We celebrated the 3-year anniversary of Star Trader’s launch this year; what a ride it’s been! Although we’ve been deep in dev work on our upcoming heist RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, we’ve still produced 38 (so far) updates to Star Traders: Frontiers this year, including one of the largest post-launch additions to a game we’ve ever made: mod support!

To help you make sure you haven’t missed anything, we’ve rounded up all the most notable changes & improvements into the summary below. We did the same last year, so if you’re coming back to Star Traders after a long break, we hope these will be helpful as you get ready for a new journey through the stars.


New default map! Since we added the new v2 map generator last year (allowing the creation of better-balanced, more unique, and much larger custom galaxy maps), we were on the hunt for a new default map to take advantage of the same benefits. Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help us find the perfect map seed!

The new default has 10 more quadrants than the original. We’ve also since made it so all "local" starting Contacts are always placed in your starting quadrant, even if there are 2 to a zone. And if you’ve starred a zone with a color, that now appears on the quadrant map.



New story vignette! Fractured Factions has a chance to begin after the Coalition, when landing on any Cadar world, from contact Felix Slayer Na’Zee. Through the multiple endings you stand to make powerful enemies, allies, and gain access to multiple powerful ship components and/or a unique crew weapon. Even with the factions supposedly united, the balance of power is in constant shift...

Economic & recruitment rumors are now for sale from many contact types. And now, all rumors that are purchased from a contact—most notably, salvage rumors—get a bonus to their duration to prevent any from ever expiring right after you purchased it.

We rebalanced many trade systems—increased rare trade goods demand in many zone types, made $5,000+ trades during economic faction conflicts now impact the conflict score, altered the smuggler talent “slippery trader” to entirely avoid Rep loss in trade conflicts, and rebalanced the supply/demand/prices of multiple goods.

Plus:

• 2 new mission types: "Nomadic Defender" & "Mercantile Negotiation"
  
• More profitable ship salvage 💥 & ransom 💰 options.
  
• Legendary Bounty Hunters are far more likely to appear and chase you down once you make enemies
  
• New operations card art
  
• 30 new crew barks with lore about factions, jobs, and planets

New crew jobs: Shock Trooper & Saboteur. The Saboteur provides many useful boarding talents, plus a mix of stealth talents and pistol abilities. The Shock Trooper brings a wealth of new combat talents to the table with a strong emphasis on frontline snubber-wielding. Also available as a starting profession for your captain, with traits that grant ship & crew combat bonuses.

All factions now provide an affinity bonus for at least one crew job: We started this last year with the Blade Dancer, renowned for their long tradition among the Steel Song. Now, every faction has at least one crew job in which its members have exceptional training or suitability. Crew members recruited from that faction, with that job, have special attribute bonuses—Cadar Shock Troopers, Zenrin Bodyguards, Alta Mesa Wing Leaders and more!

Rebalanced bleeding rules & snubbers. Any bleeding damage you’ve dealt an enemy is now applied every time they act. All bleeding effects and things that grant bleed resist were rebalanced. Meanwhile, snubbers have all been rebalanced to trade some of their Accuracy for Parry, making them superior “up-front” weapons.



Better auto-training for the early game. For new playthroughs, auto-training your crew members now prioritizes skill-save talents to ensure you reach a safe baseline of ship operation before expanding into more combat abilities / bonus-providing talents.

And more!:

• More customization options! 2 outfits, 16 new faces, 3 new beards, new flight helmet hat.
  
• New "Traits + Gear" section on crew member detail screens, summarizing all effects
  
• 7 new ultra rare level 10 Relic Weapons
  
• 4 new level 5 Gear for sale (2 Mil, 2 Specialist)—defensive, offensive, Attribute boosters
  
• New Diplomat Talent "Vindication Pact," reduces price of Pardons
  
• Improved Merchant's Talent "Garner Favor" to give even better Rep bonuses

Many tweaks to small craft (and their counters), plus new plasma bombers. The ability to build or encounter ships that launch starfighters becomes a big deal in ST:F’s late game, and we’ve continued to make additions and improvements to that experience. This year we’ve:

