Whether you ended up indifferent or excited after Elite: Dangerous offered a preview of a mission from its Odyssey expansion, you very likely had a number of questions. In which case, you very likely will want to look over this recap of a Q&A livestream from this past Thursday.
The livestream offered a number of additional details about missions in Odyssey, such as confirmation that there will be a wide variety of settlement types; confirmation that missions can either be unique to certain settlement types as well as static or available to all settlements; and word that mission variance takes into account things like the planet itself, the type of faction that currently has ownership of a settlement as determined by the background simulation, and more. One example of a different type of mission is one where players have to replace a power core, depressurize buildings, and put out fires in a settlement, all while possibly dealing with hostile scavengers.
As far as clearing mission objectives, there are reportedly a number of methods that players could use to complete the mission shown in the video, including making way to the command building to take security systems offline, carefully scanning patrol routes, using stealth-based suit mods and silenced weapons, or even scanning an NPC to snatch security clearance to an otherwise unauthorized building. Naturally, NPCs will react to any number of actions players take in a settlement, and guards may ask players to submit to a scan if they are suspicious. Player relationships with a settlement’s controlling faction can also factor into a mission; if players are hostile against a faction, things will likely open up with a full-blown shootout. Furthermore, actions will have consequences in the form of bounties for criminal acts.
Speaking of NPC guards, their difficulty is noted as “incredibly variable,” with variance based on gear as well as behavioral elements like weapon accuracy and dodging that scale up with higher tier AI. Players can scan NPCs to get an idea of how strong they are, and naturally taking on more challenging missions will yield greater rewards.
On the subject of gear, suits will play a major factor in the kinds of weapons and tools players can carry, and players can specialize their loadout based on the mission they’re taking on or for specific tasks; one player can field powerful laser weapons to take out shields while another sports strong kinetic weapons to finish foes off. As far as suit management, players will have to take into account things like managing power-hungry shields, life support, and even taking note of a planet’s temperature, which can cause internal damage if things get too hot. To help with suit management, there will be tools players can use, while some settlements may have things like power recharge stations.
Finally, should players die in a mission, the mission fails, players drop the items in their backpack, and they respawn either at a nearby port or outpost if they have no ship or they have the option to respawn at a port or in their ship if they own one. If the ship is on the planet’s surface, they’ll respawn with the ship in orbit, otherwise they’ll respawn at the port their ship is docked in.
As you can see, there’s a lot of information to be absorbed, so fans may want to read through the recap themselves or watch the full video embedded below.
