Congratulations for the Cmdr. for the First Encounter!
By the way I share the suspicion these are not the Thargoids, but could be another alien species perhaps The Guardians?
So can someone confirm you actually do not need an UA to experience such encounter?
The reason; in the original game you could initiate the break of a hyper space jump and drop into the hyper space - or actually stay in the hyper space with a swarm of Thargoid ships; they were shooting down your shield to minimum, until one shot would have destroyed you without you even blinking in your cockpit. Sometimes they let you to hang around with them in hyper space, but most of the time they just destroyed you. Even if you were allowed to stay with them they did not allow your shield to recharge - just shoot you randomly to keep it on low energy. At least this is what I recall from C64 encounters.
Now here, you seemed to be dragged out of hyper space jump but you do not actually stay in the hyper space - as I remember Thargoids were doing it in the original game; kept you in the hyper space. Also based on the video the flower look like alien creature (I don't want to say ship, I rather think it is a living creature) looks like more it wants to help / look for something rather than causing any trouble. Any thoughts?