Elite: Dangerous Blog

Apparently there's a new release? Morrissey or something?

Today probably.

Stretch your legs commanders!

Fleet Carriers: Are they your bag?

Fleet Carriers are coming in December. Last week at GamesCom, Frontier released more information following their brief announcement at LaveCon in June.

What have they said?

December Update - The FLEET CARRIER Update

The news you've been waiting for... Fleet Carriers.

Take a peek below at the initial details about Fleet Carriers, coming as the December Update.

Ownership
Purchasable with a large amount of credits.
One Fleet Carrier per Commander. Available for base game and Horizons players.

Capacity
Fleet Carriers have a total of 16 Landing Pads, composed of:

• 8 Large
• 4 Medium
• 4 Small

Set permissions to allow others to dock at your Fleet Carrier.

Operations
All Fleet Carriers feature rearm, refuel and repair services.
Commanders can choose a number of loadouts for their Fleet Carrier, governing services/module and ship availability to support a number of different activities, such as:

• Bounty Hunter
• Mercenary
• Pirate
• Trader
• Smuggler
• Miner
• Explorer
• Search and Rescue

Travel
500 LY jump range (per jump)
Schedule jumps from the Galaxy Map when you want and from wherever you are in the galaxy.
Commanders require a unique resource to fuel the Fleet Carrier in order for it to jump.

What does that tells us that we didn't know?

Any commander can buy their own carrier (just one). It's going to cost Billions of credits in all probability. This makes them an end-game goal. They're going to be available in the base game - not just Horizons, so EVERYONE gets a shot at owning their own BattleStar! 

They are persistent (if other players can dock, they have to be). So once parked, they stay put. They are indestructible and only one can be in an instance, so no mega-battles. But also no ganking the most expensive ship you'll ever own. Which is nice.

Persistence means you won't just be able to chart a course and jump, you'll have to fuel up, set destination and wait for a server tick (Thursday AM). This means with a 500LY maximum jump range, it would take 2.5 years in real time to get one to Beagle point - not sure how useful an exploration support ship would be under those limitations. They run on an as-yet-unannounced type of Jumponium 2.0 and probably will require some effort to refuel. It may be that they WILL be able to jump at any time rather than the server tick, based on the refuelling requirement. Hopefully Frontier will provide more details of this soon - after the September update. Until then we can only speculate.

If you've lots of credits and a few friends to help you with refuelling, then the Galaxy will be your oyster come December. 

And did I mention, they look damn sexy too. 

In other news, a new Thargoid Interceptor variant was discovered over the weekend; the "Orthrus". It can be identified by distinct yellow plating around the central core of the ship and yellow markings. There are more details and some screenshots here.

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! :)

There was a lot of speculation and a couple of leaks prior to the ship being activated in the game, but now it's here and I have all the details on the newest ship in the Elite: Dangerous shipyard.

What has become clear is that the data-mined information leak was more accurate, or at least less misleading that the XBOX video leak. For example, the stock ship does cost 124,755,342 CR, but the power plant is NOT Class 6 it is Class 8 but comes with the 1750CR Class 6E Power plant fitted instead of a 1,750,00CR Class 8E Power plant (those cheapskates at Lakon!). The FSD supplied is a 6E, but the slot is a Class 7. These made the specifications that appeared in the video a red herring.

So here are the speculation-free 100% accurate, taken-from-the-ship, specifications of the Type-10 Defender.

Looks

The ship is a shaved-down Type-9, but the spolier and folding wing-tips, along with the abundant engine ports, make this ship look very "race tuned".  It is not going to win any beauty contests, but it reminds me very much of the old Thunderbird 2 International Rescue craft, with it's massive size and stubby bulk and huge engines.

Weapons

With nine hardpoints, this ship has a lot of sustainable firepower. Lacking any huge hard-points it is designed to be able to "tough it out" for a long battle, making this an ideal PvE combat ship and most especially one that can take the pounding dished out by Thargoids.

The two Class 1 (small) hard-points are located on the front of the ship either side of the cockpit.

There are then two Class 2 (medium) and two Class 3 (large) hard-points located on the top edge of the ship with the medium hard-point leading.

Then there are two Class 3 (large) hard-points on the underside off the outer engine bulkheads and a single Class 2 (medium) hard-point on the underside off the ship's belly, dead-centre.

In the screen shot above, you can see the Ship Launched Fighter bay lit at the dead-centre of the ship' rear underside.

