 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 18th of December 2020 I'm CMDR Buur In this weeks news, Frontier drops more information about Odyssey and specifically combat in Odyssey than it has ever done before. In this Witchspace news special we're going to break down what happened yesterday, what we now know and where it leaves on foot combat in the games biggest expansion yet. If you enjoyed this video remember to hit like and subscribe and if you'd like to help support the work of this channel you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. So massive day yesterday, let's get into it. The run of events went something like this, from midday UTC Frontier hosted a 2020 anniversary live stream where they reviewed the year in Elite Dangerous, what the community had done, what had been introduced to the game and where we are now. They also held some special events where they were joined by CMDR Escobius for some Type 9 ship racing, participated in a buckyball race with Alec Turner and chatted to the team from SPVFA about photography and videography in the game. All in all it was a fantastic jam packed stream that lasted nearly 5 hours. In the middle of the stream after another hilarious visit from the now channel 07 Anchorman spoof news team there was a surprise reveal of developer diary 3 entitled The Sphere of Combat. Immediately after the dev diary was shown the team went straight to a pre-recorded interview that was conducted that morning with Gareth Hughes the lead designer for Elite Dangerous Odyssey. I'm going to break down everything we saw in those two pieces. The dev diary was of the type and format that we've now become used to seeing for Elite Dangerous Odyssey, some flashy images, the odd nugget of interesting factoid and some stuff you could speculate on but all in all rather light on actual details for what is actually a very detailed and deep game. Generally speaking the dev diaries have been more in the vein of a marketing promotional video than they have a true developer diary and I do understand the need for these particularly when trying to entice new players to the game. The interview that ran for a full 30 plus minutes immediately afterwards however gives some much needed context and depth to the visuals that we've been seeing for the last few months and in our opinion suddenly starts to make Odyssey a much more appealing proposition for the existing player base so let's get into the dev diary first. Called the Sphere of Combat. That title should set the scene for what to expect Frontier have referred on numerous occasions to what they call the Sphere of Combat being a key feature of Odyssey that's to say Starship's infantry and ground vehicles all inhabiting the same battle space. The video has a 4 and a half minute run time and the Sphere of Combat as a feature only gets spoken about in very broad terms for 45 seconds of that run time but it doesn't actually garner any screen time visuals at all. What the dev diary does show is the first person heads up display in action that we've only previously seen stills of there's a very cool augmented reality ammo counterfeature that follows the gun around on screen and an icon on the compass at the top of the HUD that appears to show where you find your ship and we get to see two types of grenades being used a regular explosive frag grenade and some sort of stun grenade whilst this is something that we thought we'd seen in the gameplay trailer the dev diary appeared to confirm it and we'll talk a little more about grenades when we come onto the interview section we also get to see and hear about some of the handheld weapons coming to Odyssey the artwork for which looks fantastic whilst Frontier have confirmed elsewhere this week that the first person combat in Odyssey won't feature the ability to lean or go prone the video did give us a look at a previously unrevealed cutting tool being used which hints at some deeper more tactical gameplay and we also finally get to see the players jump capable backpack in action audio is once again a big part of elites design moving into Odyssey and the dev diary goes on to talk about sound design in the first person arena and even showed the team sampling real gun sounds at Pinewood Studios the diary throughout shows lots of imagery of first person shooting and gunplay a lot of which we'd seen before in the gameplay reveal trailer last week but there were some new snippets in there as well the pace of Odyssey first person combat looks great and I'm itching to try it but the dev diary didn't offer any context or further depth to the imagery it was showing my problem with dev diary 3 was that it didn't manage to deliver on what the title promises having ships SRVs and infantry in the same space is the start of the sphere of combat but it's not the whole feature those separate elements need a way to interact and engage with each other in order to make the sphere meaningful ships need ground tracking sensors and guided munitions in order for them to observe and deal with ground based threats ground based objects like infantry and vehicles need to be able to deal with that incoming threat using meaningful surface to air weapons likewise infantry need to be able to use their inherent stealth to pose a threat to the ground vehicles with meaningful surface to surface weapons and then when they break that stealth ground and air assets must have suitable retaliatory tool sets that they can call upon it's a cyclical long established trinity of measure and countermeasure and it should make for interesting and entertaining tactical gameplay over and above player shoots gun the problem we're presented with when absorbing dev diary 3 is that despite the sphere of combat being the headline title of the video it isn't shown or talked about in specific terms and also we're only shown player shoots gun at another AI or player who is also shooting a gun back at them as hardened elite dangerous players we all know the game is far deeper than that but until it's shown or talked about in odyssey why would you believe the game has anything to offer over and above something like call of duty or battlefield so you'll remember at the start of this that i said it was important to take the dev diary in context with the interview that was released immediately afterwards for my money the interview with lead designer for odyssey gareth hughes conducted by lead community manager arthur told me does exactly what the developer diaries should have been doing all this time and was honestly fantastic and got me really excited for odyssey ground combat again so take a seat get comfortable because if you haven't yet seen that interview you're about to learn way more about the depth of first-person combat in elite dangerous odyssey than you have ever learnt before combat is most definitely not limited to just players on foot it embraces ships s rvs and troops all in the same place all at the same time and that triangle of combat presents some significant challenges in terms of tempo and balance how exactly that works out we don't yet know but it seems that the dev team will be encouraging the use of small and medium ships combat can take place pretty much anywhere except the social hubs in star ports and space stations those will always be safe zones but combat with ai will predominantly be focused around settlements points of interest and combat zones gareth described them as honey pots to draw in and focus a lot of first-person player activity but not just combat combat is just one strand of the odyssey experience some of the ground missions in odyssey won't demand combat