Archive for the ‘Elite Dangerous’ Category


Greetings Commanders,

Tomorrow, Elite Dangerous will change forever. Odyssey marks the next step in our vision for the game, and a new era in space simulation.

In honour of this, we’re delighted to present to you our Odyssey launch trailer:

“This is the next step in what has already been an incredible journey and labour of love with Elite Dangerous since the Kickstarter over eight years ago. The team have pulled off a fantastic achievement here across a mind-bending scale – from the detail within a human footprint to the vast distances across stellar systems and beyond is breathtaking, in a rich, detailed and accurate recreation of the Milky Way in 1:1 scale. For me it is not just the detailed exploration and combat, but the gothic beauty of watching stars, planets, moons, moons-of-moons rise and fall or slowly pirouette in their often complex paths in the night sky, while each tiny dot or nebula in that sky is really there and can be visited.”

– David Braben, CEO and founder of Frontier

As a reminder, all Elite Dangerous servers will be down for maintenance and preparation of the update from 07:00 UTC / 08:00 BST tomorrow for approximately 11 hours. This means an estimated launch window of 18:00 UTC / 19:00 BST.

We’ll see you on the other side!

Odyssey: System Requirements;

Check out the minimum and recommended PC specifications for Elite Dangerous: Odyssey below.

https://i.imgur.com/mjksJVt.png

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336350/Elite_Dangerous_Odyssey/


 

In a similar fashion to our Lavecon 2019 reveals, we wanted to give all of you who couldn’t join us at our Gamescom Frontier Community Meet a rundown of all the details that just dropped… or should we say hauled in here by the aid of… a Fleet Carrier!

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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We’ll be delving deeper into Fleet Carriers and all they can do in upcoming livestreams and forum posts later this year!

September Update

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For those of you who have been stranded out in the black and somehow missed it, here’s also a super-duper QUICK recap of the September Update.

  • This year’s updates are focused on improving the starter experience for new commanders. We’re adding a fully-voiced, in-game, in-ship tutorial, covering the basics of space flight, combat, traveling and scanning. Also, this experience is available in all of our in-game supported languages! Speaking of you veterans, you’ll be able to access this from your right-hand panel at any time so you won’t even need to wipe your save!
  • In addition, we’ll be reworking and rebranding what some of you might know as Frontier Points, introducing them as Arx. These Arx will be purchasable and used to buy Game Extras such as Paint Jobs, Ship Kits, Bobbleheads and more. What’s great about Arx is that you will be able to earn them in-game by… simply playing the game!

The September Update will be launched 18 September for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One!

Fly safe, Commanders!

Link


Elite Dangerous logo

Greetings Commanders,

First up, thank you to everyone who has taken time testing and reporting issues with the 2.3.10 beta. It is very much appreciated for your assistance. We’ll be releasing 2.3.10 at 10AM UK, 5AM East US this morning.

Please note that the 2.3.10 update will bring with it an extended server downtime. As with previous updates, this downtime could last for seven to eight+ hours at the start of 10AM UK. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience! 

Below are the changes for this update…

Stability Fixes

  • Fixed a Commander Data error that could occur when two players switch to a Fighter at the same time in Multi-Crew
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when in High Intensity Conflict Zones for extended periods of time
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when leaving Supercruise in a busy area
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when activating Silent Running in a CQC match
  • Fixed a crash that could occur in the Capital Ship Encounters

General Fixes & Tweaks

  • General text fixes
  • Updated some translations
  • Fixed a target-able location in the Howard system
  • Audio: Fixed an issue with inbox message alert audio not playing
  • Audio: Fixed an issue whereby the audio would continue to loop when holding the fire button, after your shield cell bank had run out of ammo
  • Audio: Fixed an issue with the discovery scanner audio – Honks are back!
  • Audio: Various audio tweaks and fixes
  • Players will now be consistently moved safely out of asteroid rings when logging in, which should hopefully prevent asteroids from spawn killing players

Camera Suite

  • Fixed an issue that caused the ‘Frameshift Charging’ indicator to become stuck on screen if you cancelled a hyperjump whilst in the camera suite

Celestial

  • More factions have joined the Colonia region of space

Holo-Me Creator

  • Implemented various changes to improve the appearance of Holo-Me in extreme lighting conditions

Installations/POIs/USSs

  • Fixed an issue whereby the Technology 06 codex entry was missing from Ancient Ruins

Missions

  • Mission board generation optimisations

Multi-Crew

  • Added the ability for Helm to limit the functionality of the Gunner role if desired (for example, preventing the use of utility style modules or deploying/retracting hardpoints)
  • Added the ability for Helm to disable the Fighter Control role if desired
  • Fix to allow the Helm access to turret mode options when they do not have a Gunner in their Multi-Crew session
  • Multicrew activities that have crew slots available are now highlighted with ‘+’ symbols
  • The ‘Switch Roles’ button will now be greyed out if your SRV is carrying more cargo than the ship has capacity for

Network

  • General network tweaks and fixes


Outfitting

  • Fixed an issue whereby the Engine Detailing slot did not appear when using the the Detailing filter tab

Player Journal

  • Fixed an issue with NPC names becoming garbled in the Player Journal
  • Faction Pending and Recovery state information is now included in the Player Journal
  • Addressed an issue whereby certain events were missing from the Player Journal
  • New “EngineerContribution” event for making donations to unlock an Engineer

Server

Ships
General Ship Fixes and Improvements

  • Anaconda

 

Fixed some visual issues with the Anaconda’s cockpit and made some improvements

 

  • Asp

 

Moved the camera closer to prevent clipping in livery outfitting

 

  • Imperial Courier

 

Fixed an issue with the Imperial Courier’s Slipstream paint job

 

  • Python

 

Python ship kits no longer appear worn when fully repaired


General Ship Audio Fixes and Improvements

  • Audio: Improvements to the “Rotational Correction” voice lines when returning to the helm from a fighter


Elite Dangerous logo

2.3 The Commanders, Changelog

Greetings Commanders, today we’ve released the 2.3 update! Below is a short snippet of the very large list of changes.

You can view the full list of changes by going to our official forums here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/341916

Thanks!


multicrew-original

2.3 The Commanders Beta – Changelog

Hi everyone,

The beta for Commanders 2.3 should be going live at approximately 4PM GMT (28/02) See the changelog below, and refer to the other stickied posts in this forum for where to leave your feedback.

Enjoy Commanders!

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PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THE MULTI-CREW FEATURES WILL BE ARRIVING IN A FUTURE SEPARATE UPDATE TO THE BETA

New Content & Features (Horizons)

Commander Creator

  • Commander creator UI added
  • Player avatars used in ship cockpits
  • Commander creator exists within the player’s cockpit
  • Added holographic effect for commander avatars (when they are not physically present)
  • Hooked up the player avatar display to the comms panel and the commander history, so now chat messages will have a picture of the senders avatar next to them
  • We don’t have a default avatar use one of the presets randomly instead
  • Added Holo-Me option to cockpit Status Panel
  • Added Holo-Me shortcut to Startport Services screen, as well as including player’s current commander profile image.
  • Added 50 male and female preset commanders
  • Added feature presets for Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Ears, Jawline and Neck
  • Added zoom in with altered FOV for close ups in commander creator when playing without VR
  • Added custom mode for commander creator close ups in VR
  • Added randomise options to most feature categories in Commander Creator
  • Added Undo/Redo to Commander Creator
  • Group flight suits into collections to avoid top level list getting huge
  • Updated cockpit chairs to allow for more elbow movement
  • Fix avatar specular baking behaviour (it wasn’t saving the output so it would simply replace its contents)
  • Added beards!
  • Added 14 new hairstyles
  • Expanded number of skin tones to 8 for each head type
  • Added “rough” female base head type
  • Refreshed all hair assets to get them ready for commander creator
  • Additional avatar morph options for nose bridge, profile, tip and tip angle
  • Added avatar morph options for eye angle, width and upper eye fold
  • Added morph option for upper lip profile
  • Added jaw angle and depth options
  • Added chin width and prominence options
  • Hair shader improvements
  • Avatar eyes now use correct environment map
  • Fixed some incorrect skinning on the female pilot suit
  • Added chin cleft options
  • Added transparent and opaque versions of the helmet
  • Added rank shoulder patches, unlocked with rank
  • Added faction and pirate shoulder patches
  • Added freckles, moles and pock marks to skin details
  • Added Milky eye type
  • Added fresnel shader to helmet glass to give the transparent version more definition
  • Added a selection of eyeliner, blusher and lipstick options.

Multicrew – ARRIVING IN A SEPARATE BETA UPDATE DATE TBC

  • Roles
  • Gunner role added
    • External turret control view added
    • Firegroup control added
    • Quick fire slots added
    • Scanner control added
    • Updated UI for role
    • Allow scanner view
    • Allow schematic view
    • Weapon mount highlights added
    • Limpet control added
    • Turreted weapons can be controlled
    • Missiles can be fired
  • Fighter Con role added
    • Helm can kick other players from ship
    • Allow an NPC fighter if another player is in a fighter (only for ships that can support 2 fighters)
  • Helm role added
  • Ships
    • Added multicrew cameras to supported ships
    • Upgraded cockpits for multicrew
      • Adder (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Anaconda (upgraded second and third chair for multicrew)
      • Asp (added second chair for multicrew)
      • Asp Scout (added second chair for multicrew)
      • Beluga (upgraded second and third chair for multicrew)
      • Cobra MkIII (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Cobra MkIV (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Empire Trader (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Corvette (upgraded second and third chair for multicrew)
      • Fed Dropship (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Fed Assault (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Fed Gunship (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Fer de Lance (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Orca (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Cutter (upgraded second and third chair for multicrew)
      • Type 9 (upgraded second and third chair for multicrew)
      • Python (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
      • Vulture (upgraded second chair for multicrew)
  • Chat interface updated
  • Matchmaking for different session types added
    • Bounty Hunting
    • Mentor
    • Piracy
    • Mining
    • Exploration
    • Smuggling
    • Session summary screens added
    • Allow friends invitations to multicrew
  • Power Distributor
    • Non helm MultiCrew players now provide an additional single power distribution pip
    • Players can distribute their pip where they want, as long as there is space for it
    • FireCon defaults to weapons, FighterCon defaults to systems
  • Added idle animations for other commanders in cockpit
  • Multicrew usage is based on the number of physical seats on your ship
  • Crimes system updated to support multicrew
  • Multicrew related stats added

General

  • New mysterious things added
  • New organics added to surfaces
  • Dolphin playable ship added
  • Dolphin NPC ships added

New Content & Features (Non-Horizons)

Ship Naming

  • Added ship name plates to ships
  • Added ID plates to ships
  • Ships can be named from within station services
  • Added ship names to various cockpit UI
  • Added hangar cameras for ship name slots
  • Request ship name when in the start new commander flow
  • Name and ID plates can be added via Outfitting
  • Ship names are server moderated if deemed inappropriate then will be masked off to other players
  • If it’s not our ship and they have no name plates, then we don’t know the ship’s name
  • If you report a player in-game, we’ll now fill in their ship name and ship ID for you

Camera Suite

  • Added vanity cameras to the ships
  • Added free camera to ships
  • Added Zoom and rotations controls for internal vanity cameras
  • Added f-stop and focus Distance to vanity and free camera
  • Enabled vanity and free camera to work in vr
  • Updated ship cockpit interiors to account for new viewing angles

General

  • Added asteroid base type station (including air traffic controllers)
  • Added 32 asteroid bases in various deep space locations
  • Added some new challenge scenarios
    • 4 new Incursion scenarios
    • Speed docking
    • Driver challenge
    • Ship launched fighter challenge
  • Added custom engine trails support
  • Added Megaships
    • Tanker
    • Cargo
    • Asteroid Miner
    • Flight Operations
    • Prison Ship
    • Science Vessel
    • Passenger
    • ???
    • ???
  • Added 100 new tourist beacons
  • Added Bucky Ball Beer Mats rare good

Stability Fixes

  • Make sure we wait for the loading screen to be ready before entering it when entering the CQC menu, this fixes an assert when the loading screen activates after the destination location is live
  • Fix crash in the inertial camera simulation when in CQC
  • Fix an error that can happen in outfitting if you replace the power distributor too fast
  • Fix occasional directional lights assert when loading the system map
  • Fix an error if a POIPlaceholder gains authority before going live after the original authority created the POI.
  • Fix crash when entering CQC caused by the system map trying create the system map object store which doesn’t work in CQC
  • Prevent crash while trying to generate ambient heat on ships inside stations
  • Avoid crash in physics if data for a wheel is not valid
  • Don’t parse an empty string within the Commander Interaction History as it causes the JSON parser to assert
  • Fix deadlock if the galaxy map is repeatedly opened and closed
  • Fix to clean up partly-initialised modules if the parent object(ship) is destroyed before they have received their first network replication

