Suggest a massive Elite Dangerous reward (we might even run it!)

Alex Sinclair · 2025-02-10T15:39:50.271Z

You've likely already seen our live suggest-a-reward reward. This short-term reward is similar, only a lot bigger. In short, we want to read your detailed ideas for a super reward with huge prizes! They could be for incredible in-game actions that help shape the galaxy, ambitious art projects, or experimental new video challenges that get the whole Elite Dangerous community fired up and/or involved! Ask yourself: what Elite Dangerous challenge would be worthy of a prize of hundreds or even thousands of dollars? Then think about how exactly that reward could be run. An important consideration, especially with prizes of that size, is that winning entries must be verifiable. So while you're laying out your idea, be sure to consider potential pitfalls and complications. What sort of evidence would be required? Could it be verified with video? What happens if two people contest the prize? Describe your idea carefully. If it strikes us as a great and plausible idea, it might just become the biggest reward that we've ever run! So let your imaginations run wild, commanders. This could be huge....

mypets 2/18/2025, 11:58:51 PM

I thought of a bounty that would challenge players to gather the maximum number of friends to play something like a game of cat and mouse, only in the galaxy! Then he would record everything and send it here for his championship to be evaluated.

In a nutshell, the basics: one player would need to hide for a set period of time within a set perimeter (like a planet, so that capture is possible), while the other players would have the mission of tracking, finding and destroying him before the time runs out.

The player would be selected and then determined as a target for everyone. He could move within the perimeter, without disconnecting for too long (let's not make it too easy).

The target would then be presented to the hunters and would remain hidden on a certain planet, awaiting his hunters. And periodically, some clues about its location would be released, with some hints like the Batman riddle, for example: "In the Middleton of green leaf, in the falcon System"... this would help in the hunt.

The target could change ships, hide in remote areas of the perimeter or even pretend to be an ordinary player (in a detective style, except there won't be a murderer among us).

If the target survives until the time limit, it wins the competition. If it is destroyed, the person who captured it takes the victory, while those who were most active and useful in the hunt would also be recognized as winners.

The event would be monitored and the player would have to record their gameplay. Thus, the player would submit to this bounty, with videos and everything documented, explaining the strategies and tricks he used to take the prize or not. The big winner of the bounty would be the one who masterfully brought together the main topics: a good number of friends to make it dynamic, effective strategies and entertainment, of course. It's an easy event to organize, which would be a lot of fun and would entertain the galactic community and us here at Just About. It justifies being a more expensive prize for the winner to share with their friends (or not haha).

FelaKuti 2/18/2025, 9:46:43 PM

Nothing better than a good old trip around the world, but this time around the galaxy.
A race to visit all 42 sectors of the galaxy (and back to the starting system) in the shortest time possible.
To monitor progress, competitors should provide their logs and beautiful photos on planets in each sector

yan57436 2/18/2025, 7:28:37 PM

Create a documentary about a major event in Eltie Dangerous. Here in Brazil we have a movie about a major central bank robbery in 2005, something like our La Casa de Papel haha (You have that inspiration if you want it). Work it out meticulously, keeping in mind the possible reversals of your journey, trying to almost predict your target's movements, narrating everything, bringing in visual elements. As Alex well knows, I have to bring real-life elements to the elaboration of these bounties, such as the elaboration of models of the targets in 3d programs, real-life reenactments to simulate a group planning an attack, I believe that big bounties are a great incentive for more elaborate productions. The imagination of those who will submit is the limit, narrating the facts as the recordings show, together with the reenactments and elements outside the game, generate almost a documentary of the journey.

If you don't want to record a video, you can make posters of your documentary and present it in writing, almost like a large chapter of a book, but of course written submissions will have lower priorities than recorded ones.

M

MrT 2/18/2025, 3:00:38 AM

My idea for a massive reward is for players to design another galaxy that could potentially be put into the Elite Dangerous game. There is , of course, no promises that the winner would have this new galaxy in the game as that would be up to Frontier to decide. Details looked for in the entries would be things such as:

The size of the galaxy, how many systems, and a proposed name for it
The kinds of stars and planets and how they are distributed within the galaxy
What part of it would be inhabited by life and what kind of life
The kinds of space ports that exist
What other creatures there are, either in space or on planets
The kinds of exo-biology you would expect to find on the surface of planets

ayebawl 2/14/2025, 11:37:43 AM

Personally I'd like to see a cash reward factored into a Frontier run Community Goal event, primarily for verification reasons and secondly to persuade a large group of players to pull together in a common cause.

I like Moonshade Gaming's idea of creating something around the new colonisation update, but I'd prefer to see a longer term challenge - something that might take months or even a year to achieve.

