Frontier Start Detailing Elite Dangerous: Horizons Patch 2.2

We've been waiting for news on Patch 2.2 for Elite Dangerous: Horizons for awhile after the previous patch entitled The Engineers came out after being delayed. Frontier are again at gamescom and they are now ready to reveal what is next.

The big headline feature they focused on was Passenger Missions, these take on two forms, bulk and VIP and add a new area to starports, the Passenger Lounge, where tourists and other potential customers vie for your trade. Passenger Cabins return from prior games, this time in a variety of quality levels, taking up module space. These provide the ability to take on passengers who want to go from A to B.

Frontier have stated that these will be affected by the background simulation to add flavour so you might, for example, take refugees from war ravaged systems or soldiers to those same systems. There are also VIP variants who as well as taking up whole cabins for themselves also might made additional demands, the example shown being a VIP who wanted to visit a conflict zone for a certain length of time.

To go along with these missions, a new ship, the Beluga liner is being added. This sleek, expensive looking ship has a fancy observation deck and is designed primarily for taking passengers.

Passengers are clearly a big addition but there were plenty of other great little additions, so-called Quality of Life changes too. You can now filter systems out of your routes on the route planner as well as see the security level of the system you are jumping to. Probably the biggest obvious change was the new Hyperspace transition, you can actually see the star you are heading to get progressively larger and it has a new tunnel effect to go with it.

There were plenty of teases to other things that Frontier intend to reveal, new station interiors, ship-launched fighters and NPC crew were all mentioned. We'll be sure to bring that information as it's revealed.

Find part two of our coverage here.