Following our roadmap publish, we are now hammering down on the content expansion goals and marching toward our next big feature addition -- Salvaging Orbitals and Wrecks. With this update, we've added a new mission giver type as well as 8 new missions -- you can now start to actively support the Hunna. There will be a lot more coming in this department on both sides of the line. We've made some exciting changes to further widen the availability of Contact recruits and different Job types, improved some M2400 ship engines, and caught up with the most requested fix for the Faen storyline -- confirmations on branches! It's a big release with balancing, new content, bug fixes and more.

If you enjoy the relentless update pace, leave a review and tell a friend!

Despite the best efforts of the faction militaries, the Hunna Collective's revolutionary effort continues to eke out an existence of the edge indie zones and harsh wilderness environments. With Update #96, your Star Trader captain can chose to become further involved with the shadowy, violent revolutionaries. We've added 8 new mission types to help support the Hunna, mostly in the form of dropping off a variety of dangerous or high value goods to their camps in the wilderness. It is a good place to start and opens the door to all kinds of more pro (and anti!) Hunna missions in near term updates.

Notably, any Contact who has the Hunna Agent Trait will also start cycling these missions into their set.

We have heard a lot of feedback about the challenge of re-hiring basic crew (Pilots, Navs, E-Techs) as the best you can get out of a spice hall is often level 1 to 3. When your crew is already level 20, this can be a hard pill to swallow. With this update, we've now cycled more of the core jobs into Contacts, allowing you to possibly recruit these characters to your crew at as high as level 8 or all the way up to 11 with the right set of Rumors or Contact Traits.

If you're looking for E-Techs, find an Intelligence Officer or Archivist. For Hyerwarp Navs, check with a local Spicetender, as the navigators are known for their love of the spice hall. Finally, Flight Academy Provost (Alta Mesa only) now hire Pilots instead of Quartermasters.

We've boosted the Starport Boom Rumor now to all provide Engineers in the spice hall if you visit the faction holding. And one more -- Science Officer Contacts have gained the ability to hire out Engineers as well.

Overall, its an exciting set of changes, making core crew more accessible and also widening the total number of Contacts offering the Recruit service which is fun for all.

Both the Aeternum Vindex and Scout Cutter ships have received improvements through their components in this release. We've increased the Navigation, Pilot and Safety Rating on 2400 Mass Void Engines to reduce critical accident damage. This will allow both ships to take better advantage of their Speed, pass more tests and overall be more effective in travel, combat and operations.


We have now added confirmation steps along the way throughout the Faen storylines when you are about to take a major branch. The power players in the Faen court are jealous and some will not brook you working with other members of the court. At these points when you are about to limit your future options for the story, we now have helpful warnings in place to allow you to weigh your decision accordingly.

- Added new mission giver type Hunna Supporter -- support the revolution!
- Added 8 new stash mission types, delivering supplies to Hunna camps
- Hunna Lieutenant Contact and any Contact with Hunna Agent Trait may assign these missions
- Engineers are now available for hire at spice hall during Boosted Starport Rumors
- Contacts offer new recruit options: Intelligence Officers and Archivist hire E-Techs, Science Officer hire Engineers, Spicetenders hire Hyperwarp Navigators
- Flight Academy Provost now hires Pilots instead of Quartermasters
- Added clear warnings and confirmations at major branches in Faen storylines
- Improved support for offline Steam Achievements
- Clarified rules for ship repair Talents like Rushed Patches and Unrivaled Patch
- Rebalanced prices for medium slot missiles
- Fixed occasional crashes on specific mission generation on small maps
- Buffed Aeternum Vindex and Scout Cutter ships
- Increased Safety Rating on 2400 Mass Engines to reduce critical accident damage
- Fixed missing SFX on some UI elements
- Additional game performance improvements, crash fixes

Update #95 comes close on the heels of our development roadmap which went live on Friday. Be sure to check out the roadmap for our ambitious plans for future version milestones and content expansions. If you've been playing Star Traders: Frontiers even for a week, you probably have already had a taste of our relentless update style. If you are enjoying it -- tell a friend and consider leaving a review!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/335620/announcements/detail/1696055855739611821
Update #95 adds 2 new ship encounter Talents, deepens the complexity of ship encounter hostility rules when it comes to military Rank and delivers on a highly requested feature for the starport: queuing upgrades for dry docked ships. Queue 'em up, and then just keep flying!