Perhaps setting the community a goal to reach and colonise a distant system, maybe something like the Jameson crash site or even further. Colonia may be a little far... but the lure of a big cash prize might motivate some! It would be very cool to have a colonised highway stretching across the galaxy though.

I think a tiered reward would be fairer than a winner takes all system, and having it tracked through a Community Goal could provide the data required to rank participants. Give the winner a sizeable chunk and then scale it down through those that took place. Everyone who participates gets at least one cent ;)

A bit more info about what colonisation will actually require will be needed, but basing it on mass haulage might be the way to go. Best trucker wins!

Alex SinclairMod2/14/2025, 4:51:26 PM

ayebawl

Cool idea. Do you think 'colonise the furthest system' could work or 'colonise the most systems'?

ayebawl 2/15/2025, 7:27:14 AM

Alex Sinclair

I think it will depend on what the prerequisites are for 'activating' a system's colonisation.

Say a set amount of widgets need to be delivered before the colonise lever is activated. Cmdr Ayebawl delivers 60% of widgets and logs off for the night. Cmdr Alex delivers the final 40% and pulls the lever. Does Cmdr Alex get the colonisation credit or is it worked out another way?

I'm not sure if Frontier have released this level of detail yet which is why I thought haulage might be a safer bet until more information comes out

Alex SinclairMod2/18/2025, 1:24:44 PM

ayebawl

Thanks Ayebawl 🫡

Hunter 2/14/2025, 9:49:55 AM

Elite Dangerous Short Film :

I Think for a massive reward in Elite Dangerous could be to produce a short film, the game have a tremendous high quality audio and vistas that no other game can give you, essential for any good short movie :

A movie Of more then 10-40 minutes that tell a story in the universe of Elite, the participants must treat this reward with care :

-The film must have a strong hook. -Engaging characters from 1 or more depending on the story. -With clear stakes and conflicts. -Visual storytelling, good pace, audio and cinematography. -And most of all the movie must tell a theme or a message. -The movie domain can go from thriller to comedy or even musical movie. -They also have to provide a description of the movie with no major spoiler.

Osiliran 2/13/2025, 9:01:10 AM

Just About Challenge: An epic creative project to add flavour to or expand on the Elite Dangerous universe.

Description: There's been several art related challenges already, both in and out of game, some about themes and others about celebrations. Some of those submissions were very detailed and piqued my interest about how they would work within the Elite 'story'. For example, the 'suggest a new ship' challenge had me asking myself lots of questions about the designs and how this would tie in-game; what did the manufacturer have to say about its new ship or what features were they proud of? Would there be 'TV' advertisements and what things would they say to get you to buy it? Another example is the more story-focused 'report from the front lines of such and such' challenge. What if we could expand on this and watch a news segment or listen to a short podcast about what happened? What about a short episode about a first-hand account on discovering a lost-at-space generational ship? What about a detailed scientific report with interview on the material composition of a thargoid sensor from a lab assistant under Professional Palin? What about the cullinary delights of the galaxy and making up, presenting and baking, your own Elite recipe from the 3300s?

In short, the challenge is about taking creative liberity and adding detail to the Elite universe.

Requirements: Players are required to submit a piece of 'art' that expands on or adds to the rich, deep lore behind the Elite universe. The 'art' piece can be any kind of creative works like painting, creating music, creative writing, video production, tailoring or outfit design, 3D printing, and so on. However, it must add to or expand on the lore behind Elite.

Rewards: I think tiered rewards are best suited for these types of challenges.

Time: 2-3 months is a reasonable amount of time for this challenge in my opinion, especially if it carries a heavy reward.

projectazone 2/12/2025, 6:18:37 PM

Create a new superpower
The participants will have to create a new superpower by creating its image, its description, ethos and the bonuses it gives, they will also have to list the order of the unlockable items and indicate the capital of the superpower as well as creating a story for it. The more detailed it is, the more likely it is to win the prize.

Phoenix_Dfire 2/12/2025, 3:22:54 PM

I could suggest one of three things;-

If Just About is willing to, then the rewards could be used as either prize money or sponsorship for in Game Events which the community organises;-

Buckyball Racing Club is an existing set of races in time trial format. There are ten races, spaced once a month, each in a different system. The routes are organised by various members of the Buckyball racing club and there are two classes, unlimited (where any ship can be used) or Regulation (where only a specific ship build is used). Time trials are entered with screenshots taken a certain points in the course or by monitor a YouTube video or Twitch Stream. More details can be found at either their Discord ( https://discord.gg/YwxcsCf ) or on the forums
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/buckyball-racing-club.193467/
SRV Races - using a tool called EDCoPilot; it is possible to create virtual circuits on planetary surfaces. With a series of these locations set up, it could be possible create a Formula 1 Type series of races. It would need players to volunteer to marshal these events, and to provide virtual cameras of the course which would be used to broadcast the event over twitch / youtube.
CQC Tournament - CQC is idea for these kind of competitions. You could have a simple deathmatch competition, where a number of players play in heats, semi - finals and the final, with obviously the highest scoring player in the final winning the event. Or a knock out tournament where teams play the capture the flag scenario, in a series of matches until the

