The Elite: Dangerous servers went down this morning to apply patch version 2.2.03, which will focus on Powerplay, engineers and blueprints, and general combat balancing.
Elite: Dangerous made our list of the best space games on PC.
Powerplay is a meta-game within Elite: Dangerous, in which players can pledge to a ‘power’ and support their expansionist ambitions in various ways. AI will now react differently to players in Powerplay, and the mode’s mechanics have been revised. Among the changes are the removal of assassins, tweaks to pirate spawning and some changes to how power security and pirates target players: ships which don’t meet certain criteria will now be left alone, even if pledged to a power.
Moving on to engineers, they get a few new blueprints, while existing ones have been rebalanced to promote greater variety in their use. This time round, combat blueprints have had the most attention. Some of the tweaks are: Long Range now removes damage falloff and doesn’t reduce damage, nor increase WEP draw. Optimised Shields, Short Range, Sturdy are among the other blueprints that have been buffed.
Beyond engineers, there have been some broader tweaks to existing weapons to rebalance combat and enable greater choice in how players can outfit their ship to win a fight. Plasma accelerators, railguns, cytoscramblers, fixed cannons and many beam weapons have all been buffed.
There’s much more in the 2.2.03 update, including tweaks to passengers and missions (notably, there’s a new mission type for investigating ancient ruins, and maximum mission duration has increased to 28 days). Check out the changelog on the Frontier forums for a full list of what’s new.
The latest rebalance follows the exciting news that the Thargoids have appeared in Elite: Dangerous, presenting the universe with its first alien threat.