Thoughts on Titan Damage Resistance and Resources

[DøømHåmstër]

So during the last FDEV live stream at about 01:01:25 , Zac and Arf pretty much came right out and said we were doing it the hard way in regards to taking out the titans and that "Before heading straight to the other titans, maybe sort of consider cleaning out some of the systems around to make it a bit easier for yourself" (Zac) and "Remember, they're obviously getting resources from somewhere and, if their resources are cut off, the titan is going to be far easier to engage." (Arf)

Now I'm sure I'm not the only one that immediately thought of the spire sites especially since Prof. Palin, in the galnet article titled 'Palin Makes Thargoid Spire Breakthrough', said "My research suggests these surface sites have been established to harvest resources which sustain the Thargoid motherships in some way. It may be that their supplies of some vital enzymes or fuels are running low, after months of being deployed away from their home worlds.”

It is possible, of course, that the resources Arf spoke of just meant the number of controlled systems or, even, something else entirely or a combination of various things. Currently, the Damage Resistance (DR) of the titans in relation to number of controlled systems does correlate (Note that Taranis data is obviously historical):

Name	Damage Reduction	Controlled Systems
Taranis	High	7
Leigong	Extremely High	14
Oya	Extremely High	40
Thor	Maximum	76
Indra	Maximum	90
Hadad	Maximum	106
Cocijo	Maximum	118
Raijin	Maximum	122

If we go just by controlled systems then we can sort of guess that <10 = High, 11-50 (75)? = Extremely High, and >50-75-ish = Maximum. Again, just a guess...not enough data.

My gut still tells me that the spire sites hold a larger influence on the DR than just the number of controlled systems. Why else would FDEV bother to create them and make it so obvious that they are for resources and then point out in a live stream that reducing those resources will help the figth? Even if we think it is just based off of controlled systems, it wouldn't hurt to take out the systems with spire sites first just in case they have weight in the equation.

One major question I have, though, is does it really matter? Will it actually be more real life time efficient to focus on reducing a titan's resources first to reduce its damage resistance vs. a sheer brute force approach? If reducing the resources of a titan is reliant on changing multiple systems' statuses and, thus, the weekly server tick, it may just be faster to wail away at it en masse like we did with Taranis since reducing a titan to zero is not reliant on the weekly tick. Especially with titans controlling over 100 systems it will take a good long time to get them down to even 'Extremely High' DR. This seems terribly inneficient to me and increases my feeling that DR has more to do with the spire sites than just overall controlled systems. I guess we'll see as time progresses.

Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts. What are yours?

 

[Factabulous]

Lots of stuff in

Analysing the Thargoid Simulation

We’ve been told that the Thargoid Simulation is fully autonomous and will make its own decisions on how to fight – and with hundreds of systems under attack, how else could it be? This thread is intended as a summary of the research into how it works for the benefit of military planners fighting...

forums.frontier.co.uk

and

Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?

Week 107, 12th December 3310 Maelstrom Cocijo Titan: Vulnerable at Sol! Comparison with previous Titans Report Titan Cocijo has overheated and exploded. Sol rescue activities Mars High is under attack and can be evacuated. All other port access in Sol is suspended. Bio-storage capsules can be...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Note that taranis was Moderate before the last weekly tick with 6 controls

 

[R4dioS1lence]

Taranis also had another issue with it, which was that FDev most likely tweaked it by hand to make it so it could survive the start of the weekend, allowing more players to shoot it (remember: both Arx, decal and ship kits rewards tied to shooting them). Just because Taranis was doable and finished at High (that again, as @Factabulous reminded, was Moderate before that tick), that doesn't mean we're gonna have an easier time with Extremely High rather than fighting the war (these damage resistances could be exponential for all we know).

 

[DjVortex]

I would also be interested in what exactly one should do to help in taking those systems back, as I genuinely don't know. (The game doesn't make this very clear, like so many other things. This isn't a criticism, it's actually one of the cool things about the game. But I digress.)

