 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 16th of October, 2020 I'm CMDR Buur In this weeks news The return of the Thargoids F-DEV moves the Monday supercruise news livestream The problem with combat The problem with mining If you enjoy this video remember to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications and if you'd like to support our work you'll also find us on Patreon Links to everything you need are in the description below The current round of community goals continued apace this week after last week's shoving match between the Marlinist refugees and the Empire finished on Wednesday The latest community goal hit a full hour earlier than usual at 1300 UTC and it sees the much anticipated return of the caustic alien menace, the Thargoids In what appears at least right now to be yet another concurrent thread running in the galactic storyline the Thargoid appear to have begun an attempted infestation of the fairly recently colonised witch head sector As soon as the news broke the anti-Thargoid community sprung into action and began loading up fleet carriers of eager combat hungry pilots The current infestation stops short of the pattern of invasion we'd seen from the Thargoid before There are no combat zones or burning stations but rather the meany greenies are swarming five key systems controlled by the Alliance in the region the Anoros, Lembas, Haki, Wellington and Shenvi systems Quite what the Manderbilt Horrors beef is with the Alliance specifically in this instance and why they've chosen to leave the feds or the imps alone for the moment is anyone's guess Could it be related to the recent use of Thargoid biotech in the bombing of Imperial stations that was claimed by the Imperial's Neo-Marlinist group? We've no idea but someone looks to have jammed a stick into the Thargoids nest and the area is crawling with non-human signal sources as a result If you're ever mined to join in the fight then there's rich pickings for all regardless of your Thargoid combat ability Even if you've never taken on one of the danger daffodils yourself you can still go scout-plapping and make a difference in the CG Just be sure to look for non-human signal sources of a threat level 3 or 4 and you're pretty much guaranteed to get nothing but scout vessels The CG runs until Thursday the 22nd of October On the regular Monday UK lunchtime supercruise news livestream this week Frontier announced that they were moving the livestream as of next week to a new slot at 2pm UTC on Tuesdays The primary reasoning for the move is simply because Monday mornings are a flurry of activity and meetings for the community team and pushing the livestream back to Tuesday afternoons will give them more time to collate news for the show and give it the attention it deserves Over the last few months the Monday livestream has very much evolved from what was a fairly simple let's play session to a more structured community catch-up with news featuring as it does the latest winners from the Weekly Stellar Screenshots Competition as well as news of community events and content creations If you've not seen the show recently give it a look in the new slot next week from 3pm UK time or 2pm UTC live on YouTube Prolific YouTuber and serial tutorialist Commander Exegius created a video last week highlighting the gaping disparities between the credit payout for combat versus other activities in the game such as exploration and of course mining It's a fairly well recognized fact in the community at large that combat just doesn't pay and the huge difference in rewards is all the more glaring when you factor in risk as well Suffice to say losing a very expensive ship and facing the rebuy screen is fairly rare when mining or exploring but with combat it's almost a given and if combat is the thing that keeps you coming back to Elite which of course it is for a large section of the community the lack of reward when you are successful in combat is forcing players towards gameplay that they wouldn't choose to engage in normally just because they honestly can't afford not to If you've not seen the video as with all of the content from Exegius it's extremely well researched and presented and does make an extremely compelling and not ludicrously unreasonable case for a modest increase in the credits earned through combat Regular watchers of the ED community will know that the issue surrounding combat credits earned versus other activities is of course not a new one What is interesting in this instance however is that after the video was very widely circulated by the community at large and almost certainly slid under the nose of frontier more than once over the last week or two They have actually acknowledged the video and the cries from the combat community surrounding it They've promised that they are listening and that they are addressing the feedback they hear from the community in general terms Right now the game is obviously bearing down quite heavily on what is undoubtedly a huge update in the early part of next year when Odyssey launches Here at the pit if we had to guess we think it unlikely that we'll see a massive change in combat payout balancing between now and then However Odyssey we're hoping does present an opportunity for frontier to address a number of extremely long standing issues in the game in general Whether those fixes and balance passes are part of the Odyssey package we don't yet know and for now at least frontier aren't saying Whilst we're on the subject of fixes at least some point in Elite's recent patch history the pulse wave analyser used for mining got well broken If you don't use the scanner yourself then let me just fill you in on the uncomfortable details It now appears that the scanner fires backwards out of your ship Yes really if you weren't to observe where you'd been you'd think nothing was occurring at all when you pulse but in actual fact the good stuff is just going on out of sight to your rear In the burpip discord we actually have one or two miners that have started flying backwards in an attempt to combat the newly introduced bug Which is obviously less than ideal to put it mildly This week however frontier have acknowledged that the bug is an issue they are aware of how important it is and whilst they can't commit to a date for a fix They have said they are at least working toward a fix for it 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