Elite: Dangerous – Powerplay beta expansion is here

The release date for Powerplay expansion has been postponed but everyone who can enter beta (which you can still buy at the game's store) can download the new huge part of the game right now and start to menace other factions and build his or her own little part of space where the influence over the systems and planets is visible and whatever you do makes difference!

What Is Powerplay?

Powerplay is a new way to play Elite: Dangerous.

In Powerplay, you can participate in an ongoing battle for interstellar conquest and control that enhances every aspect of the Elite: Dangerous experience.

When Powerplay launches, you'll be able to ally yourself with any one of a number of galactic Powers, earning valuable perks, reputation bonuses and credits for your allegiance. 

As a trusted ally of your chosen Power, you will be able to guide their strategy, take on special objectives to advance your shared cause, and dominate human space. Your choices and actions will have a direct and visible impact on the balance of galactic power.

And of course, Powerplay is a FREE content update for all Elite: Dangerous players and will be part of Elite: Dangerous for Mac and Xbox One at launch.

Source: http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=b0a8ebba0b

Every week there will be new opportunities to defend your Power's galactic influence. It means that you can be very active during the week, gather points and then vote and decide (if you have enough power) what to do next. To attack the neighbouring system or to defend your system against aggressors? 

There will be objectives and practically everyone can participate. You can gather power by the way of playing you like. You can be a part of a big economic Power or mining needed raw materials and support the big goal for your part of space. Of course there are going to be big Powers and you can be part of huge battles or you can travel far, far away and slowly building your own Power like you want.

By completing missions, players drive their Power’s expansion and boost their personal standing. A successful week will bring players rewards and see their Power expand across the galaxy, but failure may see your chosen faction weakened or finished outright.

By joining a Power that supports your play style you'll get better deals, cheaper repair costs, reduced fines, increased values for exploration data and more. Some Powers stand alone, but others have their own allegiance to the Empire or Federation and can offer reputation bonuses for their followers, potentially fast-tracking pilots to faction-exclusive starships.

The patch notes are as usually not just a few lines of text but rather massive update. See below. And focus on the new content because it is not only about Powerplay. Also new ships have been added.

New Content/Features:

• Powerplay added

  • Power map views added to galaxy map

  • Added power information and action screens

  • Power specific ship modules added

  • Power specific ambient traffic added

  • Spawn AI to hunt player if they defect

  • Power specific goods and actions added

• Playable ship Imperial Courier added

• Playable ship Diamondback added

• Cargo/Mining chunk collection drones added

• Fuel transfer drones added

• Prospector drones added

• Mission system overhaul

  • Inbox integration for branching missions

  • Missions scaling up based on rank

  • Missions scaling up based on reputation with mission giver

  • Mission targets can be generated in supercruise rather than USSs

  • Spawned AI difficulty determined by mission (if spawned by mission)

  • Missions requiring only mineable materials added

  • Revamped military progression missions

  • Added Founders and Elite ranked missions

  • More mission variants added

  • Chatter tables updated

• Updated bounty system

  • Bounties cannot be paid off (Pilot's Fed contact is gone!), but expire after 7 days.

  • Major factions don't record crimes anymore, only minor factions. (You may have major faction stuff in your saves left over from the previous system).

  • Fines now take 7 days to expire, but never coexist with bounties (bounties absorb fines and dormant bounties with the same faction).

  • Expiry only actually happens when you login, hyperspace or resurrect. (This stops cases of "I attacked a wanted ship that had no bounty a few seconds ago")

  • Friendly fire values relaxed

• Add select nav target functionality to system map

• Add mining bonus for mining operations within extraction sites

• Added Painite as a minable commodity

• Added osmium as a minable commodity

• Added low and high intensity resource extraction site scenarios

• Loan ceiling scales based on player's highest Elite rank

• Founder decal now gold

• Added crimes for reckless flying (collisions) within starport no fire zones:

  • Shields only collisions above speed limit is a fine

  • Hull damage only above speed limit is a larger fine

  • Ship destruction within short window after collision above speed limit is a bounty

