Star Traders: Frontiers News

The HIGHFALL major milestone unleashes a massive new story addition with 2 new story Eras as well as a new highly defensive fighting job, the dual wielding Bodyguard. This major new story expansion includes a major arc that moves forward the political story of the galaxy, brings new powerful characters to the fore and threatens to upend some of the order you may have helped establish. Please be careful with spoilers within the community, there is some *major* stuff in here!

On top of this major milestone, now is the time to join in and save 33%. If you're enjoying the game and continuous stream of major new updates without any DLCs, please take a moment to leave a review or tell a friend. If you're new to the frontiers, post your comments, feedback and suggestions to the discussion board or join us on our Discord where there is a great community to help!


With this update we've smashed open the new group of the development roadmap. The first item in v2.6.x has fallen with the release of these two dueling eras and the new combat job.

To see more detail about what is coming next, check out our development roadmap which details the next major features and content expansions as well as our on-going content expansion initiatives.


This update releases a major wave of story content, major branch points for the galactic story, new characters to meet, new rewards to chase and new challenges to face. This includes 2 new Eras -- Dissension and Consolidation -- which are mutually exclusive in the storyline. Your choices might help drive the galaxy one way or the other. And with each comes a heap of new content and additions to explore -- all new rules for the simulation including 2 new unique Rumors, 4 Era-specific rules for what types of cargo enemy ships are carrying, 6 new Contact creation rules to set the tone of the Era as well as a specialized Conflict setup rules and more. You might see some ship you've never seen before due to these Eras and will definitely meet some all new characters.

Keep an eye out for the "Buried Demons" storyline introduced by Silvaine von Sha to get a start on it. These Eras will only get started if you've already reached the 3rd Century Era, but will appear in any game no matter how far along you are.

In the dept of "even more new stuff" these Eras can also release up to 3 new specialist ship components as story rewards as well as an entirely new tier of ship weaponry!


The Bodyguard Job is now available as the 34th Job of the frontiers. This defensive-focused fighter dual wields pistols and blades while mixing high power defensive buffs with well-aimed disabling hits. Protecting a target is a mix of keeping the enemy off balance and blocking incoming hits. The Bodyguard boasts a truly new Talent type -- Honor Guard which grants an 75% Auto-Block chance to a friendly crew member who is behind the Bodyguard. Each hit that is blocked has a 50% chance of ending the buff, but its a great way for a front-line bodyguard to protect the back-line.

The Bodyguard is also unique in having 4 Skills which stretches his or her Skill set pretty wide -- Pistols, Blades, Evasion and Tactics. Without a doubt, the best Bodyguards will be Officers with complementary Jobs. The Job combinations are staggering and extremely fun to play with -- from the Assassin, Military Officer, Bodyguard to the Spy Bodyguard, Swordsman -- there are too many too count and we're excited to see what you captains cook up!

Bodyguards can also provide life saving Talents to protect other crew and officers and special mission bonus payments for passenger and prisoner missions.

Bodyguards can be recruited from High Princes, Judicial Counsels and Courtesan Contacts.




- Added new pistol-blade wielding "Bodyguard" Job, unique defensive fighter and team defender!
- Added 6th Story Era: either the Era of Dissension or Consolidation
- Choose a side in the growing galactic tension between the UCF unionists and the faction leadership
- All new simulation rules, Rumors, Conflicts, and Contact actions/mutations during these new chapters of the United Coalition
- Added new story vignette to introduce the Era, "Buried Demons" with Thulun Intelligence Officer
- Added 3 new specialist ship components available through story choices and rewards
- Added 2 new unique crew weapon/armors available through story choices and rewards
- Added 2 Era-specific Rumors as Coalition power shifts -- "Anti-Coalition Riots" and "UDF Recruitment Drives"
- Added 4 Era-specific special cargo rules for Merchants, Smugglers and Pirates
- Added 6 Era-specific Contact creation rules to seed the Era new blood
- Added 8 new ship weapons released by the Era progressions -- gear up for advanced warfare!
- Added 3 new major story characters who can have wide impact
- Added new Era-driven ship encounter and mechanics and 2 new Era-driven cards for orbital ops games
- Added 2 special Missions available in different story paths of the Eras, including a chance at a first meeting with legend from Templar Battleforce
- Rippling story impacts can flow into other Eras like the Plague
- Recruit Bodyguards from High Prince, Judicial Counsel and Courtesan Contacts
- Improved Alta Mesa component "Battle Bridge" with Void/Res Resist and +Accuracy %
- Contact Search now picks up Trait-based services like Offer Rumor due to Techno Addict Trait


We've now released Update #176 with some exciting new content and balance work for the Bodyguard. As we want to keep this news item top of our roll, we're just adding it to the bottom here.

