I just had a disturbing realization about future and Thargoids

[Chris Simon]

(and yes, I acknowledge this should easily turn into another "Git Gud" thread. Please try not to)

I admire and long for the original DB's vision of what Elite should have looked like and what it could have been. I still enjoy it immensely, don't take me wrong, but I see so many things skewed by the (arguably) necessary endeavour to "make it work as a game", and also very unwelcome (yet even more necessary from financial point of view) attempts to bring the game closer to masses.

Now in light of all the thrashing and gnashing of teeth caused only by improved AI and engineered weapons, I have a serious question. For Frontier, for you, guys, who knows.
Once Thargoids appear, invade, sneak in, flop around,... They will be thrashing us left right and center. As it should be. They need to have that "Oh, crap, I need to get out of here" vibe for them to work.
And I am completely fine with that. Looking forward to it.

The question is - Will they be nerfed after first week, because few vocal pacifists/traders/thatlot will be crying that they refuse to learn to fly and fight and hence they are locked out from "blazing their own trail" the way they want?

Scary, huh?

I think people, no matter they skill, experience or goals within the game should really come to peace with what Elite Dangerous is. Combat is not just one cog in a big machine full of other, equally valid cogs. Combat is the engine of the whole machine that binds it together and make it move.

o7

 

[Mohrgan]

(and yes, I acknowledge this should easily turn into another "Git Gud" thread. Please try not to)

I admire and long for the original DB's vision of what Elite should have looked like and what it could have been. I still enjoy it immensely, don't take me wrong, but I see so many things skewed by the (arguably) necessary endeavour to "make it work as a game", and also very unwelcome (yet even more necessary from financial point of view) attempts to bring the game closer to masses.

Now in light of all the thrashing and gnashing of teeth caused only by improved AI and engineered weapons, I have a serious question. For Frontier, for you, guys, who knows.
Once Thargoids appear, invade, sneak in, flop around,... They will be thrashing us left right and center. As it should be. They need to have that "Oh, crap, I need to get out of here" vibe for them to work.
And I am completely fine with that. Looking forward to it.

The question is - Will they be nerfed after first week, because few vocal pacifists/traders/thatlot will be crying that they refuse to learn to fly and fight and hence they are locked out from "blazing their own trail" the way they want?

Scary, huh?

I think people, no matter they skill, experience or goals within the game should really come to peace with what Elite Dangerous is. Combat is not just one cog in a big machine full of other, equally valid cogs. Combat is the engine of the whole machine that binds it together and make it move.

o7

Inevitably, there will be an element calling for nerfs. And a group calling for buffs as well. I can only hope FD can find the appropriate balance, like they are doing now, for the game's ultimate success. I can't imagine the lessons being learned right now, won't be put to good use.

There should be at least one facet of the issue in favor of them being a real tough go. It won't be like now, where players have gotten used to a certain difficulty with them. They will be all new, with a scary reputation to uphold. Well, here's hoping any how.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Honestly, I'd be a little more than disappointed if they were introduced simply as a threat to all humanity straight away.

I'd much rather see them introduced as holding a large area of territory out there somewhere, with their territory representing both massive opportunity and huge risk.

A simple pewpew invasion would be boring - once they had been defeated (and they'd have to be otherwise it would be game over,) there would be nothing left to develop them with.


Sure, have the odd ship pip up in human space after, but to just have an invasion would be, well, lame.

 

[Varrag]

Thargoids weren't that scary in old Elites, so I'd assume that they won't be in ED either.

 

[Chris Simon]

Honestly, I'd be a little more than disappointed if they were introduced simply as a threat to all humanity straight away.

I'd much rather see them introduced as holding a large area of territory out there somewhere, with their territory representing both massive opportunity and huge risk.

A simple pewpew invasion would be boring - once they had been defeated (and they'd have to be otherwise it would be game over,) there would be nothing left to develop them with.


Sure, have the odd ship pip up in human space after, but to just have an invasion would be, well, lame.

Sure. I don't know how wil they fit in the galaxy. What I'm concerned with is that they should be technologically superior to us in every way. It they won't act like it, for "balance" reasons, I will be REALLY peevish about it.

 

[thorn-]

It all sounds neat when you wrap Thargoids in "lore speak", but honestly...

Thargoids are nothing but another NPC. NPCs in ships shaped like a hegaxon instead of a triangle. They'll belong to a faction, just like the Anime Princess or that Angry White Guy That Points His Finger.

Half the players will cringe over the OP Thargoid AI combat, the other half will welcome a new target to shoot.

 

[Mohrgan]

It all sounds neat when you wrap Thargoids in "lore speak", but honestly...

Thargoids are nothing but another NPC. NPCs in ships shaped like a hegaxon instead of a triangle. They'll belong to a faction, just like the Anime Princess or that Angry White Guy That Points His Finger.

