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The very first Frontier Developments exhibition ended: the Frontier Expo 2017 is a great success for its first iteration!

Some small hiccups and lack of preparations here and there have made some elements difficult but the event in its entirety was really pleasant. I met a lot of people, both veterans & newbies and the dozen of FR players I gathered on-site allowed for some excellent moments together!

 

▲ Positive points

+ Developers everywhere, all the time, approachable and fun/open discussions

+ Extensive panel presentations on exobiology, analysis of Thrill from coasters and paleontology

+ The two scenes with various topics and always well animated by the Frontier team. The dynamics and the ambiance serious/joke had an excellent rythm.

+ The different players and associations booths such as Special Effects, EDRPG or the Frontier Human Resources stand.

+ With an accident not that far the same day (we didn’t know that it wasn’t terrorism) with more than 15 pedestrians injured, we appreciated the enhanced security

▲ Negative points:

– The lack of recharge stations for electronic devices

– Livestream stations were very unprepared, settings had to be made entirely, no information, codes or media to share with the community = a live empty to fill with already existing content. Might need to work on that.

– A problem managing VIP vs Founders seats which prevented us to provide the online community with top-notch captures.

 

▲ A glimpse of the 3.x Beyond content, in 3304

• The future of Elite: Dangerous in 3304, after the 2.4 is called Beyond. There will be two very large content packs for Q1 and Q4 as well as two slightly smaller in Q2 and Q3. The content will be centered on Core improvements of the game, often redesigning the functionalities.
• Engineers mods can no longer give uninteresting results and will always improve the modded modules! We need to know if there will be a limit to this + the new system to mod.
• Wing missions, surely to fight a bigger threat together 😉
• Transport & data will be improved with, it would seem, an integration of some things that the players-developers from the community have created.
• Recreating the planets ambiances to better represent their compositions, variations of colours, the icy planets will finally look like icy planets with a completely different landscape, a management of the fog as well
• Many new ships, including special Alliance ships thanks to their contract with Lakon, as proposed by Remlok Industries through many discussions with Frontier. Among these new ships are the Chieftain and the Krait respectively an imposing multi-purpose ship and an imposing hunter who appears to have three seats and a fighter bay. We also saw the large Type 10 and its numerous thrusters!
• Beyond will offer new stories for the Guardians, I learned a lot about this evening but I can not spoil you the content to come 🙂
• GalNet will be available in English audio!
• New weapons and modules based on Guardian technologies.
• Squadron is the name of the future players group management. Since we waited for a social functionality, here we are: we manage the roles, the players, the events and we can even buy a huge carrier ship providing various services and serving as an advanced base for the group. Apparently, the players groups would need to work together in a CG to unlock it (thanks Duita and Aymerix)
• Mining and Exploration will be redesigned to make these two careers fully viable for players wishing to specialize into these. This should be less annoying/boring in the long term and more engaging, especially with the addition of group missions, anomalies discoveries, Codex and many other features.
• Beyond’s content will be free for Horizons players! The Lifetime pass-ers will feel biased… I mean, it’s super cool, but it will be necessary that Frontier finances the game other than by using the shop… or are we going full Buy to Play?
• Attention Spoilers: The Oresrians are the diplomatic/peaceful Thargoids that we currently encounter in play, they are greens/grey. The Klaxians will arrive soon and will be aggressive, black and zebra-orange. I invite you therefore not to attack the current Thargoids!

 

▲ When shall we receive these features and content?

• Quarter 1 and then progress during Q2 and Q3 (new stories)
  • Improvement “Quality of life” for the core game
  • Redesign/Improvement of the Engineering system
  • Quality and response time to crimes in secured systems by the authorities
  • Redesign of bounties, fines and crimes
  • Improved Trade, including tools to improve local profit
  • Wing missions for group objectives
  • Great improvements on planet surfaces, colours variations and much more details
  • The Guardians stories will be back, with new experiences and a personal narrative to follow, all supported by stories, events and community goals.
• Quarter 4
  
  • Squadrons – Player group management system to coordinate efforts and add a larger social dimension. A very large carrier can be unlocked by the groups in order to provide basic services: refuling, rearm, docking, respawn, …
  • Mining Enhancements – Change on how we detect and extract resources. New mining tools and capabilities for even more choices. We would be able to make an asteroid implode to gather special materials and rewards.
  • Improved space/surface lighting for the game and the addition of the Scatter Rocks technology, making it possible to destroy elements on surfaces such as wide rocks, cliffs, boulders, stalagmites… in order to make the environment much more real and immersive. Dust and fog improved.
  • Exploration Improvements – Radical change on how we find things in space, even for missions, commodities and such…
  • Codex – Log your discoveries! It serves as an encyclopedia where you can learn more about what you have discovered. There will also be a part about things that we could discover… because “there are special things to be discovered in the galaxy :)”

Note that 2.4 The Return has just begun. We will have to expect new things in the coming weeks. The Type 10 could arrive soon

 

▲ Additional details

Lakon Chieftain, its size should be near Fer de Lance’s. This is an Alliance ship specializing in combat and could possess two C3 weapons and two C2 weapons rather well centered at the front of the ship. One can guess four C1 under the spacecraft, centered, unless the slots represent utility modules. If that’s the case, I think two more C3s are behind the cargo bay. Not sure about ship launched fighters

Lakon Krait, much bigger than his cousin. He seems to possess two C3 weapons at the front, a kind of small Alliance Vulture. It seems fast and agile and we notice that it is now a Lakon and not a Faulcon Delacy anymore. Fighters available.

Thargoids, the Klaxians are approaching. The real villains of the 2.4 The Return update? Look at the number of de Thargons they launch! There is also a strange small Thargoid ship, and we can see that the heart will have its own design soon.

The INRA! This discret organization previously repelled the Thargoid invasion thanks to the elaboration of a destructive Mycoid virus against the biological/mechanical compositions of the Thargoids. Should we learn more about them thanks to this abandonned base?