Update #282 takes a detour to catch up on some balance work we've been testing and tuning. We've heard from the community, watched in play and analyzed the data about how craft measure up to regular capital ship weaponry and are making some changes with this update to help tip the scales a bit. Across the spectrum -- Bombers, Interdictors and Autocannons are all more dangerous as of Update #282. We have to tread carefully with these types of updates as enemy carriers gain all the bonuses, so keep in mind that they will be hitting harder after Update #282 and be sure to you have your anti-craft strategy in place by (usually) year 8 to 12.

If you're enjoying the pace of updates, be sure to tell a friend and leave a review.

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/

With Update #282, we've ratcheted up the damage across the spectrum in small craft to keep them competitive with other ship weapons, especially as more powerful weapons are coming online through story arcs. All Interdictor rockets and Bomber bombs have gained around +10% to +20% Radiation Damage, depending on their class. In addition, standard Damage base (the static, unrolled part of the damage) has gone up around +10% per craft as well.

While they take a few turns to deliver their destructive payload, Bombers are now tearing apart enemy hulls even more effectively and your Interdictors are even better prepared to shoot down other craft.

But, if the craft are hitting harder ...


As the entire damage balance getting more savage, its key that Autocannons strike back even harder. Across the board, ACs are now more accurate when attacking small craft, anywhere from +2% to +7% in the attacks. All the more reason to make sure you're craft are defensively prepared to avoid enemy fire and even better to shoot down incoming enemy craft.

When the class 7 Bomber and Interdictor were added a linking issue wasn't caught that left them with the weapons from the class 6 craft. We've now resolved this issue and properly linked the Trifex Assault Mk2 Interdictor to its new and best in class Rockets as well as the deadly Trident DX9 Bomber to the best in class boom-boom!

All the more reason to cozy up to your factions and go shopping to upgrade what you've got in your carrier's hangars.


The Shock Trooper's Talent "Single-Minded Strike" has been upgraded to have a shorter cooldown (now 6 weeks) and a longer duration in ship combat (3 turns) as its effect is so narrow -- boarding, boarding, boarding! For those Shock Troopers helping to get their ship into range so they can get their snubber's barrels into range, enjoy the upgrades.

If you're enjoying the pace of updates, be sure to tell a friend and leave a review.

- New rocket weapon for "Trifex Assault Mk2" (class 7 Interdictor), best in class
- New bomb weapon for "Trident DX9" (class 7 Bomber), best in class
- Increased base Damage on all craft bomb weapons by 10%
- Increased Radiation Damage on all craft rocket and bomb weapons by 10-20%
- Increased Chance to Hit craft for all Autocannons
- Improved Shock Trooper's "Single-minded Strike" Talent to have 3 Turn Duration and reduced cooldown to 6 weeks
- Fixed typos and reported crashes

Update #281 circles back to adding some new awesome looks to the game with new character faces and a new set of matching outfits. Plus, we've expanded ship component access to Engine Safety bonuses with a new set of Fuel Helix Coil components for your medium slots. Finally, we've added a few new capabilities and fixes for the modding community to enable to some new mod options.

We've got a busy season here at Trese Brothers HQ for both Star Traders: Frontiers and our next game -- if word hasn't trickled down from the tippity top of the New Boston spires, leaked below the streets and drip-drip-dripped into your safehouse, we're here to tell you about our upcoming turn-based cyberpunk heist RPG. Cyber Knights: Flashpoint will be coming to Steam in 2022 and mixes stealth, hacking and tactical combat with deep RPG elements and a unique heist system for missions. The wishlist button is calling your name, Knight.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210?snr=1_2108_9__2107


With this update, we've added another 3 masculine faces to the game -- one with short cropped hair, one with an awesome mustache and one with the grayer hair of a long-time space veteran. These new faces will filter into your crew and make great new captains, officers or just mates crew dogs hoping for a promotion.

