 Hello this is Borner from Borner.tv and today I want to discuss squadrons in Elite Dangerous. On Tuesday May 8th Frontier published the first in a series of focused feedback forum posts which contain a high level overview of squadrons. In this video I'll do my best to quickly summarize the contents of the posts and then summarize with my opinion. As always I'll put the appropriate links in the video description. So what are squadrons? Here's a definition provided by Frontier in the posts. A squadron is a group of commanders who want to band together and organize themselves in game. This might be to play together or to focus on certain types of gameplay such as bounty hunting, community goals or perhaps rescuing commanders who find themselves out of fuel. The idea of squadrons is to provide a series of features that support multiplayer organization and gameplay. From this definition it seems squadrons are there to help groups of players complete tasks within Elite Dangerous more efficiently. Next Frontier goes into how to build a squadron in this proposed system. Once squadrons are introduced they will have their own full screen GUI or GUI page. When opening this without having joined a squadron you will have the option to search for a squadron or to join or create your own. Several fields will be required such as squadron name, squadron ID tag, primary language, attitude which is the type of group in terms of casual to hardcore, search tags and super power allegiance. Frontier then went into what they're planning for finding and joining squadrons. Using the same fields as listed above the commander can search by whatever is important to them and will receive a list of squadrons based on that criteria. Once the commander finds the squadron they like they can send an application. The squadron leader and officers will be able to see a list of all commander applicants and at this point can send the applicants an invite. Both the invitee and the inviter must be online at the same time for the invitation to be sent and accepted. We are currently considering capping squadron membership at 250 commanders but we're interested to hear your feedback on the matter. So far the system seems very typical of many MMORPGs currently in existence. Frontier then went into the roles and privileges for members and officers including permissions to plot a jump for a fleet carrier. Squadron communication was the next topic. One of the most important features that squadrons adds is the ability for groups of commanders to communicate with each other. Group comms, a feature that will be used by squadrons is group comms. This will add channels and other functionality to the chat panel. So this is going to be in addition to local comms, wing comms and direct commander to commander comms. The feed, the squadron overview page which becomes available once the commander joins a squadron will have a list of automated posts that are added to a feed. This feed will be a high level overview of activities within the squadron with events like join, kicks and messages of the day. Frontier mentioned the possibility of an external website and would like to hear our thoughts on that particular idea. Frontier then went into focus control at this stage of the post providing areas of squadrons that are off limits for discussion in this phase of the focus feedback. These areas include the fleet carrier and the relationship between squadrons and player minor factions. On both of these topics Frontier promised a future forum thread that will go into more detail. So there you have it Frontier's plans for squadrons. Now what do I think? Well these features sound very basic for established MMORPGs that have guilds, clans or corporations. I'm pleased to say that this is exactly the kind of feature I asked for in my 5 things that can improve Elite Dangerous video. All player group based communication occurs in external tools like Discord, TeamSpeak, IRC, Slack or some kind of website forum. It was a bit silly, that players could not send a group wide message in game. Now with squadrons that seems to be possible. I also love the fact that we have some sort of delegation system for leaders and officers to maintain rosters. With current private group management it can be a nightmare to manage and maintain membership. 250 players seems like a low number at first glance as I believe most player groups are well beyond that and I have to wonder why this number was chosen. It may be an arbitrary number to start with before hearing our feedback on what's required from us. I'm also excited to hear more about fleet carriers and their functions. Now some areas that genuinely concern me are as follows. First off the player minor factions part. One point Frontier mentioned in the post is that they don't know how they're going to tie squadrons to player minor factions at the moment. Here's a quote from the post. We are aware that some groups will want to align their squadron with the faction. We are currently looking to how we can make this work and allow squadrons to fly the flag of a faction. This is something we will be discussing during a latter focused feedback thread so please avoid discussing this for now. This concerns me greatly as it seems natural that player minor factions and squadrons would be synonymous. I can understand some technical reasons for the seeming disconnect since player minor factions were kind of an unofficial feature of Elite Dangerous and kind of hacked in. It bothers me that the single most functional multiplayer aspect of the game may not have been considered in squadrons. This is pure speculation on my part. Since Frontier they've stated that they are currently looking at how to make this work but one cannot help but wonder why wasn't this part of the design in the first place. My next area of concern is multiplayer with squadrons. You probably saw this coming if you've watched my video on 5 things I would improve about Elite Dangerous. I believe that squadrons are going to highlight a known issue with Elite Dangerous. Its multiplayer capability is known to be lacking on many fronts and I fear that this feature is going to further highlight these problems and in some cases amplify them. Now I've got a quick little scenario here that I haven't done myself, it's just off the top of my head that something that could possibly happen in today's world and I imagine that if we add the squadrons on top of that this would happen as well. Jimmy. Oh Jimmy. Jimmy is currently doing a trade CG and is jumped by a wing of three pilots. Jimmy immediately panics and asks his squadron if anyone can help him because these pilots keep killing him. Three of Jimmy's allies rush to the system to aid Jimmy and attempt to wing with him to help him out. Suddenly insisting issues arise and only one person is able to find Jimmy's instance and attempt to help him. The other two pilots are left in limbo and are unable to provide help. This scenario currently happens today with private groups let alone in open and can be all too common even with tools like Discord and the like. Now player groups are going to quickly realize the limitations of Elite Dangerous multiplayer and how much it lacks. So my thoughts are this Elite Dangerous squadrons are a great MMO feature that this game has needed for quite some time and I applaud Frontier for taking efforts. But the way it looks on the surface squadrons will not solve underlying problems with Elite Dangerous multiplayer. This scenario begs the question what good is having a squadron when players won't be able to play together. This is Buona from Buona.TV and this is Elite Dangerous squadrons. The information provided in the player focus feedback form thread. My thoughts on those and what things I think are possible concerns with this particular feature. Now I encourage you to go to the forum and voice your own opinions. A lot of things that I said in here have already been echoed by other players and I also encourage you to keep an eye on the other focus feedback forms of other features that are coming in Elite Dangerous this year. Let me know what you think in the comments if you have any questions or concerns or if you agree or disagree with anything I've said. And I'll see you all next time. Everybody have a great day and fly safe.