Guard Frequency Episode 473 | 15,000 Tuppence A Ship

Cits and Civs, Captains and Commanders, you’re tuned to episode 473 of Guard Frequency — the best damn space game podcast ever! This episode was recorded on Friday, January 19 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at GuardFrequency.com

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This Week’s Schedule

• Flight Deck
  • Elite: Dangerous
  • Star Citizen
  • Starfield
• Feedback Loop

Links & The Like

Elite: Dangerous

Elite Dangerous unofficially announced that there may be news… of a sort… soon (™). Paul Crowther, the last man standing in the Elite Community Manager shop, wrote on the forums QUOTE If everything goes according to plan, we should be able to share some details of the next stream very soon. END QUOTE. So mark your calendars for “something” “sometime” that will update us “somehow.” Maybe the reason for all the precise details in his post is that Frontier announced their guidance for mid-fiscal-year 2024. Good news, everyone! All the layoffs went according to plan and they plan to start making money again in about a year! The stock market cheered this news, causing FDev shares to rise almost 5 tuppence. But most importantly, Elite did get exactly one mention in the report. QUOTE Frontier is a leading independent developer and publisher of videogames founded in 1994 by David Braben, co-author of the iconic Elite game. END QUOTE. So, yeah, clearly we can expect a lot from FDev in the coming months.

Star Citizen

Star Citizen released its Early Access Pre-Alpha Release Candidate Prototype Experimental Test Build 3.22.0a EPTU.9024200 to the Experimental Public Test Universe. Which is different from the regular Public Test Universe. Which is different from the HOTFIX server. Which is different from the Live server. Which is different from the Evocati server. Which is different from the Preview Server. With six different servers to choose from, there’s a version of Star Citizen that’s right for you. Ask your doctor. And in other development news, CIG is trying to implement an instant-teleport system for their QA testers so that they don’t have to actually fly to problem locations to repro bugs. Seems like that would have been a priority item since, y’know, 64-bit precision maps.

Third Wheel

Starfield has released a beta version of version 1.9.47.0 for testing. This beta was previously scheduled, and then delayed twice, which seems about right for everything Starfield does. The patch contains a number of graphics fixes and improvements, some quest bug fixes, and some ship, skill and weapon patches. Still no cure for the inventory system, the leveling system or the Starborn. But the numbering of the beta patch makes us wonder: Are we getting close to the DLC and/or the mod support patch? Will those things improve Starfield’s reception in the gaming community?

Community Questions

• Is a great DLC just the thing Starfield needs to reclaim a little bit of the shine that Bethesda has lost? Or are they going to need a whole new version of Skyrim?
• Will we see Update 18 before June 2024 or will FDev hold that back until they decide to make money again in 2025?

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