Yeah. There's an issue up about it too. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/55723
-
Greetings Commander, want a more instant approach to your questions and need for help? Check out the Galactic Academy Discord server!
Feel free to join the Galactic Academy Discord server by clicking here!
Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?
- Thread starter Tyres O'Flaherty
- Start date
Hey if y'all haven't seen this thread, it's very interesting. The idea that the Thargoids are now controlled by a type of AI, with its own goals and whatnot, is fascinating to me, and one of the coolest things about this update.
forums.frontier.co.uk
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...
I did a bit of it in solo, but couldn't kill any of the big ones. Then I saw how huge the payouts are for exobiology, so I'm loading up on Tritium to head back out to get Elite in that.
I'm beginning to think this whole idea was wrapped around getting people to play in open for that very reason: to shut the gankers up by giving them some targets.
Had a quick jaunt over to a system that was under Thargoid control. Nearly died from a hyperdiction attack but made it in the end. There were a number of abandoned bases planetside so I decided to take my AX armed KII, Moist von Lipwig, down for a reccy.
Of course, this ship had no SRV bay so I went in for a 709'er. I was about to land when there were three hyperspce anomalies detected. Before I knew it, a shiled breech attack had been launched. I was on my toes immediately.
I will go back at some point with an SRV to see what will happen but, for now, I'll leave it: the Thargoids are not oinly hostile (obvs) but extremely aggressive with it. And I was unprepared.
It feels like Thargoid fighting now is for the twitchheads and battle-scarred pilots who've fought them often. For me, it was not an enjoyable experience.
Of course, this ship had no SRV bay so I went in for a 709'er. I was about to land when there were three hyperspce anomalies detected. Before I knew it, a shiled breech attack had been launched. I was on my toes immediately.
I will go back at some point with an SRV to see what will happen but, for now, I'll leave it: the Thargoids are not oinly hostile (obvs) but extremely aggressive with it. And I was unprepared.
It feels like Thargoid fighting now is for the twitchheads and battle-scarred pilots who've fought them often. For me, it was not an enjoyable experience.
Last edited:
My take on what FDev are doing, as someone who has engaged in player faction BGS game play, is FDev is creating an antagonist to provide something to do in the game.
BGS is boring to be blunt. Player factions have settled down with peace treaties removing most of the conflict. There's nothing much to be do.
Now we must oppose the Thargoids or lose a the Bubble. A new reason to play.
Yes, I think you're right. But I don't think player engagement will last, and the result will be unfortunate.
If that is in fact the case, then it would take people flying in groups protecting each other. Somebody tries to gank one, the others destroy him.
But to be fair, that is the way of human nature. If there really was an alien invasion, the guy next to you would just as soon kill you and take your weapons and supplies thinking he'll be better off than to help and fight together.
FDev are on video on YouTube clearly stating if players do not oppose the Thargoids invasion the Bubble will in time be taken over and then the Thargoids will follow the Colonia Bridge to Colonia.
It's a bold move.
It occurred to me if the Thargoids did take over like this, new players would have no where to start from and the engineers would be scattered or lost.
The new Thargoid Interceptor the Orpheus is a scout releasing Thargoid sensors into systems before they expand into them. The thinking is, capture or destroy the sensors, and destroy the Orpheus before it calls in help, would help to prevent that system being invaded next.
It's going to take the big clans to sort that out. I can't even secure a single low level combat zone when it comes to Thargoids.
I've been reading up on ship builds on the anti-xeno initiative site (https://wiki.antixenoinitiative.com/en/builds) and it turns out that they consider the Challenger a decent anti-xeno ship. They say "A great ship for those who find the Chieftain too responsive." Sounds perfect for me.
Well, I happen to have a Challenger, and it's got most of the engineering they recommend already done. So I'm going to focus on that ship for a bit, except I'm going to start out with the AX Multicannons (rather than the Gauss stuff) and just do Scouts with it at first. Later I might worry about Interceptors. Maybe.