Half the players will cringe over the OP Thargoid AI combat, the other half will welcome a new target to shoot.

Do you mean that H34th guy you see around the forums? I didn't know he was a Power.....

 

[bladebss]

I remeber the first time i encountered the thargoids on ffe, i had been playing for a long time and had no idea of there existence. I was jumping and miss jumped, when i looked at my radar it was filled with contacts. This concerned me to say the least, then i saw the green lasers and hexagonal ships and was like @-'!?,!'@'!-    ! Is going on.... then i died. Lol

Loved it.

Im not shur thats how i want every encounter i have with them to go this time round but i would expect to have to change my underware or at least go make a cup of tea and toast afterwards.

 

[Chris Simon]

I remeber the first time i encountered the thargoids on ffe, i had been playing for a long time and had no idea of there existence. I was jumping and miss jumped, when i looked at my radar it was filled with contacts. This concerned me to say the least, then i saw the green lasers and hexagonal ships and was like @-'!?,!'@'!- ! Is going on.... then i died. Lol

Loved it.

Im not shur thats how i want every encounter i have with them to go this time round but i would expect to have to change my underware or at least go make a cup of tea and toast afterwards.

Yes, I, too, remember being utterly terrified of them and loving it.
That's why I hope they will teach us some respect (and that players will actually be okay with biting the dust from time to time.)

 

[Duedy]

Thargoids weren't that scary in old Elites, so I'd assume that they won't be in ED either.

Scared yet ')

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I nver bothered reading up on it, but I'm pretty sure there is some lore about making peace with them during a FFE questline or something, but I never did that. I guess they won't attack anything on sight like in Elite.

Maybe there is secret counter?

Have 24 barnacles destroyed -> ENEMY of the HIVE!!!

 

[Commander Silex]

The big difference between this iteration of elite and previous ones, and the most critical defining factor in why some people will hate any serious challenge is - no save games. It's going to make balancing things as harshly as the original game extremely difficult when ultimately death in previous elites was only really a minor setback in comparison.

 

[Sim Maker]

Honestly, I'd be a little more than disappointed if they were introduced simply as a threat to all humanity straight away.

I'd much rather see them introduced as holding a large area of territory out there somewhere, with their territory representing both massive opportunity and huge risk.

A simple pewpew invasion would be boring - once they had been defeated (and they'd have to be otherwise it would be game over,) there would be nothing left to develop them with.


Sure, have the odd ship pip up in human space after, but to just have an invasion would be, well, lame.

Oh. BELIEVE IT......this is just turning in to a shooting game now....you want to talk to them? explore their home planets? trade with them?>....Bwahahahahaha.......FD has catered to the lowest common denominator......shooting PewPew games......don't expect an intelligent Star Trek like meeting with aliens.........they will just be targets for the PewPew zombies...
.
And, it is really easy for FD to do.....they already have AI code...they just need to build new ship models and plug them in with some text boxes.............they'll get a whole season out of that........more PewPew.

 

[Steve50]

I said this over a week ago, actually I made a thread suggesting Thargoids and other aliens should be pulled from the game.

Because we know once they appear and people start dying, the forums will be flooded yet again by complainers who want them nerfed down to pure cannon fodder. and for me to see that happen to the Thargoids that I feared for so long, would be the end of it for me. So better to not have them at all, than to have them toothless and useless.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Oh. BELIEVE IT......this is just turning in to a shooting game now....you want to talk to them? explore their home planets? trade with them?>....Bwahahahahaha.......FD has catered to the lowest common denominator......shooting PewPew games......don't expect an intelligent Star Trek like meeting with aliens.........they will just be targets for the PewPew zombies...

That's really sad but seems to be true

 

[Comrade Napoleon]

Thargoids did not interdict you on every trip in old Elite, the pulled you in anarchy systems mostly on jump there and you could flee..

Cheers Cmdr's

 

[Tikigod]

Thargoids did not interdict you on every trip in old Elite, the pulled you in anarchy systems mostly on jump there and you could flee..

Cheers Cmdr's

So.... tough AI that can take you out is actually perfectly fine to have very present in the game, Frontier just need to make sure spawn trigger behaviours are appropriate?

As it's really starting to look like that is really a lot of peoples issue, whilst it has been dressed up as a overly generalised "AI is too hard" because that helps package everything up into something so vague it will immediately get support from people who in fact completely disagree with one another, a repeating source for why it's too hard seems to consistently come down to the completely nothing to do with AI aspect of the way the instances are populated and the trigger states that cause hostile NPCs to get assigned to the player.

The more it drags on the more I think we've got a potentially smaller group that outside of bugged NPC loadouts, legitimately feel that overall the new NPC behaviour and ship performances are too harsh in every way.

