Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
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Mind that Nu Guang is edging very slowly—it has just over 99.8%, so I imagine a dead Scythe and strongly-worded insult at the last Orthrus hiding there could be enough to complete it, but it needs at least somebody to do that!
I am most indescribably impressed with Hupang reaching 18%, even if I could not possibly advise action there in the strategic sense!
I am most indescribably impressed with Hupang reaching 18%, even if I could not possibly advise action there in the strategic sense!
Indeed; the jump to eight feels almost as if the original increase to six was based on wanting 48 Alerts and considering 8 Maelstroms × 6 Alerts each, but noticing only now that two will not be performing that for a while, thus 6 Maelstroms × 8 Alerts each.
Frontier stated a year ago that simulating a galactic war is something they have never done before, and I think that will remain the case due to not having simulated it.
Frontier stated a year ago that simulating a galactic war is something they have never done before, and I think that will remain the case due to not having simulated it.
Interesting, though doesn't really make much difference in practice to "time to threaten an interesting system".
- the closest ones are some minor rares systems near Oya, and Oya doesn't really have the perimeter to make use of a higher Alert budget.
- the next closest is Meene near Taranis, which can possibly also be contained before it gets an 8-Alert perimeter back, and even if not is still over a year out on the "unopposed" trajectory.
- everything else is at least two years out even "unopposed"
It does mean that Spire attacks are even less practical - with 8 Alerts, almost all the periphery will be Alerts (or Invasions from the previous round), so hitting a Spire to get them to 85% is of extremely marginal use given the effort involved.
I still need to check if the 8 placed Alerts are the same 8 that would be expected on that budget or if anything else has changed.
- the closest ones are some minor rares systems near Oya, and Oya doesn't really have the perimeter to make use of a higher Alert budget.
- the next closest is Meene near Taranis, which can possibly also be contained before it gets an 8-Alert perimeter back, and even if not is still over a year out on the "unopposed" trajectory.
- everything else is at least two years out even "unopposed"
It does mean that Spire attacks are even less practical - with 8 Alerts, almost all the periphery will be Alerts (or Invasions from the previous round), so hitting a Spire to get them to 85% is of extremely marginal use given the effort involved.
In this case, the change doesn't come after the disruption of a Maelstrom, so doesn't even follow the previous pattern about which times they get tougher.
I still need to check if the 8 placed Alerts are the same 8 that would be expected on that budget or if anything else has changed.
The Alerts are mostly as expected, with some of the usual preference for inhabited systems especially shown at M. Indra, and still with what appears to be a scanning limit and inhabited scanners fixating on the farthest from themselves!
Week 59, 11th January 3310
ReportEleven Alerts repelled at Cephei Sectors AF-A c21, ZE-A c8 and WO-A b4, Col 285 Sectors UH-C b13-3, OB-E b12-4, KB-O c6-2, LV-F b11-0, MG-E b12-2, SW-D b12-2 and OG-E b12-1, and Poqomathi.
Four Invasions defended at HIPs 11111, 20024 and 19198, and Nibelaako.
The defended Invasion systems will start Recovery.
