Stop hiding Thargoids behind USS - add Thargoid NPC's like "pirates"

[Kaocraft]

If the threat comes to you it needs to be scaled to almost any player likely to encounter it. But if the player travels to it the threat can be scaled up to impossible.

If the player drops into a USS they are opting in. If the player knowingly makes a jump to a known to be dangerous system the whole system can effectively be one big high threat level USS with hyperdictions on the way in & other challenges as some cor alien base is approached.

We have a galaxy filter for choosing civilisation, we have a warning mechanism for jumping into anarchies (where the seriousness of the warning is undermined by every empty system being classed as an anarchy government rather than 'none'). The tools are already in place.

It sounds like we're generally in agreement here. The broad concept of "opting in" is based on the education of the player. IF a player doesn't know what a Non-Human Signal Source is, they're gonna have to jump into one to find out, or else be told by someone else. Same could just as easily apply to systems invaded by Thargoids, or Anarchy systems, or whatever. As long as it's reasonably POSSIBLE for the player to know what they might be getting into, then it should be acceptable to put any kind of threat or reward or THING in there, so long as there is a way to anticipate it and avoid it (edit: or seek it out for that matter). We need to move past the idea that every system should be functionally the same just with different USSs. Which system you jump into should be just as consequential a decision as which USS you drop into.

 

[Riverside]

It sounds like we're generally in agreement here. The broad concept of "opting in" is based on the education of the player. IF a player doesn't know what a Non-Human Signal Source is, they're gonna have to jump into one to find out, or else be told by someone else. Same could just as easily apply to systems invaded by Thargoids, or Anarchy systems, or whatever. As long as it's reasonably POSSIBLE for the player to know what they might be getting into, then it should be acceptable to put any kind of threat or reward or THING in there, so long as there is a way to anticipate it and avoid it (edit: or seek it out for that matter). We need to move past the idea that every system should be functionally the same just with different USSs. Which system you jump into should be just as consequential a decision as which USS you drop into.

Yes absolutely. Give systems a threat level indicator that indicates the expected challenge in the same way USSs do. Threat level zero means there is a remote likelihood of a pirate if you are carrying cargo (ie same as an unpopulated system now), threat 7 is going to be a significant Thargoid presence or equivalent threat, again just as a USS indicates now but for the entire system.

I'm thinking of this with the Thargoid menace in mind but the basic idea would work for any system & could be manipulated via the BGS as well as or instead of security level. Most normal systems in the bubble might be threat 1 (high security), 2 or 3.

 

[Faded Glory]

We need to move past the idea that every system should be functionally the same just with different USSs. Which system you jump into should be just as consequential a decision as which USS you drop into.

The thing is, often it's not about the system but about what a player is doing.

If a player is carrying cargo, they become a magnet to NPC pirates, who will otherwise ignore them totally. Likewise if a player has a mission they are more likely to be attacked by NPC's (although that's still just RNG).

While a system could certainly have an additional Thargoid or other external threat level, in principal most systems are the same in terms of how 'dangerous' they are, and system security level doesn't represent that at all, it simply represents how fast you will get assistance from system security, if at all.

All of this refers to PvE, so again in principal a system hosting a CG might have an elevated risk for the duration of the CG, however that would only apply to players in open mode.

In older games (FE2), there were anarchy systems that guaranteed you would be attacked a lot between jumping in and getting to the destination station. They were the equivalent to RES or CZ in this game as places you could go to ensure wall to wall combat. While this game could do that, those systems would likely need to be hand crafted and removed from the BGS so that they remained a threat.

There's also no real reason why an anarchy system should or would be dangerous in this game. Here it either means the system is empty, or is controlled by an anarchy faction, and unless you were hostile to that faction, they'd have no reason to attack you. This subject was discussed a lot early on, but it's simply not the model that FD have created, which is much more along the lines of what you are doing determines (along with RNG) the threat level, not so much where you are going.

 

[Kaocraft]

The thing is, often it's not about the system but about what a player is doing.

If a player is carrying cargo, they become a magnet to NPC pirates, who will otherwise ignore them totally. Likewise if a player has a mission they are more likely to be attacked by NPC's (although that's still just RNG).

While a system could certainly have an additional Thargoid or other external threat level, in principal most systems are the same in terms of how 'dangerous' they are, and system security level doesn't represent that at all, it simply represents how fast you will get assistance from system security, if at all.

All of this refers to PvE, so again in principal a system hosting a CG might have an elevated risk for the duration of the CG, however that would only apply to players in open mode.

In older games (FE2), there were anarchy systems that guaranteed you would be attacked a lot between jumping in and getting to the destination station. They were the equivalent to RES or CZ in this game as places you could go to ensure wall to wall combat. While this game could do that, those systems would likely need to be hand crafted and removed from the BGS so that they remained a threat.

There's also no real reason why an anarchy system should or would be dangerous in this game. Here it either means the system is empty, or is controlled by an anarchy faction, and unless you were hostile to that faction, they'd have no reason to attack you. This subject was discussed a lot early on, but it's simply not the model that FD have created, which is much more along the lines of what you are doing determines (along with RNG) the threat level, not so much where you are going.

You have accurately described the shortcomings of the game, yes.

 

[Jmanis]

Thing is... there's no evidence Thargoids *can* travel in a supercruise-like FTL manner.

 

[Kaocraft]

Thing is... there's no evidence Thargoids *can* travel in a supercruise-like FTL manner.

No need for them to appear in Supercruise necessarily. It would probably take away a lot of their mystique if we could see them just bumbling around in Supercruise. But if you're in a Thargoid-occupied system there should be a chance that they could drop in on you at any time in normal space, including when you drop into a "threat 0" degraded emissions signal source, or on approach to a planet surface, or whatever. And maybe they could still hyperdict us when we're in Supercruise by pulling us into witchspace.