 This is Witch Based News for Friday the 9th of February, 2024, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, the game gets its own Winter Olympics, there's a new world first with a blindfolded Thargoid takedown and is Aegis secretly working on an anti-Titan Death Star. You know how this bit goes, please like, subscribe and ding that little bell so that YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to directly help our work here at the Burpit you can also support us through Patreon, links to that and everything else are in the description below. Racing has existed as a player activity in Elite Dangerous pretty much since the start but it took a particular leap forward with the arrival of the diminutive Scarab SRV and planetary landings in the Horizon expansion at the end of 2015. While still not officially supported in the game in any fashion whatsoever the activity has to this day a fan base of dedicated individuals who organize and compete on an almost weekly basis in one form or another. One such sub-community of that particular devotee fan base are the Elite Racers who right now have just started a season of events entitled the 346th Winter Olympics. The first race in the season in SRVs took place on Saturday the 3rd of February and you can see some footage from that event captured by Commander Tobias von Brandt on screen now. The events in the Elite Racers Winter Olympics take place every 3rd Saturday this year from February to April in the Four Eridani system with the next one another SRV race kicking off on Saturday the 24th. If you want to see footage from previous events we've linked to Commander Tobias von Brandt's YouTube channel below and to participate in future events check out the Elite Racers Discord server that you'll also find linked below. Commander Mechon of the AXI is renowned in the AX community for let's call them unusual Thargoid kills. Have just a cursory look at Mechon's YouTube channel and you'll see Hydra kills in haulers, adders or in just plain un-engineered ships for example. But in the search to make Thargoid fighting even more challenging even Commander Mechon might have outdone himself this time. In his latest combat challenge video the good commander completes a fight against the Thargoid Cyclops completely blindfolded yes you heard that correctly completely blindfolded. Somewhat reminiscent of a violent version of professional rally driving during the fight Mechon is ably assisted by calls and guidance from fellow AX commander Aaron Royce and together over the course of the next 13 or so minutes the pair take apart a Thargoid Cyclops heart by heart. No pun intended it's quite the sight to behold. And while we're talking Commander Mechon and the AXI Mechon has also recently created an infographic to help commanders find their way around the outside of a Thargoid Titan Vessel. The piece which you can see on screen now highlights points on the colossal ship where you'll find the various materials that can be collected as well as where to find bio storage capsules and how to identify the ship's alert status based on changes in its colour. A particular interest is a clearly identified safe spot on the ship's surface where you can hide in order to lose all aggro with the ship. Getting to a Titan is hard enough, navigating and identifying points of interest whilst also trying to avoid counter attacks from the mothership and its supporting ships adds to that headache tenfold and so any intel you can gather before you visit one is naturally vital making Mechon's infographic a must have piece of a complex puzzle. The graphic is part of a larger piece of extensive intel gathering in and around Titan space that you can find on the new and quite excellent Xeno Strike Force website. As always you'll find that and everything we talk about on the show linked below this video. As the long running Thargoid war begins to move into what appears to be its final phase it looks as though the galactic greenie meanies have begun to push back somewhat against the absolute beasting they were taking week on week. The height of the war in May 2023 the Thargoid meanies controlled no less than 1186 systems in and around the bubble after the arrival of the Titan motherships around 6 months before. After that peak humanity started bringing the fight to the Thargoids winning back control from the insectoid space meanies system by system until the first week of December last year when the number of Thargoid controlled systems bottomed out at a relatively more manageable 288. Since that historic low however the numbers have started to gently climb again until as of this week the violent vegetables are back in control of 446 systems in our back yard. Whilst that number is only just over 2% of the total systems in the bubble if the Thargoids continue to expand again and were unable to stem the fall of human held systems or stop the flow of Thargoids coming from the Titan motherships it's tough to see where this might all end. It's particularly interesting then to note the specific wording used in a galnet article that was published just yesterday at the time of recording. The article celebrates the progress being made in anti-Titan technology by Professor Ishmael Palin and the bubble engineer Ram Tarr. Whilst Ram Tarr is working to develop an actual anti-Titan weapon based on Guardian technology Palin has been working specifically on a method of shielding that new weapon technology from the anti-Guardian electromagnetic fields deployed in the space surrounding the Titan vessels that erodes and eventually disables Guardian based tech. The article in question is the first time that certainly that we can recall where Galnet or Frontier directly has specifically stated the Aegis intention to destroy the invading Titans. Previous stories have carefully steered away from that wording instead favouring phrases like going against the Titans or engaging the Titans or defeating the Titans. Until now Frontier's wording had left the door open to the gameplay loops that we're seeing right now in the war continuing in one regard or another as there was always a possibility that like human capital ships in the game the Titans could be driven away but perhaps not obliterated. The direct implication now seems to be that that scenario is not in Fdev's plan and we might in fact yet still have our battle of end or moment with each of the invading Thargoid mother ships. Assuming we do eventually destroy the Titans that might not be the complete end game for the gameplay that we've seen developed. These last couple of years, it's entirely possible of course that the destruction of the Titans could elicit yet more Stargoid launches from the region around Barnards loop. If directed at the bubble once again we could in theory see the whole process restarted in some fashion. It's also worth noting that the Galnet pieces on this subject always seem to reference the weapon, singular, not weapons, plural. This could just be a turn of phrase but we'd again assumed Ramtar had some kind of weapon module in mind for all willing commanders to use but the phraseology could also be used in the same manner if Aegis were in fact referencing a singular anti-Thargoid super gun or death star. Whatever the case it appears that we might not have to wait much longer to find out. More details on the anti-Titan weapon are expected this week and its actual arrival in the game is anticipated to be part of update 18 which is scheduled for Monday the 26th of February, a little over 2 weeks from now. Will you be participating in the Elite Racers Winter Olympics? Are you planning on taking on a Thargoid blindfolded and do you think Aegis is developing a death star for use against the Titans? Let us know in the comments below. That's it for now. Thank you 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.