Elite Dangerous added only its second new starship in five years

Elite Dangerous, the spacefaring game from Frontier Developments, has had quite a few updates this year. The latest adds a new starship called the Lakon Type-8 to the roster, only the second to be added to the game in the last five years. I recently took it for a quick test drive, and I think it could breathe a bit of life back into the venerable title. But the update is not without its controversies.

The Lakon Type-8 looks more like a forklift than a spaceship, but those big booms out front serve several interesting purposes. For one, they get the nearly 100-meter-long ship’s maneuvering thrusters further out from the ship’s center of gravity. That extra length gives you much more control over the rate of speed while maneuvering, an excellent feature since we’re talking about a ship that’s twice as long as an Asp Explorer.

The second big perk of those twin booms is aesthetic. While in flight, they allow you to watch the lights of multiple stars play off your ship’s hull in real time. That’s not something you can do when you’re perched in a cockpit stuck to the nose of the ship, as in an Asp Explorer or a Type-9. Meanwhile, even though those booms block the view a bit, the Type-8’s massive domed canopy provides an excellent field of view overall, especially when landing. You can even see your forward landing gear extend and lock into place right from inside the cockpit.

Stepping outside the ship using the in-game photo mode, you can also see lots of other animations during take-off, landing, and when maneuvering. Cooling vanes and wings extend and lock into position as you depart, while the ship’s four massive main engines jut out to lock into place, and even vector slightly when turning. All told, there’s quite a few bells and whistles on this ugly beast – just the thing for avid in-game videographers keen to record their journeys.

The Type-8 is billed as a speedy little hauler. The stock boost is also pretty spicy, netting a significant speed boost compared to the Python. And even all kitted out, it’s still got more than 100 extra tons of cargo room than a Python. It also sports loads of hardpoints for exotic weapons, but that beefy size makes it a challenging choice for combat.

So what about exploration? I’ve spent more time in the game searching the stars than doing anything else, and I have yet to give up on my beloved Evelynne Christine, the Asp Explorer that I flew to Beagle Point in 2019. A video by longtime Elite Dangerous YouTuber AlsWulf (embedded above) makes the case that the Type-8 can fill the explorer role as well. His stripped-down version with fully-engineered components and a Guardian FSD booster comes close to 60 light years per jump. While that’s not quite as far as my Asp will take me, those are some seriously long legs for a cargo ship.

Here’s the controversial bit: Currently, the Type-8 is only available as a pre-built ship, meaning that you’ll have to pay a little over $12 in real-world money to fly it in the game. But we expect that in a few months it will be available for purchase using in-game currency – just like its nearest predecessor, the Python MK II, which first became available for purchase in May. In a game that originally began its life a decade ago as a $150 closed beta experience, it’s a relatively small price to pay the developers who have been at it for well over a decade. You can find the Type-8 in its standard configuration for sale on the Elite Dangerous storefront, where it requires the PC client to play.