Winning The Thargoid War the Elastic Way

Elite Dangerous:

Elite Dangerous is a Space-Adventure/Simulation Game released on the PC and multiple console platforms in 2014. The game takes place in the fictional/virtual universe of Elite. The first game set in this universe was released in 1984 by Frontier Studios. They have continued to expand this universe through multiple games and novels over the years. What makes Elite Dangerous unique from your casual arcade shooter is a component known as the background simulation and its dedication to ‘realism’. The realistic depiction of human development in both technological and socio-political timelines creates an intricate and challenging environment for the player to thrive in. The Background Simulation within the game contains 3 major powers and dozens of minor-factions all vying for control. Depending on the faction various means ranging from military, economic, and ideological are used to change the state of the star systems on a weekly basis. This complex interaction dynamically writes the story that players both experience and directly affect. Frontier Studios guides the general development, but the line between designer and algorithm is blurred, to say the least.

Thargoids:

The Thargoids are a highly intelligent species that predates Humans for millions of years. Due to this, they consider much of the space that we have colonized in Elite to be theirs. Unfortunately, previous wars have been fought between the two species that have further agitated relations. For a long period of time, the Thargoids were missing in the game, and in the story lore, it was assumed that they might have left our section of the Galaxy. Eventually, players did indeed come into contact with Thargoids once again. At first, the encounters were peaceful. But as time moved on the old Conflict returned. As of today, most players in Elite Dangerous are preparing for a full-scale invasion by the Thargoids. Several colonizing attempts have fallen victim to Thargoid forces, and they are starting to destroy established Human Stations, which funny enough the players in the game then have to contribute to Community Goals to fix those stations through the Background Simulation Mechanics (Most of my knowledge of the topic came from a Youtube Channel Called “Down to Earth Astronomy”.

My Role in Elite Dangerous:

As a huge science fiction fan, I started following Elite Dangerous when it was first released but only started playing it at the end of 2019. My character’s avatar is the picture above and is named Commander Denoire. Recently I formed a Squadron with a group of friends I have been gaming with for over 10 years called the ‘Silver Blades’. Our main goal is to participate in the weekly “Power Play” that dictates how the various inputs of the Background Simulation are affected by the player and AI actions. In particular, it is possible for a squadron to run their own minor faction that supports one of the ‘Personalities’ that battle for power on the larger stage. We began to realize that these goals would eventually bring us into conflict with the Thargoids, not just other players and caused us to change the way we approach the game. While watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I realized the problem with the way I was approaching the Thargoids. I was merely thinking about my ships, equipment, and how to survive and hopefully win a battle. However, it occurred to me while watching this episode that I knew nothing about them. A better approach to dealing with the Thargoids is to understand their society and how they fit into the background simulation that controls the universe of Elite Dangerous. There is so much not known by players about the Thargoids that our avenues of action are severely limited, and in my opinion, we will lose if we only fight militarily in a disjointed campaign.

How Does Elastic fit into this again?

So far I have told you about Elite Dangerous and my worries about fighting Thargoids, but what does that have to with the Elastic Stack? I began to realize that the first I needed was information and analysis. In my work in Cyber Security, the Elastic Stack is my bread and butter, and I realized why to change anything when dealing with the universe of Elite Dangerous. One thing I need is to know where the Thargoids originate from so we can learn more about their history, motives, political factions, and general info that is driving them. It occurred to me that I could collect all this data and use Elastic to do the analysis.

Proposed Workflow:

Elite Dangerous has an amazing community that I immediately fell in love with. Beyond just being nerds playing a game, we all bring our ideas and experiences to increase our ability to enjoy this amazing universe Frontier is developing. I knew the key was to find out who else realized that the game has a data-driven paradigm and thought about tapping into that potential. I found a community project called EDDI that provides complete monitoring of the complex data produced by Elite Dangerous and provides an API to access it. This application will be the major source of data that I plan on ingesting into Elasticsearch. In addition, I found EDSM an API providing full integration of real-time map data from the Galaxy Map of Elite Dangerous. It occurred to me that I could ingest the JSON from this application and transform it into the geojson format used by Kibana Maps. This will give me the ability to utilize the complete power of Kibana to analyze Galactic Spatial Data in real-time.

Proposed Uses:

• Use Elastic Machine Learning abilities to create a predictive model for Thargoid movements
• Analyze Thargoid reactions to the visible Background Simulation to produce a modeled ‘invisible simulation’ that takes into account the actions of the Thargoids as if they are merely just another faction. (I am assuming Frontier might have designed it this way. I would have)
• Eventually, find the most likely systems to contain the Thargoid Homeworld and explore those regions
• Utilize real-time game data to assist in making decisions for my Squadron and our minor faction
• Use the Kibana Alerting platform to provide real-time messaging to our Commanders when in-game events require immediate attention

Wait, don’t you have a day job?

It might seem strange to some readers that I am putting this much work into a video game. But at the end of the day, I am talking about an advanced use case of the Elastic Stack to make Game Theory-based decisions. In fact, these same techniques could easily be applied to situations our own nations face on a regular basis. Take the situation where a foreign nation launches a classified spacecraft with unknown intentions. Using this same workflow you could use information gathered from media, intel reports, astronomical observations, known spacecraft along its orbit to attempt to predict the mission of that spacecraft. I might be tracking the Thargoids, but it could easily be applied to a real-world solution. The power of Elastic is its ability to see the world as data to simply be ingested and analyzed. I firmly believe that in the process of having fun in Elite Dangerous I am also showing a powerful use case for the Elastic Stack that could have heavy implications for our future.