Update #192 comes after a short break as we rally around the next set of major roadmap and story additions for Star Traders: Frontiers. We're hard at work now bearing down on the final adjustments, balance and feature additions to wrap the enemy small craft expansion completely and to finish balancing out the new changes to recruitment and high level enemy AI.
A warning to high difficulty, high level players -- check the section on the AI's new cross-Job smarts, you will see a difficulty spike in enemy captains over level 32 thanks to some improvements in the AI crew builder.
Rock Paper Shotgun Games of the Decade
We are very proud to share that -- with your help and support -- Star Traders: Frontiers was picked as one of the games of the decade by Rock Paper Shotgun!
Loot All - Pirate's Delight
We've added a very quick and very helpful button to looting in ship combat victory. The Loot All button simply claims as much cargo as you can possibly cram into your cargo hold from the enemy ship, starting with the most valuable options first. It's a quick, one-click fix for looting and in most cases you don't need to do anything else. It only considers price when sorting what to take, it does not consider permit and trade law, so perhaps you might snag some mid-price but easy to sell cargo first manually and then click Loot All to fill your hold with the rest.
Enemy Cross-Job Officers
On higher difficulty, higher level officers have gained a big improvement in how they plan out and deploy their Job points to achieve the best possibly synergy and cross-Job potential. This generally means there is going to be an uplift in difficulty for any high level captains who are facing enemies at level 34-ish or above. As always, the AI are only doing what you can do, but beware -- they have once again bitten into the advantages you may have stacked against them!
Recruitment Attribute Bonuses
Attribute bonuses have always been dolled out to characters recruited at higher levels, but the meaning of "high level" shifted in a big way with Update #191. After confirming that we're happy with the new recruitment levels, we've moved on to giving further incentives to recruit through the Spice Hall and Contacts by continuing the Attribute bonus tiers up to level 26. The existing bonuses at 2, 5, 8 and 12 are all in place and we've added new bonuses for 18, 22 and 26 as well as strengthening the 12th level bonus a bit. For those captains looking to higher crew and officers with the highest possible Attributes, this is the best route for you.
Enemy Craft Targeting
We've made some important changes to how weapons target small craft with this update. Previously, the automatic targeting of weapon-to-craft was performed at the time the weapons were activated. Then, during the turn if a craft was forced to land by a Talent (Knock from the Void) or shot down by weapon fire, any weapon that had targeted that craft at the start of the turn would simply skip its firing round. We've changed these rules to now allow weapons to dynamically retarget and as long as their is a valid craft to fire at, they will take a shot. This rule affects the enemy capital ships as well.
Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is coming!
As we have moved into the v3 family of the Star Traders: Frontiers roadmap, we're excited to share our upcoming next game. In Cyber Knights, you are the razor-sharp leader of a covert merc company operating in the New Boston Zone in 2231. Built around a core of turn-based gameplay featuring stealth, hacking, ambushes, firefights and complex missions, Cyber Knights weaves the human drama story of your team, their loyalty and their sacrifice in a dehumanizing cyberpunk world.
Coming to KickStarter in Feb 2020, sign up to get the call and alerted about free first day rewards, discounts and more! We're gathering the most crackpot amazing alpha team ever and we hope you'll join us.
v3.0.21 - 12/13/2019
- Added "Loot All" option to ship combat victory -- one click to take all of your enemy's cargo sorted by value
- Attribute bonuses for high level recruits continue to increase at levels past 12 (additional bonuses at 2, 5, 8, 12, 18, 22, 26)
- Improved rules for targeting enemy craft -- if a craft is shot down or knocked down by a Talent, weapons will correctly retarget any other available craft
- Improved high level enemy ship officer cross Job intelligence -- beware more difficult end-game ship combats!
- Fixed bug with xeno-specific Talents when xeno enemy boards your ship not working
- Fixed bug with high level Scitterings sometimes having 0 Skills
- Improved some mission descriptions to include the target system name in the action summary for easier comparison
- Fixed a bug allowing some ship combat Talents to purge debuffs incorrectly
- Fixed name mismatches in ship component hovers during combat