Ok, so we have 3 controls in Leigong - plus hopefully Arietis Sector NX-U c2-20 if ppl can be bothered. That's enough for Leigong to be at Moderate next week so presumably we can move on to Oya?
Ok, so we have 3 controls in Leigong - plus hopefully Arietis Sector NX-U c2-20 if ppl can be bothered. That's enough for Leigong to be at Moderate next week so presumably we can move on to Oya?
3 only takes Leigong down to 7, which was High at Taranis. We'd need that fourth to guarantee Moderate, I think. Either way it should be enough to defeat the Titan in the next week if people pile on, though.
Not necessarily. If you can take out a Control system which is going to generate an Alert next week, that's two for the price of one, since Oya is still - just about - contained enough that it doesn't have spare Controls to use its full Alert budget if it loses the ones on its original plan.
There are six uninhabited Controls, all at >20LY distance, which will probably generate an Alert. In no particular order:
Col 285 Sector HD-G b12-1;
Cephei Sector AF-A c21;
Cephei Sector AV-Y b6;
Cephei Sector FB-X b1-0;
Cephei Sector EB-X b1-4;
Cephei Sector AV-Y b4; (already mostly done)
If you don't have any particular preference for what type of system to fight in, I'd recommend starting with those.
(And I was assuming we got NX-U - I'm just glad others have turned up as I was starting to think I was going to have to solo it, and wasn't looking good to make it in time )
Being parked already quite close to Arietis Sector NX-U c2-20, having much progress already and moreover that it will get a quite undesirable back-attack if left around, I think our next attack will be there.
We will have to be quite careful, though—if all three further targets are cleared, M. Leigong will become dangerously close to the Titan getting an attack. If I recall, that seemed to occur when it has fewer than three Control systems, where those attacks will leave it with four. The concern is that all but two systems are in the feasible domain—leaving it with two may be wonderful for Titan attackers, but please mind that doing so would provoke an attack at HIP 8033!
Ok, so we have 3 controls in Leigong - plus hopefully Arietis Sector NX-U c2-20 if ppl can be bothered. That's enough for Leigong to be at Moderate next week so presumably we can move on to Oya?
By all means, yes! Personally I think that T. Leigong lacks popularity and will need to be made a more attractive target than T. Taranis was, and that the above system is a strong cost-prevention of course, however T. Oya ought indeed be next and therefore its attacker list becomes a great mission choice list this week. Cephei Sectors EB-X b1-4 and FB-X b1-0 ought to make a nice, quick start!
Presumably for Oya defeating Alerts > defeating Invasions > defeating Controlled?
Is it better to cache samples for the Controls, so they can't be recycled, or just whack them?
All three system types are appropriate! If anything, as the wise @Ian Doncaster states, the Control attackers are best and the two I named above are quite weak systems. As for holding a payload—there are reasons either way:
Obviously if there is a chance of any shortfall in a week, it will have been better to hold the full payload rather than to have delivered it partially and subjected it to reinforcements.
Conversely, delivering partial payloads for a strong system sends a message via the Galaxy map, which reaches all Commanders and is understood universally. For this reason, and unless inventory is planned as with Operation Deleted, INIV has been delivering immediately after each harvest drive!
Not being great at Thargoid battle, I've been helping out with rescue missions. Two platforms in Jaoi, so the biggest I can land there is a python, loaded to the gills with passenger cabins and the final small slot carrying four cargo (four life pods). Trying to find more time to do more than one run per day (real life issues mean I have to squeeze in what time I can).
I did notice on my first rescue flight out of Jaoi that they still hyperdict you, lost six passengers to them.
I did find a nice way to avoid that in the future: Manually plot a way out that does not go through a thargoid controlled system. If necessary, use FSD injection to just get past it if a safe system is out of normal range. The passengers get a little upset that it's taking too long, but they'll get over it.
If you take on passengers you are nearly guaranteed to be hyperdicted by scythes when you jump out, no matter where you go. Best to equip an ECM (or two) to avoid their FSD reboot missiles and take care of their hatchbreaker drones if you lose/don't have shields.
Going for a boosted jump can be more trouble than it's worth, since the hyperdiction will waste the charge and you need to scramble to find a new target to jump away from them.
If you take on passengers you are nearly guaranteed to be hyperdicted by scythes when you jump out, no matter where you go. Best to equip an ECM (or two) to avoid their FSD reboot missiles and take care of their hatchbreaker drones if you lose/don't have shields.
If you take on passengers you are nearly guaranteed to be hyperdicted by scythes when you jump out, no matter where you go. Best to equip an ECM (or two) to avoid their FSD reboot missiles and take care of their hatchbreaker drones if you lose/don't have shields.
Going for a boosted jump can be more trouble than it's worth, since the hyperdiction will waste the charge and you need to scramble to find a new target to jump away from them.