However, for CQC there a few issues that would need to be overcome in order to get this to work and circumvent the horrible match making;-

Every Player would have to start with a base ship, i.e. none of the more advanced builds that are available in CQC.
Players are put into a random draw, to generate the fixture list of up to 7 players for the heats.
For every game, one player would have to be neutral to provide a virtual camera to broadcast to twitch for commentary. Any player who attacks the camera is immediately disqualified.
The players for the heat (and the Camera player) all form a team and then enter the deathmatch game mode. Hopefully, this will start a match with just those players involved. If players not involved in that heat appear in the match, the players leave the match and try again (this is the most frustrating part of CQC).
Each heat is played with the top scoring players goes through to the next round.
With the Capture the Flag game mode. Each team will be restricted to 3 players each. (two teams of three + the Camera player).
Some dry run CQC matches would have to be run first to see if its possible to run a Tournament like this. The CQC matches themselves are a lot of fun, it's the matchmaking that gets in the way!

Block9 2/12/2025, 8:50:16 AM

I thought of something like the ship that gives the biggest jump wins, it seems simple but the participant can't use the neutron star, the ship can have engineering and it can be prefabricated ships, it can be any ship. The reward can be made in 4 placements, and the reward can only be made by video, without cuts and without background music without editing, and no use of artificial intelligence. The participants who have jumped further away win. There's no way to tie

Y0EMINENCE 2/12/2025, 12:39:17 AM

My massive Elite Dangerous reward submission:

Get first place in a community goal, and submit some of the video how you achieved this! To verify your first place win at community goal you must submit the screen that shows your first place! 🤓🫡

EidLeWeise 2/11/2025, 11:13:23 PM

I've always enjoyed rewarding people for doing deeds unasked and Elite has had so many great examples of this. We've had streamers and podcasters raise thousands of pounds for Charities. We've had the original Skype Community group buying over £1000 of Pizza from Dominos for Frontier just because FD said they would get the Alpha patch out by dinner time (so we arranged for the pizza to be delivered for something like 12 midday) There have been countless rescues by the fuel rats, some truely epic (like beyond Beagle Point), most just in the bubble helping everyone out. We've had commanders hear that a friend's PC's blown up and their mates, or even strangers donate components for them.

This community is so awesome and so generous, that my "suggestion" has to be "wow - that person / group have gone above and beyond. Let's give them some recognition"

Alex SinclairMod2/18/2025, 2:56:29 PM

EidLeWeise

I think this is a really lovely idea, but it would be very difficult to set winning criteria for and judge the winners of. We'd essentially be asking people to do deeds unasked.

MQC 2/11/2025, 4:37:54 PM

"Blaze your own trail" but tell me what brought you here...

In a way, I've always considered Elite Dangerous to be a bit of an "RPG" game, not because you can increase your character's stats in the game, but because I think that, to a certain extent, we all try to "imitate" our own character.

That's why I think that an interesting reward for Elite Dangerous could be to create a narrated story, either in text or in video, explaining the background of your Commander; how he/she became a pilot, adventures and misadventures, goals, desires, philias and phobias, loves and hates, etc.

If you want, it can be intertwined with the lore of the game itself; with the first events of Galnet or with more recent ones, emblematic places or characters, political intricacies or sociocultural issues.

This background could be accompanied by a Holo-me image of the Commander... to put a face to the story...

XCezor 2/11/2025, 4:36:18 PM

Title: Create a modification in another game, and add to it Elite Dangerous stuff.

Elite Dangerous is very limited in terms of adding modifications but it doesn't mean it cannot be showed off in another game. For this reward, create a modification in another game that adds stuff from Elite Dangerous, like the ships, galaxy exploration, Thargoid related stuff, powerplay system (with leaders, territorial expansion, power balance etc.), starports and settlements, technically anything or everything you want to add and that is possible to be made in the game of your chose.

The most important for this reward is faithful recreation of the original game aspects and creative use of the mechanics that the game you are modding has to offer, but if the game was made in 3D style, the detailed models will be very important while grading the mod, as well as the general art style and implemented mechanics.

The game is your choice. It can be everything that is possible to mod, like the Minecraft, Terraria, Lethal Company, Fallout, Hearts of Iron or any other game.