  • Respects 'Report crimes against me' setting

• Allow any general purpose slot on any ship to contain a fuel tank module

• Show progress to next PF rank

• NPC chatter works in supercruise

• Added rank up messages and animations to inbox

Stability Fixes:

• Fix crash when entering icy rings as they have no possible minerals

• Fix possible stability issue with AI entering resource extraction sites

• Fix access violation when interdicting NPCs

• Fix crash when taking high res screen shots with super sampling turned on

• Don't try and transfer group leadership for player-owned groups

• Fix a crash in keyboard helper when it is unable to find a keyboard locale

• Fix for skybox render crash on exit

• Fix for memory crash in system map

• Fix a crash in the system generation

• Fix rank-restricted ships being purchasable and causing server errors

• Fix for streaming crash on shut down

• Fix server error entering some empty systems

• Prevent Module Data Gather crashing when setting modules while looking at the fire groups tab

• Fix for invalid shield value in network traffic

• Fix ships setting their faction to the non-existent "Anarchy" faction when there aren't any factions around

• Fix AI crash in combat zone

• [OSX] Fix memory allocation crash

• Don't kill the server if we have a hash collision on system name

• Fix issue with low level maths during ship docking

• OSX: Don't crash if an attached joystick has an invalid product ID

• OSX: Fix crash if memory allocation fails

• OSX: Fix for various crashes on launch associated with some keyboards and locales

General Tweaks/Fixes

• Fix ring scaling on stars in system map

• Made the streaks on the Cobra windscreen less noticeable, but more balanced

• When we're clearing bounties and resetting hostility states, make sure we do it on remote authorities as well.

• Searching for 'PAND' in the galaxy map brings up 'PANDAMONIUM' as the first result fixed

• Galaxy map camera now caches its current position for retrieval on returning to the galaxy map

• Fix planet popping on approach

• Replaced the mute button mode (toggle/hold) with a bespoke option which allows for toggle, push to talk and push to mute modes

• Enabling wing beacon enables voice comms fixed

• Stop the system info popup preventing clicking the system itself

• The minimum value of the lighting curves for stars has been altered so that it scales from a universal base value with star temperature

• Moved the UI camera lock on option to the input options screen, to hopefully make it more visible

• Updated all resource extraction scenario CSM's to heavily reduce the number of NPC's

• Fix missing black hole effect in certain systems – such as Phua Aub SO-Z

• Make trade voucher redemption menu options consistent with bounty vouchers – separate menu items for each, and local factions only

• Fix police ships spawning at lawless mining scenarios

• Reset current target contact when pressing the "select next route system" key

• Fix Shield Bank Module not filling properly; this lead to a missing cell when using "reload all" option in station services

• Fix to Render order problem with section of Adder cockpit

• Changed WING RANGE to EXCEEDS WING for nav panel system buttons

• Fix some new modules the wrong amount of ammo (e.g. Shield Cell Banks)

• Rebalanced mass lock values across all ships to fix various inconsistencies and also ensured ships overheat when self destructing

• Population data inconsistencies between galaxy and system map fixed Belt information are now displayed for stars in the system map

• Fix surprise non-zero throttle after pre-flight checks (unless you're using the throttle axis binding)

• Toxic corrosive damage from carried cargo now ignores broken modules

• Fixed the Fer-de-Lance clipped inside landing pad

• Prevent sleeping cargo canisters from penetrating asteroids

• One suspected cause for driver micro-stutters addressed

• Weapon lighting optimisations

• Lighting overdraw optimisations to ship exteriors

• Lighting overdraw optimisations to ship cockpits

• Lighting overdraw optimisations to landing pads

• Fix radiators being damaged and broken by corrosive cargo when nothing else could touch them

• Self destruct and Reboot/repair are not shown in the functions tab when in supercruise

• Headlook disabled during panel focus fixed

• Transaction pane now matches entries using both the id and the type, so the focus no longer jumps to a different section when it updates

• When nav lock auto jump fails and suppresses a warning, also suppress the audio for the notification

• Default ships to not being full-members of factions – only police/military should be full members. Escorts/wingmen will get the full-member status of their lead

• Give escorts/wingmen a default generic escort chatter table rather than the same as their lead

