Elite: Dangerous Update #87

Hello, Commander,

Welcome to Elite Dangerous Newsletter #87.

This week we're preparing for PAX Prime in Seattle and looking ahead to EGX in Birmingham, UK. Read on to see what's in store for Commanders at PAX Prime, learn about the story changes coming to CQC 1.4 and read the first entry in our brand new Community Goals Update blog.

Remember, the new season of expansions for Elite Dangerous is available for pre-order NOW. Elite Dangerous: Horizons launches this Holiday season, and you can take a look at some fresh concept work from the amazing Frontier art team in this week's Peek.

As always, you can hear the latest news and updates directly from the development team on our Forums, Twitter, Facebook, Community homepage and right here in the newsletter every week, and we're always eager to hear your feedback.

Contents This Week

• Elite: Dangerous at PAX Prime
• Design a Paint Job Competition
• New Weekly Community Goals Blog
• Peek Of The Week
• Developer Update
• Comms Chatter
• GalNet

Elite Dangerous @ PAX Prime

We're excited to be heading to PAX Prime at the end of next week, so if you're in the Seattle area from August 28 - 31 and you're lucky enough to have a ticket for the sold out show, make sure you come and visit us at booth 6808. We absolutely love meeting players, and you'll have a killer advantage in rounds of CQC.

We're showing off CQC for the first time in the US, and all day we'll be playing eight player Deathmatch games, with the winners earning a shot at an incredible prize each day.

The crowds gather to play Elite: Dangerous at PAX East in Boston earlier this year

If you needed any more excuses to visit the Elite: Dangerous stand, we'll also be giving away an exclusive PAX Prime 2015 paint job to everyone who plays CQC with us. You won't be able to get these event-exclusive paint jobs anywhere else.

And of course we couldn't do any of this without our amazing team of Ambassadors. For our trip to Seattle we'll be bringing back a few old hands, with Commanders Malkir, Rezri and the Fifth Horseman on hand to help new players with the game.

See you in Seattle, Commanders!

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Design a Paint Job Competition

We’re giving you the opportunity to see a paint job based on your design featured in Elite: Dangerous. Do you want to design a new paint job for the Anaconda, the popular Cobra, the versatile Vulture, or maybe a paint job for each? It’s your call.

Take the templates on our Community homepage, design your paint job using whatever software you please, and send a JPEG or PNG image to community@frontier.co.uk by August 30. Please stick to three colours maximum and favour large, strong designs that will work well from a distance.

Within a week of the closing date we’ll pick the winners who will receive the paint job they designed in-game (as will three friends of their choosing) in a future update. And the winning paint jobs will be made available to the public at a date in the near future.

For the full details, including the templates to use for your designs, the rules and information on how to enter visit the article on our community site.

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New Weekly Community Goals Blog

This week we put out the first entry in our new series of blog posts all about Community Goals. You can read the first entry below, but make sure you return back to the community site every week to catch up on the latest community goals news.

After the excitement of saving the galaxy from the terrible Cerberus plague we gave the community a little time to relax this week with a single, simple trading goal in the Apalar system. The Apalar Labour minor faction put forward a plan to transform their Industrial economy into a thriving High Tech Hub. Over 1,500 Commanders came to their aid, providing thousands of tonnes of polymers, semiconductors and superconductors. The community made short work of the task, completing it on August 16. As reward for their efforts Apalar Labour announced a 30 percent discount on all technology commodities for a two week period. This discount began on August 18 and will run until early September.

The Apalar goal was interesting as we decided to provide special rewards for the top five Commanders. This isn’t something we plan to do for every community goal, most of the time the normal top 'X' percent structure works well. Occasionally however, it is interesting to add some extra competition into the mix.

Without further ado the top five Commanders were:

1. CMDR Vinnyph
2. CMDR Leo Sagan
3. CMDR Drorelith
4. CMDR DeathMagnet
5. CMDR Alexbrentnall

This week we are back with a bang, with three interesting and difficult goals, all linked by a single faction, Emperor’s Dawn. These goals in the Dinkas, Kamcha and Jang Di systems all require players to provide different goods. One of them requires a supply of illegal Battle Weapons, another the rare Ceremonial Heike Tea. The final goal requires players to locate and supply Toxic Waste, which is both difficult to find and even more perilous to transport. Each of these three goals are twists on the normal trade goal and we are really excited to see the ingenious ways in which the community will meet these challenges.

If you are looking for the goals this week the breakdown below should help guide you:

• Jang Di – Sikorsky Orbital – Deliver Ceremonial Heike Tea to the commodity market.
• Kamcha – Saarinen Station – Deliver Battle Weapons to the black market.
• Dinkas – Blaauw Port – Deliver Toxic Waste to the black market.

That’s all for this week, we will be back next week with new goals.

Safe flying (try not to get scanned!)

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Peek Of The Week

A look at the incredible concept art of Elite Dangerous: Horizons, coming Holiday 2015 for PC and available now to pre-order

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From the desk of Executive Producer Michael Brookes...

