Star Traders: Frontiers News

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.


[h2]Help Us Support Ukraine[/h2]
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

[h2]Cyber Knights: Flashpoint?[/h2]
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


[h2]System Atlas Gets Lively[/h2]
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!


[h2]New Visor and Helmet[/h2]
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.



[h2]Trading Rumor Clarifications[/h2]
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.

[h2]v3.2.35 - 3/23/2022[/h2]
- 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.


[h2]Help Us Support Ukraine[/h2]
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

[h2]Cyber Knights: Flashpoint?[/h2]
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


[h2]Steam Deck Screen Size Option[/h2]
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!


[h2]Contact Recruit Levels ^^[/h2]
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!


[h2]Talent Manifest[/h2]
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.

[h2]Mission Updates[/h2]
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!

[h2]v3.2.33 - 3/15/2022[/h2]
- 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…


[h2]Help Us Support Ukraine[/h2]
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


[h2]Exo Suit Outfits[/h2]
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!

[h2]Controller Configs / Steam Deck Prep[/h2]
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.

[h2]New Game: Skip Intro[/h2]
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.

[h2]v3.2.31 - 2/26/2022[/h2]
- 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.

[h2]What’s the latest on Cyber Knights?[/h2]
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/


[h2]Rumor Affinities[/h2]
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.

[h2]Early Game Rumor Blocks[/h2]
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

[h2]Templar Contact Age & Recruiting[/h2]
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.


[h2]Rebalance Explorer Components[/h2]
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.

[h2]Bug Sweep Up[/h2]
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!


[h2]Improved Mod Support[/h2]
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/

[h2]v3.2.29 - 2/10/2022[/h2]
- 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