On a mission to deliver the most hotly requested feature from the player base, we have now tackled dry dock upgrade queuing. If you have a second ship in dry dock and want to replace one or more of its components, you have the option to load them into a queue or finish the work while waiting. If you queue the upgrades, the ship is moved into the starport's bays for its upgrade work and you are free to go on your merry way. When upgrades are queued, the dry dock listing for the ship reports how much longer you have to wait for them to complete and prevents you from launching the ship. However, queue up a big engine overhaul, a hyperwarp drive replacement, three new weapons and a medium officer suite drop in and plan to come back in 2 years -- you've now got all new freedom in running ship upgrades without interrupting your play or story.

The option to wait at the starport until all the work is finished is also present, if you want to continue to upgrade your ships that way, or are planning to immediately finish the work and hop in the new ship.


Update #95 adds two new Talents to deepen your options during ship encounters. First is Raider's Scrutiny a rank 1 Pirate Talent that allows you to get a reading on what cargo the enemy ship is carrying during the encounter phase -- in the form of "0 raw resources, 20 manufactured goods and 5 rare trade goods." A well trained pirate is a master of the arc scanner and can spot the slightest anomalies created by different type of cargo containers.

Second is Dubious Nod a rank 1 Smuggler Talent that allows one Smuggler captain to give the other a subtle hello-and-goodbye without stirring up any trouble. Dubious Nod allows you to end a Smuggler encounter in a draw, regardless of hostility. You may end up with Reputation loss, but there doesn't need to be any trouble between two criminals in the void.

Finally, a new rule has been added for Military Officer encounters and captains carrying military rank. If you have at least Rank 3 in a faction military, when you encounter Military Officers, they will no longer be more hostile due to the local quadrant reputation. You may be known as a criminally in the local space, but your standing in their faction military overrides it.

With this update, we've hammered through a series of bugs, incorrect descriptions and balance improvements for a big pile of Talents.

Rushed Patches and other ship component repair Talents no longer have an unlisted restriction that they won't repair Talents with less than 10% Damage. Now, they will repair any damaged component!

The weapon repairing Talent Ordnance Overhaul now focuses its efforts first on weapons that are disabled (60% or more) and then spends any remaining points on simply damaged weapons.

A number of the ship encounter and victory Talents have been rebalanced from a 3 week to 6 week cooldown. While this is a pretty minor tweak to the timeline, it does mean more of these Talents will not be available in immediately back to back combats.

Traits and Talents affecting rewards in Patrol and Spying have all been fixed. Our apologies that a bug crept in here at all.

- Added choice to put upgrades to dry docked ships into a queue so that you can keep flying your other ship while they finish
- Improved encounter hostility rules -- if you carry Rank 3 with a faction, their military officer's ignore your Reputation with the local quadrant faction
- Added new rank 1 Pirate Talent "Raider's Scrutiny" allows you to detect count of raw, manufactured and rare trade goods in enemy cargo hold during encounter
- Added new rank 1 Smuggler Talent "Dubious Nod" turns an encounter with a fellow Smuggler Captain into an immediate draw
- Improved Mechanic "Ordnance Overhaul" to focus on returning disabled weapons (60% or more damage) to being ready to fire
- Added details to Ship encounter with Pirates about rules that rank 2 Permit avoiding looting
- Improved "Rushed Patches" Talent and other mid-battle repair Talents repar even components that have less than 10% damage
- Corrected Morale restoring ship combat Talents to match description -- "Solace in Battle" heals Doctor Skill in Morale to 20 crew members
- Rebalanced cooldowns on some ship encounter and victory Talents (going from 3 weeks to 6 weeks)
- Reclassified some Gear between Offensive and Defense type
- Fixed bug with passive Patrol Talents and Traits not granting correct bonuses
- Fixed bug with "High Stakes" Talent indicating that it increased intel rewards by 0%
- Fixed bug with selling generic Intel and Conflict scores
- Fixed bug with indie pirates in Patrol not being associated with a valid conflict
- Fixed bug with story characters being affected by auto assign outfits

