Elite: Dangerous Blog

News and events from the Elite Dangerous galaxy

Krait confirmed for June 28 Beyond Chapter 2 release

UPDATE 25th June 2018

With three days to go until the second Chapter of the Beyond updates will go live, Frontier have release a CGI trailer featuring the Krait (called it!) so here it is, the Krait Mk II.

While a variant ship, the Alliance Challenger - an armoured version of the Chieftain was "officially" announced, the release video teased a second ship.

The Frontier forums gave us the following details on Beyond Chapter 2: here

Beyond Chapter 2 Release Notes


New Ship: Challenger

The Alliance continue to refine their warships in the face of the looming Thargoid threat. The Alliance Challenger, envisaged as a frontline combat vessel, has stronger armour than its Chieftain counterpart and will be able to soak up a significant amount of punishment.

Wing Missions
First introduced in Chapter One of Beyond, we are introducing a Wing Mining Missions for you and your fellow Commanders to take on!

Installation Interactions
In a similar fashion to the Megaship interactions, which were introduced in Chapter One, Commanders will now be able to scan and interact with Space Installations.

  • Scan – Scanning the installation will allow Commanders to see what they can interact with: Turrets, Comms Arrays and Cargo Bays.
  • Turret hack – Disable turrets protecting other potential hackable points. This will deactivate security measures put in place to protect the Comms Arrays and Cargo Bays.
  • Comms array – Get tradable data from the Comms Array.
  • Cargo bay – Fire a limpet on the Cargo Bay to unlock and steal commodities and materials.



Tech Broker
Tech Brokers will allow commanders to unlock large weapons versions of the existing guardian tech weapons. These Tech Brokers will issue blueprint requests to collect Guardian data as well as materials and then, once delivered, will unlock certain Guardian modules of weapons for purchase. Will you turn you weapons on Thargoid or use them to pirate rival Commanders?

Thargoid
Thargoids continue to be an intergalactic menace! With the Alliance introducing a new ship, the Thargoids intend to up their game too, introducing new Scouts that will buff other Scouts and increase their combat efficiency.

As you can see in the trailer (above) the video shows the rather distinctive rear of the new Krait heavy fighter. Recognisable from the 3D render video teaser at Frontier Expo last October (here).

Since you don't spend a significant percentage of your teaser trailer showing the back-end of the Krait if you're not going to release it, then we have visual if not verbal confirmation that the Krait will be introduced to Elite at the end of the month.

Matching rears - the Krait

So what do we know about this new ship?

  • It has a fighter bay.
  • It has more than one crew position, so almost certainly supports multi-crew.
  • Frontier stated at the Expo that the Krait was an Alliance ship.
  • It only has two visible hard-points in the render, which appear to be huge (Class 4) which makes this ship a "Vulture XL" in many ways or a super-agile big brother to the likes of the Keelback.
  • Based on sizes extrapolated from the the video render, based on the known sizes of cargo hatches & fighter bay doors, the ship is approximately 62m long x 62m wide, making it a medium sized ship a little larger than an Asp Scout.

Unless there's a Beta release of Beyond Chapter 2, which seems unlikely considering that we're less that four weeks from the release date, then the subject of ship cost and performance will have to wait until the end of this month to be answered. Expect a ship blueprint a few weeks after that! :)

 

Tips for Beginners: CMDR Ranualf’s Guardian Guide

CMDR Ranualf is a respected member of the Mobius PvE group and a long-time player of Elite: Dangerous. He has kindly authored this guide to unlocking the secrets of The Guardians. You can download a PDF version of the guide here. Ranualf's Guardian guide.pdf (1.00 mb)

 

Greeting commanders.

By now you will have noticed that the tech brokers have some new guardian items to unlock, but just how do you unlock them? Well I have the answer.

It is not just as simple as flying to the tech broker and saying, “bro, gimmie dat!” No, FD wants us to work for it and this is going to involve quite a bit of time in the SRV because it is mostly planeside gathering of items, materials & minerals, and yes it will take several hours of material gathering, shooting rocks and guardian blasting for their bits.