• added 3 new PlasBombers with massive radiation-damage weapons to help cripple enemy ships instead of cracking hulls
  
• increased the damage of all craft bomb & rocket weapons
  
• boosted the chance-to-hit-craft for all Autocannons for better close-in defenses
  
• added a new ship: Dreadnought Battlecarrier
  
• reduced Maintenance Cost for Class 1 and Class 2 Small Craft
  
• increased Hull Points for Boarding Shuttle Small Craft at Level 5 and above
  
• buffed the Battle Prow component with a minor craft defense bonus and added a Tacticians Annex component that grants accuracy/defense against capital ships and craft

Better ship armor! We’ve added new game logic to increase the chance that armored components take hits first in combat. This more appropriately increases the power of armored ships in combat, and if you have the credits to repair components makes damage soak builds more viable.



Many new components & weapons:

• New type of medium component, Annex to hold one officer and provide specialized bonus related to their class - Warden’s Annex, Tactician’s Annex, Engineer Annex
  
• Faction-specific components—Rychart Peak Velocity Matrix 4
  
• Fuel Helix components to increase Engine Safety, reduce Jump cost and add fuel boosts
  
• New level 8 heavy Railguns for 4 and 3 RP
  
• New level 8 Autocannon for 1 RP, great at taking down craft
  
• New level 8 Missile for 3 RP
  
• 6 new powerful weapon types for high level craft

Your feedback is always helpful; we hear and respond to almost all of it within the forums and our Discord, and just finished up a player survey to help with next year’s roadmap.

This year Cory & I have been on a streak of finding ways to improve convenience & clarity, within the scope of what we can do post-release. Some notable areas and overall trends we’ve put work into include:

Easier mission planning & map integration - icons for offered missions and accepted missions now appear on the galactic & quadrant maps; you can also now go directly to the galactic map from a contact mission offer. In that mission offer, you’ll now see icons next to each mission segment, indicating if it requires a ship battle, crew battle, exploring, spying, picking up for dropping off a passenger etc. And within your mission list, you can now use filters to show offered missions, and show only narrative missions or local missions.



Better logs - Lots of little tweaks to make it easier to find out more about what’s going on “under the hood” in combat (e.g. radiation & void damage from ship weapons), keep track of events as you sail the void (e.g. how your medical rating is impacting saves), and understand how much impact your talents are having (e.g. repaired components during ship combat).

Clarifications in other key areas—in addition to all the log improvements, we’ve also made Trade Ban warnings much more visible, clarified many components of ship encounters (we’re looking at more ways to improve this still), and reworked mutinies. While mutinies may be a rare event for most captains, we want to make sure if it happens your options and their cost are crystal clear (we also improved the value of anti-mutiny talents while we’re at it).

Save Slot hotkeys - check your hotkey options, as we now offer configurable hotkeys for the 4 save slots available.


The moddable version will show up as an option whenever you launch the game from within Steam. It gives you access to any mods you’ve “subscribed” to from the Steam Workshop, and automatically grants all of the game’s unlocks.



We’re excited about modding’s potential to add even more content to the game (modders can create their own stories, gear, crew jobs, and more), enable very different gameplay experiences (from near god-mode cheats to small, intimate crews), and give everyone even more customization options (art, maps, and more). We’ve expanded modders’ options in all of those areas since launching mod support in August.

We’ve written more about what modding will and won’t do as we continue to add to its capabilities (depending on the mods you start)! 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.

Sometime in the new year we’ll give the roadmap an update to share more for the road ahead. In the meantime we do have one major change we’re thinking about that we’d love active players’ input on.

Going on 4 years of Frontiers now, and we still love adding to this game and are glad so many of you still enjoy it (and so many new sci-fi RPG fans are still discovering it!). Special thanks to all who support the continued development of the game through our Patreon, by gifting Steam keys to their friends, by shouting us out on in reddit recommendation threads and YouTube comments, by drinking from your Star Traders mug during Zoom meetings, etc. 😉

Even just leaving / updating your review (and giving a 👍 to others’) is one of the best gifts we can receive as the Steam Winter Sale approaches. Happy holidays, Captains!

