Elite Dangerous Update #117

Welcome to the Elite Dangerous Newsletter #117.

This week we're sharing a piece of concept art for bases in The Engineers, giving you details on new bobbleheads in the store, highlighting some amazing content from Elite Dangerous: Horizons community, putting Elite Dangerous on sale on Xbox One, and going where no Commander has gone before.

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.

Pick up the Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass today for £24.99, €33.99 or $37.99.

Contents This Week

• The Engineers
• Horizons Video Spotlight
• HCS Voice Pack - William Shatner as Orion
• Horizons Highlights
• Xbox One Sale - Elite Dangerous 33% off
• New Lost Winds Bobbleheads in Store Now
• Game Changers Charity Livestream
• Reddit Elite Dangerous AMA series
• GalNet Focus
• Elite Dangerous Mayhem Competition Winners
• Join the Elite - Everything You Need to Know About Powerplay
• Community Goals Update
• Comms Chatter

Peek of the Week - The Engineers Base Concept

Concept art - Approaching an engineer's base in Elite Dangerous: Horizons. You'll land at these bases to offer commodities, data and materials in exchange for unique ship modules.

Pick up the Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass today for £24.99, €33.99 or $37.99.

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Horizons Video Spotlight

More than 30 Commanders gathered on a planet surface to take part in an SRV race... did we mention that they're also over 50,000 light years away from Sol? The race starts at around four minutes (be aware of some strong language).

Pick up the Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass today for £24.99, €33.99 or $37.99.

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HCS Voice Pack - William Shatner as Orion

HCS VoicePacks are proud to present "Orion" performed by William Shatner himself. A new voice pack with over 1300 phrases from the legendary science fiction master who has lent his voice for a thoroughly immersive experience. A unique and special preview from YouTuber Obsidian Ant will give you a feel for the character as well as some insight into some new features, one being a Nebula Tour which is a very exciting journey that you can go on with Orion in the game as well as the official trailer from HCS VoicePacks. Click the image below to see the full trailer.

Pre-orders are available from today, all of which will be entered into a draw for some fantastic prizes - These include: Signed photos from William Shatner that were kindly provided during the production of Orion. In addition to that HCS have signed exclusive pieces of fine artwork from the Frontier development team. HCS have also included a signed book from Wiliam Shatner "Leonard" to the lucky winners.

You can also watch a brilliant behind the scenes video of Shatner in action. Click the image below to watch the video.

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Horizons Highlights

This brilliant collection of images taken by Stef Veenhof shows off some impressive planet-side formation flying. Click the image to the see the full collection.

Roam3D posted a link on Reddit to his photo album titled 'the Colours of Exploration'.

Pick up the Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season Pass today for £24.99, €33.99 or $37.99.

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Elite Dangerous for Xbox One on Sale

The Elite Dangerous Xbox Spring Sale is now on. Those with an Xbox Live Gold Membership will receive 33% off Elite Dangerous, and those without will receive a 25% discount. Sale ends March 28th. This might be the perfect time to invite your friends to become new Commanders in the Elite Dangerous Galaxy!

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New LostWinds Bobbleheads in store now

To celebrate the launch of another beloved Frontier Developments game, LostWinds, on Steam, we've released a collection of new Bobbleheads to decorate your cockpit with in Elite Dangerous. Head over to the Frontier store now to pick up the lovely little Toku, Deo, and Notea bobbleheads.

You can also pick them up from the Steam store.

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CMDR Breakspear's 24 Hour Charity Stream

CMDR Breakspear is running a 24 hour gaming marathon this weekend, to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. Starting at 11:45pm(GMT) on Saturday 26th March and running until 01:00 (BST) on Monday 27th March, Breakspear will be playing Elite Dangerous for most of the time he's on camera.

There will be prizes provided by Frontier Developments, Elite Dangerous action and much more. Make sure you visit his stream this weekend and support a fantastic cause. http://twitch.tv/bigguy1986

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Reddit Elite Dangerous AMA series

The new Ask-Me-Anything series by /r/EliteDangerous and /r/EliteOne continues this week. See the information below.

Today at 7pm /r/EliteDangerous are joined by representatives from the massive Distant Worlds event: this new expedition will task all its participants to travel a route that will roughly follow the original path taken by the Beagle last year, this time with the added task of surveying and exploring as many worlds as possible at key locations along the way.

While at 7pm tomorrow (Saturday 26th), /r/EliteOne will be visited by two Player Groups:
• Paladin Consortium: An association of independent Mil-spec soldiers united by the will to enforce law and order in the galaxy, searching for a way to improve well-being and cooperation.
• Church Of The Space Cat: Place your tributes before The Great Painite Litter Box and receive The Space Cat Me-Ow's blessings, forever may his whiskers guide us in The Darkness.

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Welcome to our weekly roundup of news stories and events in the Elite Dangerous galaxy.

An anonymous source from the upper echelons of Imperial society has revealed that Admiral Denton Patreus has expressed concern over the recent construction of a new Federal battle cruiser. The source claimed to have information that the Federation intends to significantly expand its Navy over the coming months, and this is believed to have Admiral Patreus worried.

Medical personnel at Leoniceno Orbital have announced they will soon bring former Federal president Jasmina Halsey out of her induced coma. If the process is successful, the former president should be fully conscious within a few days.

