Elite Dangerous Update #124

Welcome to the Elite Dangerous Newsletter #124

This week, we're showcasing some of the amazing screenshots and videos coming from Commanders taking part in The Engineers beta, we're talking through the Dangerous Games and telling you how you can vote for the Wildcard entry to the game-changing competition, telling you how we're implementing your feedback coming from the beta and much more.

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

• Horizons Highlights: The Engineers
• Upgrade to the Engineers 2.1 Beta Now
• The Engineers 2.1 Beta - Community Feedback
• The Dangerous Games: Pledges
• The Dangerous Games - Rise to Power Livestream
• DJ Truthsayer's Lore Interview with Michael Brookes
• Beta Feedback Stream 2
• GalNet Focus
• Pixel Bandits 24 Hour Stream
• Reddit AMA Series
• Community Goals Update
• Comms Chatter

Horizons Highlights: The Engineers

CMDR Titus Balls returns to videomaking with this atmospheric and beautiful episode of the Wonders of the Galaxy Series. Episode 13 focuses on the Engineers - click the image below to see the video in full.

We've always enjoyed Obsidian Ant's videos about Elite Dangerous, and his latest about the Engineers beta is no exception. Click below to see Obsidian Ant in action.

CMDR Array Six finds out that Plasma Accelerators with an increased rate of fire (thanks to the engineers) makes a dangerous, and colourful, combination. Remember, this is currently the beta, so weapon effects are subject to tweaking and change, but Array Six has some fun with his new weapons in the video below.

Malic Tolsen is back with his Oculus Rift (complete with Googly eyes still) and a souped-up Imperial Eagle. He reaches ridiculous speeds in this canyon run thanks to the engineers, and shows off some impressive flying skills.

Falkrum tests out the agility of the Imperial Eagle after installing some enhanced performance thrusters. This is a brilliantly moody and atmospheric video, showcasing some good flight assist off skills.

Back to Contents

Upgrade to the Elite Dangerous: Horizons Beta Access Now

The Horizons Beta is now in full flow, and this week we ran a stream with Lead Designer Sandro Sammarco, who told us about how we're implementing the feedback and bug reports you've been sending our way. You can watch the full stream back here.

Remember, If you don’t already have beta access, Horizons owners can upgrade by visiting the Frontier store for only $9.99, €9.49, £6.99 or 562 Rubles.

The beta is an important and fun part of the development process. Come and join us – and get early hands-on with the new content and help find anything that’s not quite right - reporting any feedback in our beta feedback forum and bugs in our beta bug forum.

Back to Contents

The Engineers 2.1 Beta - Community Feedback

From the desk of lead designer Sandro Sammarco:

"There’s been lots of great feedback in the Beta so far! Because of it, we’ve already been able to make a bunch of improvements:

Diminishing returns for heat delivery weapons: turns out heat attacks were just too brutal (victims were getting thousands of times hotter than their ship could handle), so we’ve altered the way that weapons push heat onto a target. Now, the hotter a ship gets, the less effective additional heat becomes. This means that although heat weapons can still cook ships very effectively, the target has a fighting chance if they can avoid attacks or pop heat sinks, and ship total heat will never rise too high above the threshold for taking hull damage. Incidentally, we’re also going to improve the Retributor Powerplay weapon, to bring it in line with experimental effects that deal heat damage – it will now be more effective, as it should be (even more so if you load for bear with the thermal shock experimental effect).

Improved Cannons: these weapons had started to look a little dated, especially with all the fancy new modules making ships more resilient. So we’ve made them a tad better: their shells are faster, have no damage fall off over range, increased their ability to overcome hardness so they lose less damage when attacking large ships and have a better chance to penetrate through to attack modules. These changes should help cannons find their place in the pantheon of kinetic weapons: “hard hitters”, alongside “hosing” multi-cannons and “shotgun” fragmentation cannons.

We’ve softened the feedback cascade experimental effect for railguns: they will now *only* prevent deploying shield cells from regenerating shields (heat from the cell still gets applied!) and deal some of their damage directly to all cell banks that are currently deploying cells. Still rather effective, then!

Missiles have been improved throughout the Beta: they do a little more damage, shields are a little less resistant to them, seekers are better at tracking, we’ve increased their health a little and we fixed a bug that was placing blast radii at the wrong point. They are now the premium method of applying damage to external modules such as drives and weapons; just remember to use subsystem targeting to increase the chance of hitting the modules you want to destroy.

Turrets are improved: we’ve increased their damage and rate of fire a little so that they now fit more appropriately with damage progression between gimbal and fixed weapons, which should make them more viable for large ships.

