Elite Dangerous will finally let players get up inside those gas clouds

Elite dangerousUpdate 15 opens a new phase in the years-long war against the Thargoids. Frontier Developments told Polygon that it is adding new player technology to the game in addition to a new alien battleship. There will also be a new mission type on the ground at planetary settlements.

Thargoids are an alien species that was introduced in the modern incarnation of Elite in 2017. While it’s true that humanity fired first, things escalated significantly in 2022 when the Thargoids began a massive and deadly invasion with the potential to wipe out humanity. A series of toxic clouds known as Maelstroms was the first step. Once in place, they scattered additional Thargoid forces into the old-fashioned western spiral arm of the Milky Way. After the loss of many billions of human lives, things are still not going so well for players who have been shooting attackers for months and rescuing refugees as quickly as possible.

Update 15 adds a new Thargoid pulse neutralizer – teased in-game on May 2 — allowing players to reach the center of these Maelstroms for the first time. What they’ll find there, no one can guess, but hopefully it’s a way to slow down the aliens’ relentless advance into human-occupied space.

Thargoid fighter-class ships are also coming to the game, and developers said these extremely active ships can prevent commanders from escaping combat once they get going. The Glaive – a small, fast and heavily armored new ship – is just the first of these fighter-class ships and can circle around all but the most advanced builds in the game.

There will also be a new mission type on foot that will require players to stealthily infiltrate disabled planetary settlements – interactive planetary surface locations added to the game in 2020. Players must try to turn the power back on without vaporizing. A press-only preview video showed a completely silent settlement on the dark side of a planet, with players evading Thargoid Revenants – relatively small flying vehicles the size of a planetary rover. These vehicles have bright yellow vision cones stretched out in front of them on the ground. If you run into those cones, a firefight will soon break out as the Revenants call in their friends to end the fight.

Update 15 is free for owners of Elite dangerous that play on PC with the 4.0 codebase.