We've also added 2 new matching outfits featuring a finer style associated with diplomats, the wealthy gravs or fashionable duelists. These new looks are excellent on their own for pirates, smugglers and all kinds but they also mix extremely well with the other outfits in the game if you use the "Unlock Outfit Combos" option. So, while we've added 2 new full outfits, we've added hundreds of new combos for your crew to check out! Here are a few of our favorites --


Fuel Helix Coils are a variation of a medium slot Fuel Tanks which offer a small amount of Fuel, a small amount of reduction in hyperwarp Jump Cost and most importantly a bonus to Engine Safety. With a maximum of +6 Engine Safety available from ship components, this gives another option -- next to Annex and Water-Fuel Reclamation -- as to how to get your Engine Safety fix if you need one.

The highest grade Helix Coils 4 and 5 are only manufactured and sold in Zenrin starports.


With Update #281, we've fixed a few minor issues in mods where game hovers were not reflecting mod changes to maximum Ship Armor or Shield. We've also made it possible to mod the maximum number of jobs that your captain or officers can have -- that will be very interesting to see what gets done with that! Fancy a true jack of all trades? Leave it to the modders :D

Our Discord server is a great community. Lots of good Star Traders discussion, one of the best places to stay in the loop on what we're working on, and sometimes... fun surprises!

We've got a giveaway going right now for light-hearted roguelike Obsidian Prince.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1373260/Obsidian_Prince/

Hop in to check it out, we have two copies to give away and all it takes is a react to the message in #giveaway to enter.


- Added two new matched outfits
- Added 3 new character faces - gray hair, mustache, short hair!
- Added 4 new Fuel Helix Coil components -- medium slot fuel tanks that add Engine Safety, reduce Jump cost and add minor Fuel boost
- Fuel Helix Coil 4 and 5 is sold exclusively by Zenrin starports
- Enabled modders to adjust the maximum number of multi-jobs for Captain and Officers
- Fixed hovers for Armor / Shield max values if they are modded
- Fixed reported typos and crashes

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!

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/


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.


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.

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).

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.

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

- 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

Update #297 brings another round of improvements directly from the community as we continue our patch and improve drive following the big Steam Workshop mod release. After we clear this backlog of balance, QOL and improvement issues we'll be moving back to larger chunks of content and story additions. For now -- buckle up, more coming!

You may have heard our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is on its way to Steam in 2022. A turn-based cyberpunk RPG, Cyber Knight's features XCOM-like combat and a unique heist system for missions ... you don't need to hear more? Okay, just smash that Wishlist button!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/


With Update #279, we've adjusted the ordering and text color for Trade Ban and Trade War warnings to ensure that they are front and center and your merchant captain can't miss them when making decisions about going through with a trade. As always, a huge thanks to the community members helping to post feedback and improve the game.

We've updated the rules for surrendering to military ships that may check your cargo holds for illegal goods and confiscate if you fail to have valid permits. There is now a possible small Reputation loss if you are carrying goods that will be confiscated. This loss can be offset if you are carrying goods that *are* legal with a permit. No matter how much you might be carrying, the Rep penalty cannot exceed 2.

We've also fixed the Bribe offering for Independents which had been lost in the latest update -- including the key fact that Indies have no stored Reputation and therefore you can never lose Rep with them.

We've enabled the ability to pull up the game menu with during the major screens in ship combat -- including during a ship encounter and mid-ship combat. This can help you drop out of the main menu without killing the game completely. Notably, Options and Save Slots are not available in these contexts. We'll keep working to make this menu access global and getting it into key places where it is still missing (crew combat).


The Battle Barracks line has received an upgrade to help encourage ship combat captains to consider them worth their price (which has also gone up!). With new Armor, Shield and Void Res, these protected crew quarters are even more valuable to captains willing to pay the price and longtime cost to jump cost.

For those Salvage cards that included double combats, we've adjusted the language to be clearer, stating "back-to-back" combats to be sure you know just what you are risking when you make the roll.

During and after the Jyeeta Era, we've retuned the appearance of the feared Jyeeta Maeledictor to make sure it retains its boss status among other Jyeeta enemies.