As we've gathered input from all our players in our year-end survey that we put out last week for Star Traders: Frontiers, we've pulled together a quality-of-life release to address some of the community posted issues and rough spots. Thanks to everyone posting reviews, feedback, for filling out the Google Form survey and for helping us share Star Traders: Frontiers!

Speaking of good things coming-- 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

We've further improved the power of the armor meta with Update #285, allowing the component types like Hull Plating and Armored Bulkheads to continue to use their high hit percentage to soak damage even after they have crossed the 60% damage threshold. This means your armored components continue to provide that extra layer of protection even after they have drawn the first waves of damage to themselves.


In the Jobs screen, it has always taken a little bit of math to figure out the exact bonus granted by a new rank of a Job -- you had to look at the new (total) bonus and find the difference from the current (total) bonus. We've updated the screen to specifically list the bonus from the Job rank in isolation as well as the total bonus.

The Star Atlas can now search System Rumors as well as Planet Rumors by name -- so searches like "Pirates" or "Ion Storm" or "Medical Station" will turn up results. We've also fixed the logic on the searchable objects to prevent Rumors you don't know from being searchable (sorry!)


We've fixed some longstanding bugs that were preventing mousewheel scrolling in the Mission Offers and Missions List screens. If you see other screens in the game that are resistant to scrolling please report them and we'll get them fixed right up!


In the Jyeeta Brood Era we've added a few clarifications to the dialog in the final mission -- specifically some notes about healing Templar mechs and fixing the dialog that could be confusing about when the boss fight is about to occur.

We fixed 2 exploration missions -- Survey Tour and Forgotten Secrets which had issues with the order of steps you could complete.

We fixed a big typo ... Phase Infectors is now Phase InfLectors :D

We adjusted the default values read from the data.ShipEffect table so that the new Radiation Bonus and Void Bonus fields always come out at 0 instead of -1. Up next for modding, we're going to be making the rules for starport repair times and the new armor meta available to mod and see what modders want to spin up!

- Armor/protection focused components increase chance of being hit even when over 60% Damage, increasing their value to soak component damage even more
- System Rumors are now searchable from Star Atlas, hidden Rumors no longer search
- Improved Job screen to list the exact bonus from next job rank (+1 Tactics) as well as total (+3 Tactics, +4 Gunnery)
- Added note in dialog that Templar Mechs cannot be healed by your healing Talents
- Clarified story dialog in Avengent storyline that confused a penultimate battle for the final boss fight
- Fixed mousewheel scrolling in Mission List and Contact Mission Offers screens
- Fixed typo where "Infector" => "Inflector"
- Fixed "Forgotten Secrets" and "Survey Tour" missions

FOR THE MODDERS:
- Ship Effect values all default to 0, such as new Void Bonus and Rad Bonus (reduces need to update)

Hello captains! As we move into the 4th year of Star Traders: Frontiers development, we are continually seeking to improve the game. We are gathering the big topics for this year’s roadmap and we want to put extra attention on parts of the game that are tripping up both new and veteran players.

We'd like to ask you to fill out a short survey to help us identify the key areas where we could improve clarity of game systems.

You can find the Google Form survey here: STF survey

The survey will be open until December 15th.

We’d appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill it out and thank you in advance!
Trese Brothers Team

Hey Captains, it's Steam awards season! Star Traders: Frontiers is eligible for the Labor of Love award, if you all would like to nominate us. We celebrated 3 years since Star Trader: Frontiers' launch this year, with near-weekly updates to the game with new content, improvements, and changes based on your feedback.



One of the biggest post-launch additions we've ever made to a game — MOD SUPPORT — was added this year. The mod version of the game also automatically grants all unlocks, giving everyone who doesn't want to play with achievements access to all ships, contacts, and captain jobs from the very beginning. This year's also been a big one for UI improvements from your suggestions, including easier mission plotting, better trade ban & faction conflict warnings, menu access during combat. And we'll save the full tally for an end-of-year roundup, but there's certainly no shortage of new content added to the game!