General Fixes & Tweaks

  • Prevent ships spawning inside each other on interdiction drop out
  • The cursor was offset n some Front-end UI’s circumstances when using ‘In-Game Panel Based Cursor’ mouse mode
  • Fix cases of relaunching game after killing the SRV and appearing in orbit
  • If we get a rank progress update that doesn’t contain a value for combat rank, let’s assume that that means that our combat rank hasn’t changed and not that we’re now harmless
  • Fixed trespass zone radar elements being visible in the debug/classified camera modes
  • Change order of string to Lat then long to revert the order of the latitude and longitude readout on the hud to be the same as pre 2.2
  • Torval Powerplay Decal changes to Patreus Powerplay Decal
  • String ID appears on info panel as the jump destination fixed
  • Possible fix for multiple unwanted audio events triggering in Friends and Groups screen
  • Updated some of the broken wireframe codes from the Unknown Artefact
  • Improved performance of the ‘triangle image load’ animation (used on the mission board). Also added support for scaling the size of the effect
  • Fix for Docking Computer crashing into back of station when approaching from rear
  • Fix for Docking Computer crashing into Qwent Research tower when coming in to land
  • When starting the game, don’t bother waiting for PlanetarySurfaceGeneration to be complete before starting up, if docked at a space station. This is an optimisation to save a few seconds off the spinning sidewinder screen during startup
  • In the cockpit friends list, show the distance to each friend (if they’re in the same mode as you), and sort friends by the closest first
  • Info in status panel now only shows scrollbar when focused
  • Xbox One: File loading optimisations
  • Modified the “modules/trade/list” so that it filters modules where possible that are only related to the players current ship
  • Various mission template fixes
  • When a bounty voucher or combat bond is awarded, all players in a wing who would previously have gotten a share will now get a copy of the full value
  • Fixed missing info text for data link scanner
  • Fixed some shadowing artefacts in the terrain rendering
  • Fixed station interior changing when the station in under influence of a UA
  • Fixed crash when looking at left-hand panel while in a fighter
  • Make sure kill chances spawn on CollectPalin Mission template
  • Improvements to planet shadows: Added new crossfade distance settings to allow a longer transition from shadows to patch lighting on higher quality presets. Rebalanced depth biases and enabled texel stability settings.
  • Displaying station name rather than the schematics name in the target details panel (external panel) fixed
  • Remove the missions market ignore case for Jaques station
  • Various optimisations for Galaxy map
  • fixed: Can’t exit side panel with B Button after using fighter
  • Fixed refinery tab still being selected on the right hand panel after removing the refinery module from a vessel
  • Fixed Intermittent drop in frame rate in Challenge Scenario
  • Fixed low-resolution cockpit on loading into CQC matches
  • Various text fixes
  • Various localisation fixes

Passengers

  • Passenger’s demanded cargo has been updated in passenger mission wrinkles it is now related to the passenger type
  • Added prisoner cells as alternatives to passenger cabins
  • Custom passenger text on cargo display does not match Passenger Type in Customise Passengers
  • Ensure that NPC cruise ships have passengers when scanned
  • Updated passenger bulk, VIP and VIPConflict, as well as delivery and variant mission templates. The New Destination is now a choice on these mission templates
  • Also updated Bulk to show the correct rewards on the inbox message when you get the wrinkle, and transaction panels during wrinklesNew destination and dont die
  • Balanced numbers for explorers disgruntledness in the LDE template to be the same as on other templates
  • Updated the demanded cargo reward amounts on the passenger missions to make them more worth wile
  • Reduced exploration rank boost from passengers as it was way too high
  • Occupied passenger cabin modules can no longer be stored using the store multiple menu
  • Fixed NPC passengers not showing up properly after a manifest scan
  • Fixed UI inconsistency, where the ‘Pick Cabin’ button was located differently to ‘Accept Mission’ even though both these UI essentially share the exact same user flow

Missions

  • Make sure that the mission filter doesn’t show illegal salvage when set to legal
  • Updated the gating on missions. Now you should no longer see the planetary sign on the mission board for missions that don’t take you to a planetary station as the main destination. If you don’t have horizons, you should be getting gated at the new destination wrinkle if it is to a planetary stationpreventing you from accepting the new destination
  • Multi-stage mission support added (different to wrinkles)
  • Highlight a mission that is a direct consequence of completing a previous mission
  • Fixed mission messages being duplicated during transitions
  • Make supply to demand overrides take max distance into account (Stops Colonia making missions which intend to only go 500ly into missions to pop back to the bubble with a ~24 time limit)
  • Add support for equipment requirements for missions
  • Delivery, Collect, Passenger Bulk, Piracy, Rescue, Salvage and Smuggle mission change destination wrinkles are now optional
  • Smuggle missions maximum range has been reduced to 100ly away
  • Smuggle long minimum range has been increased to 100 ly away
  • Fixed issue with showing credit rewards when there are no other rewards
  • Updated the influence/reputation shown on the mission board for missions so that it matches the amount it actually changes on completion
  • Added contract elements on all transaction panels to display the mission giver
  • Added factions involved in the mission on inspace missions inbox messages so that you know who you are working for, and who you are working against
  • Added missing text for assassination Inspace Scanthe first 2 inbox messages are missing
  • Mission specific cargo can no longer be sold on the commodity market, although can still be sold as stolen items through the black market
  • When missions which require you to pick up cargo exist, they should be able to say Collect Cargo instead of Claim Reward
  • Welcome missions should not contribute towards influence or ranks
  • Prevent exploit where selling cargo from abandonment didn’t create a downward rep spiral
  • Massacre conflict and massacre skimmer missions limited to 3 per player at a time. Rewards increased slightly to compensate
  • Improve the chance of rank up and engineer missions being available
  • Planetary scan missions now limited to 3 per player at a time. Rewards increased slightly to compensate
  • The ancient codex now resets approximately 30 seconds after being scanned
  • Decouple normal missions and passenger missions selection, so a full allocation is available to each type
  • Added a check for illegal goods to system search to stop returning a system that doesn’t contain the markets needed
  • Prevent delivery scoop missions from appearing in systems without a landable planet
  • Stop player getting spammed with an inbox message from in space planetary hitmen missions
  • Changed the tags used for a system used in the text so that it now correctly displays the correct system for the destination. It used to only display the mission giver system (it is rare that it is not taking place in the mission giver system)
  • Added a variable generator to find a faction and station in the same system as a given station
  • Fixed superpower filtering in faction station generators

NPCs

  • Fix NPCs not having the long FSD cooldown after interdictions
  • Added the Independent Fighter to alliance and independent faction navies
  • Improve piracy behaviour and associated chatter to indicater the threat and a time limit for compliance
  • NPC docking improvements
  • Added in the Vulture & Python to the police archetype, these ships should now respond to crime and have the correct skins
  • Make sure that we have the correct faction before using the automatic loadout for NPC archetypes
  • Don’t report that the player is clean when being scanned when they are not
  • Balance pass for AI interdiction ability, to make it slightly easier
  • Auto-loadout system will now automatically add required passenger cabins based on the custom passenger type
  • Allowed auto-adding of cargo racks to consider slots which don’t accept shield modules but do accept cargo racks
  • Fixed a bug in adding passengers to cabins where Passenger Entries were being added to cabins with the number of passengers set to 0
  • Removed VIP flag from CustomisePassengers. Custom Passengers being added to Imperial cabins will automatically be made VIP
  • Changes to extend AI terrain avoidance on higher gravity worlds
  • Authority ships now prioritise the closest ship to them when determining what to scan, ie either the Mothership or Fighters
  • Fix Pirate Hunter Hostile behaviour so that they attack after interdicting
  • In auto-loadout system, tweak chances of high-end weapons to make them slightly more unlikely for both military and all other archetypes
  • For AI ships using the auto-loadout system, vary the amount of ammo that utility modules have based on rank. For police/military, override and have 100% ammo, unless in a conflict zone when the standard rules apply
  • Get AI pirates to start attacking if the target moves more than 1km or starts charging FSD while the threatening process is ongoing
  • Change pirates that interdict the player to always scan (rather than sometimes attacking without scanning), and to dismiss the player and fly off if the player doesn’t have any/enough cargo
  • Threaten time changed to 15s (from 18s) now that it’s displayed in chatter
  • Added jump after all ships scanned, which we didn’t used to need for these pirates as they always attacked
  • Ignore drones and powerplay cargo when deciding whether to send a generic cargo chaser after the player
  • Pirates should now make it clear what cargo can be dropped to apease them
  • Stop NPCs in ships that can’t jump (like fighters) from trying to do so
  • When a pirate has threatened you and started to attack, reiterate the conditions for the attack to stop occasionally, updated based on the amount of cargo already dropped
  • Fix for pirate hunter hostiles not always being wanted
  • Increased the combat bonds and bounty multiplier for the “big 3” (Anaconda, Corvette & Cutter), upping their values by ~10%
  • Make sure that NPCs properly evaluate cargo worth to prevent some odd cases
  • Fixed an issue in the AI defence code which stopped heat-sinks/Chaff/ECM from working

Stations/Ports

  • When targeting a station’s location (usually but not limited to when in supercruise heading towards it) show the schematic in the correct orientation. Note that this does not take into account the stations gentle axis-rotation, but will at the very least tell you where the entrance of an orbis/coriolis/etc will be when you drop out
  • Stations can now be disabled, which will turn off thier response to crimes and will disable AI spawning
  • Stations can now be placed within rings
  • Stations can now be placed within asteroid clusters
  • Fix for inner docks not using their own module list and instead always the default modules
  • Fixed the attach to bone offset incorrectly assuming the rotation it receives in in degrees instead of radians
  • Adjusted several garages in this location as planet terrain was poking through the floors
  • Fixed ugly circle caused by fog being incorrectly clipped in stations
  • Decreased the lens flare scale on the landing pad floor spots so that they don’t obscure the GUI panels and generally look more sensible
  • Remove self destruct option from the right panel when we’re docked (we can’t self destruct here anyway so the button just doesn’t do anything)
  • Adjusted the heat ring texture to get back some of the glow which had been lost
  • Fixed LODs on the “Rich” road sections
  • CPU optimisations around stations and capital ships

Station Services

  • Increase maximum stored ship limit to 35 to accommodate that we now have more than 30 kinds of ship
  • Small tweaks for repairing ship paintwork and integrity when they’re only very slightly damaged. Don’t display 100% when it is actually slightly damaged and repairable. This makes the UI clearer and avoids some odd behaviour
  • Check if a refinery has unprocessed materials in it, and display a warning if it does before storing the module, as these will be lost during the storage process
  • Fixed module transfer timer wrapping around when the arrival time is in the past
  • Don’t show the Livery button if outfitting isn’t available at that location
  • Fix fuel level cap when exchanging modules
  • Refuel and repair SRVs and Fighters when restocking
  • Remove clip size modifiers on shield cell banks

Engineers

  • New blueprints added
    • Manifest/Killwarrant/Wake scanner:
      • Long Range
      • Wide Angle
      • Fast Scan
    • Ship primary sensor:
      • Light weight
      • Long Range
      • Wide angle
    • Detailed Surface scanner (affects how fast you can basic/detailed scan planets):
      • Long Range
      • Wide Angle
      • Fast Scan
  • New blueprints added to:
    • Bill Turner:
      • DSS to grade 1, and sensor/scanner to grade 5
    • Juri Ishmaak:
      • Sensor/scanner to grade 4, and DSS to grade 2
    • Lei Chung:
      • Sensor/scanner to grade 2, and DSS to grade 2
    • Lori Jameson:
      • Sensor/scanner to grade 5, and DSS to grade 5
    • Tiana Fortune:
      • DSS to grade 5, and sensor/scanner – 5
  • Added extra gun turrets to various engineer bases
  • Fixed floating rock at Elvira Martuuk’s base
  • Added new longer range missile defences to various engineer bases
  • Mic Turner Base had a population of 0, so added bakeout data for system “California Sector BA-A E6” so that it will pick up the correct details from server
  • Add Engineer & Outfitting module groups for Life Support and Sensors so they don’t all appear in the ‘Other’ category in the Engineer Workshop
  • Remove button missing under Adjust Experimental effect screen fixed

Fighters/Crew

  • Crew rank does not update on the contacts or ship GUI after ranking up fixed
  • Optimisations for load times on fighters and SRVs
  • Perform extra crew resync after crew lounge role reassignment
  • Fighters no longer ‘red out’
  • Crew being set to ‘flying fighter’ when switching into the fighter
  • Prevent transaction error when entering supercruise while a fighter is docking
  • Make fighter orders control group not conflict with non-ship (egSRV driving) controls
  • Fix for crew cut of commodity trades being calculated on the client incorrectly

Weapons

  • Strengthening drone vfx as they were very difficult to see at long range
  • Updated laser impact effects so that they are compatible with weapon colouring
  • Limpets will show up in the restock menu while the players has them in the ships cargo allowing them to be sold even when the player has no limpet controller installed
  • Seeker Missile target hologram fixed
  • Added two turreted mining lasers
  • Regeneration sequence healing will now be affected by the targets thermal resist resistance will block healing as well (note that negative resistances will not increase healing)
  • Fix for Shield Cell bank displaying incorrect ammo amounts