With Steam Workshop being quite busy, we're still working to expand the possible footprint of mods. With this update, we've added some key new capabilities, allowing modders to start to adjust specific limits in the game -- raising max character level, job level. Also, we're enabling adjusting important combat rules and thresholds -- allowing for the change of Init cost to move, morale break or being Stunned as well as the maximum Armor and Shield ratings you can achieve with components and buffed. We're very excited to see what the community will cook with this new support!

- Improved Trade Ban warning (location, icon, red text)
- Lose up to 2 Rep when illegal cargo is seized, offset by legal permit-protected cargo
- Fixed Bribe option text for Independents to be more clear
- Added a Game Menu in Ship Combat, Combat Preamble
- Reduced spawn rate of "Jyeeta Maeledictor" in mix of Jyeeta ships
- Increased Price of Battle Barracks, Added Armor, Shields and Void Res
- Clarified "Xeno Assault" Salvage card to be clear it is 2 xeno combats back-to-back
- Better differentiated stats for the Trident DX9 and Blackhall Ultra Small Craft
- Modders can now change max character level, job level, Init costs of Stun, Morale Break, Move and Max/Buff Max of Shield/Armor

With the major release of mod support behind us, we're returning to some regular order here with a roll-up update full of community-driven fixes. In Update #278, we've added even more mission icons, improved the way that Wing Commando's "Behind Enemy Lines" works to truly knock out the single, most powerful weapon, replaced all the Bribe offer text in ship encounters to always be correct and more.

We're getting back to regular order here with more exciting updates to come, so if you're enjoying the pace of new features, content and fixes please tell a friend and leave a review.

Our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is under development. Set in a different universe than Star Traders, we think much of what you all love about STF (a lore-rich world, many ways to play, strong independent spirit, lots of RPG depth) is shared within. Learn more about the Cyber Knights setting on its Steam page, or check out this video showing a ton of art and discussing the game design.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/


With the addition of mission icons to help summarize step actions in Update #277, we've been hearing from the community about specific types of actions that weren't fully covered. We've now added icons to help summarize steps including Negotiation (huge!) and the missing variations of Intel missions.

Ship encounter options often include Bribes but the text of those offers has often been misleading about whether or not your are paying to avoid Reputation loss or not. We've cleaned up the text on all Bribe offers to cleanly match the result you'll get if both ships leave.


The Wing Commando Talent "Behind Enemy Lines" has been fixed to operate as described in its description. Previously, it was working closer to the Gunner Talent "Disarming Sabotage". Now, Behind Enemy Lines specifically targets the most powerful, functioning weapon on the enemy ship and does it 80% damage -- a guaranteed knock out hit! A couple of Wing Commandos can work efficiently to take down enemy gun's completely if they act fast enough from their striking shuttles.

With an influx of new players coming to check out the game, the Steam forums and Discord have been busy with feedback, suggestions and minor bug posted. We've fixed a bevy of minor issues with Mass and pricing on :ththe latest set of hybrid barracks components, adjusted the failure message in Civil Unrest Rumor to be more clear and fixed a whole heap of typos.

- Mission descriptions now include missing icons for Negotiation, some additional ship battle types, Conflict Intel missions
- Added hover to Accept/Waypoint buttons in mission offer for clarity
- Fixed Wing Commando's "Behind Enemy Lines" to match description -- guaranteed to disable most powerful enemy weapon
- Fixed all Bribe options for all captain types in ship encounters to be clear when Reputation loss is at risk
- Improved fail message with Civil Unrest Rumor when faction denies access (-10 or less Rep)
- Fixed pricing on Battle Barracks 4, fixed Mass on Shielded Barracks 4
- Fixed Barracks appearing twice in medium slot display
- Fixed Spice Hall description of recruit bonus for Mercenaries Rumor
- Fixed report crashes and typos

Now that mod support is released, let’s talk about where it will (and could) go from here. The last week since modding launched has been exciting with a lot of interest, thousands of subscribers to mods and a great update to the core game to boot. Now -- let's look at the road ahead for modding.

Thanks to our dedicated modders in the private beta, some of the mod support capabilities you’re seeing today are even better than we expected.

