Oolite Bulletins

Fluff tells us that the Thargoids are the singe greatest threat to the three great galactic entities: The Cooperative, the Federation, and the Empire; so much so that when a Thargoid raiding party (something akin to a Luftwaffe attack in the Battle of Britain) appears, every single ship immediately drops whatever it is they're doing and joins together to fight them off - even if everyone was at each other's throats at the time. Yet looking at them from an objective point of view, I can't really see why they have such a fearsome reputation for reasons I'll elaborate on.

As far as I can tell, Thargoid warships have three distinct advantages over GalCop (who I'll be using as a reference as I don't have much knowledge on the Federation and the Alliance):

1.) Thargoids have mastered witchspace technology allowing them to slip in, out, and even stay indefinitely inside at will. This gives them incredible strategic maneuverability unmatched by current Galcop tech which requires witchspace beacons to safely shift their forces without resorting to time-consuming calculations and dead reckoning.

2.) Every Thargoid warship is a miniature carrier with each being able to carry five drones apiece. This significantly increases the amount of firepower that can be brought to bear on a target and improves their survivability by increasing the number of combatants in a dogfight.

3.) Thargoid warships have very capable turret tech that allows them to accurately engage targets in a 360 degree field around them. Getting behind a warship then is still a risky proposition. The only blind spots, I presume, are the warship's top and bottom which are hard to target in the chaos of a dogfight.

If GalCop ever manages to get its act together (though reading from the stories, I'll concede that this is a very big if), all three of these reasons can be effectively nullified.

Yes, Thargoids can slip in and out of witchspace at will, maybe even very close to stations and planets, but these incursions are one-way deals. Every warship fights to the death with no other goal except to cause as much damage as possible. This is basically the stellar equivalent of suicide bombing which is not an economical use of their military forces. Even if we don't know much about their industrial capacity and how capable they are of replacing their losses, it's still a losing battle for them when they never actually do any damage to GalCop's shipyards and every ship has the potential to take out an entire squadron of Thargoid warships via Q-bomb.

While GalCop is no Imperium of Man with it's billions of worlds and trillions of soldiers, it's still engaged in a perpetual cold war with two other opponents alongside the Thargoid threat. Their military budget has to be huge with wartime production working overtime to crank out fighting ships and no shortage of warm bodies to crew them with so many opponents existing to unite all the citizens of GalCop against the common foes. During World War II, the Allies fielded tens of thousands of aircraft in both theaters of war and they were just a few countries on one planet. How many more could GalCop send out with the thousands of planets under it's domain? Especially knowing that out of the three galactic entities, GalCop is the economic powerhouse? Logistically speaking, the Thargoids have already lost the war by engaging not just one but all three of the great powers.

Looking at things from a tactical point of view, the Thargoids do have the advantage in dogfights. All the more reason not to engage in them then. Back in the pacific theater of WWII, Japanese Zeros could out-climb, out-turn, and out-shoot anything the Allies had much like the Thargoids do now. The Allies responded by inventing boom and zoom tactics. A squadron of Hellcats (heavily armed and armored fighters that could dive very quickly due to their weight) would patrol at high altitudes and, when ground radar had picked up enemy fighters, would dive down screaming at ludicrous speeds guns blazing through the enemy formation doing as much damage as possible before climbing up and out of sight while the enemy fighters scrambled to figure out what the hell was going on.

While the in-game limit of 10 km to the scanning range is perhaps an issue of gameplay and story segregation, it's logical that any scanning tech the Thargoids would have will be inferior to station or satellite based detection systems. Coordinating a squadron of naval vessels to stalk the warships from just out of range before screaming in on fuel injectors is thus an obvious tactic. Given that the military laser was designed to destroy a warship in one salvo if all shots hit their target, a competent squadron should be able waste an equal number of Thargoids in one pass and be out of scanning range again before any warships could react with the ridiculous speeds ships are capable of reaching with witchfuel injectors. Hell, the Navy might even consider using the old dive-bomber tactics to lob a Q-bomb into their midst. If civilian traders can hit pirates at high speeds using cargo pods (I'm looking at you Captain Hesperus!), something like this ought to be peanuts for navy flyboys. This way, you don't even need multiple squadrons to cover a large area of space. One squadron can split into individual ships patrolling their own sectors whilst being coordinated by the station crew.

