Oct 25, 2016

Elite Dangerous: The Guardians 2.2 update

Elite Dangerous - BrettC Frontier

Hi guys,

The time has finally arrived! Today sees both the Elite Dangerous Horizons (2.2) update and the Elite Dangerous (1.7) update making its way to the live game.

For those of you who haven't experienced a big milestone day, these updates can take several hours to install and make live. The servers will be down from 10am BST and will be down for an extended period of time (up to 8+ hours)

Xbox One players will see that the download will be available from 11am to pre-install but the game won’t be playable until the servers are back up. The size of that download is 9.7gb which is a file increase of 1.8gb

In the meantime we have a couple of exciting things going on today to keep you entertained while you wait for the updates to be added.

Join David Braben on a Reddit AMA from 10:00 - 12:00 BST. Followed by Ed Lewis and a series of developers from 1pm BST on our official YouTube channel.

The development team have been working incredibly hard over the recent months developing the game and working with our fantastic beta community to test, adjust and test again the upcoming version of the game so please give the beta community and the developers lots of thanks and support.

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Below is a snippet of the patch notes. For a full list of changes, click here.

NEW CONTENT 2.2

Fighters

- Added F-63 Condor as a playable ship
- Added Imperial Fighter as a playable ship
- Added Taipan as a playable ship
- Added Beluga Liner as a playable ship
- Added fighter specific weapon modules
- Added fighter loadouts
- Added Fighter Bays for supported ships: Corvette, Cutter, Anaconda, Type 9, Beluga, Federal Gunship and Keelback
- Added Crew Lounge
- NPC fighter pilots can be hired
- Hired pilots receive a revenue percentage
- Fighters can be given orders
- Mothership can be given simple orders when player is in a fighter
- NPC ships can use ship launched fighters
- Role panel updated to support fighter operations
- Display NPC Fighter Pilot name when targeting the ship they are controlling
- Added a warning/reminder to set active NPC crew
- Fighter and vehicle bays are now numbers this is to help match the bay to the vessel when using livery
- Increased boost speed of all fighters
- Rebalanced default speed for some fighters to make them inline with their original design (the Empire Fighter was too fast compared to the others)
- Increased DPS of fighter weapons by 12.5%
- Increased fighter production capability of the size 7 hanger module
- Fixed fuel gauge disappearing when switching back to mothership
- Missing avatar faces on the orders panel fixed
- NPC crew do not have appropriate backgrounds when in your ship or in the fighter fixed
- Added warnings why can't a player deploy a fighter
- Move "Orders" to the top of the menu when interacting with AI fighters/main ship
- Fighter descriptions hooked up
- Able to issue orders using both fighters in the role panel even though only one is deployed fixed
- After hiring, crew sometimes displays negative numbers fixed
- Balance displayed in the Crew Lounge is incorrect fixed
- AI Crew don't appear to be gaining any xp from combat in fighters fixed
- Fixed logic error for allowing non horizons crew in to the crew lounge to fire crew they might have hired when they had horizons
- Added default numpad keys for the new order bindings to each control scheme
- Added in better descriptions for the fighter specific stats
- Re-launching fighters resets ammo and pip setup fixed
- Fixed radar not showing hostiles/allies correctly when switching vessel in a conflict zone
- Helm 'Details' tab should go to ship description
- Audio: Velocity of the ship launched fighter is now set to the same as long as the fighter stow interface is not active
- Audio: Fixed "self" explosions to be triggered to ship launched fighters
- Fixed headlights on the fighters
- Dust layer on Independent Fighter is green, fixed it to dark grey
- Fighters can no longer use boost while they are still attached to the launch ramp
- Fixed Imperial Fighter hitspheres so weapons can be damaged
- Fed Fighter 100% damage paint issue fixed
- Fighters can no longer kill ships inside starports without being shot by the station when mothership is far away
- Fighters will no longer retract their hardpoints when the AI is asked to dock them, stopping the error where a player asked the AI to dock then swaps to the fighter and has no hard points
