Devs stated that the thargoids are (bio*)engineering new things, just like humans are.
-so for all intents and purposes it can be considered an arms race.
*That is why i find the empty escape pods so eerie.
Glaives (Hunter class ships) are overpowered and...
- Thread starter Uiros Ueramos
- Start date
-so for all intents and purposes it can be considered an arms race.
*That is why i find the empty escape pods so eerie.
Hmm, the Glaives haven't impressed me so far, but that is likely to be because of the situations I encountered them in. First inside maelstroms where they were tenacious but not so menacing compared to all the other stuff happening in there. I did kill one with 2 large AXMCs and a vent laser too. The other occurence was in the terrestial port AXCZ where my wingman and I just melted them with our 4 and 5 modified Plasma Chargers. Barely even got any damage to our Guardian equipment. Perhaps the disruption field was off. From those encounters I would say that while the Glaive has many sort of attacks, they are all pretty weak. Barely notice those missile hits in my caustic sink capacity. The Glaive is also pretty frail with only the shield buying it extra time.
However, I haven't had a misfortune of being intercepted by one yet. I imagine a non combat ship that has earlier just outrun the Thargoids has a lot of trouble with these ones. That is a real change of paradigm if you are forced to fight and possibly have to face the reinforcements too.
However, I haven't had a misfortune of being intercepted by one yet. I imagine a non combat ship that has earlier just outrun the Thargoids has a lot of trouble with these ones. That is a real change of paradigm if you are forced to fight and possibly have to face the reinforcements too.
That's not much of a stretch. As far as I know, no ship can move backwards (reverse) without the Cyclops catching up with it. Cold orbit and was born out of the fact that we have to fly in circles around the center of the interceptor's motion.
So it's a common practice in solo.
I've been trying to answer that question for years. And I think the cold has an effect there, too.
And I don't believe the release of the T10 was a hoax. The coldest ship in the game, the maximum amount of hull and its strength (75), a lot of slots ....
We just weren't told how to cook it.
Exert the heart while using heatsinks and destroy it. Fly away in a straight line while reparing/rearming, keeping the interceptor 3-5km behind you. Wait for its shield to dissipate, repeat from step 1 until dead. No cold orbiting needed.
I’m sure that would have worked well once they introduced anything hitting harder than a Cyclops…
(Note the sarcasm)
It used to work on everyone except the Basilisk before the war. It's just that Medusa and Hydra took a very long time, had to be repaired and synthesized ammunition.
But I think this tactic even more than cold orbiting was not envisioned by the developers.
It works perfectly fine for all interceptors including basilisks, don't know what you're being sarcastic about.
Synthesizing ammo is only necessary for a hydra, medusas take less than 60 gauss shots (with 4x size2s).
This was the intended gameplay loop and was why the interceptors top speed was below the best straight line speed of the human ships. You can find some youtube videos where the FDL was the meta at that time.
I'm fairly sure they were meant to be done in groups not solo. (remember the circle/"Three blue dots"?)
Looking at how the newer things are set up, especially the invasion/control/eviction -mechanics, i find it evident that concerted efforts was the main goal.
I am using "HUMAN reasoning" because this game is made by HUMANS (FDev) and they cannot simulate Alien thinking and logic, only HUMAN ones.
One thing I have noticed in your posts, is that you are so deep in your role play, that you forget that Thargoids are made by HUMANS, obeying HUMAN logic and thinking.
You must force yourself to think outside the game simulation or your posts will not be relevant.
You would need two wings of CMDRs with Human AX weapons to be able to destroy a Medusa. I do not think it is possible to do that with a Hydra.
Exactly. It is off. As are other things. Therefore my original post.
Correct. They don't. And they should.
Together with the boring grind unlock...
What do they say?
It's not. Due to very different playing time, I'm mostly a single player.
I've asked many times about this and similar things, the answer has always been that if the content is available in single player then it can work there too.
The problem is that it wasn't just more powerful drives and some guns from an Interceptor. If it was only that, this thread would not exist, because I would be perfectly fine with them.
That hypothetical situation did not occur because, besides the better drivers and Interceptor canon, they received FSD Reboot/Containment missiles, Lightning
Attack, Recharging Shields and the same Guardian Degeneration Field found in Maelstroms.Couldn't have said it better myself !!
I play alone, mostly....this is why:
First, I would like to ask for everybody that posts opinions on this thread, to restrain itself to only talk about this matter and to have a polite approach to the situation to avoid rudeness and name-calling...
Now that this request has been made, I can focus on the matter at hand.
I am an average AX pilot that never got involved in killing Thargoids until the Bubble Invasion begun. The only time I had previously destroyed them was because of being attacked by Scouts when visiting the Pleaides, back in 2018. I was even hyperdicted several times there by Interceptors and I never attacked them, finding that "First Contact" experience fascinating and although the Interceptors were intimidating, they never seemed threatening.