• A mod manager that merges SQL allows multiple mods to be installed and work seamlessly with each other with many fewer potential conflicts and much less configuration than we might have released originally.
  
• Story modding became a v1 priority. Modders now have everything they need to add their own story vignettes to the game. While creating quality stories is no small task (welcome to our world 😅), we think the potential for player-created story mods filling the Star Traders universe is one of the most exciting aspects of adding modding to the game.

In addition to those big wins, we’re proud to have v1 offer a broad foundation for modding to begin with:

• Everything in the game database is replaceable, or can be added to. Ships, weapons, gear, talents... pretty much anything with stats. Modders can rebalance, simplify, power up, or add to any of these things.
  
• All binary files in the game directory are replaceable. Graphics, sound effects,
  
• An extensive set of documentation. Upfront: this may not mean complete, but we’ve gone through a huge amount of data fields to make it more clear what each does and what your options are as a modder for using them.

We want to be upfront about a few things that will not be possible with modding.

1) Hacking in crowd-sourced translation through modding. While modders are welcome to create mods in any language, or even to attempt to rewrite the portions of in-game text that are contained within the game database, we want to be that there is still too much inaccessible text through the mod kit to complete a successful translation of the game.

We know translation is a popular request, but we want to be very clear up front that modding does not answer that request. As we’ve noted elsewhere, we’ve learned a lot from this entire process, and our next game will be translated from the start.

2) We won’t be adding a scripting language for mods (though we may add some additional scripted triggers / effects for modders to use, ourselves). Star Traders: Frontiers is built on a custom engine, with a workflow heavily driven by data in the game database. While we’ve opened up the database, we can’t open up the engine, or provide a way for modders to hook in scripts without a far more extensive rebuild than we could handle with the mod kit at this date in the game's lifecycle.

However, we are listening daily to the modding community (and asking to!) to understand where there is interest for additional extensibility and hooks that can be used by the mod kit.

3) Modding Roadmap
As we have stated elsewhere -- we are continuing our work to update the base game, especially with some big upcoming story arcs and eras. At the same time, we have reserved some bandwidth to work closely with involved and interesting modding creators to expand the capabilities of the mod kit.

• Save editor: while the modded game databases be modified at will with simple tooling, we are still looking forward to creating a saved game editor that will allow you to execute certain sets of commands against your saved games.
  
• Improving documentation: the doc team never sleeps because there is always more to write down! Star Traders: Frontiers is a surprisingly huge and deep game (did you notice?) and so documenting every in and out of its data-driven structure is going to be a process that continues for a long time.
  
• Crowd-sourcing talent effects: some of the ready-to-play mods already make exciting tweaks to Jobs but we're looking forward to the first completely New Job mod to appear. To this end, we'll be holding a brainstorming within the mod community looking for new types of Talent effects and triggers that could help define new Jobs and allow modders to create truly unique new combinations for your crew and officers.

• Game Rule Control: while few rules are within reach of the mod kit today (maximum ship armor 75%) we will be working to move some of these -- those most interesting to the mod community -- into scope and play for mods over the next months.
  
• More Story Examples and Features: with the first story mod already published, we cannot wait to see more modder created storylines filling up the galaxy. As we continue to add story to the base game, we will be authoring these new storylines in the same that the modders can use, which will expand the base of examples to pull from. We're excited to work closely with any modder working on a stories as one of our top priorities to see this type of content expanding in the game and to work on building out features that specifically cater to their needs.
  
• Further authoring tool development: the modding community has already developed a pretty set of powerful authoring tools, some of which are publicly shared. Depending on the need and interest, we may further invest in helping the community make these tools easy to use and share for new modders coming on to the team.
  
• Card Control the mod kit does not include the contents and rules for card games today but if there is significant interest, this is a direction we could work to expand the kit.

Captains, I think you know by now that given unlimited time and resources we’d just keep adding to Star Traders: Frontiers until your scientist crew members were writing essays in their downtime pondering if they were merely living in a simulation and there were a real universe somewhere outside their perception...

