Guard Frequency Episode 475 | A PIS of the PIE

Cits and Civs, Captains and Commanders, you’re tuned to episode 475 of Guard Frequency — the best damn space game podcast ever! This episode was recorded on Friday, February 2 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, February 6, 2024 at GuardFrequency.com

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This Week’s Schedule

• Flight Deck
  • Elite: Dangerous
  • Star Citizen
  • Starfield
  • A Game Formerly Known as Descent Underground
• Guard Frequency Origins, where the gang raises some shenanigans and strikes up a hullaballoo
• Feedback Loop

Links & The Like

Elite: Dangerous

Elite Dangerous may not account for much of FDev’s revenues, but they sure seem to think it accounts for most of its fanbase. That’s why we had to sit through the entire first episode of Frontier Unlocked before Arthur and Hollie finally gave us 2 minutes worth of news in 13 minutes. To be fair [H: To be fair, K: To be fair. T: To be fair], they did deliver everything that they promised. Chaos Gate and Planet Zoo are going to console and there is a game that is being worked on that they aren’t going to say anything about yet. So, 40 minutes of that happened, and then finally we got some real news. First, Update 18 will let us blow up the Thargoid Titans. Second, Update 19 will contain the long-delayed “feature rework” of the PowerPlay system and is due during the summer. Third, there will be another feature addition sometime this year. Fourth, we’re finally getting a new ship! The Python Mk II is coming Soon (™).

Star Citizen

Star Citizen released Early Access Pre-Alpha Release Candidate Prototype Experimental Test Build 3.22.1-EPTU.9045386 to the Evocati server. This test was a big one, both on the front and the back end. On the back side, this build had a number of plumbing changes that may have prevented the server from being “sc-stable”. On the front side, there was a planned skirmish which called for players to board and capture a dev-controlled Idris. Research badgers heard chatter that the entire test was “really bugged and desynced”, so that test may not have happened. Finally, we may have uncovered a design flaw with the replication layer.

Starfield and TGFKA Descent Underground

Starfield’s patch is out of beta and available for download. It contains all the little fixes and patches we talked about previously, and the Bethesda team is doubling down on the “about every 6 weeks” patch cadence. In addition to whatever else it might have – like official mod support maybe – the next beta will have AMD’s FSR 3 utility included. So Starfield will join the ranks of games like Forespoken and The Man Who Erased His Name on the cutting edge of frame-rate-boosting, latency-reducing good-computer-times. In other news, the Chiv can deliver a sick burn.

Community Questions

• Choose your acronym: PIE or PIS? Is the control wheel an improvement over the current “F” menu?
• What was the best piece of news from the Elite segment of Frontier Unlocked?

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Join Us In Game!

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