How are people doing so much damage? Three of us were getting to about 10% each run. Granted that was at extreme resistance.
Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
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4 sirius AXMR and 1 torpido. Hitting mostly 7 heat vents in solo mode.
Danke
On a very rough estimation from the "top-down" modelling I would expect somewhere between 15% and 70% damage to be done to Leigong in the first 24 hours. The nature of the curve steepening so much at the end means that even tiny variations in the few data points we have so far make it really tricky to tell.
The reduction process to get to that stage may have enough differences between maelstroms to keep it interesting on the same level of "people support BGS factions / Powerplay powers for years without the fundamentals changing" at least.
I'm not so sure - the Titan attacks are incentivised, and are going to be spaced out quite a bit with weeks in-between each major attack. The much simpler and less spectacular Trade CG lasted well over eight uses on a much more regular schedule before people got bored of it.
The reduction process to get to that stage may have enough differences between maelstroms to keep it interesting on the same level of "people support BGS factions / Powerplay powers for years without the fundamentals changing" at least.
Those differences are interesting for the tiny audience who follow the Thargoid BGS, but the big audience are the brute force 'where do I get the decal?' Titan bashers. They do seem to have stayed focused on chipping away at Leigong this week, but I can't see them hanging around for the months it will take to bring down all the Titans at the current rate. Edit: Especially if most of the weeks make little progress as the BGS is finessed.
And fdev expect the 'culmination' of the Thargoid war as part of p18, so I tend to think things will be changed up either after Leigong or Oya at most - though it would have to be a massive change to fit into their timescale
Sure, but they don't need to hang around. If they're not enjoying attacking the Titan enough to make it a full-time thing, then they can go do something else for a few months and come back later.
"Culmination" and "end" are two different things, though.And fdev expect the 'culmination' of the Thargoid war as part of p18, so I tend to think things will be changed up either after Leigong or Oya at most - though it would have to be a massive change to fit into their timescale
Certainly if the Powerplay update releases on schedule and Frontier want the Thargoids all neatly sorted out by then they might have to add something like "after Oya's defeat, the other five pack up and go home". But neither of those are necessarily the case.
Very valuable; thank you! Combined with the quite useful fact that M. Leigong has nothing but Control systems, that single data point correlates incredibly well if I suppose that only the Control systems contribute to resistance, and very poorly if I try to suppose Invasions or Alerts are included.
I will have to draw it more clearly later, but for the moment I state quite confidently that resistance counts only the Control systems. More than anything, that places a quite high value on preventing systems from becoming Control¹ while a Titan attack is ongoing!
1. Strategically I have been a proponent of clearing systems after Control is reached, although that is in the context of containment and collapse; this becomes a new interesting scenario where being Control for a week has a detrimental aspect.
Agreed. it's notable that when asked about when the next Titan is going down the only answer they like is 'this weekend' - any estimates further away are rejected as implausible.
Agreed. Not sure the CMs are aware of this though. And they're offering decals after all eight are done - a bit weird if they expect it to be years away. Plus it seems like a lousy end to a story. "How did the Thargoid War end dad? Well, it didn't really - we just ran out of steam so you can go bash away at Hadad like usual after lunch".
I could see the Thargoids rolling on into PP2.0 as a faction to please the Xeno-lovers, that could maybe work. Except for that damn decal
I'm just super glad there is something other than xenodermatology to do.
Far as culmination, the post https://www.elitedangerous.com/news/2024-year-ahead
calling it the epic Finale after that sounded pretty final to me but, not sure which to take as overall guide.
For now... offline calls for a while, will try to monitor the situation/keep an eye out around the traditional CG window.
calling it the epic Finale after that sounded pretty final to me but, not sure which to take as overall guide.
For now... offline calls for a while, will try to monitor the situation/keep an eye out around the traditional CG window.
I always interpreted it as "The Thargoid-only story arc is nearing its end"... nothing is to say certain external parties won't get involved in it afterward.
Unless they plan to rapidly up the pace and cram Nemesis and its implications into the months between now and U19 as well. Which I guess wouldn't be the most terrible thing. (But I'm gonna remain dubious about all the Titans ending up as pieces of half-functional wreckage that might not be able to tell up from down.)
Unless they plan to rapidly up the pace and cram Nemesis and its implications into the months between now and U19 as well. Which I guess wouldn't be the most terrible thing. (But I'm gonna remain dubious about all the Titans ending up as pieces of half-functional wreckage that might not be able to tell up from down.)
I make the Titan progress about 2x what it was before. Really we wanted at least 20x to get it done fast. Obviously this is in the quiet part of the daily cycle, so we need more data. And I see (a) report that the bugs with the Thermal Core aren't fixed in the News thread. Hopefully it will pick up now the server hiccups are behind us (AFAIK).
Double sounds approximately right; I had estimated T. Leigong at approximately one-third the rate of T. Taranis last week, and numbers thus far are suggesting two-thirds. Definitely that will be enough over two weeks, and it could well be enough over one week if weightings are considered!
T. Taranis had a partial day on Monday, three weekdays fully, then reached meltdown just before 1900 on Friday. It involved a bit of time for Commanders to discern what to do and there was some apprehension over whether a Titan can repair between weekly cycles, but it was completed actually without involving any peak time.
For T. Leigong many Commanders know now exactly what to do, newcomers seeking rewards have to do more of it for said rewards, it will be exposed to the full force of peak time, and it had a one-quarter ring head-start.
Two-thirds of the T. Taranis rate means the time taken is three-halves; generously, T. Taranis used four days. Three-halves of that is six days, and now that it includes peak time—I think T. Leigong enters meltdown this week!