Handling and speed

With Class 7 Thrusters, same as the Type-9 and more weight, you'd expect this thing to handle like a brick in a pool of treacle, but you'd be wrong! While it isn't going to fly like an Eagle, it turns about the same as an Anaconda with D rated Thrusters. Given a Grade 5 Dirty Drive tuning, it handles even better.

The stock speed is 179m/s, but even with over 3,000 armour on mine, with the dirty drives it cruises at 230m/s and boosts to 280m/s.

The all-important jump range

With a Class 7A FrameShift Drive fitted the ship has a fairly respectable 18.6Ly range fully loaded with armour and module reinforcement. However, a grade 5 engineer upgrade took my jump range to 24ly, which meant when jumping down from Shinrata Dezra to Maia, my ship made 22 jumps, while my wingmate in a maxed-out and engineered Fer-De-Lance took more than 30 jumps with his max range of 16ly.

For such a massive ship, this beast is more comparible with the Cutter in firepower and jump range - certainly my Corvette would not keep up with it.

Does it do what it was built for?

In the name of science, not fun (honest!), we took some Type-10's out to HIP 17694 and attacked a Cyclops Thargoid and despite our ineptitude, we were victorious!

It took two tries and on the first, I got destroyed! But when you enjoy losing 17M CR in rebuy, then you know Frontier have got it right.

Last night Frontier had a live stream hosted by Edward Lewis and alongside him was lead designer, Sandro Samarco, to herald the release of Elite: Dangerous 2.4 on all platforms on 26^th September.

They showed off a CGI trailer for 2.4; which sadly did not consist of any in-game footage. As in the past with these trailers, it was very dramatic, but had little real connection to the actual game of Elite: Dangerous.

Ed talked about Thargoid lore in the game (a short recap anyway) and Sandro answered some questions about game content. If you were not one of the 3,500 (ish) people watching the stream, here is the highlight reel of what you missed.

Law and Order

The Pilot’s Federation bounty on players who kill other players is a first-step. This will be refined and the Karma system fleshed out in 2.4. The system may also be expanded to NPC kills. Nothing is ruled out at this point.

Pilot’s Federation Bounty – When a player commits the crime of murder (PvP only), they receive an additional Pilot's Federation Bounty. This bounty is valid in every jurisdiction except anarchy systems.

A ship rebuy Penalty now applies when a player commits the crime of murder (PvP only), an additional cost is added if they swap to a less expensive ship before paying legal costs during the rebuy process.

New Ship

Sandro stated the Type-10 Defender (clearly a Lakon craft) is not the Panther LX. It’s a new ship. He didn’t answer any other questions about the Type-10. Is it a new ship or variant (combat Type-9)? We’ll find out I guess.

Above is a concept art of what was going to be the DiamondBack. Maybe as with the Imperial Ships, they'll adapt one ship concept to use for another. My thinking is that they've taken a basic type-9 heavy and made a combat variant, in the same way they did with the Type-6 Transport -> Keelback. The resulting ship would be a slow moving but very dangerous gun platform. This though, is pure speculation.

New Content & Features 2.4

Holo-Me now has multiple Save Slots for different Commander appearances, as well as new hairstyles and added slots for Eyewear and Outfits.

Synthesis can now create heat sinks, chaff, limpets and top up life support, however heat sinks require manufactured materials so you won't have an infinite supply outside the bubble.

Additional planetary bases have been added to the Colonia region for migration winners

New Content & Features 1.9

The Inbox has had a revamp with various quality of life improvements and a new look.
We get chained missions; missions that can be in several parts.
Hull/Canopy Repair Limpet controllers are now available which will enable you to repair your own and other CMDRs ships out in space.
Station outfitting now displays all options available for cosmetic items. You can preview paint jobs and other game extras with the Buy Now link enabled.
Your stored ships can now be sold from the rebuy screen to cover the rebuy if you are cash-poor when your ship was destroyed.
Exploration and the galaxy map have the following improvements:-

• The maximum route plotting range has been extended from 1,000Ly to 20,000Ly.
• Route plotting is much faster.
• In route plotting there is now an option to make use of neutron star boost when plotting routes.
• An icon is now displayed on your plotted route to show the last scoopable star before your ship will run out of fuel.

The stations now have a search and rescue contact for the new search and rescue missions. This option also allows you to hand in recovered escape pods (legally). In addition new and improved salvage scenarios have been added to support search and rescue game play.

Anti-Thargoid weapons

Confirming what was first show in concept art at this year’s LaveCon event back in June, we will be getting a new type of missile launcher which is specifically designed to combat Thargoid technology. Shown in Medium and Large hard-points, it will be the first missile launcher in Class 3 - The question is, can you use those missiles on anyone (not just Thargoids) and are they dumbfire or guided?