The Revolutionary Party of Vennik has announced plans to extend its appeal for land-enrichment systems for a second week. According to a spokesperson, the organisation has decided to keep the contract open to ensure it receives enough material to complete the terraforming project.

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Mayhem Gladiator Challenge Winners

The Gladiators Challenge – During the first four weeks after the launch of Arena (16 February – 15 March), three named accounts beginning with ‘FDEV’ were playing CQC on a regular basis If you managed to get in a game with them, and take a screenshot, you were entered into a prize draw. Well now we have the results of that competition.

The 2 x Premium Elite Dangerous goodie bags, including a cap, a beanie, three faction mugs, and signed artwork went to CMDR Mad Anthony Wayne and Gabriel Case.
The 2 x Elite Dangerous: Horizons Season passes were snapped up by Wayne Youngblood and Bozakir
And the 1 x Every paint job in the Elite Dangerous store went to the extremely lucky CMDR Nollywood.

We have been in touch with each of the Commanders who will be told how to claim their prize!

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Join the Elite - Everything You Need to Know About Training and Powerplay

Next week's livestream is all about Powerplay with Sandro Sammarco, That one is sure to be a must-see, so turn up next week, March 31 for an episode all about Powerplay! But for now, let's remind you about this week...

Tonight we're continuing our tutorial livestream series on the official Elite Dangerous channel. Join the Elite is a series that takes deep dives into various aspects of Elite Dangerous, explaining everything you need to know about a particular part of the game. The series is aimed at seasoned players, teaching a thing or two to even the most dedicated of Elite experts.

In future weeks we'll be covering the flight model, the Galaxy simulation, Powerplay and more. Join Edward Lewis and Elite Dangerous Head of Design, Laurence Oldham, in episode 3, as they show you everything you need to know about Trading (tonight!)

Make sure you join us on our official YouTube channel at 19:00 GMT tonight.

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Community Goals Update

Greetings, Commanders, and welcome to this week’s community goals blog. If you’re looking for a goal, the breakdown below should help:

Billionaire’s Treasure Hunt:
Location Unknown – Follow the billionaire’s clues to find a mystery object, and deliver it to win part of his fortune and other prizes.

Terraforming Vennik 1:
Nixon Enterprise, Vennik - Deliver Land Enrichment Systems to Nixon Enterprise in the Vennik system to support the ongoing terraforming of Vennik 1.

Neutralising the Unknown Artefact Threat (requires Horizons):
Obsidian Orbital, Maia - Deliver Meta-Alloys to Obsidian Orbital to help scientists develop more UA-resistant material.

Professor Ishmael Palin has shocked medical personnel at Wilkes Orbital by returning to work only hours after he received the antidote to the Cerberus Plague. According to Palin’s doctor, the professor was eager to talk to Lea Tantaga, the molecular chemist who recently developed a material capable of countering the Unknown Artefacts’ self-repair mechanism. The scientists’ conversation resulted in the following statement from Professor Palin:

“The significance of Professor Tantaga’s breakthrough is clear: the means to safely contain the Unknown Artefacts is now within our grasp. What we need now are quantities of meta-alloys so we can produce more of the UA-resistant material.”

The Pioneer's Cooperative, a conglomerate based in the Maia system has pledged to support the appeal by mass-producing the UA-resistant material if sufficient quantities of meta-alloys are received. This will then be used to create special ship modules that can safely transport the Unknown Artefacts. The organisation has placed an open order for meta-alloys, and has promised to generously reward pilots who contribute to the initiative.

The Revolutionary Party of Vennik has made an announcement regarding the terraforming of Vennik 1. A spokesperson confirmed that the organisation plans to extend the campaign for a second week.

“Due to overly ambitious estimates, it seems the supply of land-enrichment systems in nearby systems is exceeded by our demand. We have therefore decided to keep the contract open for an additional week, at considerable expense, to ensure we receive enough material to complete our terraforming project.”

Following a long hiatus, reclusive philanthropist Alfred Jeffress has announced a new treasure hunt, and once again he is offering a share of his vast personal fortune to the winner.

In a statement, Jeffress confirmed that the event will follow the same format as his previous treasure hunts. A mystery object has been placed somewhere in space, and the first person to find it and deliver it to a specified location will win the competition. Jeffress has released a riddle, via GalNet, that he claims will set participants on the path to finding the mystery object

These goals begin on the 24th of March 3302 and will run for one week.

Whether you’re hunting for treasure or delivering alloys, fly safe out there!

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Comms Chatter

Ddesilva on imgur wanted a little more control of their ship, so they created a cool foot pedal from an old keyboard.

CMDR Bad Koala posted the above gif of a third person view of their ship taking heat damage.

Proving that there are no age limits on becoming a Pilots Federation Commander, Reddit user gee_man74 shared this photo of his “82 year old Chinese father in law getting lost in a resource extraction site via Oculus DK2”.

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That’s it for Newsletter #117. Please don't reply to this email; this address is not monitored. Instead you can get in touch with us at community@frontier.co.uk with any questions about the newsletter. Please use our support page: http://support.frontier.co.uk if you have any support-related queries.

Click for the latest Game Manual, Quickstart Guide and Pilot Training Videos. Want to read our previous newsletters? Check them out here.

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

The Frontier Team