 Update 18 arrived into a leak dangerous yesterday bringing with it the culmination of the year plus war against the thargoid invasion of the bubble. If you're curious about what shape that culmination might take here's everything we know so far. Suffice to say what we're about to talk about delves heavily into spoiler territory so if you're sensitive to that stuff stop watching now. With the arrival of update 18 we now have access to the new guardian nanite torpedo pylon. This new anti-titan specific weapon fires guided fire and forget torpedo style weapons that are 100% effective against the heat regulation vents that open every minute or so for approximately 30 seconds. Rather than an explosive warhead the torpedo delivers guardian nanites directly into the titans normal heat regulation vents on what is generally regarded to be the ship's upper surface. Once the heat regulation vents are infected with guardian nanites they turn a distinct guardian blue colour and they're unable to dissipate the heat they would normally need to keep the titan running. In this event the titan must initiate a secondary emergency heat venting system on its underside. When this happens the vessel's thermal core emerges from its underside and is then vulnerable to attack from conventional weapons. Once the health of the core reaches 0% the core retracts and the titan initiates its torus magnetic field attack causing all attackers to withdraw from the titan's surface until it's over. Any attackers on the titans thermal core are awarded a 503 credit combat bond and then as best we can determine at the moment the cycle resumes. There does appear to be a larger picture at least going on here as a new element to the thargoid war galactic map also arrived with the update that shows a given titans level of damage resistance. Taranis the titan that was the first to arrive and became the primary focus of the efforts of the AXI and other groups last night is showing a resistance level of moderate, the other titan levels range between extremely high and maximum. Events in the Thargoid War have always largely moved on a weekly cycle with the server tick every Thursday. With the attention that Taranis has been getting the key to whatever happens next could possibly pivot on any observations made to those titan system states after the Thursday tick this week. The next frontier unlocked live stream is happening on Wednesday, we do know that Elite Dangerous will be featuring on that live stream and will continue to report back here as this crucial week for Elite Dangerous continues. How have you fared attacking titans since update 18 dropped and what do you think the next step in the war will be? Let us know in the comments below.