 This is Witchface news for Friday the 26th of May 2023, I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, the community brings science to bear against the Glaive with some interesting results. While Aegis contacts the player base directly there's also a player driven initiative to drive forward the Azimuth mandate and this week's community goal brings us a significant step closer to analysing the Titans. 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. You can also join our Patreon if you'd like to help directly support our work, links to that and everything else are below. Aside from the unveiling of the Titans, one of the key features update 15 will also be remembered for is the introduction of the new Hunter class Thargoid Vessels and the arrival of the Glaive. Whilst we've seen many a new Thargoid ship arrive in past years, if you're not particularly killy when it comes to Thargoids we've largely had the choice to either outrun them or avoid them completely. It was suspected when we first saw the Glaive at a Frontier Preview event however that these more pacifistic tactics were likely not going to be an option when faced with one of this new class of ships and within just a few days of their arrival our fears were indeed confirmed. When they were first introduced the Glaives could be found exclusively in the space immediately surrounding the Thargoid Titan vessels however after that they began moving outward and quickly inter and hyperdictions from Glaives started to become all too common on the frontline and counter strike systems. As I've mentioned this wouldn't be a problem so much with previous iterations of Thargoid weaponry but the Glaive is different and it's clearly been designed to be disruptive. The Glaive is extremely fast. Orders of magnitude faster than anything else the Thargoids have fielded before. Only the very fastest of highly engineered ships designed for racing appear to be able to easily outrun them. Worse than that however is the Glaives toolset when it has you in range. If you're a player who is unfamiliar with combat or worse unwilling to participate in combat with the Thargoids then an encounter with a Glaive can be devastating. Upon initial contact the vessel immediately shuts down your Frameshift drive preventing escape. It then initiates a series of dazzling lightning quick attacks that sap the power from engines and prevent you from moving with any great speed let alone boosting away. Once you are to all intense dead in the water it then deals damaging attack after damaging attack some of which are caustic in nature wearing you down until the icy grip of the void mercifully takes you away from the harrowing all deal. When it comes to actual combat with a Glaive they are thankfully uncomplicated beasts accepting just pure mindless damage but for all but the most prepared combat will likely leave you in no fit state to do anything else. This is of course likely all to happen before you even reach the Maelstrom system and the highly damaging environment of the clouds themselves. For the explorer, scientist or just plain content curious tourist to call it a rough road is somewhat of an understatement and honestly right now for those folks Thargoid space is currently somewhat of a no go area. The question has to be is there anything aside from a stand up fight that can be done about them. This week Commander Greybeard Seawolf asked on twitter for folks to relay their experiences of the Glaive and just asking of the question became somewhat of a beacon for a bit of community science to happen. I do want to preface this next bit by saying that right now we don't have any definitive answers for you but the thread did contain some useful collected experiences that are worthy of further testing in the wider community hence our inclusion of it here this week. As things stand without definitive proof right now given what we've read this week here's what I'd suggest. There is some compelling evidence that the immediate split second use of silent running is absolutely worth trying you'll find video evidence from commander radium IO below. Really importantly whilst you need to be as fast as you can there is again very compelling evidence that resisting the urge to boost while you are in silent running may have significant value. Upon contact you'll get a missile launch alert. It's that missile that shuts down your frame shift. Use of a regular ECM burst when the missile is close enough is definitely very compelling from ours and others results. The most important thing you can do with any of these tactics or anything you try yourself is share your results good or bad. The more information we can get out to the hands of more commanders the more chance we have of negating the debilitating effects of the Glaive in open space. You'll find a link to the Twitter thread I've mentioned below if that platform suits you or maybe get your results to the frontier forums or comment below this video with what you find. Clearly wanting to get your attention Professor Albert Tesro of the previously ridiculed and retired but now renewed and reforged Xeno Defense and Research Agency Aegis contacted every single independent commander in the Elite Dangerous Live Game Galaxy this week with a 3 part fully voiced message to their cockpit inbox. If you've not seen and heard it already check your inbox and look for the discovered Logs entry. In the message Professor Tesro recounts the recent trials and tribulations of Aegis acknowledging and accepting the problems of their previous iteration whilst also highlighting their new efforts and recent successes. The most notable of their previous failings being their almost complete reliance on independent pilots and their rebies for the defence portion of their stated mandate. Rarely if ever in fact pitching in and actually you know defending, preferring instead to bravely supervise from the safety of a megaship parked near an AXCZ but not so near that they are in danger of actually being CZ themselves. With the reforging of Aegis we have now started to see Aegis combatants and megaships