McCoy Spaceways - Restructuring/Taranis Incident Press Release

[Julian McCoy]

Guess who!
Greetings again, Commanders.

I'll keep this brief as my new (and some old) press team members are currently contacting security to have them break down (that's why it has a force field) my office door (I've locked it) after telling me I'm not allowed to, and I quote, "embarrass myself in public like the last few times they've let me loose without vetting what I say first". (It's the medication, I swear.)

But, I digress. Here is a copy of the press packet we've circulated to our media staff in HIP 13644 and Harpuligni, as well as pledged systems, RE: the recent restructuring and the Taranis incident. Suffice to say, I am very cross with the vast majority of you. Alongside that, here are a bunch of posters made by my talented art team that all fellow pro-Thargoid and Thargoid advocacy people may like.

Sidenote that this has already been disseminated to our immediate strategic partners and allied representatives as well as all factions under the Auxiliary umbrella, but I'm posting it here for general visibility among the galactic community as a whole. Unfortunately the new PR person hasn't been settled yet (nobody wants the damn job) so I'm having to do it myself under these-

Oh, balls, they're actually breaking in.
Uhm.. Right on, Commanders!

EDIT (05/03/3310): For those asking, a copy of my manifesto is available here.

 

[XenosAurion]

Since you clearly find AX to be undesirable, and current PX content is less about Thargoid interaction and more about rescue and AX preventative measures, what kind of PX are you looking for or hoping to see in the future? For example, I would love to see the Kingfisher refurbished and used in a nebula to attempt contact with non-hostile Thargoids. Do you have a unique vision to sway human interest away from Titan destruction or "human supremacy" in order to end the war?

 

[Julian McCoy]

Since you clearly find AX to be undesirable, and current PX content is less about Thargoid interaction and more about rescue and AX preventative measures, what kind of PX are you looking for or hoping to see in the future? For example, I would love to see the Kingfisher refurbished and used in a nebula to attempt contact with non-hostile Thargoids. Do you have a unique vision to sway human interest away from Titan destruction or "human supremacy" in order to end the war?

My vision is a future where Humans and Thargoids aren't locked in this seemingly eternal conflict. Some of this is covered in my manifesto - which, I might add, has gained a significant number of new pledges in the past few days.

Imagine if our species could share technology: They would gain some of the most advanced non-Guardian shield technology that's ever been invented, we would gain self-regenerative armour plating allowing our ships to repair themselves. If the Thargoids are indeed extra-galactic, we would open up an entirely new frontier of exploration possibilities. Imagine the cultural exchange, a true cooperative study into how a sentient and advanced, hive-based civilisation is structured and how it functions. The philosophers and academics would have a field day. Not to mention the design and construction principles of Thargoid craft are almost entirely alien to our own.

At the very least, my vision is that we leave them alone and stop believing we have automatic rights to the entire galaxy. On the stage of interspecies relations, as people are well on the way to learning, might does not make right.

(Yes, I relented and my PR team vetted this one.)

 

[Serbanstein]

Since you clearly find AX to be undesirable, and current PX content is less about Thargoid interaction and more about rescue and AX preventative measures, what kind of PX are you looking for or hoping to see in the future? For example, I would love to see the Kingfisher refurbished and used in a nebula to attempt contact with non-hostile Thargoids. Do you have a unique vision to sway human interest away from Titan destruction or "human supremacy" in order to end the war?

As a more concrete proposal for Pro-Xeno content and mechanics, I've been thinking that they could reintroduce an old bug as a feature: being able to rep up with Thargoids without being notified as such. Your relationship with them is not reflected in a bar in a menu, but through the Thargoids' behavior torwards you. You feed em a lot of alloys? They might occasionally drop you some kind of unique or useful cargo in return. You protect Thargoids a lot? You might get escorted by friendly goids while passing through Thargoid space. This would result in emergent gameplay as you can now get help from Thargoids when fighting against AX players. etc etc.

 

[Kira Goto]

As someone who's had issues with the idea of directly attacking the Titans when they are here directly as a result of our own aggression(s), and watched dozens of human ships swarm all over Taranis like sharks smelling blood in the water, or the 'mindless bugs' that many like to call the Thargoids...

I agree with this.

What I saw happen to Taranis threw off the trust that I had in Aegis by a lot. I believed they were better than to use a weapon such as this, yet apparently, torturing a living creature through a literal heat death, or up to the moment its fusion core detonated by the heat it was unable to vent off which further fuelled the reaction in it until containment fields failed catastrophically, is... now entirely acceptable to them. All to end a war that is forcibly described as an attempt to make humanity go extinct, when if the Titans wanted to do that, they would not be content with keeping small pockets of space at the edge of the Bubble at a high cost. Something I have gone into myself.

