Coming out of the spice hall in a whirl of steel, a sharp laugh and even sharper wit -- the Blade Dancer has arrived! We're excited to release the 34th Job for Star Traders: Frontiers and expand the options for your multi-job officer corp or your specialist crews.
Before we dive into the flashy details of Update #202, we want to take a quick moment to highlight our next game, Cyber Knights!
Cyber Knights Kickstarter - Last Chance!
With 8 days remaining in our Cyber Knights: Flashpoint Kickstarter, we are are closing time. Our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, plunges you and your team of hand-picked mercs, thieves and hackers into the future of cyberpunk. Combining a mix of stealth, hacking and XCOM-inspired combat, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint wraps a cyberpunk world full of consequential story choices and significant character development around a rich core of classic and new turn-based gameplay mechanics. Flashpoint takes place in one of the oldest cities on the eastern seaboard which has become a melting pot of influences, criminal elements and corporate power players. We’ve taken inspiration from our years of pen and paper RPGs as well as cyberpunk greats like Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson to craft a city steeped in history, alive with character and awash with neon.
On Kickstarter, we are selling pre-order copies of the game at a discount, but most importantly we are gathering a might alpha team of players. If you want to be the first to play the game, months before its Steam release, and work closely with the Trese Brothers team to help us mold the final experience we hope you will join the project on Kickstarter to pledge today!
Cyber Knights: Flashpoint Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tresebrothers/cyber-knights?ref=6n6pht
Blade Dancer
Born from a time long before the Guild the Exodus, the ancient art of Blade Dancing has been a long-loved tradition of the carnival-like spice hall for hundreds of generations. Blade Dancers combine ritualized dance, acrobatics and dueling. Eccentric performers known for their spice hall antics, they can also take their aggressive blade style to battle. While the most famous Blade Dancing styles and rituals are associated with Steel Song, it is an art with practitioners from every faction.
The Blade Dancer Job focuses on Blades, Negotiate and Tactics as their Skill trio and brings a wide variety of exciting Talents to the table. The bring unique Talents to the spice hall, causing the round of spice on which their Talents are fired to be free ($0) in return for their performance while either boosting crew Morale further of gaining new Contact introductions. Blade Dancers have a unique ability to also have a chance to learn of a new Contact whenever completing an orbital mission, as rumors of their presence aboard your ship go before you. In addition, they also bring a unique rank 11 ability to the Black Market access -- their longstanding tradition and place on the edge of society allows them to diffuse situations with security and avoid cargo confiscation and reputation penalties. Long has the tradition been that a Smugglers keep Blade Dancers among their crew!
In crew combat, Blade Dancers are offensively focused to a fault. Theirs is not a profession and performance that leads to practical defensive fighting but instead acrobatic movements and sweeping flourishes of the blade. They can be deadly but without additional training they may be a risk to inject into a high level combat. Therefore, Blade Dancers do best as an officer on your crew, crossed with other combat jobs to give them flexibility (Pistoleer) or improved defenses (Swordsman) or stealth before they come flying out (Assassin) in a Squall of Blades!
You can immediately train any officer to the Blade Dancer Job or look to hire Blade Dancers from either the Spice Hall or Contacts. During Spice Festival Rumors, Blade Dancers are always available. You can also hire them from Courtesan and Troubadour Contacts. When recruiting a new Blade Dancer, keep in ind the affinity of the Steel Song Clan with the performance practice -- any Blade Dancer coming from the Steel Song Clan gets an additional Attribute bonus.
New Contact Traits
Update #202 also roles out 2 new Contact Traits that add additional recruiting capabilities. Those Contacts with "Security Minded" Trait are focused on their own protection and will pay more for missions, recruit higher level characters and offer Bodyguard as a Trait-driven recruit. Those Contacts with "Lux Living" love the finer things in life and spend heavily to enjoy such delights. To cover their cost, they increase the cost of all of their services, but also recruit higher level characters and offer Blade Dancers as their Trait-driven recruit. We're always working to create new and interesting Contact Traits to further push the already huge variety of combinable Traits and options.
Flak Attack and Artifacts
With Update #202, we've also improved the Gunner "Flak Attack" Talent to last an additional turn, preventing enemy ships from launching fighters for 2 turns instead of 1. We've also resolved a bug where Jyeeta Artifacts were marked as being produced by Indies sometimes. Now wouldn't that bring up some tough questions?
v3.0.45 - 2/25/2020
- New Job Blade Dancer excels Contact manipulation, spice hall activity and at deadly crew combat
- Blade Dancers recruited from Steel Song spice hall or Contacts will have best Attributes
- 15 new Talents for Blade Dancer including multiple unique Talent types, uses and combat combos
- Contact types Courtesan and Troubadour both offer Blade Dancer as recruits
- During Spice Festival Rumors, Blade Dancers can be recruited in the Spice Hall
- New Contact Trait "Security Minded" pays better for Missions, promotes Rank cheaper, all recruits +1 level, hires Bodyguards
- New Contact Trait "Lux Living" increases all service cost by 15%, all recruits +1 level, hires Blade Dancers
- Gunner's "Flak Attack" Talent gains +1 turn duration to prevent enemy craft launches for 2 turns
- Fixed faction ownership of Jyeeta Artifact cargo found on human ships (now Jyeeta faction!)