I think your main point is that evacuations also belong in the set of reasons to keep a manageable number of Invasions active
Quite the contrary, in fact. I'm afraid you're reframing what I said to fit your own point and rather missing mine. I don't think that a certain number of invasions, manageable or otherwise, should be kept at all and certainly not just for something to do. As I said I fully expect the current Invasions to stop at some stage, maybe occasional ones now and again but essentially the aim is to put an end to them once and for all and drive the enemy back. I'm still hopeful that this whole Invasion of the bubble is merely stage 1 and stage 2 will be something different, with fighting still part of it but not to the point where it's the only thing left to do.
We didn't just arrive with the war, we've been a squad since 3305. We're used to having months at a time with no rescues to do and we turn our hands to other things in those times. What do you think we did for the last 4 years before the war, when invasions were sporadic at best? Deliveries, CGs, BGS, exploring, engineering, mining, following the lore, whatever.
We've always known we are specialised and occasional and never had any illusions about being anything else. This war has catapulted us into a situation where we can really work and focus, putting our knowledge and ships into practice, and it's been fantastic to see new people coming in and chatting rescues and logistics, but we don't expect it to last. Not in its current form, at least.
We're a rapid response squad ready to go when necessary. Nobody tells the Fire Brigade or Paramedics in advance where an emergency is going to be and nobody tells us either, we simply respond when it happens. Before anyone thinks otherwise, this does not mean ignoring the bigger picture and simply being reactive, we also consider operations in the wider context of logistics, what the playerbase as a whole is doing, the superstory and the lore.
When there's nothing to respond to we do other things and keep our rescue ships engineered and ready to go. Anyone can use either of my 2 carriers if they don't have one of their own so storage and transportation is no problem for those who need it and there's always one of them in the bubble even if the other one is out in the black, ready to jump to target and deploy.
Besides, for all we know more maelstroms could arrive and then all of us will be starting over anyway. I'm not ruling out anything at this point, or automatically ruling it in by inference, guesswork or extrapolations that consider the future only in the framework of the present. We shall simply see what we will see, as we always do, and decide where our work will be most useful, as we always have.
I do not want to fight Thargoids exclusively either—I am actually a bounty-hunter, at first applying what I know from flying a Mamba to make something which can help in a AX Conflict zone, and now applying what I learned from that to collect Research samples instead.
Right, and the only bounties you are getting now are alien ones. I get the monotony however lucrative it is.
On our Discord the first message you see is;
"Rescues provide a non combative way of helping to defeat Thargoid attacks for those who don't wish to fight the aliens, or to provide a mixture of activities for everyone else. Supplies and support are just as important as soldiers in a war."
Although we don't mention them specifically Deliveries obviously fall into this category as well. Soldiers win battles but Logistics wins wars.
So me telling people to go fight them is a mixed message, to say the least. They can of course if they wish and some of us do, but it can't come from me as an order for the squad or be defined as a squad operation for obvious reasons.
Even Tissue Sampling is still getting closer to the Thargoids than many people want to, it's still facing off against them and, in essence, tearing bits off them. Salvage is ok and thematic for a rescue squad but also carries the risk, so that's at their discretion. You can get in, collect and get out if you're fast and I actually like it but the lack of sources is the problem along with scenarios that are vague at best on the difference they make. I would be happy to wander through signal sources picking up pods, repairing NPC ships and so on if I thought this very time consuming process was doing something useful, compared to the couple of thousand rescues I could do in the same time.
More to the point, I think that very much highlights Recovery systems and their lack of significance. If moving evacuees and supplies back to a Recovery system also reinforced it against future attacks, perhaps translating to some amount of future war progress being completed automatically, the retaking of Control systems would then give you no shortage of options!
I like the way at the moment that Recovery Systems will repair themselves, leaving people free to go and work on other Invasions and Alerts instead of being stuck there until it's back online. But yes, I did wonder a while ago if deliveries there might do exactly that and help to reinforce the system against future attacks but that idea went out the window at the first reinvasion. It would be a good feature to add and a valid reason to do it.
On the combat side, we would still have to inspire port-only defenders to venture out into Control systems before reducing the Invasions, but definitely nudging Frontier to raise the importance of Recovery systems would be a great start there and presumably great for PDES.
Yes, but I'm thinking of completely new activities entirely that evolve as the war does, rather than just the ability to do what we do somewhere else, or in reverse as it were.
On rescues alone the mechanics could be expanded to create new activities. Distress calls and salvage, not the current signal sources but proper ones that lead to something important with a demonstrable effect. Hopefully some of the for the future scenarios mentioned on Frameshift Live will include things like that.
Thoughts off the top of my head include picking up people important to various war efforts who have become stranded and taking them to safety to deliver their information. Discovering or being sent to look for mission or time critical information to make sure support gets to where it needs to be, or to ensure an emergency call for help gets through. Recovering black boxes to discover what went wrong so that future operations can learn and improve. Rescues on foot.
Lots of new situations could be added with a little imagination. The scope is there for expansion. Hopefully this next update will bring some.