T. Taranis had a partial day on Monday, three weekdays fully, then reached meltdown just before 1900 on Friday. It involved a bit of time for Commanders to discern what to do and there was some apprehension over whether a Titan can repair between weekly cycles, but it was completed actually without involving any peak time.
For T. Leigong many Commanders know now exactly what to do, newcomers seeking rewards have to do more of it for said rewards, it will be exposed to the full force of peak time, and it had a one-quarter ring head-start.
Two-thirds of the T. Taranis rate means the time taken is three-halves; generously, T. Taranis used four days. Three-halves of that is six days, and now that it includes peak time—I think T. Leigong enters meltdown this week!
Not sure where you're getting those figures from - these are the Heart completion times from Taranis:
1st @ 28. Feb. 2024, 19:37:55
2nd @ 28. Feb. 2024, 20:52:46
3rd @ 28. Feb. 2024, 22:51:14
4th @ 29. Feb. 2024, 03:10:30
5th @ 29. Feb. 2024, 16:37:09
6th @ 29. Feb. 2024, 22:09:09
7th @ 01. Mar. 2024 15:07:19
8th @ 01. Mar. 2024, 18:56:00
That's multiple hearts per day
So far with a conservative 3 full days effort on Leigong (though work started at the weekend) we have 22% of one heart. Doubling the rate gives another 40% in the next three days. And that's for one heart.
Anyway - I hope my maths is wrong and you are correct!
It’s actually been that way since the war started - just a funny stellar forge quirk. It organizes by mass in the system map but because the top three stars orbiting in… trinary pair? have more combined mass than the M class dwarf, they’re at the top. Yet you land at the bottom because that star is the heaviest singular one.
I came across another case like that in the Bubble once except a lot more random, because… it was a binary pair and the heavier star was at the bottom anyway.
Ah so that's why, makes a certain kind of sense I suppose.
Yeah. Still funny to come across those messy-looking systems.
Also - anyone have an explanation why the anti-Guardian field around Taranis appears active when you enter the system but once you get close it kind of just… stops? That’s confusing me a little right now. The Titan state is still active too, so hyperdictions and interdictions still occur.
Based on overall progress rates I'm also pessimistic.
Taranis - once it got going, which took a few days - was 4 hearts/day at 6 systems (and might have been faster on a whole-day basis), or a little over 2 hearts/day at 7 systems.
Leigong so far has been 0.05 hearts/day at 14 systems and may be something like 0.1-0.15 hearts/day at 10 systems as the current rate.
Leigong probably isn't getting quite the focus that Taranis was, but the 24 hour EDDN count doesn't seem that far off what Taranis had pre-meltdown either.
Even allowing for this being a quiet time of day and things probably picking up in a few hours, I don't see Leigong getting as high as the 1 heart/day needed to make completion by next Thursday likely, though I do expect what we're currently seeing in early data is somewhat an underestimate of what's possible.
Some options here for which systems to take next:
- getting Leigong down to 7 by knocking out the others over 15 LY is certainly the easiest one-week strategy and should let it be finished off next week provided that there's nothing else making it tougher than Taranis was at the same Control count. It'll place three Alerts next week but so long as it drops during next week those can be ignored.
- if it might last longer, then NX-U c2-20 is threatening: it has a few options for placing Alerts closer in than it is, and it's already close-in. Taking out that one at just over 14 LY might be more valuable than taking out two at a greater distance, and it's isolated so it can't be reattacked.
EDIT: maps for the ones where shrinking might be on the agenda
Taranis - once it got going, which took a few days - was 4 hearts/day at 6 systems (and might have been faster on a whole-day basis), or a little over 2 hearts/day at 7 systems.
Leigong so far has been 0.05 hearts/day at 14 systems and may be something like 0.1-0.15 hearts/day at 10 systems as the current rate.
Leigong probably isn't getting quite the focus that Taranis was, but the 24 hour EDDN count doesn't seem that far off what Taranis had pre-meltdown either.
Even allowing for this being a quiet time of day and things probably picking up in a few hours, I don't see Leigong getting as high as the 1 heart/day needed to make completion by next Thursday likely, though I do expect what we're currently seeing in early data is somewhat an underestimate of what's possible.
Some options here for which systems to take next:
- getting Leigong down to 7 by knocking out the others over 15 LY is certainly the easiest one-week strategy and should let it be finished off next week provided that there's nothing else making it tougher than Taranis was at the same Control count. It'll place three Alerts next week but so long as it drops during next week those can be ignored.
- if it might last longer, then NX-U c2-20 is threatening: it has a few options for placing Alerts closer in than it is, and it's already close-in. Taking out that one at just over 14 LY might be more valuable than taking out two at a greater distance, and it's isolated so it can't be reattacked.
EDIT: maps for the ones where shrinking might be on the agenda
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In that case, from supposing that the Combat bond credits are proportional to the damage—if they are, then the one-third and two-thirds proportions become a statement of fact regardless of whether Commanders actually choose to partake. If they are, it means that those actual time observations contain a low participation component which affects it an order of magnitude more than the resistance component.
It is very true, though—albeit incredibly strange—that credits may be not proportional to damage. If we suppose equal participation, that would mean a thermal core attack for under 2 million credits is worth almost nothing for damage, and over 2 million credits is worth suddenly heavy damage worthy of 4-day completion!
I suppose the question becomes this—is it reasonable to suggest that two thermal core attacks with combat bond credits A and B deal the same Titan damage as one attack with credits C if A + B = C? It may not be, but if it is then I claim T. Leigong besieged similarly can reach meltdown within one week.