Sadly, as we do not have the cheat codes to get unlimited time and resources, we do have to pick our battles. So:

We're loving the response to modding so far, with more and more mods continuing to be added and more players trying them out. Check out the game's Steam Workshop to browse the now 20+ mods available and being updated. Give those creators some love in the mod comments! More mods played and praised = more mods made and updated.

Want to become a modder yourself? Check out Creating Mods on the Star Traders Wiki, and join the Discord for help, modding requests & discussions, and a great community of Star Traders players.

We can't wait to see what you all create! The Star Traders question we've always asked before is: what kind of Captain do you want to be? Now we get to ask: Captains, what do you want in your universe?

Update #277 is full of exciting adds and accompanied by a pile of new mods coming out on the Steam Workshop as well. We've delivered on a longtime community request to decorate Mission listing with action icons, the galactic starports are now installing 4 new types of hybrid barracks, we've buffed Battle Prows and even tweaked the placement of the Skip All button in dialog for faster play. On the Steam Workshop and modding side, we've had thousands of players subscribe to mods and welcomed 10 new mods to the ready-to-play family.

Speaking of new, new new -- if word hasn't trickled down from the tippity top of the New Boston spires, leaked below the streets and drip-drip-dripped into your safehouse, we're here to tell you about our upcoming turn-based cyberpunk heist RPG. Cyber Knights: Flashpoint will be coming to Steam in 2022 and mixes stealth, hacking and tactical combat with deep RPG elements and a unique heist system for missions. The wishlist button is calling your name, Knight.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210?snr=1_2108_9__2107

Modding has been live for a week and we're excited to welcome
Have you ever dreamed of flying a xeno ship? Stalking the galaxy in a semi-organic, completely alien death cruiser? Or just wearing a really big hat? Then you must be Rychart! All joking aside, in this mod Shelgeroth Cultists of Rychart have unlocked the secrets to utilizing Xeno technology and now sell the xeno ships at their starports for a hefty sum.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2495203303&searchtext=

The mini-mod pack provides a easy to modify set of changes to the game and encourages players to pick and chose among them to get just the modded experience they want. It is already a big toolkit put together by @davea and @ptarth, two of the mod creator veterans from the mod beta. Check it out!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2586893280&searchtext=

The newest SFX overhaul provides awesome sound FX for crew combat weapons, ship weapons, character injuries and all other parts of ship combat. Boom boom!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2586103199&searchtext=


Mission step groups now include a full list of all the icons of the types of actions for their children. This gives you a quick way to look at a mission and know what is involved -- from crew to ship combat, from exploring to salvaging or intel, stash and cargo missions. The ability to pick and chose missions wisely -- and to do it quickly -- is way up with #277.

In addition, the icons also include a Passenger, Prisoner and Package "+" to indicate adding one and a "-" to indicate a drop off. This is a big help as well to plan out your routes for captains completing multiple missions and especially if your multiple passengers are competing for limited space.


Update #277 adds 4 new hybrid Barracks options as well as rebalancing the existing small slot Compact Barracks to be overall improved. The new medium slot Squad Barracks is a good way to get a few more crew capacity crossed with an officer bunk. The entire new series of Battle Barracks 1, 2 and 3 offer medium slot ways to keep a battle-trained and hardened crew at the ready, granting both additional Defense % and Boarding points.

For some of us, this is going to take some muscle memory retraining -- the Skip All button for Dialogs has moved to the bottom center of the screen to minimize needed mouse movement to reach it.

This update cleans up a few sneaky bugs with craft crashing during combat, certain ordering when destroyed by capital ship weapons and a number of other edge cases that were hard to reproduce. A huge thanks goes out to the captains who kept reporting and sharing details until we could finally hunt this down!

