| Position | Crew Member | CMDR Name |
| Alec “4-pip” Turner | Alec Turner | Alec Turner |
| Head of Health and Safety | Ben Moss-Woodward | Eid LeWeise |
| Staff Liaison Officer | Clare Good | Psykit |
| Chief Archivist | Colin Ford | Phoenix_Dfire |
| Tech Primate in Training | Chris Mk V | LittleBigYin |
Download the episode directly from here.
Development News – what have the devs said this week?
- Hold your breath. Frontier’s half year results come out tomorrow. They cover up to november, which won’t count the release of Realms of Ruin, so they probably won’t be as bad as some people expect. However, there are rumours that RoR cost a humongous amount of money to make and didn’t do well (although I did buy a copy), so erm. Buckle Up?
Community news – what is the community up to??
- New elitedangereuse.fr article by Chelito on Odyssey’s thin atmosphere colours.
- For those of you that have immersive Jealousy at ha look at Simpit tech’s Mining video Mining in Elite Dangerous – SimPit Avenger PRO
- @Silencer_555 has completed his Elite Dangerous Model Display and it’s an impressive piece. https://twitter.com/Silencer_555/status/1720107491738923177
- Loot and Grind have done a video to see if Elite: Dangerous is worth playing in 2024 Is ELITE DANGEROUS Worth Playing In 2024?
- WHAT THE FUDGE HAS AI DONE WITH MY ARTICLE!!! We have a couple of repost of the original article from MassivelyOP but they’ve let AI reword it…..
- The original You Tubes are here;- Top Shift 140 Review of 2023 and the Thargoid War – Part 1 Top Shift 141 – Review of the Thargoid War Part 2
- Commander Picard’s mission farsight has now started its 9th year of exploration. 3287 days in the black! https://twitter.com/MissionFarsight/status/1745624771163775051
- Galactic Exploration Catalog Video Contest [AuraxisAnimus]
- Laser Mining Guide – MORE than “The Grind” | Elite Dangerous 2024 (Dituri’s next guide to having fun in Elite)
- EMPIRES | Elite Dangerous: Odyssey (Really rather good fan made set of public service statements from The Federation, Empire and Alliance)
In-Game Events – what’s happened this week?
- Zemina Torval Returns to the Senate
- The thargoids have begun to strike back.
- The number of Occupied Systems up to 330.
- 44 Alerts
- 10 Invasions
- 7 in Recovery
Main discussion
- “What If” Elite Dangerous had only had open play?
- I can open up with a “story time with Ben” if you want Colin… also if this isn’t gonna turn into a discussion then we can just skip it and go on to the questions
- Benefits of only open i.e. increased chance of pvp in more populous systems but also
- the rise of merc groups to protect
- Makes the world seem more alive
- More human on human interaction the positive and the negative
- Others?
- Why did Elite get private groups and Solo?
- Historical – back in 2012 when this was being designed it was very common to have PvE and PvP servers for all MMOs
- Lower barrier to entry & Accessibility – since even the most difficult NPCs are worse than some of the better PvP commands
- Other games
- Eve – open only
- Star Citizen – open only
- No Mans Sky – private group only???
- Starfield – Solo only (it’s single player, duh!!!!)
- Old Republic / sWoW – opt in PVP flag
Mostly Clueless
- Never knew this until this weekend but if you lose your canopy switch on night vision to restore the hud and land safely (is that an exploit).
Any other business
- The Dex Legacy season 2, returns with an explosive and thrilling adventure, interlude 1 “Secondary Subjects”, Premiered tonight on Lave Radio. You can find further information at thedexlegacy.com, including links to the paperback book “The Dex Legacy Season 1 – Collected Scripts and Commentary” by Emily Inkpen and also The Complete Season 2 in HD audio.
Questions
- QOTW – What are your predictions for 3310
- Cmdr Caprica XIV
New CMs for 2024 Frameshift live season. - CMDR_MACH1NE
It’ll be another slow news and development year I fear. If they have enough staff left to manage it, we should at the very least get some progression in the Thargoid story line. Come on frontier knock it out of the park and prove all the doubters wrong! - CMDR Homborger
Mostly, I would like more new players to take up playing the game. It’s STILL the best space game out there IMO. But also more cosmetics for us to buy, fleet carrier decor and purchasable extra FC assets like an arboretum and shooting range in the back of Pioneer Supplies.
