Re: The shockwave from the explosion. This was also the case for the old-school pulse wave that would kick people out when approaching the titan (before we had the Pulse Wave Neutralizer). The Big visual effect was not what coincided with the pushback, but the rapidly-moving shockwave effect did.
Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
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Yeah, and I’m starting to think that ‘anomaly’ which is left behind is… not quite dead. I was sitting there in an Open instance, observing from afar, and I very clearly heard the same sound that the Titan made when charging its repulsor - except significantly weaker, and I could not see anything from my 135 kilometer distance.
Something is still alive in there, and I’m not sure we’re gonna like it. As if I didn’t get the creeps from watching this already.
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Something is still alive in there, and I’m not sure we’re gonna like it. As if I didn’t get the creeps from watching this already.
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So, let me get this straight… you’re saying the ‘shockwave’ was from the pushback the Titan fired off just before its fusion core went? Because I very distinctly remember seeing one only when it turned into a star for a few seconds.
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A hopefully-finishing amount has been delivered for Arietis Sector XJ-R b4-1 (from 94%), and we have moved to support Arietis Sector NX-U c2-19 (22%) with harvest underway now. We will be keeping to a reasonable amount of time this evening rather than continuing until completion, so many thanks are deserved by everyone helping it with Conflict zones!
Keep it up. We've been bombing leigong as much as we can in the meantime.
I'm specifically referring to the regular Thargoid pulse. If you look VERY closely at around 15:00 in this video (you might need to HD it, because Youtube quality), you can see that there's the big blue wave, and then a more consistent, transparent, faster-moving circular wave that follows it.
Can’t say I ever noticed that while playing, but I guess you are more focused on ejecting caustic sinks at the right time and triggering the pulse neutralizer.
I also decided to pull a “For Science”, slapped a whole bunch of hull, three module reinforcements plus seven caustic sinks and a pulse neutralizer onto a Cutter. The results are -
Caustic crystals appear to be present in… rather limited numbers, not that you’ll ever get the chance to even think of picking one up
No caustic generators, it looks like
(You get dragged around in a circle by the extreme ‘tidal’ effect like your ship is a toy caught in a tornado)
Pulse wave at the center does still trigger, but the neutralizer can deflect it
Invisible barrier in effect
White particle emission effect disappeared some distance in, was hard to judge exactly when though
When I let myself get ejected on purpose, I was not at the edge of the cloud so either the ridiculously strong pulling effect of the caustic cloud is significantly reducing its pushback effect, or it’s a lot weaker (I favor the second explanation because I could hear it triggering at 135 km but the sound effect was a lot less noticeable, and nothing appeared to be visible from my screen).
Notes beyond that :
Not a practical research build other than brute forcing your way past what is not meant to be forced (yet)
Nav appeared to start getting confused again at ~90-100 kilometers but the center is a bright glowing spot so not hard to find it/keep track of it.
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Given the combined M. Leigong actions, a quick update regarding Arietis Sector NX-U c2-19:
Very loosely, and assuming the 5-light-year junctions still apply, the empty Control strengths are doing something like this:
At 15, 20 and 25 Ly those approximate junctions are 7100, 2350 and 1320 strength.
Finally, an even less scientific observation is that dealing to the T. Leigong core similar damage as at T. Taranis seems to yield around three times lower credits, those presumably proportional to damage. To be sure of that it would have needed a careful measurement with a specific number of missiles striking the core, but by similar percentage the credits factor seems to be around 3. Perhaps one experiment could be to dispense equal missiles at T. Leigong and at T. Oya and record the credits, to test whether their Extremely High are equal.
- Another payload appeared just before ours, pushing it from 22.1% to 37.3%.
- The INIV payload with 2500 pushed it from 37.2855% to 86.9293% (projecting 5036 strength at 17.164274 Ly).
Very loosely, and assuming the 5-light-year junctions still apply, the empty Control strengths are doing something like this:
At 15, 20 and 25 Ly those approximate junctions are 7100, 2350 and 1320 strength.
Finally, an even less scientific observation is that dealing to the T. Leigong core similar damage as at T. Taranis seems to yield around three times lower credits, those presumably proportional to damage. To be sure of that it would have needed a careful measurement with a specific number of missiles striking the core, but by similar percentage the credits factor seems to be around 3. Perhaps one experiment could be to dispense equal missiles at T. Leigong and at T. Oya and record the credits, to test whether their Extremely High are equal.
Is it also possible that the more hearts are destroyed on a Titan already, the higher the rewards?
I remember the baseline ‘participation award’ bond for Taranis’ thermal core getting damaged being 503 credits on its first heart (while doing absolutely nothing), on the (last) Monday, though it is also liable to no longer be accurate with the reward changes.
Re: Payout to Damage Resistance relationship. I did a few runs at 4 of the maelstroms, and compared to a Taranis run before it blew (but after Thargsday). Because damage calculations were pretty flimsy (there are more controlled versions of this, but I didn't do them), roughly speaking, the credits per % damage on the core were:
Oya being lower than Indra may be estimation error, but if payouts are proportional to impact, then this suggests that damage resistance is continuous based on number of systems, rather than discrete values following the descriptor.
| Taranis | 87k |
| Indra | 19k |
| Leigong | 32k |
| Raijin | 18k |
| Oya | 18k |
That's what I would expect, for the levels to cover a range and for the label to merely describe that range.
