Also potentially important to find out - though there may be an opportunity to do so sooner than that elsewhere.
Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
- Start date
I could see two outcomes of removing all of a Titan’s spires.
A - It goes into a kind of ‘weakened’ state that allows some kind of direct attack to it which may not be sufficient to destroy it, but put it into a dormant state for… however long, before it returns to an active state and maybe goes for some of the close-in systems it lost prior. Emphasis on maybe, seeing how they don’t place alerts of their own.
B. It gets very angry and starts trying to retake space around it, at risk of exposing itself(but we have no ways to really do anything about the Titans anyway, so it would be like option A without the phase to assault the Titan). Could look like the original assault phase when they arrived but with a weakened impact out to 15 ly, and less individual system strength? That would quickly invalidate the player effort though, or at least pose them with a choice to assault the Titan or try to defend the systems surrounding it instead.
C is moving to another spot in the Bubble, but that seems rather unlikely after establishing the spires to sustain itself. And said move would likely put a drain on whatever resources the spires might have been meant to replenish. So probably no happening.
There is, of course, also the D option of it just… not doing anything, and nothing happening until Frontier moves the narrative to the next step. Meanwhile the people around Taranis get a nice view of the big angry Thargoid ship just sitting there, menacingly. I think that’s probably the most likely outcome, but would be pleasantly surprised if not.
(Also rather curious how a spire location getting put back under alert might look like.)
A - It goes into a kind of ‘weakened’ state that allows some kind of direct attack to it which may not be sufficient to destroy it, but put it into a dormant state for… however long, before it returns to an active state and maybe goes for some of the close-in systems it lost prior. Emphasis on maybe, seeing how they don’t place alerts of their own.
B. It gets very angry and starts trying to retake space around it, at risk of exposing itself(but we have no ways to really do anything about the Titans anyway, so it would be like option A without the phase to assault the Titan). Could look like the original assault phase when they arrived but with a weakened impact out to 15 ly, and less individual system strength? That would quickly invalidate the player effort though, or at least pose them with a choice to assault the Titan or try to defend the systems surrounding it instead.
C is moving to another spot in the Bubble, but that seems rather unlikely after establishing the spires to sustain itself. And said move would likely put a drain on whatever resources the spires might have been meant to replenish. So probably no happening.
There is, of course, also the D option of it just… not doing anything, and nothing happening until Frontier moves the narrative to the next step. Meanwhile the people around Taranis get a nice view of the big angry Thargoid ship just sitting there, menacingly. I think that’s probably the most likely outcome, but would be pleasantly surprised if not.
(Also rather curious how a spire location getting put back under alert might look like.)
Something else I've noticed that may be of some relevance - Hupang and HR 1737 (which are Taranis' two remaining inhabited counterstrikes) each have 2% progress listed on DCoH, which is well over a thousand samples' worth each. Whilst there are quite a few amount of Thargoid kills listed for each, given the fact a lot of those kills will be Scouts that's not enough to account for this normally. So either combat in Controls got stealth buffed or something else is going on.
Is there a plan at Indra though or are a load of folk basically just hitting it without looking at what's coming?
If it's the 2nd one I'd say we skip testing at Leigong and let it happen at Indra by accident...
Leigong will be even more ready than Taranis was a couple weeks ago, but guessing it won't get any spire support.
It'd be daft to leave Leigong though, because alerts are about to get heavier (Hadad now + Indra later) and it's correct to balance it out.
Was really hoping not to end up in HIP 8033 by ourselves
If it's the 2nd one I'd say we skip testing at Leigong and let it happen at Indra by accident...
Leigong will be even more ready than Taranis was a couple weeks ago, but guessing it won't get any spire support.
It'd be daft to leave Leigong though, because alerts are about to get heavier (Hadad now + Indra later) and it's correct to balance it out.
Was really hoping not to end up in HIP 8033 by ourselves
Indra would take a couple of months to test in that way, though - with its high star density and substantial number of remaining controls, even this sort of pushback isn't likely to stop it placing 5 Alerts a week for a while, so if the attack is just an uncoordinated "hit the periphery via spires until that stops working" one (as good a plan as any until the 15 LY line anyway) it'll probably be most of the way to February before that gets checked, which is possibly enough time to get Thor first if it's only the spires which need getting.