Controls

  • Make sure a sensible default control scheme is selected if we are unable to load the users preferred control scheme instead of just selecting the first in the alphabetical list
  • Fix a bunch of the default control schemes that have had gamepad bindings added to them. This was causing them to not load if you did not have a gamepad connected to the PC
  • Removed gamepad bindings from all schemes that don’t rely on a gamepad. This will stop you requiring a gamepad to be plugged in to see the schemes for joysticks or keyboard controls
  • Allowed the alternate control bindings to have inverted axis

POIs/USSs

  • Lava Spouts now have proximity effects around them. Depending on the ferocity of their eurption, they deal heat and damage to the player. The more ferocious the eruption, the hotter and more damaging they become
  • Added additional installation scenarios
    • Medical installation added
    • Added Space Bar installation
    • Added Space Farm installation
    • Added Government installation
    • Added new Security Station installation
    • Colour variations for installations added
  • Enable replication of scannable space wreckage so that they are visible to all players
  • Changes to stop Unknown Probes jumping about and rolling up hill on planets:
  • The slow spinning animation did not work at all with things on the floor, it’s been removed
  • Align to planet and align to system no longer apply when the object they’re aligning is near a planet
  • Skimmers currently don’t report hostiles to their owning settlement fixed
  • Allow planet surface landed ships to take-off and attack if there’s a near-by faction hostile
  • Fumarole disappears in multiplayer situation when a collectable is collected while another client is logged out fixed
  • Added new Passenger USS scenarios
  • Fixed a bug with setting the health prop of a Destructible Mining Component to 1 causing it to have 0 health
  • Fixed hitcheck on fumarole collectibles
  • Improved loading of POIs
  • Proximity effects support added
  • Added more wreckage types
  • Space scenarios can now have localised fog
  • Fixed objects in a settlement drifting from their correct position if the player is far enough from the planets surface

Ships

  • Fix collision warnings on ship authority dummy objects hitting terrain wen landed
  • Prevent repeated malfunctions when they shouldn’t occur
  • Added a new Data Link scanner for ships
  • Changed Vulture’s planetary approach suite size to 1 as intended
  • Some optimisations for large multi-ship scenes
  • Prevent Eagle utility modules being swappable, because there is only one utility module slot and they’re already in it.
  • Lowered Orca weight to increase jump range and effectiveness
  • Ship balance tweaks as described here by Sandro Sammarco

Ship Art

  • All ship explosive effects improved
  • Attached decals to heat vents and moved the geometry up a bit to mitigate z fighting on the Imperial Cutter
  • Beluga Liner now has similar strength headlights to the Anaconda
  • Orca tactical paintjobs fixed
  • Left Decals on the F63 Condor fixed
  • Fixed Bobblehead cams and orientations on the Fer-de-Lance
  • Fixed smoothing groups and some decal positions on the Imperial Cutter
  • Updated Asp cockpit geometry to allow for the new camera views
  • Anaconda death explosion sorting fixed. Timings are nicer too
  • Disable GUI lights if the player is dying
  • Tweaks to the Sidewinder’s exterior hull
  • Art fixes/improvements for the Cobra cockpits
  • Fix misaligned lights on the Diamondback
  • Fixed ship kit tail cameras for the Eagle and Fer-de-Lance
  • Imperial Cutter hologram clipping when launching from docked is now
  • Fix wear and tear on Python ship kit
  • Added spotlights to the Beluga’s tiny hardpoints to highlight them more in outfitting
  • Added missing spoiler camera to the Viper
  • Removed blinking light from Cutter cockpit
  • Fixed bobblehead positioning in the Vulture
  • Fixed Anaconda bobblehead camera 10
  • Adjusted decal front outfitting camera for the Imperial Eagle
  • Re-aligned the the F63 cockpit so thrusters align correctly
  • Added tail kit hanger camera to the Asp
  • Fixed blue emissive ‘Lakon Systems’ panel in T6 cockpit
  • Fixed missing textures on Type 7 utility slots
  • Fixed LOD popping with lime green gradient predator paintjob on cobra mk4
  • Fixed fighter bay hitcheck on Federation_Dropship
  • Fixed Z fighting issue on Federation_Corvette hardpoints
  • Smoothed LOD transitions on Eagle
  • Fixed clipping issues when deploying SRV from Viper
  • Fix for Federal Dropship paintjobs covering the vehicle bay
  • Fix for stretched textures on Viper MkIII ship kit
  • UV fixes for Federal Fighter’s drive
  • Fixed wonky utility mounts on the Imperial Cutter
  • Patched a small hole in the Corvette
  • Fix a decal camera on the Vulture
  • Fix a missing texture on the Corvette’s nose
  • Fixed bobblehead cameras in the Diamondback XL
  • Fixed landing gear volumes and hitcheck on the Sidewinder
  • Moved the Asp’s front decal so as not to interfere with the ship kit
  • Imperial Clipper now has an icon on the livery page of outfitting

SRV

  • Adjust the sorting of signals being sent to the sinewave scanner GUI/audiorather than tracking a fairly unreliable subset of available signals, they should both now deal with as many as they can manage (8 and 32) ranked in order of signal strength. Fixes known cases where nearby objects can be omitted from the scanner (some entirely, some would be audio-only). Also includes some minor optimisation to the system as a whole
  • Deploy option is available for SRV while still on the pad at engineer stations in a large ship fixed
  • If ship gets stuck in “ship approaching” when recalled on extreme uneven ground, it can now be dismissed.
  • Improved headlights on SRV for higher quality levels
  • Fix issue where srv could still be driven even though it was
  • Fix issue where the buggy was taking forever to cool down after taking heat damage
  • Fixed SRV shield generator and sine wave scanner not remembering if they are disabled or not
  • Optimisations to buggy headlight lens flares

CQC

  • Rebalanced capacitor and charge rates to be the same across the different ships
  • Make sure we wait for the loading screen to be ready before entering it when entering the CQC menu, this fixes an assert when the loading screen activates after the destination location is live
  • Fix an error when accepting an invite from someone who has already joined a game
  • Fix an issue with the CQC default player starting params getting modified
  • Fixing flipped hit bubbles for CQC Empire Fighter hardpoints and adjusting other hit volumes to allow them to be triggered a bit easier

Render

  • Fix for hard edge on pfx smoke texture loop textures
  • Fixed temporal reprojection not taking a correct average of the 3×3 pixel neighbourhood
  • Added descriptions to various graphics setting options
  • HBAO no longer writes in the AO when the data stored in the anisotropic channel is in fact a tangent
  • Improved PFX lodding
  • Optimize cost of spawning new lens flares (and thus, also improve the cost of spawning lights)
  • Fixed the lens flare’s having a 1 pixel line down the right hand side
  • Fixed black line at the centre of insanely high res screenshots
  • Fix the “Off” shadow preset being incorrectly flagged as “High” internally by default. This caused shadows to not update correctly when switching between Off and High settings

Galaxy Map

  • System map initialisation optimisations
  • Galaxy map memory and performance optimisations
  • Disable HBAO when using the galaxy map as it is not used
  • Fix System Map not updating when scanning planets while open
  • Fix a small bug where for single-jump plotting modes (synthesis or neutron-boosted jumps), there could be a discrepancy between which systems have the “plot route” button enabled, and which systems can actually be plotted to in one jump. The discrepancy happened because the calculation for the maximum plotting distance (which is usually 1000LY but for single-jump modes is based on the ship’s actual jump distance) didn’t take into account the cargo mass slider that’s used by the route plotter
  • Small route plotter optimisation: don’t replot the route when toggling a map filter which has all systems enabled
  • Systems that don’t have meta-data now display as having pristine reserves in the system map

Powerplay

  • Change powerplay pirates and security ships to only interdict if they will then go on to attack after scanning. This means PowersPirates check the player is pledged to the controlling power and either carrying any powerplay cargo or holding any powerplay vouchers. For PowersSecurity they check the player is pledged to an opposing (different superpower) power, and either carrying powerplay cargo of the controlling power or holding powerplay vouchers of the controlling power
  • Previously ships could legally attack each other if the attacker shared the same superpower as the power of the current system, and the target was pledged to a power of a different superpower. First, we restrict this so that the attacker has to be the same power as the system. Second, we add an alternative to being different superpowersif the attacker is the same power as the system, and the target is of a different power from the attacker (but potentially now of the same superpower), is carrying powerplay cargo for the system’s power, and the attacker has cargo scanned the target and knows this, then the attack is legal
  • Set powerplay help scrollbar to external, to prevent text from truncating

Controls

  • Can no longer use mouse 2 as back in station services menu fixed
  • When comparing bindings for conflicts, first sort the array of bindings in a chord, this fixes an issue where you could bind the same button combo to multiple controls by changing the order you pressed the buttons
  • Xbox One: Expose the yaw/pitch/roll bindings so they can be bound to an axis or a button

Commander Stats

  • Fix number of fines increasing whenever a mission has failed without a fine being levied
  • Fix “Highest single reward” from assassination missions not displaying correct information

Community Goals

  • Fix inconsistent rewards being advertised when contributing to Community Goals that are in the process of ending

Factions

  • Fix a rare opportunity for a conflict to start immediately after ending early
  • Fixed faction influence change from smuggling weapons
  • Faction influence change reduced from murder, interdiction and assault crimes
  • Faction influence change increased from redeeming bounty vouchers
  • Balanced faction effects from selling commodities with a zero purchase price
  • Removed faction reputation gains from smuggling cargo at a black market
  • Improved local news articles when faction conflicts end

Exploration

  • Rebalance the amount of exploration career rank awarded when completing Passenger missions
  • Stop awarding First Discovery bonuses of zero credits
  • Fix transaction server error when purchasing exploration data for certain systems
  • Increased the credit values of exploration data for scans after this release. Unsold data from previous scans is unaffected by this change.

StellarForge

  • Starports can now be injected via server updates
  • Fix drop out distances for certain star types
  • Added thread safety to the StellarforgePostGeneration as it is used by the stellarforge job system on worker threads
  • Renamed a duplicate BD+56 521 system to ‘Between’
  • Renamed duplicate Kamba system to Mbooni
  • Iorant JN-S c17-0 renamed to VonRictofen’s Rescue
  • Iorant PD-K d8-4 renamed to Macedonica’s Leap
  • Cuffey Plant in Acihaut renamed to Habermann Sanctuary
  • System COL 359 SECTOR NN-S D4-16 renamed to Joseph’s Lighthouse
  • Exoplanet in 61 Virginis renamed to ‘Rubin’s Discovery’
  • Added a dockable megaship called ‘Fisher’s Rest’ to the Aldebaran system
  • Col 285 Sector Ke-V B17-1 renamed to Oliver and Ben’s Beacon
  • Col 285 Sector MZ-U b17-6 renamed to Sulis
  • Fix orbit and type of Scheau Phoea WL-D d12-1 A 1
  • Renamed a planet in 74 Aquarii to Ethan Raza Khan
  • Hyades Sector Zu-Y D117 renamed to Fullerene C60
  • Added starport “Rebuy Prospect” to Fullerene C60
  • Added starport ‘McArthur’s Reach’ to LHS 5287
  • Added starport ‘Bob Paffett’ to Runo
  • Added starport ‘Jaitinder Singh’ to Namba
  • Added starport ‘Mike Tapa Astronautics Ltd’ to Sigma Hydri
  • Added starport ‘Contestabile’ to Baltah’Sine
  • Eol Prou IW-W e1-2400 renamed to Meretrida
  • Eol Prou YI-W b17-19 renamed to Kopernik
  • Eol Prou PX-T d3-347 renamed to Pergamon
  • Eol Prou IW-W e1-3246 renamed to Magellan
  • Eol Prou NH-K c9-40 renamed to Pyrrha
  • Eol Prou LW-L c8-227 renamed to Signalis
  • Eol Prou KW-L c8-164 renamed to Garuda
  • Eol Prou IW-W e1-3167 renamed to Canonnia
  • Eol Prou PX-T d3-336 renamed to Union
  • Eol Prou IW-W e1-1601 renamed to Phoenix
  • Eol Prou LW-L C8-10 renamed to Dubbuennel
  • Eol Prou LW-L C8-6 renamed to Kioti 368
  • Eol Prou LW-L C8-54 renamed to Mobia
  • Eol Prou IW-W E1-3231 renamed to Edge Fraternity Landing
  • Eol Prou SS-T D3-241 renamed to Tas
  • Added a dockable megaship called ‘The Harmony’ to Yum Kamcabi system

