Station Commander Stroud takes us through a busy weeks worth of updates and even more exciting reveals, we also have answers from Zac Antonaci from last weeks show to go through.. a real bumper episode.

Aired 26th April 2016
Audio versions

Download the episode directly from here.

Crew Members

Station Commander : Allen Stroud :
Head of Health and safety : Ben Moss Woodwood : Cmdr Eid LeWeise
Chief Archivist : Colin Ford : Cmdr PheonixDFire

Show Notes:

• Development News

• Newsletter 121

  • Missions
    • We can now see what they look like
    • Characters are persistent and interact with you differently depending on your status with them (I.E. Pilots Fed Ranking, Ranking within the local authority etc)
    • Failing a mission can decrease ranking (so be warned Fozza!)
    • As well as credits we can get hidden data caches, commodities, and materials.
    • Improved showing you the impact of your mission
  • Community Goals
    • Can now have lists of items to get
    • Marker visible in the galaxy map
  • Missiles get an overall improvement
    • Now do area effect damage to external modules
  • Ice Mining
    • New commodities like methanol monohydrate crystals and low temperature diamonds can be found and mined within the ice rings.
    • New Materials can also be found
  • Traffic Control
    • They assign a call sign automatically to all ships – this is formed from the ship manufacturer and the first three characters of your commander name.
  • Incendiary Rounds
    • Thermal kinetic rounds 😀
  • Feedback Cascade
    • Shoot whilst a Shield Cell is activated and instantly break the shield
  • Lots of Base Porn 🙂

• On the Horizon – Countdown to The Engineers Beta Livestream: Part 2 with Ed and Michael Brookes

  •  Michael is looking suitably bearded 🙂

  • Bookmarks

    • Good Quality of life feature
    • MB Teasing about news from Shinrarta Dezhra

  • Map States

    • Available States
      • None
      • Anarchy (isn’t a state??? Could be a bug!)
      • War
      • Lockdown
      • Civil Unrest
      • Civil War
      • Boom
      • Expansion
      • Bust
      • Outbreak
      • Famine
      • Election
      • Also sneaky CG icon
    • Basically trying to make ‘finding things’ more obvious

  • Regeneration Sequence

    • Green beam
    • Transferring Energy from Weapons to wingman’s shields
    • Need to be winged up
    • Need to still have a working shield!
    • MB mentions other modules can be modified too
    • MB We’ll be doing a biiiiig dump on Engineers in about 2 weeks time
    • MB likes that this can add other strategies for people to employ
    • Visual FX of weapons scale depending on power etc

  • Huge Multicannon

    • Looks to me more like a rapid cannon from CQC
    • Doesn’t have the ‘ratt a tatt tatt’ the Multicannons do

  • Huge Beam Laser

    • Can be gimballed too
    • Why does it have recoil?!?!
    • Lovely detail as it heats up!

  • Thermal Shock

    • Delivers heat into your target
    • Compounds heat damage
    • Can fire disabling shots
    • Can be applied to any energy weapon

  • Force Shell

    • Ed’s favourite (and Ben’s!)
    • Dependant on the ship’s mass and makes the ships loose control

  • Outfitting

    • Always wanted to improve the screen!
    • Filters on top left
    • ALL the stats (squeeeee) (under read more)
    • Nice graphs showing the comparison
    • Better navigation, layout just quality of life goodness

  • Questions

    • Q: CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned
      The newsletter said:
      “human-created POIs will also not be encountered as far out from human space as they are at the moment”
      I think that’s pretty welcome but are there going to be no POI’s when far away from the bubble or are we going to be getting different POI’s if out exploring?
      If different do you have any hints on what non human-created POI’s will contain?
    • A: Finding ‘tea’ is maybe excessive whilst out in the black and shouldn’t find human rubbish so far out.
      • Lost diamondback is part of “the missing”
      • Natural POIs
      • ‘Other stuff’ that MB isn’t allowed to talk about!
    • Q: Imeraxes
      Any news about POI in space like Antares wreckship, whith may be, CQC asset ?
      Cheers, CMDR Iméraxes
    • A: Still looking at using CQC structures in the main game but NOT part of 2.1
    • Q: Alec Turner
      “Scanning a nav beacon will give Commanders the exploration data for the system (if you don’t already have it).” – does that mean we no longer need to carry a discovery scanner in order to get data for systems with nav beacons?
    • A: Yes
      • FD Always wanted to do more with Nav Beacons
      • Doesn’t supplant Exploration Data
      • Only within populated space
      • MB Always has a scanner because you never know…
      • Ed too
      • If you’re on a mission the nav beacon can point you in the right direction. You can find the body the mission can be fulfilled at then need to search that planet / moon.
    • Q: Barking_Mad
      As well as the graphical improvements to the ring systems, has any further work been done on planetary surfaces?
    • A: Rings improved distance as well as up close
      • Updated surface terrain system (higher res AND better performance)
      • Lessons learned from the past
    • Q: sensai25
      Are enemy ships limited around bases to attack ?
    • A: No but you’re more likely to encounter them around existing ‘stuff’
      • Got ways to deal with ‘rocket spam’
      • Can encounter ships flying from one base to another
      • Looking to increase security response where appropriate
    • Q: M4rt1n
      In the beta before the release of ED there were cool weapon variants, like overcharged, low-heat, focused, high-impact etc. which somehow disappeared upon release. Will the engineers’ crafting options somehow re-introduce these variants, or will there be totally different?
    • A: These variants are no longer compatible with Engineers and will no longer be in game at all
      BUT you can do much better cool cool stuff with Engineers
    • Q: Bliss
      Will the new Ship AI be able to handle canyon flight on a planet’s surface?
    • A: Yes, I’ve seen them do just that, but sometimes they’re better than we are!
    • Q: Arubeto
      Newsletter 120: “For Commanders who prefer to roam the galaxy looking for wars, the Pilots Federation has upgraded the GalNet system, so Commanders using 2.1 AND 1.6 will have a ‘state’ filter in the galaxy map which will highlight if a system is at war, or suffering a famine, or some other situation Commanders want information about.”
      
