Thargoid War Feedback

[Genar-Hofoen]

I've been enjoying going up against Scouts & Interceptors this past week, playing my alternate character - it's been fun!

However, it's marred slightly by other players not switching off "Report crimes against me", so on a couple of occasions I've acquired a 400Cr fine because a player with crimes switched on got in the way of an AX bullet or three. This means I can't dock at the nearest base or starport I'm defending and get rid of the silly fine due to Anonymous Access, and seeing as these attacked places don't have a working Contacts, this means I have to jump out of the system I'm defending.

My guess is the player involved didn't accept the "Will you help us defend against the Goids?" pseudo-mission which appears in the comms tab when you arrive at the place to be defended. I did notice one or two players at the site were still orange (they hadn't accepted the mission).

Similarly, on one occasion an NPC ship got in the way of my Beam/guns and exploded, leaving my character with a bounty for murder. The NPC was a member of some very minor faction hidden away in some nearby system; it took me hours to track them down to a small base with only a small landing pad, in order to clear my name and be able to return to the system being attacked by Goids.

In other words, rather than spending a few hours defending humanity against the Thargoid menace my character was instead trying to clear his name elsewhere.

There should be at least some leeway considered at the place where you're trying to "debug". I don't exactly know how you'd do this, but having the game rules regarding small fines for friendly fire and accidentally blowing up already-weakened NPC ships which happened to get in the way active as if it's a non-Thargoid-invaded system, is really making my character feel very disappointed in the human race he's trying to save... "If they're gonna fine me for some NPC schmuck on 3% hull from goid attacks getting in the way of my firepower, then these guys deserve all they get."

Regards o7

 

[Ozric]

Likes:

It has brought the community together in and out of game very well. It's been so much fun in Open.
I like the overall feel of how the war was implemented and the way that the different states work together.

Dislikes:

Weekly progress reset.
How far the ease of defending systems was balanced, and then left. The explanation given doesn't really make sense to me.
How little information/feedback/progress there has been on the scientific efforts.

Recommendations:

Address the two things you mention in your OP.
Systems with 0 population feel very much like they are discarded parts of the war, with no clear and obvious way of how to defend or recover them. It would be nice to have some more information in the game, unless it is intended that they all fall to the Thargoids.
The overview in the Galaxy Map is nice to see how many systems are in what state, but it would be nice to have a more long term overview showing how things have progressed over weeks/months.
I expected the Superpowers to get involved by now, I'm not sure why we're having to do all the work and they're not even discussing any plans.

Tell Palin and Ram Tah to get off their backsides and do something with the hundreds of thousands of Unclassified Relics we've been giving them for 5 months



Conclusion:

Overall I think it has been a great addition to the game, despite the fact my main does no combat. It's been a nice shakeup and the team should feel proud of not only what they've done, but actually going as far as to implement it. Keep up the good work, just knock it up a notch again.

May Chaos Take The World!

 

[Firehawk894]

Greetings Commanders!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope your enjoyed you holidays and are excited to be back fighting the good fight against the Thargoid menace.

The purpose of this thread is to collect feedback on the Thargoid War in one place. Thank you all who have already contributed your thoughts and ideas which we are also gathering. Now that the Thargoid War has been raging for some time, we're taking stock to inform potential changes.

We're aware of a number of things already, ranging from the specifics of AX combat such as the Xeno-Scanner range of 500m being too short given the instant hostility, to the overall way the war operates. For instance, there is no particular focused effort encouraged via the game itself leaving players to organise themselves if they want to save given systems.

Please let us know what you think about anything from the smaller details to the grand scheme, both the good and the bad. It's important for us to know what's going well so we can continue down those paths as well as what needs improvement more urgent reconsideration.

O7

Hi there Bruce, hope you're doing well!

I had a lot of hope for the Thargoid Retaliation (not war ), but after watching it go by for a while I'm a little disappointed in it and here's why:

• The Orthrus was a cool re-addition to the game, but doesn't really provide much other than just "here's another Thargoid to shoot at and this one doesn't even fight back"
• The Thargoid War system just seems to function like the Incursions that used to happen, no consequences for leaving a system under Thargoid control than a burning station that will just repair itself anyway with no player input once the massively nerfed requirements are met to return the system to human control.
  • And yes I realise that any changes to gameplay such as permanently destroyed/ extensively damaged stations requiring months of rebuild would be met with screeching results from the wider community
• To expand on the above point, the Thargoid War started with the invasion of one cluster of systems by the first Maelstrom... but then the attacks got weaker when more Maelstroms arrived? Generally speaking armies/navies don't get weaker after they get reinforcements.
• While I agree that completely resetting progress on the system bars isn't a good idea, I also don't like that the requirements for retaking systems got massively nerfed into the floor. I would suggest a middle ground where certain actions fill the bar permanently, such as evacuating civilians from damaged stations to lower the system population, dependant on the total population is how much the bar would fill.

