I'm Really Worried About The Thargoids...

[Synthetic Frost]

Or more accurately, I'm worried about the player reactions to the Thargoids. Now, I haven't read every novel in the Elite universe, but I've tried to generally keep a passing general knowledge of the lore, and have been playing the franchise since the late 80's. I know that the Thargoids were much more advanced than us during the first encounters and throughout the Human-Thargoid conflicts after 2849. I also know that our own Frame Shift Drives were reversed engineered from Alliance-captured Thargoid ships, and distributed across humanity by the Sirius Corporation. After those first conflicts, the Federation basically infected the thargoids and almost wiped them out after a long war we almost lost.

There really isn't a lot of information on the Thargoids beyond that. The only time they've really been hostile was in the 1980's Elite, and that was only because they were likely retaliating because the first trigger happy commander they encountered decided to shoot first and ask questions later.

Nothing in the lore I've read thus far has really pegged the Thargoids as necessarily hostile. In fact they quickly retreated from human-controlled space almost overnight after the initial conflict. Braben has also stated in the past that he wants to maintain that "alien" factor. He doesn't really want to give us any means in which to initiate a common ground with the Thargoids. We have no basis on how the Thargoids even perceive us. They may take the plague we infected them with as a hostile action, or they may not. they might see it as an act of strength on our part, and respect us for it. We just don't know.

however, I know Elite as a franchise has never portrayed Humanity in a very good light. I know this isn't Star Trek where we should endeavor for peace, but it hasn't really been the frontier or "wild west" that it's trying to convey either. Even in just the lore I read, Humanity is kinda just the bad guy, straight up.

_________________________

Now add all this to some of the douchey things the player communities have done over the last couple years in Elite: Dangerous, and I can't help but wonder if we're just bringing a Thargoid invasion upon ourselves.

Braben made it pretty clear when Elite: Dangerous launched that player actions would shape how the fate of the galaxy unfolds. And since launch, I read article after article about the great lengths people have gone through just to screw other people over. The obvious example being the Salome community event.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017...munity-plan-event-upended-by-masterful-troll/

On top of that, there are countless Youtube videos of players attacking Thargoid ships and carrying materials we know to be harmful to the Thargoids directly into their bases via SRV. I could honestly go on, but I think you get what I'm trying to say here...

Personally, I don't want to instigate a Thargoid invasion. Personally I've always grown up with the "Star Trek" viewpoint that we should live peacefully with other races. But if such an event were ever possible in the game, I wouldn't trust the player community not to sabotage it.

 

[Darth Ender]

If an unarmed shieldless min-max trader ship full of platinum can't escape a thargoid encounter unharmed then the forum will explode with the very vocal "we dont want to ever be killed" crowd that always pops up whenever the game tries force players to have some skill when flying and strategy when setting their ship up.

Guaranteed.

edit: you haven't read the latest book which is canon. The thargoids are two distinct factions/races. The one is attacking the other. The other is going to use humans as a meat shield. This is what we'll see as the thargoid invasion. They will be hostile, but not necessarily at us so much as trying to get through us.

we know one wave is at the border of col70 at least. With a likely second vector coming in from the Maia area. Thargoids and humans have worked together (the faction that will use us as shields, not the violent ones) but only on an individual basis. They think pretty highly of themselves.

 

[Synthetic Frost]

I think you kinda missed the point I was making. It's not so much about the gameplay as it is the lore. Humanity is the bad guy here, and I'm saddened by it. I just hope the Thargoids are understanding and gracious enough to realize we're not all like that.

edit: you haven't read the latest book which is canon. The thargoids are two distinct factions/races. The one is attacking the other. The other is going to use humans as a meat shield. This is what we'll see as the thargoid invasion. They will be hostile, but not necessarily at us so much as trying to get through us.

we know one wave is at the border of col70 at least. With a likely second vector coming in from the Maia area. Thargoids and humans have worked together (the faction that will use us as shields, not the violent ones) but only on an individual basis. They think pretty highly of themselves.

Ah, interesting. What book is that? I might have to go pick it up.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

1st reply is someone already complaining about certain subgroup of players.

