The BROOD has been awoken in this major new expansion pack which includes a extremely challenging Story Era, the new Gundeck Boss Job and invites enemy captains to command carriers and launch squadrons of attack craft.

With the drop of this major expansion, we're inviting new captains to come sail the quadrants and save 35%. If you're enjoying the game and the continuous stream of major expansions without any DLCs, please take a moment to leave a review or tell a friend. If you're new to the frontiers, post your comments, feedback and suggestions to the discussion board or join us on our Discord where there is a great community to help!


To avoid spoilers, we won't say much about the ancient, slimy, snaky void-slug evil that has slept since the time of Shalun. The BROOD Story Era will start during the 3rd or 4th Centuries with a series of introductory stories. No matter how old your game is, it will start if you play for a few years -- as always we work hard to make sure veteran captains can keep enjoying new content without any restarts.

Prepare your ship, sharpen your blades, load up on hexshell. This one won't be easy, captain.


Enemy captains now have the fully operational battle carriers! High level human captains of certain professions like Military Officer may challenge you in the void, ready to launch interdictors, bombers and boarding shuttles against you. And, the jyeeta race is well known for its craft swarms. In both cases, it is time for your captain to consider some changes to ship weaponry, ship components, Talents and even perhaps Job distribution on the boat. Consider the % to hit craft when picking ship weapons, as you'll want to blow the enemy craft out of the sky before they reach you. Take another look at Autocannons. Consider of the C-Tak and Railtrak Guidance components that play double-duty on your ship, or Pilot Assist Modules which help your capital ship evade bombing runs. Finally -- most ship Jobs already provide Talents with capability to jam, disable or debuff craft, and now a new specialist Job has arrived as well.


The new Gundeck Boss Job brings a strong anti-craft capability to any ship, combining the sensibilities of a quartermaster with the skills of a gunner. Stalking the gundecks, the boss roars orders, pinpoints targets and rallies morale in ship combat. Adding Gunnery, Intimidate and Repair, the Gundeck Boss is a great cross-Job for a ship officer but can make for a powerful stand-alone crew member. Even on a small ship, the Gundeck Boss can make a big impact versus carriers.


With the BROOD expansion, we've closed down the entire v2.6.x family of the roadmap, adding the promised 7th story Era and the jyeeta xeno species in a single blow. We've also completed our goal to add +33% new Jobs and Talents and +50% new Contact types and services after the game's release, which means we're starting to tick off some of the big boxes in the Content Expansion Goals as well.


While we still have a lot of work to finish out the Star Traders: Frontiers development roadmap, we're excited to be coming out of the pre-production phase on our next game and ready to share.

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 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.

- Added 7th Story Era: Jyeeta Xeno Brood Awakens!
- Added new anti-craft "Gundeck Boss" Job!
- Enemy captains may now fly carrier ships including the dreaded Jyeeta Xeno and their swarm
- All new simulation rules, Rumors, Conflicts, and Contact actions/mutations during this new period of galactic threat
- Added new Era-specific Echoes that forever change the simulation due to the 7th Era
- Added 4 new Era-specific Rumors which can affect entire quadrants, systems and wilderness zones and multiple Rumor echoes which can appear anytime after Era
- Added 1 new Era-specific Contact Type, the controversial Xenologist, who will also echo and appear after Era
- Added 5 Era-specific Contact creation rules to seed the Era new blood
- Added 4 Era-specific special cargo rules for Spies, Merchants, Smugglers and Pirates
- Added 5 Era-specific Explorer cards which can also echo and appear anytime after Era
- Added 6 Era-specific Orbital Ops and Salvage cards which can also echo and appear anytime after Era
- Added new Era-driven ship encounters and mechanics when meeting the Jyeeta xeno in the void
- Added 13 new Era-specific crew barks for different Rumor typess
- Added new Rare Trade Good, Jyeeta Artifacts
- New Spice Hall recruit of Xeno Hunters during Jyeeta Spore system Rumor
- Rippling effects of story choices made all the way back in the first Era bearing fruit
- Added new Contact type "Fleet Commander" offers high rank and edict, pardons, ship upgrade discount, recruits Gundeck Boss
- Renamed Contact Trait "Naval Vet" to "Wing Vet", added new "Naval Vet" Contact Trait
- Contacts with "Naval Vet" Trait gives more weight to Faction Rep, has +1 bonus level to Recruits, and Recruits Gundeck Bosses
- Increased duration of Navigator's "Fast Getaway" Talent to 3 turns from 2
- Buffed Battle Prow 1, 2 and 3 components with improved Electronics and Boarding Bonus
- Rebalanced Military Officer's "Incite Victory" Talent
- Fixed bug with Sell All sometimes still selling "F" demand resources
- Fixed issues with total component counts sometimes reporting incorrectly in starport
- Fixed issues with Awards -- Survivor III, Navigator I, II and III
- Fixed issues with some enemy Talents showing up in the player's log

