Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?

[Genar-Hofoen]

I haven't played ED for the past 4 or 5 weeks and I'm catching up with events.

Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like all the lucrative (for me) murderflower-fighting at planetary bases has dried up? That's good in the sense that the goids are being contained. Bad for the old space wallet though

 

[Starsong]

I haven't played ED for the past 4 or 5 weeks and I'm catching up with events.

Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like all the lucrative (for me) murderflower-fighting at planetary bases has dried up? That's good in the sense that the goids are being contained. Bad for the old space wallet though

There's 3 planetary bases under attack this cycle. It'll probably stop being neccesary to fight at them around the weekend, but they'll remain active until next Thursday.

 

[Cori]

I haven't played ED for the past 4 or 5 weeks and I'm catching up with events.

Unless I'm mistaken, it looks like all the lucrative (for me) murderflower-fighting at planetary bases has dried up? That's good in the sense that the goids are being contained. Bad for the old space wallet though

Sadly so - although it's good that things are so under control, don't mistake me. But those fights and post-recovery reactivation missions were all I was doing, and things are now so under control there's a shortage of both.
I was doing especially well last week, with 6 Settlement Defence Plans found (compared to the two I've found elsewhere in the entire time since Odyssey launched). Was looking good to finally get the 15 needed. This week? Not a single abandoned military settlement anywhere that I can see. Going to have to find something else to do.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Interesting. So above a planet is the trick. Might have guessed I suppose. Have to try that. Do you have one person keeping the cyclops occupied whole another takes samples, to avoid it shooting the limpets?

It is the preferred trick at least, yes! Just a short Multi-cannon burst from one Commander is enough to stop it from trying to shoot the limpets on its back, then everyone can sample it as much as they like:

We stagger the journeys back to the designated Fleet Carrier so that we can keep that single Cyclops available until we have the samples we need, ideally with minimum two Commanders remaining there for the shield regeneration. The Thargoid will revert to attacking limpets when its target leaves the area, at which point it just needs another quick Multi-cannon strike from somebody else, then back to business.

We have established an open-space harvest process also; it is a bit more fiddly, but works well and is easiest to understand after having described the landfall method. Quite simply, when the Thargoid loses its target by any means (including as above), attacking it again will start a fresh Swarm timer. This does not even make it produce a new initial swarm; that one remains expended until a petal is destroyed. By doing that deliberately so that it never reaches six continuous minutes of combat, we can get zero additional Swarms indefinitely. At first we were boosting past it then using a low-wake with nav-lock enabled, though unfortunately this has now yielded to the superior method of exit and continue, unless it is actually time for a high-wake of course!

We also perform one live measurement of the system difficulty by having the Carrier owner go and sell the first 144 samples while the harvest continues, enough to fill one shielded Anaconda. For example, if those 144 samples move the system 18% then we assume that we are somewhere within 18–20% and therefore that we need 720–800 samples, calculated as 144 ÷ 0.20 and 144 ÷ 0.18.

But those fights and post-recovery reactivation missions were all I was doing, and things are now so under control there's a shortage of both.

I hope very much that we can at least give you the latter; remember that the recaptured inhabited systems also enter Recovery!

 

[Shayan al Nasarwa]

Interesting. So above a planet is the trick. Might have guessed I suppose. Have to try that. Do you have one person keeping the cyclops occupied whole another takes samples, to avoid it shooting the limpets?

You don't need one person to keep the interceptor occupied. What works best is to launch research-limpets BEFORE the interceptor comes out of hyperspace. Then it will permanently shot at the limpets. Doing that we (SNPX) were able to get about 1.000 samples from one Medusa.

 

[Starsong]

You don't need one person to keep the interceptor occupied. What works best is to launch research-limpets BEFORE the interceptor comes out of hyperspace. Then it will permanently shot at the limpets. Doing that we (SNPX) were able to get about 1.000 samples from one Medusa.

How? Everyone else seems to find that research essentially always fail if the Interceptor is trying to avoid or shoot them.

