The 7 minute Thargoid Beserk Mode timer, and other lessons from my futile attempts to solo a Baselisk.
Soloing a Baselisk is impossible right? Well yes. It is certainly impossible unless you cheat, in which case it becomes almost certainly impossible.
The cheat in this case is manipulating the Thargoid into not shooting any of it's primary weapons anymore. This involves having a ship launched fighter. The only way to get this to happen with certainty is to launch your fighter, have it shoot the Thargoid, have the Thargoid shoot back at the fighter, and recall the fighter. You have to let the fighter dock, and this takes time.
Here's a video of my most successful attempt to date, where I get the first heart down to 72%. Most people would call that a miserable failure, but given my second best effort is 98% on the first heart I'm calling it a roaring success.
[video=youtube_share;TrsgzeUH5aw]https://youtu.be/TrsgzeUH5aw[/video]
It's important to note that everything that could go right in this video pretty much did. Here's a list:
1) I started in a large wreckage field. This meant half the initial Thargon swarm blew up before the Thargoid cleared the wreckage to begin it's attack run.
2) The Thargoid blows up my first fighter and stops shooting of its own accord, rather than when I get the fighter to dock. First time that's happened. Usually the Thargoid blows up the fighter and continues to wail on me.
3) The Thargoid stays within 2km of my ship most of the time, meaning reasonably straight approaches when I was sitting still. Usually it goes out around 2.9km and approaches fast without flying straight.
4) The Thargoid, my ship and my SLF stay pretty close together, meaning I actually got some time shooting at the exposed heart. I even had time to expose it twice.
In my attempts to see how far I could get solo, I have 4 AX missiles and 2 Flak launchers on my Cutter. I'm therefore relying on the AX1 to do all the damage to the heart. Unfortunately it appears the AX1 multicannons while doing extra damage to the Thargoid hull, only do 1% damage per double shot hit against an exposed heart (see around 7:12 in the video where I finally get a good run of hits). This means if you hit with every shot in the clip you're only going to do 36%, which means you have to hit every shot practically for 3 clips worth. That also means you probably need to expose the heart 3 times, which is going to put a strain on missile ammunition.
The main reason I'm calling it here though is that if you don't destroy the heart 7 minutes after the Thargoid releases its first Thargon swarm, the Thargoid enters beserk mode. In the video the Thargoid launches its first swarm at 1:10, which is quickly dispatched. There are no Thargons until the Thargoid launches it's second swarm exactly 7 minutes after it launches the first one.
It's not in this video, but once the Thargoid launches that second swarm with the heart still up, it will launch a new swarm every time the old one is destroyed without delay. This is a big problem as those 64 Thargon swarms eat your fighters and your shields real fast.
So to sum up you have 7 minutes to drop the first heart, and the AX1 doesn't do quite enough damage to a heart to make this doable. Maybe if you're an absolute legend of a pilot it could be done, but that's way above my skill level. That combined with the limited missile ammunition and the fighter not doing quite as much heart damage as I hoped will have me heading back to the threat 5 Cyclops's for all my Thargoid solo combat needs.
Soloing a Baselisk is impossible right? Well yes. It is certainly impossible unless you cheat, in which case it becomes almost certainly impossible.
The cheat in this case is manipulating the Thargoid into not shooting any of it's primary weapons anymore. This involves having a ship launched fighter. The only way to get this to happen with certainty is to launch your fighter, have it shoot the Thargoid, have the Thargoid shoot back at the fighter, and recall the fighter. You have to let the fighter dock, and this takes time.
Here's a video of my most successful attempt to date, where I get the first heart down to 72%. Most people would call that a miserable failure, but given my second best effort is 98% on the first heart I'm calling it a roaring success.
[video=youtube_share;TrsgzeUH5aw]https://youtu.be/TrsgzeUH5aw[/video]
It's important to note that everything that could go right in this video pretty much did. Here's a list:
1) I started in a large wreckage field. This meant half the initial Thargon swarm blew up before the Thargoid cleared the wreckage to begin it's attack run.
2) The Thargoid blows up my first fighter and stops shooting of its own accord, rather than when I get the fighter to dock. First time that's happened. Usually the Thargoid blows up the fighter and continues to wail on me.
3) The Thargoid stays within 2km of my ship most of the time, meaning reasonably straight approaches when I was sitting still. Usually it goes out around 2.9km and approaches fast without flying straight.
4) The Thargoid, my ship and my SLF stay pretty close together, meaning I actually got some time shooting at the exposed heart. I even had time to expose it twice.
In my attempts to see how far I could get solo, I have 4 AX missiles and 2 Flak launchers on my Cutter. I'm therefore relying on the AX1 to do all the damage to the heart. Unfortunately it appears the AX1 multicannons while doing extra damage to the Thargoid hull, only do 1% damage per double shot hit against an exposed heart (see around 7:12 in the video where I finally get a good run of hits). This means if you hit with every shot in the clip you're only going to do 36%, which means you have to hit every shot practically for 3 clips worth. That also means you probably need to expose the heart 3 times, which is going to put a strain on missile ammunition.
The main reason I'm calling it here though is that if you don't destroy the heart 7 minutes after the Thargoid releases its first Thargon swarm, the Thargoid enters beserk mode. In the video the Thargoid launches its first swarm at 1:10, which is quickly dispatched. There are no Thargons until the Thargoid launches it's second swarm exactly 7 minutes after it launches the first one.
It's not in this video, but once the Thargoid launches that second swarm with the heart still up, it will launch a new swarm every time the old one is destroyed without delay. This is a big problem as those 64 Thargon swarms eat your fighters and your shields real fast.
So to sum up you have 7 minutes to drop the first heart, and the AX1 doesn't do quite enough damage to a heart to make this doable. Maybe if you're an absolute legend of a pilot it could be done, but that's way above my skill level. That combined with the limited missile ammunition and the fighter not doing quite as much heart damage as I hoped will have me heading back to the threat 5 Cyclops's for all my Thargoid solo combat needs.