Hence, both strategically and tactically, I don't really see why Thargoids are the threat everyone makes them out to be. I'd rather keep my eye on the Federation and Empire. Us humans can be sneaky bastards.

Your thoughts?

The last two novellas of Drew's Oolite Saga fanfic cast an alternative light over the Galcop/Thargoid relationship and history...all is not what it seems and certainly not what Galcop would have it's citizens believe........you will probably find the premise interesting given your comments. All four novellas are a cracking read and highly recommended.

http://www.wagar.org.uk/?page_id=20

It's been covered here:
What Thargoids are up to?!
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9627

...and also mentioned here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p162710

Also with my mod, Thargoids in interstellar space may follow the player through their next jump. Those in that system may not appreciate the sudden arrival of 1-10 Thargoid warships and no telling how many Thargons. (Sadly, this still needs work to prevent them crashing into each other on arrival.)

Switeck wrote:

It's been covered here:
What Thargoids are up to?!
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9627

...and also mentioned here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 20#p162710

Also with my mod, Thargoids in interstellar space may follow the player through their next jump. Those in that system may not appreciate the sudden arrival of 1-10 Thargoid warships and no telling how many Thargons. (Sadly, this still needs work to prevent them crashing into each other on arrival.)

Well, I guess that makes my thread redundant then.

Thargoid wrote:

Also in terms of gameplay, try going back to a vanilla install without player enhancing OXPs (or even strict mode) and go against a thargoid mothership. It's tougher than you think to get rid of one, at least without taking a fair amount of damage and grief (compared to fighting any other ship in-game).

Part of the issue is that this balance is tilted way towards the player by many OXPs (including some of mine I admit), making them just another target to be quickly dispatched (but this again applies to most other ships too).

That's why I wrote OXPs like TCAT, Second Wave and Swarm - to try and rebalance things up a bit again. Go up against one of my swarm Motherships one-on-one and tell me it's not more of a challenge

I'm currently playing Vanilla Oolite and I'm certainly not implying that fighting the Thargoids in-game is easy. Damn turrets.

What I was going on about, rather, was how the Thargoids, as they were presented in the game and from what I could gather from the wiki, weren't actually all that dangerous fluff-wise if only GalCop had a competent General. A military thinker from the 21st century or even the 20th century would run rings around these bugs.

Admittedly, I haven't read the third and fourth books in Mr. Wagar's excellent Oolite Saga yet which deals with the Thargoids since I'm still making my way through the second so I may be wrong on a few accounts.

Thargoid wrote:

Also in terms of gameplay, try going back to a vanilla install without player enhancing OXPs (or even strict mode) and go against a thargoid mothership. It's tougher than you think to get rid of one, at least without taking a fair amount of damage and grief (compared to fighting any other ship in-game).

Not to me.
I am neither a hardcore gamer nor an especially good pilot, but survived my first Thargoid encounter ever (Oolite 1.73.4) without big problems, even though I was close to panicking with about a dozen flashing blips on the scanner. I think that was with a beam laser and probably no shield enhancements at all, back then.

Imagine my surprise when all of a sudden the remaining 9 or so thingies turned dead white blips, letting me pick them off without risk and still get a good bounty for that.

And even beginner players who do not know about thargoids other than that they are supposed to be a threat will probably go after the motherships first, simply because they are so much more visible - so target-able - than the drones. (that hardly ever get to shoot me before their mothers are destroyed.)

Given that the military laser was designed to destroy a warship in one salvo if all shots hit their target,

huh ? who said that ? It certainly does not feel that way.


but I have no problem accepting them Thargoid's incompetence in destroying all non-Thargoid life - I imagine them being just that, incompetent, badly organized, whatever.
Maybe the "invasions" we get to see are just individual captains / groups that could not stand the waiting for The Great Invasion that Thargoid military (?) bosses are planning, and decided to attack now.
Or maybe they are just test attacks, a means to find out why they always fail so miserably.
Or they only ever appear in "normal space" as a result of a Thargoid version of a "mis-jump" and will attack anything in sight, full of panic in this horrid strange-space (to them)?
Who knows ?

