The Prismatic Imperium engaged in a nearly 2 hour long non-stop thargoid engagement last night. No losses. We couldn't kill it, but it couldn't kill us, and in that near 2 hour long engagement we refined our tactics and perfected a strategy that I will outline later today in more detail. Here are the important details:
1) Speed is life! Thargoids operate off of this phased engagement setup as they escalate hostilities as you manage to hurt them (maybe). One of these phases is a great increase of speed and agility.
2)Fighters are thargoid fighter swarm tanks. Have a fighter out at all times. Your wing will need to be capable of keeping at least 2 fighters out at a time even if it takes losses as phase 3 of the thargoid engagement is 2 swarms of fighters.
3)Point Defense can take out their missiles and deal blows to the fighter swarm. Must have for a thargoid battler with excellent PD coverage
4)Use your speed to swarm the thargoid with your wing. Our wing of 3 Cutters could fight the Thargoid for very long periods of time because our fast orbits would make it hard to focus any one of us and leave it in a near perpetual state of trying to line up a shot.
5)Play the hull decay relay. Try to engage your thargoid close to a port you can repair and rearm at as you will have to. In our 2 hour engagement I had to return to port to repair at least 4 times, also, make sure one of you are in the instance at all times. However it will heal up
6)Shields aren't useless. The fighter swarms can not penetrate shields, the thargoid can and seems to damage both. They don't seem to damage subsystems but get used to losing a canopy often. So MRPs aren't as useful as HRPs
7)Thargoids have a disruptive mass of 30 vs a cutter, once again if you have to escape, speed is life
8)We identified what seems to be about 4 phases to the engagement, roughly, with 3 modes of fighter swarms. A defensive posture where the swarms takes a spherical stance around the thargoids like super PD, an aggressive death swarm stance that we're all familiar with, and the double swarm in a later phase where it launches 2 death swarms and why you need good fighter support in your wing. The thargoid in phase 1 will use it's blasters located around it's central eye with occaisional small missil volleys of about 4 which aren't stopped by shields and will hit your hull directly. Phase 2 will see it launch about 10-20 of these at a time at a single target. This is a ship killer.Phase 3 sees a second swarm launch while phase 4 the thargoid gets faster and more agile as well as aggressive.
9) Thargoids have super ecm. Some missiles will make it through though since the range seems to be near the Thargoid itself.
(Original report by Lord Warden UntamedZer0).
1) Speed is life! Thargoids operate off of this phased engagement setup as they escalate hostilities as you manage to hurt them (maybe). One of these phases is a great increase of speed and agility.
2)Fighters are thargoid fighter swarm tanks. Have a fighter out at all times. Your wing will need to be capable of keeping at least 2 fighters out at a time even if it takes losses as phase 3 of the thargoid engagement is 2 swarms of fighters.
3)Point Defense can take out their missiles and deal blows to the fighter swarm. Must have for a thargoid battler with excellent PD coverage
4)Use your speed to swarm the thargoid with your wing. Our wing of 3 Cutters could fight the Thargoid for very long periods of time because our fast orbits would make it hard to focus any one of us and leave it in a near perpetual state of trying to line up a shot.
5)Play the hull decay relay. Try to engage your thargoid close to a port you can repair and rearm at as you will have to. In our 2 hour engagement I had to return to port to repair at least 4 times, also, make sure one of you are in the instance at all times. However it will heal up
6)Shields aren't useless. The fighter swarms can not penetrate shields, the thargoid can and seems to damage both. They don't seem to damage subsystems but get used to losing a canopy often. So MRPs aren't as useful as HRPs
7)Thargoids have a disruptive mass of 30 vs a cutter, once again if you have to escape, speed is life
8)We identified what seems to be about 4 phases to the engagement, roughly, with 3 modes of fighter swarms. A defensive posture where the swarms takes a spherical stance around the thargoids like super PD, an aggressive death swarm stance that we're all familiar with, and the double swarm in a later phase where it launches 2 death swarms and why you need good fighter support in your wing. The thargoid in phase 1 will use it's blasters located around it's central eye with occaisional small missil volleys of about 4 which aren't stopped by shields and will hit your hull directly. Phase 2 will see it launch about 10-20 of these at a time at a single target. This is a ship killer.Phase 3 sees a second swarm launch while phase 4 the thargoid gets faster and more agile as well as aggressive.
9) Thargoids have super ecm. Some missiles will make it through though since the range seems to be near the Thargoid itself.
(Original report by Lord Warden UntamedZer0).