Extra info markers on my Galaxy Map? How does it work?
Elite has a lot a hand-crafted areas and mysteries hidden within the procedurally-generated galaxy, but they're needles in a haystack. However one of Elite's more dusty and forgotten features is an extra set of map bookmarks reserved for the "squadrons" feature, hence [GOLD] Squadron exists to passively use this feature to give people a set of useful hint markers on their map in-game, showing you whenever one of those interesting hand-crafted needles is nearby. (You join Gold Squadron to have the markers show up, and otherwise don’t need to do anything.)
Of course, you also get the designation GOLD beside your name whenever you or another CMDR sees you, and a rank made famous for assaulting the Death Star!
This gives you a way to discover Elite’s hand-crafted areas without spoilers and without web-searching: it adds a collection of green bookmarks to your map showing the location of starter-clues or signals that you would probably otherwise never find due to the vastness of the galaxy. These signals can lead you into mysteries or unusual places of interest. (Often the bookmarks show the location of a Listening Post (deep-space probe) for example, that has found a signal indicating something interesting nearby.)
If during your travels you notice one of these bookmarks on a nearby system, you could detour to check it out or simply continue on your way. It's a non-intrusive way to find interesting game content from inside the game. Gold Squadron’s internal statements can also highlight long-forgotten Galnet stories that contain information leading down a rabbithole…
An example of what the bookmarks look like on your map
Gold Squadron is meant as a service to help CMDR’s encounter more of the mysteries and stories of the galaxy that we normally miss or have to search online to find out about. There are no obligations to membership and like any squadron you can exit at any time. Feel free to approve new member applications too; Gold Squadron is open to anyone interested in having the bookmarks, and I won't always be online to do it. The green bookmarks on your map can also all be hidden and unhidden as a group, same as other types of bookmarks.
And if you know of something in the galaxy that you think really should be included, leave a reply about it here (but please use the spoiler formatting options so that people don't accidentally learn about it here unless they want to!)
Wait – what is a squadron? Will membership make me a target of anyone?
Squadrons are a general-purpose feature of Elite intended to broadly help groups of players act on whatever common interests they have. For other squadrons that might include system politics or combat, etc. For Gold Squadron, members simply gain interesting bookmarks on the map for as long as you want to remain joined. Gold Squadron is not aligned with any faction or power and does not make you a target. You can leave any squadron at any time, and you can't be members of multiple squadrons at the same time.
(I want Gold Squadron to be safe for new players as well as old. If you play in OPEN just be aware that the squadron menu allows you to read which system another member's ship is in. That info is not necessary for our purpose but I don't think it can be disabled. However there is no cost to leaving the squadron then rejoining again later, and doing this whenever you feel your location should be hidden from other members. Also let me know if someone is trying to abuse the squadron info such as attempting unwanted interactions.)
What is a Listening Post? What does it reveal?
The galaxy in Elite is filed with many interesting events and stories and mysteries, but these are dwarfed by the vastness of the galaxy, so like needles in a haystack it is vanishingly rare to stumble across any. Listening Posts are one of the methods of locating some of the stories of the galaxy, but they too are needles in the haystack. Listening Posts are deep-space probes that search for and process nearby signals. If you encounter a Listening Post, it probably has something interesting to tell you; a clue to follow!
If you are in a system that has a Listening Post, it will appear on your Nav Panel when you are within 1000Ls of it. Travel to it, drop out of supercruise, and target it to scan it. It will send a message (to your Comms Panel) containing the most interesting signal it has intercepted. Often the signal may be incomplete or garbled but still provide clues. Often the Listening Post message-header will include two other systems nearby containing Listening Posts that also detected the signal. Visiting those posts will give you more pieces of the message or its location. Alternatively you can often use the signal range information as a clue to where the signal came from and not need the full message to investigate further.