Okay, so firstly I will agree with you that a single basic Thargoid warship is not that much of a threat to a good pilot with a military laser. However, if we're talking invasion rather than scouts then we're looking at a bigger force - several warships, plus some cruisers or battleships. The cruisers and battleships can take quite a pounding - 3 or 4 full military laser charges if everyone hits - I bought my side mil-lasers specifically to fight those ships. (Thargoid turret lasers can definitely shoot up and down as well, by the way)

Sagasa wrote:

While the in-game limit of 10 km to the scanning range is perhaps an issue of gameplay and story segregation, it's logical that any scanning tech the Thargoids would have will be inferior to station or satellite based detection systems. Coordinating a squadron of naval vessels to stalk the warships from just out of range before screaming in on fuel injectors is thus an obvious tactic. Given that the military laser was designed to destroy a warship in one salvo if all shots hit their target, a competent squadron should be able waste an equal number of Thargoids in one pass and be out of scanning range again before any warships could react with the ridiculous speeds ships are capable of reaching with witchfuel injectors. Hell, the Navy might even consider using the old dive-bomber tactics to lob a Q-bomb into their midst. If civilian traders can hit pirates at high speeds using cargo pods (I'm looking at you Captain Hesperus!), something like this ought to be peanuts for navy flyboys. This way, you don't even need multiple squadrons to cover a large area of space. One squadron can split into individual ships patrolling their own sectors whilst being coordinated by the station crew.

Source code gives Thargoid ships a scan range of 50km, compared with human 25.6km (due to technical issues in Oolite, they don't currently have a 50km scan range, but I believe they're supposed to). Even an Asp on injectors will take some time to go the 20km between the Thargoid picking it up and its military lasers being in range. The Hellcat strategy relied on surprise, and I don't think there's enough of it here. It might work a few times, but once the Thargoids get wise to the strategy their ships are powerful enough for an obvious counter - charge back at the incoming Asps at their full speed of 0.5LM, and not a direct intercept course. This forces the Asps to make course corrections on injectors, which is going to throw at least some of all but the very best pilot's shots off target. Meanwhile, the Thargoid's omnidirectional lasers can take chunks out of the Asps as they fly past and as they retreat - another advantage not available to the Japanese Zero.

Alternatively, the Thargoids can fly away from the Asps, deploying Thargons as they go. At 0.5LM, the Asps will be taking fire from the Thargon swarm before the motherships are in weapons range. And okay, a Thargon pulse laser is not that threatening, but the combined effect is likely to take the fore shields down quite a bit. Meanwhile, the motherships have turned over and start charging back in towards the Asps as in the above strategy, and their turret lasers rip the Asps to shreds. (Note that Cruisers and Battleships have four turret lasers each)

Q-Bombs are probably not effective - the motherships can shoot them down before they detonate, and if GalNavy has minesweepers it's only a matter of time before the Thargoids do too. (Also, if you're dropping it off on an injector run, note that it will probably sail right out of the Thargoid swarm with you, and that at 0.5LM a Thargoid mothership can probably outrun the blast front and dodge the mine)

(Now, agreed, Thargoid warships in-game don't have a sufficiently good AI to deal with these tactics as they should. But if the Navy AIs were improved to the point where these tactics were practical, the Thargoid AIs would be improved as well...)

The big problem Galnavy has is that its fighters are generally outclassed 1:1 by the basic Thargoid Warship, and its capital ships - the Frigate and the Behemoth - are seriously outgunned by a Thargoid Battleship or Cruiser (unless the Thargoid happens to get within 6km, of course, when the plasma turrets on the Galnavy ship can start doing serious damage)

Remember that the average Galnavy recruit or reservist is probably Competent, maybe the low end of Dangerous, and with the frequency of Thargoid attacks will probably be dead before they get much beyond that. If you consider what being Elite - or even Deadly - means, there are not going to be many pilots of that skill. Surviving about 30 missions will get you into the top 10 all-time reservist pilots.

There are cost issues, too. A fully-equipped Naval Asp costs over 800,000 Cr (with Naval Energy Unit and Military Shield Enhancement, perhaps 500,000 Cr if you skip those two). Training the crew will cost quite a bit, too. Round it up to a million, perhaps. Planetary GDP is around 10Cr/person for a rich industrial corporate state, down to about 1Cr/person for a poor agricultural anarchy. Most of that productivity presumably goes on planetary and personal needs. Using the contribution of the UK to the UN Peacekeeping budget as a baseline, probably only around 1/3500 of planetary GDP is given to Galcop for Galnavy purposes.