v3.0.3 - 11/5/2019
- Fixed crash when purchasing new craft for your carriers
- Fixed crash on some Brood Era missions offered by Fleet Commanders
- Fixed issue where Explorer "Dredge Artifacts" Talent could be used on any type of ship
- Fixed issue where Xeno Hunter "Macabre Harvest" used against Jyeeta would produce Terrox Artifacts
- Fixed crashes with Consolidation Era missions offered by UCF contacts


v3.0.5 - 11/6/2019
- Gai Cluvere now offers Brood Era related missions correctly
- Fixed bugs with Smuggler Chekha's "Stockpiled for Riches" Mission - steps will now create stashes
- Fixed crashes with dialogs at Fleet Commander headquarters
- Fixed bug with "UNKNOWN ACTION TYPE" showing up for some Talents
- Fixed bug with "Sell All" threshold resetting sometimes
- Fixed missing bonuses on Cadar-only Battle Prow 4 and Battle Prow 5
- Fixed some bugs in Explorer and Mission flavor text generator
- Fixed bugs with hovers in Galaxy and Quadrant maps
- Fixed bug with Talent Manifest "locking up" buttons at bottom of screen

v3.0.7 - 11/8/2019
- Jyeeta Balancing and Ship Updates
- Added new smaller/intro Jyeeta Ship "Infector"
- Added new smaller/intro Terrox Ship "Terrox Dart"
- Added "Sale Report" to any transaction made by Sell All to give specific details of all sales and profits
- Improved difficulty scaling for AI Small Craft Attacks
- Improved difficulty scaling for Jyeeta Xeno Craft
- Fixed names of Jyeeta ship components for better combat logs
- Fixed bug with some boarding Talents incorrectly reporting type of killed Jyeeta targets
- Fixed bug in Exchange "Sell All" that could sometimes refuse to sell or sell an item below minimum
- Fixed bug preventing Dredge Artifacts from working on xeno of either type
- Fixed bugs in Options screens
- Fixed some missing Brood Era flavor text and crew barks

v3.0.9 - 11/10/2019
- Jyeeta Balancing and Ship Updates
- Added new smaller/intro Jyeeta Ship "Infector"
- Added new smaller/intro Terrox Ship "Terrox Dart"
- Added "Sale Report" to any transaction made by Sell All to give specific details of all sales and profits
- Improved difficulty scaling for AI Small Craft Attacks
- Improved difficulty scaling for Jyeeta Xeno Craft
- Fixed names of Jyeeta ship components for better combat logs
- Fixed bug with some boarding Talents incorrectly reporting type of killed Jyeeta targets
- Fixed bug in Exchange "Sell All" that could sometimes refuse to sell or sell an item below minimum
- Fixed bug preventing Dredge Artifacts from working on xeno of either type
- Fixed bugs in Options screens
- Fixed some missing Brood Era flavor text and crew barks

Update #186 rolls out the last pack of critical changes before the next major milestone -- rebalancing some aspects of ship combat, improving the AI's Job/Talent training routine, improving high level ship weapon components and tweaking some of the cards related to fighting xeno and harvesting artifacts.

Following this update, we're marching straight for the next major milestone which will include a new era, new xeno type and enemy carriers! If you're enjoying the pace of constant updates, be sure to leave a review and tell a friend!

You can see some of the "making of" the Jyeeta xeno race on YouTube. This time lapse video compresses a multi-hour animation session into a few minutes.



We've made some important changes to the meta around boarding defense and ship weapon Gunnery requirements that may impact your ship builds.

First -- we've changed the rules for boarding defense. In the past, Boarding Bonus was directly applied to your boarding defense which means a ship built to board is also excellent at defending against boarding. With this shift, we've reduced the Boarding Bonus contribution to boarding defense by 50%. Without a doubt, this is most likely to help the AI. Most players who are boarding have already figured out how to get 100% boarding success where the enemy who attempts to board fails more than 50% of the time. This change should make Bounty Hunters, Pirates and other boarding aggro enemy captains more fun and challenging.

