Elite Dangerous

[Wassim™]

Elite Dangerous[a] is a space-flight simulation game developed and published by Frontier Developments. Piloting a spaceship, the player explores a realistic 1:1 scale open-world representation of the Milky Way galaxy, with the gameplay being open-ended. The game is the first in the series to attempt to feature massively multiplayer gameplay, with players' actions affecting the narrative story of the game's persistent universe, while also retaining single-player options. Elite Dangerous is the fourth game in the Elite video game series. It is the sequel to Frontier: First Encounters,released in 1995.

Having been unable to agree to a funding deal with a publisher for many years, the developer began its Kickstarter campaign in November 2012. Pre-release test versions of the game had been available to backers since December 2013, and the final game was released for Windows in December 2014,with the OS X version later released in May 2015. A "preview" version of the game for Xbox One was later released via the Xbox Game Preview Program in June 2015 during Microsoft's briefing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015,and was fully released in October 2015,while a PlayStation 4 version was released on 27 June 2017. Elite Dangerous supports virtual reality devices, including the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.By the end of April 2015, Elite Dangerous had sold over 500,000 copies, with Frontier Developments expected to generate £22 million from sales.

Beginning in the year 3300 upon its release in 2014, Elite Dangerous has now run to the year 3305 and has been running in sync with UTC, albeit 1286 years in the future. The game is set around 45 years after Frontier: First Encounters, the previous game in the series.Elite Dangerous retains the basic premise of previous games – players start with a spaceship and a small amount of money and have to make their own way in an open galaxy, furthering themselves either legally or illegally, through trading, mining, exploration, bounty-hunting, piracy and assassination.

The game is the first in the series to feature online multiplayer, with players having access to a massively multiplayer persistent world, as well as an online-only single player mode.[18] Open Play gameplay is similar to Eve Online in that many actions which would be considered griefing in other multiplayer games are generally permitted here, so long as a valid roleplaying reason is attached. Examples include (but are not limited to) stealing from other players, extortion, and blocking off star systems via blockade or similar means.[19] However, some actions, such as "mob mentality" persecution of players, exploiting mechanics of the game (such as quitting the game in the middle of a fight to avoid death), and cursing are still not allowed, and could eventually result in a ban from the main server.

The player is able to explore the game's galaxy of some 400 billion star systems, complete with planets and moons that rotate and orbit in real time, resulting in dynamic day/night cycles.[24] Around 150,000 of the game's star systems are taken from real-world astronomical data,while a few systems' fictional planetary systems as established in Frontier and First Encounters before significant numbers of exoplanets were discovered are carried over (e.g. none of the gas giants of the Fomalhaut system correspond with the detected properties of Fomalhaut b), and a handful of entirely fictional systems named in the original Elite and featured in later games are included (e.g. the original starting system Lave); the remainder are procedurally generated according to scientific models. Throughout the galaxy, the player is able to dock with space stations and outposts to trade goods, purchase new spacecraft, re-arm their ship, effect repairs and to seek or complete missions from text-based station "Mission boards".The player may also find cargo or encounter other ships while in flight by investigating 'Unidentified Signal Sources'.

 

Factions[edit]

There are three major factions, the Empire of Achenar, the Galactic Federation, and the Alliance of Independent Systems.[27] Patch 1.3, which launched in June 2015,[28] featured the Power Play extension, for competitive galaxy-wide faction challenges. Players can now pick from various in-game factions and contribute by completing mission goals and earn various rewards. The outcome determines faction powers, territorial control, and what each faction does next.[29] Each one of these respective factions has specific ships which can be obtained through navy ranks with the respective faction, excluding Alliance ships which are not locked behind ranks. The Federation has a series of 4 faction specific ships made by an in-game federal corporation, Core Dynamics. The Empire has a series of 4 ships (but 1, the Imperial Eagle, does not require a navy rank and therefore can be bought by anyone) manufactured by an Imperial corporation called Gutamaya. The Alliance has 3 ships, none of which require a faction specific rank, and are manufactured by the in-game corporation Lakon Spaceways.

Player status and rank[edit]

There are four player status levels, for combat, CQC Championship, exploration and trading, depending on accomplishments. On 15 March 2015, the first player reached triple elite status, the highest status, and won £10,000.[30] A certain status or rank with a faction can grant access to a number of systems which require a permit. Benefits of some systems include ship discount prices.[31]

Development[edit]

Starting in 2012, Elite Dangerous was developed using Frontier Development's own in-house COBRA game development engine.[32] Frontier had been working on the game as a skunk-works background activity for some time prior to its Kickstarter launch,[33] with other projects being prioritised.[34]

On 14 November 2014, one month before launch, David Braben announced the removal of the game's offline single player mode, the developers having decided that they could not deliver an acceptable offline-only experience based on the original design.[35][36] The Windows version of the game was released on 16 December 2014.[4]

On 4 March 2015, Microsoft announced at the Game Developers Conference that Elite Dangerous would be released on Xbox One[37] and was later launched in early access as part of Microsoft's Game Preview program during E3 in 2015.[38] On 2 April 2015, the game was made available on Steam with support for cross-buy between the Windows version and the Mac version,[39] the latter being released in May 2015.[40] Although there are no plans for a Linux version of the game, Braben stated in 2014 that "There is no reason why COBRA cannot run on Linux, running through OpenGL."[41] A version for PlayStation 4 was released on 27 June 2017.

Braben has said that Thargoids, the warlike, insectoid aliens from the original games, would make an appearance in some capacity.[42] Mission objectives introduced in May 2015 about ancient specimens fueled speculation of the coming introduction of the Thargoid species.[43] On January 5, 2017, the Thargoids were possibly encountered by a player. The ship encountered was alien in nature. Through an escalation of encounters, it was eventually revealed the encountered race was in fact Thargoids. While initially Thargoid encounters were non-violent, a number of space stations have since been attacked leading to missions based on investigating, researching, and gathering materials to increase weapon effectiveness against the Thargoids.

In the most recent of events an extinct alien race named The Guardians was discovered with players allowed to explore the ancient ruins they left behind in order to gather data and materials to unlock special Guardian modules and specialized Human-Guardian hybrid weapons with increased effectiveness against Thargoid ships.

Funding[edit]

At the 2011 Game Developers Conference, following a presentation on the development of the original Elite, Braben was asked in a Q&A session if Elite 4 was still on the drawing board. He replied "yes, it would be a tragedy for it not to be."[44] The project had difficulty in attracting sufficient funding, which Braben had attributed to the traditional publishing model, which he saw as being biased against games with no recent comparable predecessors.[45]

Braben had previously discussed crowdfunding as a possible solution in April 2012.[46] Public fundraising commenced in November 2012 using the Kickstarter website,[47] the campaign lasting 60 days, with the aim being to raise £1.25m[48] and deliver a finished game by March 2014.[49] Braben described the campaign as a way of "test-marketing the concept to verify there is broader interest in such a game", in addition to raising the funds.

Following the end of the Kickstarter, further public funding was sought through the developer's UK website, via PayPal.By April 2014, £1.7m had been raised,[50] and Braben had reacquired the legal rights to the Elite franchise.Although the game's original total development budget had been £8 million, by September 2014 this had, in Braben's words, "grown by quite a lot".

Testing phase[edit

A playable alpha version of the game was released to certain Kickstarter backers in December 2013.[53][54] In May 2014, the game entered the first phase of its beta test, focusing primarily on testing the systems and servers with a greater number of players.[55] A pre-release "gamma" build was released to backers three weeks before launch, to give them a head start on other players.[56] On 2 April 2015, the beta Mac version went live, accessible to all backers.