But it should work pretty well for Scouts, I would think. And it won't be too much effort to put it together since I have most of it already, and I'm not using the ship anyway.
So that's my current plan.
Well, I happen to have a Challenger, and it's got most of the engineering they recommend already done. So I'm going to focus on that ship for a bit, except I'm going to start out with the AX Multicannons (rather than the Gauss stuff) and just do Scouts with it at first. Later I might worry about Interceptors. Maybe.
But it should work pretty well for Scouts, I would think. And it won't be too much effort to put it together since I have most of it already, and I'm not using the ship anyway.
So that's my current plan.
It does. Mine simply slaughters scouts with ease. I can sit there all day long doing it until I run out of ammo. It's virtually immune to their caustic attacks. Even when they do finally infect the hull, the damage moves very, very slowly. I just launch a decontamination limpet and that's that. Then right back at it.
Once more into the breach! By which I mean, I'm off to do some brave running away in the most heavily armoured ship I have.
Sitrep: not good. The bugs are arriving at the same time I am. Local AX pilots seem to be hoping I am here to back them up. I feel bad about saying no, but also I am really bad at combat - especially in this ship, this close to the ground, in the dark. Best I can offer is to get their friends and families out of there. At least we did get confirmation that refugee missions absolutely are contributing to the BGS on whether the thargoids are pushed out of a system or take it over entirely.
Sitrep: getting worse. Shooting the humanitarian aid is a bit off old boy. These thargoids don't know the rules of war at all, the blighters!
Takeoff was equally nasty. The bugs managed to get a caustic missile up my tail pipe (tbf, the Cutter has a few to aim for) and it nibbled away at me all the way back to the rescue ship 5 jumps away. Arrived around 75%. Which is basically fine as long as I always go in fully repaired.
Another port, in daylight, actually looked even worse and had even more things shooting at me. They do not wait to see if ships are hostile, they're just there to exterminate. EXTERMINATE!
Really do need to remember to throw out some heatsinks when they're shooting at me. I'm told it helps.
After three trips, I am fairly sure there is no payout difference between stations that are under direct attack, vs stations that are on alert - or if there is, it's in the region of 10-15% extra. Although during the livestream, FDev did seem to hint that missions for stations under attack would be more impactful, that may be entirely in the BGS. Down side is they're all planetary and thus take longer than evacuating starports before the bugs reach them.
In terms of materials payouts, I think it may be more optimal to take 3-4 smaller groups than 2x80s, since the max payout is 5x grade 5 and there are a lot of parties sized 18-35 who can offer 3-4 materials for a reliable total of 12-16.
I am planning on dropping one of my class 5 (16 passenger) cabins for a bigger fuel scoop, since I'm currently running only a 3A for emergencies, but some of the routes are more jumps than will fit in my tank - thus qualifying for emergency scooping every time. A 5A should scoop 3x faster and hopefully eliminate the waiting around. Also going to drop the class 4 FSD booster for a class 3, since it only drops from 33.5 to 32.1ly, and I can put a cabin back in for a total of 152 seats. Paired with 2x80 being relatively unfavourable in terms of material rewards, this feels like a good compromise in the build.
Of course the best solution would be if FDev made size 7 and 8 passenger cabins available to really big ships... I have a size 6 cabin in a size 8 slot and that kind of feels bad
Also, I'm getting a bit annoyed with the way the autopilot docks at rescue ships in a Cutter. It overshoots a lot, and kind of wobbles side to side for a solid minute before managing to set down. I'm faster manually, but that's not the point
Sitrep: not good. The bugs are arriving at the same time I am. Local AX pilots seem to be hoping I am here to back them up. I feel bad about saying no, but also I am really bad at combat - especially in this ship, this close to the ground, in the dark. Best I can offer is to get their friends and families out of there. At least we did get confirmation that refugee missions absolutely are contributing to the BGS on whether the thargoids are pushed out of a system or take it over entirely.
Sitrep: getting worse. Shooting the humanitarian aid is a bit off old boy. These thargoids don't know the rules of war at all, the blighters!
