 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 21st of April 2023. I'm CMDR Buur. An elite dangerous news this week. Frontier drops its first T's footage from update 15 and we now know the expected release date. Significant gains are made in the fight back against the Thargoids, EDDB 2.0 is in development and more. As always if you enjoy our videos please do hit the like button and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and click the bell so you don't miss any of our Elite Dangerous content and if you'd like to help directly support our work you can join our Patreon links to that and everything else are below. Just as last week's Witchspace news went live Frontier announced that long time Senior Community Manager Bruce Guerrero would be leaving Elite Dangerous. Bruce is staying at Frontier and moving over to other projects within the Frontier stable. During his 3 year tenure on Elite Dangerous Bruce had become known for quiet reserve and dry wit but he will perhaps be best remembered for shooting teammate Arthur in the back at every opportunity during settlement raids live on stream. Without a shadow of a doubt his presence will be keenly missed. 07 Bruce thanks for the giggles and we wish you every success in your onward journey. Whilst we're discussing Frontier operational announcements on the update 15 teaser live stream last night more on that in a moment Frontier announced that following viewer feedback they've chosen to change the cadence of the frameshift live streams from once a fortnight to once a month. In making the announcement last night Arthur stated that they were keen to make the shows more qualitative in nature and include more news and looks behind the scenes etc but collating that stuff takes time hence the change. Reviewing the regularity of the shows and then making the change is something Frontier has done before. Long term viewers will remember that the show used to be a weekly affair and that was changed to allow the team to make it more information dense. As things stand looking back over the shows since Christmas it tends to roughly follow the pattern of one dev or community guest stream followed by a more regular stream that features the community managers talking about what the community has been up to and happenings in the game with little else meet to it. The dev and guest based streams are always a big hit, the more infill streams which feature no real news or behind the scenes insight into the game are the ones that don't hit quite so positively and likely generate the most negative feedback and it seems it's these streams that are likely being removed in favour of giving the remaining monthly stream more of an opportunity to punch harder. In the last few weeks fdev have made significant changes to some of their communication, the weekly discovery scanner posted to the news site and forums has been changed from a definitely will happen thing to a definitely will happen when it makes sense for it to happen thing and following yesterday's announcement the rhythm of the live streams has been changed to monthly and obviously there's the announcement of bruce's moving on from elite reducing elites community management team to now be Sally, Paul and Arthur. Following the live stream and discovery announcements in particular we've had feedback from the community in general calling doom on elite dangerous and we've also had feedback cheering on those two decisions asking for quality not where you stand on the subject will likely depend on your relationship with elite dangerous on the whole the proof of the pudding will of course be what frontier delivers for their next few live streams going forward and whether they're able to make those streams the valuable quality community event that they're certainly aiming for. It's worth noting as well that in a post summarizing the live stream schedule announcement in particular CM Sally Morgan Moore said on the official frontier forums today and I quote we hear many of your concerns over this decision with some commanders expressing worry over whether this is a reflection of future lifespan decisions related to elite in the long term I'd like to reassure everyone that this decision holds absolutely no such cause for concern of this kind end quote the next elite dangerous frame shift live live stream is scheduled for the 18th of May it's been an interesting week for the Thargoid war as humankind has started to see real progress in the pushback against the bugs this last week has seen the largest number of alert systems cleared since the war began for the first few months of the war up until around mid-march the community effort had overwhelmingly been directed at systems undergoing Thargoid invasion however directly following an article on Galnet in game on the 16th of March where the Xeno defense and research agency Aegis recommended commanders focus instead on addressing alert systems instead of invasion systems the tide appears to be turning in this stark image taken from the excellent defense council of humanity website you can see the number of systems being cleared of invasion is shown in orange the number of systems having their alert status cleared is shown in yellow all the yellow on the far right of the graph kicks in immediately following the galnet article now compare that data with the second graph covering the same period in this image you can see the total number of systems involved in the war in