Last Updated January 7, 2023

With the help of thousands of new captains, Star Traders: Frontiers launched in August 2018. We've dropped over 320+ updates. After tackling a long and ambitious roadmap, we are continuing to update the game but no longer have any large commitments on our horizon to share. Still, we are continuing to work to grow this already massive space RPG into even more of a behemoth.

As we've said before -- the void is merciless and so too will be our update schedule. During both Early Access and even more importantly during the full launch status of the game, we've worked constantly to engage the community, improve the game and crank updates. We have focused on creating a very stable, multi-layered and deep game onto which we can continue to pile a relentless stream of updates. This powerful foundation will allow us to focus more on story and content, UI quality of life improvements and just exciting features.

Let the update rolls!

We broken the Dev Roadmap down into major version milestones, all of which we have now completed including the v2.4, 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 feature families. In addition, we listed our longterm content expansion goals, including new content, story, character visuals, ships, ship components, loot and more. We're very proud to have met or exceeded these goals in the years of active development and over 320 updates.

If you enjoyed the free updates (320+!!!) be sure to tell a friend, leave a review and check our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint.

In closing, we’d like to give a big shout out to all of KickStarter backers who supported us and pushed us to create Star Traders: Frontiers! We could not have gotten here without you!

The glue-grey alloy of duranthium is known to shine best when polished mightily. Update #94 represents a continued push for polish and improvements across the board. We're implementing player suggestions, fixing newly discovered bugs with the story and tweaking balance.

If you enjoy the updates, leave a review and tell a friend! Without further delay, here we go!

When weaving narrative and sandbox together, sometimes the unexpected happen. The extension of the story timers in Update #91 created an surprising consequence with a unrelated story -- the Stowaway Smuggler. A jam formed in the story event pipe which prevented Valencia's storyline from starting after she joins your crew. For anyone who had this happen -- she is just hanging on the crew, never talked and there were no compelling events -- the story is going to start up again after Update #94. It may be late ... in some games, very late ... but it will now move through to completion.


All three of the possible result screens after ship combat -- victory, defeat and draw -- have synchronized their data display with the lead-in encounter screen. All screens how display the quadrant owner, their Rep and flag for tooltip, as well as the faction of the opposing ship, that ship's flag for tooltip and the captain type. The Ship report tab also includes details about the ship's hull, captain's health, crew count and cargo count.

A big thanks to the players requesting these details. They help keep the thread going throughout the entire encounter and give much needed access to certain data points, such as current Reputation.

We're hard at work to expand the artistic catalogs within the game and have added two new contact character faces with this update. Expect more uniforms, hats, accessories, faces, weapons -- the art team has dived back in to increase the game's art variety and options for players.


Update #93's Officer Suite addition was a bit of a bust due to a rule that prevented you from upgrading your ship over max officer count. That rule has been downgraded to a warning, and now upgrading to medium Officer Suites is quick and painless. We did too much testing on dry dock ships!

