The following was submitted by CMDR OakPanda to aid us in our further investigation of the Thargoids. He investigated the effects of all known limpet types upon Thargoid Interceptors, in the name of science!
From CMDR OakPanda:
All results were gathered on a ship with no weapons on the hard points and no cargo other than limpets. I have never killed a Thargoid in the past. All results were obtained via non-hostile targets, varying from Cyclops, Basilisk and yes Medusa too.
Results in alphabetical order:
Decontamination: This one surprised me the most, I expected to get invalid target or the Thargoid to go hostile but it acted just as it would with a human, tracking to the target and locking on. It did the repairing thing and then said it was complete and detached. No change in hostility and the Thargoid left unhindered.
Fuel: This worked, once the Thargoid was targeted and I launched it the limpet tracked the Thargoid, docked to it like it would a ship and then said it was fueling and fueling complete then detached. No change in hostility by the Thargoid, and it left unhindered. It seemed to ignore the interaction for the most part.
Hatch Breaker: This was highly surprising! It acted normally, went to the target, latched on, and started to ‘break’ the ‘hatch’. Once it latched on the Thargoid instantly went red (hostile) but the limpet continued and then gave a message that the “Syphon Resource Failed”. I was able to flee once but once I was killed after doing this. But this was the only time I died doing this research. I was so shocked by the first result I didn’t react fast enough to flee. It makes me wonder if some Thargoids ARE able to be the target of a Hatch Breaker limpet with actual results as if this is the message for no cargo or if this is an auto failure on all Thargoids, or if the game just didn’t know how to process it and the default Thargoid ships lack a ‘cargo’ field. But all in all this is one of the more interesting results.
Prospector: My testing showed this limpet seems to phase through any invalid target for the most part and this was the case here. It passed through the body of the Thargoid without any interaction. I tested this repeatedly in several encounters and at no time did it appear to have any interaction with the Thargoid. I would note this is the same effect you get when used against a player ship as well.
Recon: Simple invalid target reply on this one, so wouldn’t even fire in the first place.
Repair: Just like Decon this limpet would fire, track, latch on and then say it was repairing then repairs complete and detach. Again surprised me. But considering the Decon results I suppose it shouldn’t have.
Research: I did this one just to give the basic full board of results. Of course the Thargoid instantly went hostile when the limpet hit. We already know the purpose/results of this one as it was designed to be used against Thargoids in the first place but I wanted to be consistent. I hadn’t used this one before so was a bit surprised that just having this on me when scanned did not give hostile reactions.
In each case I entered the area, let the Thargoid scan me, scanned it back, and THEN used the limpets.
I did try using the Hatch Breaker limpet in silent running mode which did make it go hostile when hit but it couldn’t find me until I turned that off to flee. So that was an interesting side note.
Finally just a tad more info which probably is more widely known: Manifest scanner failed completely. D-Link doesn’t work either.