Second -- we've increased the Gunnery Skill Pool requirements for many ship weapons above level 4 from anywhere from +1 to +8 points. Overall, this pushes the Gunnery Skill Pool higher which may require you to adjust your crew compositions to find additional Gunnery Skill, depending on how many high level weapons you have on board. However, it will also increase the accuracy of these weapons and impact the AI's interest in having higher Gunnery Skill.

With Update #186 we've completed the final round of AI hardening before the release of enemy carriers. This update includes improving the ability for captain and officers to balance their Talent selections by upfront planning some of the decisions and needed Talents for their ship type and size. Also, the AI is now putting more weight into higher level Talents to help drive smarter choices and harder to beat strategies.

Another improvement was to avoid too many duplicates of the same Talent. This includes toning down the number of Twitch Surge's that any ship crew will take.


With the new xeno race coming it means a new type of xeno Artifact and Rare Trade Good coming as well. As we're working our way through all those impacts, we're balancing and improving the Terrox ops cards. The reward of the Explorer card "Xeno Spore!" can be improved by Mining Ship Components. In Salvage, "Xeno Assault" has an increased number of artifact rewards if you survive the double stacked xeno fights.

We've also fixed a bug where Traits gained after Crew Combat where not immediately appearing.

Also, finally we've closed the final set of reported bugs for the Buried Demons storyline, including some issues with dialog lying about Trike's final fate.

- Improved intelligence of routine training enemy ship's officers to make smarter Talent selections
- Improved balance of enemy ship's Pilot taking Twitch Surge Talent
- Rebalanced Ship Combat - Boarding rolls to make defense weaker and buff attack bonuses
- Increase Gunnery Skill Pools for most ship weapon's above level 4, increasing ship accuracy as well as Gunnery pool needs
- Adjusted visuals in ship combat to clearly differentiate between captain's ship and craft and the enemy ship (and craft soon)
- Artifact haul for "Xeno Spore!" Exploring card (xeno plus an artifact stash) is now increased by Mining Ship Components
- Increased the Terrox Artifact rewards when fighting xeno in Orbital Salvage card "Xeno Assault!"
- Fixed issues with Traits gained by crew combat victory not appear for a little while or until game reload
- Fixed story bug where dialog would state Trike Zermotte lived when he actually dies
- Fixed crashes in Ship Combat related to Small Craft

Update #185 rolls out with another set of additions -- new Talents, new advantages to old Talents, new Rumor effects and many improvements across the card mini-games and Trait mutation rules for the game.

If you're enjoying the relentless pace of updates, new changes and additions please be sure to leave a review and tell a friend!


Drawing on some inspiration from community suggestions, we've pushed new alternatives for Morale-damaged focused builds into the Talent set for ship combat. Commander has gained a new powerful rank 15 Talent, Warning Shots, which reduces their own damage but debuffs the enemy's move, escape and inflicts nasty Morale Damage every turn.

In addition, Gunner's "Signature Homing" (rank 1), "Targeting Lock" (rank 1) and "Scattershot" (rank 8) Talents have all gained +10 Morale/turn to enemy crew, giving some new and quick options to add Morale damage to your starting and standard builds.

A final new Talent has gone in for Diplomats at rank 11 -- Compelling Conscription -- allows these quick talkers to lean hard on a new conscript and come onto the ship with higher Morale and without any negative Trait mutation.

Rumors that are focused on Recruiting bonuses -- including Mercenaries, Spice Festival and Academy Graduation -- all the now ensure the doors for recruiting at the spice hall are always open. In situations where these Rumors could appear on low starport worlds there was not enough starfaring interest in the zone to drive recruitment. Now, these Rumors temporarily boost that.

Across a number of card game operations and combat scenarios, we've fine tuned and improved the rates for Trait mutation and XP gain.

Traits are slightly more likely to appear now on crew combat victory and slightly less likely to appear on ship combat draw and hyperwarp jump (which are both very common events). We've added new Trait mutation paths for Ship Combat Victory, Craft Destroyed (assuming you survive!) and Craft Landed to help further shape those brave men and women who take to the void in bombers, interdictors and shuttles.

In addition, larger planets now cost more Fuel and Time to land on, so have your Piloting Talents ready.