With a finalised attack at Leigong, then you could potentially leave one of the outer Controls (Arietis YE-R b4-0 perhaps? [1]) alone in the "final 10" week, it drops from 85% to 52%, you finish it off the next week relatively easily if it turns out that they all need getting.
(This is all hypothetical on Taranis doing something interesting, of course - I'd add "E: it flees back to Cone Sector or at least away from the bubble" to the potential outcomes)
[1] If it's left as the only control, its first move would be to try to reactivate HIP 9180 (should that seem like a good idea to let it), so it has the same advantage as Aleks' suggestion while being a lot easier to clean up later.
With a finalised attack at Leigong, then you could potentially leave one of the outer Controls (Arietis YE-R b4-0 perhaps? [1]) alone in the "final 10" week, it drops from 85% to 52%, you finish it off the next week relatively easily if it turns out that they all need getting.
(This is all hypothetical on Taranis doing something interesting, of course - I'd add "E: it flees back to Cone Sector or at least away from the bubble" to the potential outcomes)
[1] If it's left as the only control, its first move would be to try to reactivate HIP 9180 (should that seem like a good idea to let it), so it has the same advantage as Aleks' suggestion while being a lot easier to clean up later.
Aren’t Indra’s spires also located somewhat inconveniently for any future cleanup effort around it? Once it loses its current batch under assault, that leaves it with the next closest one at just about 15 ly, with some 20 odd systems between(or maybe the spire is the 20th out of those, I don’t quite trust my counting). And there are a fair few inhabited ones in there. The other one… also doesn’t look positioned that well for inner system cleanup either.
(It is looking at things like this now that I realize Indra really caught a lot of territory in the early months including inhabited… more than I thought.)
(It is looking at things like this now that I realize Indra really caught a lot of territory in the early months including inhabited… more than I thought.)
Was really hoping not to end up in HIP 8033 by ourselves
I was about to say we have come this far with several hundred other systems cleared by ourselves, but it is true; even a few percent of Peripheral progress at M. Leigong would be ever so welcome from next week onward!
That itself could be a feasible combat strength test, or otherwise it seems fine if some Commanders noticed those inviting Counterstrike icons and have been running Conflict zones there all week. Considering that the attacks at M. Hadad not long ago were averaging around 15000 strength weekly, I can believe a smaller but persistent wing could cause 1000–2000 that way. It was a bit optimistic to do the same in two systems, though!
Perhaps find a quiet system, record a few Interceptor kills and take a few measurements?
Be it Spires or Control systems, I have seen now a few different lists of outcomes, all of which are longer than two and had at least one idea the others lacked! Loosely:
- Nothing
- Titan leaves
- Titan moves
- Control sphere captured?
- Thargoids leave Titan abandoned
- Explosion
- System destroyed
- Sphere of Alerts
- With what strength?
- System gains progress measure
- Ultra-high conflict zones
- Boss battle
- Rescue all remaining survivors—now that ingress has ceased, of course!
- System gains final task
- Commander self-sacrifice
- Proteus Wave
The final Matrix system is what really matters; the others are really just blocking the path, congesting the Periphery occasionally as with the four this week, where the ideal Peripheral progress would be ten high-value inhabited systems instead.
With that in mind, the final Matrix system at M. Indra is twelfth, which is a terrible position; it needs either:
- Non-Peripheral activity to undermine the position and move it up to sixth or better.
- Careful rationing of the Matrix system completion, reaching a percentage high enough for clean-up but leaving the Spire active.
- Final Ten completed via Titan rescues.
Incredibly so.
In terms of the overall picture:
- "easy" (relatively!)