I do spam the ECM but didn't seem to bother them. I just checked around the space stations at the rescue facility and no one seems to have point defense here. I have them at my home port but they're already attached to other ships (I was going to load point defense on all four utility slots to see how that worked out). The heat sink idea may give me a lower viewable profile and I have one attached so I may give it a shot anyway if it happens again, just for science.
UPDATE 1: just stopped at Meenas star system, small refinery platform had point defense modules, stored the things I had there and replaced all four of them with point defense.
UPDATE 2: Ok, just to confirm, Ned was correct, doesn't matter which direction you go when you leave with passengers, they'll hyperdict you anyway. Also, FYI, point defense helps keep the thimpets from your cargo hatch. Hull integrity was down to 58% by the time I was able to jump out of there. Also, FYI, passengers, even though none of them were sucked out into the thargoid ships, whine about 58% hull integrity all the way to the rescue ship. By the gods, they're a whiney bunch of little girly-men. We all made it out alive didn't we? We all made it without some of us being sacrificed to the thargoid Titan, didn't we?
What is exactly the influence Spire site missions do?
Moved to Oya for now, rescue ship in Sun Wen provide missions for Cephei Sector XO-A b3 Spire site, but Inara reports 60 commanders in there and zero progress, so probably will do some combat in invasions and then will see.
They will affect the ten furthest systems of any Thargoid state around that Titan. The spire itself won’t start being affected until/unless it is part of that perimeter.
In this case, seems, I will find a use for that few hundred units of coral sap, which I was unlucky to not deliver in time during one of the recent CG.
In this Second Thargoid War, the "Mycoid" is probably still actively being used by the NPCs.
Let's go meta to explain - The Second Thargoid War's been raging for 1¼ years now.
And Thargoid Tissue Samples are considered overpowered by the playerbase that is in the know. The time:effect ratio is just amazing.
FDev has also proven that they're able and willing to tweak numbers at will to make the War run as desired.
They've also shown, by inaction, that they consider Tissue Sampling to be functioning as desired - it's impact on the War is as desired.
This is a hint.
Now back to the lore - Thargoids adapt to threats that they're facing; key example of that would be the HIP 22460 "Proteus Wave" incident.
Presumably they also constantly tweak their new vessels to be resistant to the last used strain of Mycoid.
Enter the players who collect a statistically viable set of tissue samples from freshly produced Scouts/Interceptors that boffins can use to test new Mycoid strains on.
Once a viable strain has been found to deal with the Thargoids in a system the samples were collected from, presumably, an NPC aerospace wing of by-design cold running Diamondback Explorers with Midnight Black paintjobs are sent into that system to deliver payloads of the recently tweaked Mycoid strain to scouts and interceptors within that system.
Thankfully for humanity, the superpowers work together within a totally-not-INRA organisation to make Tissue Sampling to be so super-effective - by tuning the actual secret weapon.
Maybe it's Aegis doing this.
Maybe Aegis' left-hand doesn't know what Aegis' right-hand is doing.
Maybe the left-hand is personified by Tesreau, perhaps the right-hand is headed by Tanner.
We don't know, we don't care, we just like the results - like the upcoming speedrun of Titan Leigong, starting on the 14th of March.
When the Titans first arrived we had to figure out how to get through their Maelstroms, then negate the Pulse.
After that the playerbase got a Community Goal by Aegis/Azimuth to get tissue samples of a Titan.
Also, when first scouting around at a newly arrived Titan one could spot Interceptors scanning each other - they're likely making sure they are clean before possibly spreading a contaminant.
We collected a lot of Titan Tissue Samples, but nothing happened with those - presumably because these newer, bigger Titans have been made resilient against any new Mycoid strain.
But luckily Ram Tah and Palin collaborated in figuring out a new way to deal with these bigger better Titans; to literally make them cook themselves into a fiery, explosive yet pretty, death.
when Frontier made everything harder [...] most notable sampling groups I can think of (SNPX, INIV, Ida's Kleenex op) simply lost morale and stopped [...]
I'm curious -- did everything become harder, did the "thargoid strength" of sytems increase, or did sampling become less effective?
Because the latter would be narrative on how Thargoids are slowly becoming ever more resistant to the Mycoid, regardless of strain.
I wait for the thimpet to attach, then tap the ECM. I'm sure you can get them mid flight but that has to be well timed whereas waiting for them to attach has been 100% effective for me
Goodness—we are soon gathering for the evening, and it looks like we are bound for HIP 9180 instead!
For anyone in contact with Commanders at M. Leigong, please warn if you can regarding evicting too many systems, and suggest instead either attacking the Titan or helping to do the same at M. Oya. HIP 9180 is quite fine, but we really should leave it with enough that the Titan remains silent and leaves HIP 8033 alone!
Good evenin, I’ve been directed to this thread as I was asking if there was a coordinated war effort, I was at cook settlement but now that’s done I wanted to know of a next target.
Im only AX geared up so nothing too fancy
Need a big pad
)