 

[Shayan al Nasarwa]

How? Everyone else seems to find that research essentially always fail if the Interceptor is trying to avoid or shoot them.

Do not do this alone. In a wing (or even two wings) there are so much limpets - the goid can't shoot them all.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

A nice concentrated start thus far, and I can see why summoning may have been difficult at Arietis Sector DQ-Y c18 previously. Were it not that there are only four total Invasions, I would have suggested leaving that one until its closer port is attacked!

Invasions at 18:10 27th April 3309:
Arietis Sector DQ-Y c18 Invasion 14% — Indra 27 Ly, 3 ports, 386k Ls 0.2g planet attack
Col 285 Sector AF-E b13-5 Invasion 12% — Cocijo 26 Ly, 2 ports, 283 Ls 0.14g planet attack
Col 285 Sector YT-F b12-3 Invasion 12% — Cocijo 30 Ly, 2 ports, 703 Ls 0.2g planet attack

Alerts:
Cabarci Alert 44% — Leigong 25 Ly, 614 Ls outpost, 633 Ls planet
HIP 2422 Alert 12% — Oya 24 Ly, 192 Ls starport
HIP 20527 Alert 8% — Indra 23 Ly, 595 Ls starport, 4806 Ls planet
Bi Dhorora Alert 2% — Hadad 18 Ly, 2734 Ls outpost, 1857 Ls planet
HIP 23716 Alert 2% — Taranis 18 Ly, 2314 Ls starport, 2351 Ls outpost

Clean-up:
Hyades Sector ZZ-O b6-1 Control 28% — Taranis 26 Ly, empty

Do not do this alone. In a wing (or even two wings) there are so much limpets - the goid can't shoot them all.

I find that the Thargoid cannot shoot any of them, but either way that was not the problem! It was the bug which causes research limpets to return without a sample, where if the Thargoid is spinning then historically that has resulted in zero samples succeeding. I will check this again next time we start a harvest!

 

[Spaceman-FXL5]

Hmmm, been away for two weeks stocking up on mining stuff, come back to war and find only 4 (total) Invasions now!
I have no idea about Alert (waited around and nothing happened) and Control (just interdicted with Interceptors, so run away), I only do Invasion and loving the planetary defense especially. So is this all that is left?

Very disappointing, OK look, I have no idea how to do control or alert so going away again.
I just loved the AX CZ and planetary port and evac Critically injured, now there are none of these after these 4 (well this week anyway)

 

[yttrbio]

I find that the Thargoid cannot shoot any of them, but either way that was not the problem! It was the bug which causes research limpets to return without a sample, where if the Thargoid is spinning then historically that has resulted in zero samples succeeding. I will check this again next time we start a harvest!

The Thargoid can't damage the limpets themselves, but it can (and does) destroy the samples attached to the limpets.

 

[Phill P]

It is the preferred trick at least, yes! Just a short Multi-cannon burst from one Commander is enough to stop it from trying to shoot the limpets on its back, then everyone can sample it as much as they like:

Thanks for all of this, useful stuff. My problem so far hasn't been the Thargoid shooting the limpets on its back (if you mean the ones already attached it doesn't do that), but shooting the limpets on their way back to me. A distraction is needed to stop it shooting the limpets on their way back to my ship.

 

[yttrbio]

It's the same problem with the same solution. Unless you're drowning it in limpets like SNPX, the distraction is going to have to be a commander ship to shoot at (though it can be NPCs in conflict zones, though I find their targeting gets weird when combined with research limpets). Hence the big shields and the healybeams, though a cold circler works, too (it just isn't able to pull in the same volume of samples while circling. Circler instead of orbiter because it doesn't need to orbit the interceptor, just keep moving in a circle somewhere)

 

[Phill P]

It's the same problem with the same solution. Unless you're drowning it in limpets like SNPX, the distraction is going to have to be a commander ship to shoot at (though it can be NPCs in conflict zones, though I find their targeting gets weird when combined with research limpets). Hence the big shields and the healybeams, though a cold circler works, too (it just isn't able to pull in the same volume of samples while circling. Circler instead of orbiter because it doesn't need to orbit the interceptor, just keep moving in a circle somewhere)

