Elite Dangerous News

Greetings Commanders!


Last week was big for Elite Dangerous: Odyssey news! Not only did we release a brand new look at Odyssey pre-alpha gameplay, we also revealed that the alpha will begin on March 29 on PC (more details on this soon). The gameplay reveal was followed by a live interview with developer Gareth Hughes, answering questions around the mission itself, and giving more interesting insights into Odyssey! You can watch the entire interview over on YouTube, but if you prefer to read, we've got a refined version of Gareth's answers after the mission playthrough video below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Let's get straight into the questions:

Q: So this is pre-alpha footage we're seeing in this video?
That's right! Things have changed rapidly, we're in that end phase of development where we are really balancing and polishing everything. We're seeing pretty dramatic day-to-day improvement, the quality level is going up and up and up!

Q: This video showed off one particular mission, at one particular site, on one particular planet - and this is scaled galaxy wide?
That's it! We're looking at 27 different settlements, spanning six different themes: agricultural, industrial, extraction, tourism, research, military. There's a really wide variety of settlements, each of the themes has unique building types that can facilitate unique mission types. We also have more generic missions that work across all of the themes. There's lots of variation depending on the planet, the type of faction that currently has ownership of the settlement (via BGS) and more.

Q: Could you talk about what kind of NPCs we might encounter at a settlement?
Generally we split the NPCs into two distinct types in terms of behaviour. There's the guards that you were fighting against, and the civilians. Obviously they are different in terms of loadout and how they act in the settlement but I think the more fundamental thing that drives your interaction with settlement NPCs is the background simulation and your relationship with the faction. If you have a friendly relationship with that faction then you're free to pretty much go anywhere and explore, maybe you'll find some mission givers there that you can interact with. However, if you have a bad relationship with that faction, that settlement may just end up in a shoot on sight situation.

If you go in shooting, that's going to upset even the most friendly NPCs! As soon as you're killing NPCs without reason, you're given a bounty straight away, and you're pretty much fair game! The settlement doesn't have a hive mind in terms of what you're doing. If you're detected doing something that's going to elicit a hostile response from the AI, before the whole settlement is aware of that, the message has to be radioed out - you're given a window of opportunity to interject before they can send that message out.

Q: Sometimes the NPCs will ask you to stop for a scan, can you talk about this?
That's right, they have the same scanning device as you do, and it can pick up on your existing criminality. You might have a cordial relationship with the faction, but if you do something suspicious, they'll scan you with the Profile Analyser, if they detect an in-jurisdiction crime on you, then they will react immediately. You also see in the video, that some buildings have gating. There are a few ways to get through that day, either via overloading the mechanism, or you'll also notice a number '3' above the panel - this is the authorisation level required. The way you get this authorisation is by scanning an NPC that already has it - you're effectively stealing their identity. The NPCs don't like you doing this, and if you get scanned whilst in possession of a cloned authorisation, they will react.

There's lots of ways you can approach a settlement, it's not the case that you have to go in guns blazing. It's also not the case that you can't achieve mission objectives that are nefarious by stealthing your way in and avoiding criminality that's going to get you in trouble straight away.

Q: If you've been scanned once, will NPCs just leave you alone?
NPCs can be interested by suspicious stimuli. So for instance if they saw the cut panel on the floor, they'd know something didn't seem right, and if they see you near the panel - they'll investigate you. If you have just been scanned, another NPC won't just come and scan you again instantly, but if you're moving through and setting off all these stimuli, they're going to respond!

Q: Are there things that a player can do to avoid settlement defences like turrets and Goliaths?
Absolutely, what you did in the mission playthrough was like the ultimate 'pull the plug' - taking the regulator will shut down pretty much everything like turrets, that does mean all the NPCs will react to that though. If you're doing a more stealthy approach, the command building often has multiple consoles that you can access to turn off various security systems. If you're patient, you can scan the AI, understand the patrol routes, apply some mods to your suit to make you more stealthy, or use a silenced weapon, you can get to that building and disable those features to make your life easier if you don't want a firefight. If you're detected in an area that you don't belong, they'll warn and fine you at first, but if you're persistent things will get more aggressive!