Leigong: compared with all the others, incredibly fragile - no ultra-difficult systems at all, poorly connected
Taranis: tougher than Leigong, but a sparse inner core gives it too many weaknesses
Hadad: loose inner core, the final spire is the closest system so hard to lose "early", a relatively small number of ultra-difficult systems, mostly uninhabited due to earlier conventional attacks
- probably just a matter of time if it's just the spires, extremely difficult if it needs to be everything
Indra, Cocijo: dense inhabited inner cores with the spires outside the core
Thor: not as dense as the other two but the same basic pattern
- extremely difficult whether or not it's just the spires; the biggest challenge even with an 85% discount will be cutting it down to size fast enough to reach them
Oya, Raijin: dense inhabited inner cores containing the final spires. Oya is probably the easier of the two just because its core is slightly smaller and has fewer routes to place Alerts
I just completed a strength test and it gave about the same result as it would have before, so there's not been a combat strength buff. Looking over DCoH noticing a percent or two in quite a few other non-Peripheral inhabited Counterstrikes - many of which have no significant amount of kills recorded - so I wonder if something's going on there?
I can believe that some Counterstrike-progressing action exists; after all, it did once before with Titan rescues prior to update 17! Notably Hupang and HR 1737 show progress in accordance with their strengths, which matches how it worked at the time.
The INIV harvest wing is in HR 1737 at the moment, although I am quite sure of our relative discretion, and Hupang has been stored away and untouched by us for a while now!
Another easy explanation is "inhabited counterstrikes have a decent range of activities, players without 3rd-party data feeds do enough to get marginal progress over a week"
If there was something affecting counterstrikes in proportion to their difficulty and this was the dominant cause, then there's a few uninhabited counterstrikes at e.g Taranis and Thor which should be showing more than 0%.
If there was something affecting counterstrikes in proportion to their difficulty and this was the dominant cause, then there's a few uninhabited counterstrikes at e.g Taranis and Thor which should be showing more than 0%.
Victories in HIPs 19600, 20397, 22265 and 25679, Arietis Sectors FL-X b1-0 and MM-V b2-1, Col 285 Sector JG-O c6-5 and Nibelaako!
M. Indra seeks a little more Peripheral action to clear a few more Matrix systems away from its outer ten in future, meanwhile most of the systems it has boosted await completion. There is not much else to be gained that way this week—any significant boost will be ineffective without Commanders ready to act upon it. If possible, storing Titan rescues and presumably Spire items would be lovely for M. Taranis next week!
Peripheries at 06:30 14th November 3309:
Three matrix systems with 96% — Indra 21–22 Ly
Trailing:
Six systems with 12% — Thor 18–19 Ly, 1 inhabited, 1313–5889 strength
Ten systems with 8% — Raijin 23–27 Ly, 1 matrix + 3 inhabited, 368–2481 strength
Five systems with 8% — Oya 15–18 Ly, 4 inhabited, 2601–13.7k strength
Alerts:
Gliese 9035 Alert 92% — Oya 20 Ly, 556 Ls planet
Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-69 Alert 28% *29.3% — Cocijo 24 Ly, 451 Ls planet, Peripheral system
Evictions:
HIP 22496 Control 84% *85.8% — Indra 22 Ly, 500 strength
97 i Tauri Control 84% *85.1% — Indra 21 Ly, 583 strength
Lei Hsini Control 84% — Indra 21 Ly, 632 strength
Clean-up:
Arietis Sector HG-X b1-3 Control 98% — Indra 22 Ly, 16 strength
Hyades Sector ST-Q b5-5 Matrix 96% *96.2% — Indra 22 Ly
HIP 22350 Matrix 96% *96.2% — Indra 22 Ly
Arietis Sector HG-X b1-0 Matrix 96% — Indra 21 Ly
Hyades Sector FX-H a11-0 Control 84% — Indra 21 Ly, 151 strength
Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-109 Control 32% — Cocijo 22 Ly, 569 strength, Peripheral system
The notion of an empty Counterstrike system may be something Frontier has "fixed" after the debacle prior to update 17; they are still highlighted of course, but they have never shown the Counterstrike icon. I imagine that the definition of Counterstrike progress, perhaps having existed for a while until being revealed by the first Titan rescues, has been updated to exclude empty systems.
