Am I getting too old but is the new content too difficult to access?

I’ve just spent an hour and a half of wasted life. Over the weekend, I’ve been trying to do some pod rescuing. I was able to do four attempts in that time. Here are my results ;-

  1. Dodged 2 interceptor hyperdictions and a scout interdiction, but got wasted by the pulse (my fault I was a bit rusty)
  2. Got double glave hyperdicted, managed to escape (but it seems the silent, running boost and drop heat sinks don’t work anymore). Got to through to the maelstrom but spotted within 2 minutes despite my ship running at 16% heat. Boom!
  3. Third attempt, got through with no hyperdictions, interdicted by glaves, that was it. No escape and boom.
  4. Fourth attempt. Got through to the maelstrom, pulse got me first time, so I synthesised what I needed and tried again. Got through to the titan but again, spotted quite quickly, despite silent running and heat sinks. Rage Quit! (And some quizzical looks from my son about my language!)
I had no problem getting through to the titan before, but it seems the difficulty has shot through the roof. Have the patrols around Titan have increased?

It’s just another issue with accessing the new thargoid content. For example;-

1. Finding the Orthrus, it was incredibly difficult to find one, so most people gave up on that. (Has that been fixed?) Thank goodness for the sampling to stop alert systems.
2. The infiltration of settlements while dealing while avoiding thargoids, it’s finding those missions which are the problem.
3. Reactivation missions where the bases are already reactivated.
4. No more invasion systems, because we’ve got too good at sampling the thargoids (not an innuendo but it sounds like one).

On the other hand, I do enjoy what’s been done with the scythes, that’s fun but it’s been the only new content I’ve really able to access. I want to enjoy being involved in the thargoid war, but presently it just seems to be a turn off. Fingers crossed for update 17 next week (*) but I’ll admit I’m finding it a chore at the moment.

TLDR: Just someone being grumpy!

* changed due to a mistake
 
Last edited:
I had no problem getting through to the titan before, but it seems the difficulty has shot through the roof. Have the patrols around Titan have increased?
On one of the discord channels I frequent it was suggested that the difficulty has been increased in order to provide incentive for players to fly together.
Great idea, as ED is supposed to be a MMO, apart from relying on players actually being willing to team up with others, maybe a possibility in some squadrons, but flying in open and hoping to meet with a group of players may be inconsistent and just waste even more playing time.
 
Glaives - I don't see you mention ECM - they work on Glaive missiles (finally a use for them!). I still relog on Glaive most of the time because I don't find them a fun use of my time, other inter/hyperdictions are fine.

Titans - they are a bit more hostile, but you just need to break their line of sight until they calm down. As there are more Thargoids around this can be more difficult, but in a cold ship you should be able to stooge around pretty much forever. Rescue missiles (especially all those floating pods) do seem to attract attention, but you haven't got that far yet.

Being caught out by the maelstrom is just making it more frustrating for you - practice and you should be past without issue.

Personally I still think the thing that will put most ppl off is the module unlocks as they are a pretty brutal introduction.

gl!
 
Probably both ;).

I’ve just spent an hour and a half of wasted life. Over the weekend, I’ve been trying to do some pod rescuing. I was able to do four attempts in that time. Here are my results ;-

  1. Dodged 2 interceptor hyperdictions and a scout interdiction, but got wasted by the pulse (my fault I was a bit rusty)
  2. Got double glave hyperdicted, managed to escape (but it seems the silent, running boost and drop heat sinks don’t work anymore). Got to through to the maelstrom but spotted within 2 minutes despite my ship running at 16% heat. Boom!
  3. Third attempt, got through with no hyperdictions, interdicted by glaves, that was it. No escape and boom.
  4. Fourth attempt. Got through to the maelstrom, pulse got me first time, so I synthesised what I needed and tried again. Got through to the titan but again, spotted quite quickly, despite silent running and heat sinks. Rage Quit! (And some quizzical looks from my son about my language!)
I had no problem getting through to the titan before, but it seems the difficulty has shot through the roof. Have the patrols around Titan have increased?
I'm not so sure. The only thing I would count as "increased difficulty" are the added Glaive hyper-/interdictions. But, provided your ship is somewhat fast enough, immediately throwing silent running and boosting, booosting, boosting still works. Maybe not in every ship anymore? My Maelstrom Phantom does 590 and idles ad 16%, and it is perfectly capable to both escape the Glaives and faff around the Titan for ages. Escaping the Glaives is much easier in interdictions because of the shorter cooldown, but I got away from pretty much every Glaive that pulled me - the permaboost of the Phantom surely helps. You just have to be very quick. I did some pod rescues in that Phantom on the weekend after not being to the Titan for... it feels like months, and it went very well for my first tries - I got destroyed once, and did two successful rescues so far. It's fun.


For the Titan content, I feel Frontier did a very good job of teaching us how to be there in a few easy steps, upping the ante every time:
  • First, they taught us how to deal with the toxic environment
  • Then they taught us how to get through to the Titan to have a poke around
  • Next they made the trip to the Titans more challenging by adding the Hunters
  • And then, after we acquired the skills neccessary, they gave us the tools to mess around with the Titans

I thought it was a good approach. Now, for a new player, that's a heck of a learning curve though. If you followed along, it is much more managable.

4. No more invasion systems, because we’ve got too good at sampling the thargoids (not an innuendo but it sounds like one).
As you might know, this one really bugs me. And I do think that's Frontier dropping the ball for making sampling too powerful and not reigning it in. Maybe in the overall picture, how the war is going fits into their planned time frame, but from a gameplay perspective, this sucks.

TLDR: Just someone being grumpy!
Been there, done that.
 
My stealth strategy for the titan is to be in permanent silent running and synth heat sinks as needed (I have 4 sirius heatsinks). Kill any glaives/scythes that mess with my stuff with 4x Azimuth EAXMCs, run from any interceptors until they get bored.

Killing the glaives/scythes costs a lot of heatsinks, but it's easier than running, it's probably best to move a bit from where you got caught too before killing them since others might be patrolling the same routes.
 
Now I’ve done a number of more or less successful pod recovery runs from the Titan, but it was beginning to feel more like cheap luck for getting spotted when I did so on Saturday and Sunday, as opposed to Thursday and Friday.

It doesn’t feel like much fun when you constantly get spotted by Glaives in silent running from 6 kilometers away and they routinely stray within that distance, also stubbornly refusing to break aggro unless you have the entire Titan between you and them. Especially if four of them decide to start ‘ganking’ you at once, it just becomes obnoxious. Or the interceptors magically always manage to notice you by flying way closer to the Titan than they usually do.

At some point, I quite literally cheesed them [Glaives] by putting my ship so close to the Titan that they refused to close within 3 kilometers to shoot, out of not being willing to, well, risk hitting the Titan. Doing what you can to remain stealthy, while hiding spots on a Titan’s surface are sparse and inadequate for even a Krait, and still getting spotted basically every time?

That’s not fun, it’s frustrating. Sure, the Thargoids aren’t supposed to just remain oblivious to human ships around, but this kind of aggro is just over the top. Especially since limpets appear to have the stealth of a bull in a china shop, but you practically need them in order to gather the pods, since they will always shoot out into open space where anything and everything can see you.

(Oh, and if you’re getting shot by the Titan’s turrets… don’t worry, they’re, like, absolutely pitiful. I take more damage from Cyclops and Glaives than those things.)
 
Back
Top Bottom