The Thargoid Disaster and what we learn for the future, a speculation

I'm a biochemist. One of the units we occasionally use is LD[SUB]50[/SUB]. It describes the lethal dose, usually in milligrams of compound per kilogram of subject, to kill 50% of a population given that compound. Let's say that I'm studying a new pesticide, and initially see a LD[SUB]50 [/SUB]of .005. Assuming my pests are 1 kg, that means it only takes 5 micrograms to have a 50% chance of killing one! That's pretty lethal.

A week into my analysis, and the pests grow resistant to my pesticide. Now my apparent LD[SUB]50 [/SUB]is 0.25 mg/kg. Oh no! My pesticide didn't change at all. However, I still need to adjust the unit I use to describe it. I could try adding a fudge factor to my calculations to account for the change, but the clearest way to express the difference is by changing the LD[SUB]50[/SUB].


TLDR; the egg heads making the missiles told you they aren't working well using a clear and established measurement. It would be inaccurate of them to insist that the missiles are still effectively penetrating the Thargoids armor.

That's fine, but the penetration value is not inherently exclusive to interacting with the thargoids. So it's not that they got resilient, it's that the pesticide just became worse in itself.
 
maybe because a lot of us ground out a CG over the course of a week, and now find that the rewards we worked so hard for are now as good as useless.

And we have the Gank the Goids crowd to thank for this (take a look at Mini's YouTube videos for example).

[video=youtube_share;MF6Kn_A--yY]https://youtu.be/MF6Kn_A--yY[/video]

I'm sure you had a load of fun instakilling Thargoids but the upshot of your ganking has been this ax missile nerf. Did you believe that your actions would have no consequences? Personally, I doubt that you gave it a moments thought what fdevs response would be... Am I annoyed at you? Yes, you have spoilt the Thargoids for the rest of us who don't play in large groups so that we can instakill Thargoids.
 
A week into my analysis, and the pests grow resistant to my pesticide. Now my apparent LD[SUB]50 [/SUB]is 0.25 mg/kg. Oh no! My pesticide didn't change at all. However, I still need to adjust the unit I use to describe it.

If they develop resistance, it's because they developed resistance, not because your pesticide suddenly lost potency. Presumably it's still the same thing it was the week before. The in-game equivalent, is frontier temporarily changing resistance on the specific damage type the weapons do, on the thargoid scout ship, and actually adapting the organism (since the ships are essentially alive) as we find new ways to fight back.

That the amount of damage we now do, is lower, because it's being resisted, because the organism has developed a resistance; that this might require a measurement value change, isn't a direct cause; it's a consequence.

This would be expressed as a stat staying the same, but the consequential DPS reducing by the factor of the resistance on the thargoid ship. In exactly the same way engineered thermal shields, or heavy duty hull works. Weapon never changes, it's simple debuffed at the destination. This opens up all sorts of shenanigans for screwing with commanders and making changes that make thargoids actually appear to change.

As soon as you trash the weapon, you automatically escalate the value more of them have. So it entrenches large groups can party, no one else can. Really not helping the experience.

Frontier took the path of least resistance, because it was the fasted (also that pun!). I don't blame them, per-se, but that is entirely what they have done.

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Anyway, this entire discussion is exhausting as people are trying to find ways to make what Frontier have done valid, ignoring the simple fact that most of the complaints are really around how frontier has gone about it, and the rather flippant response to the confusion it's created. Not that it probably had to happen.
 
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That's fine, but the penetration value is not inherently exclusive to interacting with the thargoids. So it's not that they got resilient, it's that the pesticide just became worse in itself.

I'm sorry, but the anti-Thargoid weapons aren't exclusive to hurting Thargoids?

You can't reference how well the missiles penetrate a Thargoid's hull without accounting for the qualities of the hull. Using the lethal dose analogy: a pest might resist the pesticide by growing larger. In that case, the initial LD50 would still be valid.

Or pest could undergo a qualitative change that invalidates the initial LD50. Suddenly, the same size pest requires 50x more pesticide to be as effective.
 
