Thargoid Maelstrom - Interceptors and caustic damage

[Cmdr Snuffler]

Built a cold running, open play, maelstrom, research Orca.
2700 hull, 13% heat idle, 15% heat with thrusters, 550ms boost.

What I did:
Shot a mine. Big caustic cloud emitted. Cloud clears and disappears.
No interceptors came sniffing around so I scooped the dropped material and started taking low level caustic damage.
Looked which way to boost to avoid further mines, so I could decom, and saw I Hydra staring at me from 700m away. Still. Quiet. Just staring. Made me jump!
I reversed away slowly at 100ms until range was 3km, then turned and legged it. The Hydra did nothing the entire time.
It was then I noticed my hull was now dropping fast. The caustic damage was tearing through the hull like a hot knife through butter and I was down in 30% in no time at all. Way faster than "normal" caustic damage.
Decom and repair and all was good.

Questions:
1. The caustic cloud vanished before I went to scoop the mat, but still took caustic damage. How can I avoid something I cannot see? Is this a GFX bug?
2. What caused me to take incredibly high caustic damage?
3. I've shot mines before and witnessed interceptors "disinfecting" the area where the mine was with a green/yellow spray. The Hydra I encountered did nothing, no spray. Could it have been interceptor spray or a GFX bug where the spray doesn't show if you're too close?
4. Why did the Hydra sneak up and just stare at me? I thought goids could still see you even if you were under 20% heat.

Playing in VR.

 

[tolm]

Was the material you scooped up caustic and did you have caustic resist cargo racks?

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

Was the material you scooped up caustic and did you have caustic resist cargo racks?

Good point! I think it was a caustic shard, but they are materials not cargo...and no, I did not have the 4E anti-corrosion rack, but this shouldn't have been an issue.
I have scooped up a few caustic shards over the last few days and have not been hit by that amount of damage before.

 

[tolm]

Good point! I think it was a caustic shard, but they are materials not cargo...and no, I did not have the 4E anti-corrosion rack, but this shouldn't have been an issue.
I have scooped up a few caustic shards over the last few days and have not been hit by that amount of damage before.

Fair enough - was just a thought but, yeh, I would assume a material wouldn’t cause caustic damage … that would be harsh, even for FDev!

 

[Coehoorn]

Built a cold running, open play, maelstrom, research Orca.
2700 hull, 13% heat idle, 15% heat with thrusters, 550ms boost.

What I did:
Shot a mine. Big caustic cloud emitted. Cloud clears and disappears.
No interceptors came sniffing around so I scooped the dropped material and started taking low level caustic damage.
Looked which way to boost to avoid further mines, so I could decom, and saw I Hydra staring at me from 700m away. Still. Quiet. Just staring. Made me jump!
I reversed away slowly at 100ms until range was 3km, then turned and legged it. The Hydra did nothing the entire time.
It was then I noticed my hull was now dropping fast. The caustic damage was tearing through the hull like a hot knife through butter and I was down in 30% in no time at all. Way faster than "normal" caustic damage.
Decom and repair and all was good.

Questions:
1. The caustic cloud vanished before I went to scoop the mat, but still took caustic damage. How can I avoid something I cannot see? Is this a GFX bug?
2. What caused me to take incredibly high caustic damage?
3. I've shot mines before and witnessed interceptors "disinfecting" the area where the mine was with a green/yellow spray. The Hydra I encountered did nothing, no spray. Could it have been interceptor spray or a GFX bug where the spray doesn't show if you're too close?
4. Why did the Hydra sneak up and just stare at me? I thought goids could still see you even if you were under 20% heat.

Playing in VR.

You can't avoid caustic damage in the maelstrom. There are layers around the core, the deeper you go, the more caustic 'ticks' accumulate on your hull = it eats away at your hull faster, and you need higher heat levels to burn it off. The caustic damage doesn't come only from the remnants of the mines. They just add to it.

They don't disinfect the area, and they certainly have no spray. They're scanning/programming, but in the dense caustic atmosphere, the yellow, normally fairly targeted beam becomes a diffused light cone.

The Interceptors in the maelstrom aren't normally aggressive. They seem to be busy with their own things, and pretty focused / blind for their surroundings. They'll only hunt you down when you attack them, or make them take damage from a caustic gen explosion, accidentally. In the particular case you describe, the hydra must've been bugged. I saw plenty of those. If you go closer, you'll see that they're twitching / shivering, probably in a state between two behaviors. Ergo, it was stuck.

If you really want to go deeper into the maelstrom, or spend more time there, you will need a few Guardian Hull Reinforcements, ideally a repair limpet controller on top of that.

 

[tolm]

You can't avoid caustic damage in the maelstrom. There are layers around the core, the deeper you go, the more caustic 'ticks' accumulate on your hull = it eats away at your hull faster, and you need higher heat levels to burn it off. The caustic damage doesn't come only from the remnants of the mines. They just add to it.

