Station is undamaged, but on Alert. Several Services are deactivated (including concourse for some reason).
Analysing the Thargoid Simulation
- Thread starter Ian Doncaster
- Start date
Station is undamaged, but on Alert. Several Services are deactivated (including concourse for some reason).
Checking out impacts on the Political Sim, it looks like the early suggestions that it was completely frozen in Invasion systems were true - no change in influence or state recorded in a few of them that I checked. (Also, happiness seems to have dropped to Discontented as a baseline, which is fair enough)
On the Powerplay side, HIP 20577 is a LYR control system which is both under invasion and has lost some of its exploited systems to the Thargoids entirely. In Legacy, it generates 140 CC ... in Live it still generates 140 CC. It will be interesting to see what happens if the Thargoids take full control and whether LYR has to drop it then...
On the Powerplay side, HIP 20577 is a LYR control system which is both under invasion and has lost some of its exploited systems to the Thargoids entirely. In Legacy, it generates 140 CC ... in Live it still generates 140 CC. It will be interesting to see what happens if the Thargoids take full control and whether LYR has to drop it then...
Is that because things only change on a Thursday? So the balance of actions can increase or decrease things by weeks, but at minimum it will go to the next Thursday?That would be disturbing, and if they're capable of recommitting their forces that quickly we may as well go home now
Every timer longer than a week that I can see is reading "xW 6D" though, so I think for now bug is more likely. We'll see what they do when they go below 0W 6D, I guess.
Could be - but Thursday hasn't been 6 days away for a while now, so it'd need a bit of a display bug too.
Only made two runs so far for Passengers.
So, on the plus side, I was never interdicted by an NPC pirate.
On the other hand, on the first run I was hyperdicted by some Thargoid (burned rubber in my racing Dolphin, it wasn't able to keep up and didn't shoot at me) and got into the middle of a fight around the outpost, faffed around a bit, caught a caustic missile and finally docked with 50-ish percent of my (lightweight, heavy duty) hull left. No further problems when leaving or on my second run. But that Dolphin does boost to 570 and runs reasonably cool, so a single heatsink goes a long way.
I've finished engineering a passenger Phantom now (80 seats) which will run a bit colder and boost faster, with a slightly lower jump range (still something like 300 ly on a full tank, so no scoop needed).
Not sure about this. If you switch the numbers around then some systems would be showing 6 weeks and 7/8/9 days, which seems odd instead of showing 7 weeks and 0/1/2 days.
There's no "yellow" systems (alert state) around Maelstroms Indra and Leigong, only in Taranis area. Is it FDev oversight, or is there any logical explanation?
Also Galaxy Map shows Maelstrom 1 in HIP 8887, M2 in HIP 20567 and Taranis as Maelstrom 3, in Hyades Sector FB-N b7-6. But Taranis arrived first, why it's not
Maelstrom 1 then?
Also Galaxy Map shows Maelstrom 1 in HIP 8887, M2 in HIP 20567 and Taranis as Maelstrom 3, in Hyades Sector FB-N b7-6. But Taranis arrived first, why it's not
Maelstrom 1 then?
Indra and Leigong arrived on the Thursday, Taranis on the Tuesday, so Taranis has had a Thursday tick after it established itself and the others haven't.
Or indeed, why does that interface not just use the names. I'm waiting to see if the numbers change again - Taranis was M1 when it was the only one.
They show us whats going on with the first one, there is so much to figure out, imangine we would have to deal with that 3 times. This is an evolving extreme hazardous attack on human kind, its safe to assume that fd is giving us m3 as an example.
They are named after their appearance in game I assume. Nothing else would make sense.
Taranis arrived first on Tuesday with the update. The alert state systems appeared during the weekly maintenance, along with the other two maelstroms. So they will probably get their alert systems at next maintenance.
Edit: Sorry, I missed that Ian already more or less answered the same thing above.
It's a proxy of a proxy measure, but perhaps still better than nothing: EDDN FSDJumps to the various inhabited systems around Taranis, noon yesterday to noon today. (This is a byproduct of a data-collector which doesn't look at uninhabited systems, so I can't easily get data for the Thargoid Control systems out of it)
* = progress, ** = significant progress, A = alert rather than invasion
For comparison, the total number of events recorded across the bubble in the same time period was 42,000 - so HIP 23716 is getting about a percent of them and is the busiest single system in the time period by a big margin. 8 of the top 10 appear to be connected to Taranis - convenient safe systems for staging traffic, the nearest rescue ship, etc.: the only other two in the top 10 are Deciat and Sirius.
Again for comparison, during the most recent Andavandul CG (I don't have data further back) that system was getting EDDN traffic numbers around 400-450/day at the busiest.
In normal bubble systems, I'd expect the actual traffic report to be 10-20x bigger than these numbers, but these aren't normal bubble systems. (Can we get in-game traffic reports for the Alert systems to at least do some validation, or is news down there too? Thanks in advance to anyone able to check!)
