So, The Bubble Is Burning, And...
- Thread starter Ralph Vargr
- Start date
Are Thargoid Thursdays still a thing?
I thought I smelled something...
At least Zarek might repond, when was the last time we heard anything from any of the PP leaders? I'm gussing it would be back when the NI plot was exposed
There is a LOT wrong with everything related to Thargoids. Here is my list:
- Why is the amount of materials needed to repair a station vastly larger than that required in a CG to construct a new station? Yes, it should probably be more than the amount needed to construct a barebone brand new station (like the one made in Distant Worlds), but the current amount is just insane.
- Why aren't the stations being repaired by their owners (local factions and/or superpowers)? As others have suggested, player contributions should increase the speed of repair, but not be the sole source of the repair!
- Why is fighting the Thargoids not only not rewarding, but a major credit sink?! I'm not saying it should be changed where you can get as rich as mining Void Opals by killing Thargoid Interceptors. As it currently stands, you're lucky to break even on the repair costs. And it takes a lot of time to kill Thargoid Interceptors. Why is it so much more financially rewarding to just go blow up criminals via bounty hunting than it is to to fight the Thargoids?! It's pure lunacy/bad game design! Players want to fight the Thargoids and defend the bubble. Why should they be forced to do other tasks just to fund that constant costs of that endeavor?
- Why haven't the Devs, via Aegis, made AX activities more player friendly? In short, where are the gimballed AX weapons?! We have fixed and turret versions of most of the weapons, but not gimballed? Why?
Disclaimer: I'm only referring to the human made AX weapons and the Guardian tech weapons. The Guardian tech weapons should remain as they are to reward the more skilled players/continue to provide challenge.
Having AX Gimballed multicannons would allow a lot of "casual" players to kill low end Interceptors (e.g. Cyclops, maybe Basilisk) and increase the number of players fighting the Thargoid incursions? - Why is there still a limit on the number of AX weapons on ships? Maybe the Guardian weapons should still be limited to 4 per ship, but the AX weapons have been out for 1.5 years now! I want to see someone flying a T-10 that lives up to it's potential: 9 hardpoints full of AX turreted/gimballed weapons. That would be a sight to see.
Until the Devs makes some of theses changes, expect the Bubble to keep losing stations every week. The truly dedicated defenders can't keep up with the increasing demands and less skilled commanders have no incentive to join their ranks.
I'm so disappointed with the whole thing.
The best DMs are great story tellers. Remind me, what's the story behind this Thargoid invasion?
Great post.
I'd add in regards to station repairs, it would be nice and logical if stations were paying way better for people to fly them massive amounts of cargo through Thargoid infected space.
It isn't uncommon to pick between flying a lot further for a price that will bring a modest profit or staying closer and selling to the damaged station at a loss.
If damaged stations meant profitable trade routes, there would be more Commanders helping out, I'd imagine.
What's the point of helping needy victims of disasters if you can't gouge them?
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+rep
1 - Because of a poor half-baked design?
2 - Because of a poor half-baked design?
3 - Because of a poor half-baked design?
4 - Because of a poor half-baked design?
5 - Because of a poor half-baked design?
And let's not start that with years to prepare for the alien invasion, and to get some involved gameplay and mechanics in place to make the most out of it, they didn't. Instead we had development effort thrown at the likes of CQC, Engineers V1 & V2, Generation Ships, Powerplay, Multicrew, and a list of (other) poor half-baked designs?
IDK man, even if we lose 10 stations per week and we don't recover any, it'll take years for a significant part of the bubble to be invaded.
I somewhat disagree with you on these points, but not completely.
Some great GMs (going beyond AD&D and into all RPGs) come up with their own detailed stories and are great story tellers. Even if they are following source material, if they are doing a good job of "story telling" by making the NPC's and world "come alive" for the players, they are great GMs.
As far as wiping out the party vs. helping them out, that depends on your players. Sometimes a group of players will find a campaign satisfying that ends in their death if they either accomplished something heroic or it happened because they realized they acted foolishly. Other players have zero fun with a party wipe, so you have to modify things a bit.
