An excellent point. I was merely asking if somebody found a copy of a Sleeper book or something in one of the relics. If not, we can wait longer-
Wait, speaking of, what is the status of the rouge drone breakout in 4C-B7X? And the status of Cyrillian Voth?
Even if it’s a book, it might just be a cookbook.
As for the drones, I’ve heard they’ve gone a bit more into blues and violet these days, of which I approve.
So during the last Drifter Excursion, Directrix Lunarisse Aspenstar Daphiti asked me if I had made any progress, and I disappointedly had to say no. She was not surprised by this, but hoped I found something.
That said, after looking over the after-action reports (the majority which I will not disclose) it was noted that with the results of this and the previous engagements over the last month or so have had a noticeable trend of decreasing Drifter presence, and that if they wanted to really keep us out, they could amass at the mouth of the wormhole and deter any and all opponents with concentrated fire, as we know they are capable of that.
Instead, they roam around the systems, venture into K-space, venture back, and don’t put up more than a token defense against intruders into the acceleration gate network.
One comment made on this trend was that “they were almost inviting us in”.
I was naturally suspicious about this as when we completed the sweep, we encountered a lone DBS in the Nexus, at around 150km to 158km, that made no attempt to forcefully remove us from its supposed territory.
That is when I truly acknowledged that they simply don’t care about the well being of “their” territories as we know them, but rather care about their personal space, and their claim on Jovian and Sleeper technology.
I don’t know what to think with all of this. Is the lessening defenses signs of willing to talk - unlikely, but I still hold out hopes - or is it a sign of something worse to come?
I don’t like it, whatever it is. I would appreciate input from someone else on this matter.
A small clarification. The inquiry was from Directrix Lunarisse Aspenstar Daphiti, CEO and leader of Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque, or SFRIM. ARC-as-coalition is a sometimes amorphous thing, I should note; as SFRIM and IKAME have been in this together since the beginning, I would contend that SFRIM’s position in ARC is largely comparable to IKAME’s, and as such the directrix has considerable standing.
In an absolute sense, though, ARC doesn’t have a single ‘head,’ so much as a committee or, winds help me, a ‘do-acracy,’ whatever mangling of language that term is.
That said, indeed, a notable theory at present is that the Hive systems themselves are no longer significant for the Drifters, and that we are more or less corralled there for the Drifters’ purposes. That the Drifters appear to transit to a third point via the uiWH infrastructure, and not to the Hive system, may serve as confirmation of this.
If such is the case, the obvious question becomes: what do we do about it? We don’t know exactly why these systems are no longer of significant value to the Drifters - besides our repeated incursions - and the fact that we are typically able to follow their activities, but have found no such leads, to my admittedly limited knowledge.
Makoto, have we any news on the system referred to as “Run”, since the last time it was mentioned?
Run, to my knowledge, is a standard shattered system, excepting only that the Arithmos patrols there simply grew beyond what Capsuleers normally encounter.
And there is no apparent reason for this? No unusual structures or anomalies? Just a shattered system with an usually high Arithmos patrol rate?
No. The Drifters may care less and less about their systems, but why waste the time and effort of assigning a contingent of the most powerful units available to a place that has no strategic value? Either this is one heck of an elaborate and costly diversionary tactic, or there is something there - or something will be there - that we cannot sense.
Would you agree with this assessment?
Perhaps that fellow offended the main Drifter polity and are now exiled to some dead-end system to faff around and get them out of the organisation’s figurative hair.
The fact that they are willing to just dump them there inside a Drifter Battleship speaks ill about the kind of military power they have around to be willing to be wasteful like that.
The argon is mainly used for the targetting system, the plasma itself is mostly made out of the byproducts of generating argon, namely oxygen and nitrogen.
Argon? I thought it’s the laser.
Edit: Stupid question. Just occurred to me that the argon gas is the medium for the laser.
We aren’t talking about their weapons systems at this moment in time. We’ve beaten the figurative dead horse enough. We’re discussing the nature of their actions, and what we will do in response to that.
Now here’s something to consider: if Run is simply a shattered system with no strategic value, and their most powerful vessels to date permeate the area, doing absolutely nothing of any significance, then what would happen - besides immediate retaliation - if we were to attempt the removal of the Drifter presence inside Run?
If there isn’t anything inside of Run, and it holds no value whatsoever that we can determine - it’s not a matter of if it is important to them, the answer is yes, but rather why it is important to them - then what would they do if we attempted to interact with them, or otherwise remove them beyond the typical response of “you’re in my space, you’ve violated an unspoken law, now pay with your blood”, is there a limited number of Arithmos inside the system, and do they receive any support?
If it has value to them, I would imagine they would replenish lost numbers and continue standard operation, or perform system sweeps to make sure they got every intruder. If we were to try and fight them - a prospect made even more insane than my call to communicate with the Drifters - would they come back, or are they finite? What is the range and strength of their logistical support? Do they even have logistical support?
What do we know about this system besides that it’s a shattered system, and is it worth looking into? One pass does not make substantial data.
