Star Traders, gather round the spice hall -- its Update #288.

Earlier this month, we launched Cyber Knights: Flashpoint’s private alpha test for Kickstarter backers, following the same tried-and-true process we used for Star Traders: Frontiers. With a thousand players in the game now, development pace has picked up and we’re on the long march to release on Steam, so 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/

Over the last few updates, we've been updating the data schema for ship components to give us more fine-grained control over the cost and time consumed by repair. As this backend work has wrapped up, we've now made some wholesale adjustments to these values and rebalanced the time required to repair all ship components in the game. In general, repairs times should feel shorter, more predictable and less "spikey". As components increase in size (small, medium, large) and level (1-8 currently) and complexity (engines, bridges, salvage bays, launch bays, etc) the repair times increase but more within an expected curve than previously where some components simply came with astronomically high repair hours.

We've love to hear your feedback about it and will be returning to look at the credit cost ($$) of repair in a future update but this alone has gone a long way to help make repair a more predictable experience.

Finally, we have also put in a rule that -- regardless of any Talents or faction bonuses -- Repairs must always take at least 1 Turn.

For anyone who was counting Turns and worrying about the pace of story, this should be a boon as well!


I don't want to spoil anything, but we fixed a story timing bug where Valencia might leave before "the Hunter" arrives. If you had this bug, you know what I mean. If you don't, good luck!


After the fuel cost display adjustment in Update #287, the HUD could display the wrong AU Fuel Range. This has now been resolved and you'll now see a 100% sync between the displayed fuel range and fuel cost per AU throughout the game, engine displays and HUDs. Thanks to everyone pushing on this!


There was one case -- in which one of the two ships had no weapons installed -- that could cause the new ship comparison screen to crash. We've fixed this bug with #288 and apologies for the delay on that.

- Rebalanced repair time for all components, especially improving some Weapon Lockers, Railtraks and other peaks
- All repairs must always take at least 1 Turn
- Fixed issue where AU Fuel Range was misreported in the HUD
- Fixed story bug where in some cases, Valencia left before the Hunter arrived
- Fixed some ship designs could cause crashes with new ship comparison

Happy new year and welcome to the first major update, #287. With the huge new wave of captains (:wave:) joining us in the void over the winter holiday, we've focused this update on one of the major areas tripping those captains up -- with #287, we have a major upgrade for the ship comparison data in ship encounters as well as a few other minor display tweaks to help that screen flow better. We've also made another big step improving repair times and costs, added new effects to all Shielded Barracks and resolved a display bug with Engine fuel / AU shown in game.

Speaking of new, shiny, blaze -- 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. We've just launched the private alpha to over 1,000 players and the wishlist button is calling your name, Knight.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210?snr=1_2108_9__2107


Update #287 has simplified the encounter text the top of the screen so it is more easily readable quickly and added the level next to the profession so you don't have to go digging for it, such as Smuggler (Lvl 6). In addition, we've included a note to players to check the ship report if they are considering a fight.

The ship comparison report has been improved to use relative comparisons to give the captain better data about what their ac scanners can pick up about the enemy ship. The comparison report warns about razor-thin margins in dice pools and reminds that a single buff can tip a pool upwards of 25% so even that kind of margin must be considered risky.


Once in combat, the hover over the enemy ship continues to update each turn and considers all buffs, ship damage and crew losses so you can get a continued feel for how things are going and know whether or not it's time to close or retreat and where your buffs or debuffs may be best applied.


Update #287 completes a project started on Update #285. This greatly reduces the cost and time to repair for some of the most expensive components in the game. Their high install cost was previously granting them a very painful repair duration and price.

For the modders, these fields (repair time and cost) from install cost, time and salvage value allowing easier control over these important aspects ship components.


We also tweaked the event logs display of dates so that we could always keep all of the relevant data displayed. 3 yrs, 2 wks, 5 days would be "3 Years, 2 Weeks and 5 Days". Before #287, it would have simply dropped the days from the count which was causing confusion.

