But dealing with the mess above the port is part of the fun and challenge. As is trying to judge when a good moment to take off is, assuming the AI don’t decide to patiently wait nearby to dogpile on you as you take off(only to then immediately scatter around and start attacking any NPCs present).
Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
- Start date
Well they always dog pile on me if I try it these days fdev has really upped the difficulty in the war since I last played. Used to be able to wait for them to scatter and go after npcs but more and more I'm getting 4-5 hunters who just sit and stare at me scanning over and over again waiting for me to pop my head up like a whackamole. I kill whatever hyperdicts me but I'm not messing with the craziness that's above the port especially as a solo.
Why walk willfully into a trap if you know how to avoid it and have 4-500 lives in your care? Now that I'm using ecms the relog part is not really needed I guess but the rest of the strategy works really well.
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At least it has enough pads to not get glitched out and deny docking, like the outposts.
That is fair, but it’s still a hell of a mess regardless. I found two people daring enough to venture out into it in open… I think the first one decided they wanted none of that. The second one started to fight in their Corvette for a short time(saw them twice here and there), also didn’t see them again afterward.
Things I now remember… Frontier should still fix the interceptor rotation bug, big station guns can actually hit Thargoids back surprisingly hard(at least they can kill Scythes pretty quickly without needing support, and exert a Cyclops’ heart), and they make for a neat visual setpiece to drop in on.
I also feel somewhat accomplished at managing to take down a Cyclops in that madness but it was rather persistent in chasing me so I had a relatively easy time of luring it away from the main chaos. Except for the giant flock of Scouts but some FA off flying mostly ‘fixed’(circumvented) that issue…
Don’t think I am going to expect to find other players there in open and might just stick to solo instances. Unless I go into a private group with that alt, I guess.
Things I now remember… Frontier should still fix the interceptor rotation bug, big station guns can actually hit Thargoids back surprisingly hard(at least they can kill Scythes pretty quickly without needing support, and exert a Cyclops’ heart), and they make for a neat visual setpiece to drop in on.
I also feel somewhat accomplished at managing to take down a Cyclops in that madness but it was rather persistent in chasing me so I had a relatively easy time of luring it away from the main chaos. Except for the giant flock of Scouts but some FA off flying mostly ‘fixed’(circumvented) that issue…
Don’t think I am going to expect to find other players there in open and might just stick to solo instances. Unless I go into a private group with that alt, I guess.
They seem even harder to pull away from the large stations. Any time they reach ~3km they turn around, whereas it seemed more like ~10km at the outposts.
I had the impression that Cyclops insisted on following me to around 10km of the station, then I circled with it at around 5-8, only chased by the giant Scout swarm. But one case is hardly something to judge it by… I can say it seems simpler to not have the interceptor decide to head straight back to the core of the chaos in open space because you have more directional freedom as opposed to a surface port where it’s not exactly as possible to circle around it.
Not gotten any extensive experience with the outpost scenario, so I’ll just have to take your word for it there. (And see no reason not to.)
Not gotten any extensive experience with the outpost scenario, so I’ll just have to take your word for it there. (And see no reason not to.)
Well, 97 i Tauri has definitely seen a good attempt at fighting its invasion off, but what are the chances it is going to clear? ~49% in just over two days for that would be… rather optimistic, even with other high progress invasions clearing out soon.
In other news, I absolutely slapped a Glaive that hyperdicted me on my way into HIP 11111 when I felt like taking the alt out for a spin. It had so little time to exist once it aggrod properly that my modshards didn’t even go below 80%. Honestly felt a little sorry for it.
In other news, I absolutely slapped a Glaive that hyperdicted me on my way into HIP 11111 when I felt like taking the alt out for a spin. It had so little time to exist once it aggrod properly that my modshards didn’t even go below 80%. Honestly felt a little sorry for it.
It's unlikely to get done despite being our current target and (briefly) the subject of a test at the weekend with XSF. We're only doing it because large damaged stations are rare, they are usually the last thing to happen and Invasions normally get cleared before they do. It's the toughest test of a rescue build.
Our alt target for anyone not wanting to do the riskiest rescues is HIP 20527, which is doing ok, has more time on it and is more newbie friendly.
How much any of it will matter after U18 if the war is going to end and what will happen to the systems controlled by the Titans when the latter are compromised is another story. This could all be null and void next week.
