 This is Witchbase news for Friday the 27th of January 2023 I'm CMDR Buur In a bumper Elite Dangerous news this week New important features arriving in the next patch are revealed on FDev's livestream We get our first look at content plan for update 15 in April Frontier reveal changes arriving as a result of player feedback And a surprise enhanced Xeno scanner is released And more You know how this bit goes 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 become a patron to directly support our work at the Burpit You'll find links to that and everything else below Firstly two bits of important breaking news The first of the experimental AX weapons stabilizers from last week's community goal Should now be widely available at Azimuth's glorious prospect Megaship And at the rescue Megaships along the Thargoid front line Following some hiccups in their deployment We've received multiple reports that the new module is available And I myself went to Ross112 and confirmed that the stabilizer is indeed on sale there Secondly, and this is a massive hello there surprise Having heard the feedback from commanders regarding the effective range of the Xeno scanner And how it was overly challenging to use A new improved Xeno scanner with an effective range of 2km has today Been made available from military, high tech and industrial planetary bases As well as rescue Megaships No CG, no weight, it's there already, just like that I've said this before on this channel but it bears repeating especially now If you have ever fancied trying AX combat but feared it was out of your reach None of this new kit requires unlocking Fighting the Thargoids above a surface settlement means there is no swarm to deal with You can land at the base to repair or remove caustic damage at any point There are even AI ships fighting with you and firing off repair and decon limpets Now this new enhanced scanner coupled with the enhanced AX weapons of your choosing Including turrets or gimbled multi cannons if you so desire Makes this tier of content accessible to a level it has never been before Last night saw Frontier hosting their first Frameshift live livestream of the year And it was a doozy Alongside the regular features highlighting community efforts and things like the weekly stellar screenshots competition The stream featured a visit from live stream dev regular Derrin Halil The always engaging Derrin is one of the architects of the systems driving the current evolving and dynamic war with the Thargoids And he had much to say on where the war is at, what to expect from the next patch And even hints on what to expect from update 15 which is currently scheduled for April As we reported earlier this week the patch arriving on Monday was being referred to by Frontier as an interim patch And it was initially assumed that it was being deployed prior to update 15 just as a bug fix However with this week's discovery scanner post from Fdev it became clear that what the Cambridge base developers are now referring to as update 14.02 Contains more than just bug fixes and following the chat with Derrin on last night's live stream It's now much clearer that far from being just a bug fix update 14.02 is in fact bringing a raft of new systems and features to the game And specifically to the systems driving the war Derrin started the conversation with Sally and Arthur by giving a brief top level overview of how the war system works in-game for anyone not familiar with it And then moved on to talk about how the war currently being perpetrated by the carnivorous carnations from beyond the stars was going Whilst Derrin was keen to reiterate that the war game currently unfolding is being tweaked and updated The developers are taking on board player feedback from the experience and working with it, more on that in a moment He also made a point of underlining again that the system at play in the game is entirely driving itself The devs themselves don't even know where the Thargoids will try and push into or invade next The team then moved on to new features coming in update 14.02 The first change is a quality of life update to the galactic war map user interface Currently when viewing the war situation in the galaxy map you can tell what state systems being affected by the war are in And if you query a system specifically the map will give you a broad overview of the progress within that system And what actions you can take to positively affect that progress With 14.02 the galaxy map will now list the top 5 systems in each state that can be directly influenced by player actions That's alert, invasion and control by the most progress made This new layer of information will show players at a glance where other players are acting the most and making the most difference Quickly giving commanders the opportunity to assess where their valuable time and effort can best be spent to have the biggest impact A useful tool for those with the time to be actively engaged in the war on a daily basis Perhaps as part of a faction or squadron but particularly super useful for those commanders who may have less free time to play And want their limited gameplay time to be impactful Overall it should act as another tool in the arsenal of the player base to better focus community efforts across the board Next Darren spoke about the new activities that are being brought into the current pantheon of actions that players can take to progress the war effort As things stand player efforts are largely focused around AX combat, hauling of goods and occupied escape pods And passenger emergency evacuations all from alert and invasion affected systems With 14.02 salvage as well as the sampling of thargoid tissue is being introduced as a further action that can push the progress bar And thereby positively affect the war effort Following 14.02's deployment recovering occupied escape pods or black boxes from thargoid affected systems And returning them to one of the rescue