Celestial

  • Fix texture distortion in ultra due to morphing not scaling correctly
  • Improved quad efficiency for distant horizon planets
  • Ice terrain surface improvements
  • Reduce dark patches occurring when regenerating shadows
  • Don’t allow ships to fly backwards in a ring orbiting a black hole to sneak through the exclusion zone
  • Surface rock system optimisations
  • Make star lens flares check the actual depth instead of comparing against a constant value
  • Red Spider Nebula is now red
  • Split up terrain noise generation into chunks to avoid using too much memory at once
  • Fix some nebula not appearing in the sky dome generation
  • Fix a stellar jet render artefact on AMD cards
  • Fix background brightness popping in multistar systems
  • Performance improvements for terrain on 4/500 series nVidia cards
  • Updated schematics for white dwarfs and neutron stars
  • Distant asteroid billboards shading incorrectly when passing in front of their planet fixed
  • Remove the planet material texture lod drop on consoles

Hyperspace/Supercruise

  • Physics optimisations for supercruise
  • Ensure that the destination star billboard is displayed in the hyperspace sequence if lens flare is disabled

Network

  • Experimental IPV6 support added
  • Network options and information page added to the options menu
  • If you’re already in a voice chat session with another player (eg if in a wing) and you block them, mute any further audio received from them during that talksession.
  • Make sure that a player is removed from a wing if they delete their save game
  • Added an option on Network Settings dialog to allow the port number used on IPv6 to be
  • Streamline session join protocol (may fix cases of extended supercruise or jump transition times)
  • When the game first connects to a server, if the game has a dual-stack connection, test the MTU over both IPv6 and IPv4

VR

  • Made the schematics render in stereo
  • Added dithering support to tackle banding in VR
  • Fixes to some of the cockpit VR cameras
  • Fix some incorrect scale assumptions when fitting the left eye image to the monitor window. The view should feel a little less stretched. In addition there will be a significant memory saving moving from 2160×1200 to 1280×768
  • Added Python ship kit VR hangar cameras

Player Journal

  • Added journal events for multicrew
  • Replace the docking journal entry when switching back to a mother ship after a fighter or buggy has exploded, with VehicleSwitch
  • Change several gameplay modules to use new ‘Composite’ Journal logging, for more consistent journal entries
  • When a ship/slf takes damage, the journal entry now includes whether it’s the ship or fighter, and whether the player is the pilot
  • Added a journal entry when gaining Federation or Empire rank
  • Added “Target” property in player journal when recording a kill
  • Fix for getting the correct faction when docking at a station (to write into the journal)
  • Include surface location (latitude/longitude) in the player Journal’s “Location” event, if starting game in SRV
  • Add a “StartJump” PlayerJournal event, at the start of the jump Countdown
  • Basic Planetary Scan (ie without Detailed Surface Scanner) now write some limited info in the journal
  • At the start of a jump, include the target star’s spectral type in the journal
  • When accepting a new mission, include some info in the Player Journal entry about the effect on Influence and Reputation
  • Include Faction info in RedeemVoucher event in Player Journal
  • When DSS-scanning a ringed planet, the journal entry now includes the ‘ReserveLevel’
  • Record journal entry when in SRV and the pilot’s ship takes off or lands
  • Added journal entry for setting a ship name
  • Fixed a case where the amount scooped may be reported incorrectly (even -ve), if you start a hyperspace jump while you’re still scooping
  • Include more details about atmospheric composition in player journal, when detail-scanning a planet with atmosphere
  • Include target faction and count in Player Journal when accepting a mission
  • Added info in player journal at startup with Cargo, Materials, Passengers, Loadout
  • Add a player journal event when scanned (on scan complete)
  • Change the code for writing the ‘Bounty’ event into the player journal, so it gets written for every player in the wing that was involved in the fight
  • Include the name of the destination starsystem in the “StartJump” player journal
  • When buying or swapping ships in the Shipyard, write the ship’s loadout to the player journal (similar to on startup)
  • When writing a ship loadout into the playr journal, include the ship type, name, id etc; also include non-editable modulesin particular the cargo hatch, so we get the power priority
  • The “Loadout” data now includes health and value for each module

Audio Change Log

  • Audio Additions
    • Added audio for the FSD supercharge including voice alerts
    • Added ambient audio details to the starport inner-dock variants
    • 3 New flight controllers – Empire, Anarchy, Independent
    • Many audio optimisations and mix improvements
    • Additional Wavescanner sounds
    • Secret stuff. Shhh.
  • Technical Audio Changes
    • New Audio Emitter system! Imaginatively named “emitter2”, a major re-work of a critical audio system. This change is essential to support new listener/camera positions, and graceful switching of cameras and vehicles in Multicrew and Vanity Cam. Now also supports audio-lods, leading to improved efficiency and sonic detail when needed.
    • Refactored Pooled audio object system. It’s more than twice as fast now!
    • Enabled audio Obstruction/Occlusion in main game. Previously it was only enabled in Arena.
    • Improvements to the way soundbanks are loaded. Should help with fragmentation and memory issues.
    • New “Vessel-Voice” system, to replace our beloved old “Ship-Voice” system. Now much more robust and maintainable. This drives the computer voice lines.
    • Audio code optimisations. Audio work is better encapsulated into a single phase which improves the game’s overall frame rate.
  • Audio Bug Fixes
    • Fixed broken sounds in galaxy and system maps
    • Fixed NPC voice volume slider not working
    • Fixed issues with tourist beacon ambiences
    • Fixed tutorial voice text getting truncated
    • Fixed various flight controller issues

Outfitting

– Fix fuel level cap when exchanging modules

– Refuel and repair SRVs and Fighters when restocking

– Remove clip size modifiers on shield cell banks

Commander Stats

– Fix number of fines increasing whenever a mission has failed without a fine being levied

– Fix “Highest single reward” from assassination missions not displaying correct information

Community Goals

– Fix inconsistent rewards being advertised when contributing to Community Goals that are in the process of ending

Factions

– Fix a rare opportunity for a conflict to start immediately after ending early

– Fixed faction influence change from smuggling weapons

– Faction influence change reduced from murder, interdiction and assault crimes

– Faction influence change increased from redeeming bounty vouchers

– Balanced faction effects from selling commodities with a zero purchase price

– Removed faction reputation gains from smuggling cargo at a black market (NF)

Exploration

– Rebalance the amount of exploration career rank awarded when completing Passenger missions

– Stop awarding First Discovery bonuses of zero credits

– Fix transaction server error when purchasing exploration data for certain systems

– Increased the credit values of exploration data for scans after this release. Unsold data from previous scans is unaffected by this change.

Misc

All players on 2.3 Beta 1 have a minimum starting balance on their existing Commander of 1,000,000 credits.


Elite Dangerous logo

Greetings!

We’ve been receiving transmissions from Commanders all over the galaxy seeking more information on our next update. I’m pleased to be able to confirm that the beta of Elite Dangerous: The Commanders (2.3) will be landing the week ending February 26! This will be available to everyone with Horizons beta access.

multicrew-original

 

With the content now reaching a stage where it begins to fit together, we’ll soon be able to start sharing more news and updates on exactly how the features will look and work. We’ll be sharing more granular detail about how the core features will function in our upcoming dev spotlight as well as showcasing all of the content in our pre-beta stream!

Elite Dangerous: The Commanders (2.3) will come with features such as Multicrew and Commander Creator, as well as a number of other improvements and changes. Bring your friends or invite new crew mates to pack that extra punch you might need in key situations, and add more personality to your Commander with an all-new visual upgrade.

So ready your engines and tell your friends, the Elite Dangerous: The Commanders beta is just around the corner.


Elite Dangerous logo

Greetings Commanders,

I’m just posting up to confirm that we have an update making its way to you this morning. The servers will be going down at 10:45 AM GMT and will be down for approximately 2 – 4 hours. We’ll let you know if there are any unexpected delays on this thread.

I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the people who took part in the beta. The support is invaluable, thank you so much.

The update is going live to Xbox One and PC.

Here’s the juicy change log….

2.2.03 Change Log

Stability Fixes

– Fix for crash when dropping from orbit at Eafots LZ-H b10-0 D 1
– Crash fix for a rare case when hyperspacing out of a system that turns into an invalid state en route
– Fix for outfitting crash when receiving a web response without a ship loadout in it
– Fix a crash in the PlayerPOISpawner if the closest planet in the planet surface manager hasn’t been found yet
– Softlock loading in to a persistent POI in multiplayer situation fixed
– Prevent mission server softlock
– Fix some memory stomping reading JSON response for the ship list when transferring a remote ship
– Powerplay page softlocks on selecting power in turmoil fixed
– Fixed crash caused by the engineer crafting manager trying to callback on the workshop GUI after it has been closed
– Fix crash in role switch panel
– Xbox One: Fixed low level cockpit GUI crash

General Tweaks/Fixes

– Added new DTS Headphone X functionality
– Allow a mini USS bubble around Colonia
– Fix transaction server error when clearing a save that had lots of exploration data
– Committing a murder while in a fighter now results in being attacked by the Authority following a scan
– If saving or autosaving while in supercruise, move the player well clear of star Jet Cones. You shouldn’t ever reload back in after a hyperspace failure stuck in the cones anymore. Note that if you save/log out while in normal space, you will still be in the cone on your return, this safety check can’t be used to escape once you’ve already made a mistake, it’s just covering for failures that aren’t the player’s fault
– Added a warning message when a non-flown ship is being scanned
– Fixed “Ship scan detected” warning not always appearing
– Fix for NPC voice volume slider not working in the audio options
– Allow Reload time in Outfitting to be shown to the nearest 1 decimal place rather than rounded to whole seconds
– Added some system metadata for the five starsystems holding refuelling bases between the Sol bubble and Colonia
– Crew rank does not update on the contacts or ship GUI after ranking up fixed
– Fixed missing cyrillic glyphs in module and systems panel
– Avoid tinting weapon impacts on environmental surfaces
– Fix for the POIs getting stuck loading due to the ReplicatedLevelContainer not activating its advance phase
– Allow Reload time in Outfitting to be shown to the nearest 1 decimal place rather than rounded to whole seconds
– Don’t clear legal state after a cargo scan! This will make the cockpit “Wanted” warning vanish!
– Warning message now appears when player scans fighter or mothership with Kill warrant or Manifest scanner
– Fixed a rare cause of triggering the ship rebuy screen when docking an SRV at a planet base
– Fixed outfitting with multiple purchases of bobbleheads
– Added new Military slots to applicable ships along with loc strings and hit sphere locations for them
– Fixed descriptions for engineer related commodities
– Fixed (r) and ™ glyph not being parsed correctly from loc files
– Xbox One: Don’t show nameless scoreboard entries. If we have data for a player without a name, then don’t add it to the score summary
– Xbox One: Where we have axis bindings, unhide the +/- button bindings so they can be rebound. Also make all flight control axes invertible
– Xbox One: Don’t handle a protocol activation if we’re resetting or disconnecting. This means if we accept one while suspended, we won’t process it until we’ve gone through a full reset and reconnected, at which point we should be able to safely join the session
– Various text fixes
– Latest localisation updates included

Passengers

– Added passenger seating allocation to allow passengers to be assigned outside of mission board
– Updated the timescale of the Long Distance Expedition template to be 28 days
– Updated the bonus rewards from passenger demanded cargo – this makes the reward more worth while for the player

Missions

– Added a new mission type for investigating the ancient ruins
– Make supply to demand overrides take max distance into account (Stops Colonia making missions which intend to only go 500ly into missions to pop back to the bubble with a ~24 time limit)
– Reduce number of missions sent to clients as we’re only sending relevant missions now
– Increased maximum mission duration to 28 days
– Fix elite rank point calculations from missions so that they are a % of any mission profit earned
– Fix the mission generation iteration limitor as it was preventing missions from spawning and thus decreasing board size
– Make sure that missions are properly transferred to the ship transactions panel after boarding from an SRV
– Fix for lack of Exquisite Focus Crystals as a mission reward
– Fix data message IDs at all ancient sites for the associated mission so that the codex scans actually trigger an inbox message
– Added mission limit to the ancient ruins mission
– Fixed mission progress elements in the ancient ruins template to actually show the inbox messages as the data is discovered
– Reduced the reputation reward for the ancient ruin mission when handed in and not fully completed
– Added a bonus reputation reward for full ancient ruin mission completion
– Massacre Conflict missions will only accept conflict zone targets
– Add additional logging to inbox messages to try to find out why we’re receiving a reply for a message we don’t have anymore
– Fixed codex with blank entries and Tweaked active codex numbers sot hat more are active at a time
– Fixed an incorrectly set boolean preventing multiple rewards from a single success point

New Module

– Module Reinforcement Pack (MRP) added, in the same sizes/classes as HRPs, designed to protect modules against external attacks piercing the hull
– Integrity of all MRPs approximately 15% higher than beta. MRPs now have a multiplier to make them much more easy to repair with an AMFU to offset their huge health pools, each unit of AFM ammo repaired restores 10x as much health to an MRP as it will to other modules

