Thargoid War Rebalancing

[Kayvan]

Some observations:
the entire war and each individual system liberation is a matter of scale. I admit I was a bit disappointed to see how little the contribution of an average schmo like me means to the whole effort. Like, according to Inara, this week in Gliese 9035 - which is almost complete - a total of >25000 thargoids have been destroyed. Now I don't know how many "points" an interceptor is worth relative to a scout kill; I hope it's a lot bc I focused almost entirely on ceptors. But by pure raw kill numbers, my contribution was about 0,3% of the total combat effort.
Also, some 67000 rescues were performed in the same system (which I didn't participate in this time), which doesn't seem a lot in comparison: just about 500 full Pythons' worth. So certainly the largest part of the effort was combat.

Assuming that my pace of combat is in any way representative, about 1200 hours of play time have been accumulated by all participating CMDRs to liberate this one system (just for combat; the rescues might add another 100 hours or so). Probably quite a bit more in reality, bc this week I was quite lucky with my instances, none glitched out or failed to progress, which unfortunately is not the norm.

So, assuming 1500 hours per system, and we currently manage to secure roughly 10-12 systems per week, plus some lost overhead, that would mean the playerbase is putting in a total of roughly 20000 hours per week. Oh, and that just covers players syncing with Inara, I guess.

Not really going anywhere with this, but maybe these calculations are useful to someone else. ^^

 

[aRJay]

Some observations:
…

So, assuming 1500 hours per system, and we currently manage to secure roughly 10-12 systems per week, plus some lost overhead, that would mean the playerbase is putting in a total of roughly 20000 hours per week. Oh, and that just covers players syncing with Inara, I guess.

Not really going anywhere with this, but maybe these calculations are useful to someone else. ^^

Interesting.

That is around 120 players involved every hour.

 

[Jack Winter]

Dead game!

 

[Kayvan]

Yeah. Ofc it's hard to say how many hours the median player puts in every week. For me it varies, this week it was probably around 4 hours of actual AX combat, and a lot of fooling around, engineering and recreation. That's probably not a lot. I know I used to play a lot more back when some of my friends still played and we winged up almost every day.
I think i read something like 13.000 players being regularly involved in the war effort?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Oh, and that just covers players syncing with Inara, I guess.

For things like in-game traffic reports compared with 3rd-party detection of the same, I'd guess that between 5-10% of activity normally gets picked up in the bubble. But there's huge variation on that and a lot of the big AX specialist squadrons very much encourage its use so that they can try to get useful data. Still, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the real numbers were 5-10 times higher.


Too early to tell for certain - most systems being seriously contested have been in a very narrow distance range - but there is some early evidence that the further a system is from a Maelstrom, the easier it is, so it may get easier to handle (per-system, not for the whole thing) as they continue to spread out.

I think i read something like 13.000 players being regularly involved in the war effort?

That'd be "extremely popular CG" levels of activity, which is rather more than most AX CGs got in themselves (last pre-U14 was ~4,600) but of course there's a lot more than direct combat involved here. From overall EDDN traffic data both in terms of general activity and which systems are most popular, it does sound like a plausible number (though unless the source was Frontier officially it's very much one where I'd also believe double or half)

 

[Brannor]

Check out this journal snippet:

{ "timestamp":"2023-01-03T06:49:30Z", "event":"FactionKillBond", "Reward":24000000, "AwardingFaction":"$faction_PilotsFederation;", "AwardingFaction_Localised":"Pilots' Federation", "VictimFaction":"$faction_Thargoid;", "VictimFaction_Localised":"Thargoids" }
{ "timestamp":"2023-01-03T06:49:30Z", "event":"ShipTargeted", "TargetLocked":false }
{ "timestamp":"2023-01-03T06:49:31Z", "event":"MissionRedirected", "MissionID":909051328, "Name":"Mission_TW_Massacre_Cyclops_Singular", "NewDestinationStation":"Phillifent Port", "NewDestinationSystem":"Kaurukat", "OldDestinationStation":"", "OldDestinationSystem":"" }

That's a basilisk kill triggering completion for a cyclops mission (second time it has happened to me). Not a bad thing by any means, it would be great if all higher level interceptor kills counted for lower level missions but since they don't (consistently at least) it smells like a bug.

