18 months into a massive war, MMO devs give the Elite Dangerous community all the tools they need to win - but no instruction manual

The Thargoids have been "quite the thorn" in the side of the Elite Dangerous community for a long time. So says lead game designer Luke Betterton, who spoke to GamesRadar+ amid the latest development in a conflict that's been raging for 18 months. Now, developer Frontier is giving players everything they need to turn the Thargoid threat back into space - except the instructions on exactly how to use their new tools.

In 2022, Betterton says that a fleet of Thargoid warships known as Titans raced towards human-occupied space, parked up, "and unleashed eight unstoppable hordes of Thargoid vessels - methodically destroying everything human in their way." For the past year and a half, players have been focused on trying to hold this alien threat back, both with "humanitarian efforts" aimed at helping civilians, and with direct action aimed at the Thargoids themselves.

Eventually, one of the Titans was destroyed, but several others are still "dominating" large swathes of Elite Dangerous' galaxy. But the war has swung back and forth plenty of times over the past year and a half. "You must remember that the players in this war have been fighting these battles non-stop now for well over a year," Betterton tells me. "And it's not like they've always been on the back foot. Depending on how the players coordinate we really don't know how long it might be before there is a true end to the Thargoid War."

That's because while players have what they need to win, they don't necessarily know how to use their new toys. That's completely intentional, as Betterton says that "how we set players off down a path in Elite Dangerous has varied over time - sometimes we share little hints, or we can hide small narrative details in large updates." Other times, as with the tools that led to the destruction of that first ship, "we want to be really bold and clear with our information so everyone can get involved."

That's not normally what happens, but Frontier says that with players having spent