Having watched quite many streams on the attack on Taranis, attacking the titans themselves, while maybe fun for a while, seems very repetitive and very hard, and probably can't be done in solo very effectively (if I understand correctly, one single commander just doesn't have that much time to shoot enough of the vents, nor to do significant damage to the core even if he succeeds.) Plus, of course, it needs all the special modules and weapons.

So instead of fighting the titans directly, it might be more fun to help taking back the controlled systems. But how is this done?

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

So instead of fighting the titans directly, it might be more fun to help taking back the controlled systems. But how is this done?

Read the information shown in the system map panels and the codex, they both list activities that can help add progress.

 

[Rainbro]

One major question I have, though, is does it really matter? Will it actually be more real life time efficient to focus on reducing a titan's resources first to reduce its damage resistance vs. a sheer brute force approach? If reducing the resources of a titan is reliant on changing multiple systems' statuses and, thus, the weekly server tick, it may just be faster to wail away at it en masse like we did with Taranis since reducing a titan to zero is not reliant on the weekly tick. Especially with titans controlling over 100 systems it will take a good long time to get them down to even 'Extremely High' DR. This seems terribly inneficient to me and increases my feeling that DR has more to do with the spire sites than just overall controlled systems. I guess we'll see as time progresses.

Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts. What are yours?

Wouldn't be the first time Frontier have given extremely inefficient advice. Going after the Orthruses in a preventative strategy was a fine idea in theory, but Frontier did seem a bit confused as to why nobody was doing it, and figured we needed a GalNet to suggest it to the playerbase. This is giving me similar vibes.

It's super early for this kind of talk anyway, even if people really hadn't already considered this. People were obviously going to pile in on the new thing and it worked. Maybe it won't be feasible for other titans, or maybe it'll be smarter to just keep taking advantage of the interest in the new stuff.

It's funny how Frontier is now telling us, no, don't go for the preventative strategy, push back the waves a bit more.

 

[GroG79]

What about the caustic generators?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

One major question I have, though, is does it really matter? Will it actually be more real life time efficient to focus on reducing a titan's resources first to reduce its damage resistance vs. a sheer brute force approach? If reducing the resources of a titan is reliant on changing multiple systems' statuses and, thus, the weekly server tick, it may just be faster to wail away at it en masse like we did with Taranis since reducing a titan to zero is not reliant on the weekly tick. Especially with titans controlling over 100 systems it will take a good long time to get them down to even 'Extremely High' DR. This seems terribly inneficient to me and increases my feeling that DR has more to do with the spire sites than just overall controlled systems. I guess we'll see as time progresses.

Spire sites:
1) Leigong has no spire sites at all whereas Taranis had recaptured one by the time it was blown up; Leigong's DR has always been higher than Taranis. So it can't be that significant a factor.
2) The only way to recapture a Spire site is if it is the ten outer systems of the maelstrom (which in this case includes Alerts and Invasions) so almost all of them would require stripping out most of its Controls anyway. Currently none of the maelstroms (except the remains of Taranis) have a Spire which can be recaptured on that basis.
3) Indra has received extremely heavy attacks on its Spires this week and last (which don't damage the Spires but do affect the maelstrom as a whole) and this doesn't seem to be hindering the Titan's personal defences very much.


Reducing damage resistance vs brute force: not a straightforward question and it depends what you want to attack

- at Leigong, the brute force approach proceeded at about 6% of a heart/day with heavy focus from some of the bigger AX groups, so would take about 20 weeks to get to the end. Leigong's structure is such that knocking out a fair number of controls is relatively easy right now, so spending a couple of weeks doing that to get it closer to Taranis' size should speed things up substantially. It'll also give us better information on how control counts do affect DR which might help a lot with further calculations.

- Hadad, Oya and Thor might be tricky to shrink down to Taranis-scale but should be at least practical to shrink to something closer to Leigong's current size given a couple of months, and that will probably work out as more efficient overall than trying to break through maximum or near-maximum DR ... though that will need to be reassessed once we have more data points on how DR scales.

