One of the things we’ve always been quietly proud of in Star Traders is the wide variety of faces available within the game.

But even before we added official modding support to the game, some of the first unofficial mods were graphics replacements players created to further customize the game’s character art or add in their own faces & clothes. Now with fully-supported Steam Workshop modding available, it’s even easier, more reliable, and we’ve seen some modders getting pretty creative with it.

So creative… we may have gotten a little jealous. Seeing modders getting a chance to put a whole new spin on the game, from tributes to other franchises to rebalances that create new playstyle opportunities… not to mention all the straight-up improvements some modders are claiming… “Improved Ship Combat Icons,” “Sound FX Overhaul,” “Larger Cargo Holds” …this is what comes from creating a Captain simulator, everyone thinks they can run the ship better. ;)

So, we dug deep into our graveyard of code fragments, searching for a half-finished time-travel wormhole we’d written off all the way back in Early Access as too dangerous to complete, and let our wounded pride throw caution to the solar winds. Why a time travel wormhole, you might ask? Because how else in the midst of Cyber Knights development, spring travel, and 😱 tax season were we going to find the time for this: a full faces revamp featuring entirely new*, 100% original** crew art now available to you within the game.



We asked Andrew to art better this time, and boy did he! While the original faces were a collaboration between Andrew as Creative Director and our professional art team partners, the revamped crew faces are a fully in-house effort only "lightly" inspired from their original work, and we think you’re going to love the results.



Each face features:

• 20-50% more pixels
  
• fine-tuned adjustments to key facial features
  
• bold new interpretations of classic sci-fi tropes
  
• exciting speculative guesses at alternate evolutionary possibilities
  
• increased immersion through stronger representation of the effects of centuries of drinking the water-fuel

Okay, so you’ve hopefully figured it out by now, but if not: April fool’s! This is not a real game update.

…

…

…

…

BUT IT IS A REAL GAME MOD! 😮😁😮😁😮😁

If you want to, you can actually play with these ludicrous, outlandish, unexplainable, sometimes unfortunate faces, by playing the mod version of the game and adding our new mod, Star Derps. All 100+ of the crew faces have been replaced with new versions. Try it out, you might even find a few you’d like to grab from the modded spritesheet and add into a less outrageous mod of your own.

For-real props to all our modders, who have created some truly fun stuff for the game. Check out the other mods now available for Star Traders and leave some comments to encourage them to make more, and dive into the Making Mods section of the wiki to learn how to make your own.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2787587653&searchtext=

Update #292 was born directly from a lively and productive conversation here on the Steam boards about the System Atlas and its display of accurate or inaccurate trading conditions. While we were in there, we added some clarifications to the in-game text about the thresholds at which trading into certain rumors -- Trade Blockade and Embargo -- can yield Reputation bonuses. And to make it look good, we also dressed Update #292 in a new helmet and awesome translucent visor to boot.


My brother Cory and I have worked closely with amazing partners in Ukraine to dream, design and create the art for our next game Cyber Knights: Flashpoint over the past 3 years. Over the years, our partnership has grown to friendship as we spent countless hours working with these wonderful and talented people.

The entire Trese Brothers team is worried for our friends, their children, their families and their country. They need our prayers, our monetary support and our voices raised in solidarity. Their country and millions of refugees are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical supplies. We hope you will join us in giving to some organizations trying to ease the suffering in Ukraine.

Here are a few options:
Ukrainian Red Cross
Project HOPE
Docotrs without Borders

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. The private alpha is in full swing with over a 1,000 players, so get your cyber ready.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210?snr=1_2108_9__2107


This update brings a major upgrade to the way the Star Atlas displays buy and sell information for places you've visited. It's something we've been tinkering with ideas for for a while, and recent discussions in the community helped us prioritize pushing this through to completion. Thanks all for the feedback!

Previously, the Star Atlas would display supply and demand information based on the system type, zone type and economic rating. This gave players a good "usual conditions" benchmark for what they could expect to buy & sell in different zones, but was frequently mistaken for a live display of current prices. Without additional tracking on your own, it could be difficult to remember as you made numerous trades along a route where your last trades had left demand for certain goods, or where there was still an affordable supply of another.



Now we've made it so that the Star Atlas remembers and displays supply & demand information unique to each zone, based on your last visit to that zone. Your crew logs the local pricing to the ship's data cores each time you depart, where it will remain "fresh" for up to half a year (21 weeks). After 21 weeks, the Star Atlas will revert back to showing an estimate for that zone, with a helpful reminder displayed that the information may be inaccurate as you haven't visited that location in a long time.



This is a big boon for traders executing shorter trading trips and triangles and greatly reduces the need to check and double-check economic conditions before leaving port. May your trades glitter!


Update #292 adds a new translucent visor, interjecting display over reality to help combatants and ship crew alike do their daily tasks. Looking cool, looking blue. We've also added a new helmet, hitting the milestone of 15 total hat/helmet options. Perfect for some of the combat armors, this helmet is for battle-hardened combat crew or your wing pilots.



