When a system in Elite: Dangerous goes into a state of war, there are only a couple of ways players can influence the outcome: performing combat missions or performing actions. With the Odyssey expansion, there will be the addition of Conflict Zones where players can get boots on the ground and join in on the fight, and it’s this new gameplay that’s outlined in a recent video.
Signing up to a Conflict Zone is a matter of going to a Frontline Solutions desk to pick a side, flying there in a ship, driving there in an SRV, or arriving via dropship provided by Frontline Solutions. The actual Conflict Zone itself pits two teams of 12 against one another, each composed of human players and AI, as teams fight to deplete enemy reinforcements either by killing troops or capturing zones. Not only will winning have an effect on the background simulation, but it will also offer bonus rewards, while killing enemies will reward everyone with combat bonds that can be redeemed per kill and are available to redeem win or lose.
Conflict Zones are just part of today’s phase two alpha launch, which also lets players fly their own ships (and grants everyone a free Cobra multi-crew ship), places players in a new system with 20 light years more space to play in, adds a new Dominator suit, and gives every alpha player 300K in credits. The new build also features a variety of fixes and adjustments, while the notes call out a known bug where players may experience “Orange Sidewinder” error messages while in physical multi-crew, when flying to destinations, or dropping into/out of supercruise/glide; players reporting this bug are asked to provide as much detail as possible to help the devs pin down the problem.
Greetings commanders. The Alpha phase 2 servers should now be available to all commanders.
— Elite Dangerous (@EliteDangerous) April 8, 2021