Weapons

– Rather than permanently disabling guidance on torpedoes, ECM now gives an enormous kick onto a new trajectory and scrambles them for a short time (randomly between 5 and 10 seconds), after which they will re-acquire a lock and turn back in to engage
– Fixed multicannon Clips increased to 100 (from 90)
– Fixed/gimbal multicannon reload times adjusted for consistency (generally buffed), fixed are now 4s, gimballed 5s (from an inconsistent 4s/5s mix)
– Fixed cannon damage increased by 25%
– Fixed cannon clip size increased to 6 (from 5)
– Fixed cannon reload time reduced to 3 (from 4)
– Fixed cannon ammo reserve size increased to 120 (from 100)
– Gimbal/Turret cannon damage increased by 15%
– All fixed pulse/burst/beam weapons have 10% reduced WEP drain
– WEP draw of burst lasers reduced by 10-15% (on top of fixed weapons as mentioned earlier). This has been adjusted so that pulse and burst weapons have essentially the same final DPE, and represent a tradeoff between DPS and power/heat
– Plasma Accelerator reload times reduced to 6s (from 8)
– Plasma Accelerator damage increased
– Damage split for Plasma accelerators changed from a kinetic thermal split to 60% absolute/20% kinetic/20% thermal (reduced from 100% absolute in beta), this means they partially ignore any damage resistance
– Reactor power draw for beams reduced 10%
– Frag Cannon base damage and hardness piercing adjusted to maintain the same damage against large ship hulls, but get a 15% bonus against small ships and shields
– Frag Cannon ammo reserve doubled (to 180 from 90)
– Clip size modifications now always round the clip up to avoid overly punishing small-clip weapons, and the modifier is not shown if it will have no effect
– Increased fighter weapon hardness piercing
– Internal statistics panel now has a combat defences section which should show:
– Shield health
– Armour health
– Armour rating
– plus the damage resistances to all 3 types for both
– Railgun Ammo increased from 30 -> 80 (90->240 for the Imperial Hammer)
– Railgun Firing heat reduced by 20%
– HRP mass halved across the board, MRPs use this halved mass
– Cytoscrambler improvement: 50% damage increase, damage falloff/range increased from 300/600 to 600/1000

Shields

– Regeneration rates have been increased for the larger shields when broken. Size 1 & 2 have no effect, size 8 is double what it was
– Regeneration rates when shields are active but have not recently taken damage are increased. It is now the maximum between what is was before (a fixed value for all sizes) and 25% of their broken regen (40% for biweave). This is lower than is was in beta
– Reboot-repair now Bump-starts shields when it completes, reducing downtime waiting for them to return. The focus of this is out of combat, so it does not work if you move at above 50m/s or take a shot during the reboot

Engineers

– Auto loader improved and ammo penalty removed
– Dispersal field damage penalty removed
– Overload Munitions ammo capacity penalty removed
– Smart rounds flight time penalty removed
– Concordant sequence regeneration amount doubled and lasts twice as long
– Emissive Munitions duration reduced to 30% of what it was, and capped much shorter for missiles
– Emissive Munitions Scale reduced vastly, it will still guarantee visibility but no longer maxes out gimbal tracking at all ranges
– Feedback Cascade no longer provides a fixed 90% reduction to healing, instead each hit reduces the healing rate by an amount proportional to damage capped at -90% as before. Exact number of hits to reach the cap varies based on size of weapon and shield cell, but will typically be 2-3 (requiring either high skill or multiple railguns) and up to 5 for smaller weapons against size 8 cell banks
– Overcharged and Efficient Blueprints now available for Beam weapons
– Plasma Slug now available on Plasma Accelerators
– More improvements to restocking weapons with engineer modifications
– Ensure the latest version of recipe ingredients are used when crafting, regardless of how long ago a recipe was pinned
– Automatically update modified modules to the latest version of the recipe
– Fix engineer names in inbox messages
– Make default items slot aware to prevent modules that are usually core (basically just fuel tanks) having to be replaced when stored from an optional module slot
– Removed option to remove modification when the module is stored
– Reduce multiplier on Phasing sequence by 20%
– When scaling Weapon Range up in a blueprint, we now display that the projectile speed has increased.
– When scaling down the fire rate of beams, lower their DPS correctly rather than having no effect. this will slightly nerf efficient beams, with a noticeable effect to lower levels, but G5 sees very small difference

New Engineer Recipes

– Grade 5 Burst Laser from Broo Tarquin
– Grade 5 Beam Laser from Broo Tarquin
– Grade 5 Mines from Juri Ishmaak
– Grade 5 Missiles from Liz Ryder
– Grade 5 Torpedos from Liz Ryder
– Grade 5 Railguns from Tod ‘The Blaster’ McQuinn
– Grade 4&5 Hull Reinforcement Thermal/Kinetic/Explosive resistance Blueprints from Selene Jean
– Grade 4&5 Armour Thermal/Kinetic/Explosive and Advanced Blueprints from Selene Jean
– Grade 4&5 Shield Booster Thermal/Kinetic/Explosive Blueprints from Didi Vatermann

Blueprint Changes

– Efficient no longer increases firing interval (reducing rate of fire)
– Efficient heat reduction reduced (from -50-90% to -50-60% at G5)
– Efficient WEP draw reduction range reduced and maximum reduced slightly (-15-40% to -25-35% at G5)
– Overcharged damage increased (+30-35% to +35-45% at G5)
– Overcharged Rate of fire increase removed
– Overcharged now reduces clip size (-15-25% at G5)
– (Changes to focused during beta were reverted entirely)
– Rapid Fire Rate of Fire range reduced, maximum still 40%
– Rapid Fire Damage penalty increased
– Rapid fire WEP draw reduction reduced, (-30-50% to -30-40%)
– Rapid Fire Hardness piercing increase removed
– Rapid fire now speeds up reload times (-50-65% at G5)
– Increase damage buff for Short Range to 45% (+5%) so that it is competitive with Overcharged and Rapid fire for raw damage,but with different tradeoffs
– Short Range: When scaling Weapon Range down in a blueprint, we no longer scale down the Damage Falloff start, nor the projectile speed
– Short range no longer increases WEP draw of the weapon
– Long Range now removes damage falloff from range on the weapon
– Long Range no longer increases WEP draw
– Long Range no longer reduces raw damage
– Light Weight no longer reduces damage
– Light Weight now reduces reactor power draw (-10-20% at G5)
– Light Weight now reduces WEP power draw (-10-20% at G5)
– Sturdy health increase doubled to +100-250% at G5
– Sturdy now reduces heat when firing (-20-30% at G5)
– Optimised Shields Reactor power draw reduction improved (20%-40% from 13-30%)
– Optimised Shields Mass reduction doubled (16-40% from 8-20%)
– Thermal/Kinetic Shields Module health increase added (+20%-40% at G5)
– Kinetic/Thermal/Explosive Hull Reinforcements: Penalties for off-types reduced (to 10%-15% from 10%-20% at G5)
– Kinetic/Thermal/Explosive Shield Boosters: Penalties for off-types on all single-type resistances reduced ( 4%-6% from 12%-13% at G5)
– Resistive (Shield Booster): Resistance to all types reduced by 2% (to 10-13% from 12-15% at G5)

Powerplay

– Powerplay consolidation feature added
– Powerplay assassins removed
– Powerplay pirates no longer spawn in exploited systems
– Powerplay pirates must align with an opposing superpower to that of the controlling power
– When a crime worthy of an authority response is committed between two ships (NPC or player) who are each pledged to a power, effectively reduce the security level of the system for the purposes of considering strength of response and delay
– Power security and pirate ships must now scan for powerplay vouchers, to check for powerplay cargo, and concerning which powers will get involved based on the player’s power
– Power Security NPCs attack ships of opposing powers (different major faction) if they are locally wanted, they have powerplay vouchers issued by the controlling power of the system, or are carrying any powerplay commodity relevant to the controlling power of the system. They can not be appeased with cargo drops
– PowersPirate NPCs attack ships of the same power as the controlling power of the system if they are wanted, carrying any powerplay vouchers, or carrying any powerplay cargo (any power). They can be appeased by cargo drops as long as the attack was due to cargo, not bounty or vouchers
– Ships not meeting these criteria will be left alone, even if pledged to a power
– New chatter lines added to support changed behavious
– Ensure PowersSecurity ships are given an FSD interdictor by the auto-loadout system
– Updating the balance on AI ambient power play ships, as well as tweaking some of Famine and Outbreak AI ships
– When Opposing Control or Undermining a hostile power, vouchers will only be issued when destroying NPC ships from the defending power
– Cargo used for Opposing Control or Undermining a friendly power will now only count for 1 merit when delivered
– Voting for logistics consolidation becomes available at Rank 2 after supporting a power for 4 weeks. The number of votes increases to 5 after supporting a power for 16 weeks
– Replaced the 18 second threaten timer on PowersSecurity ships with a 2 second one (they appeared to be broken right after scanning, which was undesirable behaviour). Also adjusted standard Bounty Hunter AI to be the same
– Current Vote Status box doesn’t encompass all information heading correctly
– Preparation Overview does not show the current voting ratio for logistics consolidation versus continued preparation fixed

NPCs

– Fixed firing on fighters launched from already scanned ships counting as a crime
– Increase the combat bond and bounties on NPC’s by approximately 15% (to allow for increased time to kill)
– Don’t spawn more escorts each time we transfer authority to a new authority
– Tweaks to make NPCs less effective against silent running
– NPCs should’t always be so accurate with rail guns
– Wanted NPC has clean fighter fixed
– Balance pass for AI interdiction ability, to make it slightly easier
– Fix an accidental change that removed the delay before AI reboot-repair when their critical modules are damaged, this should now be 4-15 seconds as before
– Slight changes to the spawn rates of certain AI in ambient traffic and specific powerplay archetypes. The PP types have also had their interdiction chance upped, as there are now fewer PP ships in general flying around

POIs/USSs/Stations

– Removed wreckage and salvage from tourist beacon USSs
– Fixed some broken uplink messages
– Fixed the gamplay layout for Habitat_Layout_Civilian_001 so that it contains the correct assets
– Fix for some service station missing attachments
– Use the camera location instead of the ship location for determining whether to render the interior or exterior of the station

Ships

– Improved gold paintjob shader
– Improved chrome paintjob shader
– Fix for cockpit ambience ducking artifact
– Doubled hull health for:
– Hauler
– Type 6
– Keelback
– Type 7
– Type 9 Heavy
– Vipers across the galaxy have received lightweight chassis upgrades, reduce viper hull mass by 10 tons
– Added new military slots to the following ships:
– Eagle: 1x size 2
– Imperial Eagle: 1x size 2
– Viper Mk III: 1x size 3
– Viper Mk iV: 1x size 3
– Vulture: 1x size 5
– Federal Dropship: 2x size 4
– Federal Gunship 3x size 4
– Federal Assault ship: 2x size 4
– Imperial Cutter: 2x size 5
– Federal Corvette 2x size 5
– Anaconda: 1×5 size 5

VR

– Enabled dithering for VR to reduce banding
– If we aren’t trying to override saved 3d settings don’t prevent them loading
– If user has previous saved stereoscopic mode and we want to override with /vr or /novr allow all relevant modes

Network

– Wings matchmaking improvements
– Improve the way we exchange info about routers, to include info on whether there is manual port forwarding, so we don’t immediately skip to Turn when a direct connection might work
– Ensure that packet sizes are correctly allowed for
– Added telemetry to catch inconsistencies with players network configurations
– Fix a race condition in Networking startup, where the initialisation of the Turn code was sometimes delayed due to taking a long time to identify the type of router: this meant that sometimes we would upload incomplete connection details to the server, which would then be passed on to other machines, they would not be able to connect via Turn
– Change the way we interpret appconfig.xml settings regarding manual port forwarding – if port has been set, but routerport has not, we will automatically assume port forwarding in the router, with the same port number on the external WAN side as the internal port number
– Fix some timings when adding machines to a session: if we’re waiting for the machine’s connection details, then when we receive them, reset the Session’s timeout

Player Journal

– Improved atmosphere description in player journal
– Added “Target” property in player journal when recording a kill
– Fixed json syntax for Interdiction event
– Fix for getting the correct faction when docking at a station (to write into the journal)
– When a ship/slf takes damage, the journal entry now includes whether it’s the ship or fighter, and whether the player is the pilot
– Added a journal entry when gaining Federation or Empire rank


Elite Dangerous logo

Greetings commanders,

Today we begin a special beta for the 2.2 series. This beta will last into the new year and is focused around balance passes and game changes. As previously mentioned, the vast majority of these updates for 2.2.03 are targeted towards the following subjects…

  • Powerplay and its associated AI along with mechanical changes of how Powerplay functions.
  • Engineers update: Extensive balancing tweaks and changes to promote a larger variety of recipes to use. Many additional changes are designed to smooth out the combat related blueprints.
  • General Combat Balancing: We hear you. We’ve begun the process of changing existing weapon meta to enable a far greater choice in how you, the commander, can outfit your ships for combat.