- at Cocijo, even getting it down to Leigong's current number of control systems would require a massive sustained attack significantly beyond anything previously seen. Wearing it down through the Maximum DR might take a few years based on current figures but holding it significantly below Oya's current size (still too big!) for months on end would require diverting a lot of firepower from just shooting the Titan directly. We won't know for quite some time which is the better plan; equally, we won't need to know because there are six easier targets anyway (Indra and Raijin aren't a lot easier, either)

But even then, that's only considering one Titan at a time: since they don't yet seem to repair themselves, any damage at all done to a Titan is contributing towards the eventual victory (even if that's a decade or more away), whereas trying to shrink the control spheres is a task which needs constant reinforcement of previous clearances to stop them being re-taken. Shrinking all the control spheres at once is definitely beyond currently available firepower - containing one means most of the other six are going to keep growing.

Wouldn't be the first time Frontier have given extremely inefficient advice.

This is also a key point. What makes sense on paper - even with their advantage of knowing the equations in the background - doesn't necessarily work out in-game the same way.

It's also the case that it really depends who you are... if you're a lone pilot who isn't following the "big group" strategising either explicitly or implicitly, shooting a Titan is never "wasted effort". It might not make very much progress but it will contribute, whereas uncoordinated recapture or defence operations are likely to result in doing a few percent of damage to a system which the Thargoids then reinforce at the end of the cycle.

Taranis also had another issue with it, which was that FDev most likely tweaked it by hand to make it so it could survive the start of the weekend, allowing more players to shoot it (remember: both Arx, decal and ship kits rewards tied to shooting them). Just because Taranis was doable and finished at High (that again, as @Factabulous reminded, was Moderate before that tick), that doesn't mean we're gonna have an easier time with Extremely High rather than fighting the war (these damage resistances could be exponential for all we know).

Looking at the data so far it seems almost certain that DR is well above linear - whether it's exponential or polynomial or some other type of accelerating function there's really not enough data to say, but Leigong is way over twice as strong as Taranis for only having double the controls.

On that basis the difficulty increase at Taranis on Thursday could easily be explained by it going from 6 to 7 Controls without the need for Frontier to tweak things specifically.

 

[dhurth]

Reducing controls might help yes, but it isn't incentivised whereas brute forcing is. The pretty arx & ship decals for every titan (and/or heart) that you participate in killing yes pls! Spire sites? meh I don't get any precious shinies for that and if I do I might miss out on a heart kill as others are brute forcing why make it easier to kill if it increases my chances of missing out?

Add to the fact that by making a lot of the Titan engaging weapons more accessible yet keeping the normal thargoid fighting equipment gatekept; pushes the community further toward the brute force option. Personally, fighting thargoids never really interested me. The entry cost was too high in time and effort, the learning curve too steep, long and overwhelming. However I do want to be part of the big bad flower kills, to feel part of that narrative driving the next chapter of Elite.

If FDEV wants the war effort to focus on breaking down the Titan support structure before engaging the titan those activities need to be incentivised, give the people something to go oooh! over. Unless that happens I believe people will focus on what will give them those shinies they crave. It lets them say see I was there, here's my proof!

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

They only get their shineys if the hearts / Titans go down, that's not going to happen while they still have their support network.

 

[DøømHåmstër]

Lots of stuff in

Analysing the Thargoid Simulation

We’ve been told that the Thargoid Simulation is fully autonomous and will make its own decisions on how to fight – and with hundreds of systems under attack, how else could it be? This thread is intended as a summary of the research into how it works for the benefit of military planners fighting...

forums.frontier.co.uk

and

Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?

Week 107, 12th December 3310 Maelstrom Cocijo Titan: Vulnerable at Sol! Comparison with previous Titans Report Titan Cocijo has overheated and exploded. Sol rescue activities Mars High is under attack and can be evacuated. All other port access in Sol is suspended. Bio-storage capsules can be...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Note that taranis was Moderate before the last weekly tick with 6 controls

Outstanding research! Seriously @Ian Doncaster (and, obviously, many others), well done. I'm sad that I had to take a year off; I missed so much. Thanks to all who have put in so much effort to compile this info for the rest of us.