• Make AIs respect the FSD cooldown timer, the same as the long timer for players (as NPCs never submit)

• Fix incorrect orbital period for Pluto

• Move Castellan Station away from Lave 2 to prevent people not being able to supercruise away

• AI not subject to heat targeting mechanic in same way as players fixed

• Make SSAO respond to being toggled in the options menu

• Docking computer not working at outposts fixed

• AI ships experiencing difficulty leaving Orbis starport interior fixed

• Docking computer gives wrong setting fixed

• Removed extra radius added to the 'am I close enough to dock' maths so the distance on the GUI matches the distance required to allow a successful docking request

• Fix problem of Outfitting showing the incorrect maximum ammo for Shield Cell Banks

• Disable vignette effect for debug fly camera

• Fix typos in Leestian Evil Juice description

• Update to pirate scanning behaviour. Always scan, whatever the threat value, but potentially block attacking because of threat

• Updated station ad screens

• NPC bounty hunter scanning update: New chatter triggers added. Added new behaviour: if target is scanned, found to have a bounty below the minimum (but non-zero), warned, then later scanned again, it will then be attacked

• Make sure we spend fuel when we hyperspace, even if disconnect before the save-on-arrival

• Adjusted military archetypes in war zones, to distinguish them a bit more from lockdowns and the subsequent blockade. Won't interdict clean ships in war, as they are too busy fighting a war to do that

• Made the stars and planets wait until they are ready to render, this will fix planets showing up as white for a short time after entering the game

• When police scans a wanted target that has a very high threat score, previously it would ignore it; now it starts attacking, says a chatter line, and calls reinforcements

• Wing beacon is turning off or timing out and not updating the GUI fixed

• When the player equips a module and their ship has insufficient power – we should warn them about power management

• Fix no distinction between dormant and active bounties in the transactions panel

• Fix throttle going to full when hyperspacing from normal space with FAOff and without using the throttle axis

• Interdictions do 10% of the damage of a normal emergency drop

• Chance that NPC escorts won't flee but stay and fight

• Fix for Commuters having a crazy high chance to flee when their hull got to about 50%

• Improved and highly optimised Hangar lighting

• Visual improvements, rebalancing and optimisation to hangar particle effects

• Fixed typo in basic discovery scanner description

• Fix typos in water giant description

• Fix spelling for Luyten 347-14 system permit

• Remove extraneous space in class M star description

• Fix incorrect starting explorer description

• Remove unneeded secondary economy from Auta Isuang

• Jovian texture replaced wrong default terrestrial texture, schematic height params for this planet type slightly raised for better definition

• Fix turrets set to Target Only deciding to fire when you're in the hangar

• Adjusted the height of the flood lights around the large landing pad (raised them up by 5 metres) so that they interfere less with the Chat panel in the GUI

• Give turret mounts the ability to track 5 degrees down past horizontal, to help ships like the python be able to actually hit small ships in front of it

• Friendly fire rules should apply to player Vs player, not just AI

• Fix NPCs not giving themselves local bounties

• Added ampersand character to text rendering on starports

• Don't allow NPC's to jump if they have 0% hull

• Prevent docking after the police 'notice' that a player is wanted. This is the same reaction with committing a violent crime near the station

• The contents of an asteroid are now deterministic again, and will be the same every time a players logs in and for every player

• A history of mined asteroids is stored per player on the web server. If a player tries to mine a previously mined asteroid, they get nothing

• Asteroids can now contain up to 3 minerals, chunks still contain 2 minerals

• Fix typo in star class L description

• Don't go through the process of choosing a new group leader if when the leader dies we aren't the authority, as this will be an authority transfer rather than the leader dying

• When a ship is dying and we're setting its behaviour to "Just hit me", we only need to set this as the current behaviour, not the default state

• Fix repeat exploration scans cancelling previous scans

• Outpost hangars now have new and improved lighting

• Rich hangars and inner dock now have new and improved lighting

• Fix underside of flood light poking through a hangar and a texture issue on a LOD in the Rich Station interior

