 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 18th of March 2022. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, Frontier livestreams resume and we take a look at what they did say and importantly what they didn't. There's an odd occurrence at the Guardian sites raising some eyebrows, the Thargoids continue to circle the bubble and Salvation's Megaships reposition. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe and remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. We start this week then with the Thargoids. Thursday's Thargsday tick brought more infestations and attacks to systems in the bubble as the murderous caustic cauliflower continue to murmur within spitting distance of humanity's cradle. The Anti-Xeno Initiatives Xeno Watch website which you'll find linked below now has three new targets on the range in the shape of HIP38225, Pathini and Paukuman. All three systems are showing a massive Thargoid presence but despite eminently edible orbital stations being present in all three systems the Carnivore Carnations haven't yet made a move against them. Are they waiting for something? Are they instead eyeing the surface ports? Is it just a bug? Let's be honest this being elite dangerous any or all three could be the case. In some likely related news the galaxy's shiftiest Xeno Genocidal Sociopathic entity Salvation started moving some of their chess pieces this week when it was noted that three of the entity who would be kings Megaships were making moves towards guardian space. The speculation is that Salvation is again preparing to fire their guardian trash powered Death Star at the Thargoids. The AXI are currently clearing Thargoids out from systems where the stations have actually been attacked. If the Thargoids are loitering in a system but not getting all up in anyone's grill or chewing on the sofa and yet we still fire at them is this not sending the wrong message? Are they indeed looking to see if we're sending them a message? The community goal this week has the feeling of station keeping it doesn't appear to be attempting to move the story forward and so we're wondering if it's essentially filling the gap before we see Salvation again asking for a destructo beam fuel up from the community before attempting to ruin the Thargoids fledgling Goodwill tour of the bubble. Whilst we're in the general area of tin foil hatting let's talk quickly about the guardian sites. It seems to be the case currently that in odyssey if you visit any of the guardian ancient ruin sites and take a look at the obelisks that are normally scanned to collect guardian data based materials the patterns on them are illuminated and animated as if they've already been scanned. Now we are of course in the area immediately after a large patch and content update into the game and therefore bugs and glitches are not uncommon. So you know this could be nothing it's probably nothing right? But it might not be and until we know for sure Canon Research and others are wisely treating it as at least worthy of further investigation in an effort to determine either way. I've linked below to a tool created by Commander Sol that is attempting to analyse the patterns in the obelisks I think. I won't pretend to know what it's doing to be honest but do take a look I love that the community does things like this and just in case you weren't here in the early years of Elite Dangerous and aren't perhaps aware that this kind of puzzle in the game has absolutely led to things in the game before and I'm not talking about the semi regular code breaking events that we're seeing these days. In the early years of Elite Dangerous useful data was extracted by analysis of the noises made by Thargoid probes using out of game tools. In a further possibly related occurrence the debug camera that was used by a number of photographers and videographers in the community to game some of the more difficult to achieve images you see has been removed with update 11. The regular vanity camera is still there but the debug camera operated in a slightly different way and often times allowed the camera to get places frontier would rather it didn't go. It was in fact the system used by commanders to gain access to fleet carrier interiors late last year before they were officially completed or released. Is Frontier making sure we can't get a camera inside something else now that we shouldn't have access to possibly but they could just want it gone just in case a carrier gate incident occurs again in the future. Whatever is or isn't going on with all of this it is being investigated anyway and as soon as we hear something we'll of course let you know. My huge thanks by the way to the tin foil hatters in our discord and to commander lcu no fool like one of canon research for their assistance in helping me connect the dots with all of this. A couple of bits of useful information for you Frontier snuck in some extra functionality to the game in update 11 that wasn't included in the patch notes. If you now perform the clap emote at your landed ships or your deployed SRV you can operate the lights on them bringing some sometimes much needed flood lighting to a given scenario without the need to return to the relative vehicle. Also we received word this morning that following update 11's arrival on Tuesday the frankly essential commanders website inara is already rolling out a beta version of its fleet carrier material trading information meaning that once commanders update their own carriers situation via a journal