 This is Witchbase news for Friday the 24th of February 2023, I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week, Community Manager Arthur states we are missing a story element right in front of our faces, there's more mysterious signalling this time by Elite senior designer Tom Kuhl, new Thargoid system states a sign posted to be in our future and a community goal to help pierce the maelstroms goes live. If you like our videos be sure to subscribe and click that little bell to be certain you see all our Elite Dangerous content and community posts here on YouTube and if you want to directly support our work at the burpit you'll find links to our Patreon and everything else below. With the thargs day tick yesterday the game edged one step closer to piercing further into the Caustic Horror Story maelstroms with the arrival of a community goal destined to ultimately deliver the latest technological advancement from Laboratoire Aegis the Caustic Sync. Whilst the science behind the miracle caustic sync is out of necessity somewhat hand wavy the effect of the new module when it arrives is likely to be somewhat of a game changer in the fight with the Thargoids. Anyone who spent any small amount of time around the interstellar death daisies will know that one of the biggest ship killers they're able to deploy is Caustic Damage. In order to remove the hull consuming damage over time effect you are required to either be on the receiving end of a friendly decontamination limpet, land at a starport or heat your ship up to such a degree that it burns the corrosive goop clean off. The yet to be delivered caustic sync module appears to be able to scrape off the burning mess from the ship, package it up into a nice neat package via the medium of science and then eject it safely away from your ship in exactly the same manner as the similarly named heat sync module. Whilst it will be of undoubted use in a full on flower firefight the caustic syncs actual development has been centred around the necessity to probe deeper into the Thargoid maelstrom clouds for longer. As things stand going terribly deep into the maelstrom is prevented by two things, a reactive pulse that pushes a ship away from the centre and damages it and the sheer volume of caustic damage that the cloud itself gives off the deeper into it you go. The current community goal comes in two flavours, a combat portion asking for bounty vouchers from protecting trade vessels and a component delivery portion asking for raw materials to be delivered to help in the manufacture of the caustic sync units. Both goals require their respective deliveries to be made to the Oran Miller Megaship stationed in the Duamta system. To put it mildly there is an awkward somewhat irritating wrinkle to all of this and anyone who has participated in a community goal delivering to a Megaship will sadly be very familiar with it. Despite their name these Megaships aren't very mega containing as they do just one large landing pad. The very nature of a large scale community hauling effort demands that players where possible use large hauling vessels like the type 9 or the imperial cutter to fetch and carry as many of the raw materials in a single given run as they can. Where we are delivering to a starport this presents no problems as the orbital facilities are stacked with large landing pads and can easily accommodate large volumes of traffic. The Megaships on the other hand have just one large pad meaning that upon arrival at the ship to unload at the very least you are invariably left waiting for an NPC ship to clear the pad before you can manoeuvre your island sized haulage specialist into place. This situation becomes commensurably worse in open play or in a large private group or just in a team where queues of the large vessels instanced with each other quickly form. Assuming it stays orderly and a squabble for available space doesn't occur you can be politely waiting for three or more ships to depart before your time to dock arrives. Player owned fleet carriers a way more mega of a ship than an NPC Megaship have no less than 8 large landing pads hilariously dwarfing the Megaship vessels owned and run by mega corporations and in some cases superpowers. The Megaships look great and serve a very tidy narrative function in these scenarios but I would argue they aren't really fit for purpose when it comes to a community goal especially when there is a perfectly serviceable orbital starport in the system that would serve as a much more sensible option. If you are having trouble docking for a community goal in one of elite multiplayer modes then your only less than ideal option is to drop to solo play where there is less competition for the lonely large landing pad. The CG's run until next Thursday unless they're completed quicker and there are free caustic sink modules up for grabs for the top tiers of contributors upon its completion. Last night saw the latest of FDev's fortnightly frameshift livestream return to twitch and youtube this time hosted by community managers Sally Morgan Moore and Arthur Tolmey and featuring a visit from senior game designer on Elite Dangerous Tom Coole. Tom was previously probably best known in the community for his work on the now familiar scorpion SRV but this week Tom's appearance was specifically featuring his work on the instanced scenarios that are found within unknown signal sources. The ubiquitous unknown signal source itself is obviously not new to Elite Dangerous and is a regular feature of just about every commander's trip into supercruise. The scenarios found within those USS's when they are accessed however have been tinkered with by Tom and the team for the current still evolving thargoid war and it's that tailoring to the war and how they in turn deliver flavour, texture and story to the conflict that the stream was predominantly highlighting. It's always interesting to hear from the devs about the design decisions in the game and get more insight into features that are both familiar and foreign and it's worth listening to what Tom has to say for that alone but as you perhaps expect by now there were some other hints and nuggets of information that we picked up on during the discussion. In the chat with Sally and Arthur Tom was discussing the different types of scenarios that are found within systems affected by the different states the war inflicts. Sally, Arthur and Tom can all be seen and heard joking about being extremely careful about which states they mention and what name they use for the system states they talk about. As of this recording the war with the thargoids inflicts