directly involved as part of the ongoing struggle against the Thargoid invasion. And the Aegis science and engineering divisions can now proudly count the recently released Caustic Sync Launcher and the Thargoid Pulse Neutraliser amongst their early wins. All facts that are pointed out by Tesro in the address to commanders. The previous failings of the former incarnation of Aegis are not lost on the player base of Elite Dangerous either, indeed this very channel is guilty of mocking Aegis in its former life for merely observing Thargoid incursions from a safe distance while commanders throw themselves off the cliffs in an effort to stop the swarm. And a number of weeks ago we were made aware of a then draft and now public statement from a new player initiative that was forming with the specific mandate of supporting the efforts of Azimuth Biotech. Azimuth Biotech being the company formerly headed by Caleb Wichely who preferred more recently to be known as Salvation and is now either properly dead or evolving into the Guardian based equivalent of Tron's Master Control Programme depending on who you speak to. Sojin A the artist formerly known as Subject D2 would have you believe the latter. The Azimuth Biotech Player initiative is now organising and has a Discord server where you'll find the public statement that I mentioned. The statement is lengthy but if you're unfamiliar with the long history of Enra, Aegis and indeed Azimuth it makes for an interesting read and whilst I think it's fair to say they have no specific love or importantly trust of Aegis they do acknowledge that the organisation is providing what they refer to as the shields for combat. Their argument is that a shield is just part of the equation and it's Azimuth Biotech that has been providing the most effective weapons and as such they should be supported not attacked. Of course the in-game Azimuth Corporation themselves are not in a position to inhabit a colossal stretch of the moral high ground, their legacy of human experimentation speaks to that quite clearly but in their defence as far as we know right now those actions were under the previous administration who as I mentioned is now beyond his corporeal existence in one form or another at least. Whilst it's early days for the Azimuth Player initiative they do now have some BGS goals and a structured discord which I've linked to below if you'd like to get involved. Whilst we're talking all things Aegis in this week's recorded message Albert Tesro goes on to comment that the science division's next trinket from their toy box is rapidly approaching and indeed this week's community goal which launched on Thursday aims to bring that very trinket to the cockpit in the form of the pulse wave Xeno scanner. Not to be confused of course with the Xeno scanner, the Thargoid pulse neutraliser or the SRV wave scanner, the pulse wave Xeno scanner will enable pilots to scan the Thargoid titans at the centre of the maelstroms. There's quite a lot of waves and pulses and scanners drifting about in the Thargoid marketplace these days leading to some significant brand identity dilution and likely resultant consumer confusion, I'd like to humbly suggest to the marketing teams at Aegis that they consider simplifying things somewhat, lose the pulse and wave descriptors and maybe just call it a titan scanner. I suspect that's what the consumer will default to anyway. Brand awareness concerns aside as I've mentioned the plan was that the titan scanner would be available at the bubble's rescue mega ships outfitting base following the completion of this week's community goal. Just after the goal kicked off however commanders began noticing that the titan scanner was in fact already available at military surface ports, obviously accidentally. Frontier have confirmed that with this morning's tick the titan scanner was removed from outfitting options but those that have already fitted the errant module will be allowed to keep it. Its premature arrival did give the community a preview of its stats and operation and it appears from what we've seen that the scanner has dual functionality as well as acting as a titan scanner it can also be used to scan the smaller garden variety thargoids as well. Scanning a titan itself reveals points of interest in research limpet attach points that can be used to gather some of the materials that have been listed in the fleet carrier inventories since update 15 launched but players couldn't actually yet gather as well as locations for the materials that we can already see and chip off of the thargoid capital vessels using weapons fire. Whether the titan scanner has the range of the enhanced zeno scanner or just the regular zeno scanner when being used on the more common goids rather than titans is currently unclear. The community goal this week is a dual pronged hauling protect the haulers affair with the top 25% of participants for both cgs receiving a free titan scanner after the gold ends. It does seem currently that the scanner will be widely available to purchase rather than unlock at a tech broker once the cg cycle is complete this week. Quite what a bag full of titan scrapings is going to yield as the story moves forward is of course anybody's guess at this point. It's worth noting however if you've not yet visited a titan that thargoid vessels enter and leave the mothership by phasing through some sort of biotechnological goopy membrane that itself appears to be researchable and sample worthy via usage of the titan scanner. It's not a gigantic leap then to postulate that with appropriate research we ourselves might be able to replicate whatever system allows thargoids through but keeps us out allowing human weapons or perhaps even ships access to the interior. How have you fared when trying to evade the thargoid glaives will you be joining the pro azimuth movement or perhaps keeping a closer eye now that you know it exists were you lucky enough to bag a titan scanner and if you were what is it showing you 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 we very much look forward to seeing you next time