While not an exhaustive list above, we’ve included a full list of changes below. Below are the starting changes for the 2.2.03 beta; they are not final changes. We’ll post further updates to patch notes in the 2.2.03 beta feedback forum due to the focused nature of this update series.

Additionally, if you are using the standalone version of the Elite Dangerous Launcher, you can find the latest version of it here: http://hosting.zaonce.net/elite/Client-Installer.exe If you’re not using Steam to launch Elite Dangerous, you’ll need to be using the latest and greatest of our game patcher client!


2.2.03 Change Log

Stability Fixes

  • Fix for a crash when dropping from orbit at Eafots LZ-H b10-0 D 1
  • Crash fix for a rare case when hyperspacing out of a system that turns into an invalid state en route
  • Fix for outfitting crash when receiving a web response without a ship loadout in it
  • Fix a crash in the PlayerPOISpawner if the closest planet in the planet surface manager hasn’t been found yet
  • Softlock loading in to a persistent POI in multiplayer situation fixed
  • Xbox One: Fixed low level cockpit GUI crash

General Tweaks/Fixes

  • Allow a mini USS bubble around Colonia
  • Fix transaction server error when clearing a save that had lots of exploration data
  • Reboot-repair now Bump-starts shields when it completes, reducing downtime waiting for them to return. Could also be used in other cases when the player is willing to accept the risk of being idle and defenceless for the duration to focus power on their shields
  • Shield restore from Reboot/Repair now requires you to be near stationary or it will fail (to prevent in-combat overuse), 50m/s threshold
  • If saving or autosaving while in supercruise, move the player well clear of star Jet Cones. You shouldn’t ever reload back in after a hyperspace failure stuck in the cones anymore. Note that if you save/log out while in normal space, you will still be in the cone on your return, this safety check can’t be used to escape once you’ve already made a mistake, it’s just covering for failures that aren’t the player’s fault
  • Added a warning message when a non-flown ship is being scanned
  • Fixed “Ship scan detected” warning not always appearing
  • Fix for NPC voice volume slider not working in the audio options
  • Wings matchmaking improvements
  • Allow Reload time in Outfitting to be shown to the nearest 1 decimal place rather than rounded to whole seconds
  • Added some system metadata for the five starsystems holding refuelling bases between the Sol bubble and Colonia
  • Crew rank does not update on the contacts or ship GUI after ranking up fixed
  • Fixed missing cyrillic glyphs in module and systems panel
  • Avoid tinting weapon impacts on environmental surfaces
  • Fix for the POIs getting stuck loading due to the ReplicatedLevelContainer not activating its advance phase
  • Allow Reload time in Outfitting to be shown to the nearest 1 decimal place rather than rounded to whole seconds
  • Don’t clear legal state after a cargo scan! This will make the cockpit “Wanted” warning vanish!
  • Warning message now appears when player scans fighter or mothership with Kill warrant or Manifest scanner
  • Fixed a rare cause of triggering the ship rebuy screen when docking an SRV at a planet base
  • Fixed outfitting with multiple purchases of bobbleheads
  • Xbox One: Don’t show nameless scoreboard entries. If we have data for a player without a name, then don’t add it to the score summary
  • Xbox One: Where we have axis bindings, unhide the +/
  • button bindings so they can be rebound. Also make all flight control axes invertible
  • Xbox One: Don’t handle a protocol activation if we’re resetting or disconnecting. This means if we accept one while suspended, we won’t process it until we’ve gone through a full reset and reconnected, at which point we should be able to safely join the session

Passengers

  • Added passenger seating allocation to allow passengers to be assigned outside of mission board

Missions

  • Added a new mission type for investigating the ancient ruins
  • Make supply to demand overrides take max distance into account (Stops Colonia making missions which intend to only go 500ly into missions to pop back to the bubble with a ~24 time limit)
  • Reduce number of missions sent to clients as we’re only sending relevant missions now
  • Increased maximum mission duration to 28 days
  • Fix elite rank point calculations from missions so that they are a % of any mission profit earned

Weapons

  • Link Gimbal weapon tracking to the sensitivity of ship sensors. Does not affect CQC/Fighters/Non-main-ships
  • Rather than permanently disabling guidance on torpedoes, it now scrambles them for a short time (randomly between 2 and 8 seconds), after which they will re-acquire a lock and turn back in to engage
  • Emissive Munitions duration reduced to 30% of what it was, and capped much shorter for missiles
  • Emissive Munitions Scale reduced vastly, it will still guarantee visibility but no longer maxes out gimbal tracking at all ranges
  • Feedback Cascade no longer provides a fixed 90% reduction to healing, instead each hit reduces the healing rate by an amount proportional to damage capped at -90% as before. Exact number of hits to reach the cap varies based on size of weapon and shield cell, but will typically be 2-3 (requiring either high skill or multiple railguns) and up to 5 for smaller weapons against size 8 cell banks
  • Fixed multicannon Clips increased to 100 (from 90)
  • Fixed/gimbal multicannon reload times adjusted for consistency (generally buffed), fixed are now 4s, gimballed 5s (from an inconsistent 4s/5s mix)
  • Fixed cannon clip size increased to 6 (from 5)
  • Fixed cannon reload time reduced to 3 (from 4)
  • Fixed cannon ammo reserve size increased to 120 (from 100)
  • All fixed pulse/burst/beam weapons have 10% reduced WEP drain
  • Gimbal/Turret cannon damage increased by 15%
  • Fixed cannon damage increased by 25%
  • Plasma Accelerator reload times reuced to 6s (from 8)
  • Plasma Accelerator damage increased by 10%
  • Plasma Accelerators now deal Absolute damage
  • Reactor power draw for beams reduced 10%
  • WEP draw of burst lasers reduced by 15% (on top of fixed weapons as mentioned earlier)
  • Slugshot Armour piercing reduced to 15/25/35 for Small/Med/Large (from 20/35/52)
  • Slugshot reload time reduced to 2.5s (from 5s)
  • Slugshot ammo reserve doubled (to 180 from 90)
  • When scaling Weapon Range up in an engineered recipe , we now display that the projectile speed has increased
  • When scaling Weapon Range down in an engineered recipe, we no longer scale down the Damage Falloff start, nor the projectile speed
  • Clip size modifications now always round the clip up to avoid overly punishing small-clip weapons, and the modifier is not shown if it will have no effect
  • Increase damage buff for Short Range to 45% (+5%) so that it is competitive with Overcharged and Rapid fire for raw damage,but with different tradeoffs

Powerplay

  • Powerplay consolidation feature added
  • Powerplay assassins removed
  • Powerplay pirates no longer spawn in exploited systems
  • Powerplay pirates must align with an opposing superpower to that of the controlling power
  • When a crime worthy of an authority response is committed between two ships (NPC or player) who are each pledged to a power, effectively reduce the security level of the system for the purposes of considering strength of response and delay
  • Power security and pirate ships must now scan for powerplay vouchers, to check for powerplay cargo, and concerning which powers will get involved based on the player’s power
    • Power Security NPCs attack ships of opposing powers (different major faction) if they are locally wanted, they have powerplay vouchers issued by the controlling power of the system, or are carrying any powerplay commodity relevant to the controlling power of the system. They can not be appeased with cargo drops
    • PowersPirate NPCs attack ships of the same power as the controlling power of the system if they are wanted, carrying any powerplay vouchers, or carrying any powerplay cargo (any power). They can be appeased by cargo drops as long as the attack was due to cargo, not bounty or vouchers
    • Ships not meeting these criteria will be left alone, even if pledged to a power
  • New chatter lines added to support changed behavious
  • Ensure PowersSecurity ships are given an FSD interdictor by the auto-loadout system
  • Updating the balance on AI ambient power play ships, as well as tweaking some of Famine and Outbreak AI ships
  • When Opposing Control or Undermining a hostile power, vouchers will only be issued when destroying NPC ships from the defending power
  • Cargo used for Opposing Control or Undermining a friendly power will now only count for 1 merit when delivered
  • Voting for logistics consolidation becomes available at Rank 2 after supporting a power for 4 weeks. The number of votes increases to 5 after supporting a power for 16 weeks
  • Replaced the 18 second threaten timer on PowersSecurity ships with a 2 second one (they appeared to be broken right after scanning, which was undesirable behaviour). Also adjusted standard Bounty Hunter AI to be the same

Engineers

  • Auto loader improved and ammo penalty removed
  • Concordant sequence regeneration amount doubled and lasts twice as long
  • Dispersal field damage penalty removed
  • Overload Munitions ammo capacity penalty removed
  • Smart rounds flight time penalty removed
  • Overcharged and Efficient Blueprints now available for Beam weapons
  • More improvements to restocking weapons with engineer modifications
  • Ensure the latest version of recipe ingredients are used when crafting, regardless of how long ago a recipe was pinned
  • Automatically update modified modules to the latest version of the recipe

NPCs

  • Fixed firing on fighters launched from already scanned ships counting as a crime
  • Don’t spawn more escorts each time we transfer authority to a new authority
  • Tweaks to make NPCs less effective against silent running
  • NPCs should’t always be so accurate with rail guns
  • Wanted NPC has clean fighter fixed
  • Balance pass for AI interdiction ability, to make it slightly easier

POIs/USSs

  • Removed wreckage and salvage from tourist beacon USSs
  • Fixed some broken uplink messages

Ships

  • Fix for cockpit ambience ducking artifact

Player Journal

  • Improved atmosphere description in player journal
  • Added “Target” property in player journal when recording a kill
  • Fixed json syntax for Interdiction event
  • Fix for getting the correct faction when docking at a station (to write into the journal)
  • When a ship/slf takes damage, the journal entry now includes whether it’s the ship or fighter, and whether the player is the pilot
  • Added a journal entry when gaining Federation or Empire rank

This thread will remain locked. Please make a thread specific to your questions/feedback from above. Otherwise, use the threads that are stickied to discuss the changes. Thanks.


Elite Dangerous logo

The developers have been hard at work and you’ll notice that the servers and going down now for a new update coming to Elite Dangerous.
They’ll be down from 9:45 GMT and will be expected to be down for up to an hour.
Here’s the change log, enjoy!

PC and Xbox One

– Physics crash fix when disconnecting on entering a location
– Xbox One: Fix terrain flattening so planet ports do not appear underground
– Fix for client and server disagreeing about whether a jet cone boost is active and kicking the player
– Fix a crash writing to the player journal with an invalid station type when docking
– Fix low level network hang
– Crash fix when swapping to an SRV
– Update the maths around hyperspacing to a Neutron star with jet cones to properly deal with avoiding said cones, also push the arrival distance for neutron stars back out a little to avoid running straight into the drop-out radius. Note that you’ll still hit them pretty fast, but not unfairly so as long as you’re on the ball
– Fix buggy refuel on dock
– Fixed Passenger mission bug where you are unable to take any missions due to a bug where abandoned / failed missions continue to take up space in the missions limit
– Fix for planetary mission generation
– Fix for incorrect passenger elite rank points
– Heavy frame loss and stuttering when deploying a AI fighter and thrusting downwards
– Stop the station from responding to crimes of the Passenger Wanted type
– Stop the ThankYouPassedStopAndSearch chatter line from playing when scanned by police while carrying an illegal passenger as they’re about to start attacking
– Target Body does not change after scanning the first beacon of a PassengerSightseeing mission that has multiple destinations
– Prevent a faction expanding twice when a conflict state overtakes an already ended expansion state
– Ensure a minimum amount of Combat rank progression is always awarded, even when the Commanders and NPC crew have a significantly higher rank than the losing pilot
– Fix transaction server error when restocking burst railguns and some other Engineer modifications
– Module storage reliability improvements
– NPC Crew Will Not Hold Position fixed
– More improvements to the automatic fixes that try to get a Commander into the game after an invalid location or loadout including storing modules that cause trouble
– Fix faction names in the Interstellar Factors contact screen being displayed as “NONE” when there are a large number of factions in the list
– The player journal entry for when docking at a station now reports the station faction economy, government, etc: (and the info on entering a starsystem names the properties as SystemEconomy, SystemGovernment etc to be explicit about what the values refer to)
– Fix journal entry when docking an ai fighter
– Orca tactical paintjobs fixed
– Fix to the Asp Pharaoh paintjob skus being switched
– Fix incorrect onionhead2 decal sku
– Always report a MaterialCollected event after MaterialDiscovered in the player journal
– Added a text line explaining more clearly the risk of carrying criminals
– If you have an illegal passenger, call this out in the status line. Only “Wanted” status trumps this
– Attempting to spend negative credits when refuelling fixed
– Add checks for ship validity to GetStoredItemsForSlot so that we only return items that can currently be fitted to a slot. This should stop multiple shield generators, refineries, fuel scoops and other assorted once only modules getting fitted via the storage tab
– Fix livery being accessible (in extenso, outfitting) when outfitting is actually not available in a starport

Xbox One also includes 2.2.01:

– Don’t crash if there’s invalid state in the powerplay map
– Fix crash when looking at the role panel in the SRV
– Prevent spinning ship while docked and using VR mode with Rift CV1
– Fix a crash that can happen if the persistent POI generation runs before the planet surface controller is ready
– Fixed SRV starting underground if the base is in a crater
– Fix soft lock when entering installations when another player is already at the installation
– When cannons, plasma accelerators and railguns malfunction, they now deal 5% of their own damage to themselves, rather than 200% which would instakill them
– Civil wars now use the same structure as War/War Support to guarantee there is always at least one conflict zone in civil wars
– Fix an issue with station guns not causing damage in some network conditions
– Hunter hostiles now obey the same cooldown as normal NPCs to prevent instant interdictions
– Fixed an issue where delivery and delivery founder missions were showing the wrong credit reward in the first transaction tab after you accept the mission
– Fixed overhead per system being too large as it’s not counting fortified systems towards the number of systems that pay overheads
– Materials do not drop from Fumaroles (or other persistent POIs) when multiple players are present fixed
– Stop prosecuting crimes committed by dead Commanders
– Fixed Commanders allowed to equip multiple fuel scoops, fighter bays, refineries and shield generators by retrieving a module from storage
– Fixed some stored ships not being available within the Shipyard
– Fighter Cockpit UI: removing useless indicators in the bottom right corner, leaving the component’s frame only for silent running and wanted status display
– Added message when main ships power plant is malfunctioning will be displayed when player is in both main ship and fighter
– Fine now given for shooting in no fire zone with a fighter
– Lower panel shows SRV that isn’t owned fixed
– Fixed missing targeting schematic images for the Satellites
– Starport UI: fixing research panel (numeric stepper) not releasing focus when pressing left on a pad to get back to contacts menu (or back button)
– Change order of string returned by GetLongLatString, to Lat then long to revert the order of the latitude and longitude readout on the hud to be the same as pre 2.2
– Fixed missing Imperial Clipper vibrant paintjobs
– Remove build watermark

SOURCE


Elite Dangerous logo

Greetings commanders, we’ve pushed an update out this morning, here’s the changes.