We will also get a new countermeasure to protect our ships from Thargoid EMP weapons. This was shown as "being deployed". Since all Utility Slot items are "always on", I'm not sure how you would activate this in game if it wasn't always on.

These were all shown off with a CGI video trailer for 2.4 titled “Commander Chronicles: Retaliation”, which demonstrated the importance of ZombieLand Rule #2 – “The Double Tap”. Don’t be stingy with those Thargoid-killer missiles or the target will regenerate fast and will kill you with extreme prejudice using their own nasty looking warheads.

Because if you don’t, you’ll be making “Dale Face” all the way to the rebuy screen...

 Interestingly, the video showed the Target Lock on the Thargoid ship showed the ship as "Thargoid Interceptor - Cyclops Variant".

So how does the Dolphin fit? Well it's size gives it a volume of 9,481.5m³, so it is between the Adder and Cobra Mk 3 on a small landing pad.

UPDATE:
Overnight those busy CMDRs at Canonn Research (http://canonn.science/) have found another FOUR Thargoid Hives / Outposts...

#2 Aries Dark Region DB-X D1-63 A 7 A
Lat 25.94, Long 77.96

#3 Pleiades Sector OS-U C2-7 4 A
Lat 58.21, long -177.04

#4 Col 285 Sector VC-Y D57 AB 4 A
Lat 4.78, long 136.28

#5 HIP 14909 2 A
Lat 26.5 long -27.5

#6 MEL 22 SECTOR ZU-P C5-1 4A
Lat  -63.5, Long 8.02

#7 MEL 22 SECTOR NX-U D2-27
Lat -39.8, Long -56.2

The Interiors have been opened! Two 'keys' can be used: Unknown artifact or Unknown probe. Once inside, there is a room where an Unknown Link is pawned. Take all three to the main chamber and drop each on the correct pad to activated the reactor.

No sooner is an update out the door, than we discover more Thargoid stuff!

Located 357.26 ly from Sol, a short way out of the bubble (too close for comfort if you ask me) is HIP 19026 and on the third moon (C) of Planet HIP 19026 B1, located at lat -17, long -152 is what can only be described as a hive.

It can been seen from orbital cruise due to the size. Is this a Thargoid outpost? or Hive? Sure is creepy.

Very reminicant of "alien", including the currenlty closed tunnels into the structure.

I found a number of flower-like objects around the structure which showed on scanner as "unknown uplink". These gave me three new data scans.

Unknown material

Unknown residue

Unknown structure

There are also a number of "organic structures" which contain meta-material.

There were also, well, eggs. And an unknown object that I picked up (the green thingy on the left) which corroded my SRV systems.

What's behind those doors? I'd sure like to know!

The Thargoids are coming!

Frontier have announced that the next update to Elite: Dangerous will be released in Q3 of 2017 and will be titled "The Return".

This new update will be bringing the Thargoid race back to the Elite universe with a vengeance! They will require new weapons and new tactics to survive and exploration to discover their origins as well as research to discover their weaknesses and study their technology. The human race is not prepared…

The teaser trailer Ed Lewis showed us on the E3 LiveStream this evening showed an Elite: Dangerous logo being overflown by a number of octahedral alien craft and then being slowly corroded by a green glowing crystalline fungus. All very atmospheric and creepy!

It's wabbit human season

Ed topped off his stream by globally broadcasting to all players of the game that the Thargoids are back!

"This is an urgent message from Commander Edward Lewis. There are forces out there who do not want you to know the truth, but I have to make this public. I found a ship in HIP 17044. A Federal Capital ship, shot to pieces. They were carrying the data the Feds stole from Professor Palin. The crew is dead, but they discovered something important about the Unknown Ships. There is a beacon in the wreckage broadcasting a message, over and over. It proves what we suspected. They are back. And the whole galaxy needs to know. The Thargoids have returned."

To find the wreck site and beacon...

Travel to HIP 17044 and fly to the second planet (around 1,800 ls) then set a heading for the Asterope system, some 52Ly away but continue in super-cruise for a further 10,700ls until you see the unregistered comms beacon and distress call.

When you drop into normal space, you will see the wreck site. There are a destroyed fleet of Federal ships, some on fire and a green mist in the space around them. Spooky..

"Why the damage doesn't look too bad from out here!"

UPDATED 11:36am

There is another BETA related controversy brewing. In the March 21st LiveStream, Frontier mentioned that the nameplates for ship hulls would be a purchased item.