Targets updated at 06:30 18th January 3310
HIP 20485 Alert 90% *90.8% — Indra 21 Ly, 27 Ls starport, 678 Ls outpost, 27 Ls planet
HIP 19157 Invasion 88% *88.2% — Indra 22 Ly, 4 ports, 1277 Ls outpost attack
HIP 30158 Invasion 84% *84.2% — Hadad 21 Ly, 6 ports, 6333 Ls 0.5g planet + 6285 Ls 0.4g planet attack
Vogulu Alert 64% *64.9% — Hadad 21 Ly, 336 Ls starport, 35k Ls planet
HIP 20527 Alert 38% — Indra 23 Ly, 595 Ls starport, 595 Ls outpost, 4805 Ls planet
HIP 20492 Alert 34% — Indra 24 Ly, 3308 Ls starport
Col 285 Sector PM-B b14-4 Alert 30% *30.4% — Hadad 21 Ly
HIP 21261 Alert 30% — Indra 20 Ly, 18 Ls outpost, 285 Ls planet
Scythia Control 30% — Indra 20 Ly, 3144 strength
HIP 22524 Control 30% — Indra 20 Ly, 3202 strength
HIP 20491 Alert 28% *28.1% — Indra 23 Ly, 1720 Ls planet
HIP 20899 Alert 26% — Indra 23 Ly
HIP 21918 Alert 26% — Indra 22 Ly, 293 Ls outpost
Lei Hsini Control 26% — Indra 21 Ly, 2921 strength
Kurumanit Invasion 18% *19.1% — Cocijo 20 Ly, 2 ports, 38 Ls outpost attack
Vistnero Alert 18% *19% — Raijin 21 Ly, 147 Ls starport, 521 Ls outpost, 147 Ls planet
Col 285 Sector ZE-P c6-16 Control 16% — Cocijo 19 Ly, 1954 strength
Col 285 Sector PM-B b14-3 Alert 14% *15.6% — Hadad 21 Ly
Obamumbo Alert 12% *12.5% — Indra 19 Ly, 10 Ls starport, 17 Ls outpost, 10 Ls planet
HIP 7338 Alert 12% — Oya 19 Ly, 674 Ls outpost
Pegasi Sector UK-L a9-1 Alert 8% — Raijin 23 Ly
Col 285 Sector KW-M c7-28 Alert 6% *6.4% — Hadad 22 Ly
HR 1737 Invasion 4% *5.9% — Taranis 9 Ly, 7 ports, 691 Ls planet + 692 Ls planet attack
Pegasi Sector RE-N a8-0 Alert 4% *5% — Raijin 21 Ly
Pegasi Sector ZQ-J a10-0 Alert 4% *4.3% — Raijin 23 Ly
Iceniguari Control 4% — Raijin 23 Ly, 2589 strength
Pegasi Sector BQ-Y d71 Control 4% — Raijin 26 Ly, 1475 strength
HIP 38718 Control 4% — Cocijo 21 Ly, 1707 strength
Pegasi Sector BQ-Y d93 Control 4% — Raijin 24 Ly, 768 strength
Pegasi Sector KC-U b3-2 Control 4% — Raijin 24 Ly, 800 strength
Pegasi Sector NN-S b4-3 Matrix 4% — Raijin 24 Ly
Pegasi Sector PE-N a8-2 Control 4% — Raijin 23 Ly, 931 strength
Pegasi Sector UK-L a9-2 Control 4% — Raijin 23 Ly, 1025 strength
Sugalis Control 4% — Raijin 23 Ly, 2375 strength
HIP 20916 Control 2% *2.9% — Indra 17 Ly, 10.6k strength
Dhang Tzela Control 2% *2.9% — Thor 19 Ly, 6826 strength
Hupang Invasion 2% *2.9% — Taranis 9 Ly, 1 port, 142 Ls outpost attack, 106 Ls planet damage
HIP 113535 Control 2% *2.4% — Raijin 20 Ly, 4257 strength
Montioch Invasion 2% *2.2% — Hadad 13 Ly, 1 port, 1076 Ls outpost attack
Pegasi Sector JH-U b3-9 Alert 2% *2.1% — Raijin 20 Ly
Khwal Alert 2% *2.1% — Cocijo 22 Ly, 67 Ls outpost, 89 Ls planet
HIP 20419 Control 2% — Indra 18 Ly, 8896 strength
HR 1354 Control 2% — Indra 18 Ly, 9183 strength
Iduni Alert 2% — Raijin 22 Ly, 423 Ls outpost, 1754 Ls planet
HIP 20679 Control 2% — Indra 18 Ly, 9075 strength
HIP 8525 Control 2% — Oya 18 Ly, 8970 strength
Mahlina Control 2% — Cocijo 21 Ly, 3845 strength
Col 285 Sector SS-H b11-3 Alert 2% — Cocijo 23 Ly
Col 285 Sector QB-E b12-2 Control 2% — Thor 19 Ly, 2364 strength
Col 285 Sector UH-C b13-2 Control 2% — Thor 21 Ly, 1603 strength
Notes
The Alert report lists predicted attackers.
