 Late last week it looked as though the Thargoid Titan Oya was going to be able to dig in and hold off the attention of the community for a good few weeks more. We also weren't expecting a patch this week delivering a hybrid Thargoid Frameshift drive. It's funny how things turn out sometimes however and so here is a midweek news update. As we reported in witch based news on Friday following last Thursday's Thargs day tick, Oya had been able to generate over 20 new alerts in the space around it. This volume of alerts in such a wide spread of systems is counter to all previous observed behaviour patterns that we've seen across all 8 titans over the last year. If left unchecked these alerts would turn into invasions in occupied systems and Thargoid control in systems where there is no permanent human presence and if that happened the Titan Oya that had recently risen to the very top of the community's nanite infused early bath list would gain itself a significant defensive boost delaying its previously moderately imminent human sponsored please leave the galaxy party. An emergency council was convened between the various larger player groups that engage in anti-xeno operations and the other multi-discipline war efforts in the game to discuss what to do, Frontier or the Pilots Federation depending on how you choose to interpret Galnet news articles were at the same time encouraging players to go after the Orthros interceptors specifically in the affected systems. Orthros hunting does positively affect the war effort but it takes so long to find an Orthros encounter let alone kill it or steal its lunch money that it is hugely inefficient when compared to the current go to favoured activity of scout sampling. The AXI did conduct some tests to ensure that nothing had changed in that regard over their previous data and they confirmed that Orthros encounters had not been buffed in any regard. Scout sampling was indeed still the way to go when it comes to shifting system influence in the war. The end result of all this was a two pronged approach, attacked the Titan directly but also continued the scout sampling in huge quantities ignoring the Pilots Federation call to attack Orthros interceptors. As of today of the 30 alerts that were outstanding only two remain to be cleared that's an extraordinary accomplishment. The defence level of the Titan itself remained too high to move progress significantly on it and so now all attention has been redirected toward large scale scout sampling. You'll find the latest video from Commander Mechon of the AXI linked below. That video details the AXI's plans for the remaining two systems following the tick this week and the current estimate assuming no further surprises is that the attack on the Titan Oya will begin on Thursday 18th April. In a surprise move yesterday Frontier announced that the servers would be coming down today Wednesday 10th April to apply patch 18.02. The patch contains a few fixes and additions to the game perhaps most notable of which is that the pre-engineered 5A frame shift drive module can now have experimental effects added to it and support for hardware with up to 128 buttons registered as an input device has also been added. I've linked to the full notes below if you're curious to see the rest. The big headliner to the patch however is the addition of the brand new Thargoid hybrid frame shift drive from Achilles Aerospace that we reported on a few weeks back after its development was the direct subject of a community goal. The new Class C drives contain a new super cruise overcharge feature that is activated via your regular boost key when in super cruise. When the overcharge is activated the new frame shift drive immediately begins to overheat and it absolutely chews through fuel but in return you get a colossal increase in your super cruise speed and during the flight let's say things get a little wobbly like you're being interdicted wobbly except you're not because you're going so damn fast. In order to get the footage you're seeing on screen now I field every single optional slot in this python with a fuel tank and all the utility slots had a heat sink in them. When I landed at Shinrata I had half the original amount of fuel left and it cost me around 7,000 credits to fill her up. I did however do nearly 225,000 light seconds in about 60 seconds and easily obtained speeds in excess of 3,400 times the speed of light. There's a number of reasons this drive might be useful over the next weeks and months at least one of the Titans is a comedic distance from its parent star and travelling that far in super cruise all the while being chased down and interdicted by Thargoids in order to deliver a nanite coated cuddle to the mothership could swerve dangerously close to no fun at all. FDev have made it known that for the upcoming powerplay 2.0 later this year they are keen to see PvP play a bigger role so it's possible this new drive feature could be part of an effort by Frontier to get more folks in to open as we're assuming it's going to be much harder for a meta build further lance with a thimble for a fuel tank to keep up with you to maintain an interdiction tether. Science is very very ongoing in the community at the moment but we also know perhaps unsurprisingly that the new drives can't be engineered but regardless at the very least this is likely going to mean a change in tactics for AX pilots haulers and hunters alike and I'm very curious to see how groups like the bucky ball and elite racers adopt the new technology as well as how a speed record to hut an orbital might now be handled. You can purchase the new drives from outfitters at high tech star systems and also Jameson memorial in Shinrata Desira if you have access. Have you been smacking scouts in defence of the bubble? Have you tried the overcharged super cruise mode and just where do you think the drive will come into its own? Let us know in the comments below. If you've enjoyed this video be sure to like and subscribe so YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to support our work here at the burp pit you can also join us on Patreon links to that and everything else we've talked about in this video you'll find links below. That's it for now thanks very much for watching we very much look forward to seeing you next time.