 This is Witch Based News for Friday the 24th of June 2022 I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week, player actions against salvation begin to bite, a fleet carrier update bug causes confusion, and PC Gamer Magazine Online celebrates the fuel rats of Elite Dangerous. And if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. As the Azimuth saga continues toward its closing stages, in-game Galnet News has begun recapping the major events of the saga in a multi-part series of articles that you can read or listen to from the right hand panel in your ship. If you're not yet up to speed on everything's salvation and azimuth and don't want to wait for Galnet to deliver the rest in-game then there already exists the official forum-based recap from Frontier which you'll find linked in the video description below. As we reported during the week Operation Witch Hunt kicked off this week that's an entirely player-driven initiative to use negative activity in the game's background simulation to attempt to drive the now-out-in-the-open Azimuth biotech from any systems in which it holds influence. The initiative has had its first two quantifiable successes with the winning of one armed conflict and an election win against the salvation-backed Evil Megacor. To get yourself involved in those efforts you can join the Operation Witch Hunt Discord which you'll find linked below this video and just take a look at the standing orders there to find out what to do and where to go. Quite where all this ends at this point is any commander's guess. Despite his likely protestations to the contrary I don't think a reasonable argument can really be made against labelling salvation as the bad guy at this point counting as he does non-consensual human experimentation and genocide as just two of his many now proven talents. He has promised to save humanity from the Thargoids and yet his continued stick-waggling in the direction of the Pleiades peril poppies has thus far only served to annoy and infuriate them bringing them into human space in even greater numbers. Whatever it is salvation is about to bring down upon us, no one including the initiative's founders are under any illusions that Operation Witch Hunt has a chance of stopping it. The economics and complexities of game development put pay to that regardless it'll be interesting to see what it can achieve and how Elite Dangerous History records and remembers what happens over the next few days and weeks as a result of direct action from the players. An issue crept into the game recently that appeared to show fleet carriers drawing more upkeep costs from their fund reserves than advertised. Community manager Sally Morgan Moore posted to the forums yesterday to say that the issue surfaced due to the cadence of fleet carrier upkeep not working as expected. The fleet carriers were drawing the correct amount of upkeep cost but were doing so on an uneven schedule giving the appearance of an increased cost. Once the issue was identified a server side fix was put in place and your fleet carrier should now be drawing its upkeep costs in line with the posted schedule. One further quick public service announcement the Steam Summer Sale is running at the moment and as a result both the Elite Dangerous Base game and the Odyssey expansion are on sale right now if you're in the market for a copy of either those being priced at £5 and £16.50 respectively in the UK at least. This week the Fuel Rats of Elite Dangerous were the subject of a 15 minute mini documentary by PC Gamer Magazine on YouTube. Without a doubt one of the most original and unique features of the Elite Dangerous Community is the entirely player created and driven rescue service known as the Fuel Rats. The completely free of charge player ship rescuing and refuelling service has been active in the game since its earliest days and to date has performed over 132,500 successful rescues. The dedicated PC Gamer video is the latest in their Tales from the Hard Drive series and as well as telling the story of the Fuel Rats creation it also recounts in detail one of their most difficult, complex and famous rescues to date Operation Beyond the Dark Edge. The documentary contains commentary from Frontier, the Fuel Rats themselves, Evan Lartie who is PC Gamer's global editor-in-chief as well as YouTubers like Scott Manley. It's a really nicely put together piece and absolutely serves to highlight one of the most positive elements of the Elite Dangerous Community and some really fantastic emergent gameplay. We were asked to provide some gameplay footage for the video so if you've been to one of our player events you may see yourself in there as well. As an aside, if you've never seen it before the Fuel Rats stats tracking website is fascinating and actually gives an unbiased platform aware view showing the overall trend of player engagement with the game as far back as 2015. Whilst player run organisations and services are not unheard of in live service multiplayer games or MMOs in general in all my long years I've never really encountered anything quite so unique, complex, well orchestrated or selfless as the Fuel Rats that is also, as it happens, completely needed and it just wouldn't be anywhere near as cool as it is if the service was provided by NPCs and as a former rescuer let me tell you it really is very very cool indeed. Alongside the headliners like the Fuel Rats there are also player run services like the East India Company the Hole Seals, the Kingfishers, the Star Initiative and the DSSA to name but a few. Elite being so unique of a game that it positively demands the input of services like these. Whilst they keep the community ticking along being a member of one of these services or the many others like them is itself a completely valid game loop and 100% emergent. As always you'll find all of this linked in the description below this video. Will you be hoping to write your name into the history of Elite Dangerous by joining players actions against salvation? Have you been rescued by the Fuel Rats or are you one of the Fuel Rats yourself? 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.