I don't believe Braben meant players would affect the whole story or meant that the story was open ended. I'm confident they have a basic outline of what will happen with some plot elements small enough to not effect the larger story that will allow for player outcomes, i.e. Salome.

 

[Suteksio]

Yes, that's what will happen. When we have the weaponry needed to hurt them we will see thousands of confirmed kills just the first day.

 

[The New Number Two]

There really isn't a lot of information on the Thargoids beyond that. The only time they've really been hostile was in the 1980's Elite, and that was only because they were likely retaliating because the first trigger happy commander they encountered decided to shoot first and ask questions later.

More likely that Braben and Bell couldn't fit all the AI routines for determining peaceful solutions and diplomatic negotiations on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk.

Based on the many statements of Frontier's developers and communications team ("be afraid", "can't be beaten", "you're gonna need new weapons" etc.), you're probably going to be horribly disappointed in your options, regardless of what the old man said. Of course, official reveals by the communications team have been inexplicably meaningless before.

 

[Darth Ender]

I think you kinda missed the point I was making. It's not so much about the gameplay as it is the lore. Humanity is the bad guy here, and I'm saddened by it. I just hope the Thargoids are understanding and gracious enough to realize we're not all like that.



Ah, interesting. What book is that? I might have to go pick it up.

Premonition.

Technically we want the meat shield thargoids to win. I think the "club" as they're called on the forum, made an treaty of sorts with the meat shield thargoids to be that cannon fodder for this upcoming battle. It's all been kept secret to keep humanity from dividing over time (since it took a long time to orchestrate and plan). Now we'll be faced with an unexpected alien threat and react together. If we win, the meat shield thargoids would theoretically live in peace with us.

At least that's the gist i got from the books that are still canon.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Premonition.

Technically we want the meat shield thargoids to win. I think the "club" as they're called on the forum, made an treaty of sorts with the meat shield thargoids to be that cannon fodder for this upcoming battle. It's all been kept secret to keep humanity from dividing over time (since it took a long time to orchestrate and plan). Now we'll be faced with an unexpected alien threat and react together. If we win, the meat shield thargoids would theoretically live in peace with us.

At least that's the gist i got from the books that are still canon.

Could you explain what you're talking about? I take this is information you got from premonition but what is this club you refer to

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

I hope it will be more than pew pew but I very much doubt it. " be afraid" mentioning new ways to fight, team up and get new equipment to beat them. There you have it. Its already written in stone. Now as Darth Ender mentioned it will be like he said. Leading to nerfed thargoids that wee Jimmie can kill in his sidey in about 3 weeks after 2.4 launch.
I for one hope I'm wrong. Alot hinges on 2.4

Seeing as it's been said the thargoids will be optional content like a combat zone, it would be unlikely in my mind they would nerf what's being sold as endgame/wing content. I thought I was cynical but damn

 

[Synthetic Frost]

Could you explain what you're talking about? I take this is information you got from premonition but what is this club you refer to

I assume he means these guys:

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/The_Club

They surpressed a lot of Thargoid info from the public at large back in the earlier games.

 

[Darth Ender]

Could you explain what you're talking about? I take this is information you got from premonition but what is this club you refer to

The "club" is a highly secretive (they dont even know eachother by name) group of people who have been around since at least the last Thargoid encounter. They are members in prominant positions of power throughout human space - regardless of major factions or powers...but not necessarily the leaders. They appear to be hand selected by previous "club" members and genetically altered or cloned (they live a long time). They each have a specific task to fill to ensure that humanity is in the proper position for when the battle with the thargoids breaks out so that Humanity has a way to survive it regardless of the outcome.

So they're basically tasked with making sure humanity can survive the thargoid war. They have laid out escape routes. They have orchestrated wars between factions and powers to ensure humanity maintains a high military alert and also distracted so nobody screws up their plans. They need to keep humanity busy enough to not expand out too thin and thus, ruin the purpose humanity will play in this war, but not too weak from fighting that they get rolled over by the thargoids. They've been playing a game of chess that is on the order of a hundred+ years that is finally coming to an end. Humanity will come together and unify against this threat (they hope) and either win or lose. Either way, they've got contingencies all covered.