What’s it all about?

In the next major release of Elite: Dangerous, a new feature will be ship naming. You will be able (in station outfitting) be able to set a name for each of your ships, which will appear on your HUD. You can also set a ship registry ID, which is your station traffic control call-sign. This name will also appear on other CMDRs HUDs when they scan your ship. This name will only appear on other players HUDs if you pay for a nameplate! The controversy is that most players assumed (right or wrong) that the ship name would appear on the outer hull of the ship by default, at no charge.

On yesterday’s LiveStream, Frontier instead said that the exterior nameplate would cost extra!

Now does that mean space credits or real-world wonga? It would appear to be the latter and that has got more than a few commanders hot under the visor!

CMDR Zeeman: I'm normally happy to support the FD store, but I'll be boycotting this, sadly.

CMDR BongoBaggins: Other CMDRs cannot see the name of your ship on their scanner unless you've bought a nameplate. That's not cosmetic DLC, its locking game features behind a paywall. It's opportunistic, mean-spirited and churlish, and I won't be naming my ships.

Back in the Design Discussion Forum (where ideas were spit-balled during the design phase of Elite) the agreed details on ship names were:

Ship Naming

• A ship can be given a name by a commander
• A ship name can only be registered at a reputable space dock
• There is a fee to register the name
• Names are not unique
• Although ships have unique registration numbers that can be shown
• Ship names can be changed using the same procedure
• By default a profanity filter is applied to all ship names (separate from chat filters) “starring” swear words out

The impression at that time was that the naming would cost credits in-game, but now Frontier have said it will be a cosmetic DLC purchase from the Frontier Store.

The most common reaction is disbelief:

CMDR Oryana: I wouldn't mind just a free basic name plate with generic font and no bells and whistles. I'd then probably pay for cooler fonts, or other colors or symbols next to it. The fact that I have to pay to essentially stencil on some letters on my ship is a joke.

Well respected streamer and member of the Elite community Obsidian Ant had this question:

If I buy a paint job for my Asp, I can use it on all my Asps. If I buy a name plate for my Asp, can I use it on all my Asp's? And if not, what happens to the nameplate when I sell that specific Asp?

Personally, I feel that a basic nameplate should be free and that more elaborate stencils should come with a charge, much as each ship has a free basic paint-job and further cosmetic customisation is paid DLC. As for not showing your ship name on other players HUDs unless you've bought a name-plate, well if that is correct, then it's an exceedingly poor and short-sighted decision.

Frontier have not responded on the thread. Frontier responded today at 11:03 (around an hour after I published this article!)

Edward Lewis posted this statement
Hi everyone,

There’s been a number of questions from Commanders regarding ship naming and how ship name plates will work so we wanted to give you a little more information about how these features will work when they’re released.

In-game ship naming

When you have named your ship in-game, your ship name will appear in multicrew grouping and in your HUD. In addition to this, in beta 5, when other people scan you, or target you in space they will be able to see your ship name in their UI. This feature will be available for all players of Elite Dangerous (both base game and Horizons players) including Xbox One, upcoming PS4 release and PC Commanders.

Cosmetic Ship Name Plates

The ship name plates will offer an added layer of cosmetic personalisation for Commanders wanting to wear their name with pride, much like paint jobs and other cosmetics currently available in the store.

Name plates will be made available in themed packs. These packs will contain three designs, each of which will be available in three colours: black, white, and grey. This makes a total of 9 nameplates per pack. After purchase, each pack will be available for use across all of your ships (Ship launched fighters and SRVs don’t have name plates) and each pack of 9 variant plates will be coming into store at just £2/€2.5/$3. This means that purchasing one pack of name plates will allow you to use that style across all of your current and future ships, at the same time and rename each individual ship as many times as you like. We believe this flexibility offers Commanders great value and is a great way to help support the continued development of Elite Dangerous.

Thanks!

So what do you think? Is this a micro-transaction too far? Or have Frontier made the right call?

EDIT: In light of the updated information provided by Ed, I would say that while the lack of a free basic name-plate is a shame, the low cost point for having name-plates across all ships answers most of the complaints. That and the clarification that the ships names WILL be visible to other players on their HUDs.

Audio

The first thing I noticed about the game when I got things up and running was the sound. It was, to my ears, louder and the sound had a greater range. Once again, Frontier have tweaked various effects. The sound of the Kill Warrant Scanner has changed. I will have to keep an ear out for what else has changed.

