 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 20th of October 2023, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, a quick guide to everything you need to know about update 17 and we look at what FDev's latest announcement might mean for Elite Dangerous. If you enjoy our videos please do hit the like button and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and ding the bell so you don't miss any of our Elite Dangerous content. If you'd like to help directly support the burpee you can also join our Patreon, links to that and everything else are below. Update 17 landed in the game this week and following the shockwave of the Thargoid Spire sites we're still frankly wrestling to take it all in. The update shows the next and we're assuming final phase of the Thargoid Matrix sites introduced in update 16 that we now know were, as was suspected, growing. The sites, a complete list of which you'll find in the description below, are now known as Thargoid Spire sites and if you've not yet visited and explored them then here's a useful rundown of everything we've learnt so far. The spires are huge, up to 6km tall. Your ship can land on the unfolded petal portions towards the tops of the spires. Get down quickly and once you're landed you can get your SRV out and dismiss your ship to keep it safe the Thargoids will ignore your SRV when it's on the Spire platforms. Get out of your SRV, we'd highly recommend an Artemis suit at this point and you'll be equally safe to explore the area and look at what's happening on the ground a few kilometers below you. There is exobiode data to be gathered at the tower platforms using the genetic sampler that comes with your Artemis suit. On the spire structure itself you'll find 4 nerve clusters, these can be shocked using your energy transfer tools discharge mode. When you do this they will turn orange for a short time, get all 4 turned orange and a hybrid compound bin will open up and dispense a new on foot gatherable material called spire refinery compound. Professor Palin appears to have a secret community goal running at the moment to gather this and other materials. Sell this refinery compound specifically to the barkeep at Baird Gateway in the arc system to contribute. At the structures around the base of the spires there are two other caustic materials that can be gathered in an SRV's cargo scoop. Shock 2 nerve clusters in those structures to make one of the available materials highlight in red and then shoot that material to make it scoopable. You'll also find another material hanging from the ceiling that is easily released just with shooting. Frontier recently improved cargo limpets to allow them to better scoop items from the ground and now we know why. These materials are called semi-refined spire material and impure spire material and selling either of them to able laboratory in the arc system will prompt a message from Professor Palin. The spire sites have constant visitations from Orthrus interceptors. The Orthrus are easily killed with enhanced AX missiles which you can buy from the rescue mega ships dotted around the bubble. Attack them from the side to avoid their caustic trails, be ready with a shutdown field neutraliser in case they pulse and you'll receive 40 million credits for each kill. It's a completely non-technical fight and it's even easier in a wing of 2-4 players. The new Banshee Thargoid Drones patrol the sites along with Revenant Class Drones. The Banshees will fire surface to air projectiles that release a localized version of the Thargoid pulse that is seen on the approach to Thargoid Titans. As with the larger Titan versions this more localized weapon can also be nullified using a well-timed release from a Thargoid pulse neutraliser. The spire sites can absolutely be tackled on your own, they're huge fun and profitable. They are glorious however if tackled in a wing. Frontier Development became the latest company to throw their hat into the ring for one of the more unpleasant games industry trends at the moment that have forced employee redundancy. When cuts in the games industry have hit companies like Activision Bioware, CD Project, Epic and EA to name but a few. The redundancies at F-Dev were announced in a trading update to the city earlier this week and come as part of an organisational review that the company promises will see them refocusing their efforts toward their core strengths. That refocus in their words follows a period of disappointing financial performance and more challenging industry conditions. The overall disappointing financial performance from the last few years absolutely encompasses the lower than expected sales following the poor reception of Odyssey which was largely driven by the underdeveloped state of the expansion at launch as well as the closure of the company's indie title publishing venture Frontier Foundry. More recently the F1 manager games haven't sold in the numbers the company had expected. There's also been a general drop in game purchasing numbers by the consumers understandably in the post-COVID era and that was particularly evident with poorer than expected sales last Christmas that's the more challenging industry conditions part of the announcement. Frontier has taken on a huge amount of staff in the last few years, they reported in June 2022 that they had taken on over 270 new employees in that financial year a record for the company at the time bringing their total staff number to 790 people. A further 248 people joined the company in this year alone, swelling their numbers to just over 900 meaning the company had nearly doubled in size in 2 years by anyone's metrics that's some pretty significant growth. We don't know precisely where the staffing cuts will come from, Rene and I follow just about anyone we can find from Frontier on social media regardless of the titles they work on and the reports we've seen from those folks would seem to indicate so far at least that the threat of redundancy is predominantly hitting folks in marketing, community management, game capture and IT development. That is of course not a scientific assessment just what we're able to see publicly from our limited perspective here. Our take away from that particular nugget is that thus far at least we're not seeing the devs we follow reporting their position either way. What this cost cutting means for Elite Dangerous currently nobody knows, Frontier have said they will give an update on the organisational review in January of 2024 alongside their half year results. These normally land around the second week in January and it's at this point we will get an insight on how the future looks for Frontier and in turn Elite Dangerous. Here at the pit we don't think it likely that Elite Dangerous is going to have its servers just switched off any time soon but there is of course a bigger question over any future development to the game when cost reductions need to be made. We do think there is perhaps a chance that any future development of the game will slow down until Frontier reaches a better financial position but live service games depend on the strength of a what's coming next culture with a constant stream of new things to see, explore and experience. Frontier is now refocusing their priorities and strategy and looking at what made them a success in the past and Elite Dangerous was of course one of those pillars for success. Perhaps once they've gotten through this period there is the opportunity to look at the game that Frontier was very much built upon together with its hugely devoted player base and look to better explore some of its more untapped potential. Time will of course tell. The predicament that Frontier finds itself in right now is not just about Elite Dangerous but rather the company as a whole and the direction it takes from here on. Warhammer Age of Sigmar is obviously an extremely important title for Frontier developments and that title launches in just under a month from now. It goes without saying that FDF need that game to do well and find its audience. There is really only one word in this whole report that honestly matters right now however and that word is people. Amongst all the industry noise that this current situation causes it's easy to overlook that ultimately the true impact here is on real people with real lives and real concerns about their future. And I would say to those folks that you are very much in our thoughts. Will you be tackling Aspire Sight? If you do will you be going in a wing? And are you participating in Palin's secret community goal? 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.