The basics of the journey is that you will need two items that match an obelisk in order to unlock it, as without the correct combination of items, it will remain locked. The picture below is the one I used, there are many other sites, but I used this one, as it is pretty central to the new Ram Tah guardian structures in the Col sector.

So, let’s get rolling shall we, start by looking at the picture below and thinking of which obelisk you would pick to scan, take your time, drink your tea and build your planet explorer.
Ship wise, a small or medium ship with good jump range is recommended because the new sites are 800+ LY out of the bubble and in rough terrain. I recommend at least 2+ SRV’s and a minimum of two tons of cargo. So, a DBS, DBX or an Asp will do perfectly. This is a basic rundown of the Asp I used, and I am glad I took extra SRV’s because you can easily get stuck and then killed by the
guardian sentinels.

Additional notes

Having several refuel, rearm and repair materials for your SRV is highly recommended, because once you are out there, it’s a long way back for a rearm at a station.

A simple Asp Explorer build for you here.

Guide to unlock the new Guardian items

If you have seen or even heard the new Galnet news, Ram Tah has been asking for “stuff” and he even made it into a FD video. Here are the new sites in the news, and yes there are many more sites, and thanks to FD, if you get within 1000LS of a site, it will pop up in your navigation panel now, nice of them to make it easier to find them.

New Ram Tah Guardian Ruins Locations

  • Col 173 Sector QU-O d6-25 5 B
  • HD 63154 B 3 A
  • Synuefe EU-Q c21-10

I assume you have built your planeside explorer and are ready to go, just head off to Synuefe TP-f B44-0 CD 1 or one of the guardian’s other structures and you will need collect the two items that are required to open the obelisk for the scan. Note that I say guardian structure, not ancient ruins, as new structures offer easy access to the items that you will need. Yes, the ruins have some of the items, but they are very large and the items are scattered all over. The guardian structures are much quicker and are a lot smaller.

Once you are at a guardian structure site, hop into the SRV and drive about for a while until you one of the items needed, it will be on the ground pick it up, and stick it in the ship. Now log out and repeat it, because you need two items, and having them on the ship is easier than losing them by getting killed…

These are the items you choose to pick up from the ground & what they look like

Remember that RNG is a factor here, because the items on the ground are random, so you may need to change your initial plan, depending on what you find first. The items that you can find on the ground are Casket, Orb, Urn, Totem, Tablet and these items match the picture and have been shortened to Ca, Or, Ur, To, Ta.

Note, the new sites have guardian sentinels, and they are aggressive! Kill them and loot their bodies, I would recommend that you stay and harvest all the available materials from the destructible panels and guardian sentinels or grab the two items and leave for the data scan site. Note you will need a lot of materials, so you may need to come back to farm materials.

Your new best friend

Once you have the two items such as totem & totem, Orb + totem, etc head to the ancient ruin site @ coordinates 31.96, -99.97 in the picture, be aware there are 3 ancient ruin sites on the planet, so pay attention to your heading once you get into sub orbital. Once you have arrived at the one in the picture, you will be able to unlock the Obelisk with the two items you have picked up, in order to scan it and get the data; this is the most important step.

Without the correct combination of items, the scan WILL NOT WORK. I personally used the 9 toto point (far left in the picture) to do all my scans as this just needed 2 totems, which you can easily pick up off the nearby guardian structure on the other side of the planet.

Now go find the Obelisk that matches the combination of items that YOU picked up and then simply scan the obelisk, and this will give you some data. You will need to conduct many scans in order to get the data required for the weapons and power plant. This means that you have to logout to the main menu, log back in and do another scan, log out, and back in…keep doing this and you should get most of the data needed in about 45 mins to an hour. Keep at it, as this is the fast method!

You will now need material components in order to fulfil the requirements for the tech broker.

Use INARA to make your shopping list of the items you need. Now head off to any guardian structure (where you first collected the 2 items) and kill anything that moves or glows blue. Hoover up all the materials (you made the shopping list, right?), shoot the destructible panels on the spires and tops of the arches and walls, kill them all! Remember to grab a few extra for there are plans ahead….  