I'm sure you had a load of fun instakilling Thargoids but the upshot of your ganking has been this ax missile nerf. Did you believe that your actions would have no consequences? Personally, I doubt that you gave it a moments thought what fdevs response would be... Am I annoyed at you? Yes, you have spoilt the Thargoids for the rest of us who don't play in large groups so that we can instakill Thargoids.

With respect, it's not up to players to not do things in groups, lest it "ruin it" for people, so much as frontier actually accommodating multiple scenarios, without dramatic differences in outcomes. They haven't ruined anything; they've highlighted an existing flaw, that the developer is in the process of resolving, with no small amount of effort, I am sure.

Blaming a group of people, because Frontier is still getting to grips with how large groups operate in the game, despite them doing this for about 3 years, give or take, really isn't on commanders. They are doing what the game allows. That it was so ridiculously effective, compared to the solo experience, suggests there's some fundamental issues frontier is absolutely going to have to resolve.

Frontier tried to keep this as much of a secret as they could, to their credit. This was great to so. But the consequence, is we will be beta testing the live experience. And helping them improve it, for all.
 
Frontier tried to keep this as much of a secret as they could, to their credit. This was great to so. But the consequence, is we will be beta testing the live experience. And helping them improve it, for all.

Why it is kept running on assumption that Thargoids were too easy to kill and it was all unbalanced?

FD gave a taster of what Thargoids would feel in battle and then upped stakes. I am really trying to understand is there anything beyond personal salt "I didn't get to solo Thargoid, bohoo".
 
The only mistake was allowing players to know the weapons had been nerfed.

If players didn't know that specifically, they would have assumed the thargoids had adapted, which was the entire point, and actually would have been quite a cool idea.


Also, I expect the missiles with either be part of the way to harm thargoids in the future, or will be adapted further in the future by engineers.


Huh? If the Thargoids suddenly become MUCH harder to kill... Surely that's indicative of a nerf whether you have been explicitly told about it or not?
 
Why it is kept running on assumption that Thargoids were too easy to kill and it was all unbalanced?

They weren't; it's that like anything, more gun is more effective. Right now, large groups will still be killing thargoids; small groups and solo cannot, because frontier elected to change the weapon. Once you have enough of them, the damage reduction doesn't matter.

FD gave a taster of what Thargoids would feel in battle and then upped stakes. I am really trying to understand is there anything beyond personal salt "I didn't get to solo Thargoid, bohoo".

Because large groups can still kill thargoids, and rapidly at that; no-one else can. That's not upping the stakes. It's the consequence of making it a "use more gun" mechanic.

I have no problems with frontier making it a challenge; I have no interest in soloing a thargoid, and probably wouldn't succeed if I tried, but that's not the point; it's that's compounding the problem by making it a huge group activity event, only, within days of the first weapons coming on line.

You're missing the point; because you're assuming I want to solo something, rather than actually reading what I am saying.

Correct. The AX missiles were pretty effective against human ships as well, and now they are not.

So was this the intention, solving their potency against commanders, or limiting thargoid combat to (essentially) large groups?
 
At the end of the day this is Frontier's game, and they are going to move the chess pieces on occasion. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this, I am just saddened that the outcomes just really weren't overly well planned for. They can't test every eventuality, but I can't fathom how after so many weapon changes and tweaks due to damage issues, this just wasn't a planned for event, with a set of stat changes for the thargoids all set to go, if things went south.

I really think, otherwise, Frontier has done an amazing job; but there's clearly some eventuality planning missing here. Some what-if questions don't ever seem to be being asked, internally.

I agree.

It's fairly obvious to me that if a solo player can't do something like kill Thargoids, he'll wing with a friend. If they can't do it, they will form a wing of four, if they can't do it they will bring a dozen... This only needed a proportionate response, like more Thargoids arriving to balance the battle.
 
I see this as a consequence of the unfortunate, but necessary, fact that Thargoids couldn't be Beta tested. There are going to be hiccups, especially at the beginning.

