 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 29th of October 2021, I'm Commander Burr. In a bumper elite dangerous news packed show this week, we get our first glimpse of the new SRV and fleet carrier interiors. Update 8 arrives in Odyssey, the Thargoids re-emerge in huge numbers, Frontier talks Update 9's new features and what to expect, the first phase of the Colonial Bridge is installed, there's a free Arx Bonanza event underway in the game right now, Salvation's weapons are available to all at a discount and more. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. We hosted a special Halloween themed livestream last night which included a briefing on the newly released monthly dev update as well as a fair few competitions and giveaways. As part of the company's ongoing Halloween event weekend the in game earned Arx limit has been raised from the usual 400 to a maximum of 1200 and the income rate commanders receive of Arx for playing the game has been tripled. The two bonuses will last until the 4th of November so make the most of them while you can. As we mentioned last week we had suspicions that Halloween would see something happening in game and sure enough the Thursday's server tick saw the return of the Thargoids this time swarming in the kinds of numbers that have not been seen in the game in a long time. As of this recording 8 starports spread across the Pleiades and witch head sectors are ablaze with rescue efforts underway to evacuate the crispy civilians therein. Commanders can of course engage in the rescue efforts on their own but as is always the case the folks at the post disaster evacuation service are coordinating efforts and carriers should you wish to participate in a team effort to empty the stations of fire fuel. I mentioned that the Thargoids were back in numbers not seen for some time and whilst that's true in the sectors where the attacked stations are you'll also find the California Nebula is likewise heaving under the weight of assembled panic pansies. Typically dropping into a sector in any of the three affected regions will see non human signal sources spread across your FSS scanner numbering in the high 80s with those signal sources having an associated threat level of between 5 and 9 being fairly typical. Frontier did make brief mention on the Halloween livestream that the appearance of the massed ranks of cruelty cabbages along with freshly barbecued civvies was perhaps not the end of things that we can expect with more happening next week. As the attacks happened the mysterious character known as Salvation moved the Megaship Bright Sentinel from the permit locked system of Mabuni to the Marope system in the Pleiades. The Bright Sentinel is host to a tech broker that in exchange for some Guardian bits and bobs will not only furnish you with Salvation's anti-Thargoid Guardian weaponry but is also doing it as of this recording at least at significantly reduced prices. We don't know currently how long the Salvation sponsored weed killer warehouse clearance will last so if you're in the market for these items now would be a good time. Off the back of the recent community goal the Colonia Bridge project began deploying its Phase 1 Megaships this week. Thus far 30 Megaships have been deployed to help bridge the 22,000 light year void between the bubble and Colonia. We've had reports that as of the time of recording 27 of the permanently anchored Megaships have been discovered and logged by commanders. The Brewer Corporation's Colonia Bridge project consists of three total phases this initial deployment of Megaships being Phase 1. What the other phases will install we don't yet know but we think it likely it'll be linked with further community goals. It likely won't have escaped your notice that both Elite Dangerous Odyssey and Elite Dangerous Horizons were updated across PCs and consoles respectively this week. The patch to Horizons deployed a number of small bug fixes and improvements which are detailed in the patch notes and which I've linked in the description below this video. In the last week we've received a larger than usual number of comments on our videos from console commanders asking if Odyssey will be coming to their platform of choice or if Frontier is somehow ignoring them. This is a comment that is directed at Frontier on an almost daily basis across the various social media platforms that we monitor them on and the answer is currently at least always of the same flavour. For those console commanders that might not be following Frontier across social media what they're currently still saying is that the console deployment of Odyssey is on hold whilst the issues the expansion had following it's troubled launch on PC are dealt with. We'll speak more about the current state of Odyssey in a moment but suffice to say whilst it's very much not out of the woods yet it is in a much better position than it was at launch. Frontier is now adding new features and starting to talk about even more features being added in the coming months which was utterly unthinkable when the Odyssey expansion arrived on PC. This is obviously going to be a bitter pill for console commanders to swallow when there has been no further update or news on a release for their game. At the very least we're guessing Fdev will perhaps want to monitor a short period of stability and decent performance on the PC ecosystem before making a commitment on schedules etc for the consoles but the frustration being felt in the console community right now is absolutely understandable rest assured as soon as we know more about the expansion's future on consoles we'll let you know on this very channel. As I mentioned update 8 for Elite Dangerous Odyssey arrived this week in what seems to have now settled into a monthly patch cycle. As is often the way with these things the patch introduced some issues as well as fixes and the first of the after patches was deployed today whilst we were creating this video. As always the full patch notes to both are linked below the video. Thus far the performance in Odyssey seems to again have been generally improved for most people there are still some sporadic stuttering issues around the ever troublesome surface settlements but the vast majority of reports we're seeing are feeding back positive results lending further weight to the suggestion that Frontier are starting to get on top of Odyssey's bigger performance issues. New features wise as was announced ahead of time the update brought with it the new on foot emote system with the current standard 8 emotes being accessible via an on-screen interface wheel or via bindable key presses. A couple of little nuggets of note that we've had reported back to us are saluting or waving at some NPCs at settlement sometimes elicits a reciprocal response from the targeted individual. This doesn't seem to work with guards at settlements who remain stalwartly on duty as well as permanently grumpy however. Also it appears our ships have had a gesture recognition upgrade installed. If you wave at your landed ship