Since those elusive pre-engineered wonder FSDs are now out there for purchase for materials, I thought there might be a lot of people who missed their shot on the Community Goal for whatever reason, and are now wondering how to get the Thargoid parts they need for the drives.
First things first: they are really worth it... Especially if you don't have access to engineering yet. This is a fully Grade 5 engineered FSD with Supercruise Overdrive capabilities, double engineered which is not possible if you do it on your own. Range is higher than any drive you can engineer yourself.
Since I'm still in the thick of it and did a lot of scavenging at the Titan Debris Fields even before that, I thought I'll share some insights about how to go about this for people who never had any Thargoid contact at all and want to have those drives.
It really isn't hard. The debris fields are no war zone or death trap. They are pretty calm and harmless. Mostly.
Dangers
Roaming Interceptors (the big flower variety of Thargoids). These are the only thing you need to worry about at these sites. It's very few and there's NPCs that engage them. They mostly keep their distance. There's no Scouts or anything else around I've ever seen. Only the cyclops variety of Interceptors.
EDIT: At the moment there are no Thargoids at Cocijo's grave in Sol, and the caustic cloud is gone too. Apart from the occasional pirate this site is safe. So if you have a Sol permit, that's where you might want to go.
Corrosive Cargo is another thing to worry about, but also not, because you need only one corrosive part. If you grab it last you can carry it directly to the material trader and you should have enough time to get it there safely.
As soon as you have corrosive cargo in your hold, your modules will start to take damage. Randomly and in mostly small increments. At some point your cargo hold can rot through and you'll lose cargo, but that really takes time. The safe thing is to visit Palin (one of those engineers) and get a corrosion resistant cargo hold, but thats not really necesary.
EDIT: Apparently Palin needs to be unlocked to buy the anti corrosion racks off him. So really just go without if you don't have him unlocked already. You'll be fine if you stick to protocol.
Thargoid Protocol
If you are actually spotted by an Interceptor there are things you can do to safely disengage. Most Thargoids follow simple rules that help tons in evading them.
Heat
Most Thargoids are having a hard time seeing (and shooting) you when your ship is below 20% heat. That means 19% or below. Like, really. They see you at 20%. It's not enough. There are no increments in this. You don't want to be somewhat cool, but at 19% or lower.
You can engineer a stealth ship easily with a low emissions power plant, but you don't have to. Take heatsinks with you though.
Caustic Buildup
There is no caustic cloud around the Debris fields (safe for Cocijo's corpse in Sol at the time of writing). The Interceptors though shoot caustic missiles at you, which won't do much hull damage, so don't panic, but instead contaminate your ship with caustic goo. Your hull bar will turn green and will deteriorate until your ship is no more.
To prevent contamination, equip caustic sinks. You can buy those at rescue ships for example (at the time of writing there's one in Luyten's Star).
The sinks take up caustic damage until full. Only then your hull gets contaminated. If you have more than one caustic sink, and one is full, the others with fill up, giving you a greater margin. You empty the bar by flushing a sink. Do that by putting all your caustic sinks into a firegroup and push the button associated with a full sink.
If you are at any point contaminated by caustic damage (hull bar is green), and you are out of caustic sinks, engage silent running until your ship is at about 150% heat or a bit more. Your modules will take damage and your ship will scream alerts, but you'll survive and the caustic contamination will burn off.
(When silent running your ship stops venting emissions and you'll be cold on the outside but build up heat on the inside. Your shield will shut down as well!)
Armour
Shield helps, but not as much as armour since interceptor shots will partially breach your shield. Pack armour. Hull reinforcements help. Just in case.
CONTACT
If an interceptor spots you, immediately use a heatsink. Makes you harder to see and shoot at. RETRACT YOUR CARGO HOLD! Then boost like no tomorrow.
While fleeing you want to engage your lateral and/or vertical thrusters, because the main cannon of an Interceptor has some travel time and many more shots will miss you if you don't travel in a straight line.
Keep an eye on your heat and pop another heatsink if you're close to 20% heat. Boost speed is a factor, so you want a fast ship for this. At 500 boost or only slightly below you're golden. Maybe plot a hyperjump if you're below. There's no disruptive mass from the Interceptor if you are hyperjumping (high-waking) as opposed to going to supercruise (low-waking).
