Why I am miffed at Frontier Development for the „Second Thargoid war“ - with suggestions to improve

[CMDR The Riz]

Where are the options to advance science towards communication and peace with the Thargoids?

There.

Spoiler: Context...

That's the Kingfisher megaship, which was sent on a mission by Federal Congressman Dalton Chase and the Thargoid Advocacy Project to establish peaceful communications with the incoming Taranis Maelstrom. There were a few CGs dedicated to this plot thread that were relatively successful IIRC, despite the end result.

Clearly the Thargoids didn't want to talk after the Proteus Wave, probably for good reasons... though bringing a number of Thargoid Probes on your peace mission certainly didn't help the situation.

 

[Anantyanta]

I think you have me confused with some "role-player". If you want to role-play something the RP forum is further down. This is a statement of fact. The Bubble as stated by fdev will be overrun unless we do something about it. That is happening as we speak, the Thargoids are taking over more systems than we are defending. The AXI failed to make a dent vs. a controlled system and the rest of us can't keep up with the rate of expansion.
Going to Colonia isn't viable, if we don't stop the Thargoids in the Bubble, we won't stop them at all.
Politics is irrelevant, there is no high ground, we survive or we do not.

My friend, you are answering with role-play (that is, in-game) logic in a thread explicitly started as meta. Please go to a role-play area of the forums.
You are totally missing my point.

 

[Anantyanta]

Because, mechanics wise, this is a bucket filling game. This will not change. It is a BGS war at its core, and currently the BGS works like this. Sorry if it contradicts with your RP fantasy, but how do you think players would feel about humanitarian efforts that would not fill the bucket? Exactly, they would be very miffed, because then there would be really no choice apart from pew pew. And they would of course not do the humanitarian stuff.

I say it again, be patient how it plays out, but at this time, singing Kumbaya is not an option anymore.

It is not, and that is my whole point.
In BGS wars, you always have the option to counter one side.
Here, you don't have that choice.

 

[Anantyanta]

We only have Fdevs word that the bubble will burn ( and that really doesn't count for much nowadays ) .. Fdev will play the numbers game trying to keep commander engagement . Also think about it where are the BGS and Powerplay groups? Will they risk alienating those squadron's/ groups by destroying the years of work ? Nope! they can't afford to ..
We will lose a lot of systems in the begining and then slowly claw them back with some amazeballs weapon or genocidal weapon ...
I don't buy into their "our survival" line it's just about commander engagement.
But that's my take

... and it rhymes perfectly with my original post.

 

[Anantyanta]

View attachment 339737

There.

Spoiler: Context...

That's the Kingfisher megaship, which was sent on a mission by Federal Congressman Dalton Chase and the Thargoid Advocacy Project to establish peaceful communications with the incoming Taranis Maelstrom. There were a few CGs dedicated to this plot thread that were relatively successful IIRC, despite the end result.

Clearly the Thargoids didn't want to talk after the Proteus Wave, probably for good reasons... though bringing a number of Thargoid Probes on your peace mission certainly didn't help the situation.

Could you all please keep the role-play logic out of this thread? This is not about "we have to fight because else the Thargoids will kill us all" role-play.
This is about the missing choice for the pro-peace people.

 

[jojon]

In a way, it would be an interesting scenario if the entire bubble and its suburbs was abandoned, in how that would not have to mean the end of existing gameplay loops at all, but rather put them in a new "nomadic" context, where a humanity that is constantly on the run roves the galaxy on scarce and ever-shifting mobile platforms, in order to sustain themselves.

Argueably, the peaceful overture would have been to leave the stargoids the heck alone as they settled in, rather than to fly in their way... :9

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

missing choice

War doesn't often give you the choices that you might want.

 

[thistle]

As Frontier said: "If it's not in the game (ED), it is not canon."
"Aggressive Thargoids" were not in ED up to the Protheus Wave. Read up on this here in the great post by @Rainbro.

They aren't here to kill us (an overly-long analysis of Thargoid behaviour)​

Thargoids were pretty aggressive in 1984.

 

[angusmadmac1]

Thargoids were pretty aggressive in 1984.

They weren't the only ones

 

[thistle]

On this idea that we players have always had "choice" in ED (2014 onwards), somehow removed now. Not really. All the choice we have ever had in the game was shaped and limited by the devs. I could align myself with a superpower, but I couldn't assassinate the leader of another superpower. Why? Before this new Thargoid narrative I could fight thargoid incursions, but I couldn't help them. Why?

Because, as you said in your OP, this is Frontiers game. We've never really had choice beyond prescriptive narrow fields of gameplay.

And in reality, let's be honest here. It's not about choice. It's about what a dev team can do with the time and resources they have to provide profitable entertainment to their players. Like ship interiors, earthlike landings, and cockpit cats, unrestricted choice is not possible at the moment.