For this week's dev update I'm going to talk about story in the game, and some of the changes coming in the CQC update relating to story. But before that I'd like to congratulate all the players who succeeded in stopping the Cerberus outbreak - it was looking quite serious there for a while and could potentially have been quite devastating, so good job!

I mention the Cerberus plague as it's an example of some of the story elements we weave into the game. Generally speaking we have three types of story: The first are the big story arcs like the Imperial Succession thread. This is currently bubbling away quite nicely and there's some big events based around that. There's a similar one for the Federation which will resume during the CQC update and will continue well into next year.

There are other big story arcs, some of which have been foreshadowed in GalNet and others that haven't. I won't spoil the surprises!

With the major story arcs we put community goals into the plot and that allows players the opportunity to determine where the story goes next. Community Goals are a useful component and they are good for massed action, but some of the storylines need something a bit more subtle. One of the changes in the CQC update allows us to place items for collection as part of scenarios in specific locations. As well as supporting new story options it allows us to create treasure hunts and similar activities. These won't necessarily be telegraphed and I'm quite looking forward to seeing how these evolve.

As well as the big story arcs we're supporting stories created by player groups and where appropriate supporting them with gameplay elements like community goals. A word of caution on this though: we won't allow community goals that provide an unfair advantage over other groups. This is also the case with player submitted stories. When these are used in GalNet they will have the commander's name at the bottom of the story.

The third type of story is a bit more adhoc. These tend to be more local in focus and are used to fill in the gaps in the main story beats.

The changes coming for supporting the stories also have benefits elsewhere. One example of this is that there are new things for explorers to find while they are out in deep space. They won't pop up on the navigation system unless you're close enough.

And of course, I can't talk about story without also mentioning the Unknown Artefacts - the mystery for these is about to get deeper.

The CQC update progresses the tools we have to express story in the game, but it won't end there. We have some exciting plans for how we can expand the story further as we enter Season Two.

Progress on the beta release for the CQC update is continuing. It is due to have the internal candidate QA pass next week, this should be about a week in duration so all being well, the beta will be available for those with access on the week of August 31st.

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Comms Chatter

CMDR Maximilian.Y has been showing off some awesome Cinemagraphs. Check out his gallery here.

The racing group, Elite: Racers, recently finished up season two of their races and will be starting on their next season soon. Click here to learn how you can get involved, join the community in their racing-themed discussion and see a collection of their highlights videos.

Koki_v3 on Reddit posted what he described as 'The Jackpot', with an image of an Earth-like planet with rings orbiting a neutron star. Every explorer's dream.

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Dissent is growing within Federation congress over the situation in the Pegasi sector. Though many view the Pegasi Pirate War as a chance to let the Empire waste their resources, a growing contingent is becoming frustrated with the Federation’s lack of response. "Tolerating such rampant lawlessness in our sphere of influence makes us look increasingly feckless. If we don’t react with a show of force, it’s an open invitation for every would-be warlord to subjugate Federation space”, Congressman McRand argued in congress today.

This week a new series looked back at some important historical figures. Angel Rose’s career belies her relatively mundane origins, which saw her grow up on a starport under the watchful eye of her mother, Maugvahnna Rose. Angel’s rebellious streak was evident from an early age, however, and in a calculated attempt to exasperate her mother, she left home at the earliest opportunity to become a trader. Unfortunately for Angel, things did not pan out exactly as she had hoped, and through a sequence of unfortunate events, the aspiring merchant found herself drawn into a life of crime, ultimately becoming a reluctant (and not entirely successful) assassin. This in turn led to her entanglement with a group of pirates, resulting in the events that so entertained the viewers of the Underground Channel last year.

The hunt for the killers of the Darius family came to a dramatic conclusion today in a firefight with local security forces on Eotienses. The Darius family was brutally murdered four days ago in what is believed to be revenge for Brendan Paul Darius’s assassination of Emperor Hengist Duval. All of the suspects – who are understood to have been local vigilantes seeking revenge for the Emperor’s murder – were killed in the operation. In a statement, Inspector Reeve, who led the investigation, said: “Considering the savagery with which the suspects butchered the Darius family, we couldn’t take any chances while attempting to arrest them. They were heavily armed and opened fire as our officers entered the building.”

Allegations have surfaced from sources close to the office of Prime Minister Edmund Mahon that unnamed elements within the Pilots Federation are deliberately undermining democratic factions in the Old Worlds. These groups are allegedly scheming to push corporate governments into power to strengthen trade agreements with Alioth. The Lave system appears to be the latest victim of these efforts. With support from independent pilots, the incorporated Lave Fortune Organization has become the most influential faction in the system. If they are successful, Lave will become the third system in the cluster – after Leesti and Reorte – to have its democratic government overthrown by a corporation.

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That’s it for Newsletter #87. As always, if there's anything in particular that you’d like to hear more about, or if you'd like to ask a question, then please contact us at elite-newsletter@frontier.co.uk.

Click for the latest Game Manual, Quickstart Guide and Pilot Training Videos. Visit our Support team here and read our previous newsletters here.

Until next time, fly safe and Right On, Commander.

The Frontier Team