      I think this has lead to some misunderstandings. Can you confirm that the exploration data acquired this way can’t be sold, but only gives you the information about the system (therefore imitating the process of buying exploration data about a system from Universal Cartographics instead of imitating exploring as system manually?
    • A: Yes it does, it can not be sold.
    • Q: ape808
      About the new Galaxy map filters:
      Since we will be able to filter for system states (boom/famine/war etc), will these be having more effect on gameplay? I think it may have been mentioned during the Trading livestream that the devs were considering giving states more of an impact on markets and the missions available. Is this the case for 2.1 and can you give a bit more detail if so?
    • A: Yes, we’re pushing the effects that states will have. Will drive missions, affect traffic, affect commodity prices (this is exaggerated)
    • Q: DarkMatterGenerator
      “Scanning a nav beacon will give Commanders the exploration data for the system (if you don’t already have it).”
      
      How did this decision arise- what is the gameplay and design thought behind it since it really changes a basic function in game from 1.5 years of play?
    • A: Always been a need to do something with nav beacons, it’s just ‘filling in those blanks’
    • Q: CMDR Dana Jessica Booth
      Which ships exactly will be getting the ‘drives’ upgrade. Does this mean FSD or Thrusters?
      
      Just the sidewinder? All ships that equip class 1-3 thrusters?
      If its thrusters will any of these changes come over into the cqc flight model?
      
      Also regarding 2.1 will someone take another pass at the Cobra mk4 and give it the massive speed buff it needs? (it’s currently slower than a T-7…)
    • A: Sizes 2 and 3 (MB thinks!) very much enhanced performance – still needs some tweaking
      • Makes smaller ships a lot of fun to play in
      • Racing with more speed is more fun!
      • Prices will be not tremendously expensive but gotta rem this is the ultimate upgrade for that slot, so…
    • Q: ape808 (again)
      Will the AI ships near the surface apply to the full range of low to high-G bodies?
      
      If so, were there any special considerations the AI devs had to take to get the ships to behave well in high-G conditions?
    • A: they are very wary and won’t even attempt some of the high g worlds. Some ships can handle High G worlds better than others
    • Q: Dave G
      Within the new mission system, will there also be changes to support “Navy” missions for the players who are focussed on naval progression? Also, will mission successes result in the introduction to other missions or mission givers?
    • A: Will go into more detail in the news letter. MB REALLY wants to see a career in the military but will live with this for now.
      You develop a relationship with mission givers who give you better and better missions. Also your Pilots Fed Ranking counts on how they talk to you.
    • Twitch Questions
      • AI Improvements – Yes they can fly in atmosphere – be careful!
      • SRV types not for 2.1
      • Hopefully better performance on lower end machines
      • NPC WILL use these modified weapons
      • Ctrl options screen gets a good revamp too
      • X-Box players hugely extended options (as covered last week)

• Community Corner

  • Obsidian Ant Elite: Dangerous – Incoming: The Engineers – Surface Dogfights, Weapon Mods, Graphics Upgrades
  • Dobbo resurfaces!
  • First Great Expedition Sagittarius-Carina Mission
  • Elite Dangerous Miniatures Streams

