 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 10th of September 2021, I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week, Fdev reaches out to the AXI for feedback on the anti-thargoid experience, patch 7 for Odyssey is scheduled for next week, frontier comments on the use of bots in the game and frontier developments reports to the stock market and more. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. The Elite Dangerous Galaxy is a massive procedurally generated environment containing something in the region of 400 billion stars. When you're dealing with such vast numbers the odd quirk is bound to turn up on occasions, one of the more infamous oddities in the game being meter and hollow the rocketing moon around New Africa in the Epsilon Indie system, but players have also previously discovered systems with colliding planets and colossal mountain ranges. This week, another new oddity surfaced in the game after being discovered by CMDR Veronica. The newly discovered planet is 25 light seconds from its parent star and reaches temperatures in excess of a toasty 5,000 Kelvin, but that isn't the extraordinary stuff. What's really amazing about the first planet of the Koi 1701 system is the strength of its gravity. According to EDSM the previous record for a high G world in Elite Dangerous was 11.6G. The Koi 1701 is, wait for it, a bone poundering 45.32G, a full 33.72G higher than the previous record holder. Were you to land on this planet in real life, you'd quickly look like a strawberry flavoured blemange that had been dropped on the floor before reaching the dining table. 2G worlds can be challenging for any pilot to land on, 11G worlds require significant concentration. Our own CMDR Rene tried landing a sidewinder on a 9G world when she first started playing Elite Dangerous with varying results, you'll find that video linked on screen now. A 45G world is an entirely different bag of fish. Being so dangerous a proposition with a high chance of death and being a not insignificant 6000 light years from the bubble, the system was of course immediately swarmed with commanders eager to try out their hull supports and landing gear. You'll find the forum thread linked below where CMDRs shared their experience of the planet. If you head out there yourself, let us know how you get on in the comments below. Recently community manager Zach reached out to the leadership of the galaxy's premier anti-thargoid community the AXI and asked for their feedback regarding the current state of anti-Xeno weaponry and how it might be better balanced. Off the back of that request, the AXI produced a very well researched, experienced and numbers backed document that details the balance changes the AXI would recommend as well as a handful of other gameplay enhancing suggestions. The document is publicly available and is linked in the video description if you fancy taking a look at how the numbers break down. There's obviously no guarantee that all or indeed any of the recommendations will be implemented but it's nice to see FDev again reaching out to those who know how to play the game better than anybody, the player base, for advice and feedback. Frontier updated their recently launched issue report again this week and also provided an on stream and forum based breakdown of the status of the top 20 issues as voted for by the community. According to the report a number of the issues are fixed as of Odyssey update 7 and elsewhere the company was keen to reiterate that this report does not feature all the bugs and issues they're looking into it merely serves as a report back to the community on the top 20 issues that they themselves have voted on via the issue tracker. As we've reported earlier the game is scheduled to be patched again this month Horizons on consoles and PC is scheduled to receive an update later this month that includes at least a few quality of life updates. We don't yet know more specifics about what that patch will include or more specific times for when it's due to arrive as soon as we find out we'll let you know here. Odyssey patch 7 is due to arrive next week and as well as further frame rate performance improvements and bug fixes it's also set to revamp surface installation conflict zones adding NPC ships, missile launching enforcer troops and new surface to air defence turrets. As well as the updated issue report this week Frontier community manager Bruce took to the forums to respond to community concerns around the use of automated accounts in the game to affect things like the BGS and power play systems and how it wasn't appearing on the issue report despite being the 6th most voted on issue by the community. If you're interested in how Frontier publicly handles the issue and why they say the things that they do and importantly why they mostly don't say things about it then I'd encourage you to check out the post for some clarity. Again you'll find details for everything we've talked about here linked below. Frontier released its annual results to the stock market this week and as we expected their corporate broker Liberum also released their latest analyst report assessing the company's performance in relation to the share price. When evaluating what is reported in these two documents it's important to understand the nature of the documents and equally importantly who they are created for and why as that information drives the flavour of the facts contained within. Here at the burpit when we're looking at Elite's performance as a product within the company's portfolio and indeed Frontier's performance as a whole we're very keen to ensure as much as possible that we deal in all the available facts. As fans and players of Elite Dangerous we are of course very emotionally invested in the game but in making such assessments we also think it