On Tuesday, 29 November 2022, Frontier will be dropping development of the 3.8 version of Elite Dangerous completely, labelling it "legacy mode"
As a result the following changes are made to SOP:
- Horizons 4.0 mode is now available to all players, including Odyssey owners. So now anyone should be able to switch over to Horizons and rescue the client there.
- Odyssey/Horizons 4.0 now exists in a completely separate universe from legacy mode / 3.8, which means switching the client from 4.0 to legacy mode in order to reset them to orbit or sort any other similar situation will not work.
- Frontier has added a button in the menu that will allow CMDRs on the ground to "Reset to orbit" clients may be instructed to use this instead.
- Fleet carriers are now also separate between 4.0 and legacy mode, and so to rescue a 4.0 player with a fleet carrier the carrier must be sent from a 4.0 player, and to rescue a legacy mode player with a fleet carrier the carrier must be sent from a legacy mode player.
- Console counts as legacy mode and so can send and use legacy mode carriers from PC, but cannot use carriers in 4.0.
All references in Mecha and the dispatch board to H3 and H4 now refers to them as legacy mode (LEG) or Horizons (HOR) respectively.
H3_SIGNAL has been renamed to LEG_SIGNAL and H4_SIGNAL has been renamed to HOR_SIGNAL.