Why the Elite Dangerous “Brand New Feature” might be so important

we are halfway through what is turning into one of the busiest years Elite dangerous has ever had reminiscent of the game's early Heyday if the current plan plays out as expected by the end of this year we'll have seen the spectacular destruction of multiple thargoid mother ships four new ships introduced into the game a complete overhaul and relaunch of power play and a whole brand new as yet unannounced feature in this video I'll talk through what I think fdev might be up to what is likely just around the corner and why I think this year and what could be landing after power play is so important for the longer term future of the game and everyone that plays it for the last 18 months or so at least the vast majority of the new content dropped into Elite dangerous has revolved around the Salvation spurred thargoid invasion of the bubble the emergence of a thargoid Invasion force and humity fight back has led to the eventual destruction of four so far at least of the eight Titans and whilst the mechanics of the anti- thargoid effort haven't all been directly ax in nature there's no denying that events in all of 2023 and so far the first 6 months of 2024 have on the broader stage at least all revolved around battling escaping or avoiding thargoids if you're playing Elite dangerous in the bubble around Soul as I mentioned at the time of this recording four of the eight Titans are destroyed the last Titan to be destroyed Hadad went for an early bath four weeks ago and the smart money is currently guesstimating that the next Titan Indra will fall later this week making this particular juncture the almost exact middle of the thargoid war end game that is of course assuming we actually get to destroy the last four Titans I'm very deliberately casting a degree of Doubt on the fate of those last three or four Titans for a reason the war has introduced a huge amount of new gameplay into the anti-zeno loops at the very least that gameplay would have cost money to develop and it's hard to imagine a world where fdev would just throw that work in the bin because we won and the war ended I do think the war will end absolutely and likely quite soon in fact but it makes sense to me that the gameplay we've seen developed for the thargoid portions of the game will remain afterwards and will likely morph into other areas of the game at least if it remains in a slightly similar form then the game play requires the presence of at least one Titan Mothership it then follows that either we won't be able to destroy them all or the thargoids will deliver another one of them at the very least how that newly developed gameplay morphs into the rest of the game brings me to my next Point I've said this before on this channel but it Bears repeating it strikes me that the most logical place for that newly established ax gameplay to move to is for it to be folded into Power Play doing so would give the ax community in the game a meaningful forever war with a goal that goal being pushing the danger Daisy flavored Advance back from Human occupied space there is the double Advantage from Frontiers perspective of the presence of a thargoid power player becoming a banner for the pro Xeno Community to Rally behind with that said in my humble opinion it doesn't make a lot of sense in law for the existing thargoid civilization to be accepting of human assistance no matter how well-meaning from what very little we know of the thargoids their societal structure just doesn't work like that they are in essence a race of huge insect likee beings their hierarchy being formed from controlling Hive Queens down through purpose and task specific drones as such they have more in common with ants or bees than they do with humans dealing with them in the form that we've become used to and I say that quite pointedly would be like inviting a wasp's nest you found in your Loft space to negotiate their removal in front of the United Nations the Wasps will not only have no understanding of the nature of the United Nations or why it would even exist they would have no interest in learning why the UN might exist and the encounter would result in rapidly descending chaos and lots of screaming as a matter of historical in-game fact a peace delegation attempted to flag down the stargo taranis as it approached the bubble if you'd like to know how it played out you'll find the charred and burnt remains of the mega ship King Fisher in hiedi sector yq b51 the audio logs from the Unfortunate Souls on Bal will tell you everything you need to know about wasps at the United Nations so if we are to fold the thargoids into Power Play 2.0 how then might that happen enter Then soin a the former entire unwilling experiment component of salvation's less than ethical evil Mega Corporation azoth biochemicals if you've not been keeping up soen a was biomechanically altered in some way in an attempt to merge her with a captured thargoid vessel whilst the results of the experiments were broadly unsuccessful soen a survived the ordeal and managed to escape aso's dabblings in her cerebellum left her with a barely understood ability to at the very least interpret on some level thargoid Communications if she was altered to be able to communicate with thargoid biotech and as a result she can still hear them there's a good chance she can make herself heard by them as well whilst it's obviously not outside the Realms of possibility it seems odd that fdev would go to the trouble of setting up soen a as a Xeno doctor doitt to then not use her to commune with the thargoids on a meaningful level don't misunder understand me here I don't think she's about to join with a collective and become a full-on queen bee but given an army of followers she could easily become a force to be reckoned with there are of course an unknown number of quite devout far good cultists who consider her to be of divine origin but there are also let's not forget millions of abductees from the thargoid war still in stasis secured aboard the remaining four th o mother vessels it's been hinted at in the narrative that some of the early Titan rescuees had shown small signs of biological change this excerpt is from an item posted to galnet on the 12th of November last year when an imperial medical research officer said the following quote our analysis of abducted Imperial citizens currently in isolation has yielded disturbing results there is clear evidence of an autoimmune response in multiple subjects these manifest as minor physiological changes at a