So in ultra-broad terms: we're probably putting a medium-sized CG's worth of effort into HIP 23716 - which is incredibly good coordination when there's no actual CG and 80 potential places to split effort. It's working but will probably take 2-3 weeks to clear the system at the current rate of progress.
It'll be interesting to see if Awara or 29 e Orionis start to show visible progress by Wednesday - on those traffic levels and bearing in mind that the invasions have been going 2 days longer, if they do it indicates that there's a comparable threshold in play.
Code:
+--------------------------+-------+
| name | jumps |
+--------------------------+-------+
| HIP 23716 | 403 | **
| Matshiru | 184 | *
| Imeut | 168 | *
| Awara | 102 | A
| HIP 25679 | 100 | *
| 29 e Orionis | 93 | A
| Modigi | 91 |
| 63 Eridani | 89 |
| Ebisu | 69 | A
| Ildano | 55 | A
| Ixbalan | 36 |
| Hyades Sector HW-W d1-52 | 28 |
| 5 Mu Leporis | 11 |
+--------------------------+-------+For comparison, the total number of events recorded across the bubble in the same time period was 42,000 - so HIP 23716 is getting about a percent of them and is the busiest single system in the time period by a big margin. 8 of the top 10 appear to be connected to Taranis - convenient safe systems for staging traffic, the nearest rescue ship, etc.: the only other two in the top 10 are Deciat and Sirius.
Again for comparison, during the most recent Andavandul CG (I don't have data further back) that system was getting EDDN traffic numbers around 400-450/day at the busiest.
In normal bubble systems, I'd expect the actual traffic report to be 10-20x bigger than these numbers, but these aren't normal bubble systems. (Can we get in-game traffic reports for the Alert systems to at least do some validation, or is news down there too? Thanks in advance to anyone able to check!)
So in ultra-broad terms: we're probably putting a medium-sized CG's worth of effort into HIP 23716 - which is incredibly good coordination when there's no actual CG and 80 potential places to split effort. It's working but will probably take 2-3 weeks to clear the system at the current rate of progress.
It'll be interesting to see if Awara or 29 e Orionis start to show visible progress by Wednesday - on those traffic levels and bearing in mind that the invasions have been going 2 days longer, if they do it indicates that there's a comparable threshold in play.
I did a bit of a check to see how close the maelstroms (or their projected locations) were to anything really important - engineers, engineer unlock requirements, capital systems, the various regional goods which are used for tech brokers and station repairs.
Most of them are fortunately quite a way back - similar to or behind the rescue ship line, for now. Meene and Jolapa near Taranis are closer engineers at threat, but despite being fairly close the cubic nature of expansion means that they've probably got quite a few months before it gets near them.
Only one partial exception: Ion Distributor - produced around the 70 Tauri system, has already had some production stations destroyed by the Thargoids. Plenty are further back for now ... but interestingly there also seems to have been a second production region set up around Lave, including at stations which wouldn't normally produce it, so we wouldn't for now lose production in full anyway. (I have no idea if that was "there all along" or not. Certainly it predates U14) ... and I think Ion Distributor is only needed nowadays to unlock some of the Shock Cannons, so it's not like it'd be missed too badly.
Most of them are fortunately quite a way back - similar to or behind the rescue ship line, for now. Meene and Jolapa near Taranis are closer engineers at threat, but despite being fairly close the cubic nature of expansion means that they've probably got quite a few months before it gets near them.
Only one partial exception: Ion Distributor - produced around the 70 Tauri system, has already had some production stations destroyed by the Thargoids. Plenty are further back for now ... but interestingly there also seems to have been a second production region set up around Lave, including at stations which wouldn't normally produce it, so we wouldn't for now lose production in full anyway. (I have no idea if that was "there all along" or not. Certainly it predates U14) ... and I think Ion Distributor is only needed nowadays to unlock some of the Shock Cannons, so it's not like it'd be missed too badly.
The HIP 8887 maelstrom is quite close to the Ghost Giraffe Tourist Hub, the most important place in the galaxy!
I'd like to see a test of handing in 1-10b AX bonds (or whatever it's estimated it would take) in a low-traffic invaded system to see if bonds work/can be imported and if that alone is enough to move the needle.
These are just my own opinions, but they've been heavily on my mind ever since the war started:
- FD has probably over estimated the players ability to fight this war. During the last stream one of their developer said that they could set some estimated requirements based on earlier CGs that would result in winning different scenarios/states, but given how many systems are under threat (with little to no change) I have a feeling that the numbers are way too high.
- They really should tell the players, somehow, within the game, what kinds of efforts are considered a priority and when. If they have any meaningful difference that is...
- The system status progress bar calculation seems to be a complete mystery overall. It should be considered a vital element during this war and should also be explained and not left for the players to figure out (and possibly incorrectly too at first).
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This is extremely likely and possibly the reason for those thargoid CGs we had before the stargoids arrived. Unfortunately the statistics for those were completely skewed - many people still had combat bonds left over from the events in HIP 22460 that were handed in to the CG campaigns, so the amount of player work done might have been greatly overestimated. Many AX pilots are still hoarding their bonds because at this point it's just become a habit to keep them until a CG is announced, which might be hindering the war efforts if bonds are counted as a positive effect.
