 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 14th of May 2021, I'm CMDR Buur. In this weeks news are the Thargoids on the March again, Odyssey is launching this week on the PC, Fdev's latest communication regarding Odyssey and Horizons causes confusion and we have our own questions about future instancing. 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. The community awoke on Thursday morning to news that the Thargoids had attacked multiple star ports in the Colsack, Pleiades and California Nebulae and that those stations were on fire and in need of evacuation. The Galnet article accompanying the attack in game made special mention of the fact that the green meanies had invaded the Delphi system where players were last week delivering large shipments of guardian artefacts as part of an ages driven research effort and the Thargoids have a serious beef with all things guardian related, mostly because guardian tech research seems to mainly be geared towards killing Thargoids, you can see why that might have chafed the mandible somewhat. Shover stick in a wasps nest and you're going to get covered in wasps, that's how wasps work. I watched a documentary about it called wasps, this is how they work. Upon hearing the news of the latest Thargoid incursions the galactic community immediately sprung into action with communities like the post disaster evacuation service leading the charge to evacuate the burning stations and wings from the anti-zeno initiative leading the charge to clear down Thargoid combat zones and drive back the swarming waspy space menace. Both communities are being backed up by numerous independent commanders taking it upon themselves to rescue the recently singed civilians or deliver a swift kick in the thorax to ET and his caustic compound eye hoodlums. As I've stated before on this very broadcast if you're new to the game the attacks by Thargoids may seem like something remote and isolated that happens away from the core of humanity. Let me shatter those illusions for you. Up until early 2020 the Thargoids had been advancing from their starting point in the Pleiades where they first appeared and were in a continuous ongoing struggle with the forces of humanity advancing towards and eventually reaching the bubble and encircling the systems around Sol. Indeed at one point we honestly thought Sol itself might be the next target. There was a weekly back and forth with stations falling to the Thargoid advance, the AXI and other human anti-zeno forces beating them back with the post disaster guys and the teams at Operation Ida all coordinating the clean up afterwards ably assisted by independent commanders from a cross populated space. Until suddenly one day it all stopped. The Thargoids withdrew, the attacks stopped and left the war torn community with a collective quizzical cry of huh? Ever since then the question of whether the Thargoids may reappear in a meaningful way and then try to achieve whatever it was they were trying to achieve before once more has been lingering in the air along with all the left over caustic goop and alien legs. Let's bring this back to the real world practicalities for a moment. If Frontier were going to restart this particular narrative thread then the launch of an expansion might be an ideal time to do it and recently the narrative in the game through events like the Adamastor and Hesperus Megaship incidents has started to reintroduce the concept of the creeping Thargoid menace. Through these story threads we now have this character calling themselves Salvation desperately trying to remind us that we need saving from the monster under the bed. Of course when the bed with the monster under it is 900 light years away it does become somewhat of a less pressing issue so we'll have to see what happens there. I suspect we'll never really know why it is Frontier decided to switch off or at least pause the Thargoid advance for a year but whatever the reason if this is truly the start of its return on multiple fronts by the way then it really is welcome. I'll be the guy quivering in my Remlock hiding behind the massed ranks of the AXI. A reminder as if you didn't know already that Odyssey launches this Wednesday the 19th of May on PC. The console launch of the expansion is still scheduled for some time in the autumn of this year more on that in a moment. Frontier originally announced way back in August of 2018 in a forum post by Zack Antonacci that what they called at the time the next era of Elite Dangerous was already in full production and at the time they expected it to launch in 2020. Of course they didn't know at that point that 2019 was going to be a bumper fun times year that it turned out to be. The global pandemic hit and at this point Frontier have been working from home for over a year now which has only compounded the delays. The headline features of the expansion continue to be the ability to get out of our ships and SRVs for the first time, visiting star ports, outposts and settlements on foot and finding new life on tenuous atmospheric worlds. The expansion also adds interactable NPC mission givers for the first time as well as physical multi-crew. Two new Elite ranks that's exobiology and mercenary and we've also been promised diplomacy missions alongside the stealth and all out on foot combat features that we saw showcased in the alpha test recently. There's no official word on what to expect schedule wise on Wednesday what typically happens is that the servers come down for the upgrade in the morning and then Frontier do an extended live stream to keep everyone marching along for a bit until the servers return much later. It's possible that as with most MMOs and live service games when the servers do return they'll be a little bit wobbly this may be due to unforeseen bugs but it's just as likely