 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 12th of March 2021, I'm CMDR Buur In this weeks news, more Odyssey details are released on Tuesday's live stream, community manager Stephen Benedetti leaves Elite, cryptic Morse code messages from Frontier allude to Mor from the Adam Aster, Elite's player numbers might surprise you and an SRV reaches a fleet carrier. If you enjoy this video hit like and subscribe and remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications as that stuff really helps the channel and if you'd like to further support our work you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. In what is fast becoming a very positive habit Frontier released some more details about Odyssey on this week's Super Cruise news live stream on Tuesday afternoon Until fairly recently Super Cruise news had always been enjoyable but somewhat lightweight jolt around Elite's community news with a little bit of let's play thrown in but the last couple of weeks have seen Frontier speaking more openly about Odyssey and offering more finer granularity to the details that they've already released. There's a fantastic point by point breakdown on Reddit by CMDR Zerito which I've linked in the video description below but to wet your appetite here's a few of the more salient points that caught our eye. The community team reiterated again that the AI shown in the heist gameplay trailer last week was of a lower rank in order to facilitate the filming that they needed to get done and in actual fact they did die a fair few times whilst filming but have employed some artistic license in what was shown in order to get the point across. In fact at one point during their filming the top level military ranked AI probably the equivalent of the Spec Ops ships you get in combat zones in the current game did turn up and well they died. Planetary rings won't cast shadows on the planet's surface when you're landed this is a question left over from the interview with Dr K Ross a couple of weeks back Arthur didn't help with strafing runs from his ship before the team was extracting as quite simply the base's defences are of such a level now that he would have been killed in fairly short order. This is something that they've touched on before as well he did in fact fire off a few volleys from his crusader when approaching for the extraction once the installation power was offline. This is something we pointed out in our analysis video which you'll find linked on screen now. Importantly there is nothing in Odyssey that you can't do in single player but it will for obvious reasons require a slightly different approach when you have less firepower or dare I say it meat shielding at your disposal. They're keen to show off exploration and salvaging etc so it's likely we can expect more gameplay videos covering those aspects going forward. Arthur thinks the current plan is for the alpha to be 6 weeks long but is looking for some clarity on that. The frontline solution system which is something Frontier have yet to offer any more specific details on will allow players to join what they described as large battles and one really interesting final nugget at one point in their testing they accidentally spawned a player into orbit instead of onto a planet surface. When clarifying that this isn't something you'll be able to do in Odyssey Arthur did say and I'm quoting directly here that is not saying there is not zero G stuff in Odyssey. We're not going to speculate on what that could mean but oh my isn't that an interesting line. As I mentioned the full text breakdown is on reddit there's loads more juicy details in there so do take a look it's linked in the description below. Community manager Stephen Benedetti made a surprise appearance at the end of the Thursday livestream from Frontier this week to announce his departure from the elite dangerous galaxy. While Stephen is leaving elite he's not leaving Frontier and will be moving on to work on another product in the company that the team didn't elaborate on. Good luck Stephen and thanks for everything from everyone here at the pit. Frontier kicked off the week with a fairly innocuous looking post on social media showing a close up of a Thargoid vessel with the words what's your favourite mystery in elite dangerous. Upon closer inspection of the image however it became apparent that the image contained what appeared to be a string of morse code characters in the bottom left. The elite community being what it is the Morse code was quickly decoded and it spelt out the word Hesperus. Even a cursory google search will turn up a number of references to the word Hesperus with the favourites being a 19th century poem, an ancient world word for the planet Venus and the community had also named a point of interest on EDSM as Hesperus. Speculation ran rife but no more solid answers were forthcoming until the super cruise news live stream the next day the show opened with a burst of audio morse code this time spelling out the word azimuth. This is where it starts to get interesting azimuth biochemicals were the company behind the doomed Adamastor expedition that uncovered the existence of the Thargoids in an expedition to the Colsack Nebula a few hundred years ago. The ill-fated vessel returning devoid of life to the bubble in October last year during the Halloween special event. Frontier have stated on a couple of occasions that were not done with the Adamastor storyline there is still more to come there in fact most recently Arthur mentioned it in an interview on the excellent flight assist podcast when speaking to the twitch streamers scikit and Mal for the win. During the live stream Morse burst there was a galnet story on Wednesday that revealed that the ill-fated ship Adamastor had a sister vessel and that vessel was called the Hesperus as of this recording nothing else has happened inside or outside the game but you can bet that something is coming and will likely be following leads to find out what happened to the Hesperus sooner rather than later. Elite Dangerous Reddit luminary Stuart GT posted some fascinating tidbits from a stockbroker report that point to the long speculated player numbers for Elite Dangerous that Frontier have never publicly released and the numbers may well surprise you. Off the back of Stuart's post we gained access to the full analyst report here at the pit and it makes for fascinating reading. The report is produced by Liberum who are Frontier's official stockbroker and it pays particular and very specific attention to Elite Dangerous and provides forecasts for the company's expectations with the launch of Odyssey. Stuart has provided an excellent breakdown of the salient points and I'd urge you to take a look but in summary the report states that Elite Dangerous has a current player base that is estimated to be in the order of 500,000 players who regularly engage with the game at least once a month. Don't forget this is a 7 year old game at this point that is actually quite hard to play. It's important to note as well that that figure doesn't include people who acquired the game from the free week on the epic store recently. The report makes specific mention that player mobility is being addressed in the expansion via space taxis, this is the apex interstellar transport system Frontier have briefly made mention of previously and also that the new social hubs are being designed to facilitate the more community driven aspects of Elite Dangerous gameplay making it quote easier to form alliances or source supplies, weapons or expert support unquote. Further the report makes mention of the flight controls in Odyssey being easier that could be a reference to the auto planetary landing feature that was shown off in the recent gameplay trailer and then spoken about on the subsequent live stream but whatever it is directly referencing coupled with the apex transport system it's clear that Frontier is keen to make Elite Dangerous a degree more accessible to those commanders who are less inclined to own or fly a spaceship and thereby assist in opening up the game to more people. We've heard numerous times in the last few years from various voices in the community who are decrying the state of the game and to be honest with recent content droughts and lack of any officially released figures from Frontier those opinions are completely understandable and frankly very easy to agree with however these solid figures from an extremely reliable and indeed an officially sanctioned source tell a very very different story indeed. In actuality despite its age and some undeniable issues over the last few years the game remains in a very healthy position and the outlook for new players coming in, old players returning and an increase in the game's accessibility to new and old players alike lends significant weight to the argument that far from a dying game Elite Dangerous and its community is very much alive and isn't done with you yet not by a long shot. And finally this week wait for it this is awesome an SRV has been launched into orbit and reached a fleet carrier yes really in a colossal 6 hour effort a team of commanders out on the infernal expedition launched an SRV from a low G world and gently nudged and guided it to a waiting fleet carrier there's a breakdown on the official forums detailing how this extraordinary feat was achieved do take a look it makes for fascinating reading in particular the section on instancing gives an interesting insight into how the game handles instancing around carriers suffice to say there's a video of the happening linked in the video description and I do want to give a quick shout out to the team involved that's commander Bruno behind the wheel of the SRV with his ascent being aided by commander ghosty commander steam vision and commander infernal moose and also my personal thanks to Ed at the fleet carrier owners club for the heads up about the whole event well done guys that's it for now thanks very much for watching we'll be back later this week with more videos until then o7 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