but combat could always take place depending on how the mission is approached player agency has always been key in the elite experience and it seems the team is keen to carry that forward into odyssey massacre and assassination missions have their odyssey equivalents but players will be able to choose how they approach those missions going in guns blazing or taking a more measured approach scouting and sneaking their way through the suits that players equip themselves with will come with tools and features that will serve those different approaches and play styles Arthur and gareth talked about two approaches to an assassination mission where you could potentially approach a target installation looking for one individual and just kill everyone in that installation until you find the guy you're looking for but that will have consequences for the background simulation and perhaps obviously your legal standing the more subtle approach would be to find an information terminal in the settlement and attach some sort of hacking device using essentially personal records to track down the person you're looking for it seems you'll also be able to scan the ai at the installation to gain access to their credentials and then use that information to gain access to the individual you're looking for once you have the target individual highlighted you can use further tools in your armory to gain access to areas that would normally be out of bounds for you or circumvent security systems all the while it seems you can potentially have a teammate nearby ready to act as support or as a getaway driver should things go south and it seems that if the ai catches you hacking or scanning or somewhere that you shouldn't be things will go south we've seen in some of the trailers how buildings at settlements have markings to identify what they do and it seems that has a purpose in odyssey beyond aesthetics and world building one example the team gave centers around the idea of power cores power cores are a component of the power reactor for a settlement if it's removed then power across the settlement goes down doors closed lights go out etc we've seen characters running around in the dark this is why the power core however has value and can be removed from one place and plugged into an installation somewhere else to bring that settlement online getting into an abandoned offline settlement may not be that easy either though as you'll need cutting equipment to get through closed doors and it's possible there may be pirates in the installation ransacking it and they'll need to be dealt with in trailers we've also seen buildings apparently on fire it seems combat can trigger fires to break out in planetary settlements but those fires can be dealt with by depressurizing and venting the oxygen with the outside that however requires the station to be powered up which requires a power core it's also entirely possible that while you're in the middle of all this a drop ship could come down outside and drop off more problems for you to deal with AI using drop ships confirmed other missions may task you with stealing the output of an installations manufacturing plan or crucial data or defense plans the guys then moved on to talk about spacesuits there are four key spacesuit types the remlock maverick which is described as a good all-round scavenging and utility suit it's robust and has a large amount of inventory space to store your ill-gotten gains it also comes equipped with a unique tool the arc cutter which can be used for cutting and opening panels in installations to gain access to the workings underneath secondly the manticore dominator this is a tactician suit and it's completely geared around combat tough shields tough armor and has two slots for primary weapons no other suit has that and it also carries a lot more grenades suit number three is the super tech Artemis this is your explorers suit of choice and it focuses on sustaining you and your life for extended periods whilst away from your ship the fourth suit is the one you own already it'll let you get out of your ship but it has no specialty or specific function other than keeping you alive when your canopy blows out it seems that in the more intense ground combat situations there will be bonuses to having different players in different suits with different weapons everyone having tools and abilities that they can uniquely bring to the fight and this can all be further enhanced with engineering and loadout customization so for example you might be a great damage sponge that can strip an enemy shields down really quickly in the opening moments while your wingmate might be a better ranged combat here ideally suited to dealing direct damage to armor while we're talking damage ground weapons come in four damage types laser kinetic plasma and explosive very much a synergy with ships lasers are effective against shields kinetic damage is good against armor and plasma is somewhere in the middle with a higher skill requirement for the slower moving projectile we mentioned grenades there are it seems three types explosive grenades that deal direct damage to armor but are blocked by shields emp grenades which are good at stripping shields and the third grenade is a kind of deployable shield that will project a powerful shield dome for a short period for players to shelter under during the conversation the guys confirmed that you will be fighting SRVs and you can run people over in fact it's actively encouraged it seems base defenses have been beefed up somewhat for odyssey and AI will start deploying heavy weapons specifically designed for the job if ships or vehicles are somewhere they don't want them to be settlements and installations will continue to sport turrets and point defenses of various flavors to deal with personnel vehicles ships and missiles etc but different types of settlement will sport different strengths of defenses a military base for example will make a much tougher target as the conversation continued it became apparent that come odyssey will be meeting in person the engineers we've been dealing with all these years and there will be new engineers introduced for odyssey frontier are apparently keen that players develop an affinity with their chosen weapon and don't want them to become a disposable commodity they will also have pains to point out that there are low to no barriers to entry when buying and trying out weapons at the start of odyssey so you'll have the opportunity to find a weapon and a role that suits you before committing to an upgrade path as a closing to the interview Arthur and Gareth spoke about the best things they'd seen in the ground combat so far gareth spoke about seeing a combat zone up and running for the first time flying in on a drop ship and seeing combat happening on the ground likewise Arthur spoke about seeing troops storming across a bridge with mast gun and anti-airfire happening as ships move across the battlescape it's clear that there's much more to see with odyssey than has been alluded to so far and certainly way more than was shown in the rather light third developer diary Arthur closed the interview segment by noting that a swathe of questions from the forum had been harvested and passed to the dev team and we can expect a forum post detailing some further answers in the very near future so how is this new information left you feeling about ground combat in elite dangerous odyssey are you eager to hear more or has the merest mention of the supra tech Artemis space suit got you hankering for the deep black one more time 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