(edit - ED was 2014, not 2024 )

 

[Felix DiCestria]

My friend, you are answering with role-play (that is, in-game) logic in a thread explicitly started as meta. Please go to a role-play area of the forums.
You are totally missing my point.

So you have mistaken me for some RP type.
I play a trader in the Bubble. The invasion is a direct threat to my gameplay.If you want to RP some windbag I'm sure there's somewhere for that.
Assisting with refugees helps you he war effort in game and RL. Wake up and smell the cocoa.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I am not too sure what you expect. This fantasy of fighting alongside the Thargoids has never existed, and it never will, the same way you will never be able to assassinate PP figures or date the blue haired one, however much you want to. This is the setting, and you have the choice to run with it or ignore it. Just like any other game. Most games do not exist to fulfill your personal wishlist, they exist to tell the story the developer wants to tell, and even in sandboxish games the players' freedom ends where it clashes with the story progress.

I don't really get it - people were getting furious because there was no way to heal the protagonist in CP2077 and were bringing up the same "freedom of choice" arguments. This is not the story you are looking for. Move on. Choice in games is an illusion, and the more you cling to it, the more you will be dissapointed.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Humanitarian efforts without advancing human war effort.

Deliver medicines, evacuation shelters, clothing, water, and oxygen (and possibly others but those seem the most obviously humanitarian) to the Rescue Ships.
Doesn't move any war sliders, their markets request them, seems to be a humanitarian option that doesn't stop the Thargoids claiming further territory.

Science missions for advancing communication attempts, so we can stop the war without weapons.

Galnet has hinted that exobiology may play some role in scientific advances related to the war. No sign yet as to whether that's going to be communications or weapons, though.

There's whatever Palin and Tah are doing with the Thargoid Relics, too - Tah, at least, is a communications specialist to an extent.

They aren't missions, they don't have obvious progress sliders, but they are options. Maybe they're even adding to some hidden counter on a Frontier server somewhere, who knows.

Also think about it where are the BGS and Powerplay groups? Will they risk alienating those squadron's/ groups by destroying the years of work ? Nope! they can't afford to ..

On the contrary - making those groups work to defend their territory rather than having them sprawl largely uncontested (Political BGS) or end up in a stagnant stalemate where most sides don't dare expand further (Powerplay and eventually BGS too) is a good way to get them to keep playing rather than getting bored but keeping a skeleton crew around to maintain their space. Seems to be working so far from what I'm seeing. (It was a big risk by Frontier, it's still early days, but so far it seems to have paid off)

The bubble as a whole won't burn, sure, so long as there's a reasonably honest attempt made to stop it. That's in the hands of the overall plot events. But the more important part of Frontier's statement is that any individual system can burn and there's going to be no "too important to a BGS group" flag to stop it or guarantee that it'll ever be recovered - the initial Taranis Maelstrom attack took out the home system and several other systems of the largest BGS faction in the game by systems present ... well, or they were the largest until that happened, anyway. Several other groups have also lost systems (inevitably, since so few populated systems aren't claimed by one group or another nowadays) and lots more will.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

and I wanted to add: In my opinion, at this point in the lore, you cannot argue for more "choice" but disconnect it from the "RP" aspect. I would argue we have left RP behind us for quite a while now. This isn't RP anymore, it is the "reality" of our game.

 

[St0rmFury]

I believe the only game in existence which matches what OP is looking for is Kenshi.

It's a literal sandbox (since it takes place in a desert) and completely hands off by the dev.

 

[RooksBailey]

I confess to being underwhelmed by this latest update as well. I was really hoping to be engaged with Thargoid foot soldiers by now - something that would give the foot combat-focused mechanics of Odyssey greater purpose at long last. Sadly, nope. Not yet, anyway. But even beyond that, I have never found the Thargoids to be a compelling enemy. For space bugs, they pale in comparison to, say, Tyranids or the Zerg. I just don't fear them (perhaps it is the odd name that sounds like a disease - "Sorry, I can't come into work today. I have a bad case of thargoids on my feet.") Whatismore, I find this dust-up between mankind and the Thargoids to be morally nebulous at best. Like others in this thread, I am content to sit it out for the most part, with only the occasional dabble.

Having said that, I do understand why FDev went in this direction. Odyssey needed a big kick in the pants to revive the flagging community, and nothing gets people excited like a binary-choice war, particularly in a space game. Looking at the numbers on Steam, this strategy has paid dividends as peak player numbers have received a bump not seen since ~early 2020. The strategy worked! (Coincidentally, it is also the same decision CCP made to bump Eve's flagging numbers - in their case, their comprehensive overhaul of faction warfare that also allows players to engage in combat, as well as support functions for the more peaceful players. And the entire thing is opt-in as well!).