important and indeed healthy to stand back from the emotion so as to keep objective about everything we see. With that in mind here's a potted version of what we think we're seeing in the two publications and what it might mean for the future. Firstly the Liberum report. As I said Liberum is one of Frontier's brokers and as such they act as the main interface with the stock market for them, assessing market conditions and the demand for a company's shares which they then actively market to investors. Whilst the document gives an assessment of Frontier's financial performance they are also in the business of selling Frontier's shares and it is noted in the small print of the document itself that the report should be treated as a piece of marketing communication. This means they are obviously not completely impartial however they are always worth the read and they do give an interesting overview of how things currently stand. On the specific subjects of Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous Odyssey the report has this to say quote despite a successful alpha period unfortunately the launch was hindered by connectivity issues which turned the positive reception of the alpha into one of negativity that being said the company continues to roll out updates with the majority of the initial game issues now fixed and management note that hundreds of thousands of players are now enjoying the experience unquote. As you and I both know connectivity issues were probably the least of Odyssey's problems at launch but I don't suppose stock brokers much care about that particular truck load backing up to clutter their report. Prior to Odyssey's launch we saw reports from this same source saying that Elite were seeing individual player connections on a monthly basis that were in the region of 500,000. The hundreds of thousands reported here then could mean 100,000 or 500,000 and it's therefore somewhat too woolly to make any meaningful assessment with regard to the reported player drop off rates following Odyssey's rocky launch. The report does describe the financial performance across all of Frontier's four major games Elite Dangerous included as robust. It then goes on to speak about the console edition of Elite Dangerous Odyssey I would reiterate again we're speaking here about the Liberum report and by its own admission it should be considered marketing material. Of the console version then it states that given the troubled launch of Odyssey the company chose to refocus its efforts into solidifying the player experience on the PC as traditionally that market has represented two thirds of the entire Elite Dangerous player base and in the words of the report quote it therefore seems intuitive to focus on this cohort in order to ensure long term continued engagement with the franchise going forwards unquote. I would draw from that statement that Liberum at least expects Frontier to be supporting the Elite Dangerous franchise in the long term even though the game is 8 years old at this point and despite the recent problems. It further states that quote Frontier have chosen not to provide any further details at this stage on a release date for console however we would expect to hear more on this front later in the year unquote. What they're specifically addressing there is a public statement about the release date of Odyssey on the consoles not the actual release itself that's really important we'll come back to that in a moment. The next bit is really fascinating the report goes on to deliver forecasts of profits gained from the company's various releases and references previous forecasts they had made and updates them with the new information based on sales etc. The forecast for the Elite Dangerous franchise in financial year 22 has had a cautious £10 million downgrade from the expected £25 million to £15 million overall. It won't be a surprise to anyone listening to this that their financial hit for Frontier is forecast off the back of the Odyssey launch. With all that said context is important so as part of Frontier's total portfolio as far as the forecasts are concerned despite Elite Dangerous being an 8 year old game it is still forecast to bring in only £5 million less than Frontier's current best performing game Planet Zoo which is 4 years old and Elite is still on track to outperform Jurassic World Evolution 1 and Planet Coaster in the coming year. We'll come back to all of this in next year's financial report and see how these estimates stack up. You can't help wondering however if the game had been released in the condition it's in today following several patches these predictions may have been a very different story indeed. Going back to Frontier's annual report that is submitted to the stock market then this is a slightly different beast to the Liberum piece out of necessity and legal obligation it's very numbers and facts driven the company as a whole has had a very good year profits are up around 20% overall the share price is recovering and the future looks pretty healthy for Frontier. What was of particular interest to us however Odyssey on the consoles doesn't get a mention at all anywhere in the report this may be significant or it honestly may not there's an understandable degree of nervous anxiety in the console community about Odyssey's expected release window. We're already a quarter of the way through the current financial year and we really hope we'll get some clarification on the situation with consoles sooner rather than later. If you're interested in burying your nose in all the facts details and numbers we've linked to Frontier's annual report to the stock market below are you planning on visiting the newly discovered 45g planet or what are you looking forward to most in patch 7 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