Spire Site now Inactive

[Kira Goto]

so humans capturing and investigating them while under human control to gain some knowledge or something helpful?

Not seen a single research crew at those abandoned spire sites. Just/still looks a lot like “Shoot the Thargoid and ask questions later… or none at all”.

And sure, we’re “dealing with the invasion”, which I don’t see being rushed - given the pace so far - but also don’t see it ending through the Thargoids(or at least the Titans) being pushed out, if they’re what they are made out to be. Or are, really. And I feel like the fact that it suddenly got a lot harder to push them out or stop them from doing things holds some clue to that…

And, pf, yes, Palin absolutely would set up shop in one of those the moment he got the opportunity to. It’d be his dream playground, or at least anything short of a Titan would be.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

@Kira Goto
Things rarely happen instantly due to the nature of the game unless specifically set up that way.
Not disagreeing with the rest of it.

 

[Kira Goto]

@Kira Goto
Things rarely happen instantly due to the nature of the game unless specifically set up that way.
Not disagreeing with the rest of it.

And I’m only saying how I expect things to go. I think we’re just at some kind of intermediate stage or nearing a tipping point of the war.

Which direction will it tip into? Anyone’s guess, but mine is not in humanity’s favor.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

@Kira Goto
Agreed.

 

[Jmanis]

I don’t think those spires are going anywhere, any time soon. Though I might prefer if they were still there and occupied without the privilege of getting shot by local Thargoids.

I want something to come about from them. But I suspect in reality, they'll just stay there as permanent, inactive legacies of the war (once it's done), meanwhile as i might've posted somewhere else, we get sectors with Thargoids opened up where you can do the actual fighting in their homeland in a fairly infinite cycle of combat, if you choose.

 

[Factabulous]

I want something to come about from them. But I suspect in reality, they'll just stay there as permanent, inactive legacies of the war (once it's done), meanwhile as i might've posted somewhere else, we get sectors with Thargoids opened up where you can do the actual fighting in their homeland in a fairly infinite cycle of combat, if you choose.

Opening up some of the permit locks to reveal a bunch of spires & maybe titans would make some sense and reuse the assets, but when they decide to stop dev work on the game they presumably want to leave it without loose ends - and a winnable Thargoid war (even with a large number of systems) is a loose end.

Balancing the current war so neither side could win would make for a stable end of game point. Or else allowing us to win the 2nd Thargoid War. Either would allow fdev to shut down dev work and have a known state for any future Elite game (I don't think you'd want to leave an unpredictable war raging until the servers go away, you just know there will be the usual suspects around when Elite 5 launches saying 'that's not how it ended!')

I'm more inclined to think they'll go with their usual path of doing a reset back to where we were - so we'll just have the nebulae with the 'classic' Thargoids plus the dormant new stuff.

 

[Kira Goto]

An outcome that makes “peace” (neutral coexistence) with the Thargoids with some group(s) that don’t follow through on such an agreement - on both sides - would make the most sense to me, allowing (mostly) consequence-free AX while giving something to those less inclined toward violence(against Thargoids, at least…), would make the most sense to me.

And, of course, be the option I’d prefer most. But where things are gonna go when it ends is anyone’s guess right now…

… that said, I’m not feeling very inclined to the boring outcome of “Humans get their confirmed instead of told how stupidly idiotic they are” by pushing 8 Titans out of the Bubble and then thinking they somehow have a chance to fight them on their home turf.

 

[Rat Catcher]

… that said, I’m not feeling very inclined to the boring outcome of “Humans get their confirmed instead of told how stupidly idiotic they are” by pushing 8 Titans out of the Bubble and then thinking they somehow have a chance to fight them on their home turf.

While the NPC behaviour is controlled by simple routines, even in the 'home systems' it would only be a very short time until behaviour is catalogued and negated. Now if proper unpredictable AI was used to control NPCs, the story could become very interesting!

 

[Jmanis]

Opening up some of the permit locks to reveal a bunch of spires & maybe titans would make some sense and reuse the assets, but when they decide to stop dev work on the game they presumably want to leave it without loose ends - and a winnable Thargoid war (even with a large number of systems) is a loose end.

Balancing the current war so neither side could win would make for a stable end of game point. Or else allowing us to win the 2nd Thargoid War. Either would allow fdev to shut down dev work and have a known state for any future Elite game (I don't think you'd want to leave an unpredictable war raging until the servers go away, you just know there will be the usual suspects around when Elite 5 launches saying 'that's not how it ended!')

I'm more inclined to think they'll go with their usual path of doing a reset back to where we were - so we'll just have the nebulae with the 'classic' Thargoids plus the dormant new stuff.

I think you might've misread what I was suggesting there.

The war would be over, and permit-locked areas opened up revealing more Titans and Spire Sites in those sectors (being the Thargoid occupied regions). If we were to pull up stumps now, say...

• There'd be no war in the human bubble; Thargoids withdrawn because we seemed like too much work to conquer for <unknown alien reasons>.
• There'd be a sector with Titans/spires which we could hit up kinda like we do now, but they wouldn't threaten the bubble really.
• Even Titans in Thargoid regions would still have a canon reason to hold some humans, again for <unknown alien reasons> as humans we never really managed to get back.

But there'd be no war. You could fight in those sectors... maybe even systems would have a thargoid "raid" become a dynamic BGS state, so you would still have the occasional couple systems pop up as attacked for those that want that style of thing with invasion repulsion and station repair... but it'd function more like BGS states than the Thargoid war mechanic. So no loose ends really.

 

[Factabulous]

I think you might've misread what I was suggesting there.

The war would be over, and permit-locked areas opened up revealing more Titans and Spire Sites in those sectors (being the Thargoid occupied regions). If we were to pull up stumps now, say...