• Fix police defending wanted ships in their own faction

• Thickened up the fine strut detail on the Solar Array LODs which was causing a lot of aliasing as much of the geometry could become sub-pixel at distance. This seems to have improved render quality somewhat, especially in the mid-range LODs

• Fix the test that zeroed throttle when docked to only zero when docking state *changes* – allows the throttle to work when using accumulated controls during a pre-flight check

• Don't show a ship's health bar if the schematic is showing a subsystem/module

• Fixed the decal cameras for the Imperial Clipper

• Make sure that an NPC appears after an interdiction if it has been interdicted by more than one player

• Make sure that the lead ship wouldn't always head for the wake to drop out into the interdiction

• Fix alignment issues with tiny and medium hardpoints, and also splits the doors into separate CSM files so that they can open independently

• Fix rings becoming invisible when entering or exiting supercruise

• Docking computer resets timer back to 10:00 fixed

• Docking computer cannot land the ship if the player resumes control after the docking computer has piloted the ship inside the station fixed

• Eagle interior cockpit now has texture

• Fix for Asp landing gear not locking down

• Improve Vulture LODs

• Fix landing gear for Type 6

• Fix landing gear for Type 7

• Fixed shadow sharpness on cockpits

• Fed Dropship Lowest LOD fix

• Add a 'Hostile' sign in the same place as the 'Wanted' sign to indicate when the police will attack the player due to bad reputation

• Add a missing check that meant mines were being targeted even if there was a better target around

• Added rank progress bars

• Decal pass for Mercenary paintjobs

• Chaff now affects turrets and gimbals by the same amount

• Improvements to engine effects overhaul

• Improved the appearance of the Hauler drive effects

• Stop Spinning AI Ships in Supercruise

• AI will try to avoid crossing a player's firing line

• Optimisation for partial name search in galaxy map

• Fixed hole in Adder cockpit geometry

• Pilot and chair added to external cockpits

• Reduced range of Medium Empire thrusters light so it doesn't illuminate the Empire Courier's cockpit

• Cap bounties to 10 million per jurisdiction – fines remain unlimited

• Fixed Asp Gun Barrel Clipping in Outfitting

• Inconsistency in the Class Y dwarf stars description fixed

• Minor Typos in the Lakon Type-9 Heavy ship text description fixed

• Fixed some mixed up commodity labels in French

• Fix broken non-breaking spaces in French

• Make sure that the gunsights system has sensible start values to prevent odd jumping

• Fix a few cases of people with old weapon loadouts being unable to fire

• On the galaxy map, "Plan Route" should be "Route Planen" in German

• FSD cool-down timer should read "FSA-ABKÜHLZEIT" in German

• When receiving machine details in response to wing/invite, try to connect to the machine – fix for some invites not getting through

• Various translation fixes

• Altered flicker on light to be more subtle in Fer-de-Lance cockpit

• Shields persist in supercruise

• Fixed not being able to supercruise through a completely invisible ring

• Steadily loosen rank limits on supercruise interdiction as security decreases

• Allow players to adjust their power pips in Supercruise

• Make every capacitor recharge at max rate while docked, since station UI can steal the power controls, leaving players without any sys energy to bring their shield back up

• Station entrance VFX optimisations

• Don't skip the long shield recharge delay on location transition if your shield were at 0 health

• Fix 2.5s hyperspace transition time when jumping from Supercruise

• Don't duplicate ships when following a wake

• Landing gears are initialised 'down' if you start docked, instead of starting 'up' and immediately deploying

• New take on chaff effect, visible from greater distances

• Encourage mining chunks to float away from asteroids, not inside them. Also push them out along that direction a little when spawning to help prevent fast moving asteroids from rotating through the new chunks

• When weapons have a shot blocked and fail to fire, no longer drain weapon power spuriously

• Adjusted some hitcheck were it may be possible to ram your way through a wall in the Coriolis station due to an acute angle in the mesh

• Transactions panel will now update the vouchers if they change while it's open

• When firing at a moving target turrets confusion is affected by distance so that turrets are more easily confused by sharp manoeuvres at short range than long

• Confusion is based on the acceleration of the target in both absolute space and relative to the firer

• Rather than Wobbling when the gun gets confused, turrets now tend to lag behind