I mean, if we can’t have ship interiors then maybe more complex fleet carrier ones? - LCU No Fool Like One
Will BGS or powerplay changes come this year?
I want to engineer my organic scanner to hold multiple species. I want mat gathering in lagrange clouds and odyssey bio. I’d like an API that would allow third party apps to display data inside the cockpit on a screen.
Also I would like some camera suite changes. I would like the zoom speed to match the camera speed so you can do dolly zooms. Also pitch yaw and roll should be speed controlled. I would like lip sync for the holo-me so we can voice act them. Better draw distance for holo-me. - Saphaia
Speaking of camera changes: Some QoL update so the camera can move further away from your ship on planets when nothing is around. I’m 20,000 ly from the nearest known station. The single Bacterium on this moon doesn’t care if my camera can move 250m or 3km.
(I can dream, right?) - CylusResi
Hoping for more effective defence from hackers, but also some lore explanation or ideally more authorised novels with those hackers events recorded. Maybe a bad idea? - Teddy
Really anything NOT Thargoid related, it’s been chewed to a pulp, and I have never bought into the narrative. More because of how it was delivered rather than its mechanics or aesthetics. - Miserichorde
Salvation returns but instead of humanities saviour he’s now leading the Guardians to war and we wind up smack dab in the middle of an ancient conflict - MWeeble
Mining rigs and surface outpost building. Also Intergalactic travel.
Workshop modules on fleet carriers to manufacture ship modules and ships - RockingChairBoy
Top of my wishlist, please Fdev for the love of God, let us engineer Shock Canons. - miTxeL
Guardians! - RangersGSTQ
I’d love to see more missions in stations, it feels since odyssey that these have really reduced. Some of us love the grind. - HappyMoonMonkey
Weather effects on planets. Dust storms, clouds, rain. - Chebs Will
Unfortunately I guess there will be even more, ‘dead game’ lines from a lot of places. But I predict / hope more new players coming across from the other shorter gameplay space sims that sprang up recently. More new youtube channels are appearing. I’m thinking of doing my own ‘Drunk Yorkshireman plays Elite’. The list of things I’d like to see would be very long but realistically. A new ship / SRV would be cool, a few new non-combat ground missions that involve more interaction with the base types something like; a bioresearch base requires a fresh bacteria sample from planet X, nip out do the dyson machine and return with a sample to take straight to the lab etc. A mad max ship kit for the Adder.. (best ship in the game). - DJ_Wylie
Predictions: It’s probably going to be a tough year for Fdev and I’m expecting news on the Elite front to be light. But fingers crossed I’m wrong. Lets see how their financial update later this week goes.
Would like to see: the Thargoid story line drawn to a close with update 18. It’s had a good run but I think it’s time to move on. Then Fdev adjust focus to improving exploration gameplay. Comet visuals need to be added! Then look at improving and adding other spacey stuff for people to find. Accretion discs at black holes? new space and planet based POIs? Gas giant scooping? Dare I suggest a new exploration ship? 😬 lots of potentially interesting options. - Ben Moss-Woodward
I would LIKE to see updates to existing horizons content bringing it up to date with Odyssey Content. I.E. We have all the Horizons settlements (including Guardian sites, or even the Thargoid Map room) Let’s make them work for both dashing round in SRVs and walking about on foot. - LittleBigYin
I’d like to see some resolution to the Savlontron storyline. Feels like that’s just been hanging around. More communication from the CM team and maybe some sneak peaks as well as some promotion of community events. As for predictions, something titan people.
- Cmdr Caprica XIV
Shoutouts
- Our sister station, Hutton Orbital Radio, Broadcasts on Thursdays from 20:30. You can tune in at twitch.tv/huttonorbitaltruckers or, for just the audio, at radio.forthemug.com/.
- For the discerning Commander who likes a bit of CQC action, check out the CQC Discord at “discord.me/elitedangerouscqc”.
- We’re also giving a shout outs to the following Elite Dangerous podcasts which have appeared over the last year or are standard regular contributors;-
- The Guard Frequency (who do other space games )
- Loose Screws
- Following this we have the latest Galnet News Digest as provided by Cmdr Wotherspoon and Cmdr BeetleJude.
- Thanks to those who have chipped in on Twitch chat and in-game commanders
- Special Thanks to Cmdr ToCoSo, Jn Tracks and Allen Stroud who created the music used on the Show.