Somewhat of an idea I had about the damaged stations was to spawn "critical battleground" events in 1-3 (or more) occupied or invaded systems, centred around damaged stations. These "CB's" would operate much like a regular AXCZ but much more intense, much more work required to beat them, and failure to beat them results in a crippling downside for the failure, ideas for objectives in these "critical battlegrounds" would be:

• A Station in the system has taken severe damage to it's reactor containment and is in danger of being destroyed by a reactor breach, the mission is to escort an engineering ship to the mailslot of the station where they will work to stabilise and shutdown the reactor before it goes critical and destroys the station, once the engineers are inside you must protect the reactor area from taking too much damage or the Engineers will have to evacuate. Failure means the destruction of the station, maybe permanently.
• A group of military operatives recently infiltrated a damaged station in order to restore it's sensor array in the hopes of using it to monitor Thargoid fleet movements in the system, now they need to evacuate but Thargoids are swarming the area, so a (Faction Capital Ship) has been sent in to recover them, protect the Operatives while they leave the station and dock with the Capital Ship until it jumps out. You would fail by having the Spec Ops transport ship be destroyed before it can dock with the CapShip, or by allowing the CapShip to be routed before it retrieves the team.
• An Outpost in the system has had a strange pathogen released into it, seemingly by the Thargoids, you are being sent inside to find and activate the atmospheric purge system, before the outpost is lost to this strange virus. Failure to succeed (you're on a timer) results in the Outpost becoming "infected", requiring much more work to restore and pushing back human recapture efforts for the system. In addition, infected stations will now fire on HUMAN rather than Thargoid vessels (damaged would need to be toned way down)

 

[space voyager]

Are we losing the war due to technical difficulties? thread. Many bugs are bugging us.

 

[Dushess74]

Good day, Bruce.
Main problems from my side is:
-AXCZ can be randomly broken, mostly when some CMDR joins an instance. Not sure if it's related to being outside wing or just joining in middle of fight. But it occurs often, openplay is not a good solution for clearing invasion from a system. (more details is in Issue tracker, you totally have seen it) Folloving this issue or some separate one is:
-player logs writes itself in the file inconsistently. As well as other player joined the fight and with 1 shot to an interceptor takes the kill in the log. Original fighter in the instance with all his efort does not have his kill in the log file. (but payouts calculating works fine)
-bugged mission menu on the station if players overload servers with too many missions being processed. We have great problem if in a hurry. As well touches AX invaded system's progression due to CMDR are impossible to complete required deliveries.
-obligatory faction's related rescue instead of distance based. Not really an issue, but we have RR megaships around the whole core systems not for nothing, not a good way to waste nearly x2 more path each travel.

 

[NSR2]

If I have a fighter deployed I can't do an emergency land and repair.

I would like to remotely self destruct the fighter so I can land.

I would like to stock the new AX weapons on my fleet carrier.

Sometimes you don't get a payout when an AX cz completes. That's a bit annoying.

Overall its fun!
(also +1 for on foot thargoid shooty shooty)

 

[NSR2]

Ooh also progress should carry over the weekly tick.
Right now I know people who don't play on a Wednesday.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

First of all, Really enjoying the Thargoid war so far but here's a few things;-

1. It doesn't seem that Post-Thargoid state doesn't appear to be affected by player action. (See https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/post-thargoid-recovery-state-research.612655/). Dunno if that's a Bug or not.
2. Longer range / Quicker Scan time for the Anti-Xeno Scanner (think you've covered that one).
3. If there are going to be any future Thargoid research CGS, please make sure the recon limpet bug is resolved.
4. In Multi-crew, please allow turret gunner's to target Thargoid hearts.
5. Add an upgraded AXI Tiapan fighter with the advanced AXI Multi-cannon / Missiles. (Possible CG in the future?)
6. Increase the spawn rate of the Orthrus in Alert systems. Been to several Alert systems but the tracking down of the Threat 4 with the salvage icon can get frustrating.
7. Human EMP Field that could temporarily disable Thargoid swarms?
8. Quick-key for De-Comm limpets, I.e. to Launch one, which will automatically target and repair your own ship.
9. Could the rescue missions be to the nearest Hospital ship, instead of one 200 LY away?