Yeah, I've noticed that I occasionally get Cyclops payouts for a Basilisk and vice verse (it's happened a couple of times.) Usually when I'm fighting multiple interceptors at the same time in a station/planet base defense, and I have taken a heart or two out of a Basilisk and a Cyclops without killing them and then killed one of them. The payments all balance out in the end (as long as I kill all the interceptors in question.) But I can see how it would lead to the result you're seeing.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Yeah, I've noticed that I occasionally get Cyclops payouts for a Basilisk and vice verse (it's happened a couple of times.) Usually when I'm fighting multiple interceptors at the same time in a station/planet base defense, and I have taken a heart or two out of a Basilisk and a Cyclops without killing them and then killed one of them. The payments all balance out in the end (as long as I kill all the interceptors in question.) But I can see how it would lead to the result you're seeing.

There is nothing wrong with the payout - I killed a basilisk, and I got paid for a basilisk. But it triggered a "Kill One Cyclops" mission to complete (one second after the basilisk died) when there was no cyclops anywhere in the instance.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

As an explorer, I've been using third party logging tools since early 2015. I imagine a large part of the forum population uses them too.

@robbyp How many users of EDD log on at least weekly? Thanks!

 

[robbyp]

^ I have no idea, no way of gathering stats. Its programmed, released and that's that.

 

[Ozric]

It feels to me like it's swung too far towards being easy to win systems https://dcoh.watch/maelstrom/Indra
Yesterday the progress in this system was just at the R at the beginning. In one day people have almost saved that system and it's not the one that is being pushed as the main place to focus on.

I still don't understand the explanation of 'there's more Thargoids so their forces are weaker', but that's just an aside. It feels like it's just become pick which few systems you want to save each week.
And the Superpowers still haven't joined in yet. And we are still waiting on Palin and Tah to announce their findings from the tens/hundreds of thousands of Green Relics that have been delivered to them over the past 6 months.

I personally thought the initial level was harsh but fitting considering the position we were in, at least with the introduction of the Superpowers and new weapons/defensive capabilities the tide could be turned in our favour. But it feels almost like it has already.

^ I have no idea, no way of gathering stats. Its programmed, released and that's that.

That one of the main reasons a lot of us have used it since the beginning

 

[Kayvan]

There are still about 4 times more systems being invaded than we are able to defend, what exactly about this is "too easy"?

 

[Ozric]

There are still about 4 times more systems being invaded than we are able to defend, what exactly about this is "too easy"?

I guess we shall see how many new system come under invasion tomorrow, but yes it'll be 38 systems under invasion and 10 saved by the time the tick happens. If no more become invaded, then the trajectory is obvious. If all 38 of the Alert systems become invaded, then it's a lot more to fend off.

But I already explained why I thought it was "too easy", the amount of effort required to win a system.

 

[Fizzatron]

I still don't understand the explanation of 'there's more Thargoids so their forces are weaker', but that's just an aside. It feels like it's just become pick which few systems you want to save each week.

I've thought about it and the best explanation I can come up with so far is that it's possible that the Maelstroms are actually wormhole portals. This would then suggest that the Maelstroms are not then tied to the amount of Thargoids that spawn around them.

 

[Kayvan]

Actually for this tick I see a particular problem: the window is closing for numerous systems. There were relatively few with any operational ports left even this week. And of those we fail to liberate this week, many will lose their last port. And others are running their final week right now, so they'll be lost tomorrow morning.

So in short, it might very well be that we're heading towards a stalemate in just one or two weeks -- no more easily defended installations, just some alerts that are best cleared by non-combat efforts, and a big question mark remaining as to how we're supposed to wrest any of the over 250 fallen systems from thargoid control.