We've got some classic missions like assassinations, and new missions like sabotage and heists. Some of those may give a bonus payment if you're not discovered or don't kill anybody. We're trying to give the missions a lot more flavour and storytelling in terms of the context around them.

Q: Can you talk about what happens if you fail a mission, or die?
If you die, you fail the mission you're currently doing. When you die, you get a choice of two things. If you're on foot and don't have a ship (which is possible in Odyssey), you'll respawn at the nearest port or outpost. If you do have a ship, you'll get a choice to respawn at the port, or in your ship. If your ship is on the planet surface, you'll respawn in your ship on orbit, if it's docked at a port already, you'll respawn in your ship at the port. Anything that's in your backpack inventory (different from permanent storage) is lost when you die.

Q: The NPCs in the video weren't so tough compared to others, can you talk about NPC difficulty?
This relates to the classic time to kill question. The answer is it's incredibly variable, as it's all gear driven. If I have the worst gear against AI or players with the best gear, they're going to have a significant advantage over me. They're going to feel spongey to me, and I'll feel easy to kill for them. If we're on a level, then it's a lot of different. In terms of AI, there's also behavioural elements to combat that scale up when you fight higher tier AI, including things like accuracy, dodging etc. If you're doing difficult missions, you're going to get good rewards. Once you scan players or AI, you can tell exactly how powerful they are.

Q: Can you give us some more examples of mission types?
An interesting one is kind of the inverse of what you did in the video! That settlement may be in an offline state, and you may be tasked to go down, get into the reactor building, and put that settlement back online. Some of the buildings might be on fire, so once it's online, you have to go building by building, de-pressurise, put fires out and so on. There may be scavengers or other NPCs there to make your job harder.

Q: Can you talk a bit more about the authorisation levels in settlements?
Yes, this is basically one of the ways we gate off areas from access. There is a consumable device in the game that's quite expensive which overrides something that usually needs a certain authorisation level. NPCs don't like seeing them, of course, but it's another way the player can move through the settlements. It's about choice, if I'm on a relatively low paying mission, do I want to use my expensive device, or do I want to swap into my Utility Suit and use my cutter and other tools?

Q: Can you talk about the different suits in Odyssey?
Yes, as you see in the video, players can take up different roles depending on the suit they use. The tactical suit for example, can carry two different weapons, which is unique to that suit, so you need to consider the best suit for the mission you're about to engage in.

Q: There are different types of weapons in Odyssey, could you tell us why a player might use them?
Way back when we started prototyping combat, it became quite clear to us early on that the ship combat has some really interesting concepts behind it, so we basically stole them! The premise is that kinetic weapons are good against armour, lasers are good against shields, and plasma re decent against both but not quite as good as the other two. When it comes to choosing a loadout, you'll want to choose your weapons to be the most efficient, so you may want lasers to take out shields and kinetic to finish them off. If you're working as a team, you can specialise, one player can be ant-shield, and another can finish them off via kinetic.

Q: For the getaway, we landed to the side of the settlement for a quick escape, there's been a small change in this, hasn't there?
Yes, you can now automatically land on planet surfaces. It's hard to encapsulate all the changes in a few minutes of video. When players get hold of the alpha, that's when they'll really understand what we've done.

Q: Can you talk about suit management?
There are different things that can pull on the suits' power. There's the life support machine, things like the shield (which is power hungry when turned on), and some of the tools can use your suit power. Survival actually starts to become something you need to become considerate of in certain situations. If you're at a settlement, there are areas where you can recharge your suit, but if you're out exploring, there's certainly a risk factor involved. Environmental factors can also have an effect on how hard your suit has to work to keep you alive. If you're in really extreme temperatures, you'll be taking physical damage. You can disembark somewhere on the planet with safe temperatures, but you can quite quickly end up somewhere where the temperature is much hotter, and end up in danger.

Q: Finally, how important is the upcoming alpha?
From my perspective, I'm interested in player feedback on the economy - how much is a bounty worth for example. When players start playing it, they'll quickly establish where we need to tweak things. There's also things like weapon balance that we'll be looking at, and we'll have time to take that on board and react.


