Elite Dangerous update 15 adds a new Thargoid ship and on-foot missions

Elite Dangerous’ update 15 will open a new phase in the yearslong war against the Thargoids. Frontier Developments told Polygon it’s adding new player-owned tech to the game alongside a new alien combat ship. The game will feature a ground-based type of mission at the planetary settlements.

Aliens called Thargoids were brought into the world of The Elite2017 While it’s true that humanity shot first, things escalated significantly in 2022 when the Thargoids began a massive and deadly invasion with the potential to eliminate humanity. Maelstroms, a group of toxic cloud formations that were released in the beginning was the first stage. Once in place, they disgorged additional Thargoid forces into the Milky Way galaxy’s unfashionable Western spiral arm. Following the loss of many billions of human lives, things still aren’t going particularly well for players who have been shooting down aggressors and rescuing refugees as quickly as they can for months now.

Update 15 will add a new Thargoid pulse neutralizer — teased in-game on May 2 — that will allow players to reach the center of these Maelstroms for the first time. What they’ll find in there is anyone’s guess, but hopefully it’s a way to slow the aliens’ relentless advance into human-occupied space.

The game will also feature Thargoid hunters-class ships. These extremely powerful vessels can stop commanders from fleeing combat when engaged. The Glaive — a small, fast, and heavily armored new ship — is just the first of these hunter-class vessels and can run circles around all but the most high-end builds in the game.

Image: Frontier Developments

There will also be a new on-foot mission type that will require players to stealthily infiltrate knocked-out planetary settlements — interactive planetary surface locations which were added to the game in 2020. They must then turn back the power on while avoiding being vaporized. A press-only preview video showed an entirely silent settlement on the dark side of a planet, with players dodging Thargoid Revenants — relatively tiny flying vehicles about the size of a planetary rover. They project yellow vision cones on the ground. When you fall into the cones that are on the ground, the Revenants will bring their friends in to fight.

The update 15 is free to owners of Elite Dangerous Playing on the PC with the 4.0 codebase.