Rant corner

They work one way, and they would not be flying back to their home world(s). It would be more thargoid sites on the ground. Like the ones left after guardians defeated them.

24 Feb 2024, 1:20am

Yet there are Thargoids(interceptors) visibly leaving the Titan through its big maw, on the back, as well. So I’m not convinced if there is actually a “portal” on or in the Titan. Possibly, but it could also just serve as a means for the Thargoids to repair any ships that survived a battle, rather than have to outright replace them. Or it isn’t a one way trip which the Thargoid ship then has to take back manually.

Also -

Shg56Like the ones left after guardians defeated them.

Those are actually wrecks from the First Thargoid War, presumably of the “motherships” referenced in the Jameson logs and one INRA facility, which were destroyed by the mycoid. As far as my knowledge goes, scanning some of the ‘data uplink’ points in those sites will yield a message saying mycoid particles have been detected in them, too.

(We also don’t even know if any of these were involved in the Guardian-Thargoid war.)

Meowers

24 Feb 2024, 2:14am

Why do Thargoids need a 'portal' if they are capable of appearing anywhere they want without it?

24 Feb 2024, 2:42am

Also a good question. Maybe they do still have limited ‘range’ or something else tied to their ability to properly transition in and out of Witch Space that would make them benefit from something bigger to go in and out of it, for larger distances. I dunno though. It’s not like this is something you can just ‘science-handwave’ very easily when the way Thargoid tech works in a ‘native’ environment and configuration is basically not known.

So I could at best approximate a guess that it has to do with the energy requirements to where a Titan can hold open a bigger transition point. Since our FSDs happily burn(?) several tons of hydrogen in just a few seconds to open a wormhole for that same duration, for a (comparatively) small ship.

Probably still a moot point when Titans very clearly have a physical interior in which things are stored. Like pods holding human captives which a missile blasts out. (They sure are lucky the Thargoids built those things sturdy.)

And they are massive enough to hold god knows how many Thargoid ships inside, with unknown maintenance and/or manufacturing capabilities(or maybe the constant stream of Thargoid ships they seem to spew out just comes from elsewhere entirely, dunno… it has always felt like the stream of things coming and going to/from the Titan is not sufficient for how many Thargoids actually show up at a singular conflict zone, plus the ones that patrol random areas of an invaded system, pick skirmishes with local forces there or in one that is being scouted out, etc.).

… I think I’ll give my brain some rest for now.

Black Adder

24 Feb 2024, 2:45am

MeowersWhy do Thargoids need a 'portal' if they are capable of appearing anywhere they want without it?

Really, there were no thargoids in human space before except some odd places where they fought guardians and in those places they are not showing up endlessly and prior to the attacks they are gathering their forces somewhere in nearby systems... it is all pathetic fallacy there are no thargoids but FD scripts...

24 Feb 2024, 2:58am

Kasumi GotoIt’s a shame Elite’s torpedoes - comparatively - move like they’re molasses [...] Then again, I don’t know what current/modern day sub warfare with torpedoes used against each other would look like… but I still doubt it’s just going to be a simple case of outrunning them(really silly), or fitting simple automated defense turrets(or a module which magically manages to make the projectile permanently lose track of the target with a single pulse, until it blows itself up).

Elite's torpedoes are basically just slow missiles (a la Star Trek photon torpedoes) and don't really have the speed, ship-killing warhead and sophisticated guidance of a modern torpedo. If Elite anti-ship warfare had actual stealth gameplay, where you could get within 20km of a target, launch a torpedo, and have both you and the torpedo remain undetected (up to a certain threshold), then they would make sense.

Real torpedoes are much faster than their targets. Current-issue US Mk48 torpedoes have a top speed of 55kts and a range of roughly 24 nautical miles. Your average nuclear sub has a top end speed of 35-40kts, and surface vessels around 30-35 kts, so the torpedo will typically catch them unless launched at extreme range.

