 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 7th of May 2021, I'm CMDR Buur. In this weeks news, the Empire and the Feds are nibbling at each other in the Parisa system, things you need to do before Odyssey drops and head of online DAVSTOP guests on the frontier livestream. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, click the little bell icon and remember to select all notifications and to further help support the work of this channel you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. Thursday saw the launch of a new community goal in the game and once again the drums of war are beating between the Empire and the Federation as the two permanently livid superpowers glare at each other with furiously vibrating sabers from behind the cover of Nova Imperium and the League of Mandu. All of these continuing rumblings stem back to the Starport bombings from earlier this year when the Neo-Marlinist Liberation Army claimed responsibility for bombing everyone's Starports with some acquired Thargoid technology. Since then the previously outlawed Nova Imperium who are sort of Imperial purist isolationist faction within the Empire have been forgiven their misdemeanours and brought back into the Imperial fold only to then have a line drawn linking them to the Neo-Marlinist Liberation Army and their atrocities. That line is currently being investigated by the ACT counter-terrorist force but before it's been proven one way or another the Feds have initiated a proxy war on Nova Imperium via the Federation faction the League of Mandu in the Nova Imperium home system of Parisa. At the time of recording the Imperials are doing a fairly solid job of defending their turf but this Imperial Federation name calling keeps on happening and if it goes unchecked it's surely only a matter of time before the pot boils over and the two Aggie superpowers take to some more overt face punching. The Odyssey Alpha test ended this week and having waited what felt like an eternity for it to start it was gone again just like that. And we're now in the void between the Alpha ending and Odyssey launching. In case you weren't already aware Wednesday May 19th is O-Day on the PC at least with the console release of the leg centric expansion still scheduled for the autumn. The launch of Odyssey will see the face of the galaxy's existing landable planet change forever with the arrival of the new terrain rendering system even if you don't own Odyssey and if you do own Odyssey then you'll also have access to thousands of planets with tenuous atmospheres. Before Odyssey arrives on the PC in just two weeks quite frankly right now is going to be your last chance to do or see some horizon stuff before it's likely gone forever again whether you own Odyssey or not. So here's our top tips on what you can do in horizons before Odyssey arrives. With the arrival of revamped terrain rendering also comes new biologicals and object placement and scattering and that means that sites that were good for collecting materials will either move or possibly be gone forever. Right now a large number of commanders are heading out to the crystal shard sites in HIP 36601 to gather as many mats from them as they possibly can before they're probably gone forever or at least moved procedurally speaking of course. Currently the system is packed with fleet carriers as the community goes on a crystalline feeding frenzy it's 1500 light years outside the bubble but if you don't fancy driving there yourself there's bound to be a carrier heading out that way if you check in with the fleet carrier owners club Discord which I've linked below. Number 2 Visit some planet side tourist spots before they're possibly gone forever. If you've never been to Mount Neverest, torn through the canyons of Pommesh 2C or gazed upon the unbridled splendor of Kume in Chai Hercules do not wait. We have no idea how these places or other community favourite sites like them are going to look when Odyssey arrives and once they're gone they're gone. The planets themselves shouldn't be disappearing or moving as far as we can tell but just in case I want to also recommend Meteran Hollow the moon orbiting New Africa in Epsilon Indy just in case it gets fixed. If you've no idea what I'm talking about just trust me go take a look you won't believe your eyes. We've done a series of videos about the best places to visit in Elite Dangerous with ranges from Sol to fit all tastes and frameshift drives they're linked on screen right now last chance. And number 3 When Odyssey arrives there is a chance that we'll see new ships arrive in the game as well. If that happens you're going to need money, access to those ships and materials to engineer them. If you've not got at least one Elite Rank and unlocked Jameson Memorial in the Shen Rata Deserah system I'd recommend you do that. That station sells every ship and module currently in the game but you need to be elite in something anything to gain access. Trade rank is generally the easiest and quickest but your results may vary. Ramp up your Federation and Imperial ranks if you haven't already if there are new ships they could be locked behind ranks before you get access to them and you're going to want to engineer the Conkers off of any new sweet rides you get. Building materials at the moment is a known quantity we've had 7 odd years to find stuff. As I've already mentioned a lot of that will be changing on the 19th and there's bound to be a degree of community floundering about while we find our feet. See what I did there? Don't say we didn't warn you. And finally this week Dav Stott head of online at Frontier Developments was the guest on last night's Elite Dangerous livestream alongside Arthur and Bruce chewing the fat about all things online whilst indulging in some ground combat zones in the alpha build. Dav is always a characterful guest and he's bristling enthusiasm for his field of expertise and indeed all things Elite Dangerous is clearly visible whenever he speaks. During the 90 odd minutes livestream Dav spoke about the peer to peer nature of Elite's networking and how in actual fact it doesn't work quite the way you might think it does and he also spoke about the work of other teams within Frontier who have had the task of placing settlements planet side for Odyssey. Dav was at pains to point out that the placement of settlements and indeed star ports in Elite may be procedural but it isn't random. Their placement is governed by rules that draw upon the settlements function and the ambient planetary conditions as well as a number of other factors. The end result is for example that you'll find mining outposts where there are large quantities of certain materials or agricultural centres on the light side of tidally locked planets etc. The game contains something like 170,000 populated planets and they all needed to be searched in a process Dav called baking for suitable locations to place settlements. And on the subject of settlements by the way the team mentioned that the alpha test only revealed a small portion of the settlements we'll see in the game and that there are still in fact 18 settlement types we haven't yet seen. Dav also touched on the many simulation systems that run in the background of Elite and mentioned that Odyssey will see additions made to how we interact with those simulations and the outcomes those interactions can have. The example he gave being if a particular settlement has its power regulator stolen by a large enough number of players then there is an increased chance that the system will deem that settlement offline and generate missions to encourage players to restore power to it. Dav also gave the latest stats for explored systems in the game with something in the region of 208 million systems having been visited by commanders in the live game to date and that's still only 0.052% of the entire galaxy. The scale of this game will break your mind if you let it. Overall it was a fascinating conversation Dav and his many insights are always interesting to listen to. I've linked to the video on demand version of the stream in the description below if you want to give it a look. So what are your plans between now and the launch of Odyssey? Are you going material gathering? Do you think we'll see new ships at launch? Do you think we'll see new ships after launch? Or do you maybe think the galaxy has enough ships already? 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.