So the average contribution of a system to GalNavy's budget will buy it around 10 Asps a year. Or 1 Frigate. Or a share of a Behemoth. Planetary defence ships from the system's own military, Galcop police, Naval reservists, and traders who accidentally flew into a warzone will add to those numbers, of course, but GalNavy is small, thinly stretched, and under-equipped.

Yes, the Thargoids are still threatening...

cim wrote:

So the average contribution of a system to GalNavy's budget will buy it around 10 Asps a year. Or 1 Frigate. Or a share of a Behemoth. Planetary defence ships from the system's own military, Galcop police, Naval reservists, and traders who accidentally flew into a warzone will add to those numbers, of course, but GalNavy is small, thinly stretched, and under-equipped.

Yes, the Thargoids are still threatening...

Interesting calculations! It gets trickier still if you assume that a planet's contribution has to pay for their system's Vipers, not to mention the upkeep on the system station (plus maybe maintenance on the huge loan the planet took out to build the station in the first place ...). I think the level of the Thargoid threat depends on what people think "the Galactic Co-operative" actually is. At one end, you've got the Star Trek Federation model, smart and smug and organised, all shiny teeth and bri-nylon uniforms; at the other, you've got a ramshackle series of trading agreements and protocols designed to do little more than facilitate interplanetary trade, lost in a welter of bureaucracy, in-fighting and mutual distrust. I find the latter more entertaining to imagine, myself: apart from anything else it provides a lot more wiggle rooms for the independent entrepreneur ...

Disembodied wrote:

you've got a ramshackle series of trading agreements and protocols designed to do little more than facilitate interplanetary trade, lost in a welter of bureaucracy, in-fighting and mutual distrust.

Yep, that's how I imagine GalCop to be as well.

Just a thought, but the Thargoid threat is what you make it
In Oolite (vanilla) a spacer may come across Thargoids once in a while, and when they do it's a nasty surprise, and a bit of a threat but one which can be dealt with. They are an occassional interesting aside to the normal trading etc that we do.
In vanilla Oolite GalCop actually doesn't have much to do with Thargoids - it's a trade organisiation. And in vanilla Oolite there is no such thing as a Galactic Navy. The 'core' navy is Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy, and frankly they are a bit of a joke-the first encounter you will normally have with them is when they lose an experimental prototype and have to ask you, a Jameson, to help them out!
So what is this Thargoid Threat? If you play a 'pure' game there isn't one, just occassional encounters with enigmatic Thargoid Warships and Robot Fighters (Thargons).
If you add in OXPs (GalNavy and all the various Thargoid related ones) then you will change the game completely, and that's my point. You will have 'constructed' a Thargoid threat of your own making. If you get the balance right it can be great fun, if not it could be a nightmare. You pay your money and make your choice.
So, to repeat my first sentence, the Thargoid threat is what you make it

Okay, so firstly I will agree with you that a single basic Thargoid warship is not that much of a threat to a good pilot with a military laser. However, if we're talking invasion rather than scouts then we're looking at a bigger force - several warships, plus some cruisers or battleships. The cruisers and battleships can take quite a pounding - 3 or 4 full military laser charges if everyone hits - I bought my side mil-lasers specifically to fight those ships. (Thargoid turret lasers can definitely shoot up and down as well, by the way)

In cases of invasion though, a large fleet is going to be cumbersome no matter what kind of technology you've got by virtue of logistics. Any invasion fleet that expects to succeed (that is, to actually take and hold territory) is going to require thousands of support vessels to establish a supply line and maintain its momentum. Even if the invasion force achieves total strategic surprise (a strong possibility given their mastery of witchspace), tactical surprise with such a large fleet is going to be impossible and will give the system enough time to send out a warning since faster than light communication (I believe the term is "ansible") is widespread enough to be used for civilian purposes such as the news.

I don't believe that the Thargoids will be capable of witching in close enough to the station and planets to shutdown all methods of communication either because witching in close to celestial bodies seems to be far too risky. All witchspace beacons I've seen have always been placed far away from planets and the system star for, I assume, reasons of safety as hyperspace is not an exact science. Ships can jump into a system without the guidance of the beacon but this is treated as an act of the desperate and would probably be suicide if attempted with a fleet of any meaningful size. I'm led to conclude then that a Thargoid invasion would instead use the already present beacons as an entry point to any system they'd wish to invade.

