 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 22nd of May 2020, I'm CMDR Buur. In this weeks news, the Fleet Carrier Beta enters the blowout period, Operation Ida are holding a PVP Beta event and Frontier Development ups expectations in its financial forecast. If you enjoy this video consider subscribing and also click the little bell icon to make sure you don't miss any of our future videos. The second and final Beta test period for the upcoming much anticipated and often delayed Fleet Carrier update entered its terminal dive this week with the start of the promised Beta Blowout period. The blowout which applies to the Beta only sees the prohibitive purchase price of the Drake class Fleet Carrier drop to just 1 million credits meaning just about anybody can purchase one. Whilst the sudden glut of Fleet Carriers didn't cause the server Armageddon that many had anticipated, it did cause its very own Fleet Carrier specific problems. The systems where the mighty ships can be purchased were quickly so full that the newly purchased mega ships had to spawn in neighboring systems. Spawning in a system without a carrier dock or an administration system meant that commanders were unable to change anything on their carrier and would instead be required to jump the carrier to an administration capable system before making any changes. Whilst you can search and filter the galaxy map for admin capable systems the filter does require you to have visited the system first in order to filter the information and in the Beta your previously visited systems information is wiped meaning you can't then find the carrier administration systems. A list of carrier admin capable systems in the bubble was posted to the official forums my thanks to Commander Phil P and General Zoff on our discord for the heads up there and it appears that in the beta at least there simply isn't the choice out in Colonia. Elsewhere in beta news there were a few bug fixes this week but it doesn't seem at this stage that the beta will see any significant sweeping changes similar to those that we saw in beta one of the test. The fleet carrier update itself is scheduled to drop sometime in June and with this being the first significant update to the game in some significant time it's fair to say the expectations are stacked very high indeed. An update like fleet carriers is an opportunity for Frontier to restart the Thargoid War as well as reintroduce features like the Galnet newsfeed in-game community goals and interstellar initiatives but as of right now we've no idea if any of those things are coming back for sure in June but Frontier did say in January that quote interstellar initiative slash community goals will be on hold while we focus on the subsequent series of updates and beaters that will be coming over the following months unquote. We would argue that those updates and beaters are now coming to an end and therefore an expectation that at the very least community goals and interstellar initiatives may be about to return is not entirely unreasonable I'll guess we'll know more in June. Operation Ida the player run organization dedicated to repairing stations attacked by the Thargoids announced this week that they are hosting their own beta blowout event. This weekend participants are being invited to jump into one of two Ida run fleet carriers with their own choice of combat capable spaceship at a designated time the carriers will then jump to a system that contains notable stellar phenomena where participants will then be invited to battle it out as the event entitled beautiful death is taking place in the beta it's completely consequence free and is open to everyone details on how you can join a linked below and finally a quick bit of frontier corporate news this week for the second time in a month the company issued a statement saying that it's operating profits are likely to be materially ahead of those forecast previously essentially meaning it's bringing in more money right now than it had expected to the phrase materially ahead is usually code for at least a 10 percent increase in anticipated profits which would put frontier operating profits around the 14.6 million pounds mark the share price for the Cambridge based publishing and development house unsurprisingly jumped at the news it probably won't come as a huge shock that video game sales across the industry have increased significantly globally during the pandemic lockdown period as consumers attempt to combat the enforced boredom they're living under frontier being just one of many companies whose stable of products have benefited from the bizarre world we currently find ourselves in sales of the elite dangerous base game specifically broke through the 3.5 million total units sold barrier in April and the attachment rate for players that then go on to purchase horizons as well appears to be around the 50 percent mark although those figures are significantly fuzzier now the elite and horizons are often bundled together in sales etc frontier is due to produce its year end report on the 8th of June 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 rank we very much look forward to seeing you next time