 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 8th of October 2021, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, the chance to name a mega ship, fleet carrier prices are being reduced and a bridge is being built between Colonia and the bubble in this week's CG. The first anniversary of the start of the Azimuth Saga approaches and Weaver release window for Update 8, an update on planetary tech issues is incoming and more in this week's Frontier News. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and if you would like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. It will be a year ago at the end of this month that an article on Galnet heralded the unexpected arrival in the Chuck Chan system of the long lost mega ship, the Adamastor. Apparently deserted and heavily damaged the Adamastor had been adrift in interstellar space some 200 years after participating in what is now thought to be mankind's first encounter with the Thargoids. As best we can determine neither the crew of the Adamastor or the scientific survey team they were assisting survived the encounter. The arrival of the Adamastor and the subsequent community wide paper chase that resulted from its arrival reignited the twin touchpapers of both the long dark Galnet news service and narrative storytelling in the game, kicking off what is now being called the Azimuth Saga. We've reported before on Frontier's recent posting of a periodically updated forum thread called the Azimuth Saga the story so far, you'll find that linked in the video description if you've missed it before. This week with the anniversary of the start of the Azimuth Saga and indeed Halloween approaching Frontier have chosen to underline the current ongoing narrative again with a lore based live stream that focuses on and talks around the Azimuth Saga, the Thargoids and the mysterious entity known only as Salvation. Joining Bruce and Zach on the live stream were the top tier content creator talents of Commander Beetle Jude and Commander Wotherspoon of YouTube's Galnet news digest and the Twitch streamer Commander Crispy Tater Tot. As well as filling in some gaps in knowledge that you may have from the current year long narrative thread the live stream also featured opinions, speculation and some grade A tinfoiling on the direction of the Saga, the value of Aegis and the trustworthiness of salvation and their motives. As always you'll find all the relevant links in the video description below. A new galaxy changing community goal kicked off this week with the announcement of the Colonia Bridge project. It seems the manufacturer of the galaxy's premium fleet carriers, stations and megaships the Brewer Corporation has planned to install a string of stationary megaships between Colonia and the bubble to offer a degree of respite for weary travellers making the 22,000 light year journey. When completed the first phase of the Colonia Bridge which has a total of three phases will see up to 30 dockable megaships positioned along the route between the bubble and Colonia around 4 to 500 light years apart. The megaships will offer a number of services including selling Tritium the wonder fuel needed to power fleet carriers. Brewer isn't yet saying what the other two phases of the project will introduce but to facilitate the construction of part 1 they are asking for sizeable deliveries of ceramic composites, computer components and thermal calling units. The CG is running in both Colonia and the bubble and in return for their efforts as well as making some serious bank off the sale of the deliveries the top 10 commanders from each end of the community goal will be offered the chance to name one of the megaships that will be installed in the bridge. In a further twist after the goal is completed Brewer will be offering discounts for one week at both ends of the bridge for fleet carriers and fleet carrier outfitting services. The discounts will start at 10% and increase in increments of 5% up to a maximum of 30% all dependent on the overall success of the community goal. When it ordinarily costs 5 billion credits just to roll a carrier out of the showroom any discount is going to be welcome if only for a short time. The CG is running now and is scheduled to finish next Thursday at the latest. The fleet carrier discounts will be available in the Colonia and Alcor systems starting on the 15th of October and will last for one week. Frontiers regular supercruise news livestream kicked off the next in its bi-weekly cycle this week with an update on the state of the current top 20 issues as voted for by commanders that appear on the regularly updated Elite Dangerous Issue report on the Frontier forums. One of the most interesting comments came early in the stream when community manager Bruce Guerrido spoke about the issue currently occupying the number one slot on the list that of the tiling and repetition seen in planetary surface features. I've linked below to the relevant clip specifically but in essence whilst reiterating that any regeneration or changing on how planet services are generated in the game is a huge amount of work the issue is something that is being discussed internally and that we should expect a statement from the company soon. In the meantime the status of the issue on the tracker remains at investigating. As soon as we hear any more we'll obviously let you know here so ensure you're subscribed so you don't miss that. The team then went on to touch on issues including ongoing improvements to anti aliasing some of which will be seen in update 8, a fix for the thermal conduit modification which is also appearing in update 8 and the game performance drops that were introduced specifically in update 5. Frontier is saying that a cause for those performance drops specifically has now been identified and a fix will be in update 8. Whilst they didn't state it specifically here at the burpit we've experienced and have heard multiple reports of significant frame drops in and around settlements and conflict zones since update 7 and the team did make mention of the same reports on the stream and that the issue was now with the dev team. If that is indeed a separate issue it remains to be seen if that specifically will be eradicated with update 8 so watch this space. On the subject of lighting, incorrect illumination, brightness and contrast Frontier have stated that these issues are secondary to the current issues around overall performance and so likely won't be further addressed until optimisation is in a better place. The team also mentioned the galactic wide issue of planetary bodies and systems having the first discovered moniker of validating instead of an actual commander name. This issue has been identified and is down to how the Xbox system communicates with Frontier's system when identifying gamer tags. No date for implementation of a fix has yet been given. We noted here that the total number of votes cast in the top 20 issues on the tracker is relatively low given the size of the game so if there is something on there that bugs you specifically and you haven't cast your votes already then consider jumping to the forum thread where you'll find links to the top 20 issues on the issue tracker listed there making it really easy for you to cast your vote. Update 8 for Elite Dangerous Odyssey currently has a scheduled release window for the week of the 18th of October that is of course subject to some variance if the sands shift for any reason. Zach also made mention of the Elite Stunt Sport video submissions that the company asked commanders to submit a couple of weeks back. The community team is putting together a live stream event to highlight the results of those submissions but it seems there is a fair bit of work involved there so that will probably cycle around in a few weeks time. And Salvation's Gauss Cannon rewards from a recent community goal will be available for the wider community to purchase further down the line. Also if you have the permit to access the system the CG took place in then you can now purchase the new version of the shard cannon. This was changed from the specs of the original shard cannon that was available as part of the CG after community feedback but if you have those CG purchased shard cannon still the specs will remain the same for those going forward. One final point while we were recording this video Frontier announced the winners of the recent competition to have a tourist beacon with your name on it planted somewhere in the galaxy. There's a forum post and an accompanying video from FDiv which I've linked in the video description. Congratulations to the winners from everyone here at the burp pit. Are you planning on getting a name of your choice on a Megaship from this week's CG? Are you now furiously scrabbling credits together to purchase a discounted fleet carrier? 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, O7 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.