With this update we have improved the data displayed in the Exchange if you are making a sale and the Trade Blockade or Embargo Rumors are active. The messages there now include the specific threshold of sale value (for example, $1,500 for Embargo) before any Reputation bonuses can be gained. Small sales will not move the Rep needle, which is now nicely messaged in game.

- Added new helmet and new pair of translucent eyewear for characters
- If zone has been visited within 1/2 a year, Star Atlas supply / demand data is accurate
- Star Atlas supply / demand data will include cargo types that are not being bought or sold due to lack of supply / demand
- Clarified rules for Rep bonuses when trading under Rumors "Trade Blockade" and "Embargo" in game

Update #291 brings some important upgrades to the power levels achievable through Contact recruiting, fixes screen display and resolution for smaller resolution monitors, adds an important option for anyone playing on the Steam Deck and drops one more Talent into the oh-so-useful Talent Manifest.


My brother Cory and I have worked closely with amazing partners in Ukraine to dream, design and create the art for our next game Cyber Knights: Flashpoint over the past 3 years. Over the years, our partnership has grown to friendship as we spent countless hours working with these wonderful and talented people.

The entire Trese Brothers team is worried for our friends, their children, their families and their country. They need our prayers, our monetary support and our voices raised in solidarity. Their country and millions of refugees are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical supplies. We hope you will join us in giving to some organizations trying to ease the suffering in Ukraine.

Here are a few options:
Ukrainian Red Cross
Project HOPE
Kyiv Independent

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. The private alpha is in full swing with over a 1,000 players, so get your cyber ready.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210?snr=1_2108_9__2107


In the last update, we made some changes to the screen resolution detection to better cater to the Steam Deck hardware. It had some unexpected consequences for players on lower resolution monitors. We've addressed that in Update #291, by rolling back to the old resolution detection and adding an option in the Options menu for "small screen display". If you're playing on a Steam Deck (lucky you!), toggling this option on and you may find the game's interface better caters to the smaller screen. May you like it the big screen way too -- you get to pick!


With Update #291, we've made some significant upgrades to the Contact Recruiting service. All the numbers got bigger! To help Contacts provide better recruits into the late and mid game, we've upgraded their service to recruit character levels at 2X the Contact Service level which ranges from 1-8. So, instead of base levels for your characters from 1-8, you can now range from 1-16 (level 1 still recruits level 1).

In addition, we've bumped the bonuses of passing Eras from +10 over all of the Eras in the game to +12. Therefore, late game Contacts in the final Era will be offering level 28 Officers and Crew recruits, not counting any Edicts, Military Ranks, Permits, Traits or Rumors that may further increase those values.

To even out the big new improvement to Contact recruiting, the minimum thresholds for Effective Rep and Influence have been significantly raised as well as the Personal Rep and Credit cost of recruiting. Truly high-end recruits are costly, especially if you are considering cycling through a few to look for the best Traits and Attributes, but as always -- compared to Spice Hall or Conscription -- they do have the best Traits and Attributes!


If you see a Talent missing from the manifest, please report. Thanks to a report, we've now added Sample Analysis to the on-landing Talent stack in the manifest for those adventurous spirits seeking Scientific Intel.

Thanks to reports from the community, we have also fixed a number of issues with different missions. Some missions that failed to mention the name of the destination zone in their text have been corrected and other places were Prisoners were being transported and there were missing nouns in the mission options have also been fixed. Big thanks to everyone reporting issues!

- Improved Contact Recruit services across the board to recruit higher level characters (service level x 2)
- Increased Credit, Personal Rep Cost and thresholds for Effective Rep and Influence on all Contact Recruit service levels
- Added Scientist "Sample Analysis" to Talent Manifest
- Fixed multiple missions that failed to list destination zone names in text
- Fixed issues with Prisoner missions where there was missing nouns in mission options
- Fixed issue with lower resolution screens converting UI to Steam Deck UI, added option to play in small screen mode

Greetings, captains. We have Update #290 coming out tonight but first we wanted to focus on something much more important…


My brother Cory and I have worked closely with amazing partners in Ukraine to dream, design and create the art of Cyber Knights: Flashpoint over the past 3 years. Over that time, our partnership has grown to friendship as we spent countless hours working with these wonderful and talented people.

The entire Trese Brothers team is heartsick and worried to see the invasion and wanton destruction of their country – missile strikes hitting hospitals, apartment buildings, even kindergarten schools. We are scared for our friends, their families and their children. They need our prayers, our monetary support and our voices raised in solidarity.

Their country and thousands of refugees already need food, water, shelter and medical supplies. We hope you will join us in giving to some organizations trying to ease the suffering in Ukraine.

Here are a few options:
Ukraine Direct Relief
Project HOPE
Kyiv Independent


Our 290th update adds 2 new customizable outfits which are matching uniforms for the masculine and feminine characters. You can also mix and match these with any other outfits and for some matches, it is looking awesome!