But then jumping into that group because it brings more 'vocal support' to their annoyance, you got a larger group that actually don't really have a major problem with the AI or NPC performance at all.... they just don't like the fact Frontier reverted to old spawn and trigger behaviours from pre-2.0 days that were a problem back then that Frontier managed to fix already but suffered a relapse with in 2.1.

 

[Tikigod]

Oh. BELIEVE IT......this is just turning in to a shooting game now....you want to talk to them? explore their home planets? trade with them?>....Bwahahahahaha.......FD has catered to the lowest common denominator......shooting PewPew games......don't expect an intelligent Star Trek like meeting with aliens.........they will just be targets for the PewPew zombies...
.
And, it is really easy for FD to do.....they already have AI code...they just need to build new ship models and plug them in with some text boxes.............they'll get a whole season out of that........more PewPew.

Thargoids as hostile has been a trait of them since their inception pretty much.

Little chance of peace with them except as temporary measures, long history of conflict with humans.

Pretty stereotypical war-like Insectoid hive society in space species.

It has nothing to do with Frontier 'Selling out' or 'catering to the lowest common denominator'.... that's just how Thargoids have been injected into the Elite universe since day 1.... for the most part that is. Even back then they gave themselves a few small cracks to wiggle about if they ever wanted to make a side extension to the box they'd established for Thargoids. But such alternative aspects would be side details to what overall is a well documented warlike society that has little interest in sitting down and talking out their feelings.

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

The Thargoids were described in the first Elite as being comparable to Deadly and Elite ranked pilots. Their ships were large, tough and well-armed but slower than the Cobra Mk3, although the small fighters they carried, Thargons, were more nimble (but fragile). Destroying the carrier deactivated the Thargons and if the Thargons were shot down it was just a matter of time to destroy a lone warship. This made them a challenge, not least because their warships could appear in large numbers, but a manageable challenge nevertheless (unless there really were a huge number of them) - and, most importantly, fun in the context of the game.
.
Since 2.1, there are reports (and I have personally experienced this) of an apparently disproportionate number of high-ranked NPCs in capable combat ships interdicting people, even when they have no cargo. Leaving aside whether this is a really a bug or a balancing issue, it is a good opportunity to see how players might react in an invasion scenario; a point that has been made above. The key aspect for Thargoid (or any other alien) encounters to be a success is that they must be fun. This can come partly from the challenge but not only this - people might be able to 1v1 a small Thargoid warship like in the first game, in a combat ship or a capable general purpose vessel, but they need to come away from the encounter with a feeling, of awe, respect and fear. The encounters should not be trivial, nor too common (unless there is ever the equivalent of an alien CZ) but should not, automatically, be devastating: they need to be survivable with proper precautions. This is a balancing issue, that FD cannot beta test in the normal way: they might actually be better off because of the recent AI introduction - they could use this opportunity to observe the performance of the AI in ships with similar capabilities to Thargoid/alien vessels and use the feedback on the forums to balance them.
.
As to the introduction of Thargoids and other aliens, I suspect that this is partly player-driven but with a variety of alternate storylines laid out based upon what, if anything, is discovered and when. It feels a bit like the early seasons of Babylon 5 at the moment: there are some odd things being found on the frontiers of human space that no one really understands; there are people and ships going missing and plenty of wrecks with no clear sign of what caused those ships to crash/explode (although I have seen rescue ships commenting that a wrecked ship seemed to have exploded from the inside), yet no one has seen a Thargoid/alien warship. If ED follows a similar pattern, war might well come but it will come with some warning that things are going wrong and are being influenced externally, only everyone who reads the forum will be in the position of Sheridan, Delenn and the Rangers. It might still be a big shock to everyone else. And that will be OK - as long as there are safe havens and some way of adapting to the change in circumstances. I just hope that any conflict will not be galaxy-wide: the fear of interdiction would spoil exploration - but a few risky sectors, which you can avoid or for which you can prepare, could make things interesting.
.
Sorry for the wall of text, thanks for reading if you made it this far!

 

[bamber]

Someone will ask for a checkbox in options
.
Aliens or Not?

 

[Sunleader]

Combat is not the Engine of this Game.
Its a small side Feature like the Air Conditioner.

No offense but we got more than enough Spaceshooters with way more options on Combat.
Which is logical cuz they are focused on Combat.


The Engine of ED is the Dream of a Large Galxy you can influence and explore.




Easy Solution for High End NPCs is to keep em where they make Sense.

An Elite Wing of Combat Ships might Interdict an Player who hauls some importand mission stuff.
But why would Bigshots like that care to interdict some random trader?

Aliens Invading can Incite Big Battles and Ravish Systems. But why should they start annoying random players in random s stems?


Pirates so starved they Attack Traders who bring maybe 6k profit while risking their 15 million credits ship?
And they are Military Elite Pilots? Ehm yeah.



If FD wants to make any sense they will put NPCs back to normal and limit the new cheating AI to Boss NPCs and High Intensity Zones where they belong.