 This is Witchpace News for Thursday the 1st of February 2024, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, in a landmark livestream Frontier announced multiple new ships, details on the key feature overhaul, the culmination of the Thargoid War and much more all coming this year. You know how this bit goes, please like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to directly help our work here at the Burpit you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. Frontier Developments prebiated their new format multi-title monthly livestream offering last night. For the livestream the Cambridge developers had promised solid news on the future of Elite Dangerous and oh boy did they deliver. The company had stated in a report to the stock market late last year that they planned to continue to support and develop Elite Dangerous as part of their existing portfolio of games. Following the new Frontier unlocked livestream on Wednesday we are now beginning to see what precisely support and development of Elite Dangerous means in that context. Far from being the maintenance mode that some in the community had feared it is now blisteringly apparent that Frontier have every intention of not only continuing the journey with Elite Dangerous but expanding upon at the very least what is already there. The livestream was hosted by the now head of community PR and communication Arthur told me and the head of influencers and engagement at Frontier Holly Bennett and was a complete change in direction to the livestreams that Elite Dangerous fans had become used to. Following its recent internal restructure Frontier has now taken the livestreams of all its properties which up until the restructure were all on different title specific channels and funneled them into a likely more cost efficient once a month offering that covers all the titles that need covering that month. The first part of the stream concerned itself with Planet Zoo and Warhammer 40k chaos gate which are both launching onto consoles. The very last part of the stream was dedicated entirely to Elite Dangerous. I said at the start of the piece that Frontier had wanted to deliver solid news on the future of Elite Dangerous and that they very much did. A clearly very excited and infused Arthur told me started by announcing that update 18 to the game will be arriving on Monday the 26th of February and with it will come the culmination of the Thargoid War that has been running since November 2022 when the first of the Stargoids Taranis arrived on the fringes of the bubble. He was very careful to say the culmination of the Thargoid War. Note that's very specifically different to the end of the war. He added that update 18 will allow commanders to take the fight to the Titans and that Frontier won't spoil what's going to happen. It's something that the community will need to discover for themselves but ultimately update 18 will deliver the means to take the fight to the Titans in some fashion. He further added later in the stream that update 18 is quote not the end of the Thargoid War but the ability to end the Titans unquote. We're taking that to mean that it's likely the start of the end of the current dynamic war handing us the means to either destroy or most likely drive away the Titans pushing the Thargoids back out of the bubble perhaps. Next Arthur moved on to update 19 which is currently scheduled for the summer of 2024 and it's here that FDev dropped the first of their bombshells. The long-promised major feature rework that had been delayed it's a full rework of the power play system that Frontier are calling perhaps unsurprisingly power play 2.0. I'd imagine at this point there may be a few people watching now asking themselves what on earth is power play. Without going into too much detail power play encompasses a complex social political pushing back and forth between the three major factions in the game Federation Empire and Alliance. It was introduced as a feature in the game in June 2015 around six months after the original game launched and participation in the system grants access to some of the more unique and powerful ship modules the game contains. The problem with power play in its original form is that the incumbent gameplay attached to the system just isn't very compelling in and of itself and it rapidly became a means to an end of a way to gain access to those specialised modules something that you had to endure to get to the cool toys rather than the thing itself being the reason to participate. There are absolutely dedicated pockets of commanders that engage in and enjoy power play in its current form but it's definitely never reached the full potential that it deserves and I'm personally really pleased to see FDev finally addressing it. There were no other details on the rework given other than its existence but it is now perhaps fairly clear to anyone that knows power play in any regard that this is perhaps why the system rework has been delayed. The complexity of reworking something like power play must be a huge undertaking and given power play's history frontier are going to be keen to ensure that they get this right. Between updates 18 and 19 the team did say that they will continue with bug fixes and tweaks etc which whilst not unexpected is nonetheless good to hear but frontier still weren't done with the announcements. Whilst Arthur was patchy on the specific timing either before or after power play 2.0 they will also introduce an entirely new feature to the game. Arthur reiterating that this isn't a reworked old feature but an entirely new feature and that it was coming this year but that the team were working through timings for it and its introduction to the community and all the new stuff that goes with it and again frontier still weren't done with the announcements and for many the best was yet to come. One of the reasons much of the player base has become disenchanted with elite dangerous and irritated by frontier in the last few years has been the company's apparent unwillingness to introduce any new spaceships into what is at its heart a spaceship game. To underline that fact the last time a ship