Yes the NPCs are hit and miss when it comes to distracting the interceptor. I seem to get either a good run or virtually nothing.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Victories in Arietis Sector YU-P b5-1 and Gliese 3050! The Invasions are moving at almost three times the rate needed to finish them all (well done!), and one can below see that having those planetary ports adds a lot to their popularity. It would be lovely to see the astounding Alert effort target those systems with fewest planetary ports, and free some time for stopping empty Alerts by leaving around ten per week with the most planetary ports!

Targets at 07:00 28th April 3309:
Arietis Sector DQ-Y c18 Invasion 54% — Indra 27 Ly, 3 ports, 386k Ls 0.2g planet attack
Col 285 Sector AF-E b13-5 Invasion 52% — Cocijo 26 Ly, 2 ports, 283 Ls 0.14g planet attack
Col 285 Sector YT-F b12-3 Invasion 46% — Cocijo 30 Ly, 2 ports, 703 Ls 0.2g planet attack
HIP 18702 Invasion 4% — Thor 35 Ly, 1 port, 2004 Ls outpost attack
Pegasi Sector GW-W d1-115 Control 2% — Raijin 23 Ly

Alerts:
Cabarci Alert 82% — Leigong 25 Ly, 614 Ls outpost, 633 Ls planet
HIP 2422 Alert 36% — Oya 24 Ly, 4995 Ls starport
Muncheim Alert 28% — Oya 24 Ly, 6 Ls starport
HIP 20527 Alert 24% — Indra 23 Ly, 595 Ls starport, 834 Ls outpost, 4806 Ls planet
Bi Dhorora Alert 8% — Hadad 18 Ly, 2734 Ls outpost, 1857 Ls planet
HIP 23716 Alert 6% — Taranis 18 Ly, 2314 Ls starport, 2351 Ls outpost

Clean-up:
Hyades Sector ZZ-O b6-1 Control 28% — Taranis 26 Ly, empty
Gliese 9843 Control 12% — Oya 27 Ly, empty

Yes the NPCs are hit and miss when it comes to distracting the interceptor. I seem to get either a good run or virtually nothing.

Indeed; that more than anything reveals that we are up against a known glitch! I find that it depends on the Thargoid movements at the moment of completion, where slow, smooth and steady movement tends to let all succeed and sharp turning makes all fail, hence the duelist behaviour of system AX forces being undesirable. With a stationary regeneration ring, the Thargoid seems to spend enough time moving steadily to attack and retreat that the average success over one hold of limpets is a good 80%.

One other thing I forgot to mention about landfall harvests—we start by dropping manually just above the glide altitude, usually around 45 km or so. With some small planets the Thargoid actually realises that it can fly further away and deploy a Swarm, then insists on trying to do that. In those cases, gliding down a bit then flying level to abort the descent seems to work, as long as everyone is careful not to glide at the Wing beacons directly!

 

[CMDR Aldebaran]

I was in Col 285 Sector YT-F b12-3 on open (Hiorizons) last night for about 4 hrs, didn't see any other CMDRs. Found that quite odd, but I cleared my first CZ solo at Raleigh Bastion! I had fun with the Basilisk at the end, I have no Guardian modules, just good old fashioned EAX multicannons! Those things are damn fast! I got it in the end though..

Its definitely more fun with other players there, but that's a huge achievement for me!

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Victories in HIP 28913, Cabarci, Arietis Sector DQ-Y c18, Col 285 Sectors AF-E b13-5 and YT-F b12-3! The power of planetary ports delivers three Invasion systems, with the final fourth at HIP 18702 projecting... 1317%, which is just a little bit higher than the 400% needed. Once those are done, the only non-Alert action I see is a spot of eviction in Pegasi Sector GW-W d1-115!

