Star Traders: Frontiers News

Update #166 rolls out with a new Mass 8000 freighter, a rebuild of the Cargo Missions to make the more exciting and lucrative for focused merchants, a new look at how craft pilots gain XP, and a major rebalance to the Mass allocated for Dual-Field Engines, Barracks and Officer Cabins. As always, there is more so check the full notes below.

If you're enjoying the pace of updates and improvements, please share the game with a fiend and be sure to leave a review!

For anyone having crashes during the Faen storyline or other storylines when completing a mission, this update should resolve it! Thanks to everyone for reporting the issue.


While peaceful merchants have run cargo missions for a long time, these missions have not scaled well to the power and grandeur of those said merchants. With the latest update, Cargo Missions now take into account the captain's cargo hold size, their Rep with the faction and their Trade Permit level when determining how far to push the requirements for the cargo delivery -- and the price. The rewards for cargo delivery now scale more above the linear line as these requirements go up. Now, its possible to see larger deliveries with larger pay days.


We've made some important and highly impactful changes to the Mass stats for all ship components -- small, medium and large -- that primarily house Officer or Crew. This type of component has across the board seen a reduction in Mass, sometimes upwards of 20%. As every ship is required to have some barracks and officer cabins, this frees up a bit more design space across the board and even more so on ships that feature multiple components to house their crew and officers.

Dual-Field Void Engines have also seen a reduction in Mass to improve their place within the engine hierarchy and to help offset the decision to return to Balanced engine from one of the specialist builds.


The new Pallas Freighter leaves the starport at a heavy 8,000 Mass boasting powerful internal shielding, best-in-class fuel storage (96 base, 250 all told) and the average hull points of a freighter built for transport.

The Pallas offers 8 large slots -- an unrivaled layout with a ability to expanding with large components like cargo holds. In trade, it has only 12 medium and 8 small slots. The Pallas has the option to convert into a carrier and fly up to 3 max craft, which is especially suited to its large slot setup.

Built out with a wide array of medium component cargo holds, a Salvage Bay, and an array of bristling weaponry for its own defense -- the Pallas Freighter will cost you more than $1,000,000 credits to get into but is worth the price tag.


The Blazelight Railgun and Radiance Raligun -- the high level small slot railguns -- have been rebalanced a bit with Update #166. The Radiance has been pushed even more into the pattern of a crippling weapon with high Radiation Damage and high Crippling Chance. The Blazelight maintains its position as a more hull-destructive version of the weapon.

We've also added a new windowed resolution by request and dropped in 8 new awesome barks (thanks @lurker) that reference back to Exodus and pre-Exodus lore.


- New 8000 Mass class Ship: Pallas Freighter - mighty transport class
- Enhanced cargo delivery missions to scale up delivery requirements (more cargo, more reward) based on ship's cargo hold, Permit rank, Rep levels
- Improved balance of XP granted for craft pilots during ship combat, also moved XP gains to moment of attack/boarding/intercept instead of landing
- Rebalanced & reduced mass costs for Dual-Field Engines, Barracks and Size 2 Officer Cabins
- Added 8 new barks hearkening back to Exodus and galactic core
- Added 2560x1080 windowed resolution by request
- Fixed switch names of ship debuffs Devastating Shot and Disabling Approach in hovers during ship combat
- Rebalanced Blazelight Railgun (small slot, lvl 5) and Radiance Railgun (small slot, lvl 6)
- Fixed issue where story event on quadrant map might not stop ship from moving
- Fixed crash occurring on some maps with Faen or other story missions ("Conspiracy in Motion", etc)

Update #165 adds a new carrier ship to the mix, fixes a critical story bug plaguing the Faens, drops a new rare lootable relic, updates the Pirate default starting templates and improves the ship displays in new game, drydock and new ship to include more of the critical fields.

The updates keep coming, so be sure to leave a review and tell a friend.


The Obsidian Carrier lifts off from the nearest starport with a void shaking rumble. While lightly armored, the Obsidian's best-in-class Hull and high shielding makes a hull with high endurance. Built with redundant launch bays and capacity for all 4 craft right off the tarmac, the Obsidian is one of the most focused carriers available on the open ship hull market. It's sale is locked behind the Press Gang unlock


An important Faen story bug was introduced two updates ago, which causes some missions to suddenly disappear after their first step. We're very sorry for the issue and would like to talk to any player who is having the problem - we will help resolve. This update fixes the issue for all future captains.


Thanks to @en1gma and @lordofsyn on our https://discord.gg/tresebrothers for suggesting some improvements to the starting Pirate template. With some adjustments to priority, changes to Skills and Attributes as well as a ship swap, the Pirate template has never been more ready to fly and dive into ship combat.