Yes. Taking the opposite approach to estimation:
- Taranis at Moderate/6: 4 hearts per day
- Taranis at High/7: 2 hearts per day
- Leigong at ExHigh/14: 0.06 hearts per day
- anything at Maximum: maybe 0.005 hearts per day
That's really not enough data points to do much with, but "resistance is proportional to Controls cubed" is a decent rough fit (even that would predict more damage at Leigong, but it's close enough to cover with an assumption of relatively fewer attackers)
If anyone is looking for ideas for next targets, here's a map of Leigong's connectivity - some of its Controls have much more Alert-generating potential than others.
- Taranis at Moderate/6: 4 hearts per day
- Taranis at High/7: 2 hearts per day
- Leigong at ExHigh/14: 0.06 hearts per day
- anything at Maximum: maybe 0.005 hearts per day
That's really not enough data points to do much with, but "resistance is proportional to Controls cubed" is a decent rough fit (even that would predict more damage at Leigong, but it's close enough to cover with an assumption of relatively fewer attackers)
If anyone is looking for ideas for next targets, here's a map of Leigong's connectivity - some of its Controls have much more Alert-generating potential than others.
Do we need to bother about Alerts for Leigong at all? If we can reduce the number of Controls such that we can take it down within the week then the Alerts don't matter from that point.
ofc we are then stuffed after Leigong as the number of controls is going to be more than a few ppl collecting scout samples can bust down in a week for Oya etc.
ofc we are then stuffed after Leigong as the number of controls is going to be more than a few ppl collecting scout samples can bust down in a week for Oya etc.
Very interesting, and thank you! So we have another curve by system count, noting that Spire count seems irrelevant here, on which:
- T. Leigong moves three times slower than T. Taranis did.
- Other Titans move five times slower.
By system amount with Control only, Invasions included and Alerts included, the damage rate via credits:
Being the opposite of strength, I thought to try inverting it to get some form of strength measure, where I am still unsure which I prefer:
Either way, T. Oya lies on the cusp of entering the steep region where systems become much more valuable to take or hold—if indeed damage is actually proportional to credits, of course! There is a case for those Maelstroms with many systems still being good to clear due to lower strengths, although ultimately if five weeks is the no-clearance Titan time then ignoring the clearance is still simply faster.
Another possibility is that there is a minimum credits reward per point regardless of the Titan damage, in this case anything up to that ~18000 credits measured. If so, those Titans will be taking almost zero damage and it is always appropriate to take and hold systems.
Either way above, M. Leigong is still on the good part of the curve for dealing with its systems! I think clearing some Alerts now could bring three weeks down to two weeks; leaving the Alerts is not wrong necessarily, but I would be still seeking to remove them as Control, especially to prevent more Alerts, because the damage rate we do have is at least worth keeping.
Agree. Tested it with Cutter with almost max hull engineered hull reinforcements, 7 engineered caustic sinks with 7 ammo capacity each, and a Thargoid pulse neutraliser (surprised by the first pulse the first time, when I came there with 8 caustic sinks).
Thargoid pulse wave still happens, and when equipped with pulse wave neutraliser, you can avoid to be pushed back away at max speed out of control, but you can't go forward. Nevermind you're using a Cutter with Class 8A Thrusters Dirty Drives & Drag Drives. Just there is a limit we cannot traspasse. Thrusters boost, go forward, reach limit and softly "bounce" going backwards seeing your own engine trails, and then repeat, no more Thargoid pulses after that. Appears the limit is located after the Thargoid pulse wave limit. Exactly the same sounds as when Taranis was "alive" (so...).
Or is a "poor" way for Fdevs to stay us away from debris field because they're working on it, or there is something Alive & Self-repairing and we're not yet done at all.
I say "poor" because use again Thargoid Pulse Wave. The only sense for get the Thargoid pulse wave back should be a clear "clue" about there is something alive, if finally there is only the debris field, Thargoid Pulse Wave haves nonsense. In that case, why not only use the "soft barrier"?
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You're thinking those are the completion times? Isn't leigong is currently looking at around 10d per heart (best case) - so 2 months to complete. Indra is next at 2y per heart (obviously fewer ppl are working there, but it's ahead of Oya). That is a lot of work
I am missing something here - if we take Leigong next week (by dropping its controls on Thursday) then we don't need to care about alerts - because it will be gone. So it won't matter if the alerts upgrade in the following weeks as Leigong will still be gone. (Edit: I guess if difficulty includes Invasion systems then keeping the Alerts down makes sense - but I would still ignore invasions that aren't going to succeed the next week)
Ah well, it's interesting either way
I think we will see Leigong completed and the fdev will change the rules (maybe something Python2 shaped?) because I can't see any way Oya is coming down to a manageable difficulty.
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Might be that when we overloaded Taranis we didn't fully pulverize it in the process. The resulting energy release slagged most of it (hangars, cargo, fabbers etc) and vaporized the inhabitants, but some parts of it's (bio)mechanical core is still functional and operating on automatic routines.
The incandescence we observe is all the excess heat in Taranis' compromized cooling systems transferred to the surrounding asteroids and caustic gas cloud, and this heat release has allowed some parts of the titan to survive. Basically, the engine block didn't go boom, just the radiator burst and released a lot of steam—still really bad and you won't drive the car anywhere, but the radio still works
It is—but I could not possibly be sure that the same number of Commanders are attacking it as were at T. Taranis!
All it takes is to suppose that around a third of the T. Taranis group has arrived at T. Leigong, which I think quite possible given that it has been only one day since the explosion, and some of the above projections would be at least plausible. That is to say, using the first day of damage has not only the problem of being just one data point, but also the least representative data point!
It was also a weekend (highest traffic) and was showing progress on the in-game graphic (which caused an uptick in the traffic for Taranis last Tuesday).
I actually expect we'll see a drop in traffic over the coming days - because progress is so low people will just move on. I guess we will see - predictions are fun
