Me and a few others have been experimenting with Alert systems for a few weeks now, and given today's Galnet I figured I'd share our findings and the best ways to progress Alert systems.
Trading: First off, ignore just hauling commodities to sell to markets. OpIda tested it with tens of thousands of tons and it did nothing, absolutely zero. So I think it's safe to say it's not contributing.
Hauling: Hauling via missions DOES work, but very slowly. Again, OpIda tested it, hauled ~200k, and progressed the bar about 12%. Not exactly significant. Do it if you enjoy it, but don't expect to make much of an impact, given that the average player contributes around 10k to community goals and so you'd need 166 players to fill the bar that way with that amount of effort and no reward. Rescues seem to operate on similar levels. For reference, the TOP players each week seem to haul about 10k, and average more like 1000 at the moment. Filling the missions is very annoying.
Edit: This seems to be at least partially based on the number of missions completed, not just the number of commodities hauled. I'm still not 100% clear on it, but I was getting about 2% for every 400 passengers evacuated. Going out on a limb here, I would assume that wing missions are probably significantly less effective at moving the bar per commodity, UNLESS you are in a wing of four and sharing the missions before turning them in.
Salvage: Pods/Black Boxes help about on the same level as missions, but are much slower to collect.
Kills: Kills do seem to progress the bar at a reasonable pace, but are very difficult to locate. In my experience, using signal sources will net you up to 20 scouts per hour. You can also get maybe 2-3 interceptors per hour if you stop at the right signal sources and hang around for 10 minutes or so for them to spawn.
Orthruses are much worse. I generally find one every few hours. If they do progress the bar significantly, it's hard to tell, because you can't find them.
Edit: Orthruses do seem to contribute a reasonable amount, but finding them is difficult. In my experiments, an orthrus kill was worth about 0.5% of an Alert bar, or half a pip. Over the past week of fairly constant effort, I was able to locate and kill 21 of them, or about 1 per hour on average. The best way seems to be carrying AX weapons on your trade ship and killing them while hauling. 3 sirius ax missile racks and 2 gimballed large enhanced ax multicannons is able to effectively kill them.
What DOES work?
Hyperdictions. Jump in and out of the system repeatedly, into another alert system ideally. You'll typically get a hyperdiction about half the time, and it counts as the system you're jumping away from. This is, as far as I can tell, by far the best way to get thargoid contact. Kill them.
Tissue Samples. Use the same approach, but instead of killing them, tissue sample them and turn them in at a rescue megaship. This works about as fast, but is inconsistent due to the research limpets often failing. Be sure to use a universal limpet controller or you'll be too slow to make any sort of progress.
Winging up. This multiplies the value of any kills you get, or any wing missions you share, as far as we can tell. If you do find an orthrus, you should try winging up with SOMEONE who can get there, or alternatively try multicrewing up. That should have the same effect.
Alerts do seem to have a lower threshold than invasions, it's just much harder to get the points needed to fill it.
And that's basically it. If anyone finds a better way to locate Orthruses, post it, I'd love to find out.
Trading: First off, ignore just hauling commodities to sell to markets. OpIda tested it with tens of thousands of tons and it did nothing, absolutely zero. So I think it's safe to say it's not contributing.
Hauling: Hauling via missions DOES work, but very slowly. Again, OpIda tested it, hauled ~200k, and progressed the bar about 12%. Not exactly significant. Do it if you enjoy it, but don't expect to make much of an impact, given that the average player contributes around 10k to community goals and so you'd need 166 players to fill the bar that way with that amount of effort and no reward. Rescues seem to operate on similar levels. For reference, the TOP players each week seem to haul about 10k, and average more like 1000 at the moment. Filling the missions is very annoying.
Edit: This seems to be at least partially based on the number of missions completed, not just the number of commodities hauled. I'm still not 100% clear on it, but I was getting about 2% for every 400 passengers evacuated. Going out on a limb here, I would assume that wing missions are probably significantly less effective at moving the bar per commodity, UNLESS you are in a wing of four and sharing the missions before turning them in.
Salvage: Pods/Black Boxes help about on the same level as missions, but are much slower to collect.
Kills: Kills do seem to progress the bar at a reasonable pace, but are very difficult to locate. In my experience, using signal sources will net you up to 20 scouts per hour. You can also get maybe 2-3 interceptors per hour if you stop at the right signal sources and hang around for 10 minutes or so for them to spawn.
Orthruses are much worse. I generally find one every few hours. If they do progress the bar significantly, it's hard to tell, because you can't find them.
Edit: Orthruses do seem to contribute a reasonable amount, but finding them is difficult. In my experiments, an orthrus kill was worth about 0.5% of an Alert bar, or half a pip. Over the past week of fairly constant effort, I was able to locate and kill 21 of them, or about 1 per hour on average. The best way seems to be carrying AX weapons on your trade ship and killing them while hauling. 3 sirius ax missile racks and 2 gimballed large enhanced ax multicannons is able to effectively kill them.
What DOES work?
Hyperdictions. Jump in and out of the system repeatedly, into another alert system ideally. You'll typically get a hyperdiction about half the time, and it counts as the system you're jumping away from. This is, as far as I can tell, by far the best way to get thargoid contact. Kill them.
Tissue Samples. Use the same approach, but instead of killing them, tissue sample them and turn them in at a rescue megaship. This works about as fast, but is inconsistent due to the research limpets often failing. Be sure to use a universal limpet controller or you'll be too slow to make any sort of progress.
Winging up. This multiplies the value of any kills you get, or any wing missions you share, as far as we can tell. If you do find an orthrus, you should try winging up with SOMEONE who can get there, or alternatively try multicrewing up. That should have the same effect.
Alerts do seem to have a lower threshold than invasions, it's just much harder to get the points needed to fill it.
And that's basically it. If anyone finds a better way to locate Orthruses, post it, I'd love to find out.
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