Please note that these changes to the template will only appear in new installs.


Across the game where you're looking at a ship without being able to see all of its components, a wealth of new roll-up stats are available. Where before you could see the hull's base fuel, now you can see its final fuel, cargo as well as prisoner cells and passenger cabins. In addition, you can see the exact count of crew and officers who have bunks on the ship as well as the hull's maximum for crew and officers. This extra info is a great boon when planning a build and considering a new ship purchase!


A new rare relic can now be found during Salvage, the Voidsealed Heavy Jack. We've also reduced the chance of encounter xeno slightly in Explorer, with some weighting to the early game experience as well. And, we've fixed a bug with the Longbolt having a missing tag line.

A huge thanks to everyone posting bugs, feedback and reviews!


- New Unlockable Ship: Obsidian Carrier (7000M)
- Added Unlock Reward info for "Press Gang" Award -- conscript 20 enemy crew
- Fixed bug causing some story missions such as Erik and Zette's to disappear suddenly after finishing one step
- New Relic: 'Voidsealed Heavy Jack' (Military Gear, Salvagable Rare)
- Replaced Pirate Template with updated and Improved version putting more focus on the right Attributes, Skills and improved ship choice
- Improved Ship Details display in new template to include final cargo and fuel capacity as well as maximums for crew and officers, prisoner and passenger cabins
- Improved Ship Details display in New Ship/Dry Dock to include the same additions as new template
- Fixed missing description of Longbolt starting ship
- Fixed Crashes in Unlock Display in some conditions
- Slight reduction in Xeno encounter rates during Exploration

Update #164 will help us wrap up the Steam Summer Sale in style! The Grand Prix theme was all about speed, and we've dropped 5 updates with tons of new content, new features and community driven improvements fast-fast-fast! And this latest update is no expection -- Update #164 features a new Rychart-only ship, 2 new ship weapons focused on disabling enemy ships, a new Javat-only cargo hold, major new improvements to how enemy AI staff their ship, rebalance for Pilot Assist Modules versus craft attacks and well, there's more too. Read the full release notes for everything!

If you've enjoyed the relentless pace of updates and the game, please leave a review and tell a friend!


Rychart's own fast, sleek and deadly Gunhawk Sabre is hitting the void with a very unique build. This M2400 class ship features 10 small components, 7 medium slots and only 1 large slot but boasts high start Armor, Shield, a full set of 6 officers and the smallest crew out there, clocking in at 18. Build for close ranged combat, hit and run boarding or spying expeditions that are just in Rychart's wheel house, the Gunhawk Sabre requires a special kind of focus and a special kind of captain to command. Whether your rapidly training a small inner core of crew and officers for a large ship upgrade or planning to stay forever, the Gunhawk Sabre is a joy to fly.


Sometimes you need someone to negotiate for peace on your behalf. You're in luck, because the new Interceder class Plasma Cannons are ready to "talk it out" with your enemy. Packing a huge Radiation Damage punch and extra Crippling Chance, these high level large class Plasma Cannons are built to decimate and cook the enemy crew and ship's internals while leaving the hull (mostly) in one piece. Perfect for pirates and salvages alike, mount these new beauties on your ship and start negotiating your way out of trouble.


Javat is finally getting into the transport game with the release of their new Hauler Hold. Boasting 65 Cargo capacity and a solid chunk of Fuel storage, the hold is perfect for any commodity merchant all the way up to someone who can afford to pack it with Rare Trade Goods and sail the stars.


Enemy ship captains are gaining a new level of versatility as they are now able to staff their crew with more interesting Job picks. Military and boarding-focused captains may choose to foregoe extra Pilots or Gunners in trade for more Swordsman, Pistoleers and Rifleman. And now, Pirate captains may swap out some of their Pilots for Pirates. These changes will have a wide set of effects -- they can make boarding against military vessels harder as you may face multiple sets of trained fighting crew. Also, they may reduce the ship pools on some ships as a Pilot or E-Tech is replaced with an extra Pistoleer or a Swordsman. This also increases the chance that Captains may find more interesting Jobs to conscript among the enemy crew. And Pirates among the enemy crew will bring new varied set of Talents to bear in ship combat.

As with all major shifts, this will be done in multiple stages, starting here and looking to expand to other enemy captain types and other exciting crew Jobs. The changes are difficulty dependent, so you're less likely to see these new swaps on lower difficulty.





With some improvements to Pilot Assist Modules, we're moving toward some important rebalancing to help defend against craft. Craft come with a percentage based attack system (60% to Hit, etc) that does not take normal ship defenses into account. If the craft is able to close and swoop down in over your hull, you're way bigger than a womprat or a barn and their bombs are going to hit you. Now, with new bonuses coming off Pilot Assist Modules, your capital ship has gained the ability to avoid their attack runs altogether with a Dodge %. This new type of bonus will be propagating to other ship components as well, as its a critical part of allowing the AI to fairly use craft, especially for smaller ships.


