Elite: Dangerous Update #82

Hello, Commander,

Welcome to Elite: Dangerous Newsletter #82.

This week, we're going to Lavecon and taking a small surprise or two for everyone in attendance. You'll find more about the show in Comms Chatter, below.

We're also kicking off a weekend sale on our store, and announcing a contest that will see a community-created Rare Good appear in the Elite: Dangerous galaxy.

Finally, we're getting set for a major announcement at Gamescom. We're working hard to make sure we have something exciting to show off in August, and it's taking a lot of late nights and long weekends on the team's part to prepare for the announcement. We hope you'll like it.

Next week we'll have details of a special community event we're throwing in Cologne during Gamescom and how you can get involved.

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. Have a great weekend!

Contents This Week

• Weekend Sale
• Rare Goods Contest
• Peek Of The Week
• Developer Update
• Comms Chatter
• GalNet

Weekend Sale

All weekend long we're having a summer sale on the Frontier Store, with deals on T-shirts and mugs, which is good enough reason to post our CEO David Braben again, celebrating with a mug of Empire coffee as another player backs Senator Patreus.

You'll also find Elite: Dangerous available for 33 percent off on both the Frontier Store and Steam, so it's a good time to recruit some friends or pick up a rare boxed edition of the game. The boxed edition ships with the installer on disc and a download code for the game so you'll always stay up to date, and for a limited time only is available for the same 33 percent off.

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Announcing the Rare Goods Contest

Next week we'll be handing the creation of a Rare Good over to the community. On our forums we'll ask players for a Rare Good concept, and invite everyone to submit their ideas for the team's selection and a community vote.

Between July 10 and July 19 we're opening the doors for submissions on our forums. We'll be asking for a name, a short description of the item, the system and starport where the Rare Good should be found, and an idea for the Community Goal that will bring your creation to life. On July 21 we'll be putting our favourites to the vote on our forums, and the winning entry will be featured in-game.

Keep an eye on the forums this Monday for full details on how to leave your mark on the Elite: Dangerous galaxy with a Rare Good of your very own.

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Peek Of The Week

Cluster Compound. The third map we're revealing for Close Quarters Combat.

An outpost drifting amid an asteroid field makes a deadly battleground in CQC. Coming to PC, Mac and Xbox One this year. Play the Xbox One preview soon.

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From the desk of Executive Producer Michael Brookes.

Hi everyone,

For this week's dev update I'll start by wearing my other hat - that of Head of Fiction for Elite: Dangerous. The core tenet of the game is for players to blaze their own trail in the game and the bulk of our development effort has been in support of this. The Elite universe is rich in history and offers huge potential for stories on a galactic scale. There's a good variety of activities for the player to participate in game, but while many are happy to follow their own lead there’s also considerable interest in providing story driven goals and that’s something we want to do more with.

We already have a few story threads in game and they will continue to advance and obviously we have more to come which links in with new content like CQC Championship. There's also interesting puzzles and mysteries like the unknown artefacts that will continue to develop. As well as stories created by us that play out we're keen to involve players so they can share their stories and in particular for player groups to share their activities. When combined with features like Powerplay this provides some obvious possibilities for major events in game!

There is already some support for supporting this type of content in game, we already encourage players to submit news items for local GalNet news (we do promote the more interesting and suitable to global news items) on our forums here.

With the welcome expansion of our community team and soon for our narrative design as well, we're working on developing the process to enable greater player group participation in the game’s narrative. Naturally I also have a few fun things that I’m looking forward to unleashing on you all!

This week we released the 1.3.07 update which we had to hold off on releasing after an issue was discovered at the last minute. It's fair to say that we have been guilty of being a bit too eager in releasing updates, as we want to get it into to your hands as quickly as possible. This doesn't always work out too well so we're reigning back on this to be less iterative with releases. That helps us with less strain after releases and helps you as well with less, but better spaced updates.

For the Xbox players we're putting the final touches on the next GPP release which as well as a raft of fixes and tweaks adds CQC Championship to the game. We'll announce when we have a firm date for that, but it will be soon. One aspect of the Xbox version that is requiring specific focus is performance and the performance gains that we make putting together that version will come across to PC and Mac where possible.