Getting away from an Interceptor isn't really hard. Just keep an eye on your heat and run while ignoring all the disturbing flashing warnings. Don't panic. Keep cool (literally).
The Debris field and what you need
There's a lot of stuff here. Some is material and some is cargo. Most cargo here is corrosive (except Meta Alloys), materials are safe to collect and go into your storage like any other materials. You can't lose them except by spending them on something.
YOU WANT TO HAVE ALL NON-THARGOID MATERIALS BEFORE GETTING THESE TWO THINGS BECAUSE THE TITAN DRIVE COMPONENT IS CORROSIVE CARGO.
From the debris fields you need:
5-12 Propulsion Elements (Material, one pickup is 3 pieces) - How many you need depends on the size of the drive you want to have.
1 Titan Drive Component (Corrosive Cargo)
Both is relatively rare but so far I always found enough for gettng a drive by visiting just one site.
Your ship
Take any ship, maybe a medium is best because it's relatively fast and I am not sure if corrosive cargo eats smaller ships faster.
Maybe set a key for heatsinks and silent running, in case of detection.
How to
Getting to a debris field is very simple. Look at the Galaxy Map. I think you need to toggle a Thargoid war filter to see them, but there's red Titan symbols on a few systems. That's where they died and their corpses lie scattered. Go there and stop whenever there's white signals on your scanner, look at the contact list on your left panel.
If you see something you need, grab it. Best take enough Propulsion Elements first and then the corrosive Titan Drive Component.
Have everything else already collected!
(EDIT: depending on the size of the drive you want to have, you need different amounts of materials.
16-28 Tellurium
9-14 Electrochemical Arrays
11-18 Chemical Processors
12-16 Datamined Wake Exceptions
Scroll down to Happy Daze's post for the exact numbers for each drive.
If you have these, head out and find the last two pieces at the debris fields.
Good luck, Commander! Though I think you don't need it.
EDIT: For the first time today, there was an NPC pirate on the site who tried to grab a Titan Drive Component out of my hold using a hatch breaker limpet. So that's another thing you'll have to look out for. If you are out there in Open, there might be players having the same idea, who are usually a lot more effective. Be careful.
First things first: they are really worth it... Especially if you don't have access to engineering yet. This is a fully Grade 5 engineered FSD with Supercruise Overdrive capabilities, double engineered which is not possible if you do it on your own. Range is higher than any drive you can engineer yourself.
Since I'm still in the thick of it and did a lot of scavenging at the Titan Debris Fields even before that, I thought I'll share some insights about how to go about this for people who never had any Thargoid contact at all and want to have those drives.
It really isn't hard. The debris fields are no war zone or death trap. They are pretty calm and harmless. Mostly.
Dangers
Roaming Interceptors (the big flower variety of Thargoids). These are the only thing you need to worry about at these sites. It's very few and there's NPCs that engage them. They mostly keep their distance. There's no Scouts or anything else around I've ever seen. Only the cyclops variety of Interceptors.
EDIT: At the moment there are no Thargoids at Cocijo's grave in Sol, and the caustic cloud is gone too. Apart from the occasional pirate this site is safe. So if you have a Sol permit, that's where you might want to go.
Corrosive Cargo is another thing to worry about, but also not, because you need only one corrosive part. If you grab it last you can carry it directly to the material trader and you should have enough time to get it there safely.
As soon as you have corrosive cargo in your hold, your modules will start to take damage. Randomly and in mostly small increments. At some point your cargo hold can rot through and you'll lose cargo, but that really takes time. The safe thing is to visit Palin (one of those engineers) and get a corrosion resistant cargo hold, but thats not really necesary.
EDIT: Apparently Palin needs to be unlocked to buy the anti corrosion racks off him. So really just go without if you don't have him unlocked already. You'll be fine if you stick to protocol.
Thargoid Protocol
If you are actually spotted by an Interceptor there are things you can do to safely disengage. Most Thargoids follow simple rules that help tons in evading them.
Heat
Most Thargoids are having a hard time seeing (and shooting) you when your ship is below 20% heat. That means 19% or below. Like, really. They see you at 20%. It's not enough. There are no increments in this. You don't want to be somewhat cool, but at 19% or lower.
You can engineer a stealth ship easily with a low emissions power plant, but you don't have to. Take heatsinks with you though.