I also have to tip my hat to FDev. Developing an AI opponent on this scale is no small undertaking. As someone who enjoys sparring against chess bots, I am getting a kick watching FDev's bot take on human players. Honestly, I would have preferred the enemy to be an actual bot instead of space bugs - a return of the Guardian AI "constructs" would have been much more attractive to me. Heck, FDev might still have this in mind as a future chapter. As a fan of Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers, I can only hope!

[As an aside, I find this AI-driven war to offer tantalizing opportunities. Next year we are expecting an overhaul of a major game feature. Imagine if it is going to be a revamp of PowerPlay that takes advantage of the work done on this Thargoid war system? That could be a lot of fun! Something much closer to what I think most players had in mind when PP was announced.]

Back on point: I do wish there were options to aid the Thargoids. It would have been fun, and really, really interesting, if there was a Thargoid contact players could seek out and get missions from for special thargoid rewards, etc. Or maybe even a third party fighting against both or seeking a separate peace (this would be closer to what the OP wants if I read it correctly) . To be fair to FDev, each party they add to the war scenario takes an already complex system and adds another layer of complexity. I suspect FDev have their hands full just managing this simple 1v1 setup! Even allowing players to help the Thargoids probably would add so many variables to the war that FDev would find itself managing a nightmare of complexity. I agree with the OP but I also see why FDev is keeping it simple, at least at the moment.

 

[angusmadmac1]

Deliver medicines, evacuation shelters, clothing, water, and oxygen (and possibly others but those seem the most obviously humanitarian) to the Rescue Ships.
Doesn't move any war sliders, their markets request them, seems to be a humanitarian option that doesn't stop the Thargoids claiming further territory.


Galnet has hinted that exobiology may play some role in scientific advances related to the war. No sign yet as to whether that's going to be communications or weapons, though.

There's whatever Palin and Tah are doing with the Thargoid Relics, too - Tah, at least, is a communications specialist to an extent.

They aren't missions, they don't have obvious progress sliders, but they are options. Maybe they're even adding to some hidden counter on a Frontier server somewhere, who knows.


On the contrary - making those groups work to defend their territory rather than having them sprawl largely uncontested (Political BGS) or end up in a stagnant stalemate where most sides don't dare expand further (Powerplay and eventually BGS too) is a good way to get them to keep playing rather than getting bored but keeping a skeleton crew around to maintain their space. Seems to be working so far from what I'm seeing. (It was a big risk by Frontier, it's still early days, but so far it seems to have paid off)

The bubble as a whole won't burn, sure, so long as there's a reasonably honest attempt made to stop it. That's in the hands of the overall plot events. But the more important part of Frontier's statement is that any individual system can burn and there's going to be no "too important to a BGS group" flag to stop it or guarantee that it'll ever be recovered - the initial Taranis Maelstrom attack took out the home system and several other systems of the largest BGS faction in the game by systems present ... well, or they were the largest until that happened, anyway. Several other groups have also lost systems (inevitably, since so few populated systems aren't claimed by one group or another nowadays) and lots more will.

Yes it would be interesting if and when Fdevs "pet" squadron gets hit . But yes these groups would fight their own little corner and nothing gees up interest than fighting for your "home/base". I even had an anti Thargoid ship when incursions were meant to be a thing just in case they invaded my home , thankfully that never happened and my kill count is still at 0

 

[Frankymole]

For space bugs, they pale in comparison to, say, Tyranids or the Zerg. I just don't fear them (perhaps it is the odd name that sounds like a disease - "Sorry, I can't come into work today. I have a bad case of thargoids on my feet.")

Probably because the name comes from a Kenny Everett comedy cartoon from a sketch show.

 

[Greasetrap42]

As somebody craving a pro-peace option (and yes, I DID opposed Salvation, Sirius Corp, Azimuth Biotech, Hudson and all the other warmongers from the moment I realised their agenda), I can only either

• support the human war effort or
• ignore the war [... and play the game as you have for the previous several years]

... or fight the humans by shooting at the AX ships.
... or explore your own avenues to interact with the Thargoids. Either within the old thargoid inhabited systems or the new war zones.


Please spell out clearly what other game play option you are desiring. Because I'm not getting what other game play option you are desiring.

 

[Greasetrap42]

As I just said: Maybe sitting out the war won't save anyone. So it is just even more imperative to search for non-violent options. But we are given none.

It appears you very much want to have a role where you can be involved in resolving the issues. Sometimes issues can't be resolved by a specfic individual. Specifically yourself. In this story you are a single cmdr surrounded be events unfolding. No... you do not have control over the widespread events unfolding around you.

When doing RP you can't expect to be the hero. You are not the main character of this story.