You all know we're hard at work on our upcoming heist RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, but we're still adding to ST:F, with plenty more planned for it. So long as we know you're all still enjoying Star Traders, we'll keep bringing more to it.

Head to the Star Traders: Frontiers page if you’d like to nominate us!

Update #284 returns to ship combat meta to add new options for building our your specific strategy as well as improving well-known routes. Adding 4 new ship components that boost the Radiation or Void damage of your ship weaponry opens up an avenue for high focus on disabling enemy ships while buffing the ability of armored components of all types to soak up damage to your ship further empowers the heavily armored meta. To help in both cases, we've made the combat logs clearer, better organized and added missing lines of detail.

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/

Update #284 has added 4 new medium slot components which increase the Void or Radiation Damage of your capital ship weapons. These Quturaan and Katteduun Phase Inflectors can only super-charge one type of damage or the other, so focusing on a certain class of ship weapons will be important to make the most of your bonuses. Captains focusing on pulverizing a ship and crew into submission with Void and Radiation Damage now have all new angle to customize their ship. The most powerful Phase Inflectors are sold exclusively by Rychart (Void) and Thulun (Radiation) starports,

To help with the new components and bonuses, the ship combat log now reports Void and Radiation Damage to a ship on a separate line.


Armored components have always helped reduce overall Standard Damage that is passed through to your Hull and then turned into internal damage to turn your components into ash. With Update #284, they have gained a new intrinsic way to help prevent destruction to your ship's components even after all the dice have been rolled.

Once all the damage is totaled, components from your ship are selected in a series of rounds to take portions of that damage. All types of components that are designed to provide additional protection (even not those explicitly armor) are now more likely to be selected to "soak up" the damage and protect other components from taking it. In a large ship with only one or two armored components, this effect may be pretty minor, but as you increase your set of armored components this balance change will come into play more readily.

Specifically:

• Exploration Seals, Orbital Platings, Orbital Sealing increase their chance of getting hit by 20%.
  
• Armored Bulkheads, Hull Plating, Reinforced Structures and Battle Prows increase their chance of getting hit by 35%.

While this can help protect other key components -- such as Piloting modules, ship weapons and the engine -- it can also help more rapidly reduce a ship's armor as the armor components take damage and drop offline. If a ship is built with redundant Armor %, this double-edged sword effect will be prevented from taking effect longer.


The ship combat logs now include the Radiation and Void Damage of both capital ship and small craft. This key missing piece of intel is key for disabling captains to understand how their hits are hitting! We've also adjusted the spacing and lead in on most of the log lines to make them more clear and stand out from each other -- such as using (T) for Talent and (!!) for a Crippling Effect which now both really jump out in a busy logged turn.

There are some more exciting meta changes coming for ship combat and improving strategy options, so stay tuned and we will be upgrading the combat log hand in hand as we go.



- Improved many armor/protection focused components to increase chance of taking hits in combat, therefore protecting other components
- Added 4 new medium ship components (Quturaan and Katteduun Phase Inflectors) which increase ship weapon void and Radiation Damage by percentage bonus %
- Best Phase Inflectors are sold exclusively by Rychart (Void) and Thulun (Radiation)
- Improved ship combat logging to include details of Radiation and Void Damage from ship weapons
- Improved formatting and consistency of ship combat logging
- Clarified Damage Bonus in ship Talent and component effects as "Standard Damage"
- Clarified description of "Upstaged Success", it does not increase Contact Influence gains
- Fixed reported typos and crashes

Update #283 continues a series of improvements to carrier and craft, enables quick use of save slot with keyboard shortcuts, brings the BOOM with the addition of PlasBombers and improves Salvage profits from destroy ships. It's new content, community-requested quality of life features and fine-tuned balancing. It's Update #283, the Plasma Depth-Charge!

If you are enjoying the pace of updates and new content please remember to leave a review and tell a friend.

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


Save Slots just got one big step easier to use! There are now 4 configurable hotkeys that can let you save to a slot straight from the game's main map. Defaulting to 7, 8, 9 and 0 these respectively save to slots 1, 2, 3 and 4. As with most hotkeys, we suggest you bind them to fit perfectly into your keyboard setup. While playing this morning, one thing that I found that worked well was to move just one of the save slot hotkeys under my main hand so I could mash it all the time as a basic "auto-save". When I wanted and alternate slot, I'd lift my hand and go for the other bindings.