v2.6.3 -
- Added 3 new Era-specific missions for Arbiter Brokstrom and other Coaolition Contacts during the Consolidation Era
- New mission types now capable of spawning beneficial Rumors and Contacts such as Starport Boom or UDF Recruitment Drive
- Fixed bugs with bounty hunters sent by Thulun being in the wrong ships / factions
- Adjusted theme of Bodyguard's "Tactical Shove" Talent to push someone back instead of forward
- Bodyguard's "Protective Instincts" on Init Talent can now be used from any slot including 4
- Fixed Bodyguard's "Low Blow" to not give buffs to the attacked enemy
- Adjusted Bodyguard's "Body Shot" to not be useable from slot 3
- Bodyguard's "Hamstring Slice" has debuff slightly reduced, now -2 Init and -10% Damage
- Fixed inconsistencies in Bodyguard's "Screening Fire" buff and upgraded to a 1.5x Initiaive cost
- Fixed extremely short cool down for Bodyguard's "One Step Ahead" Talent
- Added missing description for Bodyguard Job

We dropped a quick Sunday night patch to stabilize a few bugs that had escaped the lab due to the new Era development. In the Crowning Smuggler storyline an unexpected character might appear and spout some nonsense. Also, there was a crash in the lab near the end of Zette's storyline.

Both are fixed! Thanks to everyone for reporting.

v2.5.89

Update #174 continues to hammer on quality of life improvements while we wrap up the next story Eras back at HQ. We've expanded the search feature into Star Atlas as well as adding 4 new filters which can be combined to make finding a specific system, buyer or seller of a cargo type much easier. we've also better marked Rare Trade Goods within the galactic map, improved Contact introductions and tweaked some of the rules for the Plague Era to ensure mission prices are right as well as letting Kloxian Medical Bays get in on the fun.

If you're enjoying the pace of updates, please leave a review and tell a friend.

This should be the last update in the v2.5.x dev family. v2.6.x is NEXT :D


Searching Contacts was a hit, so we've wasted no time moving the solution into the next most critical list in the game -- the Star Atlas. You can now search the atlas for all sorts of helpful terms such as "mining" to find all mining zones or "population" to find both pop and lux pop zones. You can search for "stash" to find where you have stashes too.

But, to the great glee of merchants and smugglers across the galaxy, the best is definitely the cargo type search. You can search "sells explosives" to find any zone that can legally sell you explosives or type "buys crystals" to find a buyer for what you've got in your hold. The search takes Trade Law and Rumors into account as well, so you can now find your next stop very quickly and with great precision!


To help the quadrants where Contacts can gain access to Rare Trade Goods be more evident, we've bubbled them up to the galactic map. Alongside Rumors, Mission and Contacts you can now see a map mark for the availability of Rare Trade Goods, and hover to see exactly which one is available where. Of course, you still need to find a Contact with the Influence, Rep and service to sell you such valuable goods, but the hunt is far simpler now!


We've made two tweaks to the Plague Era -- first counting Kloxian Medical Bays as a type of medical supplies for different Rumors within the Era. Second, due to some calculation issues, some story Contacts in the Era were offering terribly priced missions -- now resolved!

If you're looking to get an Introduction from a Contact, you'll find that they are a little more upfront about the destination of the second Contact, not only listing the jump count but the quadrant and system name as well.


- Added search feature for Star Atlas -- search "mining" to find Mining Zones, "sells explosives" or "buys explosives" to find zones that trade explosives, plus combine with filter and sort
- Added 4 new filters to Star Atlas to quickly seek zones that have Repair, Upgrade, Doctor or Spice services
- Quadrants with Rare Trade Goods available now clearly marked on galactic map and in quadrant hovers
- Selling Kloxian Medical Bays to infected zones can now help break Infected Rumors
- Contact Introductions now list the name of the Contact's system and quadrant
- Improved mission offers to recognize round-trip missions that are only in the local quad
- Improved pricing on some of the cargo delivery missions during Plague Era and increased their ability to scale to your cargo/permit level
- Fixed issue with Ship Fuel displays in New Template
- Fixed bugs that allowed certain ships to move without using fuel

For Saturday afternoon fun, we've released a quick patch to help fix some issues and improve some of the new features from yesterday.

This patch fixes some of the start ship prices -- some of the accidentally shifted in Update #173 and bumped ships into different categories. The Longbolt is now back in category D.

We've also fixed a bug that was causing some cut-scenes to resist clicking to advance. They were basically unplayable and you had to skip them. Sorry - now fixed!