- Balance displayed in the Crew Lounge is incorrect and does not update on purchasing a pilot fixed
- NPC experience always shows as 50% when they're in the main ship fixed
- Removed the life support, self destruct and reboot options from the fighter
- Fighters destroyed by the mothership jumping away shouldn't count as player kills
- Fixed rendering bug causing text to overlap buttons on the role panel orders
- Fixed issue with right panel in crew lounge not showing data after loading
- The little fighter HUD no longer overlaps the target panel. It now has its own home near your ship's schematic
- Healing lasers now work on fighters
- Moved the 'Request Docking' from fighter bay to helm
- Stop fighters being able to operate beyond 30KM range if you switch to the Mothership at the last second before the SLF explodes
- Stop AI crew members leaving turret mode of mothership on "Fire at will"
- Vessel Status UI (cockpit): display the correct fighter variant name
- Fixed overlapping text on Role panel orders menu
- Fixed hit markers on the ship schematics in the cockpit being the wrong size and appearing in the wrong position for fighters
- Reduced the severity of a few info messages when changing fighter orders. Now uses a small 'log' message type, rather than the big flashy one
- Only show "No active crew" warning when a hangar module is present
- Unable to terminate crew without horizons
- Crew total payment not updating immediately fixed
- Created binding for opening the orders page (RB+B)
- Reactivate the engineer button when switching back from a fighter
- Allow the Orders GUI to move selection to the top of the list to navigate quickly to the bottom order
- Added the available stats to the fighter details page in the role switch panel
- Role Switch panel flashes, and doesn't let player click on slots and order commands fixed
- Fighters under AI Crew control now use the AI friendly fire rules
- Can no longer select ship description text in fighters tab of role panel
- You are able to purchase a SRV or Fighter that you already currently own into the same slot fixed
- Added in Gimballed versions of the Fighter Weapons so that the lasers don't look so wrong
- Following NPC crew oddities (When NPC crew is flying a player's ship) fixed:
- If MC turrets are fitted and set to Target Only, the combat AI cannot fire them
- Can only use one missile launcher, even if two are fitted
- Missiles are fired at long range and are wasted
- AI doesn't use boost to chase and kill targets, instead lets them get away
- When out of ammo, AI ship should drop back into formation
- Player ships with just missiles won't fight
- After requesting docking, all other order hotkeys are ignored
- AI crew in mothership will not attack targets if they have non combat modules deployed before switching to fighter fixed
- Added clearer message to indicate that the players fighter will be destroyed when they FSD away
- Moved empire fighters hit spheres for the weapons even further forward to help in hitting them
- Use numbers rather than bars for displaying fighter stats
- Wanted NPC has clean fighter fixed
- Fixed bounty credit notification not appearing or being awarded in a fighter when destroying a target with a non-local bounty
- Added loading animation to screen for switching between fighters and main ship
- Fixed missing font glyphs on Role panel when running in Russian
- Fixed commander name having the "Crew" tag on the death screen when killed by a player in a fighter
- Can use hotkeys to send invalid NPC commands to unmanned mothership fixed
- Audio: target destroyed lines of NPC crews and ship voice do not conflict anymore
- Audio: reduced probability of "no more targts" npc crew message down to 40%
- Audio: Fix for Crew member saying wrong line when asked to attack target
- Fix not being able to deploy an SRV or Fighter after resurrecting
- Fix NPC Crew not increasing their total kill count when assisting with destroying NPC and Player ships too low level to award combat rank progression
- Fighter ramming not counting as illegal fixed
- Fixed the incorrect paintjobs used for red and blue in CQC
- Make sure active crew are displayed correctly
- Added an inbox notification when NPC Crew rank up
- Fixed NPC Crew profit share not increasing when ranking up
- Turret settings are recovered when switching back to main ship
- Allow fighters to accept new orders if they've been told to dock
- NPC Crew can't pilot ships near planet surfaces fixed