five possible states on a system when it arrives. Those states progress as the thargoids attempt to take over a given system and are as follows. Thargoid alert where the thargoids are probing a system for a possible future incursion. Thargoid invasion where the thargoids are actively invading a system and attempting to take it over. Thargoid controlled where the invasion state has been successful and humanity has been completely driven out. Post thargoid recovery where the thargoids have been removed from what was a previously thargoid controlled state and finally thargoid maelstrom. There are eight of these such systems and unsurprisingly this is where you'll find one of the eight thargoid maelstroms. All the previous four states are fluid to a greater or lesser extent and can be changed through player action or inaction. As things stand the maelstrom state is completely immovable. We have no way currently to eject one of the thargoids colossal caustic clouds from a system. We do know that the thargoid war is an evolving beast and that we have seen and will continue to see change in its nature and gameplay as things progress. The teams being cautious with what they described as quote player facing unquote terminology last night particularly when it comes to thargoid war system states logically then tells us that we haven't yet seen all the system states that the war intends to throw at us. Of course at this stage what those states might be is anyone's guess. Who knows will we maybe be seeing thargoid retreat as a war state at some future juncture or even dare we dream maelstrom recovery. I mentioned story earlier and the unknown signal sources potential to deliver one of the versions of story more peculiar to Elite Dangerous that being the more general texture and color delivering story elements. Away from the larger sweeping narrative story elements that Elite Dangerous now very much has as one of its cornerstone features USS scenarios are able to deliver a more background action style of storytelling experience to the player. The specific examples that Tom used centered around situations such as visits to signal sources from rescue vessels that might be part of a random chance to a scenario script. Upon its arrival that rescue ship exhibits more specific programmed behavior to it for example if there's an escape pod floating in the scenario the rescue vessel may detect it and attempt to scoop it up with some added flavor text in local chat from the ship's pilot talking about what it's doing and why. Likewise in appropriate systems players can discover scenarios where a convoy of damaged vessels has stopped to make good some repairs and that convoy might get jumped by thargoid scouts randomly during that encounter and the player can either fight off the scouts or help with the repairs returning the convoy to an effective fighting force that itself then sees off the alien aggressors. Elite Dangerous as a whole and the thargoid war as part of that whole both feature a myriad of these smaller isolated narrative slices that add to the greater narrative in this case the thargoid conflict but don't necessarily drive that larger narrative forward themselves. When talking about these scenarios last night Arthur made specific mention that storytelling in Elite can be both overt and subtle. Overt storytelling is the larger narrative stuff that is seen in Galnet and then reflected in game and he then made very specific mention that some of the more subtle storytelling is there in game and we haven't yet seen it. Here's the specific clip have a listen and see what you think. We've had this conversation before today when we were discussing this and I'm not going to go into what specifically it is but the great thing about these things that you add to the game is that there's a lot of storytelling going on in Elite Dangerous some of it is very is very sort of is is unsubtle so there's the war and obviously there's Galnet and stuff like that and there's other parts that are very very subtle that you will have to look for and see but it is there and some of it you haven't seen and it's there it's right in your face but you just haven't seen it and that's all I'm going to say about it. It is worth noting that all this takes place as part of a wider conversation as I've mentioned that is centred around the more texture based storytelling elements in the game. What Arthur is referencing here could just be a texture scenario that we haven't seen yet but it's both a blessing and a curse with all things Elite Dangerous that it of course might not be just texture and we are still missing some piece of the puzzle. It's my perception and this is skewed completely by my own play style and experience that when engaging in the Thargoid Wars specifically fewer players will be hunting down USS scenarios when looking to have an effect on the progress bar then there will be perhaps defending attack starports or evacuating civilians or hauling freight etc. Is this the reason we haven't yet seen whatever it is we haven't yet seen? Is what we're missing just a flavour scenario that no one has yet encountered or is there some secret clue or story element yet to be discovered? It's hard to imagine there's an NPC waiting with a list of instructions on what to do with a Grelik or perhaps sitting with a map to Raxlar on their lap but I suppose it is always possible. The final little nugget that I have to make mention of you will need a very secure layer of tin foil for. We mentioned off the back of the previous live stream that the then co-host Bruce Garrido appeared to make what appeared to be a triangle of blue M&M suites on the desk at one point leading to speculation that the team were hinting at relics or some other aspect of the Guardian storyline. At the very end of last night's stream guest developer Tom Coole makes a very clear and I would suggest a very deliberate triangle shape with his hands aimed at the camera. I'm struggling to believe that this wasn't something aimed at the watching audience. What I'm less sure of is if this is genuinely another hint at all things Guardian or perhaps something Aegis or whether the team are now just toying with the community who they know are looking oh so very closely, possibly slightly obsessively, at their hands during live streams. Again, we'll leave that up to you to decide. What new system states do you think we are yet to experience? Will you be delving into the depths of a maelstrom in the coming weeks? And are Frontier really dropping hints in hand signals on their live streams? 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.