 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 21st of January 2022, I'm CMDR Buur In Elite Dangerous News this week, 3 weeks into the new year, just why are FDF so quiet? We learn how much of the galaxy has been uncovered by CMDRs, the mystery of what happened to the Alexandria Megaship is finally solved and there's a Tesla electric car with its own frameshift drive. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe and 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. Just a quick heads up the first story we're covering this week contains some minor plot spoilers but I've linked in the video description to an index point further into the video if you want to skip past the first item. After the regular Thursday server bounce this week, some CMDRs started receiving cryptic messages in their cockpit inbox from Professor Albert Tesro, formerly of the recently defunct and some would argue largely ineffectual Aegis antithargoid agency. The messages directed their recipients to begin searching a specific 15 light year bubble of space after a tip-off from an unnamed source. 15 light years is a fairly small area to cover in the grand scheme of things and the search was over in short order after a drifting debris cloud later revealed to be the remains of the Alexandria was discovered. The debris contained audio logs from the commander of the Aegis Megaship that was hauling guardian artefacts due to be studied by Aegis to aid in their research. Whilst the Alexandria was being pursued by Thargoids who apparently were drawn by the presence of so much guardian technology the source of their fate is not quite as straightforward as it might at first seem and without giving too much away has some serious ramifications for the still ongoing azimuth and salvation themed plot lines running in the game currently. If you want to pick up the fully voiced audio logs from the Alexandria yourself I've put the target system you'll need in the video description. A shout out to commander Halo Jones this week who posted an extraordinary video of their own Tesla Model 3 electric car playing a sound synchronized light show featuring frameshift and hyperspace sound effects from Elite Dangerous. A recent software update to the vehicle added compatibility for the Xlights.org light sequencing and show scheduling software and with that update installed commander Halo Jones went to work. I've linked the amazing NV inducing video below and in it you'll hear effects sample directly from commander Halo's own original Kickstarter backer Cobra. Just brilliant. It's a generally recognized fact that the galaxy of Elite Dangerous contains something in the region of 400 billion stars. If you didn't know that already then I'll give you a brief moment to absorb that number before we move on. A tweet from Frontier yesterday revealed just how much of that 400 billion or so star galaxy has been discovered. Brace yourself silly numbers approaching. Commanders have uncovered 222,083,670 star systems that's approximately 0.05% of the galaxy so far explored in the last eight years or so. That's some staggeringly high numbers followed almost immediately by a hilariously low number. We're guessing that by discovered what Frontier mean is at the very least a commander arrived in a system and then moved on immediately without then necessarily having been a full scan of a given system done. The tweet was followed up by a retweet from commander Wotherspoon of YouTube's Galnet News Digest noting that at the current rate of discovery in just 140 years we will have uncovered the first 1% of the galaxy and in just 14,000 years in December of the year 17,300 we'll have finally uncovered it all. Yay team! After having built up some considerable momentum coming into Christmas Elite Dangerous is about to enter the final week of the first month of a new year and Frontier developments themselves have been noticeably conspicuous by their absence. Whilst the expected community goal to install stations into the Colonia Bridge and earn some pre- engineered FSDs in the process happened on the 6th of January a hotfix patch was released into Elite Dangerous Horizons on the 11th of January and a further community goal entered the game one week later and as we've reported today the audio logs detailing the mystery of what happened to the Alexandria arrived this week. Frontiers usually very visible community management team have been uncommonly quiet. To add a further layer to the puzzle the expected release of the FSDs resulting from the aforementioned community goal haven't appeared in the game as of this recording and queries from the community on social media regarding their expected ETA are being met with a very non-committal reply of at a later date with no further details given. The community management team's regular schedule of live streams and weekly forum posts detailing the expected week ahead have also been noticeably absent for the entirety of January with no explanation given. This unusual silence has all fallen with the backdrop of the release of the company's half-year financial performance report that we covered in last week's news and in particular the unsurprising commentary that Elite Dangerous Odyssey had performed significantly below expectations following its generally negative reception by the community. In particular a line in that financial reporting has us wondering if the report itself and FDEV's current silence are more than a little related. The line in question from FDEV's stockbroker Liberum reads quote FDEV continue to support the game and we believe management is reviewing plans for the Elite Dangerous franchise following the disappointing 2021 unquote. If Frontier is reviewing its plans for Elite Dangerous then without a shadow of a doubt one of those plans has to be the launch of Odyssey onto consoles. Pre-Christmas when questioned on the subject all Frontier would say is the line that we're all now used to on an almost daily basis across their social media platforms which is that they had nothing to announce just yet. Post-Christmas they're now not saying anything on the subject but of course they're not saying much about anything at all so that could all mean nothing. In his pre-Christmas holiday message on the forums community lead Arthur told me did state that they were reviewing and assessing a number of issues that the community had raised such as the engineering process alongside noting that the development team are working hard on new features such as the new settlement defense missions and that they would leave those details for January. Given that information it is of course entirely possible that FDEV are merely lining up their ducks for the coming years still and that they want to ensure given the concerns around consoles and the future of the game that they get their messaging absolutely right. They will without a doubt going into this new year want to be absolutely positive that what they are saying is considered and accurate for whatever the road ahead has in store for 2022. Off the back of new content in Odyssey and the various patches we saw last year there was a notable upturn in player sentiment toward the game and frontier so much so that it was also mentioned as part of the report to the stock market. Given that and their previously hinted at imminency of update 10 and then update 11 bringing with it fleet carrier interiors it would make sense that frontier would want to capitalize on those hard fought gains. Whatever their reasoning we're hopeful that frontier will surface from their silent running sooner rather than later and continue the much improved flow of information and communication that we'd become accustomed to in the latter half of last year. Do you think frontier are simply lining up some ducks for the year ahead or is there a bigger announcement on the horizon? Are you planning on making your car sound like a dying Thargoid when it pulls up to a set of traffic lights? 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