# Elite Dangerous Elite Dangerous | Trailblazers | Update 3 - Product: Elite Dangerous (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/elite-dangerous) - Vendor: Frontier Developments - Date: 2025-04-25 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/359320/view/508452792038326757 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/elite-dangerous/releases/2025-04-25-elite-dangerous-trailblazers-update-3 What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **changed** — Reworked the operation of economies and population growth within player colonised systems to allow significantly more flexibility in building out systems and boost economic output - **added** — Implemented automatic linking between completed constructions within colonised systems, where links enable supporting facilities to supply their economy to ports across the entire system - **added** — Added two types of facility links: strong links between ports and facilities on the same planetary body with higher economic boost, and weak links between ports and facilities on different bodies with lower boost - **changed** — Applied economy modifiers to strong links based on system and body characteristics, with different boosts and decreases for agriculture, extraction, high tech, industrial, refinery, and tourism economies - **changed** — Implemented automatic economy type override for constructions based on the characteristics of the body they are on or orbiting, replacing player-selected colony economy options - **changed** — Updated the construction user interface to expose links that have been created and will be created upon completing a construction - **fixed** — Retrospectively created links for all existing colonised systems during the patch downtime Greetings Commanders, We will be releasing The Trailblazers Update 3 on Wednesday April 30. This update features a number of improvements to Colonisation economies and Powerplay merits, alongside a range of other fixes and improvements. Release Schedule (All times in UTC) - 5AM - Servers offline for maintenance - 1PM - Servers back Please be aware these are estimated times and are subject to change. ##### Features of Note: ​ ##### Colonisation - The operation of economies and population growth within player colonised systems have been extensively reworked following player feedback. These changes are designed to allow significantly more flexibility in building out systems to create any desired economy, and to significantly boost the economic output of colonised systems. ##### Economic changes: - Links will now automatically be created between completed constructions within systems. Links enable supporting facilities to supply a proportion of their economy to ports across the entire system, increasing the supply, demand and types of commodities available and altering shipyard and outfitting stock. - All constructions are divided into two types for the purpose of creating links: Ports and Supporting Facilities - **Ports** includes Outposts, Coriolis/Orbis/Ocellus Stations, Asteroid bases, Planetary Ports and Planetary Port Outposts - **Supporting Facilities** includes Settlements, Installations and Hubs - Two types of link are available: Strong and Weak. A strong link provides a higher economic boost than a weak link - **Strong links** are created between a port and any facility located on or around the same local planetary body. They may also be created between ports if there are multiple of this type on or around the same body - In the event multiple ports are present, the highest tier port will be linked to. If both ports are of the same tier, the port which was built first will be selected - In the event both a planetary and space-based ports are present, planetary facilities will create strong links with the planetary port, which will pass these strong links on to the orbital port following the same prioritisation rules regarding tier and build order - **Weak links** are created between ports and supporting facilities located on different bodies within the same system - Both types of link can be present, enabling a supporting facility to supply the economies of multiple ports - Links can only be created between facilities and ports, or between ports. Facilities cannot link to each other - To aid understanding this new system, some examples of this in action are below: - System 1: Body 1 has several facilities on the surface, whilst body 2 and 3 have ports in orbit - Weak links will be created between each body 1 facility and both ports around body 2 and 3 - System 2: Body 1 has several facilities and a port on the surface, with another port in orbit - Strong links will be created between each facility and the port on the surface. A further strong link will be created between the planetary and orbiting port - System 3: Body 3 has a port in orbit, with a mix of planetary and orbital facilities located at bodies 1, 2, 3 and 5 - Strong links will be created between the body 3 port and all facilities located at body 3 - Weak links will be created between the body 3 port and each facility located at bodies 1, 2 and 5 - These links will be retrospectively created for all existing colonised systems during the patch downtime - Alternations have been made to the construction user interface flow to expose links that have already been created, and will be created on completing a construction - Additionally, strong links are subject to boosts or decreases in economic supply performance by the characteristics of the host system or body. Weak links are unaffected by this mechanic. Potential boosts/decreases are listed below: - Agriculture economy: - Boosted by: - Orbiting an Eart _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/359320/view/508452792038326757]_