What Thargoids are up to?!

[Gimi]

It can already be done, in JS. Just change the AI of thargoids to friendly helping AI such as offering Fuel(especially in interstellar space) or Goods.

Including changing it permanently for one or part of one Galaxy only?
It would require some changes to have them lower their Dyson Spheres and give us access to more systems though.

[Okti]

Including changing it permanently for one or part of one Galaxy only?
It would require some changes to have them lower their Dyson Spheres and give us access to more systems though.

You can change it for a part of galaxy, quite easily, but giving us access to more systems is not possible for the time being. Except placing planets with out suns in interstellar space. I may give a try when I am not busy sometime.

[Ganelon]

If I recall rightly, there are also OXPs that add Thargoid ships and etc, and add some plots and so on to their actions. So maybe it's already changeable and scriptable enough. I'm not a scripter or a dev, so I don't really know.

The Ooniverse as we know it is vast, but not limitless. The Thargoids being out there somewhere, and having motives we don't understand (or maybe actually *can't* understand), it gives the game a sense of mystery and risk. The speculation that gets going in these threads about what they're really like and what they may be up to is great!

It's easy to imagine this sort of talk going on in many a station bar at any given time.

Sure, Thargoids *could* (for no reason we understand) help a spacer. You might be too low on fuel in witchspace to make a jump anywhere and you get scooped by a Thargoid ship so big that your weapons can't even scratch it. Maybe you black out and wake up just in time to see that huge ship as it glides out of scanner range, wobbling and blinking at you, and not attacking. You see your tank is full, so you jump back to the safety of human civilization with a story that nobody will believe, even after you buy a lot of rounds at the bar..

.. and then a couple months later, you pull out of a station and suddenly die in agony as a baby Thargoid bursts from your body and the last sight your fading eyes see is the cute little tyke taking hold of the controls of the ship and misjumping it into witchspace to rendezvous with it's mama. "Press space, Commander.."

Or maybe you just go on waiting and wondering if something like that will happen and trying to figure out why they seemed to have helped you. Nobody believes your story and you rack your brains on long flights trying to figure out what's really going on.

I feel the less we actually *know* about the Thargoids, the better. Wild speculation, crazy stories, and maybe even the occasional unexplainable act on their part can just deepen the mystery.

Eight galaxies feel big to most players.. But a mystery can feel infinite.

[JensAyton]

This is the weird thing: despite the 8-bit nature of the original game, there are actually nine different types of inhabitants in the Co-operative. … (Human Colonials, obviously, are the exception).

Hammer, meet head. Human Colonials are generated differently; There is (for some odd reason) a 127-in-256 chance that a system will have Human Colonial population, and 129-in-256 that it will be one of the eight other options based on three bits of the system seed (after the various rules for adjective selection are applied).

[Disembodied]

Hammer, meet head. Human Colonials are generated differently; There is (for some odd reason) a 127-in-256 chance that a system will have Human Colonial population, and 129-in-256 that it will be one of the eight other options based on three bits of the system seed (after the various rules for adjective selection are applied).

Aha! I hadn't thought about the fact that Human Colonials have to be different, to prevent "Blue Bony Human Colonials" and "Red Horned Human Colonials" etc.

[JensAyton]

Is it practical to try to store persistent universe information about which systems are occupied by Thargoids, with mission variables or some such?

…
People may begin to complain about the size of their save-files, but I don't see that as a real problem. Save-files are for storing all information that is deemed necessary to store, period. It's also a question of how you would store the information. Storing one line of text for each of the 2048 systems would make the save-file quite long. But if you only want to store whether a system is infested by Thargoids or not, you only need 2048 bit for that, which you can break up into a very limited number of long integers.

This is 1990s thinking, and not even late 1990s thinking. Oolite didn’t get where it is today by squeezing data down to individual bits, and if people care about a few tens of kB of extra saved game size they can skip your OXP.

Rest of post moved to Scripters cove.

[Commander McLane]

I have to admit that this is way over my head, but it certainly is impressive.

[The Black Albatross]

Oh wow, that's awesome, Ahruman.

