I think we are jumping the gun on the whole two-faction angle. That we have Premonition (haven't read it) telling us about that doesn't mean that it's a reality, or even known known or unknown in the ED universe that we actually fly within right now.
My interest at the moment lies with the different first-contact behaviours we're seeing with things like the Hyperdictions and the NHSSs.
I think we're seeing the equivalent of navy/pirate/scientist behaviours in the Thargs.
If I attack anything, it'll only be if I'm shot at first for no apparent reason (e.g. getting too close etc).
There's yet another angle you can take, which I think ties everything together almost a little too neatly. To a human, the pattern of scanning a ship, detecting cargo they want, and then opening fire if that's their only way of getting it, sure does look like piracy... But it only happens if it's
their stuff in the first place. That changes things. Let's connect some dots:
The first several Thargoid aftermath sites we found pre 2.4 were all Federation shipwrecks, right?
We have no way of telling what the 'goids were originally doing at those Fed wreckage sites, but at current sites, we can observe a simple behavior of searching for and collecting two things: Human escape pods, and Thargoid items. Sensors, alloys, whatever.
Now, where did
we, the noble freelancer commanders of the Pilots Federation, first come across Thargoid artefacts, long before we discovered the Merope shell?
In convoys with Federation ships.
It seems to me that the Thargoids are doing
exactly what
we were doing.
Disregarding speculation, the only thing resembling a motive that we can objectively observe in our current encounters with the Thargoids is that they seem to be collecting items of Thargoid origin (and humans, but only if they're incapacitated! (Which could easily be an act of mercy that we don't yet understand, but that's speculation and I said I wouldn't do that)) Only if we do not give the items up willingly do they forcefully take them from us. That's not piracy, that's... repossession. They're taking back things that we must assume were theirs all along and that we really have no business meddling with. Even if not theirs, we
know they're not
ours, so what right do we have to hold onto them? The increasing prevalence of wreckage sites and non-Federation ship types can easily be explained by the increased rate at which freelancers (that's us!) and other factions are beginning to collect these items for their own ends. It started with the Federation, because as far as I can tell, the Federation (or at least some subfaction using their ships) were the first to rediscover the Thargoids and start plucking those sensors and probes from their intended resting places. We began to hunt them down to collect those artefacts. The Thargoids began to hunt them down to collect those artefacts.
This could all be something as simple as us having disrupted a network or structure of some kind to the degree that the Thargoids have to send more and more ships to attempt to repair the damage that we're doing. We shouldn't even be assigning the act of attacking and killing humans to a hostile mindset. If it's true what I've read, that the Thargoids are suspected to be a highly logical and more or less emotionless race, then it simply makes sense that if they need a thing that somebody is keeping from them, and they can't make them give it back, then they must destroy them so they can acquire it. (And even applying our highly subjective, human morals... again, we've been doing it, too, for the same reasons...)
Now if we wanna get back into the delicious, tea-flavored speculation, just for kicks, there are ways to apply this behavior to the two-faction theory! Thargoid sensors have been observed doing two things, right? Noting what system they're in, and noting any vessels they come across there. Presumably this data is either sent somewhere, or stored on the sensor itself for future collection, otherwise it'd be pointless to track it in the first place. I don't see any evidence for this, but
if this return of the Thargoids is the result of one faction fleeing from another through human space, wouldn't it be smart of them to collect as many sensors as they can on the way so their hunters can't just stop by one and dig into its presumed database for evidence that other Thargoids had stopped by recently? If the information is stored on the sensor itself, it doesn't matter whether it's currently in place in the Merope shell or sitting on a human transport ship somewhere, all you need to do is find it and extract the data of which ship was spotted where, and you can very effectively track your prey! So the smartest thing to do would be to apply an inverse breadcrumb trail and pick up all the evidence as you go!
Of course, were that the case, and if the hostile Thargoid faction figured out that we humans have been stealing their trackers, who knows what they would do to find them all so they could continue the hunt... If all they have to go on is "a human ship took the thing", then maybe the easiest way to find them would be to, uh... destroy all human ships... So we're fortunate that this is all baseless speculation!
, interesting that it didn't enter the field though!
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