 : Thargoid Log – The War Machine
The data in this log details the methods used by the Guardians against the Thargoids. At first they deployed ground troops, but when this proved ineffective they started to use drones – autonomous machines that felt no fear, fatigue or uncertainty. These war machines became highly sophisticated in a relatively short amount of time, and were soon able to identify and target anything that utilised Thargoid engineering. Even more remarkably, Thargoid bio-mechanical technology was engineered to recognise anything of Guardian origin. That explains why, millions of years after the conflict, Thargoids devices still react aggressively to the presence of Guardian technology.

The way that CG worded it really muddied the waters there.

I do think however that it is wise, or what we humans would call wise, of the Thargoids to be wary of the only technology that has ever defeated them and which may have the potential to overtake them again if others learn how to use it or the Guardians return. That seems like an entirely sensible precaution.

If anything it would be the other way around. But I am not here to ruin it for anyone.

Second,
Evolution has demonstrated that symbiosis is the way. Just look at a human body. As much as 75% of your cells do not contain human DNA.

The only real answer is that perhaps, the Thargoids are from another place/region of space that requires a certain set of traits that are different from what is necessary in the milky way. -- Of course this would mean threats GREATER than the guardians require them to keep these traits (that allow for the inherent vulnerability)

But that is just my realist brain talking. I love this game. I roll with it.

Although Thargoids are carbon based their chemistry is ammonia rather than water based so I would be wary of one to one comparisons with human evolution. Biological and Technological evolution are also not the same thing. Saying they could simply out evolve guardian technology as if it was a straightforward biological process is again like saying we can simply out evolve bullets. This is a technological problem not a biological one.

In that respect the Thargoids may be more integrated than humans since they are literally described as bio mechanical. Which would logically make their "combined evolution" faster in some ways and slower in others, with both biology and technology having to evolve or be engineered in their own specific ways in order to compliment each other.

And of course as soon as you introduce technology to counter what biological evolution cannot, you are no longer evolving naturally but forcing the issue and attempting to take charge of it, or as much of it as possible. So what might happen in nature ceases to apply in any case. We stopped evolving fully and directly to the natural environment when we made fire, tools and shelter.

As for how Thargoids adapt that appears to be selective. Assuming they can out evolve anything with the same ease no matter what is actually involved, as unlikely as that is, it may be a case of priorities.

It seems that large threats like Salvation's superweapon they adapt to very fast, within three or four uses of it they had immunity. Years ago a Galnet article noted that they were adapting to human weapons so they were less effective (although that was in order to introduce us to guardian weapons), yet we have been killing them with those guardian weapons ever since and they have not adapted at all. Gauss are as effective today as when they were introduced years ago.

So what they adapt to appears to be based on some other criteria than "oh it's a threat we must adapt immediately".

Perhaps it is about how dangerous they consider a threat. Better drone killing weapons like guardian gauss are therefore unimportant because individual drones are unimportant, compared to weapons capable of mass slaughter like the Proteus Wave.

But even then there may be limits to what they can counter. Again, the Guardian Codex tells us that the technological development of the Guardians was rapid once begun. If the Guardian AIs are still alive they have had a million years to evolve their technology in secret, and what we've found so far at their sites and ruins could be the tip of the iceberg. Salvation the supermuppet's attempt to upload his ego into a Guardian box confirms that there are still things we don't know about their technology, and possibly new items to discover.

If it comes to that we don't fully understand what Guardian stuff we have already found. From the Guardian Codex we know that Relics are part power source, part computer and part key and were apparently programmed to run specific tasks. We know all that, and not one thing about how to program them ourselves.

So in that sense there is every reason to think that the Thargoids are right to be wary of technology with the capability to develop faster than their own, and which targets them in the process.

Their minds have been tampered with maybe.

Again IIRC they've been described as traumatised by their experience, which is perfectly natural, but no evidence that they have been brainwashed or otherwise influenced. But then they could be sleeper agents so it hasn't happened yet and the trigger will be telepathic when the time's right. We'll know soon enough.

I don't have much to contribute aside that while I would also enjoy a good twist, I believe the narrative might stick to some tropes as this is what most people enjoy (why we have so many action movies about the same stuff while truly original movies are harder to find).

From my point of view, I don't see the Thargoids as aggressors but then the game experience, especially for fighters, would be quite dull.

Here's to your cool theories and hopefully something cool nobody saw coming

With so little to go on that wouldn't be difficult but yes, that would be fun.