• Questions

  • Questions for Zac

1. Cmdr Spike wants to know if he can have pink lasers come 2.1.
   1. No nothing in pink but mining laser is close. No rainbows!
2. Will there be improved In game Player Group support? (basically guilds!!!)
   1. No specific functionality in 2.1. Longer term things they’d like to do.
3. Will there be ‘wing missions’?
   1. Not in 2.1 but nothing to talk about just now
4. Will player actions lead to procedurally generated missions? I.E. player A discovers something ‘interesting’ and reports that to Station B. Station B and radiating out starts generating missions related to said found thing.
   1. Not in the way that this covers but see the comments from Thursday 21st + see this Thursday’s stream
5. PLEASE can we have a reason to go to Ice Rings?
   1. Yes
6. Conflict zones at interesting locations!
   1. Not in 2.1. On going process maybe in the future
7. Can we fly through asteroids? Also REALLY big Asteroids 🙂
   1. See the wish list!
8. More life in the universe! I.E. Ships preparing at stations etc?
   1. Would love to have more life in certain ways. Some stuff Zac can’t talk about. Also stuff in 2.1 i.e. traffic lanes etc. On going process
9. More tools to interact with the environment? I.E. with the Barnacles all we can really do is shoot them!!!
   1. Watch this space for more things to do with Barnacles
10. Communicate with NPCs (I.E. demand them to stand down)
    1. Definitely somewhere on the list and being considered
11. Will we ever get a ‘call for help’ implement feature?
    1. The chat view and the auto responses from systems (and this will be updated in 2.1)  A lot of thought a lot of balance
12. What does retreat mean for the BGS?
    1. MB will be talking about this ‘quite shortly’
13. More specific examples of changes to crime and punishment. I.E. stations refusing to let you dock.
    1. Something the dev team have looked at and engaged quite deeply with the community for. However this all takes time.
14. Will the AI ‘cheat’ less? I.E. No more firing 6 beam lasers at you from an Eagle whilst next to a sun!
    1. The AI doesn’t cheat very much even now.Only a very few instances of ‘cheating’ all done for gameplay but for the most part the AI’s equipment functions the same as a player characters.  AI Can overheat and does regulate itself.
15. Will there be improvements to the the High Level AI? I.E. make Reidquat SCARY
    1. We’ll see some love in 2.1. The mistress has done a lot of work
16. Will we see more A or B CGs? I.E. Faction A wants to build a ship. Faction B wants to stop that.
    1. Look at the Dangerous Games for good examples tug of war CGs 🙂

• CMDR  Daddy baddy – I have a discussion point for 106. How long do we think the horizons season will be? If say 2.1 and 1.6 are released after beta in June. And we assume that season 3 starts Xmas 2016 … That means 2.2, 2.3 and perhaps the unconfirmed 2.4 being squashed into 6 months!
• Glenn Frank –  when season three rolls out… will people get all that is in horizons too with purchase of season three? does not matter to me cause I bought the lifetime but… wondering”
  1. Ben’s Ideas –
     Elite Dangerous: Walkies for 24.99
     Elite Dangerous: Horizons for 9.99
     Elite Dangerous: For 9.99
     
     or maybe just
     Elite Dangerous: Walkies for 24.99
     Elite Dangerous: Other Stuff for 19.99
     
     Naturally we will also get
     Elite Dangerous Mongo Pack for 39.99 which has everything in it

• Shoutouts
  • On the Horizon – Countdown to The Engineers Beta Livestream: Part 2
    • Join us on our official YouTube channel at 19:00 BST on Thursday April 28th.
  • UNCLE ART – THE FILM  Passed its goal of £8000 and ends on Thursday!
    • Stretch Goal!
      
      OK, so I have to be careful how I word this as I can’t give too much away without spoiling it… We want to do an extra segment in the film that will involve a part of a certain person’s history. (No prizes for guessing who.) The segment is about a part of his career that has been captured on film. And it’s a corker! But we need to buy the rights to the footage. This is going to cost us an extra £2,500 for commercial use, so if we reach £10,500 by Thursday night we can buy this and it will be truly awesome. Also, if we can raise the extra cash, we have secured a location to film in which is almost just as exciting (it involves somewhere Charlie Chaplin used to live). I know this seems a bit cloak and dagger but when you see the segment in the finished film you’ll immediately understand the reason for the secrecy – and know that you made it possible! If we can do this, it’s going to add extra footage to the film, which had previously been thought lost! It will also raise the film’s exposure even more, and push it out to an even wider audience – and that could be a really, really good thing.
      
      Once again I just want to say a massive thanks to everyone for your support! Still 2 days to go so let’s see where that can take us 🙂

1. TINYURL.COM/uncleartfilm pleasure
• Shout out to Cmdr Yan and his mam (Allen for actual wording!)
• Can we have a shout out to Cmd Sansemin for helping Fozza do a stealing mission for LRN 😀
• https://vimeo.com/108650530 (Wanderers Short Film)