was introduced to elite dangerous was 5 years ago in December 2018 with the arrival of the Mamba. I'm very pleased to be able to say that this year the team in Cambridge are introducing no less than 4 new ships to the game and what appears to be the first of those the python mark 2 was shown off in some concept renders on the live stream. When showing the sleek new twist on a now familiar design Arthur was keen to reiterate a couple of times that not only does the ship look different but functionally it is also very different. He said there were reasons for that and that they'd let the players discover those reasons for themselves. He also said the ship will be arriving quote relatively soon within this year unquote. Frontiers wording on the stream and in material that was sent out to content creators as part of the elite dangerous partner program clearly states that the four new ships coming this year are all variants of existing ships and this is broadly speaking how FDF have played a lot of ship launches in the past which is why we have three chieftain variants the type 9 and type 10 and the extremely successful duo of crates as well as the multiple vipers and eagles etc. It's worth adding however that when Arthur was talking about the new python mark 2 he did say it was quote one of at least four planned this year. At least four quite obviously seems to imply that there might be more and that they're not yet ready to talk about them what other ships might be in the works will leave up to you to speculate. Take this also for what it is and we're including it here just for completeness when summarizing the updates this year Arthur did give a knowing nod to the camera saying quote there might be a little more later on but that's for me to know and you to find out unquote so it does seem that quite rightly they're tempering the announcements that they have for the year ahead and there's likely more coming than they're letting on at this early stage. In last weeks news we mentioned that it felt like fdev had had an injection of PR smarts somewhere somehow and in fact this week we became aware that fdev have recently employed the services of a global public relations company in the shape of dead good media. As we've mentioned before communication in an age of social media and particularly within the realms of a live service game is something that frontier have struggled to find the right balance with quite honestly for the last 10 years. Following the company's recent restructure Arthur told me has now been put in charge of not only community but also PR and communication. On frontier's live streams it's traditionally always been Arthur that was straining on an all too obvious leash to divulge more and talk more about what the company was up to with Elite. With the introduction of an external PR company Arthur's new role and indeed everything that we learned last night it'll be fascinating to see if indeed that leash has now been lengthened or indeed severed completely. As a live stream in its own right frontier unlocked was a very different offering from what elite dangerous fans at least had become used to over the years. As mentioned at the start I'd imagine that combining a number of titles into each live stream is at the very least more credit sufficient for the company. It has the added bonus from their perspective of affording them the opportunity to lay out their ways in front of thousands of potential customers that might not look at another of their games otherwise. At one point last night for example there were around 16,500 viewers watching the stream that was also being advertised on the front page of Twitch. The elite dangerous portion of the stream was toward the latter part of the broadcast and it was extremely information dense and succinct and felt very much like the headline act. It was also very apparent that F-Dev had put a lot of work into the new set and the streams presentation. It was for the most part extremely slick and utterly devoid of unnecessary filler material. We've complained many times on this channel that F-Dev's prior unwillingness to counter any undercurrent of doom saying with regard to the future of Elite Dangerous has done nothing but harm the image of Frontier, Elite Dangerous and indeed quite directly the company's revenue generation from its flagship space sim. Given F-Dev's recent woes it would be nice to think they've perhaps finally conceded that telling your customers about things they can get excited about is a good thing after all. I've been involved with Elite Dangerous as a fan since the Kickstarter began over 11 years ago. Except for the Kickstarter itself I've never known them to be this open about their future plans. The Frontier Expo in 2017 was probably the last time they were really upfront about what was coming next for a game that was already in play and I think last night's announcements may have trumped even that. It's been 10 years with Elite Dangerous being run by the old Frontier and I'd need to see a degree more evidence before I would confidently call this a new version of Frontier but if indeed this is a clean slate start for the company Elite Dangerous and how both the game and the outward face of the company are handled going forward then it's definitely a very solid start. Clearly the inaugural edition of Frontier Unlocked was a very important live stream for F-Dev but particularly for Elite Dangerous. What was readily apparent last night was that F-Dev were keen to draw a line in the sand with regard to Elite Dangerous and any speculation around their future commitment toward it as a cornerstone product of the company. As a community we can be confident that our favoured alternate galaxy and space game is not going away and it's not resting on its laurels. Frontier have plans for it and they are continuing to move forward with those plans. Elite Dangerous is very much not a dead game. How did the live stream leave you feeling about the future of the game? What was your favourite announcement from the live stream? And what ships would you like to see given a new variant? 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.