 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 19th of August 2022. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, a lost planet is found. We look at the current state of play following Update 13, the player base waits for clarification on instancing and we speak to ARF about the latest community team changes at Frontier Towers. You know the drill, like and subscribe to stay informed with future videos and to support the work of this channel directly, you'll find our Patreon linked below. Back at the start of June this year we reported on a player run expedition that was heading out into the black in search of a long lost, somewhat unique glowing green gas giant planet that was stumbled upon 7 years ago by CMDR Kelly Eldridge who shared one screenshot of the galactic oddity but neglected to note the system it was in, giving only recollections of the general route they'd taken around the galaxy. Armed with little to no specific information the expedition named at the Eldridge gate was formed with the specific goal of tracking down the lost planet and rediscovering it for the rest of the galaxy to enjoy. The Elite community has never won to shy away from a challenge and whilst the expedition was well attended with over 250 participants signing up on EDSM the available search parameters for those involved were extremely vague. In a galaxy with over 400 billion stars within it it's no small task to find just one planet. If you don't know the end of this story already then by now you can probably guess where this is all going. It's my very great pleasure to announce that the expedition has been a resounding success. The missing green gas giant of CMDR Kelly Eldridge has indeed been found. The rediscovery of the planet is no small accomplishment in itself but it's the method and how this feat was achieved that is the real story here. Whilst technically speaking given enough time a simple brute force attack of the problem at hand would probably achieve the stated goal one way or another how the planet was actually found was far more elegant and nuanced. I've linked below to the post from CMDR Orange that tells the story of how they themselves eventually found the planet but in a game of finding a needle in a haystack where you first have to find the haystack in a country full of haystacks finding the right field full of haystacks was very much a group effort. CMDR Orange then used a combination of sleuthing, deduction and no small amount of pattern recognition, eyeballing background star constellations and gas formations in the galaxy to narrow the search further and further until they reached the missing planet. This is a player driven expedition in the truest sense of the word, an active exploration of the elite dangerous galaxy in its purest form. Congratulations and a huge 07 to everyone involved, you'll find links to everything you need to visit the planet for yourself in the description below. The noise from update 13 and the firing of the Proteus wave began to subside this week as commanders started to once again distribute themselves around the galaxy. Life and Elite has started to return to a semblance of normal but there is a slight feeling of unease as generally folks are waiting to see what, if anything, the Thargoids do next. We do have some thoughts on what might be in our not too distant future in that regard and you'll find our video on the subject linked on screen now. In the immediate aftermath of the wave it was rapidly discovered that placing Guardian relics in a Thargoid surface installation corrupted them somehow turning them green. Professor Palin and the Guardian centric scientist Ram Tarr are both paying a modest fee for access to any recently pickled Guardian relics so that they can study them. There's no active community goal to drive that effort specifically just take the relics to their systems and they'll contact you. The creation of the first unclassified Guardian relics as they're called in game generated a story on Galnet and unusually the commander that pushed the button on the creation was actually credited in the game. A rare treat indeed for commander Cralone, the commander was not alone however in their scientific endeavours and were at pains to point out later that commander Nickow was also part of the effort in those early initial hours. If you're looking for a guide on where to collect Guardian relics and how to corrupt them with Thargoidness then command a psychic as you covered with an excellent guide that you'll find linked in the description below this video. Thursday's Thargs Day Tick as best we can determine at least has as yet garnered no further action from the Pleiades Terra Triffids. They're being scrutinized closely by the scientific and anti-Xeno communities within Elite Dangerous however and if they twitch we'll bring it to you here. The superpower political landscape has remained as yet unchanged following the passing of the Proteus Wave. The major superpower leaders all unwaveringly backed the Xenocidal Rantings of salvation and they have remained largely silent since the wave backfired killing thousands upon thousands of their citizens and spurring the Thargoids into a whole new level of aggression. A new hauling based community goal has gone active this week which you'll find in the leasty system. The Alliance Defence Force is keen to outfit some sentry mega ships with advanced AX weapons with the assistance of the totally trustworthy and not at all evil Sirius Mega Corporation. There was an initial hiccup with the sale prices of the goods that they're asking to be delivered to service the goal. That's now been addressed so there's some coin to be made there this week if you're so inclined. The likely next big thing on Frontier's