Since early January 2023, because of the Bubble Invasion, I started developing my AX Combat skills and learned the AX procedures regarding maneuvers, ship builds and engineering, to get involved in AX CZs. I went from only destroying Scouts and running away at the sight of Interceptors, to soloing Cyclops and Basilisks with FAOFF Cold Orbiting techniques armed with just AX Missiles/MultiCannons/LR TV Beam in Space AX CZs, as well as killing Medusas and Hydras after getting Guardian Weapons and joining other CMDRs in battle.
Currently, after having killed my 3 first Glaives in a planetary AX CZ and getting interdicted by another one in space, I can safely say that Glaives (Hunter Class > surelly more variants to come), despite being somewhat more vulnerable than Interceptors, are actually more dangerous than them.
"Why is that?", you might ask incredulously. And I say it is because, in most cases, while you have two options against Scouts and Interceptors (engagement or retreat), you really only have one against the Glaives, which is to fight.
This is because Glaives (Hunter Class) have all the good capabilities of Thargoid tech without almost any of the weaknesses, contrary to the Scout or Interceptor class ships.
Let's check its characteristics:
So, what are the consequences of having all these abilities and no weaknesses (except weak hull, that gets negated because of its shields being always on) ?
- Extremely Fast (CMDRs reported between 750 and 800m/s at peak speed) >>> Only dedicated highly engineered Fast Maelstrom Explorers or Pure Racers can escape by running away faster;
- FSD Reboot Missiles >>> All targets hit are forced to fight because they are unable to Low or High Wake;
- Mass Lock Factor of 20 >>> All ships with the exception of T10, Imperial Cutter, Federal Corvette and Anaconda are unable to Low Wake, even if they have miraculosly avoided the FSD Reboot missiles;
- Shields >>> Almost always on (currently 90% of the time the shields are on), negating the only weakness - the hull - the Glaive might have;
- Frequent salvos of 4x Caustic Missiles (currently salvos are launched every 5-10 seconds) >>> Ships hit are always suffering caustic damage, even if they are able to burn it off, since they are being hit all the time;
- Frequent Lightning Attack, due to its ability to approach the CMDR at ease >>> All ships, fast or slow, are hit most of the time and get almost permanent random reboots in their modules;
- Guardian Degeneration Field >>> Within 1,5km (?) - therefore almost always, due to its speed - all your Guardian Modules (except Guardian Hull Reinforcements that have no Integrity) get 1-2% damage/second and became useless in 60s or less;
- Are present in Maelstrom, Control and Invasion systems, often in packs of 3, doing Hyperdictions, Interdictions and fighting in AX CZs.
If any CMDR gets Hyperdicted/Interdicted by Scouts or Interceptors, they have the choice to run or fight. A Basilisk will make running almost impossible for most ships, but there is always the possibility to High Wake and survival will depend on the skill of the CMDR.
- Specialized Fast Maelstrom Explorer or Pure Racer builds, optimized for escaping any trouble, will have only one option which is to run (SR+HS compulsory), as long as they can be faster than 800m/s. If not, they are dead;
- Experienced AX CMDRs, with AX Meta Builds and Guardian Weapons, have to kill them in 60s or less, high wake (very difficult) almost as fast or sacrifice Guardian Weapons to have a few AX Missiles/Multicannons in reserve to deal with them. If not, they are dead;
- Average AX CMDRs, with Specialized Human AX Builds (exclusively AX Missiles/Multicannons), have the same options as mentioned above, except they will not suffer degeneration from their weapons but will probably react worse to the situation;
- Newbie AX CMDRs, with unoptimized AX builds and very little experience, will be unable to escape, unable to avoid damage and get killed fast. 90% chance of death;
- Multirole ships. Only very experienced and cool-headed CMDRs will survive (SR+HS compulsory). 95% chance of death;
- Mission Runner ships. Only very experienced and cool-headed CMDRs will survive (SR+HS compulsory). 95% chance of death;
- Passenger/Refugee ships. Only very experienced and cool-headed CMDRs will survive (SR+HS compulsory). 95% chance of death;
- Trader ships. Only very experienced, cool-headed and very lucky CMDRs will survive (SR+HS compulsory). 99% chance of death;
- Explorer ships. Only very experienced, cool-headed and very lucky CMDRs will survive (SR+HS compulsory). 99% chance of death.
If one gets interdicted by a Glaive you do not have much choice, because, due to the FSD Reboot missiles and very high MLF, Low Wake becomes an impossibility and High Wake almost as much, denying survivability to any other than very specific Fast Maelstrom Explorer, Pure Racer or Human AX builds piloted by very experienced CMDRs.
As such, Glaives (Hunter Class) are now effectively denying Thargoid influenced space to +90% of the builds and probably to a even bigger percentage of CDMRs.
