As promised, Frontier has published the first of its Elite: Dangerous Countdown to Beta newsletters, each intended to flesh out its plans for the Engineers patch, which had been delayed back in March but is now on track for a beta launch in early May.
Engineers will bring a big overhaul to starports in the game to coordinate with the weapons and modules changes. “All Starports in both 2.1 and 1.6 have revamped Outfitting screens, improving the process of buying and fitting new items to your ships and offering an easier route to further, as yet unannounced, module additions,” writes Frontier. “This extensive overhaul provides module filtering and easier access to relevant data on the Starport services screens for the busy Commander [and preserves] the ability to drill to the deepest level of statistics for all weapons and modules.” VR will be accommodated as well.
Players should also expect an improved galaxy map with state filtering, new classes of large and huge weapons, a “vast number of fixes and changes” for NPC AI, and new types of POIs and planetary surface encounters.