I have a theory actually that one can only accurately plot one's destination when outside of hyperspace and not inside it. Since distances are magnified in hyperspace in relation to normal space, the slightest miscalculation will probably send a ship lightyears off course. This might explain why Thargoid incursions are seemingly random. They're literally going in blind either because their homeworld is in hyperspace so normal space is a mystery to them or their homeworld is so far away from our sector of the galaxy that they have no maps. After all, if their mastery of witchspace were so complete, they'd have exterminated entire systems long ago before disappearing without a trace. Instead, they're forced to send scouting parties on suicidal missions.

The seven light year limit is apparently a physical law and not simply an issue of fuel or technology so if an invasion does occur and the Thargoids manage to take a system, they'll be restricted to the same inter-system paths that we are. Surrounding systems to the invaded one would then become staging points for the inevitable counter-attack by GalCop, possibly even supported by the Federation and the Empire. As a last resort, systems around the Thargoid beachhead could destroy their beacons. Isolating themselves but containing the invasion force in the process.

There are cost issues, too. A fully-equipped Naval Asp costs over 800,000 Cr (with Naval Energy Unit and Military Shield Enhancement, perhaps 500,000 Cr if you skip those two). Training the crew will cost quite a bit, too. Round it up to a million, perhaps. Planetary GDP is around 10Cr/person for a rich industrial corporate state, down to about 1Cr/person for a poor agricultural anarchy. Most of that productivity presumably goes on planetary and personal needs. Using the contribution of the UK to the UN Peacekeeping budget as a baseline, probably only around 1/3500 of planetary GDP is given to Galcop for Galnavy purposes.

This is, I think, because of GalCop's policy of non-interference in the governance of individual planets and because the current situation, a cold war with other two powers and occasional raids by Thargoids, don't warrant devoting more resources in war material. Once an actual invasion occurs however and GalCop shifts gears into a wartime economy it would be reasonable to expect that a greater percentage will be devoted to the military budget. Like the time Henry Ford built a factory that was able to churn out a bomber every 64 minutes.

So the average contribution of a system to GalNavy's budget will buy it around 10 Asps a year. Or 1 Frigate. Or a share of a Behemoth. Planetary defence ships from the system's own military, Galcop police, Naval reservists, and traders who accidentally flew into a warzone will add to those numbers, of course, but GalNavy is small, thinly stretched, and under-equipped.

These are peace-time numbers I think and will likely balloon once GalCop recovers from the initial shock. It has, after all, about 200 planets in one galactic sector and 8 galactic sectors to draw raw materials and personnel from.

The only way I think that the Thargoids can decisively win a war with GalCop is if it jumped in multiple invasion fleets into key industrial worlds to break GalCop's spine before it can even react but I think this is out of their capabilities else we'd be seeing more scouts rather than the paltry squadrons that one skilled pilot can take out.

Besides which, because there's no reasoning with the Thargoids, every single citizen will be united in the cause of fighting them off. There won't be any danger of dissent or war weariness or people asking why it is they're fighting. Because survival is the name of the game, GalCop will have their people's unanimous support which, in my opinion, is the most important thing a government can have in prosecuting a war.

So I believe that yes, Thargoids are certainly dangerous opponents but overall a lesser threat to GalCop than either the Federation or the Empire. The worst they can do is probably give GalCop a black eye or bloody their noses but winning the war doesn't seem likely from my point of view. Unlike the other two, the Thargoids don't have access to the most powerful weapon known to man: Diplomancy!

Disembodied wrote:

I think the level of the Thargoid threat depends on what people think "the Galactic Co-operative" actually is. At one end, you've got the Star Trek Federation model, smart and smug and organised, all shiny teeth and bri-nylon uniforms; at the other, you've got a ramshackle series of trading agreements and protocols designed to do little more than facilitate interplanetary trade, lost in a welter of bureaucracy, in-fighting and mutual distrust. I find the latter more entertaining to imagine, myself: apart from anything else it provides a lot more wiggle rooms for the independent entrepreneur ...

Hmm, GalCop is powerful enough to make both the Federation and the Empire wary of provoking them too much. The reservist policy gives them the largest navy out of the three and the requirements for enlisting ensure that the pilots will at least be competent.

