I'm cautiously welcoming of this news, though I think it should still be reasonably easy to avoid combat with Thargoids if a player isn't interested in it or particularly adept at combat. Especially for newer players in beginner ships... After all, not everyone who helps in a war fires a gun.
What would be nice is if some other ways of contributing to the war effort were available besides fighting 'goids directly.
Some ideas I've come up with:
How about stealth recon missions? Players are tasked to sneak into Thargoid occupied space and scan Thargoid 'command ships' returning with precious intel for the war effort? Extra credits if the mission is completed undetected.
We already have source and return missions, but an interesting variant would be to task a player with visiting a loosely specified location to obtain special resources. Not from some random guy in an USS nearby (why can't they bring them?) but maybe to find some exotic material found in a ring around a planet in a nearby system, and which is not found anywhere else. The mission wouldn't even necessarily specify the required system, just give a maximum distance from the mission giving system, so that maybe a handful of systems have to be searched. The player would then need to use the new exploration and mining tools to find and retrieve it.
Similarly, special items useful for the war effort (black boxes, special tech items, recent Thargoid crash sites with related bug tissue samples etc) could be made available for recovery on planet surfaces, with a risk of encountering Thargoid scavengers after the same items. Again, these might be specified only in terms of 'a nearby system thought to be within x ly', and the new scanners used to find the correct planet and coords of the required items.
We can already recover escape pods from within breached stations, and this should have a visible effect on the local war effort. Doubtless there will be escape pods to rescue from combat zones as well, since we know the bugs like to scoop these up for themselves, given half a chance. This could be totally unscripted (ie just scoop and hand in) or part of some kind of specific mission. I see this one being particularly suited to a wing mission as having cover to distract the 'goids would be very helpful on a mission of this kind.
Another fun idea that just occurred to me, would be to get information about a Thargoid spy device hidden inside an asteroid (you can see where I'm going with this one). The exploration tools would pick up a special Thargoid signature within an otherwise barren section of a planetary ring so that the mining pulse wave scanner was able to pin down the specific asteroid required fairly easily. Said asteroid would have to be split open and the concealed Thargoid device brought back to the mission giver. To add spice, the device might have corrosive effects like Thargoid probes etc.
Have commanders any other suggestions for novel mission types associated with the new Thargoid threat?