- Added 2 new contact character faces
- Added quadrant faction, enemy ship and faction to ship combat victory / escape / defeat to match encounters
- Ship combat victory screen now includes hull and captain HP under the Ship tab
- Fixed bug with Ship Encounter / Victory / Defeat screen getting locked up after a story event
- Allowed installation of Officer Suite even when exceeding max officer count
- Improved self buff on Military Officer's Boarding Rush Talent
- Fixed bug where Valencia's story could get stuck even after Duel has ended; be careful, if she is onboard, the story will start again after update!
- If a ship is in drydock, you can now always access it regardless of starport rating fluctuation
- Fixed issue with starports over-reporting their value by +3
- Clarified rules for looting Smugglers and their goods that require permits in ship victory
- Fixed Medical Drop missions not adding to the plague score in Plague Era
- Improved tooltip description of medical rating

Our apologies for the overnight bugs with Talents. Crashes occurred during leveling and when using certain Talents during ship combat.

We have resolved the bug and a hotfix is now live.

For a small studio that prides ourselves on stability, this one is our bad.

- Fixed crashes with Talents

Cory and I draw so much inspiration from the community -- suggestions, bug fixes, motivations, new ideas -- your stories, your victories and your defeats. This update, we've focused on cycling some of the most critical of that feedback into the game. Thank you for post, sharing and helping us improve the game.

We've made important adjustments to 3 Rumors -- Civil Unrest, Quarantine and Starport Boosted. The changes are to remove the traps or blockers that these rumors create, which are completely out of the player's control.

For Civil Unrest, all of the spice hall services are still shuttered. This is not a fun place to land. However, you can reach Contacts. But, reaching a Contact require leaving the controlled district and risks the chance of being attacked by rioters. The chance to be attacked by rioters is reduced somewhat by your crew's Tactics score, but the risk is always there. If you are attacked by rioters, you must defend yourself and the local security forces do not take kindly to your stirring up trouble -- you will lose Rep. However, you can reach your Contacts, albeit with higher risk.

Quarantine is now within your captain's control to end. If you reach a quarantined planet, you can perform patrolling actions over the planet. Special Quarantine reduction cards are dealt into the hand and each one will reduce the Quarantine by 26 weeks. With some Talents some dedication, you can break a Quarantine rumor completely and land on the world.

Starport Boosted now ensures that the starport is ready to repair and provide juicy upgrades to your ship. No more chance to sail the stars only to reach the Rumor world and discover it was a nasty trick.


We've expanded and filled in the catalog of missiles and railguns to include both more small slot Railguns and medium slot Missiles. This increases the options for players as well as for the AI ship builder, which will now be able to build a more versatile set of enemies to face you. To help differentiate between S and M missiles, we've renamed some of the small slot missiles to the Dracos line.


Small slots on a ship are often at a premium. We have now added Officer Suites -- a set of two separate officer cabins. You can now trade 2 small slot Officer Cabins for one medium slot Officer cabin.

We've also fixed a host of bugs, improve UIs and resolved crashes. Every report, post and thread helps us to keep making STF better so thank you!

Please, tell a friend and leave a review today!

- Added 6 new small slot Railguns and medium slot Missiles -- for sale in starports now!
- Renamed some small slot Missile weapons (Dracos missiles)
- Enemy ship builder uses more flexible long and mid-range weapon configurations
- Added new medium slot Officer Suites which holds 2 officers and Reinforced Officer Suites with shielding
- Updated Quarantine Rumor: still prevents landing but can be broken by Patrolling actions pulling special Shorten / End Quarantine cards
- Updated Civil Unrest Rumor: still shuts down spice hall but allows attempt to visit Contacts with a risk of being caught in crew combat with rioters and rebels
- Updated Boosted Starport Rumor: now boosts all Starports that have the Rumor to at least +6
- Updated Boosted Starport Rumor: now increases ratings of Starport for all uses, not just Upgrades
- Rebalanced time requirement for landing on a planet
- Improved UI for interuptions during attempted landings in Blockades, Pirate Fleet Rumors, etc
- Enemy AI no longer incorrectly uses "Burrowing Shots" Talent against you
- Fixed bug where Zealot's "Retribution Justice" Talent was never going on cooldown
- Fixed misleading prompt in Stash Missions when you have exactly the right amount of cargo
- Fixed issues with Mission waypoints not updating in Quadrant Map
- Fixed bug allowing duplicates in combat if automatically selected
- Fixed description of Morale healing Talents in ship combat, like Furious Prodding
- Fixed issues with 'Starport Closed' not fully closing Starport

More than 200 years before your captain steps onto the bridge of his or her vessel in Star Traders: Frontiers the colony ships of the great Exodus were beginning to settle their new homes, settling new quadrants scattered to the galactic winds.

