From Executive Producer Michael Brookes

"Hi everyone,

This week saw the beta release for Horizons Planetary Landings and an updated 1.5 beta build. An update was released on Tuesday and we’re planning another update before the end of the week.

There’s a ton of changes and new features to get to grips with so if you want to know more about them then watch the Commander Training Live stream from Tuesday evening with Adam and Ed – you can view it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhGyDAKkUQg

It’s also worth taking a look at Sandro’s Quick Start Guide here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=205118

The beta itself has been busier with many of you eager to see the planets up close and that’s generated some excellent feedback on the new features in the update. We’re reviewing issues and comments and addressing as needed, some of the changes in the beta 3 release as a result of that feedback. While we often cannot respond directly to these discussions, they are noted and feed into our internal decision making on changes.

I’ve mentioned this on the forums already I’d like to reiterate that the current SRV death behaviour of returning to port is not the intended behaviour, you should restore to your ship – unless your ship has been destroyed. Also if your SRV is destroyed then you shouldn’t lose your exploration data, again unless your ship has been destroyed. These fixes should be in for next week’s build.

We also have some additional changes coming for explorers to integrate some of the new features into their progression a little more. The first addition is an exploration rank increase when finding materials for the first time. Subsequent material finds will provide a small increase to the Commander’s explorer rank value. Searching planets by driving in the SRV will also accrue explorer rank increases and the bonus is scaled depending on how far away from Sol you are.

Based on testing and feedback we’re extending the base fuel range for the SRV, and with the materials capacity by preparing in advance you can have plenty of refills for the fuel. In addition the bonus effect from the fuel synthesis is also going to be changed so it improves fuel efficiency rather than boosting the shield. This change might come in a bit late for the 2.0 release, so may come in 2.1. Another change to synthesis is that we’re toning down the damage bonuses before the Horizons release.

For the detailed surface scans we shall increase the payouts for these for the Horizons and 1.5 release.

And to finish up Zac has been busy putting together some fun activities over the Christmas period – we’re supporting SpecialEffect with a 24 hour charity livestream. You can find our more on this and the other events we’re running here:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=205161

Thanks!

Michael"