Elite: Dangerous Blog

This year’s event was great and I think people enjoyed my VR shipyard. A couple of CMDRs even crashed my racing Courier, although Kerrash failed to live up to his name – he only dented the shields!

I had a hilarious game of Artemis with Frontier & the Elite Ambassadors – they made me captain (eek!) but we didn’t die, so that was a result even if I have no idea how our score rated.

The Q&A session with Frontier was a highlight and FD didn’t disappoint, giving out special edition LaveCon skins for the Eagle, Asp scout, FDL and Anaconda! For both PC and XBOX CMDRs.

Information obtained

I asked Michael Brookes some questions, carefully, because he was taking a six-foot-high axe out of his car at the time!

Will Elite support Nvidia’s new Ansel 360 degree pause and screenshot system?

There are no current plans, but maybe in the future.

Is there a (lore) reason the Imperial Eagle – a Gutamaya ship – has a Core Dynamics logo on the cockpit?

It’s a bug.

Michael also said that the new ship launched fighters would change the dynamic, making traders much more dangerous if they had them. Something we suspected would be the case.

The Frontier Q&A revealed more

Jacques station is going to end its wandering to start 2nd human “bubble”.

2.2 will introduce a local “player journal” containing a wealth of data for 3rd party interfaces and apps. Details to follow.

Passenger missions – CMDRs will need to scan objects at location to confirm they visited. These will include Battle locations and Historical sites. Some as far as 65-70,000 Lyr’s out. Frontier hope to expand the lore and story of the game though some of this “historical sites”.

Community Goals at Jacques will be coming, but will run for a month, to allow CMDRs to make the trip.

Q: System security around start systems?
Would like to increase system security.

Q: What did Frontier think was justified criticism of Engineers?
Material collection was too hard initially. Made mistakes with balance. Weapon effects were supposed to be super-rare. But FD changed tack when they became a role meta. Healer. Tank etc. so make the “exchange rep for desired effect” mechanic.

Q: Ship kits for more ships? More ship kits are coming.

Q: 2.2 A.I. Crew? Multi-crew is purely multiplayer. No AI Crew in the pipelines.

Q: Building based on planets? It's coming, but not this season.

Q: Group management tools? Changing over time. Nothing to announce right now.

Q: Why are all the stations the same? "GamesCon"

Q: Cross platform play with Xbox? Not currently possible.

Q: Planet tourism. Tour buses? Probably.

Q: Jump gates / faster way to get to Jacques station? Michael Brookes said “Like modded FSD drives you mean? Never say “never”, but Jump Gates unlikely.”

Q: Beluga liner? "Wait and see"

Q: AI wing men "escorts"? Can't say anything right now..

Q: Ship naming? "desirable feature" did not elaborate.

Q: Vive rendering any fix? One fix has already been issued, but the problem requires re-engineering - no ETA.

Q: Why no Landing lights when gear deployed? "Good idea"

Q: Decals? More soon.

Q: How is placement of objects and events decided? It depends on context, there are no hard rules. There is no FD Community Goal dartboard!

Q: Where is Formadine rift? Can't help you.

Q: Any plans for group ID in game? E.g. Clan tags.  Michael Brookes said he would prefer to utilise in game minor faction as an ID. Sandro "would like this" but said there are some technical hurdles to overcome. Not straightforward.

Q: If my faction loses all rep, will it be removed from the game? No faction can be kicked from their home system.

Q: The Galaxy map for VR is hard to use. Any changes in the pipeline? "Being looked at"

Q: Slaves. If they "go off" can they be sold as meat or fertiliser? Sandro asked “don’t we vet these questions?” but the answer was “probably not!”

Q: Where are the race of felines from early elite? They are not in ED, so you can decide what happened to them!

Q: Rise of the alliance? Maybe soon-ish.

Q: Could CMDRs with little time drop autonomous materials collectors, then come back for them – say a week - later? Doable but not planned.

Q: Could we have player created ships? New ships are great, but player created ships are not going to be a thing.

Q: Large ships at outposts / supersize ships too large for stations. Can we have them? Outposts don't support large ships for gameplay reasons. FD could do it. If there was a reason.

Q: When can we summon ships? Nothing to announce now. {GamesCon again maybe?}

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.

With GamesCom in Cologne coming up next month (August 6^th-9^th) Frontier have said they are making an announcement at the event.

"The Elite: Dangerous team is bigger than ever, and the majority are working on something secret for PC and Mac. It's not quite ready for the world just yet, but we'll be able to tell you more at Gamescom. Believe us: we can hardly wait."

So what is this big announcement?

Put on your tinfoil hats and follow me….

A LOT of people on the forum have been “SQUEE”ing (prematurely I think) that the announcement might be the Planetary Landing expansion.

For those who don’t know, Frontier have said, in addition to the core game which all players get, there will be two major expansions for Elite: Dangerous.

The first will be the Ship and Station exploration expansion that will allow players to leave the cockpit and explore their ship, as well as disembark at outposts and stations, go visit Starbucks and get a manicure etc.

The second expansion will be Planetary Landings, where players can take their ships into planet atmosphere and land on the surface to trade, set up terraforming and interact with native fauna & flora. 

Both of the First Person expansions are paid extras, except for those players who signed on for the Alpha and Premium Beta.

It follows that Ship Exploration has to be launched before Planetary Landing, else why land on a planet when you cannot get out of your ship? For that reason I think it would have to be ship exploration first, or a simultaneous release of both.

More likely is the addition of passenger transport, as the Orca is currently a 43M Lakon Type 6 with some paint options. Passengers would give the Orca a game role and would allow for the introduction of the Beluga Liner and the Dolphin small passenger craft, giving players a whole new avenue to explore.

What else has been teased?

• Stations in asteroids (very early on)
• The Federal Corvette
• The Panther Clipper.
• Ship transport (mentioned early on, then teased in XBOX trailer - sidewinder launching from Anaconda).
• Thargoids (the insectoid alien race from earlier games)

What of these constitutes a "big" update? Or will it be none of the above; something totally from left-field, like PowerPlay? A race of fashion-concious cats?

Like Mr Creosote (my personal hero) I would love to have everything, in a bucket, with the eggs on top, but it could just be a wafer-thin mint, so don't blow your air-lock just yet! We’ll know for sure in August.