• There'd be no war in the human bubble; Thargoids withdrawn because we seemed like too much work to conquer for <unknown alien reasons>.
• There'd be a sector with Titans/spires which we could hit up kinda like we do now, but they wouldn't threaten the bubble really.
• Even Titans in Thargoid regions would still have a canon reason to hold some humans, again for <unknown alien reasons> as humans we never really managed to get back.

But there'd be no war. You could fight in those sectors... maybe even systems would have a thargoid "raid" become a dynamic BGS state, so you would still have the occasional couple systems pop up as attacked for those that want that style of thing with invasion repulsion and station repair... but it'd function more like BGS states than the Thargoid war mechanic. So no loose ends really.

Nope - that's what I thought you meant. And yes IMHO it is a loose end. But hey - opinions can differ I'd say the more likely reason that won't happen is the amount of dev effort - even reusing the assets, but we will see.

Whether fdev would care about any continuity is another thing, as it is pretty easy to recon the start for the next game whatever happens, as was done for ED

 

[Jmanis]

Nope - that's what I thought you meant. And yes IMHO it is a loose end. But hey - opinions can differ

Sure... though I guess if that feels like a loose end, then there's a lot of loose ends to stitch up still.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Balancing the current war so neither side could win would make for a stable end of game point. Or else allowing us to win the 2nd Thargoid War.

Or indeed setting it to a "gradual expansion is unstoppable" balance. It won't clear the bubble out (or even significantly affect non-Thargoid gameplay) within 10 years ... but when the next game is set in 3350/3400 and opens with humanity in a tiny mini-bubble wondering if anyone else survived it'll make sense.

Loose ends are probably good from a "sequel released in the 2040s" perspective - people will want to know what happened next by then.

 

[Factabulous]

Sure... though I guess if that feels like a loose end, then there's a lot of loose ends to stitch up still.

Do you think so?

Feds should have the Hudson situation sorted soon, Alliance & Imps have nothing much happening. Thargoids in the nebulae are unchanged for years, Guardians for millennia. Salvation is in the cloud, Aegis are just having a think about things but nothing planned. Far God acolytes have jumped away, as have the dredgers.

Seo Jin-ae is still in-play, and obviously the Titans, but other than that I guess it depends what you consider a loose end (and as Ian says - probably you want some loose ends for continuity - I'd probably want more than a couple, but I don't know what they are ).

Edit: Oh, and Raxxla - that is a loose end - how could I forget?
Edit2: But I don't consider the Winking Cat as a loose end... still thinking ..

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

I liked this thread better before the "presumed doom" snuck its way into it.
If FD took that approach, nothing woule ever be done...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Alliance & Imps have nothing much happening.

There's a lot of things there which could become a loose end with a little nudge, though - Florence Lavigny and Zemina Torval are likely to leave public (and possible private) life shortly; the Kaine/Mahon (and maybe Corcoran) factions in the Assembly got a couple of recent mentions because the conflict over Sirius is still there; Winters has a whole new legislative programme to try to get through without being assassinated by Core Dynamics (and we still don't know who got Fleischer)

At least the recent Galnet articles in that direction don't seem to be on a "cleaning up loose ends" line.

 

[Factabulous]

There's a lot of things there which could become a loose end with a little nudge, though - Florence Lavigny and Zemina Torval are likely to leave public (and possible private) life shortly; the Kaine/Mahon (and maybe Corcoran) factions in the Assembly got a couple of recent mentions because the conflict over Sirius is still there; Winters has a whole new legislative programme to try to get through without being assassinated by Core Dynamics (and we still don't know who got Fleischer)

At least the recent Galnet articles in that direction don't seem to be on a "cleaning up loose ends" line.

That's where it all depends what is considered a loose end - I would be willing to put money on 99% of players (myself included) not having a clue about any of that ^^^

If the main story of Elite 5 started with what happened to Zemina Torval in the intervening five years - would that be gripping for everyone? Maybe I am the outlier here

 

[Rat Catcher]

would that be gripping for everyone?

The blue haired Princess becoming a blue haired Prince might...

 

[Jack Winter]

Regarding doom, a quote from today's business update: "Alongside this we will continue to develop and support our portfolio of existing games, including Elite Dangerous, our F1® Manager franchise, and Realms of Ruin." https://otp.tools.investis.com/clie...regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1735583

 

[Leadfoot]

Regarding doom, a quote from today's business update: "Alongside this we will continue to develop and support our portfolio of existing games, including Elite Dangerous, our F1® Manager franchise, and Realms of Ruin." https://otp.tools.investis.com/clie...regulatory-story.aspx?cid=1725&newsid=1735583

Doom reduced by 50%.

It would be really funny if FD gave us tools to dig holes in these spires and make apartments out of them. I would really enjoy being able to land on my own landing pad and walk into my new apartment that was grown for me.

At least now I would have a place to put my stufz.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If the main story of Elite 5 started with what happened to Zemina Torval in the intervening five years - would that be gripping for everyone? Maybe I am the outlier here

Oh, in that sense, no. [1] If the clock advances the "traditional" 50 years then there's relatively few individual characters who would still be relevant or even expected to be alive; a few of the younger members of the Imperial family, perhaps Jaques, maybe a few of the younger minor characters might end up in more senior positions as a continuity thing for the three people who'll notice.

More in the sense of "why bother setting up these sources for loose ends if they're not going to give them a pull in the next year or two".

[1] Setting aside Elite 5 starting with "Imperial traditionalists led by the cyborg Zemina Torval are engaged in war against the new Emperor Hector Duval's loyalists.", which wouldn't be completely implausible for a 50 year skip.