An Unregistered Comms Beacon is a deep-space probe a bit like a Listening Post but usually intended for covert applications and so it is a step up in complexity to wring information out of them. They can be found the same way through proximity, but their messages might need you to decrypt or decipher them, and they might only transmit their message once an hour (or even less!) instead of responding to a scan at any time. Unregistered Comms Beacons have often required community cooperation to figure out, so if you end up struggling don't feel like you have to solve it alone.
For an extra hint you can check the bookmark name in the map menus. Usually the name just hints at how a (fairly dumb) deep-space probe might report the signal, so the name describes the most obvious peculiarity but that might not match what is most interesting about the signal to a CMDR.
Sometimes there is useful information or a clue provided in the name if originally you might have that info from eg. a now long-expired Galnet article.
Bookmarks ending in +, ++, or +++ indicate there may be a rabbithole here that goes deeper than a typical Listening Post, though this is not consistently implemented yet.
How do I join Gold Squadron?
The Squadron menu option is on the Home Panel (HUD-Right), next to the Codex link (above the Engineers link, Galnet News, etc.)
From the Squadron menus you can go to Browse Squadrons, search for squadron code "GOLD", and apply to join. (There will be a delay until someone is online to approve the application. Once you are a member, I encourage you to occaisonally check for any others waiting to join so you can approve their membership too, but there is no obligation)
You start ranked as Gold One. (Currently this is written “Gold 1” in-game because Elite's profanity filter censors “Gold One” for unknown reasons.)
News
Right now I am gauging interest in this, so there are plenty of bookmarks but still many more mysteries in the galaxy waiting to be included. If plenty of people join then I’ll increase the amount of time I spend adding and curating bookmarks and Galnet archives. If there is not much interest then, well, it won't matter
Elite Legacy: While the Squadron also exists in Legacy, the bookmarks were added to Odyssey so they may come to Legacy in the future but probably aren't there yet. Still, feel free to join in Legacy, and if you're joined feel free to accept any membership applications from others (because applications otherwise get checked infrequently in Legacy)
This is Gold Leader, standing by...
Happy Exploring!
Elite has a lot a hand-crafted areas and mysteries hidden within the procedurally-generated galaxy, but they're needles in a haystack. However one of Elite's more dusty and forgotten features is an extra set of map bookmarks reserved for the "squadrons" feature, hence [GOLD] Squadron exists to passively use this feature to give people a set of useful hint markers on their map in-game, showing you whenever one of those interesting hand-crafted needles is nearby. (You join Gold Squadron to have the markers show up, and otherwise don’t need to do anything.)
Of course, you also get the designation GOLD beside your name whenever you or another CMDR sees you, and a rank made famous for assaulting the Death Star!
This gives you a way to discover Elite’s hand-crafted areas without spoilers and without web-searching: it adds a collection of green bookmarks to your map showing the location of starter-clues or signals that you would probably otherwise never find due to the vastness of the galaxy. These signals can lead you into mysteries or unusual places of interest. (Often the bookmarks show the location of a Listening Post (deep-space probe) for example, that has found a signal indicating something interesting nearby.)
If during your travels you notice one of these bookmarks on a nearby system, you could detour to check it out or simply continue on your way. It's a non-intrusive way to find interesting game content from inside the game. Gold Squadron’s internal statements can also highlight long-forgotten Galnet stories that contain information leading down a rabbithole…
An example of what the bookmarks look like on your map
Gold Squadron is meant as a service to help CMDR’s encounter more of the mysteries and stories of the galaxy that we normally miss or have to search online to find out about. There are no obligations to membership and like any squadron you can exit at any time. Feel free to approve new member applications too; Gold Squadron is open to anyone interested in having the bookmarks, and I won't always be online to do it. The green bookmarks on your map can also all be hidden and unhidden as a group, same as other types of bookmarks.
And if you know of something in the galaxy that you think really should be included, leave a reply about it here (but please use the spoiler formatting options so that people don't accidentally learn about it here unless they want to!)
Wait – what is a squadron? Will membership make me a target of anyone?
