Space sim Elite: Dangerous’ latest community event is a neat sci-fi story as the Federation and Empire face off over the Golconda, a long-lost generation ship launched from Earth more than a thousand years before the game’s current time. Called The Golconda, the ship’s inhabitants are the first found alive on a lost generation ship in the game. The generation ship had long ago arrived at its destination, but had chosen to preserve itself as a closed society and never contacted the outside world. Its inhabitants first reached out to request advanced medical supplies, however, because they were facing a viral outbreak which they could not stop. The game’s player pilots leapt to the ship’s aid, delivering thousands of tons of supplies and warding off pirate attacks on shipping.
Now, however, the game’s superpowers are going to use the isolated society as a political football, requesting support of the players’ independent pilots to change how the people of the Golconda live. The Empire seeks to resolve the Golconda’s original goal and settle its people on a nearby world, whereas the Federation seeks to preserve their unique way of life by building them an orbital station. Both factions have dispatched massive megaships to the Golconda’s system to enforce their will. Starting on the 18th—tomorrow—players will be asked to deliver supplies to either faction’s presence to secure victory for their chosen side. The event will end on November 26th.
Elite: Dangerous is a massively multiplayer space simulator game where thousands of players navigate and explore in a persistent simulation of our galaxy. It has events that take place in real-time on our date, but during the years of the 34th century—delivered via a news feed replete with celebrity scandals and political conflict. These community events have forking, permanent outcomes generally decided by the game’s players through competitions: seeing who can deliver the most goods, score the most bounties, or frag the most of the other side’s ships. Previous to this event lost generation ships have been found in the game, but their crews were either dead or had long since ditched their ride for some reason. The last new generation ship was found almost a year ago.
Frontier has released spoilers about the event’s possible outcomes if you’re interested in reading about that kind of thing.
