After this week’s triumph over the hostile Thargoids, pilots in Elite Dangerous are ready for the next step: expansion. In a 20-minute Q&A during the holiday edition of the Frontier Unwrapped stream, Arthur “Arf” Tolmie and Zac Cocken from the community team sat to talk a little more about upcoming colonization efforts that’ll take place in Elite Dangerous’s massive universe.
They start by going over the efforts necessary to start the process—and it’s certainly not for a new player, instead explicitly designed for more dedicated pilots. Players will have a few weeks to complete quests to gather components for a colony ship to lead the initiative, which seems to be easier said than done.
Still, there are a few measures in place to make sure you don’t just become an immediate emperor of galaxies, as you can only lay claim to one space colony at a time. If you fail twice, you’ll be locked out of the process altogether for two days.
The good news is, once you’ve colonized a system, there won’t be any upkeep needs, and it’ll act like any other occupied system in the game. There’s also a colonization radius, so you won’t be stepping on any neighbor’s toes (hopefully).
The team talks about plenty more regarding colonization, including trade routes and the slight fear of what’ll happen when they drop a player-focused system into an economy and ecosystem like Elite Dangerous’s. For better or worse, given Elite Dangerous’s universe has only seen less than 1% exploration, according to a stream earlier this year, the literal universe is open to any possibilities that players can muster in the now-10-year-old game.
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