We’ve added the ability to interrogate materials in recipes: now correctly called blueprints! When looking at materials in the interface, you can now get a description, which includes hints on where to look and what activities to try to nab them.

We’ve made ice mining more profitable: by increasing the chance of rarer resources being generated. Nom, nom, nom.

And there’s more to come:

We’re updating the crafting process to bias values towards better results, especially when experimental effects are generated, the idea being that these upgrades are supposed to be just that – upgrades!

We’re going to add additional methods of reputation increase for Engineers, using specialised markets, exploration data and bounty claims, so when the update goes live, Commanders will have more ways to get into the Engineers’ good books.

Along with this, we’ll also be removing some of the lower ranked materials, allowing the remaining ones to be used in more recipes, so that across the board you’ll need to collect fewer types to start crafting upgrades.

None of these changes would have likely happened without all the feedback that the brave Beta Commanders have been providing us with, so lots of thanks and love to them. Let the testing continue, for there’s surely more changes to come!"

Back to Contents

The Dangerous Games: Pledges

Greetings Commanders,

For the past few weeks groups across the galaxy have been on high alert after our announcement of the Rise to Power.

During this event players and groups will be battling it out to carve out an area of space and become an official power in the game, and by doing so, become immortalised in Elite Dangerous history.

Five groups have already qualified for this contest by having the largest and most powerful player factions in the game. However, as well as these five groups, one additional group will enter this epic contest as our wildcard. To be chosen as the wildcard they will need to demonstrate themselves as the people’s choice.

To begin, the entire community will be voting on their choice and the top five groups will then go on to compete against each other in a series of Community Goals to determine our wildcard in the final games.

YOU have the power to influence which groups progress, and which do not. What’s more, you also have the power to influence the games at every stage by taking part, supporting or hindering your chosen faction in the Community Goals.

The first stage is now live. You can cast your vote for the group you would like to progress to the next stage HERE. However, please note you can only vote once and results will be announced after the poll ends on Tuesday 17 May at 10:00 BST. So make sure you know who you’re voting for before casting that important vote!

It is each group’s job to ensure they are campaigning through every available avenue for your votes and making you aware of exactly what type of power they would try to represent. You can check out our FAQ here and our Contestants thread where we invite all the groups to give us more detail about their campaign and you can ask questions.

Back to Contents

The Dangerous Games - Rise to Power Livestreams

Having trouble deciding on who to vote for to be entered in to the Rise to Power final of the Dangerous Games? Then join Community Manager Edward Lewis, and our Dangerous Games pundit (it's Zac Antonaci), who will talk you through each nominee and give you the hard facts about the games.

You'll also hear from representatives from the groups, who will tell you exactly why you should be voting for them.

It's sure to be a lot of fun, and very... informative, so join us at 7PM BST on MONDAY 16th May on our YouTube channel for a new Elite Dangerous experience.

Back to Contents

DJ Truthsayer's Lore Interview with Michael Brookes

Back to Contents

Beta Feedback Stream 2

After last week's beta feedback livestream, where Lead Designer Sandro Sammarco answered nearly 60 of your questions about the beta, we decided to do the same again!

Join Sandy as he answers more of your questions about the beta, and about what changes are being made based on your feedback.

MEET UP - we'll also be hosting an SRV meet up at the same time, at the Farseer Inc base in the Deciat system, so make sure to be there and show off your driving skills while Sandy gets through as many questions as possible.

So join us at 7PM BST on Thursday 19th May on our official YouTube channel.

Back to Contents

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

A member of Jasmina Halsey's personal staff has announced that the former Federal president has been admitted to a secure psychiatric facility on Mars for "extended care and review". This announcement follows weeks of speculation concerning Halsey's mental health, which was called into question by commentators both within and outside the Federation.

Professor Ishmael Palin has launched a campaign to establish a new research outpost on Maia A 3 a. The Defence Party of Nespeleve, which is coordinating the effort on behalf of Professor Palin, has promised to reward pilots who deliver building fabricators for use in the construction. The organisation has also promised to reward Commanders who eliminate hostiles operating in the system, to ensure those delivering building fabricators can do so safely.

With the successful conclusion of the Distant Worlds Expedition looming, the Diamond Frogs have announced plans to throw a party for the returning travellers. To ensure the celebration is worthy of the explorers’ accomplishments, the Diamond Frogs have promised to reward pilots who bring alcohol and other recreational substances to Skvortsov Orbital in the 63 G. Capricorni system.