Takeoff was equally nasty. The bugs managed to get a caustic missile up my tail pipe (tbf, the Cutter has a few to aim for) and it nibbled away at me all the way back to the rescue ship 5 jumps away. Arrived around 75%. Which is basically fine as long as I always go in fully repaired.
Another port, in daylight, actually looked even worse and had even more things shooting at me. They do not wait to see if ships are hostile, they're just there to exterminate. EXTERMINATE!
Really do need to remember to throw out some heatsinks when they're shooting at me. I'm told it helps.
After three trips, I am fairly sure there is no payout difference between stations that are under direct attack, vs stations that are on alert - or if there is, it's in the region of 10-15% extra. Although during the livestream, FDev did seem to hint that missions for stations under attack would be more impactful, that may be entirely in the BGS. Down side is they're all planetary and thus take longer than evacuating starports before the bugs reach them.
In terms of materials payouts, I think it may be more optimal to take 3-4 smaller groups than 2x80s, since the max payout is 5x grade 5 and there are a lot of parties sized 18-35 who can offer 3-4 materials for a reliable total of 12-16.
I am planning on dropping one of my class 5 (16 passenger) cabins for a bigger fuel scoop, since I'm currently running only a 3A for emergencies, but some of the routes are more jumps than will fit in my tank - thus qualifying for emergency scooping every time. A 5A should scoop 3x faster and hopefully eliminate the waiting around. Also going to drop the class 4 FSD booster for a class 3, since it only drops from 33.5 to 32.1ly, and I can put a cabin back in for a total of 152 seats. Paired with 2x80 being relatively unfavourable in terms of material rewards, this feels like a good compromise in the build.
Of course the best solution would be if FDev made size 7 and 8 passenger cabins available to really big ships... I have a size 6 cabin in a size 8 slot and that kind of feels bad
Also, I'm getting a bit annoyed with the way the autopilot docks at rescue ships in a Cutter. It overshoots a lot, and kind of wobbles side to side for a solid minute before managing to set down. I'm faster manually, but that's not the point
Auto dock and depart is always dicey in a cutter. About 80% of the time in mine, I take over and do it manually.
It's fine at actual stations, but it's having problems with the rescue ships for some reason. I don't even remember it having much issue with planetary landings, I had it in an explorer build for a few weeks and never wrecked it
Mine starts ramming the walls of the station on the way out about 3/4ths of the time. It's normally ok going in most times, but almost never going out.
From what I understand it's become worse since one of the updates, because of a bug that causes your thrusters to be weaker when rotational correction is on (which it always is when autodocking, and usually is anyway). This is mostly a problem for bigger, driftier ships, which means especially the Cutter.
The bug has been acknowledged by FDEV, but no fix has happened and it's been months.
Issue Tracker
issues.frontierstore.net
I have an AX Challenger, and I love it.
Flies beautifully and has loads of hardpoints, if you want to add beam lasers on top of your AX weapons.
Oh yeah. Mine burn the entire time.
Oh, yeah. I find that if there's an incoming ship that would make it queue, it may faceplant the wall above the exit hatch. Only gently, but it does.
That might explain why I don't remember it being this bad! I haven't really flown it since... probably summer. I will add my autopilot experiences to that bug. Clearly the ship's computer thinks it has more lateral thrust than it does!
--
Back on the subject of refugee runs; not doing 2x80 is very much the way to go if you want payment in materials. Absolutely knackers the money income down to about 20% of what's listed, but at this point, who needs money?
That size 5 fuel scoop in exchange for dropping from 160 to 152 passenger seats was definitely worth it. Tops up by about half a jump every time it's going around a star, extending the no-pauses range to about 8-9 jumps total, which is enough for any refugee mission I've taken on so far. Most have been 5, some have been 7. On the whole it's taking about 3-4 minutes off each direction.
I believe the heatsink was also effective. Successfully landed without taking any hull damage and I don't think there was any shots on my shields either.
Like rats in a maze, aren't we. Chasing the gaming cheese.
That should take all about 5 minutes.