Some of you may be aware already but the beta for "Horizons" The first paid expansion for Elite: Dangerous went live today. This expansion promises to deliver a lot over the next year, including customizable characters, Multi crew ships (2 or 3 players working together to fly a single ship) Ship launched fighters (AI and player controlled) and a lot of improvements to the base game.

However the big headline grabbing feature is the ability to land on planets. Initially this is limited to planets without an atmosphere (so you can't land on earth just yet) Once on a planet you can deploy an SRV (surface reconnaissance vehicle) and explore your surroundings.

Today I got to try this feature out and I have to say it's pretty cool. I have included two videos I recorded. The first shows the landing procedure and the second shows me fooling around with the SRV and then taking off.

Landing

Working out how to land took a couple of attempts. You have to guess when it comes to the glide phase as you have no engines so it seems quite easy to overshoot your destination. You don't see it in the video but you can just land anywhere on the planet. It's very cool to see a giant crater and just go land and check it out.

Messing about in the SRV and takeoff

The second video shows me exploring the planet In the SRV. At the beginning i'm trying to drive back into the hanger and get back on the ship. (think it bugged out) So instead I just decided to do a bit of exploring. The SRV can get a bit out of control but it's very fun, The handling of it will be affected by the gravity of the planet/moon you are on. It does seem a little fragile though so you need to be careful. There are missions that will require the SRV to be used in combat but I havn't played with any of that stuff yet, though i'm excited to give that stuff a try. You will notice at the end of the video I call my ship back to me. I did this once before and it landed a lot closer to where I was, and in the video I am in a big crater so maybe the AI pathfinding is a little off at the moment? You can also dismiss your ship if you land outside the safety of a port and it will take up an orbital cruise.

Hope a few other bombers check this out. It seems very cool and I'm excited to see where this game goes over the next year.

So anyone else tried this yet?

@mister_v: Nope, but after reading this and watching your vids I intend to.

I messed around with Horizons for the first time earlier today. It was something.

Im playing on Steam. I have Elite Dangerous base game already, and am currently downloading Horizons. Do I need to start playing my game through the Horizons game launcher thing on Steam? Or just the base Elite Dangerous on Steam? Also, im in deep space, is that okay? I know I have to return to inhabited space to get my SRV and stuff, but theres no weird requirements right? I can start 2000 Ly out?

What is there to actually do on planets?

I've been getting back into Elite again this past week and took the plunge (despite promising never to buy an Early Access game ever again) with Horizons about 5 minutes ago, mainly on the recommendation of a friend.

Don't know how I'll get along with it, I really don't. I hated the bloody Mako...

@mike: Missions, theres exploration and combat it looks like based on videos and such. Apparently people have claimed to be getting advances in their exploration rank by exploring planets. Theres also bases on the surfaces of certain planets.

The problem with these sort of things is that as @mike points out, there isn't all that much to do. Or rather, it's impossible for even a large scale developer to flesh that content out. It's already hard enough to craft an exciting 8-15hr single player campaign with varied worlds and unique art assets. Doing the same thing for a sprawling open ended space sim is night impossible unless you make like 2 really detailed planets and then continue developing more in perpetuity.

@humanity: I don't necessarily have a problem with Elite: Dangerous in general, I mean I put a couple hundred hours into that game just flying around and getting into trouble. But this expansion kind of bothers me. One, it's being rolled out essentially in episodes over the course of the next year, and two, right now you can only land on rocky, lifeless planets. Nothing with an atmosphere. All of the mechanics and stuff are cool, but that isn't enough for me to justify dropping $59.99 on an expansion. Especially since we don't even know exactly what the next few pieces of the expansion are even going to bring to the game.

I really feel like they handled this whole thing extremely poorly. It's just too expensive and there is not enough information about the entirety of the package in order for me to justify spending any money on it right now. Maybe in a year that'll be different.

Yeah, it sounds really enticing, but the prospect of dropping full price on an expansion for a game I already have gives me pause. I may hold off until more of the features are implemented, and maybe the price drops a little bit.

@draugen: It's 25% off if you already have Elite Dangerous.

£29.99 instead of £39.99 made me jump in.

@dave_tacitus: Ah, you're right. Steam showed the full price on the front page, but clicking the actual game shows 25% off.

Decisions, decisions.

@draugen: There's not a lot of game there yet - You can only land on select, rocky moons - but your lander is fun to drive. It's neat to finally be able to see your ship, too.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

They have the potential to do some really cool stuff with the planets. During the Horizons beta they where running a community event that involved deciphering Octal codes to find out the coordinates of a crashed ship. If they do more of that stuff ill be happy. There isn't a huge amount you can do on planets at the moment. Although I suspect when they roll out more of the crafting stuff early next year that will add more of a reason to go hunting for materials on the surface.

I can see why people are hesitant to pay for Horizons but I'm glad I did.

I'd try it out if not for the fact that they're attempting to charge $60 CDN (that's with the 25% discount) for what is essentially early access DLC.

For the people saying there's not much to do, I'm just speculating here, it seems the developers from the beginning have built this game around the idea of the player base creating the 'stuff to do' space fights and whatnot. I think the game just needs more players and players forming groups Ala eve online or something. Problem is I don't think a ton of people play this game with the major population, they just make private games.

My friend and I tried to get an SRV into space. I feel like we accomplished at least a little something.