The Wyrd Raiders have announced that their campaign for tantalum has been extended. A spokesperson for the organisation confirmed that this was to ensure targets would be met. The campaign is now scheduled to end on the 19th of May 3302.

A spokesperson for The Fuel Rats Mischief has announced that Jaques Station has received sufficient quantities of fuel to complete the proposed jump to Beagle Point. The galaxy’s most famous travelling starport is expected to depart in the next few days.

Back to Contents

Pixel Bandits 24 Hour Stream

The Pixel Bandits Security Force are taking part in a 24 hour livestream over the weekend, featuing Elite Dangerous at key points. Click the image above to learn more and donate.

Back to Contents

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:

Skvortsov Orbital Explorers' Gala:
Skvortsov Orbital, 63 G. Capricorni – Deliver all types of Legal Drugs and Narcotics to Skvortsov Orbital in the 63 G. Capricorni system to help the Diamond Frogs throw a party in honour of the Distant Worlds explorers.

Ishmael Palin Launches Appeal:
Wilkes Orbital, Nespeleve – Deliver Building Fabricators to Wilkes Orbital in the Nespeleve system to help Ishmael Palin set up a unique engineering outpost.

Eliminating Hostiles in Nespeleve:
Wilkes Orbital, Nespeleve – Hunt wanted pilots and hand in bounty vouchers to Wilkes Orbital in the Nespeleve system to protect traders delivering supplies for Professor Palin’s outpost.

Tantalum for the Wyrd Raiders:
Gareth Edwards Park, Wyrd – Deliver Tantalum to Gareth Edwards Park in the Wyrd system to help the Wyrd Raiders meet their mysterious order.


Skvortsov Orbital Explorers’ Gala

With the successful conclusion of Distant Worlds Expedition looming, intrepid explorers both within and without the bubble are turning to the bubbly, and O'Malligan’s Coffee Bar at Skvortsov Orbital has announced plans to throw a party for the returning travellers. A spokesperson for the establishment said:

“What does an explorer want after they've returned to the bubble, stumbled out of their ship and cashed in at Universal Cartographics? A drink or two! So we’re throwing the party of the century to celebrate the achievements of the Distant Worlds pilots, and other intrepid explorers.”

O'Malligan's Coffee Bar has approached the Diamond Frogs, the system’s controlling faction, for assistance in making the party a reality. But the Diamond Frogs’ chief logistics officer, Commander Paramemetic, said:

“There's no way O'Malligan's is going to be able to throw a radical party without support from the Pilots Federation. Diamond Frogs pilots alone will consume all of O'Malligan's stock within a matter of hours."

To ensure the celebration is worthy of the accomplishments of the Distant Worlds team, the Diamond Frogs have promised to reward pilots who bring legal drugs and narcotics to Skvortsov Orbital in the 63 G. Capricorni system.


Ishmael Palin Launches Appeal

Last month, Professor Ishmael Palin announced his intention to retire from The Palin Institute, the research organisation he founded in 3301. In a statement, the professor indicated that he would relocate to a small research centre on Maia A 3 a, where he would continue investigating the Unknown Artefacts and meta-alloys. Now, the professor has issued a further statement, announcing that he has placed an open order for building fabricators for the construction of the new outpost.

“The galactic community has given me considerable support over the past few months – even going so far as to rescue me and my team from pirates in the Orulas system – and I would very much like for them to be part of this initiative. The new research centre will be relatively modest, but there is still a need for materials. I can promise that pilots who deliver the necessary supplies will be generously compensated!”

The Defence Party of Nespeleve, which is coordinating the effort on behalf of Professor Palin, has promised to reward pilots who deliver building fabricators to Wilkes Orbital in the Nespeleve system. The organisation has also promised to reward Commanders who eliminate hostiles operating in the system, to ensure those delivering building fabricators can do so safely.


Tantalum Appeal Extended

The Wyrd Raiders have announced that their campaign for tantalum has been extended. A spokesperson for the organisation confirmed that this was to ensure targets would be met.

In a brief statement, the spokesperson said:

“We are extremely grateful for the support we have received so far. But it is clear that for this campaign to succeed, we will need to give pilots more time to source the tantalum we have asked for.”

These campaigns are scheduled to begin on the 12th of May 3302, and will run for one week. If the final target for a campaign is met earlier than planned, that campaign will end immediately.

It’s dangerous out there so fly safe, Commanders!

Back to Contents

Comms Chatter

CMDR LiGhtWay emailed us some screenshots of his ship on a planet surface...

Commander Tannik Seldon should've hit the brakes a little sooner...

That’s it for Newsletter #124. 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