In the case of Elite, since we all need a huge sandbox to "blaze our own trail" there is only so much they can do to make the world entertaining for us. That said, they are dropping the ball on the story telling. We should be getting 5 to 10 times the Galnet stories we get, so they can actually include important clues/tip offs amongst the background story fluff. And in the case of the Thargoids, they've failed the "Risk vs. Reward" evaluation and have failed to take steps to address it.
Maybe they do want the Bubble to burn. They could still do a lot to engage more players (without forcing it on them) by making the content more accessible and rewarding. Also, if the station repair requirements are going to stay this insanely high, they should start destroying some stations outright. Heck, the factions themselves should be scuttling the crippled ones and forming CGs for a replacement...
ISTR FDev saying they had a massive tome of lore on the Thargoids. I wonder what proportion of that has been put into the game so far, and what proportion of that is known by the community.
From my (in-game) perspective they are a plague of locusts, not an invading force (so far).
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Yep, that pretty much covers it! [up]
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I get the feeling that Michael Brookes took the book with him when he went off to play with dinosaurs or maybe he gave it to Sandro and then the Space Loach ate it.
Well, "Thargoids consistently defeated, never really gain a foothold, go home" - as it was looking like in 3.0 to 3.2 - didn't give a particularly good impression of the Thargoid invasion. Lots of threads over that period asking "so, where's this invasion then?".
An increase in the danger level wasn't unexpected.
The problem is Frontier seem to have got the worst of both worlds here.
- the attack is still far too slow and weak to be a serious threat to the bubble in our lifetimes
- it's also far too strong for it to be countered, and the experience of anyone trying is generally of losing.
I suggested elsewhere that a possible solution would be to vastly extend the scope of the Thargoid attack - have them strike at 500 systems a week: the Eagle Eye target and anything within 20 LY, say - but also make any individual system really quite easy to defend, the sort of thing that a single dedicated player could manage in a day, or a less prepared minor player group could easily do in a week, or a major player group could protect all its 20 systems with some effort. (And of course dedicated AX groups would just go around defending wherever)
Then, the bubble burns - entire clusters of systems might fall - but regions or systems that people care about probably survive, and for most commanders the experience of the Thargoid war is not "well, we lost again, another six systems down" but "we held them off here - our systems survive". The war might be going badly, but commanders generally win the battles they take part in.
Similarly, make the mechanism for taking back fallen systems relatively easy on a system-by-system level: if a player group loses a couple of systems, then it can probably recapture and repair them in a few weeks. Make the "we're in trouble" come from there being hundreds of damaged stations, not the effort required to repair an individual one. (Whereas at the moment we're going to rapidly get hundreds of damaged stations all of which require significant cooperation to repair)
I was referring to background world description, detailed NPCs, and a general direction for the campaign. As long as the GM allows the players to make decisions and choose their own fate, it should be fine.
Yes, anytime you have a GM that puts the spotlight on their precious NPCs, and not the players, and relegates the players to following the GM's premade script - yes, that is a bad GM.
In Elite Dangerous, we really have an absentee GM, as a lot of the story telling and development (or correction of issues, like Risk vs. Reward) is absent.
The gameplay you describe (lots of little skirmishes) is already supplied with RES bounty hunting. In an intermediate position is CZs & elections, where a concerted effort is required, and I see Thargoid activity as requiring dedicated collaborative effort. It fits in.
From a combat perspective I'm happy enough to use my 'CZ level' combat skill & equipment to take on Thargoid scouts, I have neither the patience nor the motivation to take on a bigger Thargoid.
But I can still help with Humanitarian aid, I can use my assets and tenacity to shift thousands of refugees and import tens of thousands of tonnes of supplies, not for maximum profit but to repair the damage & save (NPC) lives.
I would like to see NPC traders helping to repair stations, and I would like to see the required quantities make more sense, but I'd also like to see what happens if the Thargoids manage to gain a foothold so I do broadly support your suggestion.