Week 58, 4th January 3310
ReportTwenty-three Alerts repelled at Arietis Sectors LM-V b2-3, HG-X b1-3 and HG-X b1-0, Cephei Sectors AV-Y b2 and AF-A c22, HIPs 4041 and 21125, Hyades Sectors PI-S b4-2 and ST-Q b5-5, Col 285 Sectors JA-G b11-3, SS-H b11-4, OC-V d2-79, WY-F b12-0, EA-Q c5-7, NG-E b12-3, SH-B b14-2, RH-B b14-0, YT-F b12-6, ZT-F b12-4 and KW-M c7-31, Pegasi Sector OI-S b4-4, Gliese 9035 and Nu Guang.
Three Invasions defended at Aowicha, Vocovii and HIP 18075.
The defended Invasion systems will start Recovery.
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Another possibility is that it represents the production capabilities of the Spires coming online. In that case we might see another jump to 10 Alerts somewhere around February 15th.
Though if so it's not something which can reasonably be prevented by attacking Spires - Indra with 3 can still place a full set, everywhere with fewer doesn't have the perimeter to place more than the original 5 and won't for a while.
Would that such worked both ways! It is an interesting idea which gets quite upstaged by the Alerts not also reducing for Maelstroms with fewer Spires, trivially with M. Taranis and M. Leigong but notably also M. Oya. Without the periphery band widening a bit, it would mean strategically that all activity needs to focus upon a single Maelstrom and clear enough non-peripheral systems such that the next Alerts are in the middle and leave the Spire exposed.
Without such an effect present and also designed to reach zero Alerts, I see still no plan for the moment. I think it is as simple as needing the next update before proceeding!
Indeed, changing rules isn't funny.
That's why we need returning to very first version of war, where whole community combined, and fueled by new patch hype was able to defend maybe 1 system.
Agreed. In more general terms:
- Oya and Thor have a small enough perimeter that they can't use their entire Alert budget, so keeping them that way is probably valuable out to a fairly large timescale
- Leigong and Taranis are also in that position but can't be contained yet; whether they're sparse enough in general to be contained before their perimeter gets large enough will depend on various factors but is months away from needing any decision
- the remaining four appear to have no benefit at all to fighting them at this distance rather than 10 LY further out and also no way to stop that happening anyway in the long run.
With Oya's local defence remaining solid the only current strategic question is whether it's also worth keeping Thor contained at its current size; if it is, then there are possibilities to optimise that containment quite a bit and theoretically get it down to just 4-5 Alerts/week again.
Sorry, that's a straw man.
It's obviously a very different situation if you're starting something entirely new and have to see how it works out, or if something has been going on for over a year already and now you decide that the players are getting a little too successful in your opinion and you are in no mood to concede any kind of victory to them.
Allowing the already-modified premise that Titans can attack, such a change is also unnecessary because the strength gradients also already do that! Ask oneself what are Hupang and HR 1737, and we see the answer is exactly that goal already, single difficult systems. Perhaps the distance needs to be closer to 12 Ly before the defensible amount rises above one, but the point is that it exists without any meddling required.
There is a problem with that reasoning which emerges eventually over time, although it occurs regardless of the war rule iterations thus far—the stated goal is that attacks occur close to the threshold for being indefensible, but this also pushes Commanders one of two ways:
- Defend farther out where systems are defensible.
- Attack so far in that the opposing attacks stop.
Mind that such an idea addresses only the case of single systems being given a common well-designed strength; some Commanders also like to consider the wider strategy, which has a discouraging state at present. Considering the Control systems to be a form of population and the type of differential equation which would model that over time, possible strategic goals would exist if choices of steady states existed, but they do not—not even the extinction state!
As someone who hasn't played Elite since late October (BG3 and Starfield were a thing) and is slowly dipping a toe back in to the Elite pond.
Would I be right in summarizing the recent war progress as:
1) Fdev has implemented some rules changes that have essentially halted and reversed the progress that was made?
2) Are we of the general opinion that this has been done to force the players into a 'holding pattern' whilst possible new content is worked on (obviously hampered by the current state of things over at Fdev re poor financial performance and redundancies etc.)
