Analysing the Thargoid Simulation

[Disemboweled Ego]

I think the upshot is that 33% weekly reduction doesn't really resolve all the issues people had with the weekly reset - smaller groups still can't make incremental progress and a lot of effort still feels wasted wasted in terms of overall war progress.

It mostly affects systems that were almost complete anyway and could easily be finished next week even with the 33% tax.

It's likely that this is a compromise solution that doesn't affect the overall strategy/outcomes of the invasion behind the scenes too much for what frontier had planned.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

For anything other than full carryover, it's always more efficient to work in a coordinated fashion. And with a normal 3-4 week invasion, any group much below 33% capacity wasn't going to win even with full carryover without outside support.

If anything it's a demonstration of how little material (as opposed to psychological) difference the reset was making anyway at this stage.

(If we get to a point where the per-system difficulty is 10-20% of the current level, then I think it'll start making more of a difference to the outcomes.)

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

At least it seem like a bit of encouragement to not just give up and stop fighting around monday/tuesday if it doesn't look like anything will reach completion.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

For those watching the oscillations in Alert patterns, this week has been unusually consistent: one more in Taranis, one fewer in Thor, same overall total as last week.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Yes. Looking at the number of weeks needed also makes the exponential nature clear.

Rapidly increases once you fall below 50% capacity, and starts being noticeably inefficient below 67%.

What happens if all groups dogpile one system, and move on to the next? How many systems can be saved this way?

 

[Ralph Vargr]

For those trying to coordinate disparate groups over 24 time zones:

OODA loop - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

How do you think the term SNAFU was coined?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

What happens if all groups dogpile one system, and move on to the next? How many systems can be saved this way?

That's roughly equal to "how many systems did we actually win" + "how many loose percentages were in other systems" (assuming that the loose percentages were then instead piled up in the N easiest systems)

Full single-minded coordination between every group and independent pilot I think would give us 13-14 systems each week based on what I remember of the state the last few Wednesdays.
The current approach gave us 10 last week so probably is pretty close to the practical limits.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

That's roughly equal to "how many systems did we actually win" + "how many loose percentages were in other systems" (assuming that the loose percentages were then instead piled up in the N easiest systems)

Full single-minded coordination between every group and independent pilot I think would give us 13-14 systems each week based on what I remember of the state the last few Wednesdays.
The current approach gave us 10 last week so probably is pretty close to the practical limits.

How many do the Thargiods win a week?

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

How many do the Thargiods win a week?

75 this week, up from 53 last week.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

How many do the Thargiods win a week?

About seventy on average.

 

[Northpin]

How many do the Thargiods win a week?

6-9 times more than what we win back.
however, that number includes unpopulated systems as well, while we win back populated ones.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

6-9 times more than what we win back.
however, that number includes unpopulated systems as well, while we win back populated ones.

A measure of population lost would be useful, then.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

A measure of population lost would be useful, then.

106 inhabited systems with a total population of 7.7 billion (almost all of which is Lhou Mans and Inara) are currently under Thargoid Control.

So 0.5% of the systems, 0.1% of the population, but that's to be expected as most fringe systems have very low population.

 

[goemon]

has there be more insight on how the game choses the next alert systems?
distance? states? security? controll levels of factions?

 

[Kryxix]

Do we have a "spot" system, if we draw a straight line from all maelstroms, and the shortest distance where those 8 lines all have a meeting point?
(Not the arrival route lines of each maelstroms).
Would look like a spider with eight legs.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Do we have a "spot" system, if we draw a straight line from all maelstroms, and the shortest distance where those 8 lines all have a meeting point?
(Not the arrival route lines of each maelstroms).
Would look like a spider with eight legs.

As in the system which is the shortest combined distance from all eight Maelstroms?
Trianguli Sector EL-Y b0 (combined distance 1064 LY) seems about as good as it's possible to get while being an actual system. (in deep space I think you can probably get down to just above 1060 LY)

Another measure of "centre" might just be the average position of all eight, which is a little further into the bubble not far from the Mawasi system.

 

[Maolagin]

Another measure of "centre" might just be the average position of all eight, which is a little further into the bubble not far from the Mawasi system.

The only other reasonable measure of "center" that comes to mind would be fitting the maelstrom systems to the surface of a sphere, and locating the center of that sphere. Just eyeballing, you wouldn't get an exact fit, but I think the distribution is concave enough that you'd get a sphere that's generally bubble-sized, not one that degenerates into an infinite plane or such. Which would be intuitive since they're all sitting approximately on the surface of the vaguely-spherical bubble.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The only other reasonable measure of "center" that comes to mind would be fitting the maelstrom systems to the surface of a sphere, and locating the center of that sphere. Just eyeballing, you wouldn't get an exact fit, but I think the distribution is concave enough that you'd get a sphere that's generally bubble-sized, not one that degenerates into an infinite plane or such. Which would be intuitive since they're all sitting approximately on the surface of the vaguely-spherical bubble.

Or, for a different sphere fitting, the centre of the smallest sphere which contains all eight maelstroms.

The best I can do for that is a sphere slightly larger than 165 LY in radius with Cocijo, Raijin and Hadad near its surface, and the others a bit closer in - centred on the point roughly half-way between Kurutsi and Kuanga

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Or, for a different sphere fitting, the centre of the smallest sphere which contains all eight maelstroms.

The best I can do for that is a sphere slightly larger than 165 LY in radius with Cocijo, Raijin and Hadad near its surface, and the others a bit closer in - centred on the point roughly half-way between Kurutsi and Kuanga

What is the tangent angle of the sphere? Which way is the hemisphere going?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

has there be more insight on how the game choses the next alert systems?
distance? states? security? controll levels of factions?

I only have more questions too, from what I've looked at. Random choice within 10 LY of existing controls seems to model their behaviour reasonably well so far ... except:
- the oscillations in alerts per maelstrom appear to be damping out (but not entirely) and we still have no real idea why they were there to start with, so what was that about?
- why have Leigong and Thor thrown uninhabited Alerts out to 50 LY and 40 LY respectively, while just about everywhere else has barely poked past 30 LY (and is it statistically suspicious that Leigong's numerous 35-50 LY targets haven't hit anywhere inhabited?) and basically not at all past 30 LY for inhabited systems?


It's not that there's a shortage of systems for them to go through to establish solid ~30 LY bubbles, but why would that be their objective if so? They wouldn't link up, they wouldn't hit anything really important, I guess there's some benefit to consolidating that inner region before pushing out further, and it's high enough up the distance-difficulty curve that they're not going to lose those regions in the long run. (But then, why are Leigong and Thor different?)