- Added new Commander Talent "Warning Shots" at rank 15 - reduce enemy move, escape and crush their Morale
- Added new Diplomat Talent "Compelling Conscription" at rank 11 - pressed crew start with higher Morale and don't gain negative Trait
- Gunner Talents "Signature Homing" (rank 1), "Targeting Lock" (rank 1) and "Scattershot" (rank 8) all gain +10 Morale/turn to enemy crew
- During Mercenaries, Spice Festival and Academy Graduation Rumors, the Spice Hall is always open for Recruiting even if Starport rating is below minimum
- Recovery of relic wargear during Exploration slightly more common, increased during "Gold Rush" Rumor
- Radiation and Molten worlds are slightly riskier for Exploration
- Very Large Planets take slightly longer and more fuel to make planetfall
- Slightly increased Trait Mutation rate for Crew Combat Victory, slightly reduced for Hyperwarp / Ship Combat Draw
- Added new Trait Mutation paths for Ship Combat Victory, Craft Destroyed, Craft Landed
- Very slightly increased Experienced earned in Ship Combat Victory
- Display of ship's offered price added to dry dock sale confirmation dialog
- Fixed missing "Unexpected Revelation" cards in Explorer decks, experience granting card now appears again
- Mechanized enemies no longer Bleed or suffer Poison Damage
- Fixed bug in map hovers where Repair service that was denied by Rep might not show as disabled
- Fixed bug with Hietta Lumotte's court (no longer appears)

Update #184 arrives with continued focus on polishing up the quality of life features, improving the UI and hitting major points of community feedback. As we keep marching to the exciting and dramatic end of the v2.6.x roadmap family, we're focused on hitting all the big points in the quality of life section of our to-do list. We'll be hammering away at this for a few more releases and then we'll be ushering in a new major blast of content!

Thanks to everyone leaving a review and telling a friend.


Immediately a popular feature, Sell All rapidly garnered a lot of smart feedback and suggestions on how to make it even better. Right away, we heard selling everything that was able to turn any profit mean you're incorrectly selling sometimes at F demand for a few credits -- so you have to abandon the button and go back to selling one by one.

Therefore, we have added a Minimum Demand slider which you can raise from F to A+. Any resource that has less than this demand won't be sold when you click "Sell All". Our testing merchants cruised through hours of profitable play without ever having to sell anything manually! This setting is remembered from Exchange to Exchange within your game, so set it where you like it and let it ride!

Also, to avoid nasty or nice surprises, we've added a warning about Trade Ban Conflicts as well as Embargo and Blockade Rumors, which can respectively damage or raise your Rep when trading. These warnings are visible from the Sell All view and can help you avoid mistakes here.

A huge thanks to everyone pouring fuel on the feedback fire for this one.

We've added a helpful confirmation dialog to selling a ship as a few players have been stung by a misclick here. Thanks again to everyone suggesting the little things to make the game even smoother.


Over the last couple of releases, we've worked to revamp the balance of Risk and Reward factors throughout all of the orbital games. We've pushed another set of balancing changes with Update #184 as well as increasing the impacts of the Plague Era and Meteor or Ion Storm Rumors. These dangerous events make this type of activity very dangerous and you should -- more than ever -- consider a lovely spying trip when meteorite storm is whizzing through the system.

- Exchange and Black Market "Sell All" now includes a preference for the Minimum Demand (such as B+) to sell cargo, cargo under this Demand is not sold
- Exchange and Black Market "Sell All" now warns about Trade Bans, Blockade Rumors and Embargo Rumors that might increase or decrease Rep with every sale
- "Sell All" button always appears when opening Exchange or Black Market sale screen
- Added confirmation dialog to Dry Dock ship sales to avoid accidental sales
- Additional balancing and fixes for Risk and Reward factor weights in Orbital Ops
- Increased impact of Plague Era in Orbital Ops (Salvage, Patrol, Spy, Blockade)
- Increased impact of Meteor and Ion Storms on Orbital Ops
- Fixed issues with buttons overlapping in Exchange on for some screen sizes
- Clarified description of some card game Talents
- New SFX for "Meteor Damage" during Orbital Ops
- Additional SFX for Xeno Encounters in Orbital Ops and Explorer

Update #183 brings a series of new features to the starport and exchanges on grav worlds to help established merchants, prize ship hunters and captains of all type get their void-faring work done faster and easier. We've also made a pile of changes to improve the October Community Challenge which put some odd strains on the game!

If you're enjoying the pace of updates, please leave a review!