that the infrastructure that supports the game is being whammed silly by thousands of commanders all trying to log in at the same time so maybe bear with it for a little while while the wrinkles get ironed out. There's an old saying that goes don't play on patch day here at the pit we prefer try and play on patch day but maybe don't take the day off work for it as you may end up frustrated and waiting around a fair bit. That's not nearly as punchy as sayings generally go though. A degree of confusion and disappointment erupted in the community on Wednesday morning this week when Frontier took to the forums to offer an update on the launch cycle for Odyssey and specifically the Odyssey features that will be making it into the vanilla game on the 19th. All rather last minute the plan for the upgrades that would make it into the horizons client have been revised. Together with the slightly confusing wording coming from Frontier on the issue is what led to the eruption. The plan was originally that horizons players would see their airless worlds updated to the new terrain technology and also see the lighting throughout the game updated in line with Odyssey. They just wouldn't be able to exit their ships and SRVs on foot or land on atmospheric worlds. That part of the plan has been delayed but it isn't gone. So here's what's happening and when. As we've just reported Odyssey is launching for the PC on Wednesday the 19th as planned with all its expected features intact. Players who haven't upgraded to the expansion will for the moment see no change in their game or client. This does unfortunately mean that initially Odyssey and Horizon players will not be able to instance together. So if Odyssey players wish to instance with their horizons friends they'll need to launch their horizons client instead which will still be an option for them but they won't have access to their Odyssey features whilst they do so. The horizons client will stay like this on PC until Odyssey launches on consoles which is currently planned for the autumn of this year. At that point horizons will receive all the planet tech organics and lighting improvements as a free upgrade and will be able to instance together with Odyssey players on their respective hardware platforms. We did ourselves suffer a small degree of confusion when reading the announcement but it wasn't with what was said but rather with what wasn't. ARF clearly said on stream a few months ago the plan is that the horizons and Odyssey players wouldn't be able to instance together on planetary surfaces at all regardless of the atmospheric type as the Peggy age rating for horizons excluded the first-person shooter elements of Odyssey. Potentially a younger player could see Odyssey players shooting each other in the face from the comfort of their SRV and that didn't sit well with the board of sensors. Blowing a ship up and consigning a commander to the cold vacuum of space isn't a problem for Peggy. Direct face shooting is and horizons has a lower Peggy rating which can't be chained retroactively. The latest announcement from Frontier just states that it will quote allow Odyssey and horizons players to reunite and play together with other users on their respective platform unquote. However it doesn't specifically state that horizons and Odyssey players won't instance together on a planetary surface. So there's an implication there albeit an implication by omission that Odyssey and horizons players will in fact instance together on a planetary surface. If that is the case well that's huge that means horizons SRVs and ships could participate in Odyssey combat zones for example or in settlement raids etc. We've reached out to Frontier for some clarity on this specific instancing point and as soon as we hear something we'll post it on this here very channel. I do understand the frustration this last minute change has caused in the horizons camp to have a free upgrade suddenly whipped away at the 11th hour is undoubtedly disappointing. The lack of instancing options for the two game clients will introduce a further fracture in the community for an extended period and I do anticipate horizons space becoming significantly more empty of commanders on the 19th of May. The confusing messaging from Frontier has exacerbated that disappointment and together with not knowing the reason for the decision it's compounded the frustration still further. There are a couple of plus points to be had from all this Odyssey and horizons players now have an extended period of access to the known material farming spots in the galaxy we had believed those would be disappearing completely this week from the PC platform but now both camps will be able to access them if they so desire. For those interested in drawing direct comparisons between Odyssey and horizons you'll literally be able to swap between the two on the fly and contrast and compare to your heart's content. I'm genuinely very curious to hear what way the instancing issue will be going for the autumn launch as Frontier's latest post states quote horizons and Odyssey PC players will be able to land on the same body sites but horizons players will be limited to horizons features unquote and players will quote reunite and play together unquote this implies we'll be able to instance together in all parts of the game but this obviously goes against what Arth has previously stated though and I don't want to get into speculation so I'm inclined to believe that this is probably a miscommunication issue even though I'd love it to be true but what do you guys think are we just hearing tangled wires and confused corporate messaging or have Peggy and indeed Frontier's lawyers had a change of heart 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 oh seven 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