Who’s to say that the Drifters don’t have new, better vessels hidden somewhere and they are just using now obsolete versions of their battleships like with the CONCORD ships released to cappsuleers?
That might very well be true, but these ships must be controlled, no? Why throw out a ship and the pilot that flies it? Wouldn’t it make more sense to scrap the vessels and use them to make better vessels?
And it’s true, they might have something stronger that we simply haven’t seen - I’m counting on it, for as terrifying as that is - but I’m saying as far as we’ve seen, no more, no less.
Unless each ship is tailored to the pilot - vise versa, or some combination of the two, where both are unique makes and models - it doesn’t make sense to throw them out when there are much more cost-effective alternatives.
From what little we know of the Drifters and their behavior, that argument doesn’t make sense to me. The only case I can find this being remotely plausible is if the Arithmos are hazardous to themselves and other vessels even when not active, say, radiation.
I find it unlikely that they use a straight nuclear reactor on such a vessel, since we don’t have evidence to support the theory, but there could be another material that is equally - if not more so - dangerous to Drifter operation and that of itself is the reason why these Arithmos are otherwise indisposed of. Why keep a super weapon around if being in close proximity to it is hazardous enough, even when it isn’t active?
But again, unless this was the bizarre chance of it being true, I find it unlikely, and otherwise nonsensical. Up until a point where hazardous materials are concerned, you can reclaim, repurpose, reprocess, recycle, and reuse all materials. You don’t simply get a vessel like a DBS if the people who produce them are wasteful. It doesn’t add up.
What the ■■■■. Seriously. It’s a public thread, different people are having different conversations.
It is, but I’m trying to keep a consistent train of thought. I do not mind others having side conversations related to the topic at hand, but if it has little or nothing to do with it, I would prefer if they took it elsewhere.
And others providing possible thoughts? I do not mind at all. But they must make logistical sense, and if they do not, I ask that they provide evidence to describe why logistical sense is not practical or necessary in that instance.
Basically, back up your theory with evidence if the theory in question cannot exist without it, because otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.
Of course, that is just me.
Perhaps I am a little too late in my response to this thread, despite following this thread for many weeks now. For those of you who don’t know me, I have been championing discourse with the Drifters for nearing 18 months now. I am, I believe, the only known “Drifter Sympathiser” in the cluster.
I am a little disappointed at the lack of the Drifters’ ability to communicate with us outside of violence. I would love nothing more than to be able to understand their motives. They destroyed my family, yet I do not hate them for it. I truly believe that at this point in time, both them and ourselves are attacking this “problem” from a standpoint of misunderstanding.
Simply put, we, as a collective, should stop shooting them. Then perhaps, there is a small chance that we and them can make progress in moving forward together.
You do realise that they fired the first shot, right? And that they leave absolutely no channel for communication. If they wanted us to stop shooting at them, maybe they should either send us their contact details or shoot us a ‘ceasefire!’ message. The fact that they haven’t done so implies that they aren’t interested in non-violent solutions.
Uh, they only started showing up after people shot up the Seekers, if memory serves me right.
You do realize this is a false assumption. It is possible the Empires, CONCORD, Sansha or Sisters of EVE actually fired the first shot but won’t admit it - but as far as what we know for sure is that capsuleers fired the first shots, attacking the Circadian seekers, which were decidedly nonhostile unless attacked first - and if memory serves, actually originally didn’t even respond to attacks.
As long as they are not provoked, they are non-aggressive. The only exception to this was the brief period of incursions in Amarr space, but since they have not resumed, it can be reasonably assumed they had a specific objective, after achieving of which they stopped.
This is correct, and I believe specifically around the same time as what are now identified as Jove Observatories started decloaking.
Bottom line is we don’t know enough, period. We as capsuleers have been left in the dark on nearly every front. What little the empires know, they don’t feel keen on sharing, and the same goes for SoE and CONCORD.
Now, a simple “we do know, but can’t tell you due to (insert reason here)” would suffice, and would lay a lot of nerves to rest. But of course, in this big wide world, we can’t share like civil beings unless we’re on the verge of death.
There may be reasons, but they aren’t telling us why they can’t tell us.
And that aside, we cannot unite, as nice as it is, given the state of affairs. Unless the entire capsuleer population were gathered together for an event on the scale of Burn Jita or greater, we can not get any real progress in with anyone or anything without having to resort to subterfuge, open combat, and otherwise violent acts that go against the very idea I stand for, regarding a solution.
I don’t want to kill them all, I’d rather remove the mystery and the threat of that mystery of what they are and what they can do, but unless we get our collective sethesiltag together, we do not have any solution but what we’re currently doing.
This whole thing frustrates me. They don’t want to listen, or can’t figure it out because we don’t metaphorically and actually speak the same language. We can’t agree on one thing long enough to try, and the only thing we can seem to agree on is disagreeing.
And… for the love of Setunni…
I need to take recess, if we’re not making any progress here, there’s other things I can be doing right now. By all means, continue, do what you can, but I don’t think I am going to make a difference here.