Guard Frequency Episode 443 | Rated M for Maelstrom

Cits and Civs, Captains and Commanders, you’re tuned to episode 443 of Guard Frequency — the best damn space game podcast ever! This episode was recorded on Friday, May 12 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at GuardFrequency.com

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This Week’s Schedule

• Flight Deck
  • Elite: Dangerous
  • Star Citizen
  • Starfield
• We continue our audio adventure, Guard Frequency Origins, where you think you remember what you did, but did you really remember doing it?
• Feedback Loop

Links & The Like

Elite: Dangerous

Elite Dangerous released Update 15 on Tuesday, and it was fairly smooth. There is, in fact, a big mothership in the middle of the Maelstrom, and it is, in fact, a put-together version of the Thargoid wreckage sites in the Pleiades sector. And once you’re inside, you can fight a Glaive Thargoid and get lightning-ed and missile-ed to death, if you’re into that sort of thing. Then, there’s the ground drone fights that are hard to find, hard to complete, and hard to get rewards from… and not for all the right reasons. They got a few things right: like the mostly error free patch, the recipe for the new gadget, and the “V’ger moment” in the Maelstrom. And they got a couple of things wrong: like the restore missions still don’t work right, and the crime and punishment system still doesn’t work right, and the team system still doesn’t work right. But, those things have been broken forever. One new thing they broke was the engineer you need to upgrade the new caustic sinks. Finally, believe it or not, we have visual confirmation of the Thargoid Fun Hole. It exists, in game, right now.

Star Citizen

Star Citizen released Early Access Pre-Alpha Release Candidate Prototype Experimental Test Build 3.19 to all backers on the PTU server and then patched it three times… in three days. With the Epic Month of May really getting started next Friday, it might be best to get that out to the Live server EARLY next week, instead of the night before the big sale. And after our show release on Tuesday, the team over at CIG coincidentally addressed the new player experience this week in Star Citizen Live. They also coincidentally explained why the perfectly good single-player tutorial was abandoned years ago. And it’s still a work in progress, because the game is still nowhere near done. And they’re going to add the new player experience to all the landing zones. But they don’t want to keep you from your friends. But they want to hold your hand a little. Oh, and remember, nuggets, buy a helmet! Also coincidentally, they announced the “champion testers” for 3.18 and let everyone know that they have a “robust incentivization program planned down the road”. In the meantime, there are three top winners in a bunch of seemingly random categories.

Starfield

Starfield is once again a tragic victim of a national ratings agency. This time, it’s the ESRB of the U.S. of A. instead of the Australians. Like the Australians, the Americans are giving Starfield an M-rating, which is the most restrictive. Unlike the Australians, who only give colored dots for certain categories, the Americans give the straight scoop about why Starfield is getting the adults-only score. Also unlike the Australians, the Americans are giving us fair warning about all the saucy sexy talk just pervading the entire game. That’s right, the Australians said there was no sex in Starfield, but the Americans beg to differ. Just because the sex isn’t on screen, that doesn’t mean the passionate post-coital pillow parley isn’t just a little too spicy for family hour. Bethesda just cannot catch a break from the bureaucrats.

Community Questions

• Write a few more post-romance reactions for Bethesda to use in Starfield. Extra Points for making us ask “what are you talking about?”
• What’s the next reveal now that we’ve made it to the middle of the Maelstrom? How long until we get a peek inside the Thargoid Fun Hole?

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Join Us In Game!

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