 This is Witchface News for Friday the 3rd of February 2023, I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week we get clarification on the AX Payout nerf following patch 14.02 There's paintjobs up for grabs in this week's community goal but participation comes with a twist and Azimuth's new weapon stabilizers go on sale as CMDRs continue to dance with Salvation's legacy. 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. 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. A new anti-thargoid community goal sprung up this week which is these days in particular not in and of itself terribly unusual. This week's goal however demanding combat bonds earned from dismembering our nearest sentient galactic neighbours and smearing their entrails in a blaze of glory across the face of the galaxy comes packaged with a twist as well as some free paintjobs. In case you've missed recent events on Galnet the Kumo crew, the faction of the Piratee powerplay leader Archon Delaine has recently initiated a classic textbook Let me save you from the monsters by first taking all your stuff land grab against the Alliance Faction Turner research group. The Alliance Faction's turf was indeed surrounded by the recently riled Thargoid menace and could probably use some light defence. The twist in this instance however is that the grabbed turf is actually in the California Nebula region just under a thousand light years away from any maelstroms and the actual active Thargoid war. The California Nebula is more a victim of ambient background Thargoids and not the current very problematic more pushy style of Thargoids we're seeing present in the bubble. In summary the Turner research group properties in the California sector didn't really need saving but Archon Delaine and the Kumo crew which sounds like a dreadful hip-hop act by the way decided to take the turf while everyone was distracted with the real war and claim they were saving the locals by doing so. To further reinforce their position they are asking for the assistance of the galaxy's many independent pilots to flap some of the murderous marigolds and in return as well as sharing gigantic quantities of their no doubt ill-gotten gains they are also offering up to three tiers of paint job to participants which you can see on screen now. That's how you can tell a hardcore murderous criminal organisation by the way they offer to paint your spaceship for you. The CG is just asking for Thargoid combat bonds and not specifying where they come from so maybe bear that in mind as Thargoid combat in the bubble is currently more numerous and somewhat easier than it is elsewhere. I've not tried this personally but it might be worth testing to see if you can kill a bunch of Thargoids in the bubble and then pay them in at the CG and see if you can still contribute. If you do try this let us know in the comments what you find. As is always the case the goal runs until next Thursday unless it tops out before. A quick reminder that both flavours of azimuth biotech's experimental weapons stabiliser module that's the class 3 and the class 5 are now widely available to purchase for credits around the bubble after the class 5 was released this week. The stabilisers bypass the hard limit of four experimental AX weapons on a ship allowing one extra and two extra to be added for the class 3 and 5 respectively. We've heard numerous reports this week that the resultant damage output particularly when coupled with azimuth's now newly enhanced missiles and multi cannons is both effective and hilarious in equal measure and overall they appear to have proven to be quite popular with commanders embarrassingly not quite so popular with the Thargoids obviously. There will no doubt be a terrible price to pay for all this further down the line all these nice new shiny toys are coming from azimuth biotech don't forget the legitimately actually evil mega corporation that was directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths across numerous atrocities, human experimentation and torture and was the catalyst for the single biggest assault on humanity by the Thargoids that the galaxy has ever seen. They are the elite dangerous equivalent of entities like Weyland-Yutani or the Umbrella Corporation. It's amazing how quickly we are prepared to forgive evil incarnate when we're hungry and he's wielding a jam sandwich or indeed a paint job. The drop of update 14.02 earlier in the week brought with it some unexpected wiggles which as we reported earlier this week caused a degree of chatter within the wider community as it turns out it also caused some problems with the administration of services aboard the galaxy's many gigantic player-owned fleet carriers. If you were experiencing problems there that should be back to normal now after a server side fix. The cause of the community chatter was of course the changes to payouts commanders were receiving for taking down the various flavours and tiers of Thargoids. In case you missed it it wasn't specifically mentioned in the patch notes for 14.02 but individual Thargoid scouts are now bringing in credits of between 15 and 19% less than they were before 14.02. Because it wasn't specifically mentioned in the patch notes and you know patches being patches it wasn't clear whether the nerf was by design or an unintentional side effect of the patches deployment. Frontier senior community manager Sally Morgan Moore promised to get dev flavoured clarification either way and today we have that clarification following a forum post from Sally. It was as it turns out an intentional nerf from the dev team the communication of which internally unfortunately got missed at Frontier for which they apologized and as part of Sally's post which I've linked to below this video there is now a detailed explanation from the dev team on precisely what was nerfed and importantly why. On screen right now you can see the details of the nerfs but also details of the buffs that were included elsewhere as part of the process. The bottom line is that whilst individual payouts for Thargoid kills were reduced killing Thargoids is now significantly easier to achieve as a result of the new readily available enhanced weaponry being able to add more of that weaponry via the experimental stabilizers and the greater range on the enhanced Xeno scanner making the use of gimbled and turreted weapons a perfectly viable option. The nerf was an effort to reduce an over bloating of credits in the game and instead direct the value in killing and completing missions to kill Thargoids into an increased payout in valuable engineering materials. For most players I do think it's fair to say that credits particularly when you're at the stage of taking on Thargoid interceptors are not so much of a problem. Access to engineering materials however is something that Elite is still very much wrestling with and this redress in the balance is part of a welcome attempt to deal with that. Without a shadow of a doubt as I've said on this channel many times before access to Thargoid combat and being successful in that combat is far easier now than it has ever been in Elite's history and I'm personally really pleased that this tier of content is available to just about everyone now particularly with the new developing war being an important part of life in the bubble these days. In opening up the content and lowering the barter entry to the degree that Frontier have there is however a balance to be struck and it's important that the players that enjoy the more challenging elements that Thargoid combat used to bring are not left behind in the rush to open up that progression ladder. Thargoid combat in Elite Dangerous is quite long in the tooth now and largely hasn't changed since the introduction of the Hydra the current top tier deadly daffodil. I'm hoping that this opening up of the end game content to more players is part and parcel of a refresh for the very top tier of Thargoid combat perhaps a level of Hydra plus if you will and that will see a new player or three in the galactic arms race for the galaxy's many AX pilots to step up and defend us from who knows maybe even the maelstroms and whatever lies at the center of them will play a larger part in all this going forward. Will you be gratefully accepting free stuff and jam sandwiches from Azimuth or the Kumo Pirates this week? Have you recently tried AX combat for the first time and just what would you like to see added to the top tiers of AX combat now? 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