Cits and Civs, Captains and Commanders, you’re tuned to episode 523 of Guard Frequency — the best damn space game podcast ever! This episode was recorded on Friday, June 27 and released for streaming and download on Tuesday, July 1, 2025 at GuardFrequency.com
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This Week’s Schedule
- Flight Deck
- Elite: Dangerous
- Star Citizen
- Dune: Awakening
- Guard Frequency Exiles, where space is dark and full of horrors and space twinkie wrappers
- Feedback Loop
Links & The Like
Elite: Dangerous
Elite Dangerous showcased the new Panther Clipper Mark 2 on the Frontier Unlocked livestream. It’s a chonky boi, with 10 hardpoints, 4 crew seats and capacity for over 1200 tons of cargo. But in usual Frontier fashion, they stopped themselves from making the ship as cool as it could be by generating confusion during the announcement. For a brief shining moment, it looked like MAYBE you could carry 1400 tons of cargo aboard this beast, but FDev decided that arbitrary restrictions and “union rules” were more important than consistency and fun. OK, fine, old chaps, we’ll talk you out of this bad decision too. There’s still time to fix this, as the ship comes out July 22 in ARX-only early access. And the promised Vanguard update with squadron carriers is promised for “early August”
Star Citizen
Star Citizen released Early Access Pre-Alpha Release Candidate Prototype Experimental Test Build 4.2.1 PTU 9903833 to all backers on the PTU server. CIG is backing down from its RN-Jesus Wikelo game, which marks a new record in retracting a terrible idea which never should have made it off the whiteboard. And the 4.2 release to LIVE did not go so well, especially with the whole “losing my Wikelo favors to the patch inventory dump” thing. Fortunately for Tony, he did NOT predict a smooth release for this patch, so he can claim he was right. And also, it looks like there’s a spacesuit for sale that lets players just skip to the end of missions with a locked door.
Dune: Awakening
Dune Awakening has over a million players and counting. With just about three weeks under its belt since launch, the team released a brag sheet with a lot of numbers. And the dev team is already making changes to the Deep Desert PvP, which has the griefer community wasting precious water by crying terrible salty tears about how unfair it is for people to have fun.
Community Questions
- What are some other examples of dev responses (good or bad) to intense feedback that resulted in quick changes? Is Dune Awakening setting a new standard for responsiveness?
- What’s your prescription to cure the FDev allergy to fun when designing ships and mechanics? How can we convince them that it’s OK to go a little crazy sometimes?
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Join Us In Game!
- Click here to go to our Star Citizen Organization page and apply today!
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