# Elite Dangerous Trailblazers | Update 3.4

- Product: Elite Dangerous (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/elite-dangerous)
- Vendor: Frontier Developments
- Date: 2025-07-03
- Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/359320/view/508458485971684752
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/elite-dangerous/releases/2025-07-03-trailblazers-update-3.4

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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'.

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- **added** — New Community Goal type that may require Commanders to destroy specific power-aligned ships within Power Conflict Zones across multiple systems
- **changed** — Control Scores now decay on each weekly turn
- **changed** — Decay will not affect or take a system below 25% of the current system state
- **changed** — Decay amount is non-linear and dependent on current control score, with systems closer to maximum score threshold decaying more each week
- **changed** — Merits gained for reinforcing a system now operate on a sliding scale adjusted between -20% and +30% depending on undermining effort in the past 24 hours
- **changed** — Offensive activity merit bonus for undermining another power's system increased to +15% from +5%
- **changed** — Offensive activity merit bonus for acquiring an unoccupied system changed to 0% from +5%
- **fixed** — Fixed Power Conflict Zones not starting due to missing faction information
- **fixed** — Fixed additional causes of systems not displaying flags for initial port locations and not being claimable via System Colonisation
- **fixed** — Fixed additional causes of console accounts failing to transfer from Legacy to Live

Greetings Commanders,

A new update has been released for Elite Dangerous featuring Powerplay improvements.

**Features of Note**

- New Community Goal type. Future Community goals may require Commanders to destroy specific power-aligned ships within Power Conflict Zones, these will take place across multiple systems and may help to shape the galaxy.

- Further changes have been made to Powerplay, in order to encourage more aggressive play and create more vulnerability and therefore fluidity in Power territory.

- Control Scores will now decay on each weekly turn.

- Decay will not affect, or take a system to, below 25% of the current system state.

- For example, a system at 100% Stronghold would decay over time, until settling at 25% of the purple Stronghold status bar.

- Therefore, Systems cannot change their state via decay alone.

- The actual amount systems decay is non linear and is dependent on the current control score of the system.

- Systems closer to the maximum score threshold of their current state will decay more each week than those closer to the 25% decay limit.

- Merits gained for reinforcing a system will now operate on a sliding scale, in addition to the recently introduced flat defensive multiplier.

- Depending on how much undermining effort a system has been subjected to in the past 24 hours, merits gained for reinforcement actions will adjust in a range between -20% and +30%.

- For example, reinforcing a system which has not been undermined at all in the past 24 hours would result in -20% merits gained.

- Merit gain bonuses have been adjusted as follows:

- Offensive activity - undermining another power's system: +15% (up from +5%)

- Offensive activity - acquiring an unoccupied system: 0% (down from +5%)

- Defensive activity - unchanged

**Fixes**

- Fix for Power Conflict Zones not starting due to missing faction information.

- Colonisation - Fixed additional causes of systems not displaying flags for initial port locations and not being claimable via System Colonisation.

- Fixed additional causes of console accounts failing to transfer from Legacy to Live.

Please note that system score and merit gain from the on-foot transfer power data activity remains disabled at this time. The team is actively working on a general solution to prevent future exploitation of mechanics such as this to the state of Powerplay. Once implemented, the intent remains to re-enable this activity.