The real question is how feasible it is on the scripting-end. For instance, what would you do with a system that has been taken over by Thargoids? Would you give GalCop a certain chance of re-capturing it? On which basis? Re-evaluation of the whole Ooniverse on each jump? And what would the chances be? You want to see an evolving Ooniverse, but with any "realistic" time-frame (the Thargoids won't overrun one new system a day; and GalCop won't take back one system per day; both is going to work much slower) the intended changes will hardly be noticeable for the player. So is it worth the whole effort?

I think it is worth the effort if the events happen at a slowish pace (once every one or two game-months?) but the player always has a decent chance of participating.
Some sort of quick, very rudimentary sketch for possible mechanics:
The information about which systems are under GalCop or Thargoid control or under siege by either, how many ships of each side there are in the system, is all kept track of in an array. (Probably only for the sector you are in currently.)
At a random interval (no more often than once a game month), a random system in the sector comes under siege by Thargoids. If you're not at that system, the number of ships there are recalculated every jump, abstracting the battle somewhat by rolling dice on how many ships either side loses, as well as how many gain. Meanwhile, there is movement in the surronding systems: navy ships and brave independent fighters travel toward the besieged system to help, while traders more concerned about their necks and goods try to get the hell away.
Should you choose to fight, you travel to the system; if they've held up for long enough, the system is properly populated with the tracked number of Thargoid and resistance ships, and you do your damnedest to fight off the Thargoids while more of their ships witchspace in.
The siege ends in victory maybe if GalCop blows up a certain number of Thargoids, or maybe after a certain length of time; it ends in defeat, however, when all the GalCop ships there have fled or been destroyed, which would most likely happen while you're not at the system (provided you flee before you die). If this happens, then the system is marked as occupied by Thargoids. GalCop masses ships in the neighboring systems, both to defend against a direct offensive from the infested planet and to stage a counterattack, which would work very much the same as sieges, but in the opposite direction.

Looking back, I realize that this whole "track ships in each system" thing is such a huge radical departure from my understanding of how Oolite populates systems at present. So I guess here's where I overstep myself and reveal a crazy idea that I've been wondering about for a while:

What about making Oolite keep track of the world state independently from the state of the player's game? What ships there are in each system, some things about what's going on in each system, etc.

Doing that would allow a persistent game world that evolves across multiple games (an idea stolen from Dwarf Fortress). While the advantages to such an effort might seem scarce at first, I have noticed a number of OXP's that attempt to introduce a storyline that is essentially greater than the player's story alone, most of which are about "the decline of GalCop" (Smiv's ToughGuys being foremost among them). If we allow such OXP's to have mechanics that modify the world state over time, then it would allow their authors to bring their narrative ideas to fruition in a much more concrete, organic, and engaging way. A world that persists across games would solve the problem that Commander McLane mentions, which is that if a game world evolves gradually as it is supposed to, the changes would not be noticeable within the span of one game. If the world evolved across multiple games, the Oolite player will see his world change over his real-time weeks of playing the game. In combination with OXP's that cause the decay of the universe, such gradual changes would have the side effect of creating rising difficulty curve over a player's time of playing Oolite: the universe is relatively safe as the player's first Jamesons launch from Lave, but over time, as the player gains greater skill, the world becomes more and more dangerous.

This might not be the best place to break out such a huge idea, but it seemed to flow from the topic so I decided to put it here. Is this (or the aforementioned Invasion scenarios) something that you would like to see in Oolite?

[Switeck]

I hacked together Behemoth OXP and BehemothSpacewar OXP to produce BIG in-system fights between a Behemoth and mad numbers (like 30+) of Thargoid Warships:

Code: Select all

this.shipExitedWitchspace = function()
{
	if(!system.isInterstellarSpace && Math.random() < (system.government*0.005 -0.01) ) // don't add Behemoths in anarchies.
	{
		system.addShipsToRoute(this.uniqueBehemoth(), 1, (Math.random()*0.15+0.2) );
		system.addGroupToRoute("thargoid", 9, 0.2);
		system.addGroupToRoute("thargoid", 9, 0.23);
		system.addGroupToRoute("thargoid", 9, 0.26);
		system.addGroupToRoute("thargoid", 9, 0.3);
	}
}

I don't expect the Behemoth to win under those conditions unless it gets a LOT of help from in-system traders, police vipers, the player, and even pirates.