In the dusty and unlikely stretch of space known as the Cirm Sector, a weakened and battered force of Templar Militant strive to protect the fledgling faction colonies. In the following years, your captain will be called to lead the elite strike force of mech pilots into the most harrowing battles against xeno and humans alike. It rests on the shoulders of your leviathan battle mech to preserve the colonies, the save the quadrant.

If you are enjoying the lore of Star Traders: Frontiers, step into the turn-based tactical combat of Templar Battleforce and experience the galaxy and its history from a completely different perspective and through the eyes of a Zendu.

Save 50% and pick up a copy today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/370020/Templar_Battleforce/

Update #92 caps off another big weekend on the Frontier. More than double the music in the game, boosting the Smuggler's black market access, improving the UI and fixing another pile of bugs -- its just Sunday demands.

If you're enjoying the game and the steady stream of updates, please tell a friend about us and leave a review!

With Update #92, we've doubled the length of the musical soundtrack for the game. We've introduced 2 new dramatic combat tracks -- music for the heightened tension of deadly ship and crew battle. We've also introduced a second extend track for travel, exploration and management.

All of this music was already included in the game's Soundtrack DLC -- if you haven't checked that out:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/912470/Star_Traders_Frontiers_Soundtrack/

For a long time, there was a rule stating that if a world had a Trade Law of 3 or less, no criminal Black Market would exist there. To the great benefit of smugglers and pirates everywhere, we have removed this rule. Even in places where the Trade Law is lax, there is still law -- the Exchange has rules, taxes, annoying clerks who keep record of every trade and worse the Exchange bows to faction Conflicts. So now, on any world there can be a Black Market. Those Contacts who were offering Black Markets due to Traits are especially empowered by this change.


We're soaking up feedback from the community and fixing bugs and improving the game with every release. If you're seeking a Contact service, the Contact's detail panel now includes the specifics of what level Rank / Edict / Permit they can offer. If you're trying to watch the clock closely, hover over the date in the HUD -- you can now see the exact Turn and Day of the week as you can see in the Ship Status screen.



The price to Retrain Talents for higher level crew is now set to increase per level after 8.

We've resolved issues with the starting story (if you skipped the Arbiter), hanging story objectives, bugs with returning the De Rivesh blade and issues with Auto-equip stealing weapons.

A huge thanks to everyone helping us polish Star Traders: Frontiers into a diamond -- crashes are going down, bugs are falling, polish is shining.

- Added two new dramatic combat tracks to the in-game sound track (7m)
- Added one additional ambient background track for the main game map (9m30s)
- Remixed the in-game sound track to provide better consistency and higher quality playback
- Huge boost for Smugglers - removed restriction of high Trade Law on Black Market Contact Services, Black Markets now available on any world!
- Contact Details now includes maximum rank offered for Military Ranks, Trade Permits and Edicts
- Price to Retrain Talents increases every level once characters are above level 8
- Hover over Date in HUD includes precise date -- Year.Month plus Day and exact Turn
- Fixed situations where hanging story objectives are left in multiple quest lines
- Fixed issue with De Rivesh Legacy, possibly resulting in a hung dialog choice
- Fixed issues where Auto-assign could steal your primary weapon
- Fixed bug preventing recruits from Spice Festivals from getting bonus levels
- Fixed issue if you go to Faen homeworld first that the story cannot be continued
- Fixed inconsistencies in filtering drop down behavior in crew list
- Fixed misprint of debuff name for On Init Talents used by enemy crew

A few days have passed and the team here at Trese Brothers HQ has been busy on another big update. We're soaking up feedback from the community, crushing crashes (80% down over the last 2 releases) and fixing bugs as fast as we can. We're also prepping a new public roadmap which will give better visibility into everything that is coming down the pipe.