Yeah, I definitely made that experience doing… four, maybe five runs there in my Cutter. Usually I’d appreciate station defenses keeping some of the local Thargoids busy but when it results in just an absurdly chaotic madness outside with more than just occasional spawns of a Hydra, two Medusas, and whatever frequency the Basilisks spawn outside with, when the Scythes are shot down… it makes the other two damaged port scenarios look absolutely tame in comparison.
No idea how far the added chaos around those orbitals is intended(possibly, considering that there’s loads more people trying to be evacuated compared to the other two station types), but at least the going out part my ship did well in that limited sample size(seem to have lost no passengers and shield only dropped right at the edge of the danger zone once).
Going in… let’s just say that not enough people were interested in that insanity for me to really find an ongoing instance. But the S&R NPCs generally just stopped even making it into the station at some point. I chose to replace the remaining shield reinforcement with another hull for this case anyhow.
But, yeah, no telling where this’ll go from here. I doubt that unless the Thargoids from around a Titan all just stand down or retreat after it is brought down, disabled or leaves (not so much of its own accord), those systems would immediately just clear up though. And I wonder what’ll happen to the spires, are they just going to remain as vestiges of the war, defunct and slowly deteriorating, or remaining on standby forever until some Thargoids return to give it a bit of a nudge?
I guess it’ll be interesting no matter what happens. And the war has certainly lacked that a bit in these ‘downtime’ periods of its story. I suppose I should be glad it is picking back up, despite some of my objections about attacking the Titans directly(which are in part related to the captives that remain onboard).
For leaving the station I go into silent running, pop a heat sink, get out the door and keep boosting, cycling the ECMs until I can jump away, dropping more heat sinks as necessary to counteract silent running, using the SFN as well when necessary then turn off silent running just before the jump. Low Emissions PP on the Conda means I use 2 heat sinks at most, usually. Juggling your heat sinks, silent running, ECMs and Shutdown Field Neutraliser while boosting away is the hardest part.
After that you will likely get the obligatory hyperdiction by Scythes on your first jump out and once you evade that you're home free.
I think it's because the weapons at the Coriolis are more effective than at an Outpost or Ground Port so they kill a Scythe faster, which ramps up the instance sooner.
Yes, I hope things like the captives and other story developments are not conveniently forgotten because "players want the war to be over". For month we've been led to be concerned about the welfare of the million of abductees and now all of a sudden - we're not?
Which brings us to the weapon itself. The question has already been asked on Galnet News Digest and by many players, and that question is - Is this weapon any more acceptable than the Mycoid Virus?
There's not the level of dishonesty that surrounded Mycoid, where Jameson was lied to about what it would do and killed before he could blow the whistle on INRA.
This time we are told, up front, what this weapon is going to do. But what it does is just as nasty.
Attacking the Thargoids at the molecular level, deliberately destroying another life form molecule by molecule, that not only sounds absolutely evil but extremely painful and unnecessarily sadistic. It comes to something when even some AX pilots have said this is going too far.
Alba Tesreau is the one puzzling me at the moment. For years she hated the way the superpowers who funded Aegis wanted her to make weapons all the time under the constant threat of withdrawing their funding if she didn't. She often spoke out saying that we should be doing more to understand them and communicate. In the voice logs where Seo Jin-Ae told us the abducted people are being held inside the Titans she also says Alba Tesreau has been helping her try to understand the Thargoid signals picked up by her implant by using musical instruments as an analogy. And now all thoughts of communiction and understanding appear to have gone out the window and here she is doing a massive U turn and casually going along with the nanite weapon?
I hope there is a good reason for this and they haven't just forgotten her character in the desire to wrap up the war.
Any heat or electromagnetic weapon essentially has that effect too, though ... as will the various corrosive Thargoid weapons. Your basic choices for weapons are "turn their molecules into something less useful" or "move their molecules further apart than normal" and neither is particularly pleasant.
I suspect one of the main concerns with INRA was not the method as such but the potential that it could be wiping out the Thargoids entirely; something which is obviously not a possibility now as we've learned more about how widespread their territory is. It also seems likely to be considerably less effective than the Mycoid - there, a single torpedo was able to take out an entire Thargoid ship, whereas here the expectation seems more "maybe it will damage their heat vents and get them to retreat ; if they don't, then enough torpedoes at once might eventually destroy them."
