Regular Python with regular midlevel shields, aka Thargoids! Thargoids!
12 Mar 2022Tiffany Yür
Now that the embargo on public speech has been lifted, I find it my duty to inform other Commanders of my last endeavour outside the Bubble. I had just bought a Python, the sturdy old multipurpose ship, and left the area of current residence to beyond Hyades Cluster. There's still quite a bit of Col 285 sector to travel after Hyades to get to the borders of the next sector. I had outfitted the Python with very standard parts for exploration and planned to traverse the border of sectors there. You can imagine my surprise when in the fourth system i scanned, the fss-scanner informed a frequency it did not recognize! It marked them as 'non-human signals'. All four of them. This is probably the Thargoids, the other extant spacefaring species we keep hearing about in the news now and then. The scanner did recognize the levels of threat though. 4, 5, 5 and 6. This means pretty much all out war between humans, but I bet the scanner exaggerated a bit. I flipped out of supercruise pretty much immediately after scanning the system and spent a rather bad night of sleep floating in a system with Thargoids. The next morning, it looked like they were gone, but it did not take them long to reappear in the scanner. It looked like they did not move within the system, so I assumed they're just stationed there and possibly guarding something. I did manage to map the whole system, carefully avoiding the signals and supercruising at low speed to appear harmless. After mapping two of the nearest planets to the Thargoids last, on the secondary star of the system I retreated back to the primary. Then the Thargoids appeared to be moving, towards the planets I had just mapped! I did manage to map the rest of the planets of the primary pretty quickly and got away to the next system along the border.
Did the fss, and saw more non-human signals.
This meant I wasn't going to stay around for long. I watched the signals for about 10-15 minutes, and they didn't seem to take notice of me. Onwards to the next system. "Threat level 9". Next system. "Threat level 8" Next system "threat level 6."...
They didn't seem to get angry when I was supercruising and fss-scanning, so I can tell that the two level 9 threats I saw were both near ammonia worlds. The fact that supercruising within 1000 ls of these didn't induce any hostile moves against me, convinced me to try a more close contact when I saw a "level 3 threat" on the fss. Supercruising past them, no reaction. Maybe I was lucky. Then I thought I might signal them. Wrote just "Hello" to the comms system. I dropped from supercruise beside another 'threat level 3', hand on supercruise button. Initially they didn't do a thing, but immediately when i tried to turn back to look at, they either scanned or mildly attacked the Python. They don't want to be seen? Also, the "threat level 3" turned out to be two ships, seen on radar "threat 4 and 6". Do not trust the fss in assessing the threat. Got out of the encounter with about 14% of hull damage.
All in all, there were about 15 systems and ~35 signals, of various levels of threat, of Thargoid presence behind Hyades near the border of col285 and the next sector. This would likely mean at least double the amount of ships (70), and if the threat level is directly proportional to the number of ships, way more (est. 150-200), but maybe the higher threat values are for larger ships? All I know dropping beside them is not a thing for midlevel midlevel ships like my Python. Thinking of naming it something alien, but we don't know much of alien languages. Fly safe behind Hyades-sector, CMDRs.
o7 CMDR Heylindh Yür