We are very excited and honored to have Rock, Paper Shotgun publish a review this morning! If you haven't picked up the game yet, you should check out Fraser Brown's review -- he's smitten, you might be too :D
https://steamcommunity.com/news/post/2454911758740334309

When we set out to create Star Traders: Frontiers, we decided to take a different--if not almost unique--approach to the story. To achieve a dynamic and evolving galaxy, we knew that the storylines must move as well -- not to wait for you, not to pause for your presence. This design decision has been a cornerstone of the stories we've told so far in the game and will continue to be.

However, we've had a lot of feedback over the last 8 months and especially in the last week that the story deadlines are unclear and sometimes don't provide enough time to do anything but the story. So, with this update we've made some significant tuning to the timing of the story as well as the visibility of story objectives and deadlines to help encourage the mixed play of sandbox-and-story that is so key to Star Traders: Frontiers experience.

First up, the Faen and Arbiter storylines have both been repaced to be a little more relaxed -- generally about 25% more Turns. We have no changed the core principles -- they are still in motion and you can still get left behind if you don't stay involved, but there is more time built into their progression to allow you to trade or pirate, upgrade your ship, get lost in a spice hall, do some side missions or whatever you please. To assist with this, we've added story objective deadlines throughout these two first critical arcs -- now you can see how long you have. We've also improved dialog and give some story justification to why you would know these dates.

We'll be working timeline tuning and story objective deadlines in the other vignettes and eras throughout the game, but needed to start here.

We've also done work to tune the plague era, tweaking dialog to help players have an easier introduction to the story as well as making the plague score rewards more generous.



On top of the story work, we've hammered out a ton of bug fixes and quality of life improvements. To help players avoid dumping cargo, the button been recolored red. Mutually exclusive Traits like Malcontent and Reveres Authority can longer appear in any Trait mutation scenario. If both ships try to retreat in combat, it always succeeds. If you board a ship without damaging a single component, you will get properly paid.

The list is long, be sure to browse the change log below!

- Increased Story Objective timers across the board for Faen and Arbiter storylines, at least 25% more Turns
- Displaying Story Objective deadlines throughout the arc, including end of the legal case
- Aligned story objective and mission timelines to be more clear about timing requirements
- Improved some dialogs and discussion between characters during these arcs, more timing and story state specifics included
- Increased duration of all basic missions timers by about 10%
- Simplified rule set for ship combat when both ships are trying to retreat - always succeeds
- Improved dialog at start of Plague Era to make Dr. Kaera Gouldbern easier to find
- Increased plague score boost for selling medicines to end rumors and completing plague-related missions
- Boarding xeno properly counts toward score of crew combats versus xeno
- Improved visual color of "Dump" button to avoid tossing cargo accidentally
- Fixed bug with mutually exclusive Traits appearing (Reveres Authority + Malcontent)
- Fixed issues with salvage values from completely undamaged ships (you boarding monsters!)
- Fixed bug with Bootleg Profits not applying price change to purchase
- Fixed bug with all gear showing unavailable from Contacts
- Fixed issues with hanging Story Objectives
- Fixed issue with rumor-triggered Pirates not being hostile
- Fixed issue with Quadrant's owner flag and reputation hover being incorrect after hyperwarp jumps
- Fixed logic for detecting Pirate I, Pirate II and Pirate III Awards
- Fixes some issues with main map keybindings
- Fixes some issues with swapping and selling ships in Dry Dock
- Fixed missing SFX on some UI elements