Elite: Dangerous announced this morning that it’s bringing its hotly anticipated Powerplay update to its live servers today. The patch brings with it a plethora of new game systems, features, fixes, and improvements.

Powerplay, a dynamic faction sovereignty system, is the eponymous centerpiece of the game’s newest free content update, and will allow players to grant their loyalty to one of several NPC factions, all with unique personalities and bonuses reflecting them, to go head to head against one another for territory and influence in the game’s expansive galaxy.

While players will not be able to create their own factions for use in the Powerplay system, the update does manage to place a significant degree of control in the hands of the players over the political map of the galaxy. As with the game’s economic systems, even players logged in using the game’s solo or private group modes will be able to take part in the Powerplay meta-game, as they’ll be a part of the same galactic map as everyone else, even if it’s just a little bit emptier.

The patch also includes new drones to collect ore for miners, more ships for players to obtain, overhauls to the mission and GalNet systems, and more.

The servers are currently down while the team at Frontier readies the servers to go live with the new update some time later today. Launching a major content update on a Friday is a bold move from a development studio, showing a significant degree of confidence that the update will roll out smoothly. If not, the development team may be in for a lot of overtime this weekend.

Sources: Twitter / Patch Notes