 One of the marketed tent pole features of Elite Dangerous Odyssey prior to its launch was what Frontier referred to as the Sphere of Combat. In this video we're going to discuss what the Sphere of Combat is and what needs to happen to the current game to make it a meaningful feature. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, remember to click the bell icon and select all notifications and to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. The Sphere of Combat is an encapsulating phrase that defines the concept of having ships, SRVs and on foot commanders all in the same place all at the same time. When Odyssey launched on the PC in May of this year conceptually at least the Sphere of Combat was possible. You could have a ship, an SRV and an on foot commander in the same area on a planet surface at the same time and the three can interact with each other on a basic level but as of right now there is no real reason to get the elements together. As things stand surface conflict of any significant size in Elite Dangerous Odyssey largely revolves around two areas active or inactive settlements that are not in a state of war and active settlements that are subject to a war state and have therefore become the feature of an active surface conflict zone. As things stand in both examples a lone on foot combatant can easily infiltrate the settlement grounds and initiate, participate and bring satisfactory resolution to any conflict without fear of outside interference from either NPC driven SRVs or NPC piloted ships. Whilst settlements do feature some anti personnel turrets it's been my experience that they rarely engage in any meaningful way and can, for the most part, be largely ignored. An SRV can be useful at a settlement raid but generally it's true worth is as a storage facility for stolen materials or as a changing room to swap your active on foot loadout in. An SRV can be used as a tool for clearing a base of guards, the roof turret fairly rips through the surface foot soldiers with ease but it's noisy and invariably attracts dropships full of more NPC foot soldiers. Likewise a surface installations exterior can be cleared of NPC guards with a ship loaded with dumb fire missiles very effectively, again this is extremely noisy and serves to attract the same dropships full of backup and the better defended settlements are very good at harassing a loitering ship if not swatting it out of the sky with the turrets generally being too tough to knock out quickly enough for little reward. Your results may of course vary and I'd be interested to hear your tactics in the comments below but it's been my experience that a settlement is just simpler and quicker to quietly take apart on foot. When it comes to conflict zones the on foot commander is king, an SRV can be brought into a surface CZ but it's honestly somewhat of a glass cannon in those scenarios. If it remains on the outside of the zone it can pick off stragglers but it's often times quicker to take on the combatants on foot, again your results may of course vary. Get an SRV in amongst the buildings in a CZ and it's almost impossible to maneuver it in a meaningful way amongst all the ground clutter, again on foot is king. Couple that with Frontier's recent addition of rocket launcher wielding troops who are particularly adept at reducing SRVs to their constituent components and it just compounds the issue, the SRV just isn't good at on foot combat, feet are. When it comes to ships in a surface conflict zone it's kind of the same story again this time with a wrinkle. A suitably outfitted ship can drop mines or dumb fire missiles on a CZ but there is no way to make that ordinance genuinely useful to those on the ground and again it's quicker and more efficient to just park up and shoot the NPCs in the face rather than rake the entire settlement with explosions and then let RNGs are sought out whether you manage to hit the enemy or not. The wrinkle to the ship scenario is that Frontier recently installed large temporary surface to air weapon emplacements at surface conflict zones. These emplacements can be cut open by a player wearing a maverick suit and shut down albeit temporarily. They also installed NPC ships fighting overhead presumably to give the turrets something to do because very few commanders are bringing their ship to a gunfight. The turrets whilst impressive are a solution to a problem no one has and the NPC ships fighting overhead are interested only in each other meaning they are nothing more than scenery they literally have no interest or input into the conflict raging below them. Well ironically mines and dumbfire missiles can be used to great effect to complete some horizons era missions and here at the burpit we've attacked elite dangerous horizons level settlements with those on more than a few occasions just for the giggles but as far as odyssey is concerned as things stand that's pretty much the state of the sphere of combat. You can combine the available trinity of weapon platforms in one spot but why would you? If SRVs and ships are next to useless in the available surface combat arenas then why has Frontier chosen to spend