You heard right — you don’t need to be a dad.
We’re a large community-focused group for all the Elite Dangerous pilots out there who schedule their gaming time around their families or careers. Dads, mums, husbands, wives, busy career professionals – you will find a home with us.
The Fatherhood is aimed at bringing together pilots so we can wing up and explore the galaxy together, take part in community events, haul cargo, and go mining or bounty hunting safe in the knowledge that we will look out for one another and more importantly, have some fun and make new friends.
We play in Open, Solo, and Private Groups, and have members across all time zones ready to wing up. We welcome pilots of any skill level, from any platform, all you need is a ship.
FAQ
Want to learn more? Have lots of questions? Take a look at our FAQ for answers.
History
The story of The Fatherhood starts with its founder, TK7725. In the squadron, he’s simply known as TK. He tells its humble beginnings best:
To begin, I’ve always been a fan of the Elite universe. I didn’t really play the original Elite – when it was released on September 20th, 1984 it was only a week before my 5th birthday. I did buy Frontier: Elite 2 on my Commodore Amiga in the early 90’s and I poured hours into that game. I absolutely loved it. So much so, that I still have an Amiga and a copy of Frontier: Elite 2.
Fast forward to August 2016 and I was seeing adverts for Elite Dangerous. Being a PS4 player and not owning a gaming PC, I went out and bought an Xbox One just so I could play Elite Dangerous! So, my first steps into ED were on Xbox, playing on my own. I based myself in YZ Ceti for a while and then moved to Itza because it was in Li Yong-Rui space. It stayed that way until the PS4 version was released on 27 June 2017 and I made the switch to PS4 on launch day.
The idea for The Fatherhood came about as I sat on my sofa late at night playing Elite: Dangerous after my son, who had just turned 2, had finally gone to sleep. I wondered how many other families were in the same position as me — only playing when their work and families allow.
I decided to form a group on Inara and see if I could find some Commanders in the same boat and hopefully get some of them together. I wasn’t looking to start a massive group or anything, just getting a group together for some casual flying. Quite a few people joined and we ended up with about 10 people in the first month, and that’s when we started looking for systems to base ourselves out of – mainly myself, Jeb, Andy Graham, Withnail13 and Phantom_rw. This formed the basis of the group and is when we came up with the logo and tagline.
— TK7725
August 2017
We started scouting for High Tech systems, preferably in LYR space that didn’t have a player faction, and we identified quiet a few systems, and Kolaga was one of them TK found, though not the top contender. A lot of the systems we found were either already occupied or weren’t quite right, and eventually we all agreed that Kolaga seemed a decent fit, with Hajangai as second choice and LFT 300 as third. Once we picked a home system, TK applied to register us as a Player Group and also as an in-game Player Minor Faction – back then it was two separate applications. We applied on 22nd August 2017.
September 2017
All this discussion and development for the first month or so was done on the wing/squadron Inara discussion pages. Then on the 21st of September, Jeb set up a Discord and the discussion moved there.
The ‘wing‘ (as it was known then, rather than ’squadron’) continued to slowly grow. TK created a Twitter account for the wing and began to promote The Fatherhood as a group on Twitter and the FDEV forums. The Fatherhood got noticed and Paige got in touch asking if we would like to be featured in their ‘Featured Commanders’ promo. A couple of weeks later she posted it on their media pages. All of sudden, both TK’s and Jeb’s phone exploded with Discord notifications!
The interest in the wing was mad and in less than 24 hours The Fatherhood went from approximately 50 members to 164. Over the next week another 140 people joined. This established a good relationship with FDEV. TK got on well with Paige, Will, and Sally Morgan-Moore. They continued to mention us regularly and that helped us grow even further.
January 2018
From a group perspective, two key things were happing. One was the forming of a dedicated BGS squad which would start on prep work for when we would eventually (and hopefully) be placed in game and into our chosen system. Begun, the Kolaga wars had.
The other milestone was in early 2018 we took part in the Enigma Expedition, and it was this event that really cemented our status as a ‘known’ player group – we hooked up with CMDR Allcrowsareblack during this trip and some of the core friendships that still exist today were defined on that expedition.
It was great fun and one of my favourite Elite Dangerous moments.
— TK7725
April 2018
The application for a Player Minor Faction proved to be quite a long process both from an in-game perspective and for TK chasing the application.
The guy handling this at the time was Brett at Frontier. He would post only occasional updates and I was chasing him regularly to try and push the application along. He was hard work. Eventually, in April 2018 I pushed hard with FDEV and got Brett to join our Discord. Without going into too much detail, I got the ball rolling for us and a lot of other groups. We got an update on the 9 April 2018:
We hadn’t been rejected. They had just needed to run system checks, but we should be good for Kolaga, and there would be another update in 48-hours.
— TK7725
A few days later, we were told we were going in game, but not where we thought – a Player Minor Faction called Tachyon Syndicate, who unbeknownst to us (and Brett apparently!) had applied to be in Kolaga and they got inserted as a PMF in the Kolaga system. We got notified that were going to be put in game in Hajangai. We finally got added on the 24th April 2018 and on the 3rd May took control of our first in game asset.
A lot of us were disappointed but I liked that system as much as Kolaga so I wasn’t too bothered.
— TK7725
The rest, as they say, is history.
We switched BGS priorities to Hajangai and the surrounding space, but the Kolaga wars were not over. It remained a back burner goal and we eventually secured that system without a conflict, and still control it to this day.
Some key dates in The Fatherhood history:
- 4th July 2017 — The Fatherhood created
- 16th Aug 2017 — Kolaga chosen
- 22nd Aug 2017 — PMF submission
- 21st Sep 2017 — Discord setup
- October 2017 — Featured Group
- 13th Jan 2018 — Enigma Expedition Launch
- 5th Feb 2018 — Dove Enigma reached
- 20th April 2018 — Enigma Exp home
- 26th April 2018 — Added in game
- 3rd May 2018 — The Fatherhood BGS took our first asset
- 12tH May 2018 — Featured Group again
To my surprise this group has grown way beyond anything I could have imagined, I dare say we are now the largest player group for Elite Dangerous, a fact which continues to humble me.
I started it, but the members have made it.
— TK7725