That leaves an unknown contributing action, though—for Counterstrike systems, all we can see immediately is that the Galaxy map lists Conflict zones and salvage, despite some non-Counterstrike systems also having those available.
Supposing it has an element of colour-coding, could the purple colour imply something to do with actions in Recovery systems, as opposed to being simply an indication of progress towards Recovery?
M. Indra seeks a little more Peripheral action to clear a few more Matrix systems away from its outer ten in future, meanwhile most of the systems it has boosted await completion. There is not much else to be gained that way this week—any significant boost will be ineffective without Commanders ready to act upon it. If possible, storing Titan rescues and presumably Spire items would be lovely for M. Taranis next week!
Peripheries at 06:30 14th November 3309:
Three matrix systems with 96% — Indra 21–22 Ly
Trailing:
Six systems with 12% — Thor 18–19 Ly, 1 inhabited, 1313–5889 strength
Ten systems with 8% — Raijin 23–27 Ly, 1 matrix + 3 inhabited, 368–2481 strength
Five systems with 8% — Oya 15–18 Ly, 4 inhabited, 2601–13.7k strength
Alerts:
Gliese 9035 Alert 92% — Oya 20 Ly, 556 Ls planet
Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-69 Alert 28% *29.3% — Cocijo 24 Ly, 451 Ls planet, Peripheral system
Evictions:
HIP 22496 Control 84% *85.8% — Indra 22 Ly, 500 strength
97 i Tauri Control 84% *85.1% — Indra 21 Ly, 583 strength
Lei Hsini Control 84% — Indra 21 Ly, 632 strength
Clean-up:
Arietis Sector HG-X b1-3 Control 98% — Indra 22 Ly, 16 strength
Hyades Sector ST-Q b5-5 Matrix 96% *96.2% — Indra 22 Ly
HIP 22350 Matrix 96% *96.2% — Indra 22 Ly
Arietis Sector HG-X b1-0 Matrix 96% — Indra 21 Ly
Hyades Sector FX-H a11-0 Control 84% — Indra 21 Ly, 151 strength
Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-109 Control 32% — Cocijo 22 Ly, 569 strength, Peripheral system
The notion of an empty Counterstrike system may be something Frontier has "fixed" after the debacle prior to update 17; they are still highlighted of course, but they have never shown the Counterstrike icon. I imagine that the definition of Counterstrike progress, perhaps having existed for a while until being revealed by the first Titan rescues, has been updated to exclude empty systems.
That leaves an unknown contributing action, though—for Counterstrike systems, all we can see immediately is that the Galaxy map lists Conflict zones and salvage, despite some non-Counterstrike systems also having those available.
Supposing it has an element of colour-coding, could the purple colour imply something to do with actions in Recovery systems, as opposed to being simply an indication of progress towards Recovery?
Since scythes were added (and subsequently had their hyper/interdictions nerfed) there seems to be a lot more combat aftermath and capital class distress signals present where there are large amounts of escape pods to be found with scythes jumping in trying to grab them, has anyone measured the effectiveness of handing those in?
The last-known salvage measurements I recall were from July, posted here and containing this document. At the time, both types of escape pod were worth one-fifth on the harvest strength scale, the same as with Titan rescues for each Counterstrike system prior to update 17.
If the only changes since then relate to the Scythes and signal sources, it would be still the case that five escape pods recovered from Hupang now are worth one strength for Hupang alone, a statement which highlights two possible tests for changes in strength and in affected systems.
Capital class distress signals are a thing? where? how?
Might be better than the run to a titan and hope for not too much damage before I get to hope for not a laser light show to hope for some collections.
I used to see them in Fed-owned invasions quite frequently. Wrecked cap ship surrounded by stuff. I’m not sure where else they might spawn, but it is/were dynamic signal sources in that war state.
We've not done much testing lately, just been getting on with things and noting any changes in passing, the small raise to samples required for Alerts etc., but it doesn't seem so far like salvaging escape pods and black boxes has had a boost from the ones we've been handing in as we go. Would love to be wrong about that or for a boost to happen.