 

[Bruce G]

But deep down you knew it would be the first reply, didn't you

Not even deep down to be fair.

 

[Jack Winter]

The forum does however excell in comedy!

 

[Z4VOS 9000]

For Thargoid ALERT systems:

More NHSS4 poi's to show up for Orthrus combat. Often no NHSS show up or just one.
For higher level NHSS poi's send more scouts and/or more scout waves. Sometimes for NHSS7-8 only 2 waves of 4 scouts show up. Do same with AX Signatures poi's.

Rescue missions- interdiction from pirates: Often when firing back at attacking pirates, I get a bounty and become wanted for no reason.
Reduce button/key pushes to accept and load injured people onboard for these rescue missions. Too many button / key pushes to load 20 rescue injured missions!
Add more rescue injured type missions at a time. I often have to wait for 10 minutes for the missions to refresh to reach the 20 missions limit. Maybe increase the missions limit as well? Large ships can take more rescue missions.

 

[Vallysa]

Thanks Bruce. More ways to organize in-game is much appreciated for those of us who don’t spend much time on Reddit/Discord

 

[Rubbernuke]

But deep down you knew it would be the first reply, didn't you

To be fair I had a funny picture ready but I was a good commander and kept out of it

 

[OliviaL]

"We're aware of a number of things already, ranging from the specifics of AX combat such as the Xeno-Scanner range of 500m being too short given the instant hostility, to the overall way the war operates. For instance, there is no particular focused effort encouraged via the game itself leaving players to organise themselves if they want to save given systems." ..... Hell, yeah! New scanner will be fine and no-limit for AX weapons too. Thx for this new update, it is very interesting for me.

 

[eralm_237]

Have seen a lot of comments within my own squadron of "I'm not going to participate in the thargoid war" due to no central goal, expecially when there is a lot of player information regarding the thargoid controlled systems not being able to be taken back (imo/best guess there is a narrative reason for this), and more systems falling each week than the player base can objectively save. So a lot of players that I know are off exploring or doing bubble BGS instead of the Thargoid war because they don't like something that the player base is loosing at. They've lost hope. (I should mention these are the same people who have opposed the "burn the bubble" mentality.)

Some of the QOL things mentioned in my squadron that would make life nicer in the war would be

• remove the weekly progress restart (let it "roll over")
• enable players (or bgs/narrative) to have "bastions" against the thargoids invading that system after post-thargoid recovery status

As for me? This is an interesting new mechanic.

 

[EidLeWeise]

It definitely would! To clarify, that's a bit beyond the scope of what we're asking here which is how the existing things are going and might be improved.

Honestly I'd be worried if the Thargoids were reduced to "The Bugs" in Starship Troopers.

I hope that we get a way to be proactive recovering from Thargoid attacks

 

[Xarionn]

o7 Bruce!
Like most people around, my main issue is the weekly reset mechanic which feels really... "Unnatural", it makes the war feels like a turn based minigame where 0% or 99% are equal to the same thing : a failure

An easy way to resolve this would be to not reset the entire progress in a given system but rather reduce it so there's still a consequence to not repel the Thargoids in under a week but not a straight "And now it's like you've done nothing!" feeling.

This aside, I personally feel like there are a couple of smaller issues like :

. Unpopulated Alerts are impossible to defend due to the lack of NHSS / AX signature (the only option is to kill Thargoids but there's barely any Thargoids)
. Post-Thargoid recovery systems repair... Automatically? Players seems to have no impact on the recovery rate.
. Previously defended systems can be re-attacked as soon as they exit the recovery state so, what is the incentive to repair them faster then? Why don't they "build" some kind of defenses so the next invasion is easier to repel?
. It would be great if the Galmap could display a list of the affected systems categorized by their respective Maelstrom rather than a simple number.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

expecially when there is a lot of player information regarding the thargoid controlled systems not being able to be taken back

It looks like things might be more subtle than this - there's increasing evidence that systems further from a Maelstrom are easier to fight, and the high-profile defeat in a controlled system was about as close to a Maelstrom as it was possible to get. We won't know for certain until someone tries seriously attacking a more distant one, of course.

 

[Ozric]

Mod hat on

Let's keep the thread to feedback only please.

 

[DemiserofD]

It would be nice if decontamination limpets moved faster, so it would be a little easier to use them on allies. It's almost impossible to support other players at the moment, because they tend to be moving so quickly.

It would be nice to have more solo missions, most of the wing missions are nearly impossible for solo players with limited time.