They don't disinfect the area, and they certainly have no spray. They're scanning/programming, but in the dense caustic atmosphere, the yellow, normally fairly targeted beam becomes a diffused light cone.

The Interceptors in the maelstrom aren't normally aggressive. They seem to be busy with their own things, and pretty focused / blind for their surroundings. They'll only hunt you down when you attack them, or make them take damage from a caustic gen explosion, accidentally. In the particular case you describe, the hydra must've been bugged. I saw plenty of those. If you go closer, you'll see that they're twitching / shivering, probably in a state between two behaviors. Ergo, it was stuck.

If you really want to go deeper into the maelstrom, or spend more time there, you will need a few Guardian Hull Reinforcements, ideally a repair limpet controller on top of that.

I keep seeing conflicting advice on G5 Heavy Duty / Deep Plated HRPs vs Guardian HRPs …

On paper, it looks like switching out a couple of small ones can help provided that, say, 9.8% of the REST of your hull is more than the HPs you lose for doing so. But in practice I’ve not really been sure whether my hull lasts longer or not.

Mind you, that in AX CZs … but I guess if you’re fighting a caustic cloud - and nothing else - that might be more noticeable?

 

[Ozric]

The Maelstroms have a background Caustic Zone. Once you get within about 100Km of the centre you will start to take Caustic Damage from the cloud itself. The closer you get to the centre of the cloud, the more damage you will take. And the caustic damage hits much harder here than from Interceptors and Scouts!

In my experience the Interceptors inside Maelstrom clouds are all passive (regardless of how close you get (good time to scan them)), and curious. Like you say they will investigate Caustic Generators that are destroyed, I think the "spray" you're seeing is just them scanning the husk of the destroyed generator, which you can see but not target.

The only time they turn aggressive is once the EMP is triggered. If you set that off, they will turn instantly hostile and hunt you out.

The build I am using has 3.9k Caustic resistance because of the Meta Alloy packages, but even then I have to keep an eye on my Hull as the Caustic damage seems to be applied as a multiplier to me.

edit - partially ninja'd

 

[Ozric]

I keep seeing conflicting advice on G5 Heavy Duty / Deep Plated HRPs vs Guardian HRPs …

On paper, it looks like switching out a couple of small ones can help provided that, say, 9.8% of the REST of your hull is more than the HPs you lose for doing so. But in practice I’ve not really been sure whether my hull lasts longer or not.

Mind you, that in AX CZs … but I guess if you’re fighting a caustic cloud - and nothing else - that might be more noticeable?

I only have the Meta Alloy ones unlocked, not Guardian which might be a bit better, but they both give a bonus to Caustic resistance. Meta Alloy ones are 3% per Hull Reinforcement.

 

[tolm]

God. I hate DoT effects in games … it’s just such a lazy way to make things “harder” and force you to burn through resources.

 

[Ozric]

Makes perfect sense though. If you're moving towards a source of radiation for example, then you're going to take more radiation damage from it the closer you get to it. Same principle here but with Caustic Damage.

 

[tolm]

I only have the Meta Alloy ones unlocked, not Guardian which might be a bit better, but they both give a bonus to Caustic resistance. Meta Alloy ones are 3% per Hull Reinforcement.

Yeh, Guardian ones are 5% resist but you lose a lot of raw HPs for that boon vs engineered HRPs.

On most of my builds - on paper (well, Coriolis!) - once you’re pushing 4000 Hull switching, say, a C3 and a C2 to Guardian ones gets you more from the 9.8% resist than you lose compared to the engineered ones. But changing larger ones doesn’t look to pay off and changing more than two is often a minimal gain (like 10 - 50 integrity extra) vs caustic for a significant loss in absolute integrity.

Why we can’t just skin a whole ship with whatever the Caustic Resist Cargo Rack is made from is beyond me …

 

[tolm]

Makes perfect sense though. If you're moving towards a source of radiation for example, then you're going to take more radiation damage from it the closer you get to it. Same principle here but with Caustic Damage.

Oh, yeh, makes perfect sense but I still don’t like it!

Same reason I hate quiz questions with time limits. I don’t need the stress!!

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

The Maelstroms have a background Caustic Zone. Once you get within about 100Km of the centre you will start to take Caustic Damage from the cloud itself. The closer you get to the centre of the cloud, the more damage you will take. And the caustic damage hits much harder here than from Interceptors and Scouts!

In my experience the Interceptors inside Maelstrom clouds are all passive (regardless of how close you get (good time to scan them)), and curious. Like you say they will investigate Caustic Generators that are destroyed, I think the "spray" you're seeing is just them scanning the husk of the destroyed generator, which you can see but not target.

The only time they turn aggressive is once the EMP is triggered. If you set that off, they will turn instantly hostile and hunt you out.