Update #183 includes some fixes and balance changes specifically aimed at making this month's community challenge more playable. The community challenge -- linked below -- involves surviving 14 years with only Officers and your Captain on board the ship, in honor of Firefly's 14 awesome episodes and their tight knit group.
October Community Challenge: Firefly Tour

Update #183 reduces the minimum head count required for Orbital Ops to 5 which makes this far more achievable with officer-only setup. We've also fixed a bug with the screen locking up on orbital missions if you have less than the minimum head count on board. Finally, we fixed a bug we had never seen before -- the "chain of Storytellers" in which one Storyteller could boost another Storyteller's Morale who would in turn boost another Storyteller's Morale ... its not something you'd ever see in a larger crew but it was causing some occasional issues for this popular challenge!


The Exchange and Black Markets now have a new fire sale button! The "Sell All" button will sell all goods that can be sold in the current market at a profit. The button is not picky about how much of a profit, so be sure to check the totals displayed in the table before clicking -- even a few credits will get a cargo row tossed into the fire.

However, for most trading this is a welcome addition to speed up the pace of cargo hauls! Thanks to the players suggesting it and enjoy!


Ships parked in dry dock have long had the disadvantage that they could not be repaired. This could create some challenging situations for launching them as sometimes their officer cabins or barracks could be so damaged that your current crew couldn't transfer over for a valid launch event! Now, you can repair local dry docked ship in the starport by swapping into their repair list. Use the white arrow button in the repair box in the zone to open the repair detail and you'll see a list of any dry docked ships there. Swap in and repair! This can also help you net a better price when selling a ship, as component damage tanks the resale price of a vessel.

We've also made some improvements to how certain classes of story missions are set to expire -- specifically those by Calagan Faen and the Arbiter. In both cases, now as the Eras roll by and major political events happen if the mission is still pending as an offer from the Contact it is immediately expired. However, if you've already accepted the mission then it will not expire out from under you suddenly.

- Added "Sell All" button to Exchange and Black Market which makes all profitable trades in a single click
- Added ability to repair locally Dry Docked ships in the starport
- Improved story handling of expiring missions for Calagan and Arbiter Brokstrom -- better cleanup for mission offers and no clean up for missions in progress
- Fixed crash for Community Challenge "Firefly Tour" to prevent possible crash during Paying Wages
- Reduced minimum head count required to engage in Orbital Ops and orbital missions to 5
- Fixed bug causing game freeze when attempting an Orbital Ops mission with less than minimum head count
- Added note to all orbital operations (Spy, Blockade, Patrol, Salvage) that 5 is the minimum head count required
- Improve new Trait mutation paths for even better results, fixed bugs causing some characters to get Trait overflow

Update #182 is almost entirely dedicated to Traits and Contact Traits with a massive addition of 15 new Traits, one new Contact Trait and further refinement and deepening of all Trait mutation systems. With this big addition, we're excited to finally be marking some of the content items off the dev roadmap -- having now exceeded 210 Traits, we've cleared the "+100% Traits" goal that we put up for Trait expansion.

This doesn't mean that more Traits aren't coming, but we're getting close to knocking down a number of these categories (+33% Jobs and Talents is next).

If you enjoy the constant updates and new free content, please leave a review and tell a friend!


Update #182 comes loaded with new Traits, many of them inspired by or directly suggested by the community. A big thanks definitely goes out to @DrSpendLove for suggesting at least half of these! We've got -- Ace Pilot, Bad Eyes, Bloodstained, Bulky, Daredevil, Diggermind, Fast Talker, Flexible, Lonehawk, Maimed, Surehand, Self-Taught, Wayfarer, Well-Rounded!!! That's quite the list and its a mix of good and bad Traits to enjoy.

Ace Pilot, Daredevil and Lonehawk are specifically craft pilot focused, so watch for these when considering your choices on carriers.

We've also spent some time tuning and refining the Trait mutations, creating more links between Traits and game events and preventing odd Trait crosses. With this update and the new additions, we've added more strong faction-links to Traits -- meaning Traits like Diggermind are most prevalent on Javat where existing Traits like Spatial are most likely to appear in Alta Mesa crew. We've improved the list and added more to further differentiate the factions over the course of your crew's Trait evolution.

If you end up with Bad Eyes from exposure to Radiation or Maimed after falling under xeno claw, you can visit Chaesin and Gestalt clinics -- they can help recondition these Traits out.


