@Aleks Zuno
Thargoids adapt though. It's what they do.
Thargoids adapt though. It's what they do.
Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
- Start date
Sure - if you consider the second world war, there were rules that no projectile could travel faster than light, guns could not fire without ammunition, tanks had to pass through intervening space to reach their destination, submarines were ineffective at air-to-air dogfighting, etc. Both sides came up with huge numbers of new tactics within those "rules", of course, many extremely effective and surprising to their enemy.
Up until this point the Thargoids have followed the following "rules" precisely, to the extent that they could be inferred to be actual constraints on their capabilities, perhaps representing logistical requirements or similar:
- all Alerts must be launched from a Thargoid-controlled system (and each individual system is limited to launching one Alert every two weeks)
- a system cannot attack more than 10 LY from itself
- there is a limited weekly budget for Alerts even if far more potential targets are available
- once repelled from a system, the Thargoids will not retarget it for a short period
Every single rule change up to this point - and there have been many! - has kept within those rules, and one of the reasons that Oya was selected by larger AX groups over Cocijo or Indra is that at Oya it's possible to use those limitations against the Thargoids strategically, whereas at Cocijo there doesn't appear to be any better option than "brute force meatgrinder sampling".
So now we're in a situation where Oya's recent attack - coming at a time when it is thematically under most pressure and low on resources - breaks all four of those: Alerts launched without a source, to a greater combined budget than three fully operational Titans with huge surrounding Control bubbles and multiple Spires can manage, at extreme ranges, in some cases to systems recaptured minutes earlier, and the Alerts have their full strength so don't represent a smaller than normal scouting party. That's not new tactics, that's new capabilities.
And that raises the big question of: "if the Thargoids are physically capable of doing this even when under extreme pressure, why aren't the other five remaining Titans also doing it routinely rather than carrying on entirely as normal?". The human side hasn't been shy about using new capabilities even when they've not been absolutely urgent.
There are most certainly Titans which - even assuming Oya had been "saving up" its Alert budget somehow from underspend in recent weeks, which might just about be "new tactic" - could make use of the other three new capabilities (most especially the ability to immediately re-attack a system they lose, but the others would be useful too) on their normal Alert budget to become permanently unassailable. So when they don't do that? What, was the tactic too effective to use again?
As Aleks points out, Frontier chose to run the Thargoid war with a "simulation" style interface which implies (and allows) player choices to determine which Titans are under pressure and which are still expanding largely uncontested, which allows tactics and strategy on the human side to matter, and so on. They didn't have to do that! No-one was expecting what we got in Update 14. They could have carried on with the same CG-style narrative they'd had prior to that - with Alerts, Invasions, Control, etc. placed in the background with no visible progress bars, with all the same in-instance gameplay that's generally worked pretty well, and no-one would have felt that there was something missing. The Titans would have died on the appropriate schedule, counter-attacks like this would have been narratively sensible, no "balancing" issues to deal with or tissue sampling being overly dominant, no exploitable strategic rules, simpler to code so Powerplay wouldn't have been delayed so much, systems of greater importance could be attacked to raise the apparent stakes knowing that they couldn't actually be lost, etc. etc.
Having decided to run it as a simulation-style war, though, that does imply some need to keep the Thargoids' new tactics within the "rules" of the simulation. They had options here - actual tactical ones. For example, the other Titans could have responded to the attack on Oya a few weeks ago by switching away from their "spherical shell expansion" tactic to one which aggressively targeted focused "spear" expansions towards critical human systems: is the human side willing to risk losing an engineer or two to finish Oya off, or do they fight the diversion and give Oya time to recover? Or even one where the 30 Alerts at Oya come from no other Titan placing any Alerts this week - so it's implied that the "new tactic" is the other Titans at great local expense sending reinforcements to Oya - would be a surprise but would only require one new capability rather than four, and would also have a sufficiently obvious cost to answer "why don't they always do this?".
EDIT: I'll also note that even with these recent actions, Frontier are still trying to have their cake and eat it on the "simulation" side - giving out advice to attack the Alerts, or to reduce Oya's Controls further before attacking the Titan. Why? If Oya won't fall until the ordained hour, what does it lose human players to just attack Oya (or Indra) now rather than worrying about things like strategy? It's more fun than sampling or searching Alert signal sources for rare Orthrus encounters for most people, after all!
