I’ve personally been running low AXCZs in the absence of other players, though not from lack of trying to find some. I’m not sure how it stacks up to the progress awarded by a high intensity zone(or visiting an abandoned port in a system where those are treated as conflict zones too - which is a way to get swarm-free conflicts, when available, as is currently the case with Ixbaksha at Raijin), but I can usually complete them to the Hydra stage in 30 minutes, be that with AX multicannons or shard cannons(modified, not standard, though with only Cyclops I could use the standard too). Doesn’t require any ammo synths either, so far at least. Can’t say if they spawn any Glaives though, but it
feels more enjoyable than spending 2+ hours slogging through a single CZ with nobody else ever showing up*.
Meanwhile, a medium AXCZ(regular, not port conflict) which I completed two or three days ago, I contended with three Basilisks, everything else Cyclops and Scouts, no Glaives, but still had to throw ammo refills at my shard cannons twice.
[Using the basic one, but I have the impression someone got the synth recipe mixed up because the standard synth uses Sentinel weapon components, one of the G2 Guardian materials and crystal shards(G1), for a full rearm and damage bonus, whereas the basic one requires two raws, one of which is grade 2, and three different Guardian materials while not even providing a full refill.
bringing Azimuth Guardian carries the risk of the main zone event being a Glaive wing.
Worst case scenario, one could always wait the Glaive spawn out by letting the AX NPC pilots deal with it - their targeting priority seems to basically be “Everything bigger than a Scout is targeted first”… which gets quite annoying when you have a big swarm of them around an Interceptor and a Berserker decides it is time for human pilots in the area to have a bad time… meanwhile, the NPCs will obliviously target the interceptor to little effect.
The AFMU repair cost to that is another matter…
(Fun story about those low AX conflict zones in space - when I pushed one to the Hydra stage, there was so many human NPCs with missiles alive they managed to get its first heart exerted - as there is only one which spawns - but then it began to slaughter them.)
*I target former inhabited space by preference, not so much unpopulated. If the Thargoids weren’t using it to launch attacks, they could have it as far as I’m concerned. And I’m aware I could be of more use at Indra, but…
shrugs