Shielded Barracks 3, 4, 5 and 6 have all received new bonuses that help protect the ship from Void and Radiation Damage, and some of them have had a small Shield bonus increase. This helps them find a better position within the meta compared to Reinforced Barracks.


We have made a display change (with no gameplay impact whatsoever) to Void Engine's display of their Fuel / AU statistic. This has long bothered some captains who are closely watching their Water-Fuel that in real travel conditions, the Fuel / AU is always higher than was being posted. This change makes the Fuel / AU calculation correct and closer to real travel conditions. In most cases, it results in an additional +1 Fuel for the engine. However, there was no gameplay change, only the text in the display.

- Enemy captain level now visible from the main screen of ship encounter
- Improved ship comparison report (ship encounter, combat hover) to include relative comparison data (toss up, risky, dominant, etc)
- Reduced & Adjusted repair time and cost for many expensive components (high-end bridges, engines, launch bays)
- Corrected Fuel / AU rates for all engines to better match real world travel conditions (display only, no gameplay change)
- Improved Shielded Barracks 3, 4, 5 and 6
- Fixed display bug where reduction of repair time was not properly displayed (but correctly used, per event log)

Happy New Year and welcome all new captains! We're pushing out a quick patch today to fix a crash with pinning the mission list and an oddity causing the repair times of hulls to be near random. Both bugs were accidentally introduced in release .19 and .21 and we wanted to get them fixed as so many new captains are piling in this week.

We'll be back to regular updates in a week or two, we've just launched the private alpha for our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint and are getting that going before returning to the ST:F roadmap.

- Fixed random, long repair times with ship hull
- Fixed crash with pinning Mission list

Happy holiday to all from the frigid cold of the void. We've got the year's best deal on Star Traders: Frontiers here with 50% off, so we hope you'll join us on the bridge of a new starship. On top of the best prices of the year, we are rolling out some changes to the starport repair duration rules which are gifting you all with the best starport deals of the year.

This such a huge year for Star Traders: Frontiers -- check out our summary of all the updates we made in 2021 and thanks to everyone posting feedback, reviews and sharing the game. Our thanks and gratitude!

Development on our next game, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, proceeds apace. We’re currently barreling 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 #286, we've increased the impact that the Starport rating has on repair durations. The maximum repair duration -- which has been shorted to 32 weeks from 35.5 weeks -- is reduced by 1 week (10 Turns) per Starport rating. The new range of maximum repair durations now ranges from 320 (Starport rating 3) to 250 (Starport rating 10).

While Starport rating is already key in keeping repair durations short, this further increases the importance of planning routes higher Starport zones for larger repairs.


In addition to reducing maximum duration times by starport rating, we have improved the Mechanic and Wing Techs repair boosting Talents by allowing their cost-only discount to now affect duration as well. Where previously, these Talents might have reduced repair cost by 14%, they now reduce cost and time by 14% (etc). Notably, this reduction is applied after the Starport rating cap has been put in place, so for a Starport rating 10, this hypothetical 14% reduction would be calculated against a 250 Turn wait.


To keep up with the Wing Commandos, we've finished the testing and balancing run to push all the Wing Leader and Wing Bomber flight plans that cause debuffs up to 4 Turns each. This heightens the ability for bombers and leaders to pulverize targets, raining down debuffs in a continual cycle without a gap.

- Starport Rating has more of an effect on maximum Repair times, reducing max time by Starport Rating x 10 Turns (now ranges 340-250)
- Engineer and Wing Tech repair Talents now reduce duration as well as cost of Starport repairs
- Rebalanced repair times of Water-Fuel Reclamation components
- Fixed bug allowing hull repair times to sometimes exceed maximum Turn allowance for repairs
- Increased debuff duration for all Flight Plan Talents (Wing Leader & Bomber) to 4 Turns (!!)
- Fixed issue in ship combat with Phase Inflectors and Fuel Helix Coils showing up as buffs
- Clarified Strength description in new game template

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