Next you will need the raw material components, which means more time in the SRV and you will need to locate Manganese (30) & Chromium (28) use EDDB to find them or if you have several highgrade materials you can head off to the material broker and trade down for the items. Note that they are grade 2, so it is not going to be cheap.

Once again INARA has a perfect solution to our closest material trader needs!

Lastly you are going to need 10 magnetic emitter coils (buy from here ) and 12 micro weave cooling hoses, and these are mission rewards only.  

I found one of the best places to find a mission for the hoses is Shinrarta Dezhra, as it is a Hi-tech system and with a decent population. Make sure you check both the mission board & the passenger lounge to locate a mission. Remember if it is a passenger mission, you will need a passenger module on your ship.

Additional note, if you do not see a mission you can to flip the board (log out and back in) and you can filter the reward on the right side of the mission, under the text description of the mission now, to help speed up the search. After completing all the above steps, you can now go and see the tech broker and say “Yo, bro, gimmie dat ting!”

 

Additionally, I have been to the two new Ram Tah guardian structure sites and have solved new puzzle locations there. Here are the tower location & pictures that have been highlighted to show where the towers are. All the of the new guardian structure sites that I have been to so far (8) are located on top of a hill, or stuck in very rough high ground. Which makes landing in a large ship virtually impossible, I suspect that FD are working with the guardians to troll us, as the missiles from the guardian sentinels can easily launch you up into the air and get you rolling down the hill, that coupled with the fact the AI hides up and down the hill… Sneaky bastards.

The puzzle solve is quite easy, all you have to do is to find the control pillars and activate them and then activate the “control box”.

The best way is to drive up to the control box and the two towers will push out of the ground, this will let you activate the rest. If you do not go to the box first, the rest of the pillars will not push up and thus you will just be driving about. You can then drive about and push the rest of the pillars up, and then start to activate them. To do this, you need to shoot the “light” until you get the message that the pillar is charged. This will start the timer countdown, so you don’t have all day cupcake.  The sequence I used started with the bottom left, then middle, far left, far right and then the 2 at the console. Note, several sentinels will activate once you start this process.

After you have done all six pillars, you will need an ancient relic (the blue thing from the top of a pillar), simply shoot it down and then pick it up. Head back to the console and there will be a blue mark on the floor (go external camera and you will see it better) X marks the spot. Drive onto it, and eject it out of the SRV, this will activate the console, and the orb will pop up.

Go into turret more and scan the orb, with will give either a weapon blueprint or a module blueprint, depending upon which location you are at.

See Obsidian Ant’s video for a full drive through.

System HD 63554 planet B 3 A

This puzzle hands out Weapon blueprints. Just land at the right side of the pic (loads of room) and drive up the hill. 

 

System SYNEFE EU-Q C21-10 planet A 3

This site hands out module blueprints 

It is a real pain to land here, even in a small or medium ship as it is on the top of a very large hill. I managed to landed my DBX as the bottom of the picture, just south of the arch.  Please note that Large ships are very hard to land, due to the terrain and will end up parked over 10k+ away!

Fly safe and get the new guardian stuff

CMDR Ranualf.
OH WAIT

I have some news

Sneak peek – SPOILER ALERT!

Ed [Edward Lewis at Frontier] let something drop as the Frontier Expo last year and several commanders have confirmed that he said this, and was hushed up quietly. It has now resurfaced… We are going to get more guardian modules for our ships, these include:

  • Guardian power plants
  • Guardian power distributors
  • Guardian hull reinforcement packages
  • Guardian module reinforcement packages
  • Guardian shield reinforcement packages
  • Guardian Frameshift Drive boosters

For more information on this click here
o7 CMDRs
 
For a more detailed Ancient ruins guide (old Ram Tah guide) go to CMDR Nicou's remlok-inustries.fr site here.

Elite Dangerous Ship Blueprints 3.0 Update

Update January 2019 - all these blueprints have been superseded by the new "3305 Editions" here which include hard-point and utility slot locations.  

With the addition of the Dolphin, I have republished the full set with a few additions. There are size corrections on the Viper Mk III and I've added ZIP copies of all the JPEG version of each language. Additionally, the remaining translations have been applied, so this is the most complete set to date.

