Elite Dangerous recently held a System Colonization beta ahead of the Trailblazers update. The feature-complete live beta focused on letting players get in there and start colonizing while the developers gathered data on how they might balance the feature. After more than 8,000 systems were colonized in the first few days, Frontier decided to temporarily disable colonization for the time being while they address some issues and balance.
Letting everyone colonize systems embodies what the Trailblazers update is going to welcome, and it's a significant update. When deciding to pause colonization of new systems, they announced that everyone colonized more than 8,000 systems and completed more than 13,000 facilities. Everything that people did will remain while they address a big issue that came up in feedback. If you've already claimed systems, you can continue colonizing within them, but further expansion won't happen for the time being while they work on fixing a major issue.
People have already claimed so many systems, they're not planning on wiping any progress, so everything will remain in place. Nobody can claim new systems but everything you already claimed is still going to be there. There have been some reports that have claims made before the pause that don't show up as claimed, but Frontier says this is a visual issue and once they have everything back online you'll be able to see what you claimed. Others have reported issues with system architects and this is also something they'll working on.
The CG megaships that are supposed to come into the system colonization feature are now also temporary delayed until next week.
Since this is an issue that is halting progress on this big feature, particularly since the issue affects the ability to claim systems, they're reviewing everything and working on fixing it as an urgent priority.
The War Within Hotfixes - 18 March
The War Within Hotfixes - March 18