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You mean I could've used cheats this whole time since there's no rules?
They're starting to fight dirty
Well, on that note, I am continuing to question what the Thargoids are using the spires for when there is seemingly no difference to one that has two spires and one with seven or eight. Or just none, looking at how Taranis and Leigong weren’t bothered by their absence at all.
If they’re making new Thargoid hive ships beneath the surface, it’s really not obvious.
Happy to lend a carrier if needed - would need to know the basics (when, where, what units/prices to set, any permissions, and so on). Credits not a concern for e.g. 25k x 500k
Apparently the main cheat was fixed on 21st...
...the cheese is gone, so time for the wine?
In a "war" where it should, frankly, be impossible to progress easily just by taking tissue samples, or for a handful (in comparison) of active humans with, essentially, big sticks, to overwhelm a much advanced adversary with superior resources.
It is a pleasant diversion for the players enjoying AX activities, for sure, but, in truth, had it been an actual war, the bubble should be burning brightly by now.
It was "too hard" at the start of the infraction, and the Titans were nerfed, perhaps more nerfing will happen next Thargsday?
@Ian Doncaster
Has humanity been blowing up those kind of thargoid ships?
Or have they been taking out the easier ones?
It might be that humanity just hasn't killed enough of those ships and FD have put them back in the mix.
Just a speculative thought.
Has humanity been blowing up those kind of thargoid ships?
Or have they been taking out the easier ones?
It might be that humanity just hasn't killed enough of those ships and FD have put them back in the mix.
Just a speculative thought.
I dunno, having actively followed it there may well have been an intended story background to why the Thargoids just decided to park at the edges of the Bubble and kind of stay there instead of razing the whole thing to the ground.
I don’t know if that’s still relevant now though, seeing how it all just went to “Shoot the Titans, don’t ask too many questions about it or why no one is trying to figure out their motives any longer”…
… if anyone has actually been trying over the last six or more months because we have as much clue about the Thargoids as a deep sea creature does about humans.
I've paid attention to it, not as a particularly AX combat player (I find other activities more engaging), but more along the lines of "what next?" and not seen anything particularly threatening bar their taking over a bunch of minor systems without posing any threat to core systems (even @Ian Doncaster commented that they would take many years to do any significant damage to the bubble, back in the early days) even of left untouched for years.
Agreed, it is all jingoism, and not much else.
I've been mulling things over, the below may not be right but it is one possible scenario. One that the devs may see as as a great / masterful / epic conflict situation, without realising how demoralising it is for people who want to play a game
Oya has put out 20+ alerts this week, meaning we cannot use spires to help against inner systems (Eoto, Inara, Baiabozo, etc.)
We could ignore those alerts and focus on the titan. This looks to be a very challenging target unless weekend activity ramps up significantly
We could try to clear most of those alerts in case Oya survives the week, and hope Oya doesn't do the same again, week after week
I have a concern that the alerts will continue, meaning we have to pick off inner systems without spire activity and that may be the developer intent. Which in itself is achievable if we only have to do each system once
However, if we can't kill off Oya and took out say Eoto before moving onto Inara the subsequent week and Baiabozo the week after. What is to stop Oya putting another alert onto Eoto. Meaning we'd be on a rolling clearance where after clearing Baiabozo we'd need to clear Eoto again
If we could clear two inner systems some weeks we'd kind of make progress but it would be very very tedious and frustrating. Would this really be what the developers want to achieve, either deliberately or unintentionally
Oya has put out 20+ alerts this week, meaning we cannot use spires to help against inner systems (Eoto, Inara, Baiabozo, etc.)