The build I am using has 3.9k Caustic resistance because of the Meta Alloy packages, but even then I have to keep an eye on my Hull as the Caustic damage seems to be applied as a multiplier to me.

edit - partially ninja'd

How long does it take to repair your hull, those class 3 multi limpets only have a repair capacity of 70. Isn't that risk?
You need to fully heavy duty your hull
I'm assuming you're synthing limpets?

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

the more caustic 'ticks' accumulate on your hull = it eats away at your hull faster,

Does this apply to mine clouds? I did sit there for a few mins staring at the Hydra, not wanting to move in case it decided to slap me about.

 

[Ozric]

How long does it take to repair your hull, those class 3 multi limpets only have a repair capacity of 70. Isn't that risk?
You need to fully heavy duty your hull
I'm assuming you're synthing limpets?

I just jump to another system to repair. Of course it's a risk But here is literally nothing to lost other than credits which are meaningless. All the items you pick up are materials, Codex entries are automatic. If I die I respawn a system away and go back for more

Yeah I couldn't be bothered to do engineering properly on anything other than the FSD, and I don't have the Heavy Duty pinned so I just did what Felicity offered.

No I buy limpets one system away and fly there with 4 of them. Keeps me alive for a while.

 

[Coehoorn]

My current Anaconda build for Maelstroms. Not much math behind it, just strapping some parts together and seeing how it works. I can definitely confirm that it hold up good in there. I can basically take up residence in the cloud without having to worry about the caustic effect too much. Repair limpets slow down the caustic dot intensively.
Having the universal limpet controller helps, because I can decide to use repair limpets, probe caustic generators with research limpets, or whatever, without wasting multiple optional slots.
Lasers stayed from the former fighting build. I use them to tag and activate the mines when needed (for a safe corridor to the core or when researching the interceptors reactions), although one would be enough.

Regarding the caustic dot, I believe I can stay longer in the cloud with this build, than with a build with two GHRs less and two Heavy Duty reinforcements more. Didn't use a stopwatch, but it felt like it.

More research needed on the caustic effect. It definitely seems like it stacks on the hull. Flying closer to the core adds more stacks, flying through a caustic gen fart adds stacks, etc. The heat needed to burn off the caustic effect is sometimes 120%, sometimes even higher than 170%. I believe it has to do with the amount of caustic stacks. Ergo, if you just probe the outermost caustic layer and turn back, you'll get rid of it with >120% heat. If you go deeper or go through a caustic explosion, you'll need >150% and more.
Little science done on it, unfortunately. I'm not the "make a sheet" guy and most people are busy with scanning plants or fighting for systems now. But there's definitely a quantifiable system behind it.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Caustic damage in general does stack - getting hit by multiple enzyme/caustic missiles causes higher rates of damage (and so does flying constantly behind an Orthrus). Basically any time you see the little caustic status icon pop up on the ship hologram is another "stack" being applied.

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

I just jump to another system to repair.

But you're mass locked...or is there a way to jump from inside the cloud?
Yes, you're right, money is no option...but there's pride. Can't remember the last time I lost a ship

Regarding the caustic dot, I believe I can stay longer in the cloud with this build, than with a build with two GHRs less and two Heavy Duty reinforcements more. Didn't use a stopwatch, but it felt like it.

You're right, you can survive longer as you would have more caustic resistance.
There's a limit where GHRP > HRP + Deep Plating.
If you conda had a single HRP it would look something like:
GHRP: 3984 caustic hit points
HRP+Deep Plating: 4047 caustic hit points
So if you ship has around the 4000 armour mark then GHRPs are in fact a disadvantage since 5% of the hull < increase in HP you get from deep plating.
Once you get higher armour...(there's a tipping point, not done the maths on this, but lets say 6k) then the 5% caustic res bonus is now better than the deep plating mod.
Medium to small ships should go for HRP+Deep Plating and large ships should use GHRP

You you get get swamped by mines that sense your heat? I've only ever gone into the cloud with cold builds.

EDIT:
Class 5 HRP+Deep Plating = 737
GHRP = 488

Difference is 249.
5% = 250
100% = 5000
So roughly if your armour is 5000 then GHRPs are the way to go.

 

[Coehoorn]

get swamped by mines

They have a max range for sensing heat. I have no problems navigating the cloud without a cold build. The only times I have to cool down is when going really close to them, <500m for scanning and getting a caustic sample, or when boosting past them to get to the core. I never witnessed them swarming me from all over the place just because I run a bit hotter.

 

[Ozric]

But you're mass locked...or is there a way to jump from inside the cloud?

Depends how close you are to the core, but if you're close then trigger the EMP and it will fling you out of the cloud. Then you have a death defying race to a station to see if you can survive.

Yes, you're right, money is no option...but there's pride. Can't remember the last time I lost a ship

Being part of the Buckyball Racing Club I learnt to embrace the rebuy screen many years ago