any given state over that same period yellow being alert orange being invasion the number of alert systems does appear to have been capped by frontier at 40 around the time that the galnet article launched but at the same time the community focus shifted and the result is that the number of systems being invaded has absolutely plummeted from an all-time previous high of 67 invaded systems there are now just four as I speak these words the green line on the graph that you can see in the second image represents total number of systems that have fallen completely to the Thargoid advance and are now under their control even the upward curve on that has now started to level out following the adoption of the new tactics I just caveat all this right now by saying that at no point are we in serious danger of forcing the Thargoid invasion back just yet and sending the maelstroms and whatever is at the center running away with its thorax tucked between its multiple limbs however with the focus now solidly shifted toward preventative measures rather than reactive measures we can in theory at least hold fast a front line against the slavering hordes whilst the more combat centric portions of the player base attack the infested and invaded systems behind that front line for a much more detailed ongoing analysis of the Thargoid war on a week by week basis you'll always find Ian Doncaster's forum thread on breaking down the Thargoid war in the list of useful links in the description of all our videos likewise for a more pictorial breakdown of the war's progress take a look at the DCOH Overwatch website which is similarly always linked below we reported a few weeks back that the off-trafficked community website eddb.io had very sadly had to close its doors due to the author's life taking them in other directions as is so often the case nature abhors a vacuum and a community effort has sprung up in eddb's stead to replace the website the effort currently being called eddb 2.0 is still very much in its early planning stages but being a group collective effort its existence won't be dependent on the involvement of just one individual there's no url or website in existence just yet for you to bookmark but there is now a discord server which you'll find linked below if you'd like to get involved in the project also of note this week the just as trafficked and just as useful website inara.cz added and revamped a few of its tools particularly around trade route searches and searches for multi-state minor factions as well as adding a new massacre mission stacking tool you'll find all of that linked in the description below this video last night saw the latest episode of frontiers frameshift live livestream and it was a corker we'd been promised not only a developer interview but also there were hints of an update 15 ts and the stream did not disappoint on either front plus we also unexpectedly got a scheduled release date for update 15 that date is Tuesday May the 9th during the stream the audience were introduced to a developer new to the live streams but not too elite dangerous in the shape of Curtis Curtis began studying astrophysics and computer science at university but rapidly became interested in creating video games and ended up creating a horror game for his university dissertation thereafter he mastered in video game design and joined frontiers shortly after finishing university just over a year ago these days Curtis is heavily involved in scenario design working on things like the content found in unknown signal sources and conflict zones working closely with stream semi-regular tom cool it's always a pleasure to hear from the devs on an fdev live stream and their visits never fail to deliver a juicy nugget or two so be sure to check out the rest of the chat with Curtis which you'll find as always linked below as we mentioned frontier had hinted that we may get our first small taste of update 15 during this stream and as the interview with Curtis began to wrap up the stream was indeed interrupted by some unintentionally glitchy footage showing what appears to be a new variant of fargoid vessel unlike anything we've seen prior the new ship appears to be much smaller than regular intercept to class ships and most definitely quicker and more agile in case you weren't watching last night here is exactly what was shown we've grabbed a couple of still images from the stream that you can see on screen now the community has immediately picked up on the vessels design traits likening it to a shuriken or the glaive from the 80s fantasy movie Krull or some other similar sort of bladed throwing star Arthur hinted that perhaps just like the author this new variant may have a specific role to play nothing else is known about the vessel at this point but the cm team were keen to point out that this thing whatever it is is just a small part of update 15 describing it as the cherry on top further expounding that update 15 contains a big moment that will be up to the players to experience for themselves but they are obviously keen not to spoil any other details before we get a look at the update ourselves as we mentioned update 15 is currently planned to arrive on may the 9th can't wait how do you think the fargoid war is going right now have you personally been active in any of the fargoid alert systems and just what do you think the purpose of this new fargoid ship could be 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