We've fixed a ton of other nice things for you as well! Salvage Bay components now work against xeno. All story fights against xeno are properly counted in your stats screen. We've fixed some issues with smaller maps and story missions hanging -- if you were having this crash, just try again after the update. We've resolved a bug with "Dread Legacy" Trait from xeno hunters in certain quadrants. The Quad-Goltha Scanner component needed some tweaks to be fair versus the rewards of the storyline so got a bit of a down balance. And, we fixed more odd edge-case bugs with the Arbiter storyline and story arcs timing out.

If you're enjoying the updates, we hope you'll leave a review!


- Added new ship design: Gunhawk Sabre is a unique Rychart-only M2400 class ship built for close range combat and boarding
- Added two new large slot Plasma Cannon ship weapons -- the "Interceder PCX" class deals massive Radiation Damage in trade for low Standard Damage
- Added new Javat-only "Hauler Hold" large slot cargo hold is high capacity for bulk shipments, adding 65 cargo and 40 fuel
- Military or boarding minded enemy captains will now hire additional fighting crew (difficulty dependent)
- Pirate enemy captains will now hire additional pirates to staff their boats (difficulty dependent)
- Improved Pilot Assist Modules 1-4 to include % chance to avoid attacks from small craft
- Rebalanced the Quad-Goltha Scanner against the Red series Goltha tech to improve the "Goltha Theory" storyline pay off
- Salvage Bay ship components now improve the results when salvaging xeno ships
- Fixed crash occuring on some 12 quadrant small maps with story missions ("Conspiracy in Motion", etc)
- Fixed bug with "Dread Legacy" Xeno Hunter Captain Trait that caused it not to display in certain quadrants when defeating xeno
- Fixed issue where some Mission and Story battles against xeno were not properly recorded in logs
- Fixed bug making the chance to avoid a fight in Civil Unrest Rumor very low
- Fixed bug allowing Zenrin Archivist Contact to appear on non-Zenrin systems
- Fixed other ways that the Arbiter Coalition storyline could end early
- Fixed some bugs with early Arbiter-Faen storyline and timing out

It's the second week of Steam Summer sale and our 4th big update so far! With Update #162, you're still saving 33% and you get even more content, outfits, a new Pirate Talent, major Stash feature improvements suggested by the community and more! We'll dive into all the specifics below, section by section.

If you're enjoying the pace of updates and new content, please leave a review. Great to see some of our 600+ hour players coming out to drop reviews on the game! Thank you :D

If you've ever been looking for an interesting and peace-focused merchant / high cargo ship build, look no further than the screenshot above shared by @JimmysTheBestCop. Amazing capacity, amazing fuel efficiency, but no weapons and weak Ship Skill Pools. This one needs factions to be friendly and some powerful Encounter Talents.


With Update #162 we've added another matching outfit. Your Military Officers and Commanders never had it so good, now featuring an outfit specifically baked just for them. If you are a Captain, Officer or just a pretentious crew member, you can now wear your full regalia and remind everyone else that you serve a faction military. Or not. Either way -- you're going to do it in style.

A huge thanks to all of our Patreons who have helped suggest outfits that are appearing in this second wave.


If you've got *a lot* of things in stashes buried all across the galaxy than this update is for you. First up, we've now denoted the rows that are the headers for individual stashes by coloring them differently, making it a quick visual scan to see the different stashes. Second, we've included Quadrant name in the stash header row, making is easy to see which Stashes are in the same Quadrant, helping you plan a pickup run if you're sweeping through to collect and sell.

Third, we've added a Dump feature for stash items. You can dump an entire entry in a stash or even just a few units -- all from across the galaxy. By erasing these entries from your data records, you remove the Stashed cargo from your list. Got 32 units of Biomass that are 17 jumps away? Dump it!

Finally, we fixed a routing bug that was occurring when looking at Stashes on the galaxy map. If you're routing to stashes from this map, the waypoints will now update correctly.


The Pirate Job has gained a new rank 11 Talent, "Looter's Intuition" that affects all encounters with Merchants while blockading. While hunting the richest targets, a Pirate's nose for loot can now help pick out the merchants who are most heavily loaded with cargo. There are no clear visual signs, perhaps the slightest traces on the arc scanner reverb -- but none the less, a real Pirate just nose. Knows? Nose.

Any Merchant who is encountered with this Talent firing is going to have a packed cargo hold, often with extra valuable goods. Just one more way to reap the benefits of blockading.

