Update #280 arrives with some shake up to the availability of high-end faction ships, better XP balance for mission runners, improved balance for anti-craft Talents and more. A huge thanks to everyone posting suggestions, feedback and bugs to the forum and helping us continuing to push Star Traders: Frontiers.
If you're enjoying the continued updates, be sure to tell a friend and leave a reveiw!
What’s the latest on Cyber Knights?
Development on our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, proceeds apace. We’re currently working toward the private alpha test for Kickstarter backers, following the same process we used for Star Traders: Frontiers. But you can view the latest updates on the CKF Steam page (make sure you’ve wishlisted and followed!), or join us for behind-the-scenes discussion and development snapshots in our Discord.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/
Rank Ships
By their nature, faction-specific ships are a perk of serving a faction. Previously, all ships -- regardless of their cost -- required only Military Rank 4. With Update #280, we've pushed this to a scale grading from Rank 4 all the way up to Rank 10 for the ships costing over $2m credits. With this new ability to set the minimum rank easily for each ship individually, we've opened up an exciting new option we are investigating -- powerful faction flagships offered only to the highly qualified military officers. We're gathering some ideas and will be moving forward with this expansion soon.
Mission XP
While some XP has been always granted for missions requiring skill checks, we've doubled that amount with Update #280 and also added a log to the mission completion details with the exactly amount. Before this update, no XP was granted if your crew ended up falling back to a Saving Talent. However, we've now adjusted this rule to grant a smaller chunk of XP, but XP bonus nonetheless. You traveled, you may have bled or fought to complete that key task -- the XP is earned, Talent or not.
Gunner and Gundeck Boss
We've adjusted two anti-craft Talents brought by the Gunner and Gundeck Boss Jobs. The Gunner's "Close-In Defenses" Talent is a rank 11 Talent that now cleanly provides a nice mix of anti-craft with reducing boarding, reducing the craft attack chance and their evasion (-10 Boarding, -20% Hit Chance, -15% Craft Evasion for next 3 turns) -- it is best used if you have weaponry and you're planning on lighting the enemy craft up. On the other hand, the Gundeck Boss's rank 1 Talent is purely defensive and turtle strategy, with "Point Defense" (-10 Boarding, -30% Hit Chance, -25% Dmg for next 4 turns).
Magnanimous Victory Clarification
We've tagged the description of Magnanimous Victory to be clear that it removes your options for other aggressive abilities such as looting, destruction or conscription. This is a key Talent in managing reputation damage but also ends your interaction with a defeated enemy ship.
Mod Support
With Update #280, we've made some changes to how the AI approaches the Wing Commando's Talent "Ripcord" to support the "Merchant Marines: Fly Casual" mod -- one of the most popular mods on the Workshop right now that seeks to adjust the Star Traders: Frontiers balance to better approximate smaller crew and more of a Firefly-like experience.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2539177784
v3.2.9 - 10/1/2021
- Faction-specific ships require scaled faction rank -- Rank 4 for basic, Rank 6 for over $1m, and up to Rank 10 for $2m+
- Doubled the XP gained for completing a mission step which require Skill Save, added XP log
- Completing mission step while relying on a Saving Talent now grants some XP for crew
- Clarified Talent "Magnanimous Victory" to be clear it prevents any further looting or aggressive actions
- Improved balance of Gunner's "Close-In Defenses" and Gundeck Bosses' "Point Defense"
- Documented faction special rules for Rychart and De Valtos expensive bribes in New Game
- Fixed Bribe option text for Pirates to ensure it never threatens Rep loss (pirates never report)
- Improved AI crew combat intelligence to work better with "Merchant Marines: Fly Casual" mod
- Fixed report crashes and typos