I like to think of GalCop as taking a laissez-faire approach to governing with minimal interference for maximum profit. Their organization makes me think of the United States where the president has minimal say in the matters of individual states but is the overall commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Very flexible but able to consolidate its forces into a sledgehammer of military might.

All they need is a God-Emperor to unite them.

Sagasa wrote:

Even if the invasion force achieves total strategic surprise (a strong possibility given their mastery of witchspace), tactical surprise with such a large fleet is going to be impossible and will give the system enough time to send out a warning since faster than light communication (I believe the term is "ansible") is widespread enough to be used for civilian purposes such as the news.

This depends on how fast any FTL communication actually is. In my brain, anyway, the fastest way to send information in the ooniverse is to put it on a ship and have it flown to another system. Way faster than EM waves, but still not instantaneous. Multiple hours for the information to travel even a few light-years, and then more multiple hours for any reinforcements to be mustered and to jump through to intercept a raiding party.

Sagasa wrote:

The seven light year limit is apparently a physical law and not simply an issue of fuel or technology so if an invasion does occur and the Thargoids manage to take a system, they'll be restricted to the same inter-system paths that we are.

This leads us into the murky depths of Elite/Oolite/Frontier crossover ... In Frontier, it was possible to jump further than 7 light-years using Hydrogen as fuel, but Frontier ships don't use the same in-system reactionless drive technologies that are used in the Co-operative. Thargoid technology may allow them to overcome the 7 light-year limit.

Sagasa wrote:

There are cost issues, too. A fully-equipped Naval Asp costs over 800,000 Cr (with Naval Energy Unit and Military Shield Enhancement, perhaps 500,000 Cr if you skip those two). Training the crew will cost quite a bit, too. Round it up to a million, perhaps. Planetary GDP is around 10Cr/person for a rich industrial corporate state, down to about 1Cr/person for a poor agricultural anarchy. Most of that productivity presumably goes on planetary and personal needs. Using the contribution of the UK to the UN Peacekeeping budget as a baseline, probably only around 1/3500 of planetary GDP is given to Galcop for Galnavy purposes.

This is, I think, because of GalCop's policy of non-interference in the governance of individual planets and because the current situation, a cold war with other two powers and occasional raids by Thargoids, don't warrant devoting more resources in war material. Once an actual invasion occurs however and GalCop shifts gears into a wartime economy it would be reasonable to expect that a greater percentage will be devoted to the military budget. Like the time Henry Ford built a factory that was able to churn out a bomber every 64 minutes.

It might be less to do with a Co-op policy of non-interference, and more to do with their total lack of power and authority to order planets to do anything. The Co-operative might not be an actual entity, just the sum of its parts – like the UN, or (perhaps more apposite) the G20. No-one is "in charge" of the G20, it's just a forum. Some voices can shout louder than others, but it's just a talking shop.

Sagasa wrote:

Besides which, because there's no reasoning with the Thargoids, every single citizen will be united in the cause of fighting them off. There won't be any danger of dissent or war weariness or people asking why it is they're fighting. Because survival is the name of the game, GalCop will have their people's unanimous support which, in my opinion, is the most important thing a government can have in prosecuting a war.

The Thargoids are – in vanilla Oolite anyway – an occasional, if dangerous, nuisance. Nobody knows what they want, or what they're doing. It's not even utterly clear that they're intelligent, on an individual level. What we might be seeing is a clash of a hive-mind species against a highly distributed and decentralised, even non-centralised meta-civilisation. The Thargoid warships could be an endless series of probes, hunting fruitlessly for the control node for the Co-operative. They don't launch an all-out attack because they can't find a target. They're lost inside the Co-operative's own foggy and uncertain existence.

Sagasa wrote:

Hmm, GalCop is powerful enough to make both the Federation and the Empire wary of provoking them too much.

In your Ooniverse maybe... but neither the Federation nor the Empire exist in my Ooniverse, and GalCop is pretty much as Disembodied describes it.

Not directly related to this Thargoid discussion, but mention has been made of a Federation and an Empire.
I must point out that such things do not exist in either Elite or Oolite. They are 'devices' invented to give a different computer game a bit of backward compatibility with the original Elite.
I think to analyse GalCop and its role in terms of a coherent Thargoid threat in conjunction with Federations and Empires that may exist in the future of a different game is just muddying the water.
In Elite and Oolite, GalCop is simply a trade organisation and has very little to do with defence and military matters.