Pilots;
We’ve confirmed multiple active Drifter/Sleeper raids against Society of Conscious Thought facilities throughout New Eden. These raids seem to be largely composed of assorted Sleeper drones coordinated or led by a single Drifter ship. We can currently confirm the deployment of Hypnos Tyrannos in cruiser-class vessels, and will be looking for others.
Currently, these raids appear to be relatively easy to disperse.
More information will be provided as we find it.
Apata and Hypnos eh?
How many types of Drifter are there now ?
Apollo, Artemis, Hikanta; Arithmos; Orion, Cassandra; Apate, Hypnos. There are indications via elint that there are other possible designations in the field, but I’ve yet to confirm them. Conferring with staff now.
I don’t even have anything to say…These attacks just speak for me.
If any of you need me, you’ll know where I’ll be.
Hm.
It appears some of the initial information was inaccurate; Apate Tyrannos clones are piloting a Drifter battleship of new specification. Pilot Alec Kerry indicates successful engagement resulted in the retrieval of Sunesis blueprints. This would seem to confirm theories that the Drifters are attacking the Society of Conscious Thought in part due to their ship design work.
I engaged Hypnos Tyrannos today in Rens at a SoCT facility with my flagship, the Jormungand. It proved a challenging fight at first, due to it being a turret platform and the Hypnos cruiser going well over 1,1km/s. However, it seemed to orbit my ship precisely at 34 kilometers away, and engaging my own microwarpdrive I could about match it in speed, forcing it to turn away and flee from my ship, reducing transversal signifigantly, letting my ships autocannons shred it with impunity. Phased Plasma rounds seemed nominally effective, taking considerable chunks of shield and armor off it with each volley. I will have to test if other ammunition would be more effective.
I also tried to engage it with drones, but for some reason my drones kept disengaging constantly. Somekind of interference seemed to be at play, I haven’t yet reviewed the drone operation logs.
And lastly, all of the Sleeper-derived drones accompanying the Drifter Strike Cruiser warped off once their apparent leader was dispatched. Among the wreckage I recovered a Sleeper Data Library and somekind of neural booster.
Having not participated in anti-Drifter operations previously, I do not know how hard these are usually to defeat, but I concur with the OP, that it seemed “relatively easy” to disperse.
Edit: Additionally, damage levels were tolerable with a so-called omni-tank, I had to engage a shield boost once or twice, but from my very limited experience, these Sleeper derived drones do not seem to possess the same level of destructive power as their usual Anoikis counterparts, similarly, I was expecting the damage from the Drifter cruiser to be signifigantly higher judging from reports I’ve read - but as said, I have no prior experience in engaging Drifter vessels.
That’s a fair assessment.
I responded to a raid in Jita, of all places, and the situation was about the same. A reasonably-designed Legion did a fair job of dealing with the cruiser, and incoming damage was minimal.
My guess is that most of the usual weapons technology may’ve been stripped in favor of command and control systems, perhaps slaving the Sleeper drones directly to the Drifter’s control.
Either way, this seems like a fairly major escalation in aggressiveness, though it seems like the Drifters were planning to focus on relatively soft targets.
Edit: also, it’s worth noting that the Drifter cruisers, even with Doomsday weapons operational, are nowhere near as deadly as the battleships. They’re sufficient for engaging, say, a Capsuleer cruiser without support, but are easy enough to deal with once prepared.
I would say that is a fair assumption. Oh, and the neural booster I mentioned is an X-Sense -made cerebral accelerator, registered for SoCT. X-Sense was previously owned by the Jove Directorate, as many might remember.
Evidently, like you said earlier, they seem to be pilfering the SoCT facilities they are attacking.
Quite so. I think it’s fair to say that, much like the Drifter attacks against Sisters of EVE research facilities and teams, this fits a policy of technological containment.
I wonder if the Drifters are attempting to recover SOCT technology for the good of Drifter Society? Now wouldn’t that be a twist.
Especially if they’ve been trying to communicate with us in a way we just don’t understand all along, and have now deemed us too stupid to worry about because we can’t understand them.
Addendums to my earlier post on the enemy capabilities:
Having dispatched two more assaults in Ortner constellation, the drone interference is real. I have not pinpointed the actual method how they do it, but they can briefly stop standard drones from attacking them. I would guess they can scramble the drone’s weapons lock on them, though I could not observe any discernible effect on how. Specifically, the Hypnos piloted cruiser can do this, I observed no such abilities from the drones it leads.
As such, I do not recommend engaging them with ships that use drones as their main offensive weapon. The disruption is very brief, though, and I could almost immediately command them to resume attack on the cruiser, but as said - at least the Hornet and Warrior drone models are vulnerable to whatever interference they use. No reason to assume other models can’t be affected similarly.
Further, if you plan to engage them with projectile weapons, EMP and Fusion charges seemed to be the most effective, from brief testing I’d say EMP was even more effective than Fusion rounds.
Edit: Definetly EMP appears to work best.
I’ll let you know if fighters and fighter/bombers are similarly vulnerable.
F/Bs appear to have no problems at all. Neither do quartets of Bosonic Field Genertors.
We have confirmed the presence of at least one new Drifter Hive in known space. Two command battleships, identified as Tyrannos Polemos, were engaged and destroyed by a small team in the Brundakur system, where the Hive was discovered. Unfortunately, we as yet lack the means to suppress the spatial rift at the location, and the Hive’s shielding was online.
Camera drone stills can be found either here or here, provided respectively by Gen. Stargazer and Aurolana Equliser. My thanks also to the other pilots who were able to deploy to Republic space on short notice:
Alec Kerry
Avio Yaken
darkezero
Evi Polevhia
Kalaratiri
Khaprice
Thomas Meagher
While the Tyrannos Polemos ships were fairly tough, much like other Drifters deployed in this operation, they were easily overwhelmed with a handful of battleships and logistical support. To be perfectly frank, we suspect three or four Machariels would be sufficient for fighting this concentration without issue, even without logistics support.
Hey! Like I was gonna pass up an opportunity to bump off a command vessel belonging to the Drifters.
Was practically a pleasure to head out there and participate.
I would like to congratulate the members of the fleet and ARC on this successfully, its good to see that the Drifters are getting driven back.
Good job.
What do you think would be needed to deal with the spatial rift and the facility itself?
A lance of some type. Or a bosonic field in optimal range.
I am extremely curious regarding what is on the other side of the spacial rift 
Not exactly easy to do in highsec.