Typical doctrine (depending on type of target and number of targets) would be to launch the torpedoes (aka fish) outside the sonar detection range of the targets, and have them follow a dogleg course (ie. launch them slightly off-angle to the target, only turning toward the target much later). When the target(s) detect the attacking torpedoes they will usually counter-launch their own torpedoes on the detected bearing, which is supposed to give the attacking sub something to think about. If the attacking fish were doglegged properly, the counter-launches will not be heading toward the attacking sub at all.

The fish themselves have sophisticated sonar and guidance systems to help them distinguish between countermeasures/decoys and real subs, and they can be guided over a physical wire spooled out from the launching sub. Generally a fish will be set to run silently toward the target, with its own internal sonar systems set to go active when it is close to the target.

In the case of surface targets, torpedoes are designed to detonate under the keel, creating a vacuum that is then filled by an enormous "water spout" pressure wave that punches a big hole up through the centre of the ship. For subsurface targets, the "water hammer" pressure wave will damage the enemy submarine's pressure hull, and that will generally cause flooding, or at certain depths, implosion and loss of vessel.

There are no torpedo-killing countermeasures, but you can fool them with four types of countermeasures. ADCs (Acoustic Device Countermeasure) are small externally-mounted decoys that hover at a pre-selected depth and emit an acoustic signal to try and distract incoming torpedoes. ADCs don't really have any maneuvering capability.

The second type is a MOSS (Mobile Operational Submarine Simulator) and it is a full-sized torpedo (launched from a regular torpedo tube) designed to mimic the acoustic signature of the launching submarine. Being a torpedo, a MOSS is designed to change depth and speed and essentially fool any attacking subs/ships into following it and not the real sub. In real life, MOSSes were equipped on SSBNs but were withdrawn from service a few decades ago.

The third type are towed torpedoes (aka "Nixies") used by surface ships. Like a MOSS, they emit simulated ship noise, and are supposed to draw an enemy torpedo to the decoy rather than the mothership.

The final type of countermeasure is a radiated noise reduction system ("Prairie-Masker", in NATO parlance). This produces a curtain of bubbles around the hull and propeller, which bounces back some of the ship sounds and prevents them from being radiated out into the deeper ocean, where enemy subs can hear it. It is not so much an anti-torpedo system as an anti-sonar-detection system.

Torpedoes are smart, though and will enter a search pattern if the target manages to evade them. If they are still wire-guided, the launching ship can turn them back toward the target, or sometimes their sensor suite will re-acquire the target and prosecute it.

Generally when you're fighting torpedoes you're trying to sprint away (best possible speed) perpendicular to it, changing depth and dropping an ADC to make it think you are still where you used to be. And then when you think you are out of danger, you slow down so that your sonar can hear things again and figure out where everything is now. You are essentially deaf/blind while sprinting and will need to re-acquire all your previous target bearing and speed information; they will have moved, and somebody may have launched additional crap at you while you were noisily running for your life.

Last edit: 24 Feb 2024, 12:09pm

24 Feb 2024, 3:13am

Yeah, I picked up some torpedo knowledge from watching people play a simulator-esque submarine game set in the Cold War era in an alternate timeline of “What if it had gone ‘hot’”. Hence my comment about why the Elite torpedoes don’t seem very believable.

And even taking into account technological advances, the ECM just sending a projectile off target completely with a single pulse to never worry about it again(as opposed to it throwing it off for a limited time while it is active, or after the pulse) just seems like pure magic. It’s not like the enemy ship has exactly lost its target lock, which could be re-sent to the weapon to reactivate its tracking, unless thermal signature is reduced to practically zero or heat vents are closed off entirely.

(Funny thing though, the torpedoes are evidently meant to look like killer weapons, and have had 10,000 armor piercing as a stat for as long as I can remember. But their behavior… well, it leaves many things to be desired. Seeker missiles, meanwhile… good luck dodging one of those without breaking the enemy ship’s target lock entirely, because they move too quickly to really be outrun.)

There’s also an oddity here where chaff does nothing to confuse their tracking while I know for a fact that it, or something that looks a lot like it, is used in modern day aircraft for them to confuse a seeker missile. Although nothing about the specifics of how either work in the current real Earth time. (And it confuses gimbals in ED which also definitely operate via heat signature tracking. I guess it’s just game stuff.)