We've also fixed a bug with the "Signature Jammer" type Talents -- they were not appearing in the ship encounter log if they reduced Rep loss to just -1. We've clarified their description as well to be clear that they have cannot reduce Rep loss below -1 and we've also clarified all Doctor Saving Talents which had some confusing words in their description before.

Thanks to everyone for playing, sharing and gifting the game. Also, for reviewing! Enjoy the new content!


- Added new matching character outfits -- military officer or top brass commander
- Added new rank 11 Pirate Talent "Looter's Instinct" which causes any Merchant encountered during Blockade to have bonus cargo
- Stash List now includes Quadrant name for each stash grouping for easier visual parsing
- Added feature to "Dump" cargo from Stashes at a distance, allowing the complete removal of Stashes without visiting them
- Improved color coding of rows in Stash list to make it clearer which are the Stash headers and which are Stashed cargo
- Fixed issue causing galactic map to route oddly when navigating to a stash
- Fixed bug that was preventing "Signature Jammer" Talents from appear after ship encounter if the Rep loss was exactly -1
- Clarified description of "Signature Jammer" Talents to be clear that they reduce Rep loss to a minimum of -1
- Clarified description of medical Talents that prevent Doctor Skill failures and Life Savers

Welcome to the first weekend of the Steam Summer Sale and another big update for Star Traders: Frontiers. Update #162 is built around the arrival of the 7th new story in the 2.5.x roadmap family -- the first vignette to result in unique story ship components becoming available based on your actions. We've also made shipping xeno artifacts a little more dangerous, improved the fuel bar in the HUD, helped the AI pick weapons to cover ranges more intelligently, and upgraded all the ship comparisons to fully take difficulty into account. And more -- so be sure to check the full release notes.

Thanks to everyone leaving a review -- it's been bonkers, so thank you!


We won't go into spoilers about the new storyline vignette that has been added, other than to say that it starts on Rychart worlds only after the Early Coalition Era has ended. In this messy weave of galactic espionage, there are opportunities to unlock new and unique ship components that otherwise are unavailable. Your captain's actions can help change the technology of the galaxy in this new vignette.

The Contact's name is Cassie Cain and we'd like to send out a huge thanks to the KickStarter backer who helped us develop her character and her storyline!

This storyline will eventually appear in any game, regardless of how far along your captain is -- no need to restart!


Carrying Terrox Artifacts just got a bit more dangerous. While no one knows why, warnings have always been whispered that smuggler's carrying troves of artifacts are the most likely to be attacked by the Terrox. Perhaps someday, humanity will better understand the Terrox to know how it is possible, but for now, know this -- every Terrox Artifact in your cargo hold gives a very fractional increase to the percentage chance of encounter a xeno in the void. It's small, but carrying a hundred Artifacts results in a few important percentage points bump!


Based on some great player feedback, we've added a third field to the fuel bar text in the HUD. It now includes the exact amount of fuel, along with the fuel range in AU and the AU to the destination. While the exact amount of Water-Fuel is implied by the existing numbers (if and only if you know your ship's fuel-to-AU ratio), it is a big help to see the actual changes to your fuel gauge. It helps to impress upon a captain the differences between ships, large and small as well as between efficient and guzzling Void Engines.


We've improved the ship comparison run down in a ship encounter and the tooltip during combat to include the Ship Combat Boost from your Difficulty setting. This was mistakenly not taken into account before, and it is a very important factor. Mostly, this was leading to enemy captains on lower difficulties looking overly powerful for what they really were, while captains on higher difficulties might look underpowered. The comparison report is even more accurate now!


- Added new story vignette "Goltha Theory" starting on Rychart worlds after the end of the Early Coalition Era -- thanks KickStarter backers!
- Get tangled up in galactic espionage in the "Goltha Theory" story arc
- Multiple possible unique story Ship Components unlocked by story -- best new spying equipment available
- Story includes new high powered Contact type, so called "Retired Diplomat"
- Improved Fuel Bar in the HUD to include exact quantity of Water-Fuel in the tanks as well as AU range and AU to destination
- Carrying Terrox Artifacts in your cargo hold while traveling increases chance of encountering xeno ship
- Improved critical hit target group in ship combat to include Launch Bays (along with Bridge, Engine, etc)
- Refined ability for enemy AI to pick ship weapons that cover a wider band of ranges
- Improved ship comparison logic in tooltip and ship encounter screen to take Ship Combat Boost from Difficulty properly into account
- Fixed a bug that could prevent the second of two orbital ops missions from appearing over the same system
- Fixed issue where hovering over an event for a Skill test or a Saving Talent could be misleading about Saving Talents ready at time of test