upload on their profile page on inara the relative material buys and sells their carriers are hosting will be displayed there completely essential good old inara. I don't imagine I have to remind you that when the community returned from its Christmas and New Year break this year the positive communications headway from the Frontier community management team that we become accustomed to sadly didn't. Well did we know then that the eerie silence would continue for three full months. As we postulated a few weeks back it appears we were indeed waiting for the decision on the future of console development to be finalised and with that 800 pound gorilla now resolutely dealt with Frontier awkwardly back on the phone asking if everyone is free for dinner one night this week. As a result we saw a resumption of updates into the game, an uptick in communication and Thursday afternoon this week saw the arrival of the rebranded regular Elite Dangerous Livestream now called Frameshift Live. With Covid restrictions in the UK now all but gone the team this time consisting of Arthur and Bruce was back in the studio at Frontier Developments and part of the relaunch has seen the previous two one hour shows a week combined into a single two hour show every Thursday at 1600 UTC. The format of the show this week at least didn't go to any significant lengths to break any moulds kind of what we expected to be honest containing as it did the regular slots featuring stellar screenshots, commander creations and gameplay. The Livestream started with an acknowledgement from the team regarding the recent cancellation of further console development and reiterated that options with regard to moving accounts over from consoles to PCs were being investigated but that they had nothing to announce in that regard currently. One of the new features the streams going forward are introducing are regular Twitch drops that being Twitch TV's own system for granting in-game rewards to players for watching Twitch Streams live on Twitch. For obvious reasons the system doesn't work with YouTube viewership but the company continues to stream on YouTube and now on Steam as well for those that want to use those platforms. The current crop of regular purple themed Twitch drops is being complimented regularly with seasonal and event based drops as well currently available are spring themed skins but you can also expect drops based around things like annual events such as Christmas and Halloween etc going forward. Whilst it was undoubtedly good to have Frontier back on Livestreams and communicating on some level with the community again here at the burp pit we were left with a slight sense of bewilderment after the stream. After so long without any online engagement by the company the stream suddenly appeared and rolled in like nothing had happened made no real acknowledgement of the communication blackout gave its audience no real information about what to expect from the game in the coming weeks and then rolled out again. Partly because of the comms blackout and partly because of the Twitch drops the Twitch side of the stream ended up with over four and a half thousand viewers that's no small number for any Twitch stream let alone one about an eight year old very difficult to play space game that's been somewhat off the radar for three months. Given those viewer numbers there's clearly an appetite for the game still and to not use that audience as an opportunity to instill some confidence in the player base especially after the hammer blow of losing console development felt like a little bit of a wasted opportunity. Indeed Conspicuous Bytes absence was any mention of the community development updates that we'd seen regularly last year after Odyssey's disastrous launch in May. The last one of those arrived in October last year just before Halloween that's nearly a full five months with no development updates from Frontier. I'm not opposed to them coming back and carrying on like nothing has happened but if you're going to do that at least set off from the same point you left at in October last night rather had the feel of a stream from an earlier age like a time-travelling stream arriving from a time prior to the slight rejuvenation of communication that we'd seen last year off the back of the Odyssey backlash. What was good to hear was that the community team is gathering feedback from the community and passing it back to the development team particularly with regard to update 11 they made note of the size of the material inventory behind the bar on fleet carriers as just one example. They also mentioned that we can expect the promised community calendar to arrive next week which is good news so much of the sandbox nature of Elite Dangerous revolves around community events, expeditions and gatherings it will be great to see those player-driven efforts in an officially sponsored and recognized shop window finally raising their level of discoverability. The team also acknowledged that they've not been making the best use of the official Elite Dangerous website and had plans in motion to address that for the uninitiated it's been largely static since before the release of Odyssey nearly a year ago whilst it really was great to see the team back at the Colface it would be nice to see the streams a bit more information dense from here on. Were you in the audience last night how did the stream leave you feeling do you think the Guardian sites are really doing something 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