valuable development time implementing countermeasures to weapons that almost no one is using? The logical answer to that question is that they are presumably planning on those weapon systems being used in the future as part of the sphere of combat. If that is the case then the current toolset and scenarios available to the player are woefully unsuitable. We already know that a more combat orientated multi-crew capable SRV is due to arrive into the game in December as part of patch 9. Whilst we welcome the arrival of this new shiny toy its arrival as a tool is only part of the equation. In order for that SRV to have meaning beyond being a nice addition to the garage it needs to be the solution to a problem otherwise Frontier will have invented the hammer but not the nails. Given all the things I've just talked about with the current SRV I'm struggling to understand where a new more combat capable SRV is going to fit literally and figuratively into the current available combat scenarios. New weapons and better armor notwithstanding I still can't see for example why you would take an SRV into a settlement you were intending on raiding or into a conflict zone. Of course the caveat to those musings is that I haven't seen this new SRV and therefore don't know what it's capable of but unless it's significantly smaller and more nimble than the current bewepened beach buggy which seems unlikely given what little we know of its feature set then I still can't see it being of use in those cluttered and cramped environments. So is the new SRV the herald of some more missions or tool specific content? Then that would seem a logical extension and we have seen some hints of this from Frontier in a previous live stream which is linked on screen now but as of this video at least there are no solid affirmations in that direction. As far as the ship third of the combat trinity is concerned one could argue that new ships would be required to engage in a meaningful way with all that is presumably about to be happening on the ground. I would counter that argument however and suggest instead that we in fact already have the ships we need. I'd further suggest that there are at least two specific ships that we have already that would seem tailor made for air to surface operations. What they lack currently however are the tools to engage in a meaningful way with the turrets, spongy meat sacks and toy cars running around like ants below them. I long argued that the Federal gunships weapon placement, tanky nature and manoeuvrability profile make it an ideal air to surface platform. What it lacks like all ships in the game is the ability to acquire, track and then employ guided munitions onto ground targets. That could in theory be solved by the addition of a ground tracking radar module fitted to the ship if Frontier chose to magic one up, slaved to guided missiles or perhaps a nice chin mounted cannon or multi cannon and you'd have a superb spacefaring Apache. For an even sorcerer coupling how about giving an on foot commander the ability to laser designate a target for the ship allowing them to dumb fire from outside of a settlement's ability to counter attack leaving the missile to acquire its own target once it sees the laser. Even the name gunship would seem to imply certainly in contemporary parlance that this is in fact what the ship was born to do. Likewise the oddly named Federal dropship as I've mentioned on this very channel many times before it doesn't drop anything. In the current game it's a capable fighting ship but if you google dropship you'll eventually find it listed as a common military sci-fi trope defined as quote a craft used to carry troops, vehicles and or supplies from an orbiting ship to the surface of a planet or natural satellite and back sometimes while under fire unquote. Its name by definition therefore means it's supposed to be a troop carrier and a deployment platform for combat capable vessels. Prior to Odyssey there hasn't really been a scenario where the dropship could serve that role in a meaningful way but with the addition of a troop capable cargo hold or a rapid deployment SRV bay where the vehicle is essentially dropped by the pilot firing it like a weapon perhaps dare we dream. I guess the conclusion I'm rambling towards is that with the current drip of new toys entering the game the SRV, the turrets at conflict zones, the ships fighting overhead, the ground troops armed with rocket launchers it could be argued that FDF are building towards something. The much vaulted sphere of combat doesn't realistically exist in the game yet but these new countermeasures coupled with the new SRV could mean that not only is its emergence into the game more likely but it's also possible that it could be coming with more varied content as well. What do you think Frontier's plan with all this is? Will we see new tools to make ground attack more meaningful and if so what would you like to see added? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now, thanks very much for watching, if you enjoyed this video consider subscribing to the channel and maybe take a look at one of our other videos linked on screen right now.