Elite Dangerous teases fleet carriers and rebrands its premium currency

Later this year, you'll be able to park your little ship in a bigger ship in Elite Dangerous. At this year's Lavecon, a partly-Elite focused fan event in Northamptonshire, developer Frontier Developments teased the biggest stuff coming to Elite Dangerous for the rest of 2019: fleet carriers, better onboarding, and a rebranding of its premium currency on all platforms.

The most exciting bit are the fleet carriers, but they're also the farthest away. Nothing specific was revealed about their functionality, but you can watch the brief teaser above. Fleet carriers are planned for Elite's December update. Frontier had much more to share about the September update, like its rebranded premium currency, which will be called Arx. PC players currently purchase cosmetics directly from Frontier with regular money, but all future in-game purchases will happen with Arx.

As part of the change, Frontier is giving players new opportunities to earn Arx credits through normal play. "We won't ask commanders to change how they play, simply being an active player and engaging with the game is all that's required," the blog post reads. Cosmetics that were previously only available in bundles will also be purchasable on their own.

Frontier also has plans to better onboard new players to Elite. Since the game's launch, new players have been dropped into the open universe of Elite without much tutorialization. A separate training section has always been available to learn the ship controls and combat, but Frontier wants to integrate those lessons into the beginning of the game.

"With clearer instructions and guidance during the beginning of Elite Dangerous, we believe this will lead to a more engaging way to learn the basics and help commanders understand the tools they have at their disposal to become fully-fledged pilots," the blog post reads.

All of these changes are still pretty far away, but they seem to be positive step towards Elite's health, minus the annoyance of buying virtual currencies.

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.