 

[Broken_One]

Yea I like the idea that Guardian Tech is just designed to target the tharg biology. Makes more sense that way.

Dang reporters on Galnet again muddying the waters ><

---

Still the idea that they have we have no chance at peace just seems counter intuitive to me. The reward from functional symbiosis is just too great. -- I mean even the most warlike humans we know are primarily cooperative. they generally follow the social rules and norms to the degree that we can build spaceports and trade etc etc etc.

But like you pointed out there are other factors and using the 'human measure' is not necessarily the correct one. I lean more to another threat or condition that requires them to be that way, which is why they haven't adapted fully.

 

[Kira Goto]

Yea I like the idea that Guardian Tech is just designed to target the tharg biology. Makes more sense that way.

Dang reporters on Galnet again muddying the waters ><

---

Still the idea that they have we have no chance at peace just seems counter intuitive to me. The reward from functional symbiosis is just too great. -- I mean even the most warlike humans we know are primarily cooperative. they generally follow the social rules and norms to the degree that we can build spaceports and trade etc etc etc.

But like you pointed out there are other factors and using the 'human measure' is not necessarily the correct one. I lean more to another threat or condition that requires them to be that way, which is why they haven't adapted fully.

I dare say that their different way of thinking might make them less inclined toward making such… what’s the word used again? Peace openings, whatever. You probably know what I mean. Some of the lowly humans who aren’t really in charge or affecting anything making a peace offering probably won’t be of much interest to a Thargoid queen unless she(it?) intended to use that human as a means of parleying with an actual leader.

Or so I assume, anyway. There’s a good chance that view is wrong too, given our lack of knowledge of how Thargoids ‘Thargoid’.

Our(the species’) generally xenophobic attitude and two highly destructive WMDs don’t help that matter, I imagine. I sure wouldn’t expect that to have left any positive impressions. But having to deal with Guardian AI might change things… at the very least on the human side, I’d think.

 

[Phill P]

Yea I like the idea that Guardian Tech is just designed to target the tharg biology. Makes more sense that way.

We are the only ones who have attempted a biological attack as far as we know with the Mycoid Virus, but with them being bio mechanical it raises an interesting point about attacking their technology as the Guardians did.

The Mycoid affected both their technology and the Thargoids themselves because it was made to, but the Guardians targeting Thargoid technology could still have a massive knock on effect on their biology even if it doesn't affect it directly. Since Thargoid technology will be more closely built around their biology how easy would it be to make that technology immune from Guardian weapons without having to redesign at least some of their biology as well? This assumes they have the equivalent of genetic engineering but that's still a big job and may not be completely possible. Which could be why after a million years they still haven't managed it and have worked on technology like anti-Guardian fields instead.

Maybe that's why they fear the Guardians so much, for exposing the weakness of marrying your biology and technology to the point where one can't survive without the other, and all anyone has to do is affect one of them to really mess you up.

Still the idea that they have we have no chance at peace just seems counter intuitive to me.

I don't think we have seen or know enough to understand what a Thargoid's idea of peace would be, let alone what they would agree to in order to secure it, but our biggest issue isn't whether they understand or care about the concept of peace. We don't know their language so we can't communicate with them, and I believe this to be absolutely deliberate.

We know from the Codex entries Ram Tah sends you to get that the Guardians figured out the Thargoid language and tried to talk to the Thargoids to end their war but the Thargoids ignored them and kept blasting. This has been taken as an article of faith by everyone, it's in the CMDR codex and even in Galnet.

And yet in the 100+ codex entries you find on Ram Tah's quest "Decoding the Ancient Ruins" and the 28 entries on "Decrypting the Guardian Logs" there is not one letter, not one cipher, not one single example of this language they translated. This massive story beat that everyone has taken on faith has no examples of it anywhere in game.

Which doesn't mean I don't think the Guardians deciphered the Thargoid language. I'm happy to go with the idea they did and have no reason to suppose we've been lied to about that. But I also think the lack of a single example of it in all those codex entries is a very deliberate omission. We have been stopped from communicating with them in any meaningful way on purpose because we're not meant to yet.

Beyond that humans are the biggest obstacle to peace in my view. We shot at them first and invaded their barnacle patches, building a whole industry and in the case of the Alliance an economy relying on meta alloys stolen from the barnacle sites.

Until then they were fiercely territorial where they had barnacles but outside those systems they made no attempt to expand into human space or bother us at all. Until we bothered them.