All Alerts now cleared, 1137 samples delivered for Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-69 combined with rescues finished it a few minutes ago. Another successful week for Operation Kleenex, top job by everyone as usual.
All Alerts now cleared, 1137 samples delivered for Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-69 combined with rescues finished it a few minutes ago. Another successful week for Operation Kleenex, top job by everyone as usual.
Drop them off Thursday. We’re going for the final push next cycle.
Victories in Col 285 Sectors OB-E b12-4 and KM-V d2-69 (thank you PDES!), Hyades Sectors ST-Q b5-5 and FX-H a11-0, HIPs 22350 and 22496, Arietis Sectors HG-X b1-0 and HG-X b1-3, and Gliese 9035!
The Matrix blockade is dismantled at M. Indra, and 97 i Tauri and Lei Hsini remain boosted and cheap to complete. Little else of special note remains; the other systems below have progress beyond their Periphery amount, but those looking for other late one-day targets would do better looking at week 50 generally, or for that matter the Alert report.
Quietly and steadily, Operation Deleted has now everything needed for HR 1737, completing those inner inhabited systems and becoming 89% of its total—well ahead of the 50% needed by the end of this week just to be on-course!
Evictions:
97 i Tauri Control 84% *85.5% — Indra 21 Ly, 568 strength
Lei Hsini Control 84% *85.2% — Indra 21 Ly, 582 strength
Dhang Tzela Control 20% — Thor 19 Ly, 5627 strength, Peripheral system
Pegasi Sector GW-W d1-115 Control 20% — Raijin 23 Ly, 2361 strength
Clean-up:
Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-109 Control 34% *34.1% — Cocijo 22 Ly, 551 strength, Peripheral system
Thank you ever so much for doing so, and that is an excellent question! Given a high number stored, there is a case for delivering a few at first to present an obvious head-start then decide again after a day or so:
With a day to spare—that is absolutely brilliant dedication, and it comes at a such critical time where we need as few distractions from M. Taranis as possible next week, least of all anything proceeding to Invasion. Reducing your Alert list permanently is something I have wanted for a while, and I think we have everything coming together now to do exactly that!
If next week yields a Community Goal to unlock all the classes of double-engineered Frame Shift Drive, somebody is watching and meddling with the plans purposefully.
The Matrix blockade is dismantled at M. Indra, and 97 i Tauri and Lei Hsini remain boosted and cheap to complete. Little else of special note remains; the other systems below have progress beyond their Periphery amount, but those looking for other late one-day targets would do better looking at week 50 generally, or for that matter the Alert report.
Quietly and steadily, Operation Deleted has now everything needed for HR 1737, completing those inner inhabited systems and becoming 89% of its total—well ahead of the 50% needed by the end of this week just to be on-course!
Evictions:
97 i Tauri Control 84% *85.5% — Indra 21 Ly, 568 strength
Lei Hsini Control 84% *85.2% — Indra 21 Ly, 582 strength
Dhang Tzela Control 20% — Thor 19 Ly, 5627 strength, Peripheral system
Pegasi Sector GW-W d1-115 Control 20% — Raijin 23 Ly, 2361 strength
Clean-up:
Col 285 Sector KM-V d2-109 Control 34% *34.1% — Cocijo 22 Ly, 551 strength, Peripheral system
Thank you ever so much for doing so, and that is an excellent question! Given a high number stored, there is a case for delivering a few at first to present an obvious head-start then decide again after a day or so:
- A weak rate means we need an inventory list and withhold it all unless the amount reaches a possible completion.
- A middling rate may mean delivering gradually more if it would keep good pace.
- With a strong rate it would be as well just to deliver it all so Commanders can move sooner to another Maelstrom (Leigong...!).
With a day to spare—that is absolutely brilliant dedication, and it comes at a such critical time where we need as few distractions from M. Taranis as possible next week, least of all anything proceeding to Invasion. Reducing your Alert list permanently is something I have wanted for a while, and I think we have everything coming together now to do exactly that!
If next week yields a Community Goal to unlock all the classes of double-engineered Frame Shift Drive, somebody is watching and meddling with the plans purposefully.