'Elite Dangerous: Horizons - The Engineers' AI Problems Addressed By Frontier Developments

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Frontier Developments is working on a fix for a major bug from Elite Dangerous: Horizons - The Engineers. Find out how much progress the studio made and how the issue is impacting Elite: Dangerous players.
Frontier Developments is working on a fix for a major bug from Elite Dangerous: Horizons - The Engineers. Find out how much progress the studio made and how the issue is impacting Elite: Dangerous players. Photo: Frontier Developments

Frontier Developments has released a patch to address an issue with Elite Dangerous: Horizons’ newly-OP NPC ships, following a tweak to the game’s artificial intelligence in its latest expansion, and that’s just the start of this weekend’s big Elite Dangerous: Horizons news.

If you’ve been playing Elite: Dangerous much in the last week, there’s a good chance you’ve come into contact with a few more NPC ships than normal. Depending on how you were traveling at the time, things might not have gone so great for you and/or any other pilots you happened to be flying with at the time. Turns out, an unexpected issue with Elite: Dangerous’ latest expansion, the recently-released Engineers expansion, opened up a world of pain for the EDH community.

According to Zac Antonaci, head of community management at Frontier, an unexpected network issue apparently made it possible for the game’s AI to begin meshing weapon stats and abilities that were never intended to be paired. Worse, interdiction -- being pulled out of hyperdrive and forced into combat -- has become much more common since last week’s introduction of The Engineers . As a result, players were being slaughtered en masse, costing the community millions (if not billions) of credits in repairs and lost goods.

Frontier is currently working on a permanent solution to the problem, and has already removed the upgraded weaponry from NPC ships; however, Antonaci says the team hasn’t scaled back the game’s AI in any way. Interdictions will still be more common and attackers will be more capable than they’ve been in the past. But well-prepared players shouldn’t have to worry about falling to the monstrous new weapons that appeared last week. The fix has already been released for PC versions of the game and should be available on Xbox One in the next few days.

Elsewhere, Frontier Developments is already celebrating the console debut of Elite Dangerous: Horizons, now that the game’s first expansion, Planetary Landings, is available to the Xbox One community. Like their PC counterparts, Xbox owners won’t have the option of purchasing the new Elite: Dangerous contents piecemeal. Those interested in exploring the atmosphereless planets and celestial bodies scattered throughout the game still have to spend $60 on the complete Elite Dangerous: Horizons Expansion Pass. Unfortunately, there’s no word on when players can expect to see The Engineers on Xbox One.

Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for additional Elite Dangerous: Horizons coverage throughout 2016 and for however long Frontier Developments supports Elite: Dangerous in the years to come.

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