Which does leave plenty of things which can go wrong, of course:
- the Thargoids might actually resist being shot at by effective weapons hard enough to make it impractical to do so
- the converted matter might not be inert
- as with the last attempt to weaponise Guardian technology against the Thargoids, the Thargoids might already have seen it and have a defence ready
I expect there's two considerations, from the perspective of the superpowers funding Aegis:
1) If all we can actually do when we rescue them is quarantine them indefinitely it's not necessarily worth the extreme risks of running the rescue trips in the first place - especially since those pilots could be running evacuations from the current front lines and save more people that way even in the short term.
2) If the Scythes are capturing new abductees faster than they can be rescued, which seems likely, then destroying the Titans now loses millions of current abductees but potentially prevents tens of millions of future abductees, as well as whoever might be killed in the existing waves of attacks outside the Titans. Deliberately prolonging the war in the hope that a much more efficient rescue operation might eventually be possible is likely to lead to far more deaths overall.
As far as communication goes ... at the moment, there's an argument that the Thargoids currently don't need to communicate because they're secure in their military superiority and can make any points they wish to make that way. If we demonstrate the ability to damage or destroy non-expendable assets of theirs, they might be more interested in establishing other channels of communication. I don't think it's inconsistent with Tesreau's previous behaviour necessarily; if she was purely interested in communication with the Thargoids then joining Aegis at all has probably never been the most effective way to research that.
Yeah, definitely - the Scythes also don’t make it difficult by moving in a predictable circular pattern when there is no target to actively pursue. Outpost lasers barely do any damage to them, and the surface port weapons often just seem to outright be inactive(and the scenario at all ports was either tweaked or always meant to basicaly never spawn AX NPCs that bother the Scythes - I only saw some spawn when it first occurred in Omumba and none of the subsequent times in this update).
I more or less do the same except avoiding to trigger silent running unless my shield drops. Usually I only get the attention of one Scythe or an Interceptor or both. And while the lightning slowdown is quite annoying, I’m not exactly confident enough in the Cutter’s evasion abilities to go without. The one ‘benefit’ of my setup is not needing to worry about breach drones so I have a single ECM and keep it in the same fire group with one bound to the separate trigger.
Not only that, but if the inside of a Titan heats up - which is made to sound like it is the main cause of damage of this weapon, or intended to be - things get very uncomfortable for any Thargoids inside very quickly. We are led to believe that they evolved in a ‘cold’ ammonia environment, through the codex, and I don’t think anyone would really appreciate their blood boiling. Whether that is a Thargoid drone considered expendable by the queens or otherwise.
And there is also that question of what exactly the Thargoids are going to do if they refuse to let go of the captives but the life support pods they’re in get damaged with no way of safely removing the occupant and/or placing them in another without some… let’s say, drastic measures to ensure their survival. Since they do seem to care to leave the human alive and healthy.
I was convinced that the spire contamination would have adverse effects on the rescuees - thankfully, the Thargoids don’t appear to be desperate enough to use impure… whatever the stuff the spires produce is… yet? - and that we would end up creating the problem of “hybrid” humans that may not be so happy with humanity ourselves, assuming they remained under their own free will. If this is how it ends up happening…
I don’t think it has been. There was one reason given, but it was very briefly glossed over in that Aegis message to the public… whenever it was again last year. It basically gave the reasoning that “the Thargoids don’t appear to be interested in communication at this time”, without really going into any of the specifics - probably left up to the player to guess, and it doesn’t seem hard to when you’ve got eight Titans sitting at the edges of the Bubble wrecking human stuff(but also remaining curiously held back about some of it - like not planting the spires in human inhabited space, and not bothering to wreck ports to the point of absolute destruction, just leaving them disabled and with a big repair bill for anyone going back in once territory is reclaimed).
I still think it should’ve been tried nonetheless. Even if the answer we’d received was a no or “Your actions have spoken to themselves so we’re ‘speaking’ to you in that way too, now”. It’s certainly something that we’ve given the Thargoids plenty of reasons for.
