Analysing the Thargoid Simulation

[Danieros]

What about distance to furthermost control?

Taranis: 16.21 ly (Moderate)
Indra: 25.29 ly (Maximum)
Leigong: 20.93 ly (Extremely High)
Oya: 23.57 ly (Extremely High)
Cocijo: 25.24 ly (Maximum)
Thor: 27.38 ly (Maximum)
Raijin: 25.66 ly (Maximum)
Hadad: 26.05 ly (Maximum)

While Taranis has very few control systems, it has already reached out relatively far.

Leigong despite having twice the controls of Oya have similar furthest control distances.

 

[yttrbio]

Oya has an alert past 28 ly, while none of Taranis or Leigong alerts are going to expand their control ranges (though Taranis will pick up a spire site). Under this hypothesis, Taranis should stay Moderate, Leigong will stay Extremely High, and Oya will go to Maximum on Thargsday.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That does look very possible.

Oya should get an extension to overtake Cocijo and Raijin this week while adding relatively few actual systems, while in two weeks Taranis should have mostly caught up to where Leigong is now in terms of Control count but keeping its current radius as it backfills.

 

[Athum]

What about distance to furthermost control?

Taranis: 16.21 ly (Moderate)
Indra: 25.29 ly (Maximum)
Leigong: 20.93 ly (Extremely High)
Oya: 23.57 ly (Extremely High)
Cocijo: 25.24 ly (Maximum)
Thor: 27.38 ly (Maximum)
Raijin: 25.66 ly (Maximum)
Hadad: 26.05 ly (Maximum)

While Taranis has very few control systems, it has already reached out relatively far.

Leigong despite having twice the controls of Oya have similar furthest control distances.

Could you please tell me what does these "Damage resistance" levels mean? Resistance of whom/what and to what? Sorry if t was somewhere on previous pages, I might missed this info.

 

[Shurimal]

Could you please tell me what does these "Damage resistance" levels mean? Resistance of whom/what and to what? Sorry if t was somewhere on previous pages, I might missed this info.

Since directly attacking Titans has been a thing for less than 24 hours, I'm pretty sure nobody knows for sure yet. But it might be about how many times you need to attack the thermal core to neutralize a Titan.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Could you please tell me what does these "Damage resistance" levels mean? Resistance of whom/what and to what? Sorry if t was somewhere on previous pages, I might missed this info.

We have absolutely no idea, since they only showed up yesterday. It's a property shown on the Titan systems; best guess is that the more threatening it sounds the harder it is to do damage to the Titans.

Incidentally, we do seem to be getting progress figures through in the Journal now, looking at DCoH's reporting:
- Taranis: 0.0055%
- Raijin: 0.0004%
- Oya: 0.0002%
- Indra: 0.0001%
all others below measurement threshold

Without having a good picture of the balance of attacks, it's hard to say how much the damage resistance is affecting things; Taranis is moving noticeably faster but that might just be because there's a lot more people attacking it.


(Extrapolating wildly from those figures, it would take around 50 years to take out a Titan, while the Thargoids will overwhelm the bubble in about 70 years if they keep all eight. Allowing for people figuring out how to be a bit more efficient after a few weeks of experiments, those numbers will probably end up suitably close for a dramatic ending)

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

(Extrapolating wildly from those figures, it would take around 50 years to take out a Titan, while the Thargoids will overwhelm the bubble in about 70 years if they keep all eight. Allowing for people figuring out how to be a bit more efficient after a few weeks of experiments, those numbers will probably end up suitably close for a dramatic ending)

Assuming the progress doesn't reset for us each week?

 

[Shurimal]

Watched Cmdr Mechan's yesterday stream for a while and, yes, Taranis is seeing a lot of extremely well organized action (hat off to Mechan and his comrades!). And at the same time we are in the learning process of what works, what doesn't. Thermal cores seem to be immune to nanite torps and very resistant to non-AX weapons like beam lasers. My interpretation this far is that one medium torpedo pylon per ship is enough to attack the heat vents and eventually expose the core; then 2 or 3 large AXMC-s could be the ticket to actually damage the core.

Mamba as the torpedo boat is an interesting choice, but maybe good old Krait MKII would be better when you want to both torp the vents and damage the core? Maybe even Krait Phantom due to its 580+ m/s boost speed, if 2 large AXMC-s are enough to damage the core?

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Mamba as the torpedo boat is an interesting choice, but maybe good old Krait MKII would be better when you want to both torp the vents and damage the core? Maybe even Krait Phantom due to its 580+ m/s boost speed, if 2 large AXMC-s are enough to damage the core?

I was at the Titan in my AX Krait, because the description of the torpedo pylons read as if I needed additional weaponry too, and the Mamba didn't seem the right fit for that, and also there are no small nanite pylons.

I didn't know what to expect (I didn't read anything or watch any footage when I first went to the Titan), so I equipped it with two caustic sinks, the Titan pulse nuetralizer and the pulse xeno scanner thingie (totally useless). In terms of weaponry I decided to keep the two large Azimuth AXMCs and the large TV beam on top and replace both my shard cannons with torpedo pylons - again, totally useless, one medium pylon is more than enough at this stage. I couldn't re-outfit my ship as I was too far from my carrier, so I went with it.

My solo run wasn't very long, and I had trouble finding the vents at first so I only managed to disrupt two of them, but my two AXMCs seemed to do some fair damage to the core - I think I stripped down like 15 percent or so in the ten seconds exposure I got. The TV beam fired at the Titan surface helped keeping me cold and escaping various attacks from the aggro'ed environment.

