I've taken a closer look at the Thargoid's expansion pattern. Lots of graphs in this one
The first graph shows a moving average of how many systems the Thargoids are affecting (including recovery, but for convenience of calculation not including systems previously hit but returned to safe - it doesn't make much difference) at given distances from each maelstrom, while the second shows the same thing but at a given index (maelstrom=1, next closest=2, etc.)
The ones which aren't connectivity-constrained seem to have a sharp drop-off between 25 and 30 LY (index 150-200 depending on how many systems they have): they control or contest almost everything within ~25 LY, then they switch to contesting almost nothing a few LY beyond that. Leigong, Thor, and surprisingly Oya [1] have smoother drop-offs. There's a definite policy here of taking the systems closest to the maelstrom first, at least in general.
[1] I suspect Oya's constraints were masked previously by it being able to spend so much of its budget hitting inhabited systems early.
Looking at how this has evolved week-by-week - I picked Raijin because of the non-constrained ones it's had the least interference in its growth - also has something interesting
So, same graphs but rather than looking at each Maelstrom this week, we're looking at Raijin each week since its arrival.
There's an interesting change in behaviour here: its initial alerts spread out quite a bit, with 12 January getting some out past 25 LY and 19 January going out past 30 LY. There's a bit of in-fill as well, but plenty of outward motion.
On 2 February's cycle, this changes - there's comprehensive infill, nothing new added beyond 22 LY out, and every cycle since then has been the same sort of pattern very cautiously pushing outwards from the centre, essentially moving the position of that "everything behind this line, nothing in front of it" bar slowly forward to the position it reached on 9 March (and then in following cycles their advance has been "deprioritised"). There's been no placement beyond 26LY (rounded) since 26 January's cycle.
You can see a similar drop-off in this graph of the furthest Alert placed by each Maelstrom each week - many of them take a substantial dive between 19 Jan and 2 Feb and only slowly recover: the exceptions are Leigong, Thor and Oya which are connectivity constrained (at least until recently) and Taranis which has seen a lot of successful defences which may be throwing it off its natural behaviour.
Before 2 February every Maelstrom placed over 30 LY (in Indra's case, only once) ... since then, none except Hadad of the largely unconstrained ones have. If you look at it in yttrbio's spreadsheet you can see huge blocks of "the next 10" alerts being placed down after 2nd Feb for some maelstroms in some weeks.
It does seem that there was an intentional change on 2 Feb to prioritise in-fill over a more tendril-like sprawl, for reasons unknown. This may be worth noting if you're trying to figure out where they place Alerts: data before that point probably isn't relevant now.
I'm starting to come around to the theory that Frontier got scared that the Thargoids might do something interesting in 2023 and are reining them in to make sure that they don't.
The ones which aren't connectivity-constrained seem to have a sharp drop-off between 25 and 30 LY (index 150-200 depending on how many systems they have): they control or contest almost everything within ~25 LY, then they switch to contesting almost nothing a few LY beyond that. Leigong, Thor, and surprisingly Oya [1] have smoother drop-offs. There's a definite policy here of taking the systems closest to the maelstrom first, at least in general.
[1] I suspect Oya's constraints were masked previously by it being able to spend so much of its budget hitting inhabited systems early.
Looking at how this has evolved week-by-week - I picked Raijin because of the non-constrained ones it's had the least interference in its growth - also has something interesting
There's an interesting change in behaviour here: its initial alerts spread out quite a bit, with 12 January getting some out past 25 LY and 19 January going out past 30 LY. There's a bit of in-fill as well, but plenty of outward motion.
On 2 February's cycle, this changes - there's comprehensive infill, nothing new added beyond 22 LY out, and every cycle since then has been the same sort of pattern very cautiously pushing outwards from the centre, essentially moving the position of that "everything behind this line, nothing in front of it" bar slowly forward to the position it reached on 9 March (and then in following cycles their advance has been "deprioritised"). There's been no placement beyond 26LY (rounded) since 26 January's cycle.
Before 2 February every Maelstrom placed over 30 LY (in Indra's case, only once) ... since then, none except Hadad of the largely unconstrained ones have. If you look at it in yttrbio's spreadsheet you can see huge blocks of "the next 10" alerts being placed down after 2nd Feb for some maelstroms in some weeks.
It does seem that there was an intentional change on 2 Feb to prioritise in-fill over a more tendril-like sprawl, for reasons unknown. This may be worth noting if you're trying to figure out where they place Alerts: data before that point probably isn't relevant now.
I'm starting to come around to the theory that Frontier got scared that the Thargoids might do something interesting in 2023 and are reining them in to make sure that they don't.
