Today Elite: Dangerous Alpha Phase 2.0 - Multiplayer was released, which provides backers the opportunity to play against each other in four distinct multiplayer scenarios:

Free-for-all melee
Pick your side in a two-team melee
Co-operative defense of a crippled Federal battlecruiser
A more sophisticated ‘Pirates and Bounty Hunters’ mode which hints at the fluid choices and roles players will experience on a much greater scale in the final game

Credits can be earned in each scenario and used to purchase new ship loadouts.

Frontier’s Elite: Dangerous Alpha program has been created to engage with the game’s Alpha backers, enabling the team to respond to feedback, add features and balance the game to make it the best it can possibly be. This is an incredibly exciting and important phase in the development of Elite: Dangerous.

Commented David Braben,

"Player stat tracking, the multiplayer networking code and associated management are all big new systems that are being tested with Phase 2.0 plus it’s the first time we’ll be able to test how the game mechanics perform with significant numbers of players all playing simultaneously."

There will be two further major Alpha releases to roll out before Elite: Dangerous reaches Premium Beta stage.

The Elite: Dangerous Alpha program can be joined now via http://elite.frontier.co.uk