megaships along the front line will positively affect the progress for the system where the item was recovered Similarly gathering thargoid tissue samples via the use of research limpets and then handing them into the rescue vessels will positively affect the progress bar The caveat to this being the thargoids themselves don't generally react well to pieces of them being forcibly removed But let's be honest here they're already fairly fed up with us so it's likely not going to make that much of a difference Whilst we're on the subject of the thargoid front line update 14.02 will see the arrival of systems featuring unknown signal sources and thargoid combat zones along the outer edge of the expanding thargoid bubbles These new front line systems will serve to highlight the front line itself and show human forces pushing back against the systems new unwanted owners They also serve as extra content attach points that players can use to positively affect the progress bar in those front line systems Helping to wrestle back control from the advancing thargoid menace If and when systems are successfully defended or taken back from the thargoids they go into a state of recovery that slowly sees those systems returning to full operation over a number of weeks One of the most important changes planned for the next patch is the ability to affect the amount of time that recovery takes by rebooting the odyssey surface settlements We're assuming via a mission that provides players with the necessary power regulator to bring them back online again Darren stated that if all the settlements in a system are brought back online it can reduce that systems recovery time by as much as a week And if the target is achieved then the progress bar for the system will show 100% to prevent commanders from over delivering allowing them to put their focus elsewhere This is a really important change for two reasons Firstly this is the first time that we've been able to directly affect that recovery time by performing any actions whatsoever But more importantly this marks the first time that odyssey gameplay directly has been introduced into the war Up until this point anything you do to affect the war can be achieved with ships in the horizons live game level of gameplay This is the first time Fdev will have opted to send players down to a planet surface on foot and into a settlement to affect change as part of the war I am left wondering if on foot Thargoids are in Elite's future whilst I don't think they will arrive with 14.02 could this be the start of that rollout Either way those offline surface settlements are super creepy and I'm personally really looking forward to that reboot gameplay gaining some meaning as part of the war effort Whilst talking all things Thargoid war Darren did confirm a couple of player observations with regard to how the war progresses Firstly that unpopulated systems are much easier to defend and require less effort to positively affect the progress bar Secondly the more the Thargoids extend their reach away from the maelstrom starting points the harder it is for them to take a system Just like a real conflict the game is simulating an extended front line and the larger a front line gets the more stretched the resources needed to maintain and progress it Conversely of course this means that the closer to the maelstroms we are the tougher the fight will be One other important note whilst clearly not wanting to give too much direct information Darren made specific mention with regard to system states and war progression Saying and I'm quoting directly here quote there hasn't been too much of a change in the way that you can defeat aliens since space invaders And sometimes shooting where they're going to be and not where they are can make a bit of a difference He followed that up by saying quote there are some systems in certain system states that might not be getting enough attention and that might make a lot of a difference There's a couple of ways to interpret this I think it most likely that what he's referencing here is the alert state where the Thargoids have targeted a system but not yet invaded it And that perhaps more actions there would better help players push back the tide The other way to interpret what Darren has said is that the existing BGS state of a system might make it more susceptible to encroachment and eventually Thargoid alert status But some science will be needed there to determine if there's a pattern to alert systems that we've previously missed Before rounding off the chat Darren and the team had two more tidbits to drop and those are about update 15 which is currently scheduled for April As things are still in development Darren wasn't too specific on details but he did say that the developers had heard the player feedback with regard to the weekly reset mechanism of the war's progress bars And that they have a clear idea with regard to changes that they'd like to make to that That progress bar reset mechanic is felt by many to be often times a little too harsh and if FDF are taking that feedback on board and working on a solution then that's really encouraging And most tantalizingly Darren then went on to say that whilst he was choosing his words carefully in update 15 and again I'm quoting directly here Quote there are going to be new tactics for humans to be able to use against the Thargoids but the Thargoids will also have some new tactics to use against humans What that means we can of course only speculate on but clearly where the war is at now is not where Frontier intends the war to be in the future and there is clearly more yet to be introduced into all of this Will you now be trying AX Combat for the first time? Are you planning on venturing into recovering systems to reboot surface settlements? Just what do you think Darren was hinting at when he mentioned new tactics for humans and Thargoids? 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