Unless any other game-changers occur, of course.

 

[Ozric]

Actually for this tick I see a particular problem: the window is closing for numerous systems. There were relatively few with any operational ports left even this week. And of those we fail to liberate this week, many will lose their last port. And others are running their final week right now, so they'll be lost tomorrow morning.

So in short, it might very well be that we're heading towards a stalemate in just one or two weeks -- no more easily defended installations, just some alerts that are best cleared by non-combat efforts, and a big question mark remaining as to how we're supposed to wrest any of the over 250 fallen systems from thargoid control.

Unless any other game-changers occur, of course.

I have only just started looking into it but the numbers are quite interesting.

There are currently 38 systems under invasion and 10 will be saved by the time the tick happens.
14 of them I think will be lost with the tick.
9 will have 1 week left
5 will have 2 weeks
4 will have 3 weeks
and then presumably 6 new ones will have 4 weeks. (these come from systems that are currently in Alert, and have a population)

If we keep the current pace we should be able to clear all the rest of them and stop any advance in 3 weeks. As you say though what we do about getting systems back is unknown.

 

[nemolomen]

Dead game!

My shiny Magic 8 Ball says:

 

[nemolomen]

Actually for this tick I see a particular problem: the window is closing for numerous systems. There were relatively few with any operational ports left even this week. And of those we fail to liberate this week, many will lose their last port. And others are running their final week right now, so they'll be lost tomorrow morning.

So in short, it might very well be that we're heading towards a stalemate in just one or two weeks -- no more easily defended installations, just some alerts that are best cleared by non-combat efforts, and a big question mark remaining as to how we're supposed to wrest any of the over 250 fallen systems from thargoid control.

Unless any other game-changers occur, of course.

I have only just started looking into it but the numbers are quite interesting.

There are currently 38 systems under invasion and 10 will be saved by the time the tick happens.
14 of them I think will be lost with the tick.
9 will have 1 week left
5 will have 2 weeks
4 will have 3 weeks
and then presumably 6 new ones will have 4 weeks. (these come from systems that are currently in Alert, and have a population)

If we keep the current pace we should be able to clear all the rest of them and stop any advance in 3 weeks. As you say though what we do about getting systems back is unknown.

I was away from the galaxy for most of the holiday break, and when I did look in, on NYE, I thought...well, that was a short war, no, what I really thought was "either the 're-balancing' was too soon or it was too much"...but there's still >300 systems under goid control so maybe we the "Christmas Vacation Squadron" just stemmed the major bleeding...and now that everyone's gone back to work and school, maybe the playerbase effort will decrease again...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If we keep the current pace we should be able to clear all the rest of them and stop any advance in 3 weeks.

This is assuming that:
1) We continue to place no value at all on stopping the Thargoids capturing uninhabited systems, which they presumably do have some use for or they wouldn't do it.
2) The Thargoids continue to politely place almost all their new Alerts each week on uninhabited systems.

If they keep putting only 8 or so Alerts a week on inhabited systems, then yes, after a few more weeks of saving 10 systems a time, we should have got them to a point where their Alerts and Invasions of inhabited systems are all being stopped before they get as far as Control ... at the cost of freely letting them have 40 or 50 new uninhabited Control systems each week, most of which we'll never recover.

If they switch to putting 40 or 50 of their weekly Alerts onto inhabited systems (which they certainly have enough total Alerts to do), then being able to stop ~10 a week from progressing is going to be a massive defeat every single week.

 

[nemolomen]

If they switch to putting 40 or 50 of their weekly Alerts onto inhabited systems (which they certainly have enough total Alerts to do), then being able to stop ~10 a week from progressing is going to be a massive defeat every single week.

Having the war progress this way for at least a few months would be great...

 

[avow555]

Having the war progress this way for at least a few months would be great...

I suspect after the holidays are over the player base will dwindle and the goids can expand all they want.

Personally I'll be going back to a login now and again, the initial war was amusing but without any new equipment or chassis it's just the same old song.