So, once I get back to my carrier, I think I'd modfy the outfit of the Krait as follows: Ditch the Xeno pulse scanner for a heasink, and store one of the medium pylons. Either replace the large TV on top with a smaller one in the mediums in favor for another large MC on the top. Or just replace one pylon with a medium Azimuth MC - I don't have a third large Azimuth MC for the top.

In general, tough and tanky seems the way to go at the Titan, but keep in mind you have to get there. I had no issue with the Krait, mine permaboosts to 530 with two pips (it brings 3k armor and repair facilities I didn't use - making it lighter would make it faster). The Krait made the trip through the caustic pretty quickly, it cost me four and a half caustic sinks (out of two ammo engineered ones I brought), i.e. I had to dump caustic sinks twice during the trip.

For damaging the cores, bringing as much AXMC damage as possible seems the way to go.

 

[Kira Goto]

Thermal cores seem to be immune to nanite torps

because the description of the torpedo pylons read as if I needed additional weaponry too

Their damage stat is zero(from a screenshot I’ve seen). So it is quite literally a single purpose module with the use of disrupting those heat vents under the Titan.

For damaging the cores, bringing as much AXMC damage as possible seems the way to go.

What about (AX) missiles? Assuming the core is treated as a ‘standard’ target rather than a “module” on the Titan, they might not do terribly due to higher base damage to offset lower fire rate. Could be wrong though - I’m just bringing it up as a suggestion from seeing people fling them around at Taranis when I dropped by to observe how things worked.

(And there were quite a few people there, as expected. I had to fire off the pulse neutralizer two or three times to not get knocked back.)

RE Titan damage resistance - what if the spires do end up playing the role of “Titan will recover damage sustained at the weekly reset”? That might provide some incentive to clearing them out but doing so might be difficult for some Titans. And would require adequate support at that, while the various balance changes over the previous month(s) would also make that more difficult.

… I somehow suspect that ‘circle’ around the Titans in the war info panel might be their “health”?

Things to find out, I guess.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

What about (AX) missiles? Assuming the core is treated as a ‘standard’ target rather than a “module” on the Titan, they might not do terribly due to higher base damage to offset lower fire rate. Could be wrong though - I’m just bringing it up as a suggestion from seeing people fling them around at Taranis when I dropped by to observe how things worked.

The people I played with last night said they tried AX missiles, and they were not as effective for core damage as the Azimuth MCs. I have no experience of my own with that, so I take their word for it.

 

[Shurimal]

RE Titan damage resistance - what if the spires do end up playing the role of “Titan will recover damage sustained at the weekly reset”? That might provide some incentive to clearing them out but doing so might be difficult for some Titans.

That would make a good sense as a game mechanic. Do direct damage to Titans to neutralise them; take spire sites offline to prevent the Titan from repairing the damage done. Would add a new strategic layer to the war in addition to the new tactical layer of the attacks on Titans (sorry, couldn't resist that).

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Oya has an alert past 28 ly, while none of Taranis or Leigong alerts are going to expand their control ranges (though Taranis will pick up a spire site). Under this hypothesis, Taranis should stay Moderate, Leigong will stay Extremely High, and Oya will go to Maximum on Thargsday.

There's an interesting further option for experimenting if anyone is interested, too: if the boundaries are aligned to the 5 LY difficulty bands, then taking out Pegasi Sector BQ-Y d71 at Raijin will shrink its radius under 25 LY which might bring it down to Extremely High while its Control count rises, making distinguishing the two theories easier.

(Whether that's actually practical to do before Thursday I don't know)

 

[Danieros]

The other gain, but harder to achieve would be clearing Hyades Sector FB-N b7-2 for Taranis to significantly shrink from 16.21 ly to 10.72. If the hypothesis is correct that'd very likely reduce it from "Moderate" and make better use of the commanders hitting it next week. But if it's like the beginning of the war, the current Titan "HP" may be extremely overtuned.

Galnet seemed to indicate the main goal is to get the heat of the titans going up - then supposedly the superpowers can strike with "more conventional weaponry".

Remains to be seen if thargsday just resets the damage or heat (there's a heat indicator and hull circles on the UI). I'd guess at very least the heat will reset.

 

[Factabulous]

Looks like they boosted the rate of progress with the server update? Now seeing actual progress - around 1% on taranis?

Spoiler

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Yes - it'll be interesting to see if this is a general boost, or if it's the difference between "Moderate" and "Maximum" becoming more significant.

It's moving pretty quickly so we might get to find out what happens when a circle is cleared relatively soon now.

 

[Factabulous]

yeah, I reckon it will be done in a handful of days at this rate. though that's obviously on a small sample size - and it is unlikely the completion rate will be stable. At least now ppl have a reason to do it.

edit: Payout is still bad

 

[Jmanis]

FWIW, HIP22460 is still being HIP22460. Although notably, the dropout warning has changed (unless I just never noticed it before) from something about the permit requirements, to something like "Hazardous environment detected, emergency dropout initiated"

Spoiler

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

FWIW, HIP22460 is still being HIP22460. Although notably, the dropout warning has changed (unless I just never noticed it before) from something about the permit requirements, to something like "Hazardous environment detected, emergency dropout initiated"

The hazardous env warning was always there I thought?

 

[Jmanis]

The hazardous env warning was always there I thought?

My recollection might be poor.. i don't remember it there before. However, it more reports as an unknown structure instead of the "Major anomaly" as well... so somethings changed though maybe not notably.