 This is Witchbase News for Friday the 10th of February 2023, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, following player feedback changes are made to the Thargoid War progress, there's an intriguing tweet from one of Elite's senior developers, as fdev talk update 15 on last night's livestream, we're left wondering if the CM's hinted at something guardian and more. If you like our videos be sure to subscribe and click that little bell to be certain you see all our Elite Dangerous content and community posts here on YouTube and if you want to help directly support our work at the burpit you'll find links to our Patreon and everything else below. How well do you know your Elite Dangerous ships? More specifically, how well do you know the landing gear of your Elite Dangerous ships? Following a slightly odd conversation that we had on a recent livestream, friend of the channel CMDR Quiz Engine decided that was a question that needed answering. You may already be familiar with CMDR Quiz Engine's work within the Elite Dangerous community, particularly if you've ever needed help gaining access to an Odyssey settlement. Quiz Engine is the creator of the excellent OMG web app that you'll find linked below that lists every single variant and flavour of Odyssey settlement and gives hints and tips on how to get the access permits you'll need for that settlement and where to find other useful things like alarm consoles etc. CMDR Quiz Engine's latest gift to the community is, true to his name, a quiz that tasks the player with identifying all of Elite's signature player owned vessels by their landing gear alone. In and of itself this is no small feat either, pun absolutely intended by the way, as there are 38 of them and the quicker you can identify them as the timer counts down the more points you'll accrue for a correct answer. Alongside Quiz Engine's OMG guide to settlements you'll find the Elite Quiz quiz linked below this video, do let us know how you scored in the comments. There was an intriguing tweet from Elite Dangerous senior developer Sarah Jane Avery this week. Sarah is commonly referred to in some quarters of the Elite Dangerous community as the Mistress of Minions as her work has previously touched the actions and movement of the game's Myriad AI NPCs. The tweet, which starts by celebrating Sarah's now 14 years working at Frontier, goes on to say that Sarah is still working on AI for Elite Dangerous and having lots of fun working on, well, that bit is censored. Without wishing to get too tin foily, I'll leave that for later on in the show, it's hard to imagine a scenario where Sarah would be working on something we already knew about but couldn't talk about it. So the question is, just what are the AI minions that Sarah is now working on? Huge congratulations on your 14 years at Frontier Sarah, thank you for all your hard work and we're very much looking forward to meeting whatever you're going to throw at us all next. Right before the Thargoid Tick arrived this week, Frontier announced that, following player feedback, the way that the Thargoid Tick affects the progress bars in the Thargoid War will be changing. As soon as it became apparent one of the great bug bears from week one of the war was the way that the progress bars reset to zero if they were not filled to 100% in a week, meaning any and all player effort expended that week up until that point in a given system would be lost and we'd all have to start again from zero to try and fill the bar again. With the announcement this week, the system has now changed to one where in most circumstances at least some of the progress will likely be carried over. Under the new system 33% of the total progress required for a given system will be deducted from whatever is left remaining when the server ticks over. In the example given on the forum post from fdev about the new system, which I'll find linked below, in a case where a star system has filled to 50% it will retain 17% of the progress at server tick, where a system is at 33% progress or less it will be reduced to zero. Progress cannot be transferred across different states, for example where players have failed to reach 100% in a system in an invasion state before all the markets are abandoned and the system enters a controlled state then the bar is reset to zero. The new mechanic is not applicable to the alert state as that only lasts for a single week before the impending invasion is either averted or successfully initiated by the terror triphids. An unlike invasion states controlled states continue indefinitely until the progress bar is full so as long as the bar is above 33% that difference will be carried across, if it's 33% or below it'll be reset. This does seem to be a somewhat fairer and less harshly punitive system while still actively encouraging the player base to act collectively on turning a given system their way. The Thargoids initiated their invasion a little under 2 and a half months ago, they are now in control of 724 systems with another 50 systems fighting active invasion and a further 87 systems have been targeted by the Thargoids for invasion. We do know that as they move further away from their centers of power the maelstroms their strength is diminished and they are collectively at least easier to defeat but as things stand even with this new progress bar mechanic in place it's clear we're going to need a change in our own tactics if we are to have a hope of truly turning this war around. Thursday this week saw the now regular bi-weekly episode of the Frameshift live livestream from Frontier this week hosted by community managers Arthur Tolmey and Bruce Garrido. Whilst the team were at pains to point out that this week's stream would be heavily community focused and wouldn't feature any direct input from the development team that's not to say that the stream was bereft of some juicy morsels. The community news section of the show featuring the elite dangerous community seemingly endless creativity featured an accurate rendering of a station interior in lego as well as a chieftain this week's animation from the high wake some stunningly detailed blueprints of the diamond back explorer and an incredible home-built hardware cockpit interior featuring a display screen and various game functional buttons and switches all driven by a raspberry pi. You'll find the full archive of the show on youtube linked below and I've linked to the start of the community news section specifically as well if you need Bruce and Arthur then went on to talk in very broad terms about update 15 to the game