Stability Fixes
– Fixed Skimmer Group issue
– Fix a crash if we try to send a message to or about a player that is no longer in the game
– Fix crash during high res screen capture
– Fix crash in wing manager
– Fix for the pilot object never being destroyed
– Fix a number of unreleased effects that could potentially have caused small memory leaks
– Fix crash when calculating the tidal locking amount for a planet with exactly -180 axial tilt
– Fixes to protect against a fatal network error, and early detection of the disconnection with server
– Fixes a crash in the fairly rare case of a ship being killed or fleeing while waiting for a response to a docking request
– Fixes for cross-platform crashes reported from the Xbox client
– Improvements to memory management to tackle cases of fragmentation
– Fix a potential NaN in the vehicle system
– Added crash protection in outfitting when getting the inventory for a sub slot
– Fix crash when taking damage and when a contributing player doesn’t exist anymore, likely due to quitting
– Fix a server crash if a CQC game ends at the same time the lobby is shut down
– Fix a crash if you disconnect while shooting someone while in CQC
– Fix a crash in CQC capture the flag if someone leaves the game at the same time that the flag is dropped
– Fix crash when disconnecting while taking damage in CQC
– Fix a transaction server error when transferring cargo on changing ships

General Tweaks & Fixes
– Added surface scan materials data to system map
– Added Federal supply stations to Merope
– Fix to allow TrackIR users to have the same headlook range as before the 2.1 patch when live
– Mouse cursor stuck on side of screen when in main menu fixed
– Station weapon strength increased to allow for players with engineer upgraded defences
– When dropping out after an interdiction make sure we don’t drop out too close to a planet
– Added Saitek x56 control pre-set
– Fix occasional doubling up of first discovery names on the system map
– Fix for first discovery bonuses not being paid out when all members of a wing sell their exploration data
– Factions can no longer retreat if fewer than 3 factions would remain in that star system
– Fixed combat rank increases awarded from killing other Commanders
– If the game owner has changed before we close CharacterComponent (because we switched users for instance), then don’t save the PlayerMisc config. Otherwise we’ll save the old user’s settings in the new user’s save data
– Added latest batch of translations
– Various text fixes

Xbox One
– Updated New Logo and Idents
– Improvement to user settings when switching players
– Added a language override option to allow players to choose English over their default console language
– Reduce the frequency that the statistic events are sent to make them less spammy
– Don’t allow the player to spam Create Commander requests – block new requests while another is active
– Don’t refresh the XBL Inventory when unconstraining to avoid the client and server getting out of sync

CQC
– Matchmaker optimisations
– Removed the localisation from commander name in CQC as it is causing issues in the UI for long names

NPCs
– Removed boost from lowest NPC ranks
– Removed sub-system targetting
– Allow players a better chance of fleeing from NPC ships
– Rebalance for fixed scenario AI set up, specifically for Nav Beacons and RES sites
– Increase the threaten timer across the board for all AI. Pirates have slight higher since they are waiting for cargo to be dropped
– Set all AI ships in lawful space to have an interdiction rank range of 2 or less ranks below their own, and all AI ships in anarchy space to have an interdiction rank range of 3 or less ranks below their own
– Slightly reduced Anarchy interdictions, whilst keeping them more dangerous than lawful systems.

Engineers
– Wide ranging changes to drop rates and USSs: Change the rate and spread of drops from missions, wakes, ship scanning, USS collection, mining, data links and scannable wreckage
– Fixed blueprints being lost when using reputation to override the special modifier
– Make sure POI data points have the firmware rarity improvements mirrored across to them
– Rebalance POI data point drop quantities, including the rate and spread of drops
– Change the weighting on “Wrecks” USS
– Fix for being able to select an unselectable adjust option which appeared to give a free upgrade
– When collecting physical micro resources or retrieving data loot, add 3 to the inventory instead of 1. If your inventory can’t fit 3, just add enough to fill the inventory
– Added locations to the descriptions of the commodities
– Material positions are now replicated correctly
– Balanced values for Materials amount and rarity spawned by PoI’s to address difficulty of finding resources

Weapons
– Fix infinite ammo reloading on player ships
– Make the diminishing returns cap on external heat attacks more harsh, primarily making it very hard to cause significant hull damage with heat from thermal shock/cascade
– 20% reduction in heat applied by Thermal Cascade
– Fixed lens flare on class 4 burst laser

Missions
– Make permit missions have rank up tick box ticked
– When attempting to add a message to the inbox list in GUI, check if the mission manager knows about the mission. Don’t show it if it doesn’t
– Add a short wait time before the client re-requests a tutorial mission (60 seconds)
– Fix to allow Navy promotion missions to succeed if offered prematurely
– Fix to use the correct rank name in Navy promotion inbox messages
– Automatically clean up undeletable inbox messages for expired missions
– When attempting to add a message to the inbox list in gui, check if the mission manager knows about the mission. Don’t show it if it doesn’t
– Fix for Settlement Not Spawn Spawning Mission Required Skimmers

Scenarios/USSs/POIs
– Fixed various issues with capital ship scenarios
– Added new types of USS and new USS classifications
– Rebalance for fixed scenario AI set up, specifically for Nav Beacons and RES sites
– Separate Checkpoints/seeking weapons into a separate WarSupport scenario bucket and when generating war scenarios guarantee that at least one is always from the actual War bucket rather than support, to prevent warring systems being full of checkpoints but no actual combat zones people can participate in

Ships
– Diamondback Scout – cannot land on planet surface fixed

Render
– Make the render feature system more robust against GraphicsConfig.xml being broken

Powerplay
– Fix for “System Resistance” ships not having any weapons in Military Strike zones in powerplay systems
– Prevent depopulating systems, change the background sim to only allow Factions to retreat if there are at least 4 factions in that system
– Additional modifier to require a commodities market during Trade related CG’s

Audio
– Fixed bug where planetary music suite didn’t play when approaching from supercruise
– Reduced the timing interval on the probe to bring the total transmission down to just over 6 mins
– Small volume boost on flight controllers and radio chatter


Elite Dangerous logo

Hi everyone,

update 2.1.03 will be released this morning for all platforms. Servers will be turned off at 10 am BST, and should be live again within 2 hours. The update contains the following changes listed below.

For Xbox One players the download size is 1.2 GB.

Thanks!

Michael

Stability Fixes

– Fixes a crash in the case of a ship being killed or fleeing while waiting for a response to a docking request
– Fix proxy kinematic rig crash
– Don’t crash on capital ship ‘death’
– Fix for server crash from uncertain CQC state
– Fix a server crash when checking commodity lists
– Fix a server crash when checking a players death
– Fix a crash if we receive damage from a disconnected player in CQC
– Fix a crash if you disconnect while shooting someone while in CQC
– Fix crash when disconnecting while taking damage in CQC
– Applied fix made sure that user has their input focus on a proper component when entering inventory shop
– Fix a crash when handing in missions when trying to find superpower info
– Don’t assume locking of vertex buffers will succeed – prevents crash in terrain generation
– Tackle some soft locks caused by specific POIs
– Fixed softlock when quickly selecting refuel/repair/restock after opening station services
– Fix softlock when signing out as we enter Hyperspace
– Fix for softlock when loading at settlements
– Fix a softlock when approaching or loading in an Engineer’s base
– Fix server disconnect on “Pomeche 2 C”
– Xbox One: Game enters a semi unresponsive state when changing the Yaw Axis Preset from within the Controls Options fixed
– Xbox One: Don’t refresh Inventory when unconstraining. We don’t want the client and server state to get out of sync so we now only check for Inventory once, at sign-in

General Fixes/Tweaks

– Xbox One: Support for localised languages (French, German, Spanish, and Russian)
– Added Saitek x56 control preset
– Fix missing Hawking Depot – now called Hawking Station
– Use loose rather than strict checks when testing if a ship is valid for recovering from storage, this means that people who’ve stored ships with mass over their engine limit will be able to recover those ships again. But will still be prompted to fix the problem when in outfitting
– Pirated cargo not appearing in hold when stealing from players fixed
– Re-fix making Independent powers being hostile to each other when deciding which actions to allow when being opposed
– Added guards against receiving duplicate inbox messages, which could cause the inbox gui to become unresponsive
– Fix not being able to dock at some stations in the Arbuda system
– Fixed viewing the list of CG’s, and the progress preview bar being wrong
– If an interdiction takes you into orbital cruise, then cancel the interdiction as otherwise you will end up inside the planet
– When dropping out after an interdiction make sure we don’t drop out too close to a planet. If we do drop out too close then move the drop point away
– Extra logging for some machine disconnection issues
– Stop sending Federation and Empire rankup inbox messages when eligible for the mission for the next rank
– No longer able to bind ‘Reset Mouse’ to the same buttons as UI controls
– Audio: For Wwise prior to 2015.1.7 and Windows 10+ only use XAudio2 if the 2.7 DLL is there
– Audio: Make sure we are relatively close to a hostile before triggering combat music
– Audio: Don’t load chatter soundbanks or planet port voice soundbanks when they aren’t needed
– Audio: Fix for orbital cruise sounds happening after hyperspace jumps
– Xbox One: Fixed excessive XMA compression on title ident
– Xbox One: The tabs under Friends and Private Groups do not update when the user tries to view member in a group fixed
– Xbox One: Fixing Nasty sounding XMA compression artifacts on some music cues
– Mouse cursor stuck on side of screen when in main menu fixed
– Store relationship values on mission avatars so they don’t change into their cool pirate jackets anymore
– Fixed missing Cyrillic font glyphs on special effect panel
– Latest batch of translated text
– Various text fixes

Engineers

– Ensure we have up-to-date data when opening the workshop so that we correctly show ‘alternative’ progress
– Players can now spend favours (reputation levels) to control experimental effects on blueprints
– Filter option is not always reset when navigating to the recipe selection panel fixed
– Back button working on pinned and help popups

Missions

– Permit Missions should now give a permit
– Supply to demand overrides should take into account permit access
– Fixed mission board reputation bars being wrong
– All missions now give a positive state effect with the mission giver for completion, that is relative to the cargo/mission target
– Fix reputation values and spawning levels in planetary rescue
– Make delivery missions fail upon death
– Fix for Settlement not spawning mission required skimmers
– Some mission generation optimisations
– Nav Beacon Wrinkle message will be sent every time you supercruise away from the contact’s system fixed
– If we don’t have space for all the reward materials, only add what we can
– Use a more reliable way of finding commander ids so that mission update requests aren’t handed invalid commander ids
– Added a contract element into the initial mission progression that checks the player’s cargo hold – This prevents the player from taking missions if they don’t have enough cargo in their hold when the reward has cargo in it
– Added Contract Element to all ‘hand-in’ panels to indicate when the player does not have enough cargo space for the cargo rewards and therefore cannot hand in the mission
– Allow people who do not have a matching mission to drop cargo for said missions through in/voluntary means
– Removed the destination station element from the transaction panels that don’t need them, so you should no longer see random destination logos on the left hand panel
– Changed the Massacre legal variants to set a timer when an enemy is killed – ensures that the race wrinkle can spawn
– Read relationship from avatar contact string. Prevents the issue where you’re standing may change as you complete a mission to be greeted by a slightly different avatar from the original mission giver
– Planetary Disable BLOPS missions are now marked as Horizons only
– Mark a mission as planetary if any of its contract element results are Available Planetary, not just if the end result is Available Planetary (means that unavailable missions can have the planetary icon)
– Micro resource space deficiency should be called out in the rewards section not additional
– Added Can Land AtS tation Checks to all Alternative offer inbox messages, preventing the player from talking Alternatives that require Horizons content
– Exclude minor factions from selection as mission targets if they are engineers and/or hidden
– Reduced the number of community goal web requests sent from the client by caching data and only fetching new data when viewing the goals on the mission board
– Changed the ship being used in the rescue mission maints from a hauler to a type 6 – they now have the correct amount of cargo for the mission
– Changed the effects of the states for the piracy, planetary and mining missions to be a “positive” effect when the player successfully completes the mission – on these templates it was backwards
– Allow missions & Community Goals to be completed at stations that have mission generation temporarily disabled