Anyway, going back to ‘Have they forgotten the character’ - part of my hope is that something will change after this weapon hits the Titans, assuming it even works*, and that’s where those ambitions could come into play. But, I am still a bit… wary, or not exactly pleased, about the idea that the only way to possibly get the Thargoids to be more receptive to communication, is by hitting them on the head with an even bigger stick. Because we’ve kind of engineered this conflict ourselves by doing just that.
And that brings me to…
*It could work, yes. Or maybe everyone in charge of the project has been glossing over the fact that the unclassified relic is created by interfacing with a Thargoid device and maybe they do kind of know about this stuff themselves by now, and have a way to either disrupt those nanites before they cause any significant damage, or reprogram them, themselves.
But I’m kind of concerned that this will just make them even more annoyed at us. Even if the weapon does work, they might still not exactly be pleased after retreating(if they do).
And there is the strong possibility of its effects not playing out as intended. Because - just like with the abducted - we simply don’t know much of anything about the reasons for the invasion, just assuming that they’re here as retaliation for the Proteus Wave.
I remain convinced we are really not important enough to be the only reason for their presence, however. I might be biased due to wanting to end the conflict through non-violent means and as such misinterpreting the signs, but I don’t think we might ever have been the target. Or, certainly, not the primary one - the simplest part of that is the Titans remaining stationary ever since their arrival and putting a lot of resources into creating a foothold at the edges of our space, even holding (spire locations aside) worthless empty systems, instead of laying total waste to the area and gradually pushing forward while leaving behind regions humans would have little reason or the time to start establishing infrastructure again while it mattered. I suspect, said reason has to do with Nemesis and maybe the Thargoids are a bit concerned about the Constructs returning. Which would not be great news for us.
Those thoughts are part of a slightly greater writeup (from an in-character perspective) I’ve made to that end but am not planning to share until Friday for… reasons, even though it’s ready. Maybe because it seems a timely point with the update coming out on Monday.
They also tend to kill more quickly as opposed to dragging the process out. It may work faster than expected but if not then this is a slow and possibly extremely painful death, which everyone involved is fine with.
Perhaps. Then again we don't know the difference between the mothership Jameson fired at and the Titan. I suspect the Titan is much larger. In fact I have a dim memory of someone, maybe from fdev but don't quote me on that, saying the Titans were 7 times larger than the crashed ones we find at the old sites.
Nor do we know if it was a single fleet attacking when Jameson deployed the missile or multiple simultaneous attacks in different locations as it is now. From context it was a single fleet since the missile was able to get the majority of them and force the rest into retreat. With a single fleet Mycoid would spread but with the Titans if one was hit it could be quarantined.
If that's the case then hitting all the Titans at once would still have been needed with Mycoid, if Mycoid still worked. Therefore I'm not convinced it was that more powerful than this weapon now. Why they want to hit the Titans simultaneously now isn't clear, but as it isn't a virus they possibly fear the rest adapting if only one is attacked.
Another question is ok, Mycoid killed them faster than this is being said to, but does taking longer to kill really make the new weapon "weaker" than Mycoid or is that an overly simplistic way to look at it? If the end result is the same, the Titan dying, and supposing that this time it's from something they cannot develop an immunity to like Mycoid, or because none of them get away to do so, then it could be worse.
Or we find out that Guardian tech can just as easily decide it's going to react to us and be worse than the Goids could ever be.
I thought the Grelics might be an example of the Thargoids learning to program relics or adapt to them, but now we know it was the other way round and it was the relic reacting in self defence after being plugged into Thargoid machinery. That suggests to me 2 things;
- That the Thargoids are still not very good at adapting to Guardian tech and so far their only defence has been crude EMP fields that are either fired or passive.
- That Guardian tech, even now, can adapt faster than them and they fear that more than anything we might do with it.
I would normally agree except the superpowers no longer order Aegis around. That was agreed when Aegis was reformed, no interference, no threats of withdrawing funding, no controlling or micromanaging, hands off. They decided their own research or it wasn't happening.
So whatever other considerations were taken into account, and bearing in mind that "hands off" need not mean no discussions with anyone at all, in the end this was Aegis' decision. Of entirely their own volition they consciously and without interference chose potential genocide with millions of humans swept under the carpet as collateral damage. They don't get to blame the superpowers for it this time.
Yes it's always easy for people to talk about sacrifices when they're not the ones making any.