To apply for this reward, you need to pass 3 steps:
1) Send a video or a bunch of screenshots where you are showing off your mod, where you explain in which game it was created, why you have picked this game and what features have been added.
2) Include link to your mod which is a proof that it is an actual valid mod, not a Photoshop creation or Blender animation.
3) To proof the authenticity of your work, record a video of creating graphical assets, the planning you were made or show and explain how your code works, by showing its results in the mod.

We would prefer this to not be AI style made, but since it's not possible to tell if the code was written by AI, we can (still) tell if the artwork was AI generated, so you should avoid using such tools.

GoJapan 2/11/2025, 9:52:21 AM

create a video review of the game Elite Dangerous lasting a maximum of 10 minutes in which you review the game in all its aspects, from the graphics, to the animations and combat, exploration and contents offered, assigning a rating from 1 to 10 at the end

S

Solaris104 2/11/2025, 9:34:33 AM

Challenge : David versus Goliath

Description : show 1 or more battle against Threat 6 or higher opponents using one of the following ships: Sidewinder -Eagle - Viper Mk3 - Imperial Eagle or Cobra Mk3 at Live or video the ship build is up to the player. and it is also permitted to use the aforementioned engineered vessels

Players will have to make a live or video, showing the fight with the described ships facing opponents marked with Threat 6 or higher (only the Bounties are valid), the build of the ships will be described by the participants, the aim is to accept bounties with Threat 6 and above and complete it using one of the ships indicated above, if one is good he can do it.

furthermore and the player will also have to show his build at the end of the fight and show how he built his ship.

XCezor 2/11/2025, 12:43:09 PM

Solaris104

Dark Souls of the Elite Dangerous

S

Solaris104 2/11/2025, 5:49:41 PM

XCezor

yes, Elite Dangerous Dark Souls version, in the end those who are good at battles can do it too

USCSS 2/12/2025, 7:39:09 PM

Solaris104

I like it..

TrialByStory 2/11/2025, 12:58:20 AM

Just About: Elite Dangerous has had a few kayfabe/in-universe bounties, but I've got an idea for one that goes just a bit bigger: Record a vlog from the cockpit. My general frame of reference for this is LoadingReadyRun co-founder Graham Stark, but obviously different folks will have a different touchstone. Regardless though, the general idea is the same: a roughly 10-20 minute video showing off your commander's exploits. It could be a montage of your day doing some mining, maybe a cops-style docu-drama about hunting pirates, or maybe talking galactic politics while you fly a trade route. You could have some fun with the framing too, is this what your average day-to-day looks like, or is the stuff that's happening in the footage out of the ordinary? Everything has a story, and you're in control of what this one is and how you decide to tell it.

This could be a fun way to show some creativity and encourage a bit of role play while also actually exhibiting some of the different ways we all play the game.

Moonshade Gaming 2/12/2025, 12:58:40 AM

In one of the other Just About communities I recall seeing a "Be the first to ___" challenge, and I think an event like that could be implemented in Elite fairly easily.

With the upcoming release of the Trailblazer update, there is going to be a community push to colonize systems. The first CMDR to get a system colonized with, say, both a orbital station and a ground port deserves to be recognized and rewarded for their effort.

As far as verification goes, screenshots of the purchase and placement of the claim beacon, arrival of the first carrier, and completion of each port, accompanied by screenshots of the system architect UI to show your ownership should be sufficient. Obviously some of the specifics do still need to wait for the release of Pathfinders (or at least for the Elite Partners to share their test server footage) for us to know what exactly can be pulled to use as proof.

Additionally, there could be separate categories; one for CMDRs that work mostly on their own, and another for CMDRs backed by a squadron. For a CMDR colonizing a system [mostly] on their own, screenshots of the starting material requirements and screenshots of their deliveries showing that they bought and delivered at least 75%+ of the materials would be sufficient proof (can't exactly stop space truckers from randomly pitching in should they feel so inclined). A CMDR working with their squadron should still be moving a sizable portion of the materials, let's say 30%.

I imagine there would likely be several more considerations to make, but as a framework, I believe this has merit for an upcoming challenge.

ENDERS 2/11/2025, 2:29:26 PM

Moonshade Gaming

Love the idea! Found a typo calling the Trailblazer update the "Pathfinder update" ;) Cheers!

Stormseeker 2/11/2025, 4:19:47 PM

Create a new mechanic as detailed as possible.

mastercesspit 2/15/2025, 12:08:52 AM

show us your suits, not much content as yet on ground combat, so how about we show off our combat suits? a big grind but as with ships, engineered suits are a must

As another thought,

How about an on foot kill of the week? i did much testing of my suits in ground CZ's and i think some footage of that would be most entertaining, along with bringing to light the ground side of Elite Dangerous, i haven't done much lately, but it could attract some more traditional 1st person shooter consumers to the game.

have fun 07