NPCs

– When determining the rank of NPC ships for interdiction, use the player’s combat rank, rather than their highest PF rank, although add 1 rank if their trade or exploration rank is higher than their combat rank
– Updated the Archetypes of the NPCs in the USS cargo drop missions – they are now Ambush Pirate and should attack the player on entry
– Fixed AI rotation damping to work properly across the AI skill range
– alter the changes in allowed interdiction ranks based on security, so that the biggest rank disparities are reserved for very low security and anarchy systems
– Reduced the number of engineer mods on AI ships substantially, now only Deadly & Elite rank ships are guaranteed to have mods and any below Master are guaranteed to have none
– Fix for Large AI ships ramming large player ships
– Slightly reduced the ranks below an AI that they can interdict players, this will tighten up the difficulty a bit
– Add state to Powers Assassin and Powers Security ships to allow them to threaten the player before attacking
– Reduced the percentage interdiction chance of power play ships by 10%, and altered the ship type chances and combat ranks to be more mid range, dropping a lot of the top range down
– Balance mission generated NPCs to be lower ranked (for the most part)

POIs/USSs/Settlements

– Address some long initialisation times for certain POIs
– Fix for seed spikes not spawning meta-alloys
– Changed trigger volumes of trespass zones to be much smaller to prevent issues
– SRV gets stuck on Baker’s Prospect ramp fixed
– Doubled the height of the foundation wall of the large biome, so that it can be bedded into more undulating landscapes without the terrain intersecting through the centre
– No audio acknowledgement that something has been received after scanning a nav beacon fixed
– For capital ships in fixed scenarios (e.g. the one at Sol, but not capital ships that turn up for combat zones) make their name choice pseudo-random based on UniversalAddress so that it will always be the same
– Materials from nodes floating high into the air when in wing fixed
– Attenuation changes for POIs
– Fix for silent security door on settlements
– Fix a server error when scanning certain large industrial settlements

Weapons

– Huge burst lasers added
– Adjust tracking rates for turreted weapons. Large+ are unchanged, medium are slightly faster, small are a lot faster
– Improvements to turret tracking: When evaluating confusion the turret will now take into account the apparently linear acceleration of the target actually caused by angular acceleration of the firing vehicle. Overall this should make turrets confused less of the time, and emphasises the skill element a bit more – the better you match your targets acceleration to keep them stationary in view, the better your turrets will track
– Correct the Target Entity checks when weapons hit their target to correctly account for subtargeting being used with Target-Only mode turrets, these will now cause hostility correctly when hitting the ship whose module you’ve targeted, but will correctly disregard hostility when stray shots clip other ships as before
– Advanced Plasma Accelerater now has ammo when installed
– Changes to impulse attacks (force shell an impulse mine), aiming to prevent stacking from being extremely unpleasant (and sickness inducing in VR) while not making single guns ineffective:
– Reduce impulse generated by force shell on larger cannons, smaller ones are increased slightly
– Torque generated by impulse attacks is clamped to a multiple of the ships mass, so large weapons cannot induce unrecoverable spins in small ships
– Diminishing returns now applies to impulse attacks within a short space of time. This resistance will drain to zero after at most 5 seconds, but within that window the more a ship is pushed around the more it becomes resistant to it
– Balance pass for Incendiary ammo multicannons, they’re a bit too good . They now also come with the downsides of a 10% reduction in fire rate, and generate significantly more heat than a normal multicannon (though still less than an equivalent pulse). This change will retroactively affect existing items
– Dispersal field should no longer affect (some) fixed weapons, or turrets set to forward fire
– Balancing for heat attack weapons (Retributor, Thermal Shock and a few others), overall intention is to keep single weapons having a purpose, while reducing the power of heavy stacking:
– Having an active shield now statically prevents 25% of the heat from getting through
– Adjusted the diminishing returns curve, getting someone to 100% is easier, getting them past 100% is harder, getting them into hull damage is MUCH harder, and the final cap is now 220% rather than 300%
– Remove override that was giving C4 pulse/burst lasers the incorrect audio event name
– Ensure that beam highlight textures are kept alive as long as they are needed
– Main game power distributors were too good on eng/sys across the board and have been brought back to 2.0 levels
– Prevent ammo from going over the normal maximum when modifications have reduced the clip size, which also caused absurd costs to show in restock menu
– Audio: adjusted the number of audio objects in the audio impact system. A Partial fix for messy impact audio when player is hitting target with multiple beam weapons at once
– Updated the missile sound

Outfitting

– Power distributor recharge rate cropped in outfitting fixed
– Outfitting shop GUI data can persist between core modules fixed
– Sidewinder spoilers have the wrong icons fixed

Ships

– All shields now regenerate at double rate when in supercruise
– Fixed landing collision issues with Diamondback Scout
– Missing engine VFX on the Anaconda
– Both Asp Explorer and Scout Paint job cameras are no longer position behind the roof lights
– Some flight controller volume inconsistencies fixed
– Clashing “Incoming Message” and “Incoming Mission Critical Message” fixed
– Imperial Courier drive flares now working as intended again
– Added bullet fly by sounds
– Fixed some weird panning behaviour on flight assist on/off mechanical sounds by whacking up the spread on it
– Xbox One: Added landing gear deployed/stowed rumble for ships that had it missing

SRV

– Fixed offset hitcheck on SRV

CQC

– CQC power distributors now have their 2.0 values back, and weapon distributor is no longer strictly the best
– Fix a lost flag on a few PG weapons that turned all the beam lasers into pulses, and would have un-intentionally increased DPS by 50% because the damage per second value would be interpretted as damage per shot and fired every 0.66 seconds
– Wing manager should now remove player that leave the game from their teams wing, they should also no longer assert about having a wing member in a weird state
– The message the team gets about players leaving teams should now work as intended

Stations/Ports

– Small volume boost on flight controllers and radio chatter
– Xbox One: Fix for rumble happening on “other” landing pads
– Xbox One: Fixed out of sync rumble on small pads animations

Galaxy Map

– Galaxy map now properly opens from transaction tab while in headlook
– Bookmarked systems show the bookmark marker even if it has other active markers
– Bookmarks: Pressing left (pad/joystick) will close the bookmark dropdown menu fixed
– Gal map / powerplay : Displaying “radius profit” instead of “profit” in the popup to avoid confusion about values displayed
– Bookmarks: Make sure the send modification button (delete/save) can’t spam request the server

Render

– Make the render feature system more robust against GraphicsConfig.xml being broken
– Increased distance for tiling rates on rocky and metal worlds to improve the distance you can see surface details from the materials. Also brightened the surfaces slightly
– Sort the stars based on the new lighting curve – addresses some lighting issues in systems with black holes
– Fix for cases where stellar background textures could fail to render correctly
– Fix ring detail texture resolution so that it isn’t synced to main ring texture size
– Smaller authored ring textures as we don’t need 4096 x 128 for the coarse colour/spacing information
– Fix for NaNs showing up in PlanetRingFog shader

VR

– Only control input focus through HMDs if they are rendering (don’t affect regular mono modes)
– Fix for the VR camera flicker in supercruise transitions


Elite Dangerous logo

“Our amazing team at Frontier is continuing to deliver on an incredibly ambitious vision for Elite Dangerous. There have been major Elite Dangerous deliveries every 2-3 months, with smaller point updates in between – a stunning total of 148 deliveries over the last 15 months. For The Engineers we decided to take a bit longer, to ensure what we deliver is great, but also to give us a chance to revisit many of the features in the game already. This is in addition to the great new features we have already hinted at, and of course more of the story, more on the ‘barnacles’ and their origins, more on aliens, and much, much more…

The Engineers are individuals that are mavericks in some way. Each has some sort of expertise from their pasts that they have made into a business – tuning all sorts of aspects of your ship to improve them. They do this using exotic and often hard-to-find components. Most Engineers are very secretive, working behind the scenes for the military or other shady organisations, and so you need an introduction, and need to find out how to find them. Missions can lead to introductions to Engineers, and some Engineers will introduce you to others, providing a more directed path for those that want that sort of approach. There is progression with each Engineer too, as you build up your relationship with them by doing missions and earning their trust.

I am delighted to announce The Engineers (Elite Dangerous 2.1) will be available to players with beta access in the week ending 8th May.”

David Braben

The Engineers and Elite Dangerous 1.6

The Engineers (2.1) is the second major release in the Elite Dangerous: Horizons season of expansions that started with Planetary Landings. The Engineers adds Loot and Crafting and the eponymous Engineers themselves as the headliner features, but also delivers a massive number of new gameplay elements.

Through the engineers, you will be able to improve and upgrade the stats on every module of your ship, and add rare, experimental effects to your weapons for some special outcomes. We’ll be showing more of these weapons in the coming newsletters, but here’s one example of the abilities that you can implement.

Click the image to enlarge.

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Our second big announcement today is that Elite Dangerous 1.6, available to all players of Elite Dangerous, not just those with Horizons, delivers significant changes to the core gameplay experience for all players, headlined by a completely re-vamped mission system and having its own vast number of additions and changes, and it will go into closed Beta and be released at the same time as The Engineers.

In the next three week’s Newsletters (starting this Friday) we’ll be going into both 1.6 and The Engineers, with articles written by Executive Producer Michael Brookes about all of the new features coming to the game, artwork, in-game images and much more.

We’ll be following up these weekly newsletters with ‘Countdown to Beta’ livestreams on the following Thursday, where we discuss the information in the newsletter with the developers, show you on-screen examples and answer any questions you have about that week’s content.

We thank you for sharing the Elite Dangerous journey so far. We have taken our time with The Engineers and 1.6, and we think you will like the results. The future of Elite Dangerous is incredibly exciting – and it starts in three weeks!


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About This Game

Elite Dangerous: Horizons is the second season of content for Elite Dangerous, the definitive massively multiplayer space epic.

It starts with Planetary Landings, an unprecedented, vast new experience that lets you journey seamlessly from space to any point on the surfaces of accurately simulated planets and moons throughout Elite Dangerous’ multi-player, cut-throat, full scale re-creation of the 34th century Milky Way galaxy.

Coast over mountaintops, dive into canyons and drive the new Scarab SRV wheeled vehicle. Each 1:1 scale world offers incredible vistas and plentiful gameplay opportunities; Discover valuable resources, experience deadly combat encounters, raid bases, scout crash sites and co-operate with other players, both on the planet surface and flying high above.

Planetary Landings is just the first of a full Elite Dangerous: Horizons season of expansions; throughout the season Horizons players will also get – free of additional cost – other massive new expansions dedicated to gameplay, community, and narrative including:

  • Loot and Crafting, unlocking a world of customization options and adding new value and meaning to every action.
  • Multi-crew, allowing teams of players to assume roles aboard the same ship.
  • Commander Creation, giving a unique appearance to players’ in-game avatars.
  • Ship-Launched Fighters, allowing larger spacecraft to carry their own short-range fighter ships for attack and defense.

Elite Dangerous: Horizons is fully back & forward compatible with Elite Dangerous (season one) – everyone plays together in the same galaxy.

It gives new players access to Elite Dangerous and all the expansions in Elite Dangerous: Horizons for one price. A discount for existing Elite Dangerous players is automatically applied.

Starting with only a small starship and a few credits, do whatever it takes to earn the skill, knowledge, wealth and power to survive in an incredible, cut-throat galaxy in an age of galactic superpowers and interstellar war, and rise to the ranks of the iconic Elite.

Every player’s actions influence the unique connected gaming experience and evolving interactive narrative as governments fall, battles are lost and won, and humanity’s frontier is reshaped.

Decide the next moves of powerful story characters. Take part in intense Close Quarter Championship PVP arena battles. Play with large community groups, in 4-person Wings, or alone.

400 Billion Star Systems. Infinite Freedom. Blaze Your Own Trail.

Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons are AAA VR experiences, and include support for HTC Vive and Steam VR.

STEAM