If you'd bothered to seek them out for yourself, or even just watched the livestream, you'd see that shooting them is not the only option.
Who said I hadn't? And what else can you do with them apart from shoot limpets and missiles at them? Feed them human flesh? What sort of a daylight-hating psychopath invents such a mechanic for a game that started out as a Galactic sandbox?
So you are the kind of person who reads the last chapter of a book in order to find out if the book is worth reading?
No...? So you're the sort of person who tries to offset their own feelings of inadequacy by attacking their intellectual superiors with obvious logical fallacies? If you're going to attack people with logical fallacies, at least make them funny enough to distract from their fallaciousness.
Historically (earlier Elite games), the Thargoids were hyper aggressive and only beaten back courtesy of a human engineered biological weapon (a WMD as I understand it). They have now come back but are doing so slowly, why? We do not know yet but some are assuming the worst and preparing for it. In the first Thargoid war we were completely outmatched (disregarding the WMD option), now our technology has evolved somewhat hence the newer anti-Thargoid weapons that are not WMDs.
I know. I was there. I'm an '84er and I've played every version of Elite since.
We are led to believe that there are currently at least 2 factions of Thargoids and it is possible that only one of these factions have aggressive intentions towards humankind. Then again, the destruction of human vessels by the Thargoids may be comparable to a human killing an insect just because they do not like where that insect is and/or what it happens to be doing.
Who cares?! That's not game content! It's all make-believe! Like the Formidine Rifters and the Children of Raxxla! It's fanboi fiction! None of it is actually in the game! The actual game sucks!
Apparently, FD has a bible/encyclopaedia on the Thargoids and that level of detail almost certainly means that another Human-Thargoid war is not the only potential outcome. Not everyone wants that kind of kitsch (an open and unconstrained Human-Thargoid war) nor considers it "compelling content".
Have they really? How exciting. But even assuming that was true, since when have FD actually responded to what players want? Yeah, an open-ended player-driven potentially pacific outcome to human-Thargoid interaction, with respect to the game lore, yeah that would be really great, sort of, whatever... I feel sleepy... >YAWN<.... But that isn't what's happening here. It's just what fanbois like you tell yourselves is happening. What's actually happening is that FD have introduced hostile Thargoid warships into the game, and two days later following a highly-publicized CG, FD have introduced a new weapon module with which to destroy hostile Thargoid warships, all amidst much hype about an impending renewed human-Thargoid conflict. That is all. It's just the next all-too-brief triannual episode in a tediously linear gameplay script that is leading nowhere, and is absolutely typical of everything FD have produced with respect to game lore and fan fiction. Following it is exactly like lying comatose in a hospital bed, where the only excitement is being fed a drip of sugar water through a tube two or three times a year. Which is where some of the developers need to be for the money they've taken for this game.
So of course I have to agree that a scripted war is an entirely crude and facile handling of human-alien interaction, totally inadequate for a game like Elite, and more suited to a game like Space Invaders. You can already shoot Sidewinders, Cobras, Anacondas, whatever, for increasing numbers of points, and now... after nearly three years and with the game still missing multiple key features... look! The mystery Thargoid mothership is finally flying across the top of the screen for bonus mystery points, and the fanbois in their jim-jams are all besides themselves with excitement! Shoot the mystery ship! Shoot the mystery ship! How many bonus points will we get?! But my point was that if FD can't be bothered to do anything more imaginative with the Thargoids than start another war with them, they could at least have made it a compelling war, with recruitment and units and a front line and missions and battles and devastation and results. But instead we've merely got another type of RNG Signal Source where you roll a 6 or whatever and bingo you've got a Thargoid encounter, where you have a choice of shooting either limpets or missiles at them for no real reward. It's pathetic.
Personally 2.4 has really turned me off Elite, for the first time in over 30 years. I can't play it any more. 2.4 is even lamer than Powerplay, CQC, Engineers, Commanders, all the other pointless facile rubbish the devs have turned out, all the cynical attempts to milk players for cash for worthless extra game content, because the game is so sucks that players are supposed to become hysterical with excitement whenever FD announce that players can now paint their ship black for only £10 or something, and thereby really disappear into the crowd. Instead of just getting on with populating the Galactic sandbox with an adequate variety of authentic astronomical and game content, in conjunction with full planetary landings and space legs. Perhaps I'll go back to playing Oolite and FFED3D.
I really think DBOBE needs to sack his whole team and rework the entire game from scratch, recruiting the right people this time, developing the original vision of Elite without any respect to the pew-pew fanboi market, and only releasing a completely finished product. 1984 Elite was a success and a phenomenon precisely because it wasn't Space Invaders, because it didn't cater to the existing games market in any way. Braben & Bell simply had a vision of a 3D Galactic sandbox which they implemented without trying to make it saleable, without compromising it with games industry norms or player-driven market forces whatsoever. And that's what needed to happen with Elite: Dangerous. Instead, the incomplete base game has been loaded with worthless gimmick after worthless gimmick in an effort to expand its customer base to the lowest common denominator and thereby maximise sales. The result is an unfinished mess that doesn't know where it's going any more. 'Elite: Dangerous'. 'Elite: Incompetent' more like.