it will depart into orbit which is a kind of cute touch. As we reported earlier in the month 4 player multi crew is now possible with an extra seat being installed into the crusader anaconda beluga federal corvette imperial cutter type 9 and type 10. Four on foot engineers have been added to the colonia region although there are problems with unlocking two of the four engineers with elena bressa and why shen not currently being available these are being investigated by fdev currently. Wells class mega ships now have an internal social space that can be accessed on foot and new mission types and NPC interactions for odyssey missions have been installed and horizons era cosmetics have been odysseified and are now accessible for some further on foot customization options. As we reported earlier this month new NPC mission contacts have been added to some odyssey missions as well as new target NPC behavior alongside some other further wrinkles like interdictions and bounty hunters. Those are the patch headliners there's obviously a bunch of other stuff fix wise included and as i've mentioned the full very extensive patch notes are linked below if you're after some more granularity. Along with the regular monthly patch cycle we're becoming accustomed to the equally now regular monthly development update landed on the forums on thursday afternoon. The update format has evolved somewhat as the expansion has evolved where is it used to be in a definite where we've been where we are sprinkled with a little of where we're going it now seems to be edging much more towards the where we're going portion of the update format leaving the where we've been and where we're at portions predominantly in odyssey's regular lengthy patch notes. Having moved past the precy of the current state of play the post then rapidly moved on to what to expect with update 9 and beyond. Without a doubt the poster child for update 9 is to be the new combat centric 2 seater SRV whilst very little is known about the vehicle yet there was a teaser image in the update that shows what appears to be the roof mounted turret of the vehicle. All frontier have said about the vehicle so far is that it's definitely not road legal and the turret does seem to lend weight to speculation that the current somewhat diminutive scarab SRV is about to be joined by a somewhat chunkier and beefier sibling. It's hard to tell from looking at the image but if the turret stows away in a similar fashion to the complicated unfolding system the scarab uses then we certainly can't determine how from this image. If it's chunkier than the current model then there's bound to be speculation as to whether it can even be deployed by all the current ships or will its deployment be restricted to some of the vessels with better ground clearance. Whatever the answer we don't think it'll be too long before we find out. Frontiers Arthur Tolmy has said on a couple of occasions that development of the SRV is very far along we also know from recent live stream comments that he's personally recorded gameplay of the vehicle for a promotional video that the company will be releasing and if the current monthly patch cycle continues then we think it likely we could be driving the SRV ourselves at the end of November. Alongside the new SRV also scheduled for update 9 are further enhancements and improvements to Odyssey's missions with NPC mission contacts of the type added to settlements in update 8 also being added to planetary points of interest with a variety of more complex mission types beyond the simple fetch and carry scene so far. Further update 9 is targeting the addition of settlement based mission provider NPC's similar to those seen in starports in essence potentially turning the thousands of settlements in the galaxy into mission hubs as well as just mission targets. Another headliner for update 9 a new multi limpid controller module that will work in addition to the existing limpid controllers allowing players to deploy multiple limpid types using one module slot in their ships. Frontiers stressing that the module will not replace the existing controllers but rather be balanced to give the basic use of multiple types with the dedicated modules still presumably offering more for longer. The dev update then goes on to talk about what to expect post update 9 with fleet carrier interiors. Straight out of the gate the update went for a bombshell opening with a black and white work in progress screenshot of the view from the bridge of a player owned fleet carrier. The update further reveals that players will be able to experience the view of a hyperspace jump while seated in a carrier. There'd been much speculation on how frontier would handle the tricky issue of moving what is essentially a space station while there are players running around inside and their careful use of the words quote experience a hyperspace jump seated inside a carrier unquote would seem to suggest that you'll likely be forced into a seated viewing area for the jump. How fleet carriers would handle a jump has been the subject of much speculation and debate amongst the commanders of the burpit. The big asks from the community at large pretty much since carriers launched have been let us see the hyperspace jump and I want to visit the bridge. Without having seen the experience in action it does appear that some version of those requests is being delivered but we'll have to wait and see how frontier and the cobra engine handle the not insignificant variable juggling surrounding people and feet and hyperspace and moving stations. Fleet carriers interior social spaces will change somewhat depending on what services a player has installed the example being given that adding a shipyard will allow on foot players to buy ships from the concourse similar to how it works currently with star ports and the update further hints that new optional services will also be available to fleet carrier owners but no details are revealed in this update at least they did however promise that what they're calling a very special VIP carrier tour will be revealed in December. The update finishes by mentioning the azimuth saga that is playing out in the game currently and saying that the efforts towards narrative in the game will be continuing into 2022. Once again this month the promised upturn in frontiers communication policy and how it deals with the elite community is very evident. Talking about updates and new features a month or more in advance is a fairly significant about turn and that's good to see as the situation with odyssey on the pc continues to make strides in the right direction we're keen to see that communication extend to the console community offering some more clarification on the situation with the expansion's arrival for them how do you think the carriers hyperspace jump is going to work on foot in odyssey what new services do you think frontier are hinting at are you headed to the pliades and the witch head sectors for rescues or thargoid smashing 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