With Update #182, we've added the 60th Contact Trait -- Hunted. A Contact who perhaps has had a brush with death or assassins in the past can't shake the feeling that someone is gunning for them. Hunted Contacts hire out Bodyguards, avoid violent missions and offer cheaper pardons.

In addition, we've pushed more rules about Pardon pricing to Contact Traits -- Traitor and Corrupt Contacts are willing to take lower price Pardon offers as a form of bribes while Greedy Contacts always charge more.

We've made some nice improvements to desertion this update. First, we've increased the maximum bonus that a veteran's tenure can provide from 25% to 35% -- their weeks and years on your ship will now make them even more resistant. Combined with other factors (landing on a world that doesn't match their faction, on a world that is a syndicate when they are a clan or just landing somewhere indie) your vets can reach over 100% resistance to desertion.

Another important note about desertion -- the new Wayfarer Trait can cause some issues with Officers. Those Officers who have Wayfarer gain +4 Wisdom by they are also wanderers and seekers and are willing to jump ship if their Morale is low, even when they are Officers. Otherwise, Officers never desert. So, be sure to know your Officer's Traits.

We've also fixed a bug that cause the Ship Skill Pools to not correctly update after desertion was prevented by Talent or Trait.

- Added 15 new Traits (Ace Pilot, Bad Eyes, Bloodstained, Bulky, Daredevil, Diggermind, Fast Talker, Flexible, Lonehawk, Maimed, Surehand, Self-Taught, Wayfarer, Well-Rounded)
- Added more strongly faction-linked Traits for newly recruited crew (Javat to Diggermind, Alta Mesa to Ace Pilot, as well as others new and old)
- Added more Trait mutation paths from ship and crew combat results
- Added new Trait "Surehand" which can grant Gunnery Skill Bonus up to +12
- Maimed and Bad Eyes can be healed by a mix of Chaesin and Gestalt Reconditioning
- Added new Contact Trait "Hunted" with cheaper Pardons, less violent missions and Recruits Bodyguards
- Updated Contact Traits Corrupt and Traitor to charge less for Pardons while Greedy charges more
- Fixed issue with some bonus Skills from officers not appearing in Ship Status / Logs (from Neverlost, Spatial)
- Increased maximum desertion resistance bonus that a long tenure on the ship can give a crew member by 10% up to 35%
- Fixed bug with Desertion prevention Talents and Traits not always causing Ship Skill Pools to refresh properly
- Corrected inconsistency in Born Hunter Trait description

While we are still hard at work on Star Traders: Frontiers dev roadmap -- with another big Era release and major milestone coming this month -- we are very excited to preview our next project -- Cyber Knights RPG.

It is early -- we're deep in pre-production -- but want to share the exciting news (outside of our Patreon who have been watching for a while).

Cyber Knights invites you to lead your shadow company of mercs through the New Boston Zone in 2231, testing not only your skill and what you'll compromise to make it big but also your loyalty to each other and how much you're willing to sacrifice. Built on a core of turn-based gameplay featuring stealth, hacking, ambushes, firefights layered over merc company management, base building and criminal networking, Cyber Knights weaves a sharply human story in a dehumanizing cyberpunk world.

So, while it is early, if you like are enjoying Star Traders: Frontiers, like our style of games or love our dedication to updating and expanding our games, sign up to get the call!

In the meantime, enjoy some concept art and tell a friend! Cyber Knights RPG is coming.

Update #181 arrives to close out September and helps us preps for a really big October. With this release, we've added new character outfits, are nearly done rebalancing all of the Risk and Reward factors in the operations, pushed in some important ship component improvements and have done another round of minor improvements to the quad map and star atlas. From here, we have a few more big quality of life focused releases coming up before we drop the later October update that will close out the v2.6.x family of the dev roadmap with a bang, a boom and a scream in the void (new xeno, new era, new Job!).


While most of the outfits in the latest additions have all been matched, we've added two unique outfits today with Update #181. Before you get your pitchfork, these outfits were suggested and detailed by some of our Patreon supporters (https://patreon.com/TreseBrothers). If they're popular, we'll look into making a matched set for each but these are additions thanks to our awesome patron crew who support us every day.

First up, we've got a space-punk swordsman and second up we have a sleek and simple fashionable attire suitable for captains, diplomats, merchants and also I am betting that works for assassins too. You try and tell us what you think, captains!