Sorry, I haven't been paying attention, other than the occasional glance at the forums and the odd twitch stream, and wanted to get a quick and dirty a precis of the current position.
I left in late Oct/early Nov with the carrier and myself out in Colonia, so at some point soon I need to spend a weekend jumping back to the Bubble.
Would I be right in summarizing the recent war progress as:
1) Fdev has implemented some rules changes that have essentially halted and reversed the progress that was made?
2) Are we of the general opinion that this has been done to force the players into a 'holding pattern' whilst possible new content is worked on (obviously hampered by the current state of things over at Fdev re poor financial performance and redundancies etc.)
Sorry, I haven't been paying attention, other than the occasional glance at the forums and the odd twitch stream, and wanted to get a quick and dirty a precis of the current position.
I left in late Oct/early Nov with the carrier and myself out in Colonia, so at some point soon I need to spend a weekend jumping back to the Bubble.
A possible finer-detail problem with the strength gradient idea is that it currently applies to human offence much more than it applies to Thargoid offence
The cost of retaking a shell of systems is roughly 1/N^3 per system, so roughly 1/N per shell as you get further out.
But the cost of holding a shell is - once you get far enough out that the Maelstrom is able to use its full Alert budget, anyway - solely proportional to 1/N^3 because the amount of attacks doesn't depend on the system strength at all.
So you always end up with a situation where A/oN ~= 1/dN^3 and neither side can make further progress [1] - the question is simply where that boundary ends up:
- sufficiently close to the Maelstrom that zero systems is stable
- at some distance the Thargoid expansion might plausibly reach in months to years
- sufficiently far from the Maelstrom that the Thargoid expansion will only halt after it has eaten the bubble
[1] A = number of Alerts, N = distance, o and d constants to represent that offensive and defensive actions to systems with nominally the same strength as measured in samples aren't of completely equivalent difficulty in practice.
1) That's the overall effect, yes - the Thargoids are now retaking approximately ten systems a week and this week's change will probably accelerate that slightly further.
2) I think it's probably fair to say that they didn't want to risk a situation where sufficiently coordinated attacks led to the war de facto ending in a few months time with eight contained Maelstroms. I'm not sure if that would actually have been possible ... but five was definitely on the table. Whether that's because they have more content to roll out and needed to ensure there was still a war to see it, or because they want the Thargoid presence to be a permanent feature more generally in its current form, we won't find out until later.
I don't think "holding pattern" is really the intent - the war state is now a very long way from equilibrium and today's changes pushed it even further out - if they'd just wanted a return to the pre-U17 stalemate where many Maelstroms were already in a long-term holding pattern then smaller changes would have sufficed and this week's certainly wouldn't have been necessary.
The problem I think isn't actually the current week-by-week situation:
- the Thargoids are on the attack, gaining systems every week
- strong defences are required to hold what ground can be protected (including Invasions, and lots of people like Invasions)
- there's still room for carefully-placed counter-attacks to blunt the Thargoid advance at the strategic level
That's far more interesting than a static situation where the frontlines at some Maelstroms don't move for months on end.
The problem is that since the last time that was the situation (last May) we've gained a lot more knowledge about how the Thargoid advance works - most crucially, what the negligible consequences were of their previous greatest extent! - and know that there isn't actually a threat on any meaningful timescale. Shaking up that assumption while also making it remain clearly possible for players to respond to the threat and prevent it might be rather difficult for Frontier at this stage.
(From an experimentalist point of view, arguably the next interesting test is just to keep falling back indefinitely and see if there's any maximum size beyond which Frontier will cut the Thargoid's strength again, as they did back in March and May)
So, caught up on everything now, and even I have to say I’m starting to lose track of things.
In what sense? Simply, whether any of this is intended as a direct consequence of ‘lore’ stuff or just artificially extending the lifespan of a - at this point - somewhat stale war which has little happening in it in terms of story progression(on a day-by-day or even week-by-week basis), so it just feels like you’re fighting the system for… no clear goal.
We don’t have any clue what the Thargoids are here for besides some superficial “territory conquering” stuff, abducting humans to a yet unknown end(maybe not much longer?), and… that’s about it so far. To my memory, at least. Didn’t sleep too well so some of it might be off right now.
