 This is Witchspace news, for Friday the 22nd of January 2021, I'm CMDR Buur. In this weeks news, Frontiers ask me anything goes on a brief hiatus, we've got new answers from Frontier on Odyssey's interface and NPC behaviour and quite the best elite dangerous we've ever seen. If you enjoy this video remember to hit like and subscribe and if you'd like to help support the work of this channel you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. We begin this week with a quick policy change from Frontier around their regular Wednesday ask me anything sessions. Regular attendees to the sessions will know that while any question can be asked it's all too often unlikely to get a solid answer. This sentiment has been expressed quite loudly and often by the community and it seems Frontier have heard the complaint and are keen to take steps to make the AMAs more meaningful. In that vein then the AMAs are being stood down until February and in their stead Frontier will be presenting actual answers from the development team to harvested questions from the community as they have done for the last couple of weeks in fact to great effect. Going forward as I mentioned the AMAs will be returning next month but in a slightly different format. The AMAs will instead be themed around a specific subject and the community team will be attending with pre-loaded knowledge from the dev team around that subject the plan obviously being that they would like the Q&As to be more effective for everyone involved and deliver for the community at least a lot more answers and a lot less frustration. So as we've just mentioned the AMAs on holiday for a while and Frontier is instead picking up the community questions and delivering some more solid answers around a general theme. In line with that policy this week they've released a whole raft of information from Odyssey developer Gareth Hughes centred around the games interface and NPC behaviour so here's what we now know. In answer to a question regarding night vision or lighting when playing the on foot portions of Odyssey Gareth stated that spacesuits in the game will be upgradable in a number of ways night vision and lighting being just two of those ways however by default all suits will have some kind of lighting option at the very least. In regard to the players radar on the HUD it appears it will act unsurprisingly in the same way as that in your ship it will display players and NPCs in your immediate vicinity your relationship to them and reading between the lines whether their weapon is drawn or not in a similar way that you can tell if ships around you have deployed their hard points by the shape of the icon on the radar. Fielding a question regarding HUD colourisation and whether it will be customisable particularly in reference to making the game more accessible to the visually impaired Gareth confirmed that there are no current plans for the HUD to be customisable in any way but did say that they are taking on board feedback regarding accessibility issues. This is a question and a request that has come up time and time again already and is a particular problem for commanders on the console platforms. PC players can always dig out a third party HUD modification if they so desire console commanders have no such option. Indeed we have a commander in our squadron that often has to have wing targets called out by name to him as his ability to distinguish different colours is somewhat impaired. While we're on the subject of HUDs it was also confirmed that parts or all of the HUD can't be turned off and on the subject of weather we'll be able to hide from a player's radar on the ground in a similar way to the current silent running mechanic used in ships. Gareth was unable to offer any solid information at this time as PVP and how the HUD functions in that environment is still undergoing review. Gareth had this to say about NPCs in Odyssey. Combat zones will be a mix of both AI and player characters but he made no mention of any AI teammates outside of combat zones. AI around settlements will be spawned based on the settlement's theme and its state and the ever present background simulation will also affect AI difficulty and if you give an NPC enough reason it will pursue you as well as actively investigate areas reporting what they find and using cover whilst calling for reinforcements all while operating under the same line of sight limitations that players also have. When talking about your suit's oxygen supply Gareth described how your suit losing power will cause the life support systems to shut down and move onto an emergency air supply. If that supply is likewise depleted then your player character will start to asphyxiate making aiming and movement more difficult. Also you'll lose your assisted jump functionality we're guessing this is the jetpack that we're seeing being used and in a similar fashion to ship gameplay your audio will also be affected. These effects will not however carry over to NPCs. A question was asked about how energy levels will affect your combat effectiveness and whether the AI will be operating under those same constraints. The question was only partly answered however as Gareth only stated that your energy levels are finite and will power your shields so knowing when to activate your shields will be crucial. Gareth further confirmed that whilst on foot NPCs will not get into vehicles they will deploy from drop ships. They didn't say how many troops a drop ship will carry or indeed what counts as a drop ship. Are Fdev talking about a specific purpose built drop ship or could it just as easily be an ASP scout that is dropping people off. We're also very curious to know if the federal drop ship for example will finally you know drop stuff and indeed if we'll be able to drop troops ourselves in any significant numbers higher than the current multi-crew limit of 3 including the pilot. Again in a similar fashion to the in ship gameplay if you have a bounty on your head the NPC characters will be able to detect that and may act on it. Whilst the planets in Elite Dangerous have a day night cycle the NPCs it seems will not and night time assaults for example will make no difference to their effectiveness. A question was asked about the possibility for on foot armour themed around the various superpowers military Frontier responded by saying that they're always looking at what customizations players would like to see in the game but didn't add any further detail. And finally Gareth let go the name of the on foot system authorities it seems they are part of a new organization called Omnipole and are often kitted out with the very best in tactical gear consider that fair warning. As and when we get more Odyssey answers you'll find them on this here very channel so make sure you hit the subscribe button to stay up to date. And finally this week check out the LEGO designs and real world builds of the real beef 1 2 1 3 on Flickr looking through real beef's collection you'll see their speciality is clearly spaceships but it's obviously the Elite Dangerous stuff that got our attention and it's not just the external accuracy of the creations these beasts of LEGO lunacy have interiors as well of particular note are the crate mark 2 and the cobra mark 3 that is designed to minifigure scale it's absolutely huge find the entire library linked in the description 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