In preparation to apply for verification with the Steam Deck, we've assigned 3 default controller configs for the game. The Steam Deck one was put together on our testing hardware and the Steam Controller and XBox Controller configs come out of the community -- so thanks for posting up awesome configs, team.

Occasionally, we get a little confusion from some players when the Skip Intro checkbox missing on a new install or after wiping all their saved games. For most players, this is never noticed but we've adjusted the code to ensure that the Skip Intro option is always available, even to a completely new captain who has never before played or a player who has no saves on the local machine.

- Added default controller configs (Steack Deck, Steam Controller, XBox)
- Added 2 new outfits
- Skip Intro option is always shown in New Game regardless of save counts
- Improved modding support for modders

Update #289 takes a turn and swings back through the Rumor section of the simulation to see the completion of some long needed tweaks and the addition of a Rumor affinities system that helps better match Rumors to applicable systems and zones to deliver more compelling and impactful results. We've also fixed and improved a number of other things with Update #289, working from community requests -- blocking more early game Rumors, repricing the Explorer extraction components and fixing odd bugs with the new ship comparison display. Plus, from our on-going work with the modding community, we've improved some of the visual modding support and are looking forward to the upcoming release of some new exciting character design mods.

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/


With Update #289, we've added a new system of Rumor affinities that improves the matching between the system and zone type and the Rumors that can be generated along with it. This system both helps to avoid certain silly situations -- such a Surplus on a Lux Population world that produces nothing -- but also strengthens the thematic appearance of Rumors in the right places -- Mining zones are more prone to civil unrest, oceanic systems are more prone to Ion Storms, Farm zones are more likely to have Surpluses, Orbital zones are often running into Shortages. We've loaded in about the first 30 affinity matches and are excited to keep extending and improving this system.

The new Rumor affinities system also gave us a chance to review and improve some of the Contact events taken in response to Contact actions taken when a positive economic Rumor was on their zone. We have increased the strength of these actions -- helping an ally, creating an additional positive Rumor, gaining Influence by 20% -- making the impact of positive economic news felt more strongly.

We have also improved the text on many of the event logs for Rumors (bottom right) as well as the entries going into the captain's log to ensure they are more helpful and clear.

To avoid unfair and messy situations in the first 2 years of the game, we've extended the block on certain Rumor types in the early game. Previously, this type of blocking was reserved for Xeno related Rumors, but now you will no longer encounter the following Rumors in the first 900 Turns of the game: Starport Closed, Civil Unrest, Ion Storm or Meteor Storm. Have more fun flying in your first years :D

We've done some work with #289 to improve support of Templar Contacts. Templar and all Zendu Contacts have received an even longer age limit before they may die of old age. We've also fixed a number of places where the game could report -- through filters, search or services list -- that Templar and Zendu Contacts could offer services, such as Recruiting, that they really do not. Thanks to everyone for reporting these issues.


With Update #287, we've adjusted the purchase and repair cost for some of the most powerful Exploration components -- Extraction Drill, Harvester Bay, Resource Processor and Javat Mechi-Reaper. For their value in the field, and ability to greatly increase profits from exploring, their costs had dipped too low. Constantly damaged by their use in exploring, finding the right value for their repairs is key.

Update #289 fixed a couple of key issues that came out of the last few updates. First, zones with 0 Starport rating -- which rare -- could crash the game if your ship had certain levels of damage to it when you tried to land. Second, if you debuffed an enemy ship hard enough, its ship comparison could go "all the way around" and start reporting that it was superior to you!


We've got some exciting work brewing in the modding community and to support that we've made some improvements to the game's handling of hair, hats and beards to help the modders keep making progress toward some awesome releases. If you haven't checked out the Workshop recently, don't miss all the different options to tweak gameplay, character visuals, add story, jobs and more --
https://steamcommunity.com/app/335620/workshop/

- Removed "Stardock Closed", "Starport Closed" and "Civil Unrest" Rumors from early game
- Removed "Ion Storm" and "Meteor Storm" Rumors from early game
- Increased Influence Economy via Rumors by 20%, making all Contacts more powerful
- Created New Zone and Planet Rumor affinities to tie Zone/Planet Types to thematically consistent Rumor Types
- Revised & Improved Rumor Lifecycle Logging
- Fixed issue where heavy debuffing could cause ship comparison to go "all the way around" and flip comparison
- Clarified in-game Wisdom hover
- Fixed issue where Recruiting or Rank services could show up for Templar Contact incorrectly
- Increased the maximum Contact age of Zendu and Templar Contacts
- Repriced & Rebalanced "Extraction Drill, Harvester Bay, Resource Processor, Javat Mechi-Reaper" Components
- Fixed crash landing on Starport: 0 Zones with a damaged ship
- Improved support for modders adding new head / hair / beard / hat combos

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!