Thank you again to Gareth for joining us on his birthday! With the alpha fast approaching on March 29, we'll have even more information on Elite Dangerous: Odyssey in the coming weeks. Until then, fly safe Commanders.


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Greetings Commanders,

In anticipation of the exciting new gameplay features Commanders will first experience during the Alpha phase, we have released a new video showing an Odyssey mission playthrough, which features gameplay captured from a raid mission.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The video shows a team of three Commanders plunge into a daring on-foot raid of a military outpost. Their objective: to disable the power centre and ultimately render the opposing faction powerless!

All three Commanders in the incursion team are specially equipped for their assigned role, selected from the wide range of space suits, weapons and equipment available in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey. Their tactical gear grants them an edge in their assigned tasks, whether it is to infiltrate the base avoiding detection, lay down covering fire if the alarm is raised, hacking, or quickly extract their teammates from a tight spot if enemy forces overwhelm them.

And in case you missed it in the video we are also excited to announce that the Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Alpha will be available for PC from 29 March!

Stay tuned for more Elite Dangerous: Odyssey news soon!


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Greetings Commanders!


We're back again this week with more answers for you on Elite Dangerous: Odyssey. This week we're taking a look at your questions regarding on foot weaponry.


Q: Will anti-vehicle weapons be available?
All weapons can be used against ships, however some are far more effective, such as explosive weapons like rocket launchers and grenades.

Q: Will players be equipped with a weapon immediately upon launch?
Just as you will always have a Sidewinder available as a ship, all players will have a side arm to help them in combat

Q: Will there be melee weapons?
Players will be able to attack with melee when close but there are no specific melee weapons.

Q: What kinds of explosives are there?
Only grenades and rocket launcher are planned for launch

Q: Will the aiming reticule always remain on-screen?
The reticule is used to interact with objects as well as for combat, so will always be on-screen. Firing from the hip will still use the same reticule for general direction, but will be less accurate.

Q. Which weapons allow you to look down the sights?
All weapons will have this function, however different scopes are available for each through Engineering.

Q. Could players throw grenades at ships an expect to deal significant damage if it's unshielded?
Yes and we look forward to watching it happen!

Q. What types of weapons will there be?
There's a wide variety of weapons from pistols, rifles and SMGs, to shotguns and rocket launchers. More details will be revealed on these later.

Q: Will players be able to upgrade their weapons with attachments?
You can choose from several attachments for your weapons. However, a modified weapon cannot be reverted, so think carefully. You can own multiple copies of a weapon for different situations, but can only carry a limited number of them at a time, depending on your suit type.

Q: Can you drop items for your friends to use?
Yes - other players can pick up and use your dropped items.

Keep an eye out for more Elite Dangerous: Odyssey information soon!

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Greetings Commanders!



Last week, we were joined on stream by the fantastic Dr Kay Ross to answer some of your questions regarding planetary tech and the changes coming in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey! If you missed it, you can watch the entire stream on YouTube - but we're also going to give you a refined recap of the answers given by Dr Kay right here! As Arthur mentioned last week, we were unable to answer every question, so we've sprinkled in a few extra answers in this post.

For those who might be unfamiliar with Dr Kay Ross, she's a Lead Render Programmer here at Frontier, and is one of the brilliant minds behind the Stellar Forge, the tool used to create the Elite Dangerous galaxy.

Without further ado, the questions and answers:


Q: What is the Stellar Forge?
The Stellar Forge is the framework in which we input data and get out the space stuff that we want! We build this framework with what raw data we have on our Milky Way to hand to feed it, and knowing what we need out of it in the end - it then procedurally and deterministically offers a physically plausible series of star systems which represent our Milky Way! Examples of the Milky Way data included are: layout, mass distribution, age regions and lots more!

Q: Can you describe something funny that's happened with the Stellar Forge?
For sure! We've had to deal with something called the 'Hairy ball theorem' - if you have a sphere (or an object) and it's got hair pointing out all around it - you can't. There's going to be a seam somewhere, that's mathematically the case in an object like that. However, in generating the surfaces of the planets through Horizons, Beyond and Odyssey, things can be sensitive when inputting data! If something gets inputted wrong, what we have ended up with is essentially a very hairy planet to show the very frustrating Hairy ball theorem! There are tiny spikes everywhere and it looks really fuzzy - it's a very expensive way of rendering fur and we don't recommend it!

Q: So you've built the galaxy, how do you go about the finer details?
So, the last time we did a talk on this, I went into how planets start not as spheres but as cubes, with square patches that make up the cubes. Everything then becomes a sphere and an offset is generated to represent terrain. For Horizons, that terrain is generated entirely mathematically. There was a lot of effort put into representing the kind of shapes a hill or canyon makes, just using maths.

For Odyssey, there's an entirely different approach for making these offsets. It takes the view of starting big and refining small. A planet has all sorts of Stellar Forge data associated with it. Things like the gravitational stress its crust goes under, the proportion of its depth which is crust or magma or core, the stresses its under, how cratered it would be, if it's tidally locked, and more. From those, and the general knowledge of what the planet is made up of, we decide its top layer information. That is describing general shapes and regions of interest across the entire surface and the general types of formations which will be there. Things might make the terrain more chaotic, make more flat plains or basins and things like that. From stochastically sampling that information, the next layer of information goes down - we're talking up 100km worth of terrain for example, which are now generated offline into terrain shapes that we know are formed.

We have resources that represent the shapes and the types of features that we'd want to generate in the first place. Then we've got some stochastic sampling and blending to put those together, not only in the right places across a planet, but now also rotated correctly so they flow into each other in the right direction - which makes quite a difference in the visual quality of a vista.

Q: Would you say your approach for Odyssey is more accurate?
Yes, we've got the layers going from the top level down. We're trying to get the detail in all the way in, and represent it from a distance, so you can see the detail from further out which makes a lot of difference. The system we made for Horizons was good for Horizons, I'm very proud of what the team did and the results you can get from it. I still from this day enjoy looking at screenshots on Twitter and lurking in streams! But to look forward to whatever comes next for Odyssey, I wanted a system that was robust enough to handle things without having to do another remake of any of the tech, that's why it's changed and we have all that detail.

Q: What type of planet is this new tech going to be applied to?
Every planet you could land on before, and the new ones opening up, will be using this approach. The old surfaces can't be represented in this new approach and you're going to get a larger variety using this new tech.

Q: Are non-landable planets seeing changes too?
No, the planetary tech is focused on the planets you can land on to see the detail up close.

Q: Will console users see the changes at the same time as PC users?
No, console players who purchase the expansion will experience the planetary tech changes upon the release of Odyssey on their platform.

Q: Does it make you sad that players might not see the perfect alignments of planets and stars before moving on, missing out on some stunning views?
There's a range of feeling regarding that! There's the "can we test every single possible combination in the galaxy?", "what does the lighting here look like in 2 years time?" - we don't get to see that, but we do get to see your screenshots on Reddit, Twitter etc. I do spend a lot of time lurking, not to stroke one's ego but to see the joy of players when discovering sights in the galaxy.

Q: How comparable are the changes you are making to Odyssey to those you made for Horizons?
It's the same but different, we've talked a lot about the planets, but the second half of what my team does is the lighting, which is another thing that's changed a lot for Odyssey. Horizons was a fantastic and heavy undertaking to introduce full scale planets, which people don't tend to do because planets are hard! When it comes to Odyssey, we've got a framework there of how to make a planet and surface, but the process in which the shape of the surface is decided, how the resources are streamed in and out, and combined, that's also a large undertaking! It hasn't just been a weekend or two's work!

Q: Were you excited by the challenge?
We felt it was a great opportunity to make those changes I was thinking of before, to make this expandable to more and more afterwards. I was excited to see what could happen with the code and art side working together to create these assets which are blended for planets.

Q: What can players look forward to in regards to lighting in Odyssey?
I want to give good credit to the render people that I've worked with over the years to provide the visuals going forward. Not only that, but provide a consistency in how lighting behaviour works. We've made quite a few changes on the rendering side, to list a few examples: We now have some per-pixel lit particles, we have more shadowed spotlights working together, and we also finally have physically based materials that have information about how rough they are and how they should respond to light. If we then feed in these realistic lighting values that we have now, things work right, together, and consistently. That's part of the reason why the new planets are looking very nice now, it's a combination of lighting from the atmosphere, the star, and any lights around your body.

The lighting on a world with an atmosphere is different to that of a world without. You don't have the atmospheric contribution as much, it's a slightly starker look - and I love that we're able to see that now in our engine. Not only are we generating the Milky Way as accurately as we can, we're also getting the looks down.

Q: Are some of the planet types getting some more love?
The planet classes are the things you see in the galaxy and system map, how it categorises them. There are somewhat arbitrary dividers between what fits into each 'box'. In Horizons, the landable classifications were rocky, metal-rich, high-metal content, rocky-ice, and icy. However, there were two main noise graphs (collection of nodes that we put together using that old maths to generate the shape of the terrain) used and rocky-ice ended up using the icy graph. Due to that, the rocky-ice worlds were somewhat not distinct from icy worlds, however in this new system where we are deciding which resources for generating terrain go to which planets depending on their parameters, the rocky-ice worlds are going to have a much more distinct look. They'll have specific terrains and materials on them, they'll be firmly represented, which warms my heart a little!

Q: Will large worlds feature tall mountains or geological features?
This is an interesting question! There is a reason why the features are shallower on larger planets. With the increased gravitational strains you can't maintain as tall a natural feature with the strength the material is made out of. so you'll end up with shallower features. I'm afraid it's just how the maths drops out for those, there's a good range of planets but the tiny ones tend to be able to support the more extreme terrain because the large things aren't being destroyed by the gravity pulling it down.

Q: Does the planetary tech upgrade allow for new land features such as caves in the future?
Caves aren't currently part of the plan for Odyssey, the focus instead is on planet-wide improvement.

Q: How may rock scatter be different in Odyssey and how is it determined?
Scatter has changed quite a bit! With Horizons and Beyond, small rocks are placed around the player as they go along - there's not too much logic driving it, it was a CPU based placement. For Odyssey, we have what we call the 'scatter system'. This is sending data through another noise graph, and we have essentially different collections of things that are expected on different areas of different types of planets - so you get a wider range of things being put down in different patterns and densities, depending on what should be there. This is going to make the surface more visually interesting to drive and walk around!

Q: Will atmospheric worlds feature weather effects such as wind and dust?
Yes, there'll be some effects visible on the surface.

Q: Will the changes include a multi-source lighting system to reflect the presence of multiple stars in systems that have them?
As we're aiming for similar specs to base game for Odyssey, we won't be including a multi-source lighting system, for performance and art reasons.

Q: How will the new planetary tech affect volcanism and the integration of volcanic features into the terrain?
We will be using the scatter system to ensure that the volcanic regions are placed in the correct areas of volcanic worlds.

Q: How does the Stellar Forge place planetary bases and installations?
There are various ways that we place settlements on planet surfaces. The outposts and the ports use a simple radial flattening of an area where we know a port or outpost is going to be - or a little bit of a deviation if they're a crater port. For things like the Guardian sites, we use 'stamps'. We have an authored resource of what the terrain should look like underneath this point, and we can tailor what goes where and decide how it blends in. With Odyssey, we've expanded this a little bit, so that across a 'stamp' there can be variations of the height it's calibrated to, which leads to more interesting levels.

Q: Will atmospheric planets have visible poles with different biomes?
After internal debate, we've ended up using the term 'geomes'! There are geomes across the planet, there are polar caps where there should be, plains, mountain forming regions, and all of the nice stuff!

Q: Will aurora be visible on some atmospheric planets?
Whilst planets with atmosphere will look different, there are no plans for visible aurora at the moment.

Q: More of a personal question, do you feel more fear about space the more you learn about it?
What I've found at university, is that things start becoming larger and larger, and you start using scales which don't make sense to humans anymore, in particle physics for example. One can start dissociating the universe in your mind in these models, and it's somehow so far removed from ourselves and our tactile interactions with it. It's less scary, and more 'indescribable'.


Those are all the answers from the amazing Dr Kay Ross! Once again, we'd like to thank her for her time, and imparting some incredible behind the scenes knowledge of how the Elite Dangerous galaxy is made. We'll be back with more information soon, so stay tuned Commanders.


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