Elite Dangerous players get their first new ground vehicle since 2015

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey receives its ninth update on Thursday. Along with some much needed improvements, publisher Frontier Developments is also adding a new ground vehicle to the game. Called the Scorpion, it’s the first wheeled vehicle to be introduced since 2015.

Players in Elite Dangerous travel a realistic recreation of our Milky Way galaxy with more than 400 billion star systems in all, only a fraction of which have even been seen by its players. Launched in 2014, it was later augmented with the release of Elite Dangerous: Horizons. That expansion added planetary landings to the game for the first time. It also added the Scarab, a single-seat surface reconnaissance vehicle (SRV) not unlike a six-wheeled version of the Lunar Roving Vehicle from the Apollo missions.

Image: Frontier Developments

Well, I guess it was a little different in that it had vectored thrust nozzles on each wheel to help you keep from driving off the side of a mountain and into orbit, and also a twin-barreled, turret-mounted laser repeater on the roof. But I digress.

The SRV Scorpion is a four-wheeled armored combat vehicle with room for two: a driver and a dedicated gunner. Capable of reaching speeds of up to 50 mph, it fulfills an infantry support role. That should mean that more players will be able to have more fun together in Odyssey, which added on-foot gameplay for the first time in May.

How this will improve the Elite Dangerous community’s opinions of the controversial Odyssey update is an open question. The launch of that update heralded many changes to the game, and came with a boatload of bugs that necessitated a personal apology from co-creator David Braben.

For full patch notes on Update 9, including information on the new Multi-Limpet Controller module now available for starships, see the official Frontier forums.