Squadrons are a general-purpose feature of Elite intended to broadly help groups of players act on whatever common interests they have. For other squadrons that might include system politics or combat, etc. For Gold Squadron, members simply gain interesting bookmarks on the map for as long as you want to remain joined. Gold Squadron is not aligned with any faction or power and does not make you a target. You can leave any squadron at any time, and you can't be members of multiple squadrons at the same time.
(I want Gold Squadron to be safe for new players as well as old. If you play in OPEN just be aware that the squadron menu allows you to read which system another member's ship is in. That info is not necessary for our purpose but I don't think it can be disabled. However there is no cost to leaving the squadron then rejoining again later, and doing this whenever you feel your location should be hidden from other members. Also let me know if someone is trying to abuse the squadron info such as attempting unwanted interactions.)
What is a Listening Post? What does it reveal?
The galaxy in Elite is filed with many interesting events and stories and mysteries, but these are dwarfed by the vastness of the galaxy, so like needles in a haystack it is vanishingly rare to stumble across any. Listening Posts are one of the methods of locating some of the stories of the galaxy, but they too are needles in the haystack. Listening Posts are deep-space probes that search for and process nearby signals. If you encounter a Listening Post, it probably has something interesting to tell you; a clue to follow!
If you are in a system that has a Listening Post, it will appear on your Nav Panel when you are within 1000Ls of it. Travel to it, drop out of supercruise, and target it to scan it. It will send a message (to your Comms Panel) containing the most interesting signal it has intercepted. Often the signal may be incomplete or garbled but still provide clues. Often the Listening Post message-header will include two other systems nearby containing Listening Posts that also detected the signal. Visiting those posts will give you more pieces of the message or its location. Alternatively you can often use the signal range information as a clue to where the signal came from and not need the full message to investigate further.
An Unregistered Comms Beacon is a deep-space probe a bit like a Listening Post but usually intended for covert applications and so it is a step up in complexity to wring information out of them. They can be found the same way through proximity, but their messages might need you to decrypt or decipher them, and they might only transmit their message once an hour (or even less!) instead of responding to a scan at any time. Unregistered Comms Beacons have often required community cooperation to figure out, so if you end up struggling don't feel like you have to solve it alone.
For an extra hint you can check the bookmark name in the map menus. Usually the name just hints at how a (fairly dumb) deep-space probe might report the signal, so the name describes the most obvious peculiarity but that might not match what is most interesting about the signal to a CMDR.
Sometimes there is useful information or a clue provided in the name if originally you might have that info from eg. a now long-expired Galnet article.
Bookmarks ending in +, ++, or +++ indicate there may be a rabbithole here that goes deeper than a typical Listening Post, though this is not consistently implemented yet.
How do I join Gold Squadron?
The Squadron menu option is on the Home Panel (HUD-Right), next to the Codex link (above the Engineers link, Galnet News, etc.)
From the Squadron menus you can go to Browse Squadrons, search for squadron code "GOLD", and apply to join. (There will be a delay until someone is online to approve the application. Once you are a member, I encourage you to occaisonally check for any others waiting to join so you can approve their membership too, but there is no obligation)
You start ranked as Gold One. (Currently this is written “Gold 1” in-game because Elite's profanity filter censors “Gold One” for unknown reasons.)
News
Right now I am gauging interest in this, so there are plenty of bookmarks but still many more mysteries in the galaxy waiting to be included. If plenty of people join then I’ll increase the amount of time I spend adding and curating bookmarks and Galnet archives. If there is not much interest then, well, it won't matter
Elite Legacy: While the Squadron also exists in Legacy, the bookmarks were added to Odyssey so they may come to Legacy in the future but probably aren't there yet. Still, feel free to join in Legacy, and if you're joined feel free to accept any membership applications from others (because applications otherwise get checked infrequently in Legacy)
This is Gold Leader, standing by...
Happy Exploring!
Last edited:
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I need to go to Specsavers.