Elite: Dangerous Blog

This is the blueprint for the Core Dynamics Federal Assault Ship. Agile, tough and deadly this is the choice of many a bounty hunter.

This ship requires the Federal Navy rank of Chief Petty Officer for a player to purchase it in the game.

First introduced in version 1.4 the CQC expansion.

I made the Combat rank of Elite this week after 18 months and 15 weeks of play-time. Which goes to show it can be done without any grind.

I was helping a new player (Awesome_Gamer) and thought a bit of bounty-hunting combined with a Community Goal (The crime crackdown at Morrina) would be a good way to introduce him to the concept of community goals and do some pirate-hunting for cash in the process.

Over the week of the CG my young Padawan went from a Cobra Mk III to a Viper Mk IV and put several million credits in the bank. He’s current goal is to achieve enough rank with the Federation for a SOL permit.

On Monday night I pushed the combat rank from Deadly that last 1% into Elite. I’m now looking forward to seeing what missions that this new status unlocks!

Choose your weapon

For the most part in Elite, I tend to fly around in multi-role ships favouring light armour and good jump range over ships with heavy combat loadouts and short range.

I’ve owned an Anaconda since February of 2014, so a lot of smaller ships have simply passed me by, having been added later. Although I own a Federal Corvette (The "Kharon") which is a monster of a combat ship, I hadn’t really tried any others.

During this week’s CG though, I took out my Federal Assault Ship on CMDR Ranualf’s recommendation and loadout advice and found it an amazing ship. Agile, tough and very adept at bounty hunting. Having found the change rather satisfying, I dusted off my Vulture from storage and took “Toomes” out for flight last night (Spider-man fans will get the reference). Wow! The thing is a killer. A space-faring attack-dog! Equipped with a C3 Beam and E3 Pulse I was racking and stacking the kills, but the best part was how it sounded. The audio effects are pure artistry! If you haven’t tried these ships, do yourself a favour – you don’t know what you’re missing.

Footnote: In case you are wondering why I have ships I haven't flown, it's because I have every ship, but until this February I only had four. The rapidly acquired collection of ships are for my VR shipyard at LaveCon.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Yesterday I received the most forum reputation I’ve ever had for any single post! People were complaining on the forums (shocker there) that 2.1 was over-hyped. I pointed out that, just like the militants in Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" sketch, that you can give someone everything or nothing or something in between and they will STILL be unhappy.

To make the point with a bit of satire, I whipped up a GIF file.

The best bit (for me) was when someone reposted this on Reddit and people were making complaint posts underneath, about how it "..was outrageous for them to have to pay $60 for these fixes to be done when all the Horizons functionality should have been in the game at launch for free!"

Clearly the irony was lost. Everything mentioned (except skid marks) is free and available to everyone at the next release. My point made for me – you just can’t please some people.

After the various announcements so far at GamesCom 2015 we know a lot more about the forthcoming CQCC add-on to Elite: Dangerous and the other content being added.

We've heard a lot about it and that it will be a (short) Xbox One exclusive.

When is being released?

September, first on the Xbox and then on the PC a day or two later. The Beta for 1.4 has been confirmed for September 1st!

What else is in the update?

• Player factions are being added to the game. Groups of players can have their own faction and homeworld and (if they want) work up influence to make themselves a Power.
• The mission system is getting some love.
• Legal salvage missions are coming, so you can grab booty on the right side of the law.
• Delivery, courier and smuggling will gain long range variants that can set destinations from tens to hundreds of light years away for long haul missions.
• A new variant on the massacre mission will have higher numbers and greater time for a more sustained strike against the mission target.
• An even more hazardous extraction site has been added to provide a more dangerous environment.
• Changes to the background simulation are being made around systems changing from war / civil war states and also around population and political stability based on population size.
• Frontier has confirmed that assets from CQC will be included in the main game.

What new ships will there be?

The Imperial Eagle

A variant of the Eagle with a larger power generator, higher straight line speed, a medium hard-point on top and a less agile flight model.

Federal Dropship Mark II "Federal Assault Ship"

An improved combat model of it's predecessor. A more agile flight model and two medium plus two large hard-points (instead of four medium and one large) this is at the expense of some internals space.

Federal Gunship

And finally the Federal Gunship which will have two small hard-points, four medium hard-points and one large hard-point. This will be a large ship and with those seven weapon hard-points, will be the second best armed ship in the game after the Anaconda. While similar to the dropship in shape, it has delta wings at the back, more like a Vulture and what appear to be folding fins at the front. Much has been made of the large hatch visible on the underside. It looks like the Anaconda's landing bay hatch.