radar is the account copy process, facilitating console accounts to be copied over to the PC side of the game which is scheduled for September and the launch of the 4.0 Odyssey codebase into Horizons on the PC. We have no targeted launch date for that currently. Beyond that, the next benchmark update to the game is Update 14 which is currently scheduled for November, delivering what Frontier are calling the next major narrative phase for Elite Dangerous. Whilst we're talking the impending arrival of the 4.0 codebase into Horizons on the PC, this week's Discovery scanner post from Frontier did mention that the 4.0 upgrade to Horizons is due in the coming weeks and it further made mention of how instancing between the various versions will work, leading to some consternation in the community. When the new version of Vanilla Horizons arrives on PC, it will mean that there are essentially five instances of the game that the community will be split across. PlayStation and Xbox have their own instances, PC will be split between 3.8 Horizons, 4.0 Horizons and Odyssey. When Frontier first started talking about instancing across the various versions of the game around a year ago, they published a guide on how it was expected to work. In that guide, which you'll find linked below, they had originally stated that, following the then anticipated console launch of Odyssey, Horizons 4.0 and Odyssey players would be able to instance in space together at the very least. As of this week, that no longer seems to be the case and it's here that a lot of the tension and confusion is arising. The post this week does finish on a slightly odd turn of phrase stating, quote, there's no final state to confirm in situations like this, which are always open to re-evaluation, unquote. We take that to mean that this is the way instancing will work right now, there is always a chance it could change in the future. If you're curious, we conducted a very quick poll on our YouTube channel today that indicates that just 15% or their abouts of PC Elite Dangerous players are still currently choosing to hang out in Horizons rather than Odyssey. Whilst obviously no one has these specific numbers other than Frontier, it's an interesting indication nonetheless. Frontier are working on a fact for players on 3.8 and 4.0 questions. As soon as that's available, we'll cover it here. It's a big huge day in Frontier Tower's community management team today. Off the back of the announcement last week that David Braben was stepping away from the CEO position at the company, we started the news gathering process this week with the news that lead community manager Arthur Tolmey was being promoted to the role of principal community lead at Frontier. That news was rapidly followed up with the news that Sally Morgan Moore was being promoted to be a lead community manager alongside Bruce Guerrido on Elite Dangerous, who was promoted to the same role last year. Since his arrival at the company in June 2020, Arthur's passion for all things Elite Dangerous has been readily apparent and his influence on the company's outward face has been equally apparent. When he arrived, Arthur had to literally hit the ground running as the much delayed and evolved fleet carrier update was launching that very day and with Odyssey's troubled launch coupled with all that the last few years have seen in the real world as well as in-game, it likely feels like he hasn't stopped running yet. Sally returned to the Elite Dangerous fold 18 months ago with none of her custom enthusiasm and cheerful demeanor diminished and she has remained a stalwart community favourite and omnipresent steadying hand on the forums and social media ever since. Arthur was keen to point out that his promotion won't mean moving him away from Elite Dangerous in his own words, he just has fingers in more pies. The ramp-up in communication and engagement that was seen in the build-up to the crescendo moment of the Azimuth saga and Update 13's release into the game was masterfully handled by the team with promotional gameplay videos on social media, updates on in-game happenings, Galnet bulletins, developer interviews, live streams and more. It was of a volume and confidence that we'd not seen from the often times to quiet Cambridge developer. Speaking about today's announced changes Arthur told us this Whilst my promotion does see me take on more responsibilities within Frontier I will not be leaving Elite, I am so proud of what the team and I have achieved already and very excited to keep pushing forwards and with Sally's recent promotion to sit alongside Bruce I am confident we can maintain the momentum we have gained. That momentum and the positive buzz that is currently surrounding the game is certainly something here at the burp pit that we'd like to see maintained. The Odyssey launched Troubles, the poorer than expected sales performance from the expansion and its recent hit on the company Financial Reports can make it difficult to see where Elite now sits and how it's perceived by Frontier as a company. Let's not forget that this is a company that was built on the back of Elite way back in the 80s. With a new CEO in place and these recent changes in the CM team after their skillful handling of the community in the run up to update 13 an update that was technically speaking one of the smoothest launches Elite Dangerous has ever had it feels at least like change may be in the wins for the venerable space game an interesting road ahead for sure. Will you be visiting the newly rediscovered Green Gas Giant? Will you be trying the 4.0 code base when it arrives in Horizons? With all the recent changes where do you think Elite Dangerous now sits? 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.