We have been looking into the cause(s) of the reported occasional stuttering when approaching planets that some people have reported, particularly on specific very high-end machine configurations, which is understandably frustrating for players experiencing it and is proving equally frustrating for us investigating it. We are continuing to dig into the issue and will update when we find a solution.

Thanks!

Michael

Comms Chatter

Axellenium on Reddit started off a poster trend with this piece of Federation propaganda.

Kerbobotat and Timoarto followed up with their own Federation recruitment posters.

In last week's newsletter we gave a shout-out to OneVigor, who was planning a 24-hour livestream to raise money for Cancer Research UK. We're happy to report that his stream was a huge success, with members of the Elite: Dangerous streaming community joining him to smash through his targets. OneVigor raised an amazing £2,287.22 for the charity - you can watch the full stream here and you can donate at his JustGiving page.

The science fiction and fantasy festival run by members of the Elite: Dangerous community, Lavecon, returns this weekend, and just like last year we've got a panel of special guests to chat about Elite: Dangerous. On Saturday (11th) Art Director Chris Gregory, Executive Producer Michael Brookes and Lead Designer Sandro Sammarco will be sitting down to answer questions from players present in the room. We'll have a surprise or two for those in attendance, and a full report next week.

And finally, want a quick reference guide for Powerplay? Sokonomi has you covered. Some of the information needs correcting, but Sokonomi promises to keep updating the image and making changes in the thread. So keep your eyes on Reddit for future updates.

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Read this week's Powerplay report, by CMDR Cadoc.

Independent Commanders in support of the People's Princess Aisling Duval have come together in recent weeks under Commander Andariel in the 'Thirteenth Legion'. Count Jeffrey Alexander Ryan of Ugain said: "Some want to trade, others run cargo specifically for my Princess. Some know how to fight, but until the Thirteenth was formed, few knew how to do it making each laser pulse count." The Thirteenth Legion has built its base on Chona.

The leadership for Humason Orbital in the Carns system responded today to a report released earlier in the week, suggesting that the mining operations in the system would soon become uneconomical. At the close of the briefing, Deputy Communications Officer Ramon Lamor stated that the nature of the local workforce would also need to change and that further information would be revealed within the next few days.

Apathy toward the Kumo Crew’s activities on the fringes of Federation space was replaced by the full wrath of Senators Patreus and Lavigny-Duval as the Imperial system of Cuchua came under attack this week. The expeditionary forces launched a two-pronged attack, spearheaded by the Velites Squadron of Lavigny’s Legion, targeting Kumo ships in Cuchua and Harma. The operations, code named “Charybdis” and “Davy Jones,” have led to the downing of hundreds of pirate vessels and dozens of Kumo Commanders. Imperial casualties have been minimal, but the fighting continues.

It has been formally announced that an agreement has been reached between Hammer Arms and Emperor's Grace. This is the first ever agreement made by the fiercely proud and independent Cosmic State with an Imperial faction. Grimnir Allvadderung, CEO of Hammer Arms, kindly invited Admiral Brennus of Emperor's Grace to an evening of carousing and competition. It is reported that vast quantities of mead was consumed by both delegations. This was later followed by an axe throwing contest between Grimnir Allvadderung and Vaarwen Mako Brennus, where Grimnir Allvadderung was declared the winner. A joint military exercise of Imperial Naval units and Cosmic State forces in the Hel system was also announced.

Following up on the surprise announcement of changing economic policy in the Carns system, Deputy Communications Officer Ramon Lamor outlined further changes: “In the fine traditions of the Empire, our extraction facilities relied on the unyielding efforts of our imperial slave workforce. However, in these changing times we need a new skillset to drive the economy. Some of those slaves who possess the correct aptitude or skills are already being prepared for their new roles.” He went on to explain that the authorities will finance a substantial discount for slaves sold at Humason Orbital. This discount will remain in place until all our imperial slaves have found new places to work.

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That’s it for Newsletter #82. 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