Still, if they do want us to rescue more people from the frontlines instead then a) it would be nice if this plan was confirmed because we have no intention of taking that on faith and b) they should have thought about that before wiping out a year's work overnight with no thought or consideration to those who did that work, or their incentive to play against a stacked deck for nothing again.
Trust is in short supply right now. And that's nobody else's fault.
If it doesn't just kill them first.
Leaving aside whether Aegis or any other organisation was a good choice, which is besides the point, I still think it does contradict her attitude of the past. If the weapon turns out to be super effective and kills the Titans any hope of communication could go with it. She's prepared to consider that U turn with no explanation and I think it needs one.
Been trying to help 97 I Tauri finish up since it only has 12hrs left till we lose it. If anyone has the time today I suggest focusing it but it may be too late with just 12hrs left. Was going to head to hip 11111 but that system has a week left so will go there after the server tick tonight.
I think you're likely wasting your time on Tauri, a last stand invasion with that much progress left to go is almost never going to clear. Better off investing the time into HIP 11111 to give it a better chance next week. Or 20527 which is right by Indra as well and almost done(even if it is on its first week).
I've finally taken the plunge with my Alt, and went to the Thargoid war for the first time. No Guardian tech and very little engineering -- basically only G3 DD drives, that's it. I was at an outpost and alone. I kinda expected to get my unengineered arx handed to me. But what do you know? It actually was smooth sailing!
At first I went with a Chieftain that didn't even have all hardpoints occupied and, of course, also lacked a TV beam. Did the instance about halfway, then left - with about 45M worth of bonds. Turns out that wasn't enough to cap out my Arx, so I plugged the modules over into a Vulture and went back in (btw I use my Main's carrier as base), hoping to manage at least two Cyclopes. And before I knew it, I had the instance at half-way point again. With AXMCs, the Vulture works probably even better than the Chieftain. The much lower HP - just about 1200 - weren't really any trouble. I never dropped below 50% and always had plenty of reaction time.
So, long story short, I really was surprised how well a build works that requires practically zero grind except 25MCr and Farseer. It probably also works with no engineering at all.
At first I went with a Chieftain that didn't even have all hardpoints occupied and, of course, also lacked a TV beam. Did the instance about halfway, then left - with about 45M worth of bonds. Turns out that wasn't enough to cap out my Arx, so I plugged the modules over into a Vulture and went back in (btw I use my Main's carrier as base), hoping to manage at least two Cyclopes. And before I knew it, I had the instance at half-way point again. With AXMCs, the Vulture works probably even better than the Chieftain. The much lower HP - just about 1200 - weren't really any trouble. I never dropped below 50% and always had plenty of reaction time.
So, long story short, I really was surprised how well a build works that requires practically zero grind except 25MCr and Farseer. It probably also works with no engineering at all.
Yeah prolly so hip 11111 at worst will be at 50% starting next tick so we should be able to get it done next week.
Props for going at it in a fresh account, it's been so long since I fully engineered my fleet I forget how much of a grind it can be for some just starting out. Still wish all our fancy gtech wasn't nerfed but that ship has long since sailed.
Cyclops are actually pretty easy even with little or not much engineering. It’s the Basilisks and higher that will hand it to you pretty quickly (sometimes, even with a heavily engineered ship).
I also got around to the Palin unlock on my alt last night and spent today setting up an AX Chally. The initial verdict?
It’s very responsive. Maybe even a little too much for my preferences, compared to the Krait. And to think I was also thinking about a Chieftain which is going to be even more responsive. Do like the higher pitch rate and (much) better verts though.
And I hate how exposed the top hardpoints with the beams and where you stick one of your Guardian guns, are. The Thargons seem to be magnetized to that area to make things worse.
Should is the key word, a damaged outpost as the final stand is going to be… a bit painful, to say the least. Possible, certainly, but it still needs sufficient support and those last stand invasions are probably still the least popular of… well, at least, the invasion content.
Still a chaotic bit of fun if you like to mess around with the Scythes. Oh, and on the subject of them, can anyone tell me if their death cloud is corrosive? I never seemed to get any caustic substance on the hull when killing them in 97 i Tauri. I’d like to be certain, for… a log that I’m going to post soon-ish. And for the implication that they don’t release such a death cloud to not destroy any of the pods ejected by them(which would of course kill the occupants).