Either:
Or:
- Reduce speed of all current (Glaives) and future Hunter class ships to allow for some ships other than Fast Maelstrom Explorer/Pure Racer builds to have a chance to escape >>> 600m/s top speed;
- Remove FSD Reboot missiles ability, to allow for some chance of High Wake to some ships other than Fast Maelstrom Explorer/Pure Racer builds;
- Reduce frequency of shield activation so that Glaives have some time with its hull exposed;
- Reduce frequency of salvos of 4x caustic missiles so that the CMDRs' ship is not hit every 5 seconds;
- Reduce range and damage/second of Guardian Degeneration Field to allow for 2-3 minutes of use for Guardian Weapons.
This is my personal view and opinion on the matter and I know that many hardcore veterans will intervene saying "Where is the challenge after that nerf?"...
- Make them only available in Maelstrom and Control systems. If a veteran AX CMDR wants a challenge it is that CMDRs' choice to seek for it, not to be imposed to the rest of the CMDRs who are trying to run Refugee Missions/Salvage and do not seek insane AX challenges.
That is why I explained that such content should be, either generally available and catered to the abilities of a sufficiently large number of CMDRs, or restricted to areas where super-duper CMDRs can go and have their kicks...
Opinions on this are welcome...
EDIT: Typos and layout
All I know is every attempt to engage in combat in this war leads too, fighting only scouts which gets dull, or a fight that can't be won with the ship I'm in at the time. I'd just learned cold orbiting with a Gauss Chieftain up to Basilisk, but now there are always scouts or Glaives with Interceptors so I can't have fun with that any more. I spend time building an Orthrus hunter but failed to kill one on my first two encounters and gave up. I don't mind having more than two failures and having to practice to succeed. I do mind only finding Orthrus at a rate of one every 3+ hours of play time. Denies me the chance to practice. Running supplies and rescues in the war is OK for a while, but that too gets dull.
Exploring the Titans is fun for a while, but there isn't a whole lot to do when you get there. Farming some materials, for reasons yet unknown. Admiring the spectacle. That's it.
When the scouts were briefly overpowered I gave up on the war completely and went out into the black on a mining and exploration tour with my carrier. It will repair the dent in my finances after weeks of carrier maintenance and rebuys with little income.
Yeap, that's how i used to kill Cyclops and Basilisks, and i was getting really close to be able to do it with Medusas too (but i still had a lot of work to do on my aiming consistency to be able to kill hearts fast enough to minimize damage taken)
The fact that Glaives makes interceptor combat impossible by destroying our guardian weapons makes them extremely overpowered.
Anyway, since i dont really like the direction the Thargoid war is taking - i'm not getting involved in it anymore
"You just need to "git gud" because it´s REALLY very very laughably easy... seriously!!"...this is why:
...
Opinions on this are welcome...
EDIT: Typos and layout
You cannot seriously expect much different responses when discussing game difficulty on an online forum.
Personally, I find the Glaive much harder than the Interceptor(s), because it´s much faster/agile and very aggressive (plus all the other abilities you have mentioned). I´m not much of a combat pilot, but still managed to kill a few Interceptors; I have been unable to kill a Glaive, though, even with a focused build.
What bothers me isn´t the difficulty of a new enemy ship, though. It´s the fact that it makes the rest of the new content inaccessible to me: I can´t really kill it (even if I did I wouldn´t want to repeat the exercise over and over) which is even more true when it´s bringing a few buddies to the party... I CAN outrun it with a race build, but that paper ship will just dissolve as soon as I arrive at the Maelstrom proper... So far I haven´t been able to collect a single unit of the materials required to unlock the new AX modules. :-(
As usual it´s unclear to me what FDEVs intentions are. Maybe they intended this content for multiplayer only or maybe they intended the new content being only accessible by a small minority of players at first (until better strategies have been worked out and new AX equipment becomes available).
All I can say is that I find it rather tiresome than challenging (hyperspace jump equals hyperdiction etc.) and that is considering that it´s a tiresome (grindy) game altogether. It´s ok if progress is slow, but if the only progress is the decline of my account balance due to visiting the rebuy screen repeatedly, I´m not really having fun.
That being said I have little doubt there will be a "solution" to the situation, because I´m convinced that the majority of players (most never visit the forums) does not consider any of the new content including the Glaive as easy, something that can be killed "with very little effort".
To get back to your original point: I agree with other commenters that "hard" changes to the game (lowering Glaive difficulty etc.) should be a last resort. A lot of people enjoy working out a perfect strategy against an overpowered enemy. It´s just... if you don´t or can´t... you can either ignore the "Thargoid War" content altogether (many players do) or just play something else (both ok options to me, not sure if FDEV would agree).
Just to clarify: I did invest considerable time, I did research my options and I did try different builds/approaches. It´s obvious players shouldn´t be able to crack this with a standard/general build on first try...
Last edited: