Elite Dangerous News

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey blends sci-fi inspirations without going "too Guardians of the Galaxy"

If you're a space games fan, you've probably been taking a good look at that new Elite Dangerous: Odyssey exploration dev diary to get an idea of what's in store for the sim early next year. It's clear the upcoming expansion will add a whole new dimension to Elite Dangerous' gameplay, with new locations and outposts to explore on foot and up close - and it seems some of the other big space stories across films and games helped inspire developer Frontier in creating these new worlds.

In an interview about the upcoming Odyssey expansion with game designer Luke Betterton and art director Chris Gregory, we asked about whether any other works in the space, er, space had been inspiring for the dev team in crafting the new update. "Oh, yeah," Betteron jokes. "The Elite Dangerous: Odyssey team is full of nerds, to be honest." He mentions that earlier on that day a member of the team had been talking about British sci-fi comedy classic Red Dwarf, for example.

"It's one of those things that's just in the fabric of who we are as a team. So yes. There's no way you can get away from inspiration," he adds. The designer says he can't "point out anything specific", per se, and Gregory agrees, "it's not one thing really, is it?" - however, the art director does mention a handful of passions and inspirations.

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Here's a brand-new look at Elite Dangerous: Odyssey's on-foot exploration

When Elite Dangerous: Odyssey lands, the space game's exploration will be taken to a whole new level. As announced earlier this year, the expansion will bring on-foot gameplay to the space sim for the very first time - that is, the chance to hop out of your enormous craft and see the vast universe up-close - as well as a whole host of systems to support this. As is true of Elite Dangerous in its current form, exploration will be a key facet of the new expansion, and Frontier Developments has posted a brand-new dev video taking a look at exactly this.

The studio's new dev diary, suitably titled 'One Giant Leap', marks the first in a series of upcoming updates about the expansion, and gives us a good, early peek at the simulation game's atmospheric planets up-close. That includes the beauty of the new worlds' flora and features - but also its hazards. Gulp.

Frontier is "lavishing great care and attention to detail in the authentic recreation of the ice and rocky planets players will be landing on," a press release explains. "Surface pressure, volcanism, atmospheric composition, and other geological agents all play a key part on the structure and natural features of each world, capriciously moulding their appearance and making them unique and distinctive."

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Elite Dangerous: Odyssey | The Road To Odyssey Part 1 - One Giant Leap

Greetings Commanders,

Make sure you are parked at the nearest Fleet Carrier or station and pour yourself some Lavian Brandy in your favourite Hutton Mug. It is time for the first Elite Dangerous: Odyssey dev diary - One Giant Leap!

We are more excited than the Far God Cult being scanned by a Thargoid to bring you the first dev diary on our road to Odyssey, check it out here!

The first in a series of Elite Dangerous: Odyssey dev diaries One Giant Leap explores how commanders can experience light atmospheres and break new ground with exploration on foot for the first time.

Stay tuned for future episodes set to dive-in to combat, missions, environments and co-operative play over the coming months.

Tonight we will be streaming a Discovery Scanner episode at 18:00 (UTC) on the Elite Dangerous Official Twitch Channel, to take a deeper look into the dev diary with CEO David Braben, and Senior Designer Derin Halil.

o7

Tritium Efficiency Update

Greetings Commanders!

We'd like to talk about the recent patches and a change we have just made to the live game.

Since the release of Fleet Carriers we've made changes intended to balance the overwhelming effect of overlapping hotspots, with the latest update resolving the cause of this issue and bringing hotspots back in line with our original goals. Singular hotspots now provide a significant bonus to a resources' frequency over the rest of the ring and areas where multiple hotspots overlap are still more lucrative than their non-overlapped counterparts, but at much more reasonable levels.

One effect of the latest patch that we felt could be improved further was how it impacts tritium. The reduction in availability of tritium, most notably at overlapping hotspots, has made getting around the galaxy by mining the commodity more time consuming than we would like. In order to maintain the new, more natural distribution of tritium within icy asteroid rings, we will instead be increasing its effect.

Tritium is now twice as potent, allowing Fleet Carriers to consume 50% less fuel (this includes the base tritium requirement) and effectively doubling the capacity of their fuel tank. This change should be effective immediately but players may still see old values until they next log in

Thank you as always to our community for your ongoing feedback.

Fleet Carriers Update - Patch 4 Patch Notes

Greetings, Commanders!

We're pleased to confirm that the patch described in our Known Issues post from earlier this week is expected this Monday 3 August at 11:00 UTC with an estimated 15 minutes of downtime. Please find the Patch Notes and Known Issues below:

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]
Mining

Fixed an issue whereby surface deposits created after cracking a motherlode would flag themselves as depleted.
Fixed issues related to diminishing returns for commodities in overlapping hotspots.

Crashes and Stability

Fixed an issue where loading into an instance in a system with a large amount of Fleet Carriers would cause very long load times (potentially long enough to cause a disconnect).

Fleet Carriers

Fixed an issue which stopped Fighters being restocked from a Fleet Carrier.
Fixed a number of issues related to Fleet Carrier positioning:
- Better enforcement of the 16 carrier limit per body.
- Preventing departing Fleet Carriers from taking up one of the 16 slots from the body they've just left.
- Further work to ensure Carriers are positioned away from other nearby body sites, such as other Fleet Carriers.

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]
Fleet Carriers

When opening the Fleet Carrier naming pop up in the Livery, an additional unwanted character will be added to the start and end of the name. These characters will need to be manually deleted to prevent them being included.

Please note that the above notes are liable to change as adjustments are made and changes are added or removed. Tweaks may be made up until the time of launch.

Thanks as always for your continued feedback!

o7