 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 23rd of February 2024, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, there's an article to take your exploration game to the next level, Lave Radio is celebrating 11 glorious years, update 18 and the next FDev livestream arrived next week and more. You know how this bit goes, please like and subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to directly help our work here at the Burpit you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. CMDR Spatula 007 is back with a bang this week with the next installment of their James Bond-esque Elite Dangerous Machinima comedy. The latest outing of the hapless hero is entitled Thunderdangus and sees the secret agent Spatula 007 going on a forced vacation to a waterworld holiday planet. If you've seen Spatula's handy work before then you'll already know that things don't go to plan. There's a huge amount of work already in the Thunderdangus video including the usual hilarious voice talents and a genius full musical score from CMDR Takoso which includes a James Bond style theme song with accompanying title sequence but that wasn't the only thing that Spatula released this week. Before the video was released there was not only a full trailer but also a red carpet style premiere event video featuring the same production style and quality of Thunderdangus that is just as funny. There's a huge shed ton of work gone into the project by Spatula and it's clearly a labour of love for them. You'll find links to the half hour movie, the trailer and the Thunderdangus premiere event linked in the description below. CMDR Phoenix Defyre announced in a post to the official forums that the weekly Elite Dangerous podcast Lave Radio celebrated its 11th birthday this week. Since its inception the podcast has recorded a staggering 477 episodes which equates to nearly 1000 hours of audio content as well as playing host to the LaveCon yearly convention in the UK. Over the years the venerable podcast has passed through many pairs of hosting hands but these days you can hear the current crew of the Orange Sidewinder recording live on Tuesday evenings from 8.30pm UK time with the edited download podcast becoming available shortly To catch up with Lave Radio or listen live check out the Lave Radio website and Discord server linked in the description below. While we're talking Lave Radio my thanks go to the crew there for highlighting this next piece on the show this week. CMDR Homburger maintains a blog about their Elite Dangerous travels and adventures and this week the good commander published an article about exploration and specifically the methodology and tools that they use. It often surprises even the most seasoned explorers in the game that there is actually a method that can be used when searching systems in the galactic map to help narrow down the more interesting systems to view before you travel to them using the naming conventions that the game uses to generate system names. CMDR Homburger details this method in the blog alongside a few of their own methods for searching the galaxy for interesting systems to explore. In the piece you'll also find links to the third party applications that Homburger uses as the commander talks about their personal journey with the exploration process that has made them the explorer they are today. All in all it's a very entertaining and informative read as well as being a very useful reference piece. You'll find CMDR Homburger's article The Next Level of Exploration linked in the description below this video. The next update to Elite Dangerous update 18 arrives this Monday the 26th of February just as we were going to press in fact fdev let go the release schedule which you can see on screen now. The servers are going offline at 8am UTC and aren't expected to return before 1500 UTC following a whopping 30 gigabyte patch. With its arrival Frontier have promised what they're calling the culmination of the Thargoid war. A war that started over a year and a half ago with the battle of HIP 22460 and the detonation of the Proteus wave device. Following that conflict 8 fast moving anomalies were detected on the fringes of known space anomalies that became known in the community as the Stargoids. Upon their arrival in the bubble the Stargoids deployed protective caustic maelstroms around themselves and once the interior of those maelstroms was accessed we were presented finally with the true nature of the Stargoids Thargoid Titan Motherships. These Titan Motherships have been the source of a war that has decimated every system it has touched. As we reported last week there is an Aegis sponsored community goal running right now in the game to build what are being called Guardian Nanite Torpedoes. These torpedoes are specifically designed to target the heat regulation systems present within Thargoid Titan vessels. The hope is that on deployment the Motherships will be severely damaged or even destroyed. Once the nature of the anti-Titan weapon was revealed the anti-Xeno strike force a subset of the AXI led by Commander Mechon began developing highly engineered ships together with the tactics they believe will be necessary to deploy the new torpedoes against the Titans. The nature and behaviour of the thermal regulation systems used by the Titans can be seen already in game and using this intel Commander Mechon and the team have designed purpose built stealth mambas that can not only survive in the environment around the Titans but if used correctly can remain largely undetected and hopefully deploy the new weapon system. Whilst there are absolutely still many unknowns until we actually get our hands on the torpedoes Mechon has already produced a couple of videos that detail the proposed stealth mamba build and demonstrate the tactics the Xeno strike force team are hoping to be able to use. You'll find those videos linked in the description below. If you want to see what happens to the AXI and their pilots when they first attempt a full-on assault of an active Titan Mothership then Mechon will be live streaming on Monday afternoon as soon as the servers go live. Again you'll find that live stream linked below. We don't really know yet what it will take to destroy a Titan and if we do destroy one we don't know what the Thargoids might do in retaliation. Could we perhaps see more Stargoids being launched at the bubble for example? If we only manage to damage a Titan it's always possible it will leave the fight entirely rather than be destroyed and if that happens where it lands next will be a concern. Whatever happens next week should prove to be fascinating either way. Following the patch we have a couple of days of whatever comes next and then the next installment of FDev's new monthly live stream series Frontier Unlocked arrives and we do know that perhaps unsurprisingly Elite Dangerous will again be featured on the show. The Frontier Unlocked live stream kicks off on Wednesday the 28th of February at 6pm UK time on Twitch and on YouTube. Have you been listening to the Lave Radio podcast for the last 11 years? Are you following the adventures of Spatula 007 in Thunderdangus and will you be packing torpedoes and taking the fight to the Titans next week? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thanks very much for watching. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, 07 Commanders follow the Greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.