After a while of hinting at it in-game it seems that we were right. Aliens are coming to Elite: Dangerous and soon it looks like. Frontier showed off patch 2.2 at Gamescom today, and the first official reveal of the alien antagonists was just one of the things teased.
In the presentation today Frontier showed a massive green ship for a brief time, floating through the wreckage of many human ships it had apparently just finished taking out. This was just a glimpse though, a tease of what is to come on Sunday in a livestream.
Another thing talked about was a drone system, releasing smaller ships from a larger vessel to act as guards. You'll be able to switch between your large vessel and the smaller ships at will as well, with an AI controlling whichever one you are not at the time. The smaller ships are supposedly cheap enough to be considered sacrificial and meant for close-quarters combat, just as some of the current player ships are depending on your set up.
All this fits in with other teasers and news we've had in the past about non-combat large ships that Frontier were planning to introduce into the game, we knew that passengers and multi-crew functions were coming for the game in the next few patches at least. 2.2 will be the patch for passengers and this new drone system is going to alleviate some concerns people might have had about the large luxury liner ships.
The last thing that we found out is that some of the space station interiors are due to get a visual update, making them much prettier to look at. It'll only be coming to some of the richer sectors of the galaxy though, so as not to confuse things by having lovely fittings in a station and system much too poor to afford such things.
Of course, this is only a peek at what is next for Elite, with more to come in livestreams across the week.