Players, at this stage, should not be soloing Thargoids. A group of players should be very hardpressed to hurt a Thargoid. These are the warrants that FDev is bringing to this issue.

There will be a problem if every weapon is released, used to insta-kill a Thargoid, and nerfed. But until that happens lets give FDev a little leniency.

Oh, and the development of Elite and other titles is compartmentalized. Please find another talking point.

And you think any future weapon will not be used by players in the same way?

The lowest common denominator is that the Thargoids will only ever be killed by large groups of players hence forth.
 
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I agree.

It's fairly obvious to me that if a solo player can't do something like kill Thargoids, he'll wing with a friend. If they can't do it, they will form a wing of four, if they can't do it they will bring a dozen... This only needed a proportionate response, like more Thargoids arriving to balance the battle.

What happens when pirates start shooting in a resource extraction site? More security arrive. Imagine you're in a wing of 3, and there's something like 9 or more commanders in the instance, and as they start their attack, two more thargoid scouts wake in, responding to distress.

It is now a) a party and b) everyone is invited and c) commanders are now woke because their entire world is a maelstrom of thargoids

There are so so many ways to shake up the situation. Escalate the response, based on the situation; scale the challenge. All the good things we'd expect to see. So so many options. They just fell back on tried-and-true. Make the gun work less good.
 
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And we have the Gank the Goids crowd to thank for this (take a look at Mini's YouTube videos for example).


I'm sure you had a load of fun instakilling Thargoids but the upshot of your ganking has been this ax missile nerf. Did you believe that your actions would have no consequences? Personally, I doubt that you gave it a moments thought what fdevs response would be... Am I annoyed at you? Yes, you have spoilt the Thargoids for the rest of us who don't play in large groups so that we can instakill Thargoids.

Sorry, what? I HELPED kill ONE thargoid. It took our group almost an hour to do so. And MINI did nothing wrong - simply proved that, with enough concentrated firepower, you could actually instakill the thargoids. I'd also like to point out that you still can, because MINI and his friends used plasma accelerators, not the AX missiles. And the PAs haven't been nerfed at all, only the AX missiles. Another example of Frontier taking the laziest way out possible.
 
Huh? If the Thargoids suddenly become MUCH harder to kill... Surely that's indicative of a nerf whether you have been explicitly told about it or not?

Or indicative of a buff to Thargoids, yeah. That's the point.

I personally wouldn't have had any issues with the thargoids getting stronger, but the missiles becoming weaker bugs me, even though it's effectively the same (as I've never used the missiles against anything but thargoids)

The difference is important.
 
I think they've rolled Thargoids out just fine. In the original games Thargoids were supposed to be very difficult to kill. They are an intelligent species and I imagine that just as we are attempting to defeat them they are attempting to study us and out-technology us as well. It's an arms race and it doesn't surprise me one bit that they have started to adapt to us.
 
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sollisb

Banned
The bit you all miss is that the players had to complete CGs to even get the weapons. Then less that a week later, after putting in the effort FDev say, the weapons are now useless. Amateur game development. It's also showing for all to see, that FDev are running against a ladybird book. If players get ahead of their story, FDev will nerf the weapons.

The way to fix it, and show FDev the light.. Is to just ignore Thargoids entirely. They're pretty useless sitting in a USS with no interaction from players :D

On the other hand, if you want to play their hame, their way, go ahead, but you can't complain.

It's obvious to anyone in development, they're out of their league.
 
What happens when pirates start shooting in a resource extraction site? More security arrive. Imagine you're in a wing of 3, and there's something like 9 or more commanders in the instance, and as they start their attack, two more thargoid scouts wake in, responding to distress.

It is now a) a party and b) everyone is invited and c) commanders are now woke because their entire world is a maelstrom of thargoids

There are so so many ways to shake up the situation. Escalate the response, based on the situation; scale the challenge. All the good things we'd expect to see. So so many options. They just fell back on tried-and-true. Make the gun work less good.


This ^^^^^
 
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