But human nature being what it is, just because someone has shown no interest in you and just wants to be left alone to farm their barnacles doesn't mean they couldn't turn their ploughshares into swords at some point, and paranoia did the rest.

So we tried to wipe them out, twice.

The reward from functional symbiosis is just too great.

Yes but you know it will be used;

-- I mean even the most warlike humans we know are primarily cooperative. they generally follow the social rules and norms to the degree that we can build spaceports and trade etc etc etc.

Although manipulating the economy has shown itself to be at least as effective a weapon as physical war but yes, cooperation has to last long enough to have something to fight over in the first place, and cooperation has played as important a part as competitiveness in our evolution. Completely agree there.

But like you pointed out there are other factors and using the 'human measure' is not necessarily the correct one. I lean more to another threat or condition that requires them to be that way, which is why they haven't adapted fully.

Or it's not possible completely, or they fear that even if they can the Guardians will out develop them technologically, or any number of other possibilities. I'm not convinced about it being tied to any genetic need or trait, tbh, or how different it would be for a carbon based life form with an ammonia chemistry instead of a water chemistry to adapt, or if it would not be able to adapt to the point where it becomes it specifically vulnerable to another species, that all seems like going down an unprovable blind alley of pseudo genetics to me. I think it's more about technology, the desire to use it aggressively and good old fashioned suspicion - "would you trust them not to attack if you thought they could? If you even suspected they could?"

having to deal with Guardian AI might change things… at the very least on the human side, I’d think.

Us and the Thargoids against a common enemy is plausible, maybe, if they throw us at least a bone to communicate with them, but as for changing human nature as soon as we fought off the Guardians together how long would it be before someone said "hey, why are we trading with these guys when we can just kill them and take what we want?"

I'd like not to be cynical but humans won't let me.

 

[Kira Goto]

how long would it be before someone said "hey, why are we trading with these guys when we can just kill them and take what we want?"

You know I don’t have a good answer to that, beyond the fact that I agree it would happen eventually… since we can’t stop doing it to ourselves(like the idiots we are) even in a time of war against another species.

The lack of a good answer arises in trying to judge what the Thargoid reaction would be, based on a number of factors like whether they’re aware of our different nature where each and every individual is (usually) entirely autonomous, if they care about that aspect, and so on.

If there was not a risk of it being extrapolated(if that’s the right word in context) to the entirety of the human species(maybe they wouldn’t be so wrong to …), I’d just say, ‘Let the attackers suffer the consequences’.

And not being able to communicate with the Thargoids? That’s absolutely deliberate. I may point toward that shadowy organization in the background known as the Club to this end, because they’re all about controlling all human stuff. And cooperation with the Thargoids would be an absolute nightmare to their ridiculous “dreams”, because they can’t control the Thargoids or their technology*(see permit locks, for example).

One example of this would be the superpowers constantly shouting down old Aegis’ proposals to try and actually study the Thargoids to obtain an understanding of their language. You know, something that I hear is common military stuff for an “enemy” you’re fighting(even if said enemy is almost entirely self-made in this case).

Didn’t happen at all here and “MORE GUNS!!!” was shouted at the top of the lungs every time the idea entered the room. Most loudest by Hudson, I’d imagine.

And that’s just what’s visible in ED. If you go delving into the rabbit hole of older lore, where we don’t know which parts are or aren’t canon(Frontier, if you would …), I’m sure more examples of this type of thing can be found. But since it isn’t always obvious which parts are or aren’t [still] canon, I’m not going into said hole**.

*Presumably. I get that feeling Project Seraph was in some way an attempt to bridge that gap but in a very non-genuine way.

**With one exception. Supposedly, there was one human-Thargoid cooperation project at some point between the end of the first war and 3300-onward, detailed in the novel Out Of The Darkness that appears to be canon, or at least it was at one point(again, hard to say whether that is a narrative point which still has relevance now or was dropped… I’m not in the right places to ask such a question and the answer would probably be quite intentionally vague too).

Peregrina - the system in said novel - is also present in the game. Entirely permit locked itself(you can get it, it seems) and one moon in it is also considered a “plague world”, thus quarantined. A perfectly sensible reason, you could imagine. Except I’m not entirely sure it is.

Of course, our characters and others in the game/story have no particular way of knowing about it anyway, and I generally prefer to remain focused on what’s visible ‘as is’ in the game.

