Elite Dangerous is getting paid-for cosmetic ship nameplates

While it seems the alien Thargoids who turned up in Elite Dangerous might be more hostile than first thought, it looks like you'll at least have the chance to look good before they lash out. That's because the space adventure sim will soon let you name your spaceship and buy cosmetic ship name plates. 

Taking to its official forums, senior community manager Edward Lewis sought to lay bare exactly how ship naming and nameplate purchasing will play out. "When you have named your ship in-game, your ship name will appear in multicrew grouping and in your HUD," explains Lewis. "In addition to this, in beta 5, when other people scan you, or target you in space they will be able to see your ship name in their UI."

Lewis suggests premium ship nameplates will allow players an extra layer of customisation in-line with the paint jobs and add-ons already present in the game's store. 

Available in themed packs, nameplates will be grouped in designs of three available in black, white and grey—a total of nine nameplates per pack. Lewis continues: "After purchase, each pack will be available for use across all of your ships (Ship launched fighters and SRVs don’t have name plates) and each pack of nine variant plates will be coming into store at just £2/€2.5/$3. 

"This means that purchasing one pack of name plates will allow you to use that style across all of your current and future ships, at the same time and rename each individual ship as many times as you like. We believe this flexibility offers Commanders great value and is a great way to help support the continued development of Elite Dangerous."

Thanks, Eurogamer

Deputy Editor, PC Gaming Show
Latest in Sim
Truckin' in the rain.
American Truck Simulator’s latest teaser is just a sound effect and no one seems to agree on what exactly it means
PowerWash Simulator 2 screenshots
'More evolution than revolution': PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming late 2025, and it's bringing online multiplayer and split-screen co-op with it
A child stands on top of a dinosaur exhibit, hugging the nose of a dinosaur skull.
As a real life museum employee, I'm a bit confused by the amount of pirate ghosts in Two Point Museum—but it's not going to stop me trying to make the most realistic exhibits I can
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Latest in News
Hollow Knight: Silksong — character art of Hornet, Silksong's protagonist, brandishing her weapon
Silksong's weary hollows tossed another scrap of hope from Xbox on high, as a blog post namedrops it next to other 'upcoming games'
A young boy uses the Xbox Adaptive Joystick, mounted to a tabletop.
Microsoft's Adaptive Joystick is geared towards 'players with limited mobility' and is available now for just $30
United Videogame Workers - CWA logo
Game developers launch North America's first industry-wide union 'to build worker power irrespective of studio and current job status'
Truckin' in the rain.
American Truck Simulator’s latest teaser is just a sound effect and no one seems to agree on what exactly it means
The PCIe slot on an Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi motherboard, showing the Q-release latch for GPUs.
Rejoice! PCI Express 7.0 hits 'final draft' status enabling bandwidth that you probably won't notice on devices that won't appear for years
Holding an Xbox controller in front of a keyboard
Microsoft is finally rolling out its controller-friendly virtual keyboard for a better Windows handheld gaming PC experience