As always, thanks to the community for posting suggestions, feedback and reviews to help us improve the game!


With Update #283, we've added 3 new types of bomber craft which all pack powerful and disabling PlasBombs. Trading the usual hull-busting power of bombers for extreme Radiation Damage and high Crippling %, PlasBombers focus on disabling a ship instead of destroying it outright. Especially well paired with mid-range capital ship weapons like Plasma Cannons or long range disabling Torpedoes, PlasBombers give an entirely new angle to carrier combat which focuses on burning out the enemy crew and components while leaving the hull still in one piece.

We have also made one last round of adjustments to the weapons for regular Interdictors and Bombers to ensure each class of craft has their own stand-alone weapon. Class 5 and 6 were still accidentally sharing weapons. This has resulted in an upgrade in *another* weapon power for class 6 and 7 Bombers and Interdictors.


Not to be left behind, Wing Commando's launch plans for their boarding shuttles have also been upgraded. These launch plans now bring even more powerful, longer lasting debuffs to the table in a way that no other boarding strike can. When paired with well-planned boarding victory Talents, these can hasten the way to victory or surrender.

Both "Breacher's Assault" and "Boarder's Storm" have had their durations extended to 4 Turns (nicely matching with the time it takes the Commando to round trip for another boarding). In addition, they have both gained a damage over time component to increase their effect in bringing the enemy ship or crew to its knees. Breacher's Assault has replaced the -10% Boarding debuff with a 15 Crew Dmg / Turn debuff, leaving wounded and dead in the wake of the shuttle strike. Boarder's Storm has gained a 15 Morale Dmg/Turn, as the defensively-weakened ship reels from the strike, knowing they are about to get pummeled.

With Update #283, we've increased the maximum profit you can make from Salvaging a destroyed enemy ship by $5,000 to $31,500. This maximum is applied *before* any Talents, Traits or ship components are calculated -- so those can help you capitalize on an expensive Salvage and make far more than that. The amount of money made from Salvage is based off the ship's component pricing reduced by any damage done to those components. So, as always, the best Salvage profits are gained from ships with less (or no!??!) damage.

While Ransom is a much harder way to make significant money, the same calculation is applied -- all of the ship component prices are multiplied by their damage to calculate the final ransom hall. As it comes with much less Reputation loss, Ransom applies a much steeper reduction to the component pricing but still in some cases if you are Ransoming a large mass battlecruiser or a carrier, the resulting profit can be quite substantial. To protect the balance between Ransom and Salvage, we have added a similar cap to Ransom but -- as it is much, much harder to reach -- we have set the cap at $56,500. The same rule applies to Ransom, where Traits and Talents are applied after the cap and therefore can capitalize on expensive Ransoms to make far more money.

You can now access the game menu and exit to the game's main menu cleanly from crew combat as well as ship combat. Just hit ESC!

- Added 3 new Bombers carrying heavy plasma bombs with massive Radiation Damage, high Crippling Effect % (class 5, 6, 7)
- Fixed issue with class 6 Bomber/Interdictor sharing weapons with class 5 (improved stats for both class 6 and 7)
- Improved Wing Commando's "Breacher's Assault", replaced -10% Boarding debuff with 15 Crew Dmg/Turn, extended to 4 Turn duration
- Improved Wing Commando's "Boarder's Storm", added 15 Morale Dmg/Turn, extended to 4 Turn duration
- Added configurable hotkeys to save game to Save Slot 1-4 from quadrant map
- Increased maximum pre-Talent/Trait/Component Salvage value for enemy ships by $5,000 to $31,500
- Added maximum pre-Talent/Trait Ransom value for enemy ships at $56,500 (very hard to reach)
- Added a Game Menu in Crew Combat, allowing access to options and main menu
- Fixed issue with "Explosive Shots" debuff being cleared like a buff
- Fixed bug with "Forgotten Secrets" mission step ordering

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