This is brilliant stuff @Ian Doncaster!
One important question that seems to be missing: what effect does denying the Orthrus interceptor access to the Thargoid probes it's collecting (either by destryoying the Interceptor or destroying or scooping up the probes) have?
One important question that seems to be missing: what effect does denying the Orthrus interceptor access to the Thargoid probes it's collecting (either by destryoying the Interceptor or destroying or scooping up the probes) have?
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I've noticed this and find it so stupid. Also kind of lazy on FDs side not to limit the CGs bonds to specific systems/factions at least (I assume they're not which has lead to this).
There's another side to it too, if you have powerplay rank 5 with ALD/Hudson/Antal you can double your money by cashing in at exploited systems. None of the invaded systems have that perk yet.
The Colonia Engineer upgrading might be an interesting previous example for trying to predict this sort of thing with CGs.
The initial targets for that were set so that roughly 100,000 upgrades were needed to move a module to the next grade - so 100,000 G1 materials for the G1->G2 upgrade, more expensive for the higher grades.
They'd held a Research CG in Colonia not long before, and that had had 330,000 G1 materials handed in during the week. So based on that you'd get ~3 G1 upgrades a week, though spread out over the different modules it would take a few months to get them all to G2, and then keeping on that rate you'd finish the project within about a year.
Obviously, that didn't happen. Partly, it was slower because to hand the materials to the engineer you had to do it one roll at a time, rather than just saying "donate 300" at CG the research contact in seconds. But mainly it was because the CG itself provided visibility and coordination that wasn't ordinarily there. After three months of solid effort we'd got a few modules to show "5%" progress (the minimum displayed increment, though we were able to deduce some 1% progress from sort ordering)
Even when they reduced the thresholds by roughly 98% - which put a few of the more popular modules to "nearly complete" overnight - it still took almost three years to finish the job.
Similarly station repairs. Back at that sort of time, trade CGs tended to get 10-20 MT a week, so a 10MT station repair target, especially since it didn't have a hard deadline, must have seemed quite reasonable. But even after a >90% reduction most of them sat unrepaired for months until Op IDA could get round to fixing them.
Even without questions about bond hoarding and whether that matters, unfocused effort is going to be way less effective than a CG, most of the time - and the interface is not really set up to encourage fully-focused effort either. It wouldn't surprise me if - again - the thresholds are going to need a substantial reduction to get the balance to be where it was intended.
(Worse option: they are relevant and that's why none of those systems have moved even slightly)
I'll add it to the "questions" list.
The initial targets for that were set so that roughly 100,000 upgrades were needed to move a module to the next grade - so 100,000 G1 materials for the G1->G2 upgrade, more expensive for the higher grades.
They'd held a Research CG in Colonia not long before, and that had had 330,000 G1 materials handed in during the week. So based on that you'd get ~3 G1 upgrades a week, though spread out over the different modules it would take a few months to get them all to G2, and then keeping on that rate you'd finish the project within about a year.
Obviously, that didn't happen. Partly, it was slower because to hand the materials to the engineer you had to do it one roll at a time, rather than just saying "donate 300" at CG the research contact in seconds. But mainly it was because the CG itself provided visibility and coordination that wasn't ordinarily there. After three months of solid effort we'd got a few modules to show "5%" progress (the minimum displayed increment, though we were able to deduce some 1% progress from sort ordering)
Even when they reduced the thresholds by roughly 98% - which put a few of the more popular modules to "nearly complete" overnight - it still took almost three years to finish the job.
Similarly station repairs. Back at that sort of time, trade CGs tended to get 10-20 MT a week, so a 10MT station repair target, especially since it didn't have a hard deadline, must have seemed quite reasonable. But even after a >90% reduction most of them sat unrepaired for months until Op IDA could get round to fixing them.
Even without questions about bond hoarding and whether that matters, unfocused effort is going to be way less effective than a CG, most of the time - and the interface is not really set up to encourage fully-focused effort either. It wouldn't surprise me if - again - the thresholds are going to need a substantial reduction to get the balance to be where it was intended.
Since uninhabited systems for Alert and all systems for Control have nowhere in-system to pay in the bonds and only combat listed as a means of moving the progress bar, I'd assume that this means the bonds aren't relevant.
(Worse option: they are relevant and that's why none of those systems have moved even slightly)
I'll add it to the "questions" list.
That could go either way, according to steam charts player numbers are up so participation might be high.
I'm more worried about progress being capped per-system so spreading out is more efficient than focusing a single system - thus making it harder to find instances with many CMDRs.
If balanced well then the "CG" being spread out should offer the opportunity for individual contributions to stand out in systems that receive little attention otherwise, but I don't think that's happening at all because only a few systems have moved a tick.
It could also be that we're overestimating how far and how fast the things can spread after the initial alerts - maybe the whole challenge is just de-infesting the initially conquered systems. That's less BGS-like though.