Finally, we've made the first round of improvements to the Contact Search feature. We've changed the searchable text to more closely align with the visible text -- searching "Spy Recruits" will now get matches as that is what you can see on the screen. We've also changed a few game terms to separate keywords -- Spy Missions are now Espionage Missions, Diplomat Missions are now Diplomatic Missions and finally Doctor Missions are now Medical Missions. This should help prevent some keywords from crossing and getting false positive results.

We're hard at work on getting the Star Atlas search perfected, so stay tuned for exciting updates to come!


- Fixed pricing on some starting ships that had moved categories (Longbolt is now back in D)
- Fixed bug preventing clicking from advancing cut-scenes like those at the start of the game
- Renamed some mission giver categories to make search easier ("Spy Missions" is now "Espionage Missions", "Dipomat" is "Diplomatic" and "Doctor" is "Medical")
- Improved searchable text to match visible text fixing some mismatches (searching "Spy Recruits" now correctly gets hits)

Update #173 lifts of the starport tarmac with a roar bringing a long awaits UI improvement to the Contacts list, 4 new ship components, better rules for high Rep protecting against Rank/Permit/Edict loss and more. A huge thanks as always to all the players posting feedback, suggestions and bugs who help us drive continued improvements to the game!

We're in the final ramp up to the next major move on the Development Roadmap. A few updates from now, we'll be rolling out 2.6.1 with major new story Eras, galactic shifts and more!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/335620/announcements/detail/1696055855739611821
The map seed above is st-v01-40-6-10776916 if you're interested in a a nice multi-directional sprawl.


This request has been very popular for a while and we're excited to finally deliver. You can now search your Contacts for specific terms such as "quartermaster", "generous" or "prince missions". The search is a single keyword, so "prince missions" will only find Contacts who offer that type of mission, and anyone who offers any type of Mission and all Princes. You can also search zones, systems or quadrants like "Northpines" or specific Contact types like "Gestalt".

Search can be combined with filters and sort for the best effect.

We're rolling out Contact search as a first trial of the setup to gather player feedback, see if there are any issues and test the waters. From there, we will move on to other exciting areas like the System Atlas.


As we continue to fight the good fight to get enemy carriers to be ready, we've introduced a new set of Small slot anti-craft components. These components also have general bonuses that might make them appealing to wider ship design. The Railtak Guidance Matrices components add standard Accuracy bonus as well as an improved chance to hit enemy craft. The C-Tak Interceptor Systems increase a capital ship's chance to avoid craft attacks, increase Initiative and also provide Void Resistance.

While you may not be running to your nearest starport to install these just yet, the enemy AI ship builder is interested in using them and since you can capture enemy ships ... anyway -- they are nice!


With Update #173, we've rolled out an improved set of contextual rules for the loss of high grades of Ranks, Permits and Edicts. As you cross the 100 positive Reputation mark, these faction perks becomes more difficult to lose. Each category has its negative Reputation threshold loosened a little bit at the 100 Rep mark. For Military Ranks, it goes from -2 to -4 Rep to lose a Rank. For Permits, it drops from -3 to -4 and for Edicts -4 to -5.


This deserves to be a full heading. The princes of Weapon Lockers have been increased. You can now get an A4 for what you used to be able to get an A5. The middle tiers are also more expensive in a better curve. The enemy's access to Weapon Lockers has been adjusted accordingly to match.


Both Launch Bays and Hangars have gained Skill Pools to help them integrate into ship builds more directly.

We've also simplified some of the requirements for ship components, removing some of the lower Economy requirements, cleaning up Starport requirements and fixing a few tiered sets of components that had contradictory requirements.


- Added search feature for Contact list -- search "Quartermaster" to find specific recruits, "Generous" to find certain known Traits, and combine with filter & sort
- Added 2 new "Railtak Guidance Matrix" ship components to increase chance for capital ship to hit Craft and general Accuracy %
- Added 2 new "C-Tak Interceptor System" ship components to increase capital ship evasion against Craft, Initiative and Void Res
- Above 100 Rep with a faction makes it more difficult to lose high level Rank/Permit/Edict by 1 to 2 pts (-4 for Ranks, -4 for Permits, -5 for Edict)
- Launch Bays and Hangars all gain Ship Ops and Electronics Skill Pools
- Increased prices of Weapon Lockers A2 thru A5
- Fixed a number of component sets that had inconsistencies in Starport / Military / Economy requirements
- Reduced complexity in low requirements for components (removed all Economy 2 requirements, etc)
- Added System Danger rating to Star Atlas for better seeking recruits, orbital ops, etc
- Fixed pricing and component count issues with Skylift Carrier and other ships
- Fixed bug with De Valtos Grand Lux Suites not always providing 22% bonus
- Fixed some keyboard issues in the HUD and subwindows