Elite Dangerous’ war against the Thargoids is going real, real bad

Thargoids, an invasion of alien force known in large numbers. Elite DangerousThere have been a few scrambling of player-led factions this week. On Wednesday, designers at Frontier Developments released a clarification to how they’re running things behind the scenes. Many players now feel that the efforts they made during the initial week of the invasion were a waste. One faction of players is telling their members to leave the conflict and get on with their lives until it ends.

The controversy surrounds timers — little in-game bars that count down or up based on player actions toward a shared goal. Initial players believed that the timers for the Thargoids war were not working correctly, as they counted down days like weeks. Frontier provided clarification on Wednesday night. While timers may indicate how many weeks it takes for players to complete a task in the Thargoid War, they are actually counting down the days. The worst part is that each week’s progress resets.

Basically, players went in to this war thinking that the game would work much like it has since launch — giving players multiple weeks, sometimes even several months, to reach a given goal. As the time ticks by, non-player characters have been decimated as entire star systems are under attack from the alien menace.

My own time has been spent around a star system known as HIP 23716, where I’ve been embedded with an in-game group called Operation IDA. IDA specializes at moving materials between different locations. Elite’s virtual Milky Way galaxy, and has dozens of successful heavy lift efforts to its name. I’ve spent several nights in a custom-built blockade runner, flying through deadly Thargoid hyperspace interdictions and into bases actively under attack by alien ships. At noon CST, Thursday Commander Light027 ordered an operation pause.

“Due to the information released today,” Light027 said in a Discord announcement, “we have made the tough decision to discontinue tracking and no longer focus on support and relief efforts for HIP 23716, or any other thargoid war systems.

“We do not feel we can advise our members to spend their time and effort on this dangerous hauling,” Light027 continued. “After being given a timer showing 7 weeks, a vast portion of the community put their all into a single system, managing to move the bar to around 40% complete, yet all that work is now set to be erased.”

Official message boards are being sounded by other commanders not affiliated with the alliance.

“This does not sound like a fun mechanic,” said one player, “given the difficulty and considering how we have no tools to track progress and estimate completion. […]As it appears now, the difficulty [the] all-or-nothing nature of the weekly resets makes it impossible for groups and/or individual commanders to take on heroic efforts to defend systems they’re interested in and get any sense that they’ve contributed. It’s maybe possible to move 1-2 pips as a group, but it’ll just be reset next week anyway.”

All this is set against the backdrop of real peril for Frontier’s fictional universe since its release in Elite Dangerous2014 Developers have been clear from the outset: The human-populated bubble will be destroyed in detail if players do not react — up to and including the distant population centers in and around Colonia, some 22,000 light years away.

Now it’s up to those players to coordinate how they’re going to react. A new Discord channel, Defense Council of Humanity has been established to consolidate efforts. There, representatives from dozens of player-led factions are engaged in a continuing dialogue on how to proceed — including members of the Fuel Rats, the Hull Seals, and more. It’s a great place for new players to get stuck in, with public channels that show an interest in helping players find their way in the notoriously complex spacefaring simulation game.

Meanwhile, several community goals are underway — and both should yield more powerful weapons to use against the alien menace.