Sadly, this often causes a crash-to-desktop.
Thargoids added as groups crash game.
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9638

Bug #18055

[Commander McLane]

With Thargorn Threat and Second Wave installed you don't need 30 warships. In my experience Behemoths don't even survive encounters far less Thargoid ships. Something like 3 Behemoths + 7 Thargoids leads to 3 dead Behemoths rather quickly. Especially the Thargoid Cruisers with their multiple lasers and the Thargoid Battleships with their plasma turrets (both from Thargorn Threat) tend to hammer down Behemoths with frightening efficacy.

[Okti]

A friendly Thargoid,



With route1TraderAI.

[Switeck]

Battles in interstellar space may ultimately matter little if trade between systems is not significantly disrupted in the process. It may look like a mighty battle, but it's just a small battle of attrition for a "piece of ground" (a volume of space anyway) that has no value at all unless you can disrupt hyperspace jumps through there. If the Galactic Navy manages to fight there, they have at least somewhat limited and contained the Thargoids in the region even if they lose that fight.

Small raids by 1 or 2 Thargoid warships into a system are potentially more damaging if traders, bounty hunters, and police can't concentrate slightly to kill them. A lone Thargoid plus its 5 Thargons might be roughly equal to an Anaconda and its 6 Cobra 1's, but if you've actually seen that fight...usually the Anaconda tries to flee while only 1-3 Cobra 1's initially charge at the Thargoid. As such, the Thargoid can piecemeal defeat them so long as its Thargons stick with it. In low-traffic systems, it is unlikely that 2 freighters + their escorts will be in close enough proximity to assist -- and due to their flee logic unlikely to actually do so even if they are close. This gets far worse for traders when Thargoid warships increase in numbers and also start including Cruisers and Battleships.

But scale this up...larger Thargoid forces (with Cruisers and Battleships mixed in) hit systems, and piracy should nearly cease to exist or the whole network of systems will. Main system stations would not be safe, so desperate measures would be tried. Traders would (be forced to) start creating ever-larger tight convoys that nothing short of a major system invasion could break. They would heavily reuse wormholes as well. By reusing wormholes, more ships should have spare fuel to inject away/hyperspace out if things go horribly bad. If it's effective against Thargoids, it should be more so against pirates. It might be justifiable to put a couple weakly attached, fast fighters in the convoy mix for additional protection. Asps work nicely for that task, but even the much cheaper Cobra 3's would do and might be available in greater numbers. Any extra ships that tag along, such as Adders and Morays, would still probably contribute more total firepower. When defense of numbers/position is strong, even the cowards can be brave.

[Ganelon]

The sporadic raids with a couple of Thargoid warships do not make sense as an invasion attempt. They're also unlikely to be the usual sort of recon, since they make no real effort to leave and just hang around until they get wiped out.

Tactically, it makes more sense to always use sufficient force to achieve the objective. One or two warships can be effective though for keeping an adversary on the defensive. The ships we see may be old ones, being intentionally sacrificed to keep the humans and their allies entrenched rather than advancing.

The other possibility is that the objective is something we don't understand, or it could be reflective of the hive mentality some think may be how the Thargoids operate. If they're aware of what each member sees, by some means we haven't yet detected, then they may not think of those pilots as individuals and as such their safe return is no large priority. They may just go as deep into human/ally systems as they can manage to see what they'd be up against with a larger force, or it may be more on the order of a diversion to keep the humans on the defensive.

Probably not a bad idea from their point of view considering the human tendency to undertake hostile expansions whenever a new frontier is discovered.

Or.. they were just written that way, and it's all trying to make sense of the behaviour of a few lines of code. LOL

[Commander McLane]

The other possibility is that the objective is something we don't understand

That would be my theory.

Or.. they were just written that way, and it's all trying to make sense of the behaviour of a few lines of code. LOL

Ssssshh, don't tell anyone. But you have just discovered the secret ingredient of Oolite.

[Thargoid]

A friendly Thargoid,

With route1TraderAI.

He shouldn't have that AI - something isn't right there. He should be under TCAT_ThargoidAI.plist or something like that...