We've been gathering feedback and input on the new Risk and Reward rebalance and by and large are very happy with the new results. We've continually rolled out new sets of Risk and Rewards for a new type of operation each update for the last few updates, to be careful not to upset everything at once. Still, everything in the orbital and ground ops just feels better now, and the feedback is good so we are marching forward! Spy has now had its Risk and Reward math, all reported bugs fixed and all oddities about really high Skill pools causing unpleasant results are resolved.

With Update #181 we improved the Valkri Missile Pods, the level 8 ship weapon. For that price tag, they needed to pack a bit more punch and accuracy. We've also added Ship Ops requirements to every Prisoner Cell and Passenger Cabin. This helps bump the Ship Ops pools on ships that may be investing heavily in Missions and is overall a definitely improvement for captains across the void.

We're bringing in new suggestions from the community every week and this week we picked up a few more related to the Star Atlas and the main star map hovers. We've added Trade Permit values to the hovers over zones so you don't need to remember whether or not you have a permit with a faction when shopping on the map. Also, we've added the phrase "trade law X" to the searchable term -- while it isn't perfect it can help when you're looking for some specific trading zones.

We've got a few more great requests this week about QoL in these areas and are looking forward to rolling in more community feedback in the next updates!

Thanks to everyone leaving a review and especially to our Patreon supporters.

- Added 2 new character outfits suggested by Patreons -- sleek and stylish outfit and gray and space-punk swordsman
- Improved Risk and Reward factors weights for Orbital Spy including all zone stats, Rumors and other influences
- Improved balance of level 8 ship missiles, Valkri Missile Pods
- Added Trade Permit level with faction to hover over systems on the quadrant map
- Added minor Ship Ops Skill requirements to Passenger suites of all kind and rebalanced Ship Ops requirements for Prisoner cells
- Fixed bug that allowed some non-local starting Contacts to end up on Indie zones
- Added searchable string "trade law X" for all visited zones in the Star Atlas
- Fixed issue with incorrect jump count shown when navigating to distance quad from Star Atlas
- Fixed mobile issue where too many Contacts could run off screen

Update #180 comes burning out of the system, opening up the frontier for traders, pirates and anyone traveling the void's lanes. With a major new filter in the Star Atlas, a new unlockable ship for purchase, further extension of the new enemy ship selector and a full rebalance of Blockade's risk and reward system, Update #180 full of improvements requested by the community with solid adds of new content.


The new star atlas jump filter allows you to populate the Star Atlas with zones that are outside of the currently selected system. The default comes up only showing the local zones, but if you want to cast your net wider, you can pull down the filter drop down and pick any range up to 4 jumps distant, and these zones will load in.

This will greatly increase the number of potential zones shown, as even using the 1 jump filter will pull zones from any quad within 1 jump -- which might be 1 to 4 new quads on the regular. So, it is very important to use additional filters and search to narrow down the list.

For example, look for any wilderness zone within 1 jump. Or, search for any zone that "sells explosives" within 3 jumps. Or search for a "mining" zone within 4 jumps. You can peruse what the galaxy has to offer with new ease!

Sorting by distance can be a big help to keep things useful.


Locked behind the Master Explorer unlock, the Azurite cruiser is 7000 Mass class combat vessel coming off the starport shelf with many upgraded components including multiple Shielded and Reinforced types of components, Deflector Array 4, upgraded weapons and more. Also promising the best-in-class base Armor for a 7000M ship and with the highest medium slot count of 10 and still packing 11 smalls -- the Azurite stands out as combat ready but also prepared to be retrofitted for many other types of duties.

The AI isn't yet flying the Azurite but will get the option soon.

The same major rework coming through Explorer and Patrol has now touched down in Blockade. All of the underlying math to determine Risk and Reward from your crew's Skills as well as all of the local factors from Danger to the zones' Economics, Starport and Military have been fine tuned and improved. We've also made a second pass on Patrol, tweaking a few things and make it even better.

You'll really feel the benefits of Patrolling and Blockading at ripe systems and can feel the pain of doing it in the wrong places even more clearly.

We've also jammed a pile of community requests and reported fixes into this release.

A long running issue that allowed some of your starting Contacts to end up in Aetaan Char's faction has been resolved.

We've further expanded the AI's ship selection routines, spicing up Pirates and Military Officers with a few more options.

We've added some missing tooltips to the crew list screens and to craft during ship combat. Finally, we've fixed some issues with hanging story objectives in some branches of the new Era content.