Thanks to CMDR Noxa on reddit for finding out who manufactures the Corilios station.

Thanks also to all the others on Twitter, Reddit and the Frontier forums who have been spotting errors and mistakes and letting me know. It's been very helpful to have so many people proofreading this lot! As you can imagine, while most of this work has been done in my lunch hour, there have been a few nights where I burnt the midnight oil and almost certainly copied numbers from the wrong spreadsheet column!

Thanks to CMDR Aidan Abacus & the CMDRs of www.elitedangerous.de for German translations. Thanks to CMDR Nicou, CMDR Aymerix & CMDR Duita Rider of www.elite-dangerous.fr for French translations. Thanks to CMDR Nyra, with the help of CMDR Kimanuel and CMDR XPi2, from Corsarios de Heimdal for Spanish translations.

  Craft Manufacturer 1920x1080 4096x2305
Stinger-2 Attack Skimmer Achilles Corporation
S4 Sentry Skimmer Core Dynamics
S9 Goliath Skimmer Core Dynamics
Scarab SRV Vodel
F63 Condor Federal Fighter Core Dynamics
GU-97 Imperial fighter Gutamaya
Taipan Independent Fighter Lakon Spaceways
Sidewinder Faulcon DeLacy
Eagle Mk II Core Dynamics
Hauler Zorgon Peterson
Adder Zorgon Peterson
Dolphin Saud Kruger
Imperial Eagle Gutamaya
Viper MK III Faulcon DeLacy
Cobra Mk III Faulcon DeLacy
Viper Mk IV Faulcon DeLacy
Diamondback Scout Lakon Spaceways
Cobra Mk IV Faulcon DeLacy
Type 6 Transporter Lakon Spaceways
Diamondback Explorer Lakon Spaceways
Imperial Courier Gutamaya
Keelback Lakon Spaceways
Asp Scout Lakon Spaceways
Vulture Core Dynamics
Asp Explorer Lakon Spaceways
Federal Dropship Core Dynamics
Type 7 Transporter Lakon Spaceways
Alliance Chieftain Lakon Spaceways
Federal Assault Ship Core Dynamics
Imperial Clipper Gutamaya
Federal Gunship Core Dynamics
Orca Saud Kruger
Fer De Lance Zorgon Peterson
Python Faulcon DeLacy
Type 9 Heavy Lakon Spaceways
Beluga Liner Saud Kruger
Type-10 Defender Lakon Spaceways
Anaconda Faulcon DeLacy
Federal Corvette Core Dynamics
Imperial Cutter Gutamaya
Majestic Class Interdictor Gutamaya
Farragut Battle Cruiser Core Dynamics
Coriolis Station Brewer Corp
Thargoid Sensor Thargoids
Thargoid Marauder Thargoids
Thargoid Cyclops Thargoids

 

Hail to the Chieftain!

Tonight's Elite:Dangerous livestream gave us the most complete information about the chieftain so far.

"It's Between the Python and the Federal ships"

Firepower

  Fixed Small Medium Large Huge
Hard points 0 3 1 2 0

The hard-point placement is all along the centre-line and combined with its agility, this makes it a perfect ship for fixed weapons.

The medium hardpoint is on the underside of the cockpit. This means most of your firepower is on the top of the ship.

Outfitting

  Core internals Class Base fitting
Power Plant Power Plant 6 6E
Thrusters Thrusters 6 6E
Frame Shift Drive Frame Shift Drive 5 5E
Life support Life Support 5 5E
Power Distributor Power Distributor 6 6E
Sensors Sensors 4 4E
Fuel Tank Fuel Tank 4 4C

 

Optional internals Base fitting
Class 5 ?
Class 5 ?
Class 4 ?
Class 2 ?
Class 2 ?
Class 4 [military] Empty
Class 4 [military] Empty
Class 4 [military] Empty

 

   
Utility slots 4
Mass lock factor ?
Crew 2
Fighter Bay Capable No
Cargo (Maximum without shields) 88T
Hull mass ?
Pad size Medium
Cost T.B.C.
Armour 504T
Maximum jump range [unladen] 20Ly