which is currently scheduled for deployment in April. Dealing with hints about updates for elite dangerous is often a tricky subject for the community team as more often than not these days the updates lean very heavily on the ongoing larger narrative of elite dangerous and they are therefore dancing around in spoiler territory. What they did say was that update 15 has some serious heft to it and that they are very keen on letting players experience moments in the game that are personal to them and that sometimes as was the case with the stargoids those things are in the game immediately following the update but that we may not have yet found them. I can't be a hundred percent sure what the team are specifically referencing here when they talk about moments in elite I think it's likely things like your first high prediction or seeing a Thargoid interceptor visit a surface site for the first time rather than events like HIP 22460 that were much more a collective shared experience that we were all hit with largely at the same time. One of the things Arthur mentioned is that the update is heavily narrative driven the lack of a cohesive narrative was a complaint that was directed at elite dangerous for a long time in its early years and suffice to say since the arrival of the adamaster and the start of the azimuth saga those complaints have largely gone away the ongoing narrative is now a huge part of the greater elite experience and whilst no surprise it's good to hear that situation is continuing. Bruce made a point of saying that the company were going to allow players to discover unfold and drive the direction of drops into the game as they are released. If I had to guess I'd imagine we're going to see more scenarios where the community is encouraged to vote on mass with its feet choosing sides in community goals or conflicts. There was a lot of that in the first phase of the azimuth saga and generally speaking because azimuth was offering the big shiny as a reward it usually went salvation's way and HIP 22460 and the Thargoid war it could be argued was the result. The reality is that companies can't spend time developing something like the events of HIP and take the chance that it won't be used due to player agency and decisions so it's not unreasonable to assume that any given story will likely always end in the same result but the route that we take to get to that end result may have some wiggles and extra flavour along the way that are driven by player choices. The takeaway from all this is that Frontier are likely pleased with the engagement from players that they've seen as a result of the upturn in narrative that they've delivered in recent years and as a result we're going to see more of it being used as a vehicle to deliver new features and content into the game going forward. Here's an interesting nugget and a small piece of tin foiling from last night's stream picked up by Commander Running Wild. Toward the end of the discussion about update 15 Bruce takes a handful of blue M&Ms that the duo had been munching on during the stream. After eating some of them he then throws the remaining three down on the table in a line and as the chat continues very deliberately arranges them into a triangle formation. All through his M&M manoeuvring he's glancing at the monitor off to his left that would show him what the stream is seeing and he's very specifically looking directly at the M&Ms themselves when arranging them into a triangle. The colour blue and triangle based iconography is very reminiscent of all things guardian. If you look end on to a guardian relic it is of course a blue triangle. Immediately following HIP 22460 and the detonation of the Proteus wave it was discovered that placing a guardian relic in a Thargoid surface site would corrupt them somehow tainting them with a telltale Thargoid green colouring. Citizen Ramtar and Professor Palin upon discovery of this strange turn of events immediately started paying commanders to deliver more of the corrupted relics now known commonly referred to as Grelics to the respective bases of operations to enable further research. To date that particular oddity has not been followed up in-game and the arrival of the Maelstroms and the Thargoid war has largely taken players attention since. I'll leave it up to you to decide if Bruce is indeed telegraphing the significance of the guardians and their relics for update 15 or not. This wouldn't be the first time the current community team have used a live stream to signal towards something in the game whilst it's not a common occurrence this Halloween the whole stream and indeed the hosts were hijacked at the end as the start of the Halloween in-game event but if this is indeed a hint it's a fair degree more subtle to the point where no one here at the pit spotted it but after having had it pointed out to us by commander running wild we now can't look away it's a reasonable assumption that the Grelics have some larger part to play yet update 15 in April is as good a place as any for that part to land whilst frontier aren't yet keen to discuss the specifics of what update 15 will include Arthur did say that he'd like to talk about at least one aspect of the update in more detail before it drops and he's hoping to be able to do that in March closer to the updates arrival I was asked on our own live stream this week if I thought we'd see a roadmap from frontier this year similar to the one they delivered last year in the build up to the crescendo events of the azimuth saga's first phase when that top level roadmap was used by frontier we were in very different times the Cambridge developers were nowhere near as bold as they are now with information drops to the community so honestly I'm not personally convinced that there is really the same requirement for a roadmap's usage now as there very much was last year with that said the very last item on the roadmap last year was a quote key feature overhaul unquote due to arrive in early 2023 whilst early 2023 is quite a broad window I think it's fair to say that April is probably the last opportunity to reasonably claim we're still in early 2023 I am wondering if the key feature overhaul is part of update 15 and if it is is that feature overhaul what Arthur would like to talk about in March just what do you think fdev's mistress of minions is working on what score did you get in the elite feet quiz and was bruce really signaling something guardian on the live stream 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 oh seven 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