Caustic Buildup
There is no caustic cloud around the Debris fields (safe for Cocijo's corpse in Sol at the time of writing). The Interceptors though shoot caustic missiles at you, which won't do much hull damage, so don't panic, but instead contaminate your ship with caustic goo. Your hull bar will turn green and will deteriorate until your ship is no more.
To prevent contamination, equip caustic sinks. You can buy those at rescue ships for example (at the time of writing there's one in Luyten's Star).
The sinks take up caustic damage until full. Only then your hull gets contaminated. If you have more than one caustic sink, and one is full, the others with fill up, giving you a greater margin. You empty the bar by flushing a sink. Do that by putting all your caustic sinks into a firegroup and push the button associated with a full sink.
If you are at any point contaminated by caustic damage (hull bar is green), and you are out of caustic sinks, engage silent running until your ship is at about 150% heat or a bit more. Your modules will take damage and your ship will scream alerts, but you'll survive and the caustic contamination will burn off.
(When silent running your ship stops venting emissions and you'll be cold on the outside but build up heat on the inside. Your shield will shut down as well!)
Armour
Shield helps, but not as much as armour since interceptor shots will partially breach your shield. Pack armour. Hull reinforcements help. Just in case.
CONTACT
If an interceptor spots you, immediately use a heatsink. Makes you harder to see and shoot at. RETRACT YOUR CARGO HOLD! Then boost like no tomorrow.
While fleeing you want to engage your lateral and/or vertical thrusters, because the main cannon of an Interceptor has some travel time and many more shots will miss you if you don't travel in a straight line.
Keep an eye on your heat and pop another heatsink if you're close to 20% heat. Boost speed is a factor, so you want a fast ship for this. At 500 boost or only slightly below you're golden. Maybe plot a hyperjump if you're below. There's no disruptive mass from the Interceptor if you are hyperjumping (high-waking) as opposed to going to supercruise (low-waking).
Getting away from an Interceptor isn't really hard. Just keep an eye on your heat and run while ignoring all the disturbing flashing warnings. Don't panic. Keep cool (literally).
The Debris field and what you need
There's a lot of stuff here. Some is material and some is cargo. Most cargo here is corrosive (except Meta Alloys), materials are safe to collect and go into your storage like any other materials. You can't lose them except by spending them on something.
YOU WANT TO HAVE ALL NON-THARGOID MATERIALS BEFORE GETTING THESE TWO THINGS BECAUSE THE TITAN DRIVE COMPONENT IS CORROSIVE CARGO.
From the debris fields you need:
5-12 Propulsion Elements (Material, one pickup is 3 pieces) - How many you need depends on the size of the drive you want to have.
1 Titan Drive Component (Corrosive Cargo)
Both is relatively rare but so far I always found enough for gettng a drive by visiting just one site.
Your ship
Take any ship, maybe a medium is best because it's relatively fast and I am not sure if corrosive cargo eats smaller ships faster.
- Collector limpet controller (DON'T FORGET YOUR LIMPETS)
- Heatsinks, as many as you can carry
- Caustic sink (not necessarily needed, just in case of a really bad going Interceptor encounter)
- Hull reinforcements and armour (just in case, not necessarily needed)
- Be as fast as you can (also just in case)
- a few tons cargo space for limpets and the Titan Drive Component
Maybe set a key for heatsinks and silent running, in case of detection.
How to
Getting to a debris field is very simple. Look at the Galaxy Map. I think you need to toggle a Thargoid war filter to see them, but there's red Titan symbols on a few systems. That's where they died and their corpses lie scattered. Go there and stop whenever there's white signals on your scanner, look at the contact list on your left panel.
If you see something you need, grab it. Best take enough Propulsion Elements first and then the corrosive Titan Drive Component.
Have everything else already collected!
(EDIT: depending on the size of the drive you want to have, you need different amounts of materials.
16-28 Tellurium
9-14 Electrochemical Arrays
11-18 Chemical Processors
12-16 Datamined Wake Exceptions
Scroll down to Happy Daze's post for the exact numbers for each drive.
If you have these, head out and find the last two pieces at the debris fields.
Good luck, Commander! Though I think you don't need it.
EDIT: For the first time today, there was an NPC pirate on the site who tried to grab a Titan Drive Component out of my hold using a hatch breaker limpet. So that's another thing you'll have to look out for. If you are out there in Open, there might be players having the same idea, who are usually a lot more effective. Be careful.
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