And without that, there is no way of seeing how the Thargoids could be swayed to maybe not be bothering us in our home space any longer through other means than ‘Continue shooting them until they leave or they really decide they’ve had enough of us*’. I’d be more interested in an outcome that isn’t just the same old “Shoot the problem until it goes” of the last few years, whenever Thargoids attacked a human-occupied system.
But for that, Frontier would have to actually move the story along. Which it basically isn’t when there’s some 8-10 GalNet articles a month, or not too far from it when most recent weeks frequently just had two of them and one is “This important character has gotten an invitation to go somewhere, now wait until you hear about it”. (… and then the followup is “Actually, it happened but we’re not gonna say scrap about it, so wait even more”.) Or Imperials building crappy gold statues to distract the masses.
*An idea I’m not entirely sure I believe in myself, but it’s more interesting to entertain the thought than that they only have eight Titans in total. Or that there is some other focus they have but it’s clearly not at all apparent or something that we really could do anything more than speculate wildly on, in the absence of facts and information.
So… my ranting about the whole slow story aside, basically, I’m saying that this doesn’t feel like an ‘interesting’ change when there is no kind of backdrop to it that would logically explain this. No mentions in GalNet about the effect active spires have for a Titan, those without them don’t even become ‘lethargic’ (while remaining invulnerable in that state), and we’re still stuck fighting something that is beginning to strongly feel like it lacks a purpose.
So at first it was “8 alerts?” and then… eh, yeah, this doesn’t mean much unless the story also moves along with it. Or maybe I’m just a bit worn out on Elite at the moment and have needed some distance from the game(as I’ve… not played it in a few days at least, going off memory). I still want the story to move at a slightly faster pace than “Slower than a glacier pre-industrial era”, though. Surely that is not so much to ask.
In what sense? Simply, whether any of this is intended as a direct consequence of ‘lore’ stuff or just artificially extending the lifespan of a - at this point - somewhat stale war which has little happening in it in terms of story progression(on a day-by-day or even week-by-week basis), so it just feels like you’re fighting the system for… no clear goal.
We don’t have any clue what the Thargoids are here for besides some superficial “territory conquering” stuff, abducting humans to a yet unknown end(maybe not much longer?), and… that’s about it so far. To my memory, at least. Didn’t sleep too well so some of it might be off right now.
And without that, there is no way of seeing how the Thargoids could be swayed to maybe not be bothering us in our home space any longer through other means than ‘Continue shooting them until they leave or they really decide they’ve had enough of us*’. I’d be more interested in an outcome that isn’t just the same old “Shoot the problem until it goes” of the last few years, whenever Thargoids attacked a human-occupied system.
But for that, Frontier would have to actually move the story along. Which it basically isn’t when there’s some 8-10 GalNet articles a month, or not too far from it when most recent weeks frequently just had two of them and one is “This important character has gotten an invitation to go somewhere, now wait until you hear about it”. (… and then the followup is “Actually, it happened but we’re not gonna say scrap about it, so wait even more”.) Or Imperials building crappy gold statues to distract the masses.
*An idea I’m not entirely sure I believe in myself, but it’s more interesting to entertain the thought than that they only have eight Titans in total. Or that there is some other focus they have but it’s clearly not at all apparent or something that we really could do anything more than speculate wildly on, in the absence of facts and information.
So… my ranting about the whole slow story aside, basically, I’m saying that this doesn’t feel like an ‘interesting’ change when there is no kind of backdrop to it that would logically explain this. No mentions in GalNet about the effect active spires have for a Titan, those without them don’t even become ‘lethargic’ (while remaining invulnerable in that state), and we’re still stuck fighting something that is beginning to strongly feel like it lacks a purpose.
So at first it was “8 alerts?” and then… eh, yeah, this doesn’t mean much unless the story also moves along with it. Or maybe I’m just a bit worn out on Elite at the moment and have needed some distance from the game(as I’ve… not played it in a few days at least, going off memory). I still want the story to move at a slightly faster pace than “Slower than a glacier pre-industrial era”, though. Surely that is not so much to ask.
Thank you for taking the time to post a clear and concise reply!