Surface Features

- New geological features added (fumeroles and geysers)
- Biological entities added
- POIs can now be persistant (applies to new geological and organic features)
- Mysterious things added

Engineers

- Limpet blueprints added
- Scanners (KWS, Cargo, Wake) blueprints added
- Defences (ECM, Chaff, Heat Sinks, and Point Defence Turrets) blueprints added
- Utilities (Life Support, Fuel Scooping, Refinery, AFM) blueprints added
- Added new Engineers!
- Make sure we always get the right string key for existing modification name
- Added ellipses functionality to blueprint text strings. If they are greater than 25 characters an ellipses will be added
- Fixed layout problems in engineers workshop that would cause a scrollbar to appear and have unintended effects
- Fixed bug where engineer special effect animation would always overlay the description of the successful special effect, before the animation had completed

General

- Implementation of patch-based planet rendering on the system and planet maps

NEW CONTENT 1.7

Passengers

- Added passenger modules of different sizes and quality to outfitting
- Tourist beacon (surface and space) added
- Tourist beacons send an inbox message with the blurb for that beacon when scanned
- Passenger Lounge
- Added Passenger Lounge to Station Services
- Travel agents are available in the passenger lounge
- Passengers can be bulk or VIP varieties
- Added in support for mission filtering and selecting cabins in the missions panel for passenger missions
- Added mission themes for the new passenger mission types - plus appropriate icons
- Filtered missions with these themes to their own section on the transaction panel
- Custom welcome lines and titles added
- Added different passenger types
- Aid Worker passenger type added
- Business passenger type added
- Criminal passenger type added
- Explorer passenger type added
- Medical passenger type added
- Minor Celebrity passenger type added
- Political Prisoner passenger type added
- Politician passenger type added
- POW passenger type added
- Prisoner passenger type added
- Protester passenger type added
- Refugee passenger type added
- Scientist passenger type added
- Security passenger type added
- Soldier passenger type added
- Terrorist passenger type added
- Tourist passenger type added
- Head of State passenger type added
- Added UI support for showing passenger entries when cargo scanning
- Passengers (or their representitives) have portraits and names
- Added cabin inventory tab to cockpit panel
- Passenger Liner NPC archetype added
- Passenger cabins require escape pods
- Added passenger liners as possible Massacre Targets
- Ships can be scanned for wanted passengers
- Added stats for passenger contracts
- Passengers use escape pods to abandon ship if they wish to leave
- Added a long time stamp generator for use in expedition missions
- Capacity for Passenger Cabin Size 5 Class 4 has changed from 6 to 8
- Crewed SLF displays player rank, not crew's rank fixed
- Display the NPC crew experience correctly
- Improved the UI flow when selecting which cabin to place your passengers in
- Plugged in Head of State passengers to the passenger sightseeing missions
- Passengers do not eject themselves after failing a bulk mission until you discard the mission from your Transactions tab fixed
- When you abandon a mission and the passengers eject themselves, the message you receive should now appear in your inbox
- NPC chatter/ AI behaviour seems incorrect during PassengerVIP CEO kill chance wrinkle fixed
- Passenger satisfaction now decreases when taking hull damage if they don't react well to danger
- Updated the values, meaning passengers will get more disgruntled at lower ranks, but remain the same amount as before at higher ranks
- Chief medical officer still expects goods wrinkle after declining it fixed
- Updated the sightseeing kill wrinkle, to have its own hand in state - allowing you to continue to kill the spawned enemies if you want to
- Allow sightseeing to be completed even if a cargo wrinkle is active
- Long distance expedition rewards shouldn't increase with each jump
- Abandoning a long distance expedition should now impact faction reputation
- Make pods the most important thing when working out if we can take passengers
- Make passenger cabins replicate properly
- Ensure that a new destination wrinkle doesn't send you to the port you've just come from
- Updated the passenger quantity for the luxury cabin - can now support 8 passengers
- Removed the destination marker for the visit tourist location wrinkle
- Fixed not getting an inbox message about returning to the nearest dock after abandoning a passenger mission
- Updated the states to prevent it sticking on disgruntled checks
- Cannot accept PassengerStowaway mission message when there is one cabin remaining fixed
- Passenger cabins in the inventory panel now match the surrounding styling better
- If a tourist beacon is planetary, stop non-horizons people from accepting it
- After dying with passengers on board and returning to the game there is no message saying that your passengers ejected from the ship fixed
- Updated the passenger VIP templates with the state change effects for new destination system
- Added new passenger modules for various sizes and tweaked capacity numbers for all of them as well
- Balance pass on passenger mission rewards
- Balance pass on passenger mission reputation, influence, and state changes
- Add the bonus money for wrinkles into an inbox - so that players know there is a bonus for them if they do the wrinkle
- Removed explorers from the bulk passenger template
- Changed the scan wrinkle for long distance tourist missions to give a bonus for not getting scanned, rather than taking money away if you do get scanned
- Passenger sightseeing mission was blocked from being handed in by inbox request for items fixed
- Don't fail a mission if a fighter is destroyed
- Reduced jump distances for visit tourist locations in passenger VIP missions
- Corrected which VIPs get the wrinkles that they should have
- Remove assert when we try to parse a passenger contract without a passenger cabin container (i.e. in an SRV)
- Stuck in the cabin section of inventory tab in the right panel when you switch to a different ship with a cabin selected fixed
- Changing the POW passengers to appear as security guards to match the text of the mission
- When you abandon a mission and the passengers eject themselves, the message you receive does not actually appear in your inbox fixed
- Allows the player to hand in the cargo without the cargo. Should the player dock at the final station without the cargo, the passengers will get mildy annoyed - preventing the player from exploiting the goods demanded wrinkle
- Ship hull damage while in an SRV or Fighter does not effect passenger happiness state fixed
- Fixed passenger satisfaction decreasing when SRV is damaged
- Body location is now shown on long distance expeditions
- Tourist beacon wrinkle will no longer spawn twice with passenger vip wrinkles
- Tell mission listeners when progression is blocked so they don't try to trigger mission progression during location changes
- Fix the transaction panel to show goods demanded at correct times
- Manifest scanner returning incorrect results from passenger vessels fixed
- No inbox message appears when scanning a Nav Beacon during a Passenger VIP mission fixed
- Long distance expedition missions are not displaying body location of the tourist beacon in the transactions fixed
- Fixed detection of planetary tourist sites
- Audio: Fixed click in loop on Tourist beacon
- Audio: Fixed a very loud tourist beacon
- Passenger missions not displaying or paying out rewards on hand in fixed
- Updated the transaction tab for passenger sightseeing conflict, and for passenger vip conflict. They now include the system address for the conflict zone
- Remove commodities bought for passengers when completing a mission
- More balance tweaks for reputation, influence and state effects
- Player has been scanned - When scanned just once, the inbox message will pop up several times until the passenger is disgruntled fixed
- Stop passenger cabins containing passengers from being swappable
- Generic passenger generation now fits cabins with Tourists instead of Generics
- Fixed errors in passenger cabin classes and types
- Fix for passengers hiding when the ship is dismissed (from a planetary landing via SRV) and comes back...
- When you abandon a mission and the passengers eject themselves, the message you receive does not actually appear in your inbox fixed
- Fix Passenger mission problems when swapping occupied cabins between module slots
- Updated the tips referenced for political prisoner. They now display the criminal trait
- Fix error when previously occupied passenger cabins are not rebought from the resurrect screen
- Fixed passenger crime scans. Add string for passenger wanted crime
- Fix for passenger cabin allocation vis-a-vis missing pods and accidental restocking