Ship launched fighters and crew

Well, they have packaged and delivered that “BattleStar Galactica” moment perfectly. The fighter launch is amazing! I tried out a Condor and a Taipan fighter and had a fly around – I haven’t tested them in battle yet, since I never got that far from the station. The ships seem a little slower than they did in CQC. The AI crew doesn’t fly my Corvette as well as I do! The pilot just loops around me until ordered to stay put.

The “orders” menu is fairly intuitive. You can instruct the fighter to fly in formation, stay put, attack your target or attack at will. These options can be picked in either the fighter or the mother-ship to control the one you aren’t flying.

You need a minimum Class 5 internal slot for a fighter bay. A Class 6 fighter bay can have two slots and equip two fighters, sadly however, you can only ever deploy one. I did try sending my crew out in one ship and deploying myself in the second, but it didn't work - the crewman just got swapped back to the mother-ship and I was left flying the already-deployed fighter. Ah well!

If your fighter gets destroyed, you or your crew-mate are unharmed, since it is flown on remote. The fighter bay then rebuilds (grows? prints?) the fighter.

The crew you need to fly the fighters are recruited in the new "Crew Lounge". They have varying ranks and the better they are, the more they cost. I think Austin Powers must be in charge of HR there because the first crewman I saw was Ivanna Bonner and depending on how you pronounce it {bon-nar or bone-her}, the name is slightly comical, if inappropriate!

You can have up to three crew mates on payroll, but only one "active".

New Engineers

Pretty much as soon at the station hangar had appeared, so did an invitation in my InBox. A new Engineer! How many others will there be? I'm not sure. We have fifteen so far and Frontier bandied the number thirty around when Engineers were first mentioned. So will we get another fifteen? Or will we get another five per release for the rest of the season? That's my guess.

As I find out what upgrades they perform, who they are and where, I will publish a follow-up to my earlier Engineers article.

New training missions

The entire set of tutorial missions has been reworked and now includes training missions for mining and ship launched fighters. If you're never tried the training missions, well shame on you! Do them. Now!! Also, if you - like me - haven't played any since the game was released, it is worth a retry. They are a good showcase of the game.

I did find there was a bug in the ship launched fighter mission for VR users and I have reported it.

Blimey! That’s a big one!

New stuff has been added to Elite. Space furniture. Things to see and interact with. All that mile wide, inch deep nonsense is so 2014! Within a few minutes of flying around the game, I came across a "Military Installation" which looked like some part of the CQC scenery. It doesn't matter I've seen the models before, the station looked incredible. And huge. It dwarfed anything I've seen before. My Corvette looked like a Viper next to the massive structure.

It was also rather hostile to my presence and didn't like my fighter taking a poodle around too close. My fighter was destroyed and I had to beat a hasty retreat to super-cruise. That'll teach me to switch to debug camera in unknown territory!

The Beluga Liner

As new kid on the block, the Beluga is the latest ship to arrive in the game. It was priced slightly higher than the Type-9, so I would estimate it will sell for around the 90M CR price-point.
The ship is slow, but feels quite agile for its size and handles well. The audio is, as always, amazing. Being an Oculus CV1 user, I got a good look around the ships bridge and it seems a very shiny hybrid of the Anaconda's bridge and the Orca's.

D rated, the ship had a jump range of just over 21 light years.

Ship relocation

The BETA uses a server backup from a month ago, back then my Anaconda was back in SOL at Mars High, so I requested it's relocation to Jameson Memorial in Shinrarta Dezrha, using the new "Ship Transfer" option in the Shipyard menu. All your stored ships locations are listed with a price and transfer time. My Anaconda cost 6,500 CR and took 15 minutes to transfer. Relocation takes place in real time, so if you set off relocation and come back tomorrow, it'll have all been done while you out of the game.

Pink lasers baby! Yeah!

A new option on the ship livery menu in outfitting is Weapon Colour. Will this be another cosmetic digital download option? Looks like it. For those that want a distinctive look for their ships can have it, without shifting the balance of weapons in the game. So pink lasers for everyone darling!

The not-so-good bits

When I ran the game it crashed. A lot. After five quits-to-desktop, Frontier issued an update, which I duly downloaded - however my PC needed a restart before my Oculus drivers recovered from their earlier harsh treatment.

The servers were clearly overloaded by all the players having a go. I think sometimes Frontier underestimate how popular their game is. A lot of lapsed players come back for new releases.

Anyway, so far all my problems stemmed from server stability and the issues from the first point release (let's call it 2.2.1). Late last night I managed a couple of hours of solid game-play with the 2.2.2 version. That's why they call it a BETA test.