With Maelstroms popping up throughout human space and fear in the air, everyone wants to participate and fight the thargoid menace. But how? Most guides seem to ask for maximum engineering and unlocked weapons, taking dozens of hours to acquire. Is that really necessary just to get started?
No! You can start killing interceptors RIGHT NOW…with the right help from obliging NPCS! Luckily, there's never been a better time to find that help!
Your starting ship is the Vulture. () This build is(I am not joking) literally the cheapest possible build you can get started with and hope to make any difference against a cyclops. This ship is small, maneuverable, and tough, but can carry two large weapons, which is crucial to damaging the critical Thargoid Hearts! The Large Fixed Multicannons(buy them at the rescue megaships!) do something like 10x the heart dps of the gimballed ones, and if you want to kill a cyclops, they're your ticket. Now, the thing to remember with this is, they'll be a lot harder to hit scouts with, so you should not attempt to fight them head on on your own, but rather support NPCs already focusing on a scout! Otherwise trust me, you'll get frustrated.
In fact, that's the general rule of thumb here. Thargoids are tough, and we can only beat them if we all work together as a team. That's why you'll want to go to an attacked outpost in an invaded system. These have wings of highly-skilled NPCs defending them, and if you stick with them, you'll do alright.(not only that, but you can dock at the outpost at any time to repair, rearm, and remove any caustic damage! What a deal!) In fact, the NPCs can do all but one part of the interceptor fight, and that's where you come in! When damaged, Interceptors activate a Heart, which rapidly regenerates away any damage. NPCs fire center-mass, and so miss these hearts, so that's going to be your job. It takes about 10 seconds with both AX multicannons on target to kill a Cyclops heart, and the heart only exerts for 20 seconds at a time, but if it doesn't get killed the first time, don't worry! The damage remains, and you'll have a much easier time next time!
Heart 1
The trick to killing thargoid interceptors(not scouts!) is staying cold and moving sideways. When you're cold, the thargoids shoot where you are NOW, not where you WILL BE. SO if you move sideways fast enough, you dodge the bullets! This only matters if you get targeted, of course, and that won't always be the case. But if you do get targeted, what you'll want to do is use a heat sink or activate Silent Running, and use your SIDEWAYS THRUSTERS to move sideways fast enough they miss you. Easy! (haha, not really, this is the hardest part of thargoid combat, don't be worried if you don't get it right away!)
The SECOND trick with guns that fire bullets(IE, have travel speed) is to use the TRAILING AIM option in your right panel under the Ship menu. Normal mode gives you a spot to shoot where the thargoid will go, but it only tells you where their center mass will be, making it hard to it their heart with any accuracy! Instead, trailing aim shows where your BULLETS will go, and you can much more easily place that right on top of the thargoid heart! (Don't worry if your reticule seems to fly all over the place, it's all about practice, and any time on target is better than none!)
Once you kill the heart, the Thargoid will turn yellow and give chase; run away! If they catch you, they'll hit you with their *Lightning Attack. This is devastating to shields, but fortunately does relatively little to armor, but it does slow you down almost entirely! If you do get caught, don't try to run, you will usually fail. Instead, bring yourself around and take advantage of the time to unload into the thargoid! Wait for the lightning to end, and THEN boost away as quickly as possible towards your allies, so they can take the heat for you. The thargoid will generate a shield when the heart is killed as well, so you'll need to bring that down before you can start to exert the next heart!
Heart 2
Heart two is about the same as the first, but with a different ending. Exert the thargoid with your allies, same as before, but when you kill the heart, it will launch caustic missiles at everyone nearby, which deal pretty heavy damage that lasts indefinitely. The best thing to do is run away! Just turn around and boost away the moment the heart dies; the missiles will go about 5000m or so before exploding, so if you just run, you'll avoid them! If you do get hit, you'll want to burn this off by using silent running and boosting until you overheat. ANY overheating slowly removes it, but it goes away faster at higher heat – at the cost of module damage, of course! Don't let it get too high. ~200 is a good point to get to until the caustic goes away, then you can disable silent running to cool off again.
Heart 3
Heart three is when the Thargoid starts getting worried! It will fire off its Shutdown Field, disabling any ships nearby for about 30 seconds! That can mean death, so don't get caught. Since you're relying on your allies here, you'll want to carry a Shutdown Field Neutralizer, and bind it(and practice with it a few times!). Basically, the instant you see the alert on your screen(it pops up in the dead center!), you'll want to put pips to your SYSTEMS, and as soon as you have that done, press AND HOLD the Shutdown Field Neutralizer button until after the shockwave passes over you. You'll figure out the timing as you go!
Heart 4
Heart four is the last one! This is the time to strike! You have a few precious seconds to kill it before it activates a final shield and launches a final wave of caustic missiles. Blow it to smithereens!
And pow, just like that, you've killed your first Cyclops!
Dying
I wont lie; you're going to die. Probably quite a bit. Fortunately, the rebuy on a Vulture is extremely cheap, about 1.1m per death, and since you're fighting around an Outpost, you'll respawn right there in the fight! In fact, if you have a friend there, the instance won't even reset, and you can keep working on the same cyclops as before, and you can die almost 8 times per cyclops kill and still break even!
And you'll be LEARNING with every death. In no time you'll have the skill to be doing more than the NPCs are doing, and you'll start to dream of more powerful weapons; Guardian weapons. And man, are they worth it! But you CAN get started without them, and you can even have a lot of fun doing it!
And most importantly, you'll be making a difference! Only you can save humanity!
Good luck, and have fun!