superficial level which are mostly being dismissed in my professional opinion this qualifies as evidence that these individuals have been altered in some way by the thargoid constructed bio storage capsules end quote if soen a could somehow stop the alien Onslaught by horse whispering to the thargoids and free those people then that's potentially at the very released a flatpacked army possibly even a civilization ready to go that owes her at the very minimum a debt of gratitude soin a hasn't been heard of in the elite dangerous narrative since December last year when it became apparent that in all likelihood the consciousness of her Nemesis Caleb salvation witchery likely survived the events of hip 22460 inside Guardian technology that fact that Caleb's salvation whicher survived in one form or another and so Jin A's desire for revenge is a nice nebulous motivation for whatever she then wants to perpetuate using her flatpacked civilization that's all just theory of course and as we've said many times on this channel before fdev often go left when we think they're going to go right so take all this with a pinch of salt that's the where we're at right now and where we might be headed in the immediate but what about longer term future from the deployment of Odyssey onwards there seems to me at least to be a thread working its way through all of the original Elite dangerous gameplay loops and disciplines regardless of what you might think about it aside from the onf foot combat aspect Odyssey was largely about exploration whole new tenuous atmospheric planetary surfaces were added to the game along with numerous plant-like biological entities and bacteria for for the initial deployment at least ax operations remained completely untouched there were no new ships with the expansion and nothing really fundamentally changed for ship-based PVP PVE trading or mining since the rocky launch and subsequent stabilization of Odyssey the game has been largely focused on adding something more Dynamic for the ax community and for those looking for a more challenging endgame style experience in the form of the thargoid invasion and its new tools and gameplay Loops from announcements recently it's now fairly apparent that whilst the thargoid war has been in more open development Frontier have also been working in the background on a more fundamental overhaul of power play and I would argue the noises fdev have made of late would seem to indicate that through the power play overhaul and deployment they also see a way to give the PVP Community the much needed meaning to their gameplay that they have been craving with the proposal and open conversation FD plans on taking power play to open only play if you follow the line I'm drawing fdev have covered off exploration and on foot with Odyssey then meaningful ax combat through the thargoid war they're now hitting the double whammy of power play and meaningful PVP soever leads Major professions and Loops that just leaves trading and mining for the future after power play 2.0 deploys aside from the new ships that we know have been added or are coming this year that brings us to the as yet unannounced brand new feature that fdev mentioned way back at the start of this year to quote Arthur's words from January quote this is a new feature this isn't a rework this is a brand new feature coming to Elite dangerous this year end quote I've commented many times on this channel before that I believe believe that new feature may well be some sort of baseb building mechanic before I explain my logic here let me stress again the caveat that fdev quite often go left when we think they're going to go right however there have been now well documented Bonafide leaks from within fdev from a time before Odyssey was even announced that implicated and indeed directly stated that Base building was at the very least being investigated if indeed Base building was to be implemented then it strikes me that it would require at least four fundamental things firstly exploration data and planetary surveys to determine suitable locations for a base to be built secondly raw and manufactured Commodities in bulk to facilitate the construction and thirdly bulk haulage of those Commodities to move them to the identified construction location in those three requirements you can clearly see where there might be endgame level content for the more PVE inclined players exploration surveys would obviously appeal to explorers the Gathering of raw materials could be linked into existing mining gameplay loops and bulk huage would appeal to the trader and freighter Pilots you'll note at this point I said there were at least four fundamental requirements in my mind to make Base building a valuable proposition that missing fourth fundamental is quite simply a purpose for the base to exist in the first place what does a base provide or give to the player Beyond vanity and a sense of ownership for the player or players that constructed it here's where it gets a degree more nebulous with even less evidence either way however FDF have stated that a review of engineering and material Gathering is still on the cards for them I believe a solid argument could be made that manufactured materials could be provided by a base with an IND industrial slant to it raw materials could be provided by a base with a processing slant to it and signals Gathering installations could gather data Etc this is of course all conjectural but if this is where we're headed it would nicely round off a few Loops giving PVE players Traders haulers Miners and explorers more meaning to their end game beyond the acquisition of wealth and beyond all this it would reignite the expansion of the human occupied bubble opening up new gameplay possibilities and indeed real estate for player minor factions and squadrons away from the struggles of power play and the limitations of the now somewhat overcrowded bubble around Soul do you think Base building is in Elite's future if you do what features would you like to see from it and if it isn't Base building just what is the announced brand new feature let us know in the comments below if you've enjoyed this video be sure to like And subscribe so that YouTube shows you all our content and if you'd like to support our work here at the burit you can also join us on patreon links to that and everything we've talked about in this video you'll find linked below

Channel: The Buur Pit

Views: 28,115

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Id: etpd98S3UMk

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 03 2024