Space stations have concourses where you can shop for suits and weapons, take missions from the terminals and NPCs, trade materials with the bartender, turn in exobiology (plant) scans, buy and move ships around, sign up to fight in ground conflict zones (on foot) with a dropship to take you there, or catch an Apex taxi to any station within 100 ly range.

Space stations with ports allow you to swap ships and recall ships from other locations. You can also rebuy your most recently destroyed ship.

If you're in a team, you can use the elevators to visit any hangar where one of your teammates has parked. If their ship has two or more seats, you can board it, and they can fly you other locations.

Over 400,000 Odyssey settlements have been added to the game, with about 28-36 variations in size, layout and economy. (E.g. tourist sites, mining sites, agri sites, etc.) A lot of them are used as destination for missions - of which there is a very wide range.

Occupied settlements are patrolled by soldiers, and have scientists and other civilians around the place. Higher security bases have a skimmer called a Goliath which is enough to give any Cmdr a bad day.

Abandoned settlements can be on fire, or simply powered down. Some of these are infested with scavengers, and if you can take them all out you can loot the base in peace.

If your notoriety is high Omnipol troopers can show up, scanning you AND the base inhabitants alike. Anyone with a bounty is executed on sight. Running away is advised.

Settlements have crates in the surroundings (locked and unlocked). To loot any locked crates you need to access a terminal and read off the keycode. The terminal also allows you to tag any NPC or point of interest at the settlement, but you'll need clearance for higher-security areas.

Missions include (but are not limited to)

• Delivering and picking up packages (legal or not)
  
• Stealing specific items
  
• Assassinations
  
• Defending a cargo item from waves of incoming enemies
  
• Helping crooks defend their stash against waves of Omnipol (this used to be the hardest on-foot combat in the game. See AX Reactivation Missions below.)
  
• Uploading viruses to halt production
  
• Raiding smuggler caches
  
• Stealing production samples
  
• Disabling the power at a settlement
  
• Restoring power and putting fires out at abandoned bases
  
• Eliminating scavengers at abandoned bases
  
• Power-on missions in systems ravaged by the Thargoids
  
  
  
• Power-on missions (with a side quest) at settlements protected by the new Thargoid Revenants.
  
• Wiping out every living being at settlements, and more.

To sign up for Odyssey missions, disembark at a station or ground port and head for the terminals in the concourse. There are also NPC mission givers at concourse and settlements.

If a system has recently been attacked by thargoids, the ship mission board will offer on-foot power restore missions.

If a system has an active war, ground conflict zones pit you against an enemy team with capture points. A high difficulty CZ can net you about 10 million credits in bounties.

Just visit the Frontline Solutions desk on the concourse, where you can pick a conflict, choose a side, and board a custom dropship which will fly you to the fight and drop you out of its belly.




You can also fly directly to a conflict zone, disembark, dismiss your ship and choose a side.

High CZ can pay 8-12m per fight, depending on how well you do, so they're a decent earner.

What is missing from these Conflict Zones?

a) Variety. It would be nice if there was a 'defend building X' variant where one team is inside trying to keep the other from gaining access. Having a chokepoint in the doorway(s) would lead to intense, crazy action. A building with more than one entrance would be ideal.

Other players can physically fly aboard your ship, drive your SRVs, and run around doing any ground mission with you (all Odyssey missions can be shared.)


There's a new 2-seater SRV (the Scorpion) which allows you to drive other Cmdrs around. You drive, they fire the multicannon/rocket launcher.

Boarding a ship together, flying to a settlement, disembarking and then running around causing absolute chaos is one of the high points of Odyssey for me.

In larger groups, splitting the players and fighting in conflict zones on opposite sides is a huge about of fun.

You can also try 1v1 fighter combat: Fit a size 6 fighter hangar and 2 identical fighters, another player boards your ship and you fly to a nearby planet. Deploy the fighters just above the surface, then dogfight in the valleys and around the mountains. If one player is killed they respawn on the ship, where they can take the next fighter and rejoin the battle.

There are approximately 800 types of plant to find and scan, located on the new thin-atmosphere planets you can land on.

These planets have skies in a wide range of colours, depending on the chemical makeup of their atmosphere, and sunsets on some of them are spectacular.




Plantlife is found on atmospheric, landable planets.



Scanning plants is very lucrative. An undiscovered species can net you almost 100 million credits for three samples.

Horizons-era structures have not been updated to include any Odyssey assets. For example, if you visit a Guardian ruin, there are no doors to open, and no on-foot-only content to partake in. (You can still shoot sentinels, knock off destructible panels, energise the pylons, etc, all with hand weapons.)


However... some Horizons SRV missions were almost impossible in the original Scarab, which wasn't strong enough to fight its way past medium or high security defences. These missions are incredibly good fun in the new Scorpion SRV.

So, take a 'Discreet power failure required' mission, fly out and deploy the Scorpion, and enjoy some of the most intense vehicular combat in the game. For extra fun take a team mate or two, and tackle a high-security Horizons settlement together.

Odyssey has its own set of engineers, both in the bubble and in the Colonia region.

