The third Dev Diary for Elite: Dangerous Odyssey is out: Sphere of Combat!
Let’s have a look at the video.
The Elite Dangerous Community Team proposed a long Livesteam to celebrate the 6 years of the game! They prepared a list of the best memories of 2020, some in-game activities that you could follow with me during the Livesteam at 12pm UTC today, and most of all we have also appreciated the information about Odyssey thanks to a new Dev Diary, centered on the Combat.
4 minutes of video bringing new images & details to the Combat of Odyssey as well as a pre-recorded Q&A with Gareth Hughes, Lead Designer on Elite Dangerous, allowed us to get answers to some questions about the Combat on Foot.
Firstly, Gareth tells us that Odyssey will be an Extension centered mainly on the new surfaces of planets with light atmospheres; there will be Combat, but not only; it’s just a part of Elite. However this video is dedicated to Combat, so we will mainly talk about it.
When we talk about Combat, we think about our characters on foot with our suits, weapons and tools; But Combat on the surface will also be extended to SRVs and ships. The latter will also be able to interact with the characters on foot on the surface. Although it has been difficult to balance the troops, SRVs and ships on the surface, Frontier seems to have found the right compromises between these gameplays so that each has its own advantages, disadvantages and different battle tempos. Frontier wants to create what they call a triangle of combat between the ships, SRV & on-foot troops.
While the players’ Social Hubs will be secured (no combat possible), it will be possible to use our weapons as soon as we get out of them, anywhere on the surface, especially in hot spots such as conflict zones, points of interest and planetary settlements. The best example here has been the Combat and Assassination Missions but also the Conflict Zones in the surface bases.
Different gameplay approaches will be possible. If our combat mission asks us to kill a given character, we could shoot down absolutely all the NPCs getting in our way or we could play Splinter Cell with the Scavenger suit, to cut the protections of an access point with your unique tool in this suit: the Arc Cutter. You can then use the access panel to hack it and track your target. For this you could get a list of the NPCs present on the base and other information that will allow you to have the location of your target on the base. Select the NPC you are looking for and it will be displayed in Augmented Reality and highlighted. All you have to do is infiltrate, break through the base’s protection and gently assassinate your target.
Gareth also indicates that the Artificial Intelligence handling non-player characters has been particularly well done. Indeed, sentinels and other NPCs will pay attention to surrounding sounds, what they see but also to objects lying around. If you have left the protective plate of your access point on the ground, the NPCs will be able to notice it and investigate.
We also note that on a base, several buildings are available such as the HAB houses, the main building of Production PROD or the Power Core PWR.
On the PROD building, we could retrieve plans of defenses, objects or things produced on this base. Why not keep them or even resell them in other markets or black markets.
If we deactivate, destroy or steal the power core: then the base will be plunged into darkness, the doors will close, the defenses will be deactivated and of course all the NPCs will stop working to investigate the cause of the failure. Missions could ask to steal a generator core or even to repair a base by bringing a new generator.
As an example of a scene, you arrive on site, there is significant damage, there are fires in various parts of the complex, and enemies are still on site. It’s up to you to rid the station of these thieves and restart the generator… when all of a sudden, while you’re in an inner room repairing something, you hear a Dropship flying over the base and dropping reinforcements from the enemies! It’s up to you to sneak out or clean up these new enemies if you think you’re up to it.
There’s also talk about the three suits that will be available when Odyssey comes out.
- The Remlok Maverick Suit allows you to specialize in Utility and Versatility, with a unique Arc Cutter as its only tool.
- We also have the Manticore Dominator Tactical Suit, for combat, allowing the player to have two main weapons instead of one, as well as more grenades and better armor and shields. Don’t forget that the shields will have to be activated and deactivated manually and will drain energy from our suit.
- The exploration suit is called the Supratech Artemis and will also be available with its unique Sampling Tool for exobiological sampling and its new dedicated Rank.
- The Remlok Flight Suit can be used but has no specialization.
Gareth mentioned group combat with players having different suits so one of you can cut & hack Access Points while your friends would have a bodyguard role with various weapons.
As far for the damage types, they will be just like ours ships: Kinetic vs Armor, Thermal vs Shield, Explosives and Plasma weapons. For the manufacturers, we’ve seen Takada, Manticore and Kinematics.
We will also have various grenades such as Explosives against armor, EMP against shields or a grenade generating an energy shield on an area for our allies.
We also all have a jetpack, adding a certain verticality to the combat especially by using the surrounding scenery.
Concerning the Zones of Conflict on foot, the AI will also avoid being run over by SRVs by dodging the vehicles effectively. Players, be careful not to be run over by SRVs! If NPCs see an enemy SRV, they will equip themselves with anti-vehicle weapons instead of tempting the devil with small, inefficient weapons. 3 to 6 players or NPCs on foot could counter an SRV with their weapons, noting that grenades and heavy weapons will have a better effect.
NPCs seem to have intelligence and skill levels between 1 and 5; 5 representing an elite NPC.
Different defenses will be ready against ships with the turrets and drones we know well. Against SRVs we will also find various turrets and foot guards. And on foot we will also have these foot guards, turrets and other defenses.
It has been confirmed that new engineers will be added to the game. The old ones will have additional stuff and we will even be able to visit them on foot, but they will still specialize in ships, while new Engineers will specialize in the suits and weapons for our characters.
Frontier Developments wants us to keep our weapons so that we can improve them with the Engineers and modify our gameplay differently depending on the Mods we add to them. We could have the same weapon with two different game styles, just like the current weapons on our ships. The Engineers mods will be available to new players, even casuals, but Gareth notes that a veteran and very active player will obviously be able to have many mods to be more effective in their gameplay.