 

[Factabulous]

Reducing controls might help yes, but it isn't incentivised whereas brute forcing is.

managing the controls means we could be done with Leigiong next week. Brute Forcing it currently looks like more than 80 days - and increasing if no-one manages the Thargoid BGS.

Have fun with the Brute Forcing

 

[DangerousDan]

The problem is that if we take too long destroying the next Titan the other Titans will expand their zones of control making it even harder to destroy them later.

We have to hope that when the Caustic cloud around Taranis eventually disperses, there is something in there we can obtain. Perhaps we can collect things from the wreckage to aid in the war?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The problem is that if we take too long destroying the next Titan the other Titans will expand their zones of control making it even harder to destroy them later.

That's true but probably not the difficult bit.

The difficulty of removing an entire 5LY shell of systems from a Titan control is roughly linear as you go inwards.
The time taken for the Thargoids to capture a shell, on the other hand, is roughly proportional to the radius squared as they go outwards.

It doesn't matter all that much how far they expand outside about 25 LY from the Titan, because compressing them back down to 25 LY can be done very quickly, but it takes them months to go even a few LY outwards from that point. If Indra is still around in a year it might be up to 35 LY and a few hundred systems ... but the 25-35LY band will be full of individually weak systems which can be taken off it much faster than it can do anything, so it won't delay the eventual attack very much.

The bigger problem comes at the other end of the scale - recapturing systems below 15 LY from a Titan is extremely slow going, and stopping the Thargoids retaking the territory again is trickier too. But all of the remaining ones except Leigong will require a substantial amount of fighting below that range to bring them to the point where the attack on the Titan itself can be done in less than months.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

My guess on how it'll work out in practice?
The edgelords won't care. Their metachariots can deal with the damage resistance and the average player will complain about the grind and smaller impact to participate.

 

[Kira Goto]

That's true but probably not the difficult bit.

The difficulty of removing an entire 5LY shell of systems from a Titan control is roughly linear as you go inwards.
The time taken for the Thargoids to capture a shell, on the other hand, is roughly proportional to the radius squared as they go outwards.

It doesn't matter all that much how far they expand outside about 25 LY from the Titan, because compressing them back down to 25 LY can be done very quickly, but it takes them months to go even a few LY outwards from that point. If Indra is still around in a year it might be up to 35 LY and a few hundred systems ... but the 25-35LY band will be full of individually weak systems which can be taken off it much faster than it can do anything, so it won't delay the eventual attack very much.

The bigger problem comes at the other end of the scale - recapturing systems below 15 LY from a Titan is extremely slow going, and stopping the Thargoids retaking the territory again is trickier too. But all of the remaining ones except Leigong will require a substantial amount of fighting below that range to bring them to the point where the attack on the Titan itself can be done in less than months.

That assumes the plot doesn’t put a hitch into the “Kill the Titans” plan(it probably will?), or provides no other tools with which to potentially speed up the process.

I suspect the fate of Taranis, or whatever remains of it, might also affect proceedings in some way, by whether that fusion core turning into the biggest nuke known (ignoring stars but they are generally not artificial) actually does enough to the Titan to make it worth the effort to take one down.

(I presume yes. Thargoid bio-engineering might be extremely advanced but that kind of explosion is going to leave a mark no matter what.)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

That assumes the plot doesn’t put a hitch into the “Kill the Titans” plan(it probably will?), or provides no other tools with which to potentially speed up the process.

Certainly if Frontier did want the Thargoids to be dealt with and all neatly cleaned up by the currently-announced Powerplay release schedule, then there will need to be some tools to speed it up at some point.

On the other hand, if they want to make sure there's still some Thargoids around right up until that release (and therefore probably at least some left beyond it) the current balance should give them several months of extra time without needing to do "oh, wait, surprise ninth Titan" shenanigans if the schedule slips.