General

- *Mysterious things added*
- Fixed mysterious things not deactivating
- New player power added - Yuri Grom
- Jet effects added to neutron and white dwarf stars
- Updated tutorials
- Instructor character added with dialogue across all training scenarios.
- Added additional on-screen prompts and assists to all training scenarios.
- Updated and improved existing training scenarios:
- Docking and Travel
- Basic Combat
- Added new training scenarios:
- Basic Flight
- Advanced Combat
- Mining
- SRV Training
- Ship Launched Fighter Training
- Mining tutorial added
- Added local player event log
- Option to move owned ships added - it's available from all Shipyards
- Ability to sell ships remotely (from different ports) added
- Module storage added to Outfitting (not currently active in beta)
- Stored modules can be sold (not currently active in beta)
- Add system to support greater variation with station interiors
- Industrial interior pieces added
- Services interior pieces added
- Agricultural interior pieces added
- High Tech interior pieces added
- Add some additional variants for hangar interiors (following the above scheme)
- New layout for Station Services menu
- Added a factor contact for universal fines, bonds and bounties handling - found in low security systems
- Various station contacts now have faces and names
- Added a security filter to the Galaxy Map
- Added the ability to use a filter to govern systems used in route plotting in the galaxy map
- Visited stars filter added to the galaxy map (this uses local storage so will only record stars visited from 2.2 release)
- Add a method for semi-automatically replotting a route to the previous destination, if the route was lost after logging out of the game or jumping away from the route
- Added fixed point locations using CQC assets
- Added planet surfaces to planetary map
- Added docked and state variants of the capital ships
- Capital ship docks added to various locations
- Added a Faction Status Summary to the local GalNet news feed
- Added an info message popup which displays the security level and, if necessary, the state of the system when jumping to a new system
- Added "Press BUTTON to abort" to the jump-to-system info, where BUTTON is the most relevant of the various FSD input bindings
- Added UI for the engine spooling when taking off from planetary surfaces
- Mission cargo can be sold on the black market