We could ignore those alerts and focus on the titan. This looks to be a very challenging target unless weekend activity ramps up significantly
We could try to clear most of those alerts in case Oya survives the week, and hope Oya doesn't do the same again, week after week
I have a concern that the alerts will continue, meaning we have to pick off inner systems without spire activity and that may be the developer intent. Which in itself is achievable if we only have to do each system once
However, if we can't kill off Oya and took out say Eoto before moving onto Inara the subsequent week and Baiabozo the week after. What is to stop Oya putting another alert onto Eoto. Meaning we'd be on a rolling clearance where after clearing Baiabozo we'd need to clear Eoto again
If we could clear two inner systems some weeks we'd kind of make progress but it would be very very tedious and frustrating. Would this really be what the developers want to achieve, either deliberately or unintentionally
Not sure if it has been said here already but SNPX is focusing its sampling efforts on Cephei Sector AF-A c21 and Col 285 Sector HD-G b12-1.
The carrier [SNPX] Resolute has a buy order for Col 285 Sector HD-G b12-1 and is stationed in Cephei Sector ZZ-y b3.
Edit: The carrier [SNPX] ISS Nadire has a buy order for Cephei Sector AF-A c21 and is stationed in Cephei Sector EQ-Y b1
If anyone wants to do some sampling in those systems we appriciate it.
o7
The carrier [SNPX] Resolute has a buy order for Col 285 Sector HD-G b12-1 and is stationed in Cephei Sector ZZ-y b3.
Edit: The carrier [SNPX] ISS Nadire has a buy order for Cephei Sector AF-A c21 and is stationed in Cephei Sector EQ-Y b1
If anyone wants to do some sampling in those systems we appriciate it.
o7
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I hope it is because all instances break pretty quick and not something else.
Or the rules were not understood/changed.
The emergency/panic attack from Oya only targeted uninhabited systems while ignoring cooldowns. Recoveries in populated systems were not affected.
And if they actually expected people to retake systems of the inner core by force instead of using a spire site, well, they would need to be made so they’re not basically impossible.
Are you sure?
I see alerts in Tougeir, Muchihiks and Chernobo.
Tougeir, Muchihiks and Chernobo were not in recovery/cooldown, having been secure and unattacked for several months (Tougier clear since October, Muchihiks since July, and Chernobo since August by DCoH's records).
Thanks to the recovery systems being left alone, a couple of systems reclaimed last week like Lhou Mans are tharg-free even while being under 10Ly from the titan for now, serving quite reasonably as a staging point, the repairing coriolis still having triple-R/shipyard/outfitting.
It's either:
1. The AI is amazing, it analysed our tactics, perceived a weakness in our tactical approach, and developed an entirely new, never before seen tactic to confound and delay our inevitable victory. Or . . . .
2. FDev tweaked it to so that everything is completed to a release schedule.
I could not possible guess which ;-)
07 CMDRs
1. The AI is amazing, it analysed our tactics, perceived a weakness in our tactical approach, and developed an entirely new, never before seen tactic to confound and delay our inevitable victory. Or . . . .
2. FDev tweaked it to so that everything is completed to a release schedule.
I could not possible guess which ;-)
07 CMDRs
Well, that is essentially the problem with trying to combine an in-game strategic layer with any sort of narrative importance or pacing: you get the utterly counter-intuitive result that the more effective player tactics are, the more effective the resistance gets to keep the story on track ... and the less effective player tactics are, the less effective the resistance must be to ensure players don't get too far behind. Neither a purely strategic simulation nor a purely narrative approach has that problem.
I look forward - from a safe distance, you understand! - to seeing if Frontier intend to make the same mistake with the new Powerplay. It'd be so easy to keep it as the same irrelevant "for scorekeeping purposes only" system as the current one is, and so tempting not to...
The amount of Orthrus sitting ducks killed at the spire site in Oya last week to get the 85% discount on the Control attacks, it's a miracle that it had any left to do Alert scouting with, never mind a fleet of well over three times the usual size. Even before that, Oya hasn't had an Alert succeed for four weeks and has had poor Alert success for the entire war. Compared with the other Titans which didn't do this militarily extremely powerful "new tactic" Oya should have far less forces than they do.
Obviously the Thargoids are no more obliged to account for their exact fleet numbers than a human minor faction is. If they found a few hundred thousand spare Orthrus parked in a hangar that they'd previously forgotten about due to a paperwork error, sure, they can do that. Similarly, when players decide that Cocijo is too boring to actually bother destroying, the Thargoids will have an "adaptation of their tactics" to accidentally lean on the self-destruct button at a dramatically appropriate point.