- Mission description now includes type icons for all segments (combats, op types, add/drop off passenger, etc)
- Baracks Components Update: 4 New Barracks Components, rebalancing Compact Barracks
- Added new medium slot "Squad Barracks" which provides a Cabin-Barracks hybrid
- Added new medium "Battle Barracks 3" with Defense and Boarding Bonuses
- Buffed Battle Prow Boarding Bonus, Added Minor Craft Defensive Buff
- Improved Spice Festival Rumor description
- Moved "Skip All" dialog button into middle center of screen
- Fixed sort order for craft to be more closely aligned with components
- Fixed issue with extreme hostility in ship encounter printing "ERROR"
- Fixed story issue where sometimes story mission could start twice
- Fixed a crash with Ship Combat with a type of Small Craft conflict
- Fixed reported typos from Forum and Discord
- Fixed crash issue with some hotkey combinations

With new mods coming online daily, we wanted to shine a big spotlight on some of the other awesome mods already available to play -- one that adds story content, one that removes complexity in ship builds and one that re-writes the default v1 map.

The modding creators have been working hard to bring their creations before the community. Be sure to tell them how much you appreciate their work, rate and share their mod!


This mod is the very first story mod for Star Traders: Frontiers, adding an entire new vignette introduced by Contact Valen Ducote. The Spy Pack isn't only a story mod, it also buffs spying and diplomatic abilities and Talents, adds a new Stealth Raptor ship and new spying components. The modder, @schrader, is a legend for the amount of work he put into creating this mod and helping us document and test story modding support during the private modding beta.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2578776840&searchtext=

This mod reduces complexity in ship build by completing removing the concept of Mass and therefore Mass Reducers from the game. With every ship component contributing only a small amount of Mass, the only thing you need to consider are your Small, Medium and Large slots and exactly how you'd like to set them up.

Note, this mod really needs to go last in your mod config or it can cause crashes when combined with other ship or component mods.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2492139496&searchtext=

The first mod that creates a customized map for players to enjoy, this mod revamps the original default v1 map. New jump routes have helped improve playability and travel within the original map.

After subscribing to the mod, you must delete any map_2.db file in your saved game folder, otherwise the mod changes will not take effect.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2498806096&searchtext=

After months of working closely with the mod community, Star Traders: Frontiers is opening our Steam Workshop for all to contribute and enjoy. After years of interest and requests from the community, we've been able to add modding to Star Traders: Frontiers just after its 3 year anniversary. We owe a great thanks to the 100+ creators who have already started working in the modding space and helped us write documentation, improve mod capabilities and test out the entire workshop kit.

One of the first things many of you will notice is the game now offers you a choice at launch, to play either ST:F or its moddable version. These two versions of the game will both receive the same updates, but will store saves separately. Additionally, the mod version of the game comes with all of the Unlocks automatically achieved, so you may decide to play this version of the game just for that.


The Steam Workshop is now open with some of the first mods created and tested during the modding beta. This first wave of mods covers a wide gamut -- from UI, to SFX to ship design and more. The creators are hanging out with us -- and the community -- in our Discord #stf_mods channel waiting for your feedback and ideas.

To check out these mods, the process is straightforward:

1. Visit the Steam Workshop, browse and pick some mods by clicking the green “Subscribe” button on the mod page. Your Steam client will download any subscribed mods. If you don't see the downloads queuing, then try restarting your Steam client (classic).
   
2. Select Star Traders: Frontiers within your Game Library and push the big green Play button. This will pop up a choice to play the regular version of the game or the moddable version of the game.
   
3. When you pick the mod version of the game, you'll see a very different main menu with your subscribed mods listed. Click "Activate" to enable any mod you'd like to include in your current game configuration.
   
4. Any time your mod configuration changes, you must restart the game.

We've worked for 4 months with the modding creator beta team to expand modding support and build out the needed documentation. With the first crop of mods now out and the Workshop going public, we know there is a lot more coming. There are multiple story mods for vignettes in the works -- some reportedly being released soon -- and a great frontier of new content that could be added including jobs, professions, story vignettes, eras, ships, outfits and more.

Join us in Discord or on the new Modding discussion board in Steam’s community hub to post up your ideas for mods, find like minded creators and get busy! The modding documentation for players and creators is homed on the wiki.