Luckily, this in no way disproves that obfuscation of things and quite deliberate impeding of any attempts to understand the Thargoids which could even vaguely risk someone deciding “Hey, why don’t we try and talk”. Kingfisher doesn’t really count. Even discounting someone smuggling Thargoid sensors onboard - a Far God nutjob who was a little too desperate to see his deity, perhaps - placing it in the path of something with proven angry Thargoids around it was pretty stupid and it had little chance of actually succeeding.

(Waiting for the captured humans to show up as messengers, maybe. “Please stop being idiots for a few seconds, we maybe just want to be left alone.”)

 

[Kira Goto]

From the Guardian Codex we know that Relics are part power source, part computer and part key and were apparently programmed to run specific tasks. We know all that, and not one thing about how to program them ourselves.

Something to that - the unclassified relic comes to mind and how, post-Proteus Wave, the Thargoids have figured out some way of turning them into those hybrid structures. One has to wonder exactly what they learned in order to do that - obviously, it has something to do with the Proteus Wave mechanism and the way relics are, presumably, a key part of it(since they also appear capable of emitting radiation pulses powerful enough to kill, if ‘threatened’, for lack of a better word - see the Proteus logs from the Hesperus event chain).

But I’m asking myself whether they realized it only when that weapon fired, or they began to study the tech after the first test run in Cornsar and saw that, maybe, they could reprogram/reconfigure those relics themselves. Maybe that’s what they were doing at that isolated battleground way off from any known Guardian or Thargoid location… until we found them.

 

[Phill P]

Something to that - the unclassified relic comes to mind and how, post-Proteus Wave, the Thargoids have figured out some way of turning them into those hybrid structures.

Or simply reprogramming them.

One has to wonder exactly what they learned in order to do that - obviously, it has something to do with the Proteus Wave mechanism and the way relics are, presumably, a key part of it

They had two months to watch and learn as Salvation plugged Guardian items into one of their own sites. All they had to do was take notes. As to what they found out;

(since they also appear capable of emitting radiation pulses powerful enough to kill, if ‘threatened’, for lack of a better word - see the Proteus logs from the Hesperus event chain).

To our knowledge Ram Tah was the first to translate the Guardian Codex entries so the Proteus crew would not know the relic was "part power source, part computer and part key".

My guess is that in the absence of knowing what else to do the Proteus crew simply tried bombarding the relic with different kinds of radiation until one of them triggered an uncontrolled burst of power in response, which fried them. By the time Salvation came to use relics he had their research to refer to, thanks to us, and learned how to unlock that power without crudely blasting it until it was released, in essence learning how to turn it on properly instead of simply hitting it till it blew up.

That, coupled with their conversion to grelics, suggests to me that perhaps both he and the Thargoids now know how to program relics, if not fully then more than anyone else does.

But I’m asking myself whether they realized it only when that weapon fired, or they began to study the tech after the first test run in Cornsar and saw that, maybe, they could reprogram/reconfigure those relics themselves. Maybe that’s what they were doing at that isolated battleground way off from any known Guardian or Thargoid location… until we found them.

Good point, before getting the chance to study Salvation's work they were already developing immunity to the Proteus Wave. That's a good thought that they also studied the Proteus site. That was found in June 3307 and Cornsar, the first use of the superweapon, wasn't till September.

It fits.

I also think it would be hilarious if Salvation had uploaded himself into a relic and then someone had handed him in to Ram Tah during the CG.

 

[Kira Goto]

Or simply reprogramming them.

That’s what I was saying. In something of a roundabout way, at least. Looking at something said by Palin(thought it was Ram Tah but not so) :

“But our preliminary studies show a molecular realignment of the artefact’s crystalline structure, resulting in something that emits both Guardian and Thargoid energy signatures.”

https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/19-AUG-3308

Which, I’d assume, can be achieved by programming the relic accordingly such that it changes its internal structure to… well, that hybrid relic. Certainly sounds that way to me.

Still curious that the Thargoids chose/learned how to use that tech themselves over indiscriminately destroying it like they do if a human ship is caught with it onboard.

I also think it would be hilarious if Salvation had uploaded himself into a relic and then someone had handed him in to Ram Tah during the CG.

That would indeed be funny. Imagine someone’s weapon firing at a Titan causing enthusiastic old man shouts to come through the ship’s speakers.

 

[Phill P]

Imagine someone’s weapon firing at a Titan causing enthusiastic old man shouts to come through the ship’s speakers.

Just so long as he doesn't play Ride of the Valkyries at me. There's enough clichés in my cockpit already.