Heartwarming / Elite Dangerous

• In honor of Leonard Nimoy's passing, the Space Station orbiting the planet Vulcan in LHS 3006 was renamed to "Leonard Nimoy Station" by fan request.
  • They did the same thing for Carrie Fisher after she passed; in this case the "station" is a new megaship named Fisher's Rest, parked in the Aldebaran system.
• In another example, a young commander had been dealing with his real-life mother dying of natural causes and pinged Frontier Developments with an offer to sell everything that he had and spend all of his ingame credits - or even pay real-life currency - to rename an uninhabited system in Imperial Space to "MacBrayer's Rest" in honor of her. While Frontier didn't rename an entire system after her, they did choose an uninhabited planet in the BD+26 2184 system (described as "a rather unusual planet" by the devs) to call "Kathy MacBrayer". You can read about it here.
• If you come across a fellow Cmdr in space, It's pretty nice when they send you an "o7 cmdr" as a greeting. It's a salute, for the uninformed.
• CMDR Persera set out to explore the furthest reaches of known space, jumping out to Semotus Beacon and then supercruising away. She miscalculated, and was left with only the barest amount of fuel. The Fuel Rats have mounted a rescue mission, and are on the way. on the way.
  • They succeeded by the way.
• In January 3304, the dev team honored terminally-ill player DoveEnigma13 by creating the Dove Enigma, a Wells-class Carrier megaship that would be moved to Colonia to memorialize him before he passed. Unfortunately, a number of trolls decided to UA bomb (basically bringing Thargoid Probes onboard and selling it via black market, causing stations and megaships to shut down from the Thargoid interference) the ship to cause it to malfunction. In response the team called out for players to deliver Meta-Alloys to combat this. They did. In fact they brought so many to the Dove Enigma, that the ship was rendered immune to future UA bombings. Video Game Caring Potential at its finest - saving a tribute to a dying player, and in-universe possibly creating the first large ship to be able to resist Thargoid interference (Federation and Imperial Capital ships had been getting wiped out around this same time).
  • That caring potential? It paid off. As of May 3305, all Starports and Megaships are immune to UI Bombings. Capital Ships aren't, but the Federation and Empire are actively working towards it. Fling a Light into the Future at its finest.
• Even the Fuel Rats, best known for being the Big Damn Heroes who refuel stranded commanders in the void, have their moments. Beyond Frontier officially acknowledging their existence through station advertisements and Artificial Atmospheric Actions, and many players taking the initiative to seek out and destroy other players who gank a Fuel Rat, there was also the so-called "Fuelum War" in 3305, where an NPC minor faction, the Constitution Party of Fuelum (CPoF), waged civil war with the Fuel Rats' minor faction, The Fuel Rats Mischief (TFRM), over control of the Fuel Rats' home system, Fuelum. At the outset, the CPoF had 72% influence over TFRM's 21%, which made it almost certain that the Fuel Rats would lose control of Fuelum, as well as all their stations in the system. With only 26 hours left before the game's background simulation decided it as such, a Fuel Rat made a request on Reddit for any players to assist them in the war. The response was overwhelming, with regular players, retired players, players exploring the other end of the galaxy, players who have almost no combat experience, players flying ships not built for combat with engineered ships, players grinding a separate ongoing Community Goal, players who have heard of the Fuel Rats but never sought help from them, Federation supporters, Imperial supporters, players in other factions, pirates, and the YouTuber CrimsonGamer99 pitching in to turn the tide. Even CMDR Harry Potter, the player famous for firing the killing shots on CMDR Salomé in defiance of the wider community's efforts to protect her, made a post on behalf of the NMD and SDC, condemning the efforts of the players who had instigated the civil war, and announcing full support for the Fuel Rats. The joint community effort paid off, first by increasing TFRM's influence to slightly surpass CPoF's at the time the background simulation updated, preventing control from switching, then continuing to boost TFRM's influence to 61%, while CPoF's influence dropped to 31%, thus winning the civil war for TFRM on the next update to the background simulation and ensuring the Fuel Rats retained control of Fuelum.
• May 5, 3302. The eccentric cyborg Jaques has decided to take his space station and go sightseeing. This is unusual enough, considering Jaques Station is the only station of its type known to be fitted with a functional hyperdrive, but what makes it all the more unusual is that he's planning to go all the way to Beagle Point, on the far side of the galaxy. Over the following week, Commanders provide masses and masses of hydrogen fuel, easily enough for the trip. Jaques Station departs into hyperspace. As with the Dove Enigma two years later, there was suspicion that Thargoid technology was used to sabotage the station, as it did not report in when expected - but remote installations began to pick up fragmented messages starting on June 13. 16 days later, on June 29, an explorer managed to stumble across Jaques Station in the remote Eol Prou RS-T d3-94 system; the station had indeed experienced malfunctions due to Thargoid technology being planted on the station, and had made an emergency drop in order to prevent further catastrophe. Commanders then began shipping Meta-Alloys, a journey of some 22,000 light years from civilized space^note  This trip takes around 520 jumps and 19 real-time hours, with neutron boosting, for a ship that is more or less optimized for long-range jumping, in order to aid in repairs, and would, starting on July 21, start to ship out massive volumes of specialized equipment that could only be manufactured in civilized space, managing to reach the assigned goal in around half the allotted four-week timespan. Jaques Station would receive a fully-functional shipyard as a result of this operation. Not only that, but the whole operation ultimately lead to the foundation of the "Colonia" project, establishing an isolated and nominally stable human civilization away from the turmoil of the Bubble with the three Powers, the various lesser Powers, and the frequent Thargoid attacks. All because some ancient ex-specops cyborg bartender wanted to go take a look at the far side of the galaxy in his custom space station.