Materials you loot, or obtain from mission rewards, can be traded or sold at bars. You can also use them to improve suits and weapons, and the engineers will allow you to fit mods like night vision, scopes, extra battery and so on.

One point: unlike the ship engineering, Pioneer stores in Odyssey sometimes have pre-engineered, pre-upgraded items. G1 is the lowest, available almost everywhere. G5 is the highest, and can only be achieved with engineering. Specials include G2 and G3 equipment, and the latter is good enough for anything you might encounter in the game.

A few updates ago we got full Fleet Carrier interiors, along with new services that can be optionally installed.

You can disembark at any Fleet Carrier, assuming you can dock there.

The hangar bay has a custom Fleet Carrier elevator entrance, with the name of the carrier and two lifts to the upper deck.

You can use the elevator to visit the hangar of any team mate, and board their ship if they've given permission.

On the way to the front of the carrier you will walk past four corridors. Whether these are open or sealed depends on the services the owner has installed. More on that below.

At the fore end of the carrier there is an impressive seating are with room for around 20 commanders. This area offers a spectacular view through huge windows, and sitting here for a carrier jump is an experience and a half.


There is also a secure elevator to the Command Deck, which the owner and their team mates can use. Here you'll find the captain's chair and three chairs for the team, as well as a separate office for the captain with a desk, a bench seat with a view out of the carrier, and the all-important coffee maker.

What on-foot services are available?

Barkeeper: Here you can trade and sell materials, just like you can at any concourse. In addition, the carrier owner can store up to 1000 extra Odyssey materials, data and items, and optionally set up sell or buy orders. In other words, unlike ship engineering materials, in Odyssey you can buy and sell them like commodities.

Vista Genomics: Sell your exobiology data directly to a carrier. Given exobiology can make hundreds of millions of credits, this one service makes deep space exploration with a carrier 100% viable. After all, you only need to scan a couple of species a week to cover the maintenance.

Pioneer store: Unlike the concourse editions, this one doesn't randomly sell pre-engineered suits or weapons. However the carrier owner CAN set the store up to sell e-breaches.

If the owner has installed the Shipyard, you can also visit this on foot to recall a ship, swap ships, etc.

The beauty of the fleet carrier is that a whole team can dock on board and - now that carrier interiors are a thing - embark on each others ships to take on missions together.

What is missing from carrier interiors?

a) The terminals don't offer missions from local factions, which should definitely be included
b) There's no Apex taxi service too or from Carriers, which is sorely needed.

There is a huge range of clothing, armour designs, weapon skins and helmets available in the game shop, which uses ARX (the currency you buy with real money)

It's not cheap, but some of them look really, really good, and there's nothing like showing off a big shiny weapon when you team up with friends.

The Maelstroms arrived towards the end of 2022, signalling the next phase in the war against the Thargoids.


To enter a Maelstrom you'll need limpets to remove caustic damage and also heal your hull. You'll encounter caustic generators replenishing the clouds, which explode with a massive bang if they detect you.


To penetrate deep into the Maelstrom you'll need the new pulse wave neutraliser, which can be unlocked at the rescue megaships.


Once you get past the pulse wave, you can fly to the Thargoid Titan. This gigantic structure has nodes you can extract materials from, ships arriving and departing, and defensive turrets.


As of update 17 you can deploy a new type of sub-surface charge to release and rescue human prisoners captured by the Thargoids throughout the war.

A new type of ground site (Thargoid Matrix) appeared on 40-50 planets near the Titan maelstrom systems.

Since they're all located on atmospheric planets, Horizons players cannot access them. This is Odyssey exclusive content.

For Update 16, the sites had thargoid Revenants patrolling, and you could collect Sap from tree-like structures.

The Thargoid Matrix sites from Update 16 have evolved into Thargoid Spire sites.

There are currently 45 of these surface sites, and every one of them is on an Odyssey-only planet which means you can't access them from Horizons.

These sites offer some of the best on foot, SRV and ship gameplay in the entire game, and while you can tackle them solo they are a load of fun in a large team or group.

The spires are now enormous, with petals you can land on. There's on-foot gameplay where you can activate various nerve clusters and retrieve new materials. There are now missions at rescue megaships to hand in these materials, which leads to a second part of the mission where you return with a modified compound.

These latter missions pay out big-time in ship engineering materials.

There's an huge, aggressive new thargoid 'skimmer' which has 3-4 modes of attack, and can shoot at several commanders simultaneously.

There are Orthrus interceptors constantly spawning, and shooting them down earns 40m credits each. (I've made a billion an hour in a team doing this.)

The Scorpion SRV comes into its own against these Banshees, and it's great fun to team up in a single SRV with one player driving while the other uses the turret weapons.

I know some players complain about 'oh noes, more Thargoid content', but this is seriously good fun, and doesn't require engineering or special unlocks.

Four new ships are being added to Odyssey:

The Python Mk II (already in game, can buy with credits)


The Type-8 (currently unlockable with ARX, buyable with credits in November)


The Mandalay Explorer (ARX unlock in October, credits in January)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea70BndYL4I

An unknown fourth vessel later in the year.

Each new ship is unlockable with ARX for the first 3 months, then available in-game for credits. But if you only have Horizons, the ships are only available as ARX unlocks.