Stability Fixes

- Fixed network crash caused by non-replicated objects having replicated children
- Fix for asserts/crashes and wrong items showing in outfitting when adjusting the sorting for buyback items
- Fix a potential NaN in the vehicle system
- Fix error while switching user while in matchmaking for CQC
- Fix crash during high res screen capture
- Fix a server crash if a CQC game ends at the same time the lobby is shut down
- Fix a crash when searching for an exact system name that doesn't exist
- Fix crash in CQC when taking damage and a contributing player doesn't exist any more, likely due to quitting
- Fix a crash in CQC if we try to send a message to or about a player that is no longer in the game, also a tweak to getting player params to return a default value if that player is no longer in the game
- Xbox One: The title enters a semi unresponsive state when changing the Yaw Axis Preset from within the Controls Options fixed
- Fixed a crash when trying to get a name from a non-existent system
- Fixed crash that often occurs when self-destructing an SRV - but could conceivable occur during initialisation of any new ship
- Fixed a crash during transition states is a valid ship isn’t available
- Fixed crash exiting CQC
- Fixed a crash trying to create an NPC pilot in an invalid vehicle
- Prevent crash on game shutdown
- Prevent a crash trying to generate a mission for a station that no longer exists
- Fix a crash with the fighter bay trying to access an invalid state machine
- Fixed crash in the ship launched fighter tutorial
- Fixed crash in the SRV tutorial
- Fixed soft-lock on station services home screen if you spam click the quick refuel/reload/repair button
- Fixed the game locking up when editing/deleting a bookmark
- Fixed crash when finishing VR experience tutorial
- Trying to switch into a retrieved fighter crashes the game fixed
- Fixed an occasional crash in open vr on startup. Prevent presenting when SDK Rendering isn't setup
- Fixed CQC CTF assert when picking up a flag after previously dropping a flag
- Fixed an error in terrain cube sphere mapping
- Prevent attempting to eject a cargo unit that is already queued for ejection
- Livery modules are no longer added to the list of newly purchased modules
- Don't try to access control bindings while they're loading
- Fix a crash if a planet made completely out of gas cannot hold onto its own gas and so has no mass
- AI fighters can validly spawn as independent ships, not linked to any parent ship, so cope with this case in Fighter Stow
- Fix a crash when a POI tries to spawn the same time the player is disconnected
- Fixed a crash in the role switch panel
- Fix vehicle switching crashes in the SRV tutorial
- Mark a persistent POI as invalid if it fails to find a position for its first attempt, this fixes a crash that it causes on some planets
- Fixed an error with an audio emitter
- Fixed an error with a mysterious thing in the contacts panel
- Fix for an assert failure when loading game into a fighter and using the role switch panel
- Fixed crash when shooting Skimmers due to them not having a vessel ownership
- Fixed soft lock when backing out of launchable livery
- Fixed soft lock when selecting a cabin from your inventory tab
- Added some sanity checking to cargo transfer so we don't try to move from non-existent inventories
- Fix an assert caused by damage being moved between a ship and its modules causing it to lose the original machine the damage came from
- Fixed soft lock in outfitting when the user has the livery vessel selection dialog is open, but then instead selects an outfitting group from the left
- Removed crash telemetry if entering a location takes more than 2 minutes
- Fixed outfitting crash when previewing a fighter while docked at a planet port
- Allow the "visited stars" map filter to apply to route-plotting
- Fixed crash when starting the game with an HMD for some monitor/resolution combinations
- Fix a low level vertex locking crash
- Fix a crash when self-destructing the SRV
- Fixed JSON error in ship delivery
- If we lose connection with server immediately after connection, before mtu discovery is complete, don't crash, reset mtu discovery for another go around
- Server time synchronisation can soft-lock the game fixed
- Ensure that system map materials get destroyed on shutdown
- Fix crash swapping modules in outfitting
- No longer assert when trying to add an item which is supposed to be empty
- Fix for buyback and stored items being deleted in one array but not another
- Don't crash if the planets materials are not sensible
- Fixed error loading civilian installation
- Fixed a memory leak with the terrain compute shaders
- Updating the contents of module storage in UI was causing the UI to unlock earlier than intended fixed
- Fixed crash in outfitting where players were able to try to access data before it was ready
- Fixed an issue with a highly eccentric planet orbiting a single star and intersecting it
- Fixed an assert in CQC when damaged by an explosion from a destructible
- Module Transfer Crash - Trying to fit a module into a slot that it won't fit into fixed
- Fixed a crash when killing a faction ship
- Fix a server disconnection when boarding an SRV at a planet station after the ship has been destroyed
- Catch cases where physics objects returned in an ai probe are destroyed before being used
- Fixed crash when role switching
- Fixed memory leak in system map
- Fix for crash when bulk storing large ships
- Disconnect after deploying SRV then requesting boarding with an SRV at Planetary Outposts/Stations fixed
- Spawn our ship in space on Xbox One instead of crashing if the launch bay is not valid.

Oct 25, 2016

Elite Dangerous: The Guardians 2.2 update

Elite Dangerous - BrettC_Frontier

Hi guys,

The time has finally arrived! Today sees both the Elite Dangerous Horizons (2.2) update and the Elite Dangerous (1.7) update making its way to the live game.