Merchant Marine: Fly Casual is a game rebalance mod that was inspired by Space Opera and Western tales, small ships with small crews up against the universe. But has since broadened to include a larger number of changes to base ST:F gameplay. The mod aims to increase the options players have, while fundamentally retaining the gameplay of ST:F.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2539177784

Dave's New Component mod lives up to its name, dropping a boat load of new and awesome ship components into the game, such as new officer cabins (Quartermaster's HQ and the Shrine of Shalun), cargo holds that reduce the Mass of your ship, and the Caterpillar engine which reduces both ship encounters and fuel use drastically. Not stopping at components, Dave has also included a new ship, the Habbanya Frigate, a 5000 mass ship with a unique layout and at a price that's difficult to resist.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560635932

A classic cheat mod, the Instamax Mod rockets your crew to level 40 in a blink of an eye and sets the price of every ship in the game to $1. Play with a new level of freedom and power as you cruise the void with max max max!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2500463612

This mod moves around the Talents of the MIlitary Officer and Commander Jobs to help each better focus on a single thing -- the new Army Officer is a crew combat expert while the Naval Commander excels in ship to ship battle in the void.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2501902114

Currently 15 of the game's nearly 40 crew jobs provide special bonus traits to a Captain who starts with one of them. Now with the Doctor Profession mod, you have a new archetype to create your captains with. Envisioning a quippy Captain McCoy, a steely-smart Simon Tam, or ...why not Zoidberg? This mod gives you medical-minded captains a nice boost.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2567607837

While we've opened the door for modders to create in the endless reach of the void, this is far from the end of our own content for Star Traders: Frontiers. We'll be updating the public roadmap in the months to come and still have more story content and Eras planned.

If you enjoy the new features and capabilities still being added to the game without charge 3 years later, we hope you'll consider telling a friend and leaving a review.

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

- Enables mod support and Steam Workshop

Update #275 brings a major improvement to your quadrant map to make starred zones ever-visible as well as improving ship encounter messages, fixing an Explorer card, tweaking a ship price and making final preparation for the modding upgrade. Thanks, as always, to the community for making great suggestions on how to improve the game, reporting bugs and pointing out little places where we could put on a little more polish. We wouldn't have made it to Update #275 without such an amazing community gathered around the game, so many thanks!

The launch of Steam Workshop and full mod support is very close now. We're lucky to have had such an amazing crew of creators working on different improvements, adjustments and adds to the game. It's going to be awesome to see so many new things available to everyone on the first modding day!

Speaking of new, new new -- if word hasn't trickled down from the tippity top of the New Boston spires, leaked below the streets and drip-drip-dripped into your safehouse, we're here to tell you about our upcoming turn-based cyberpunk heist RPG. Cyber Knights: Flashpoint will be coming to Steam in 2022 and mixes stealth, hacking and tactical combat with deep RPG elements and a unique heist system for missions. The wishlist button is calling your name, Knight.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210?snr=1_2108_9__2107

If you use Stars on your zones, they now appear right on the quadrant map as you pan or sail around. This really helps brings stars into constant consideration, avoids the need to use the Atlas and can help you spot and remember zones you might have otherwise forgotten. My captains are already grumbling about needing more colors!

Update #275 is more specific about the Depart messages in ship encounters for Merchants, Smugglers and Explorers, removing vague warnings about losing Reputation in the cases when that is not a possible result. We've also improved the text on the explorer card "Wild Revelations" and increase the number of crew who can possibly gain XP. The price on the Neutiquam Cruiser had to be increase a few hundred grand and finally we clarified some text in new game Templates around who can use gear (some crew!)

While we've got a really nice update here, there is a lot more work going on behind the scenes to finalize the mod support in each of these updates. If you're enjoying the pace of updates, be sure to tell a friend and leave a review!

- Zone stars now appear on the quadrant map when sailing the void
- Improved depart messages from ship encounters for Merchants, Smugglers and Explorers
- Fixed "Wild Revelations" XP card in Explorer to reward 12 or more crew
- Fixed price issues with Neutiquam Cruiser
- Improved note about Contacts offering weapon/armor/gear in New Game Template