The whole jaques thing i think happened after this narrative was created at Fdev, so it's being shoe-horned in to it now and kinda ruined the whole usefulness of the formadine rift, which was a dangerous escape route they were protecting. meh. That's what happens when you let the interns handle QA on the galaxy map

 

[Xious]

I'm worried too...

I'm worried that 2.4 will be lame.

 

[Jenner]

Conflict makes for good drama, and it makes for good gameplay in this type of game.

I'd love it if Frontier had a few more alien races up their sleeves - perhaps one or two could be the friendly types that humans could get along with.

To pull it back to a Star Trek analogy, Deep Space Nine wouldn't have been nearly as interesting if it weren't for the Dominion threatening to clean the Federation's clocks.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

The "club" is a highly secretive (they dont even know eachother by name) group of people who have been around since at least the last Thargoid encounter. They are members in prominant positions of power throughout human space - regardless of major factions or powers...but not necessarily the leaders. They appear to be hand selected by previous "club" members and genetically altered or cloned (they live a long time). They each have a specific task to fill to ensure that humanity is in the proper position for when the battle with the thargoids breaks out so that Humanity has a way to survive it regardless of the outcome.

So they're basically tasked with making sure humanity can survive the thargoid war. They have laid out escape routes. They have orchestrated wars between factions and powers to ensure humanity maintains a high military alert and also distracted so nobody screws up their plans. They need to keep humanity busy enough to not expand out too thin and thus, ruin the purpose humanity will play in this war, but not too weak from fighting that they get rolled over by the thargoids. They've been playing a game of chess that is on the order of a hundred+ years that is finally coming to an end. Humanity will come together and unify against this threat (they hope) and either win or lose. Either way, they've got contingencies all covered.

The whole jaques thing i think happened after this narrative was created at Fdev, so it's being shoe-horned in to it now and kinda ruined the whole usefulness of the formadine rift, which was a dangerous escape route they were protecting. meh. That's what happens when you let the interns handle QA on the galaxy map

Haven't read premonition so just basing this on the wiki link above but if one of the thargoid races is retreating through human space then is it possible that colonia is at risk?

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

I just hope thargoids will be deadly at my current place in the game the npc ships can still be a challenge I want thargoids to be able to destroy max engineered cutters for a while give the players a sense of fear that any moment they could be hyperdicted and fed their rear ends

 

[Darth Ender]

Haven't read premonition so just basing this on the wiki link above but if one of the thargoid races is retreating through human space then is it possible that colonia is at risk?

Colonia is not considered "human space". All of this is written and narrated around the "bubble". Jaques was intended to be a long hidden unknown perhaps revealed when the war had been going on for a while as an additional means of escaping the war and hostilities. Unfortunately for Fdev, they screwed up that whole thing and it was discovered in a manner of days after being "lost".

edit: actually it was probably completely unrelated to any of this when it was lost. It was supposed to be a very difficult and contrived puzzle to hunt down news items in various systems that would reveal the location of the system. Those clues would be spread out over time and across various systems. It would have taken months if not years for someone to piece it together. Now it's being shoe-horned in as a potential "escape route".

 

[dubsdj]

Well if they can disable your engines and power systems by the flick of a switch I don't really know what we can do.

If research teams come up with something to stop this then I suppose that fix would also apply to human vs human combat which might get a bit one sided.

 

[Darth Ender]

Well if they can disable your engines and power systems by the flick of a switch I don't really know what we can do.

If research teams come up with something to stop this then I suppose that fix would also apply to human vs human combat which might get a bit one sided.

There's always the chance that the aliens we've encountered are the "meat shield" thargoids that have had constant contact with humans (though only select individuals) for decades. So they know our tech. They've also been non-hostile. The other thargoid race may not have any such insight into our tech and not be able to do such things.

 

[dubsdj]

There's always the chance that the aliens we've encountered are the "meat shield" thargoids that have had constant contact with humans (though only select individuals) for decades. So they know our tech. They've also been non-hostile. The other thargoid race may not have any such insight into our tech and not be able to do such things.

Well lets hope we don't make them angry then.

 

[Enderby]

I'm more worried that it'll just be rather dull.