This really is no better than the mycoid virus, even if for entirely different reasons - if a weapon manages to make the Proteus Wave look cleaner as a way to disable or destroy a Thargoid ship, someone should be asking themselves questions. Yet, apparently, no one at Aegis has or publicly mentioned, or issued doubts about what this weapon would actually finally end up doing when a Titan's self-repair mechanisms fail after enduring days or weeks of relentless assault by a swarm of bloodthirsty xenophobes*. Which, if you've failed to notice it, also causes the Titan to be in pain more than just a small amount.

And then leaving it in agony for another whole day while it has no other choice but to further seal its own fate to ensure as many of the Thargoids onboard it can evacuate it, that is just too much. Using weaponry as 'dirty' as this is something that I would expect of Azimuth, and their approach to achieve results no matter the cost or sacrifice, not the organization led by an individual who clearly expressed the desire to establish communication with the Thargoids while strongly opposing Salvation. And she knows about my objections, both before and after the Titan's destruction.

*Am I going to upset people by saying that? Yes. Do I care? No. Those who are concerned by that mention will already know who they are. And those who are simply acting in defense of the Bubble should really ask themselves what they are actually doing to what is inarguably another living being, all to end a war as quickly as possible without understanding why the Thargoids would be willing to sacrifice something as significant and hard to replace as a Titan without even seeming to flinch. If this war was just about us, I doubt it would have remained at the Titans staying put at the borders of our space between their and our colonies for an entire year and a half, or soon to be. But attempting to figure out their goals is seemingly not being considered any longer.

Nor what effect this could have on those who are or might be connected to the hive mind, and feel the pain that the Titan did. But I suppose those considerations are less important than needing to quickly have the Thargoids disposed of without a care for the consequences, so we can go back to beating our heads in for a cold, dead rock at the edge of a system, where not even a Thargoid would want to live.

I've... spent too much time watching what is left of Taranis now, and I still believe that doing this is a terrible mistake, not only because of how it is done. And I watched, felt, how it was in agony, right up until the end. I personally watched it happen. Even if this does not prompt a further escalation from the Thargoids - and I'm well aware that the horde has moved on to do... whatever this savage madness can be called, to Leigong - if they actually had a good reason to be in our space over pure retaliation over the Proteus Wave, they might just leave us to our devices if something worse comes along that actually threatens to wipe us out, and we would need their help.

If that something is Nemesis, or Salvation within that, we don't even have the excuse of not knowing about its existence. We didn't even have one to be as surprised by the arrival of the Titans as we were.

I'm going to stop writing here. I represent no one but myself, but I'm sure someone will manage to take issue at this, somehow. If it is because "I have the Thargoids in my head and they're telling me things to stop humans from fighting back", even though I make my own thoughts. And someone called me a bug hugger when I told everyone near Taranis what I thought of that nonsense.

You know what? I would rather be a 'bug hugger' than to be responsible for that. Which is exactly what I replied in that moment.

 

[Novarek]

This really is no better than the mycoid virus, even if for entirely different reasons - if a weapon manages to make the Proteus Wave look cleaner as a way to disable or destroy a Thargoid ship, someone should be asking themselves questions. Yet, apparently, no one at Aegis has or publicly mentioned, or issued doubts about what this weapon would actually finally end up doing when a Titan's self-repair mechanisms fail after enduring days or weeks of relentless assault by a swarm of bloodthirsty xenophobes*. Which, if you've failed to notice it, also causes the Titan to be in pain more than just a small amount.

Let's try to think rationally from the perspective of a galactic warfare that the vast majority of mankind haven't caused and is forced to clean the drity mess let by Salvation, shall we?

Titan is the source of invasion of human space, human controlled system which were absolutely not responssible of Salvation action, the Thargoid are doing absolutely no disctinction between Salvation and the rest of mankind.
Aegis has been urgently reestablished to clean the mess of Salvation, with for priority job to defend human space (and therefore the 99.99% which were absolutely not responssible and asked nothing in this war and were the war has been impossed on them).
Given that the Titan is the source of the invasion, it is a de facto primary target to save the life of the inhabitant of the invaded system and avoid that more system get invaded and causing more humans death, which again, are not responssible of Salvation action.
Question, given the context, do you think Aegis seriously have the luxury to take the time to think about a clean way to repel the invasion?