- Star Atlas now supports jump filter, allowing viewing of systems outside of the currently selected quad, up to 4 jumps
- New Ship: 7000M Azurite Cruiser (Heavy Combat Ship)
- Unlock Azurite Cruiser with Explorer II
- Permanently fixed all occurrences of starting Contacts being in Aetaan Char's faction
- v4 of rebalanced enemy AI ship selection -- now with more than 110 ship AI
- Revised and Updated Patrol risk and reward weights based on player feedback and results from v2.6.13
- Improved Risk and Reward factors weights for Orbital Blockade including all zone stats, Rumors and other influences
- Improved hovers for Small Craft in Ship Combat
- Improved missing tooltips on Crew List / Trait List / Talent Manifest screens
- Fixed hanging story objectives that could be left during Buried Demons story branches

Update #179 brings another wave of improvements to enemy ship selection, a rebalance of all the risk and reward factors for Exploring and Patrol, as well as adding all the missing operation Talent sections to the Talent Manifest (Explorer, Black Market, Salvage). We've also pushed more powerful and varied effects into Rumors, Military Rank and high Rep with factions.

As we start the march to the next major Story Era and Job milestone, we're hammering away on quality of life, systems balance and community suggestions. So a huge thanks to everyone posting feedback, suggestions and bugs!


We used Update #178 as a release and testing ground for the new rewrite of the enemy AI ship selection. This let us test out the new system, gather data and we had to hotfix a critical bug. Now that everything is confirmed working, with Update #179 we've revved the engine and actually applied gasoline. Boom! The enemy ship AI has a better sense of progression and has more than 100 more options across the board through the tiers of levels and with different captain types. We're eager to hear feedback from the player base, but we've taken this very important project slowly in multiple stages to ensure that this part goes smoothly and leads to a more balanced, fun and challenging experience for all captains at all difficulties.


With Update #179, we've completed a rewrite of the Risk and Reward factors of Patrol and Exploring. The factors remain unchanged -- Explorer, Tactics, Danger, etc -- are all still what derive the % for Common, Good and Rare rewards, for example, but the math to combine all those factors has been adjusted to better take into account the large swing of scale of these values as well as the modifiers of Rumors and Conflicts.

This also addresses some issues that were reported about the values oddly shifting as certain Skill Pools got very high as well as some oddities with high Danger planets not being dangerous enough. They're dangerous, we fixed that!

One of the dangerous improvements to Explorer is that system-wide Ion Storm and Meteor Storms now increase Exploration risk of ship and crew damage.


We've now added the 3 missing sections to the Talent Manifest to cover all the wide variety of Talents for Explorer, Salvage and Black Market. Each major Talent type has its own section, making it easy to check on your crew's prowess within any given specialty operation and the cool down status of these Talent groups.

We've added more effects to high Reputation, high Military Rank and recruiting Rumors.

First up -- very high Rep Captains can gain additional bonus levels recruiting anyone from a zone with Starport 8 or higher. These bonuses can be especially significant when combined with other Rumors and factors -- starting at 500 (+1 non-combat), 800 (+1 all), 1100 (+2 combat, +1 all others), 1400 (+2 all) and 2100 (+3 all).

Next up -- Permit Rank 4 and Military Rank 13 and higher both have gained additional bonuses to their recruit types. For example, Permit 4 now gives +2 level bonus to Smugglers.

Spice Festival, Academy Graduation and Mercenary Rumors also all got their level bonuses boosted, giving even better options for spice hall and contact recruits.

With all the changes, the new theoretical maximum for a recruit is now level 16, but it would take a lot of work and the right Rumor conditions!

- v3 of rebalanced enemy AI ship selection -- now with more than 100 ship AI
- Improved Risk and Reward factors weights for Explorer including all zone stats, Rumors and other influences
- Improved Risk and Reward factors weights for Orbital Patrol including all zone stats, Rumors and other influences
- Very High Rep Captains (Star Hero and above) increase bonus Recruit Levels from affiliated Starports of Rating 8 and above
- Increased Recruiting Level Impact of Rank 13, Mercenaries, Graduation and Spice Festival Rumors
- Revised some negative Trait mutation tables to better match each event's theme (void, wilderness, spice, piracy)
- Ion Storm and Meteor Storms now increase Exploration risk of ship and crew damage
- Fixed bug where a Military Officer might be sailing a Xeno Spine ship (oops!)
- Fixed bug that allowed xeno ships to surrender due to Morale loss in certain situations
- Fixed occasional crash in UCF Founding cut scene