24 Feb 2024, 3:52am

Well, sorry for that long-winded explanation then, I'm sure you have the gist of it. Some games have a decent approximation of subsurface warfare, and some are more... arcade-y.

I agree with the ECM and chaff criticisms, but then I suppose Elite never really played at being an avionics or weapon systems study-level sim. Not sure it would really benefit from a mass import of the DCS player base.

24 Feb 2024, 4:08am

I’m sure other people do appreciate that info. And I was not too aware of all of it(though it is also a little late for my brain to properly take in all the details), just that generally countermeasures were/are not completely foolproof and generally torpedoes are not slow, sluggish projectiles you can laugh at and run away from at your own leisure. I wouldn’t call them torpedoes but more explosive frag cannons, if the best way to get one to hit is by launching them right as you ‘joust’ an enemy ship(and I’m guessing that there is no ‘arming period’ in Elite either, for there being no point in one, or gameplay prevailing over realism, so that seems to work).

And I guess it wouldn’t be too appealing to the casual Elite player if that missile they thought diverted suddenly changed its mind and came right back for seconds. Or even some of the average players since not many had a second thought about turning the supposed war against the Thargoids into a tissue sampling contest despite it being utterly boring(and them knowing that it was/is).

A.G.Duran

25 Feb 2024, 6:35pm

Kasumi Goto
Other than a really dirty weapon that destroys the molecular structure of the Titan’s heat venting system and will try to cook its insides, apparently.

I would say if there is thargoids, they go first (?) since different temperature contitions for this specie. But the abductees goes right next, you conna cook up your comrades, stolen from some refugee vessel two months ago..

25 Feb 2024, 8:07pm

A.G.Duran I would say if there is thargoids, they go first (?) since different temperature contitions for this specie. But the abductees goes right next, you conna cook up your comrades, stolen from some refugee vessel two months ago..

That right there is why I am not so sanguine about this Guardian nanite torpedo business...

We're going to destroy all eight Titans simultaneously? Not render them inert, or incapable of combat, or try to rescue the few million human captives held against their will. It looks like the powers that be are prepared to write off these poor folks (who aren't even enemy civilians) as acceptable losses.

If that's the way it's going to go, then Aegis has effectively endorsed Azimuth Biotech's ends-justify-the-means, eradicate-the-bugs obsession. If they have cooked up this anti-Titan plan without any thought or contingency for still-extant captives, then it will be hard to conclude otherwise.

25 Feb 2024, 8:18pm

Frankly, as I’ve alluded to elsewhere, I get the feeling the fact that the Thargoids have gone to oddly great lengths to keep these people alive makes me think they might not hesitate to do other things to ensure they remain alive even if the pods they are held in fail(and/or it isn’t possible to move them to another).

Assuming that the tolerances of the pod machinery to higher temperatures are no better than that of the Titans, that is. Which I wouldn’t know for sure. It doesn’t seem to pose an issue to keep them in a human-friendly environment until they’re opened, at least… or maybe they would just throw them back out.

But to go back to my point, I still think we’re going to be the ones to cause ourselves the problems we believe the captives could (have) cause(d). If any arise from them, that is.

(Azimuth have also been oddly quiet about getting left out on this whole deal.)

25 Feb 2024, 8:44pm

I don't really have any deep thoughts on whether the Thargoids are going to go to extraordinary lengths to save the human captives in the event of Titan destruction. It's possible, given the lengths they have already gone to to keep the pod-people safe.

My main beef is that we should have a plan to deal with them, because they're our people; theoretically they matter most to us, first and foremost. It's nice and all if the enemy decides to safeguard human captives even if we would sacrifice their lives in an instant, but it's not something we should depend on. It would be better for human forces to have a plan and not need it, than need it and not have it.

There should really be a lot of noise in Galnet about what these torpedoes are going to do. Are they going to harm the people still captive? Do we care if they do? Do we have options for getting some out before Thargoid Götterdämmerung?

Out of curiousity, how do you feel we're going to cause our own "fifth column" issues?

25 Feb 2024, 9:00pm