To the surprise of probably nobody, HIP 28913 was another INIV effort to keep M. Hadad contained (open-space harvest!). The general feeling is we should at least nudge Fotlandjera to discover its difficulty, then either commit to retake it, or leave it in favour of a more broad clean-up of smaller Control systems.

Invasion at 00:20 29th April 3309:
HIP 18702 Invasion 12% — Thor 35 Ly, 1 port, 2004 Ls outpost attack

Alerts:
Muncheim Alert 86% — Oya 24 Ly, 6 Ls starport
HIP 2422 Alert 70% — Oya 24 Ly, 4995 Ls starport
HIP 20527 Alert 40% — Indra 23 Ly, 595 Ls starport, 834 Ls outpost, 4806 Ls planet
Bi Dhorora Alert 26% — Hadad 18 Ly, 2734 Ls outpost, 1857 Ls planet
63 Eridani Alert 10% — Taranis 20 Ly, 1698 Ls starport, 2039 Ls outpost, 432 Ls planet

Clean-up:
Hyades Sector ZZ-O b6-1 Control 28% — Taranis 26 Ly, empty
Gliese 9843 Control 12% — Oya 27 Ly, empty

I was in Col 285 Sector YT-F b12-3 on open (Hiorizons) last night for about 4 hrs, didn't see any other CMDRs. Found that quite odd, but I cleared my first CZ solo at Raleigh Bastion! I had fun with the Basilisk at the end, I have no Guardian modules, just good old fashioned EAX multicannons! Those things are damn fast! I got it in the end though..

Its definitely more fun with other players there, but that's a huge achievement for me!

Congratulations, and thank you for making our combined Invasion capacity all the stronger! This cycle may look a bit disappointing for that, but it is likely that there will be a rise of Invasions in the cycles to come as the number of inhabited Alerts increases, and it is well that said capacity remains ready!

 

[St0rmFury]

Not sure if this is the place to ask, but do all evacuation missions still direct you to Tarach Tor?

 

[yttrbio]

No. They go to whichever rescue ship is associated with the controlling superpower of the station you are picking up rescues from (with a few minor exceptions). There are 4 rescue ships that take evacuees, Tarach Tor is the one for independents, which have been a larger proportion of the systems hit by the maelstroms.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Victories in HIP 20527 and Muncheim! HIP 2422 soon to follow, after which there is an upcoming band of Alerts calling for attention. HIP 18702 is supported well enough, and I am transporting a harvest now which should move Fotlandjera up to somewhere around 34–38%.

Targets at 17:30 29th April 3309:
HIP 18702 Invasion 34% — Thor 35 Ly, 1 port, 2004 Ls outpost attack
Fotlandjera Control 8% — Hadad 20 Ly

Alerts:
HIP 2422 Alert 98% — Oya 24 Ly, 4995 Ls starport
Bi Dhorora Alert 38% — Hadad 18 Ly, 2734 Ls outpost, 1857 Ls planet
63 Eridani Alert 24% — Taranis 20 Ly, 1698 Ls starport, 2039 Ls outpost, 432 Ls planet
Aurus Alert 16% — Raijin 26 Ly, 751 Ls outpost
Ngolite Alert 12% — Raijin 27 Ly, 48 Ls starport, 2730 Ls planet
Pathamon Alert 12% — Leigong 22 Ly, 105 Ls starport, 194 Ls outpost, 194 Ls planet

Clean-up:
Cephei Sector EL-Y c23 Alert 38% — Oya 27 Ly, empty
Hyades Sector ZZ-O b6-1 Control 28% — Taranis 26 Ly, empty
Arietis Sector YJ-R b4-4 Control 24% — Leigong 33 Ly, empty
HIP 10616 Control 18% — Leigong 28 Ly, empty

 

[Frank]

Will everyone please turn off report crimes. I do try to keep my bullets on target, but if you've got the nose of yer ship buried deep in a Thargoid flower I may inadvertently hit you with a few rounds

If I have a fine I can't land at the local station to get fixed up and rearm. This means you lose an extra gun while I go off looking for an interstellar factors