Star Traders: Frontiers v2.0.31: Engage Void Engines!

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Captains, gather round the spice plate and let us talk. There is much news to share as we roll out update #12: Engage Void Engines! We're picking up pace with the speed of improvements now, hammering out some really good additions, fixes and balances with the growing strength of our community and the incoming feedback.

We've got some hot topics that are receiving attention tonight! We couldn't do this without your feedback so please keep leaving reviews and posting to the boards!

Rep Visibility and Balance

Your Reputation with other factions has a constant impact on your ability to access key grav services -- fuel, spice, repairs. Throughout the game, we've updated the service icons (blue wrench spice crystal, fuel tank) to indicate when they are at a location where hostile officials will deny the service. In the first screenshot of the update, you can see that the Steel Song will deny my Captain the opportunity to refuel at their starports.

As we continue balancing, we're looking hard at the AI that drives each type of captain type (Pirate, Merchant, etc) as well as how each Faction modifies those AIs and the additional impacts that Conflicts can have. This release includes a noticeable change in the behavior of Smugglers and Merchants, who will no longer dip below -3 Hostile -- meaning they no longer appear with the only option of Fight or Surrender.

Continued Combat Balance

Ship Combat balance is something that will take many iterations. We are improving and testing and improving and testing. This release includes some new rules to prevent Engines from taking multiple hits during a single round of combat -- a possibility that happened too often and is one of the causes of sudden-engine-death.

We've also improved the balance of some of the defensive components, giving each a better defined role with less overlap.

Contact and Atlas Improvements

The contact and atlas screens got major improvements in this update. On the Atlas, you can now see extensive details about any visited zone, including all the resources that it buys and sells. Contacts listing is better annotated and includes the system name where they reside as well as the economy type of that system to facilitate quick trading decisions while visiting allies.

Of course, hovers all around! Another 25+ tooltips have gone into the game across the screens and more will be coming.

We fixed a bug that was hiding the Arbiter storyline as well as some lingering crew combat freezes and odd dot position placement for Talents like E-Suture.

v2.0.31 - 12/11/2017

- Zone Service Icons are Reputation Aware (Map, Hovers, Atlas, Orbit, Details)
- Reduced Merchant and Smuggler Hostility in Ship Combat - no longer attack
- Improved Contact Detail Lists (Zone, Traits, Services, Location, Links)
- Improved Star Atlas: Lists Goods Bought / Sold for Zone Econ
- Improved Star Atlas: Added time since last worldfall
- Improved Star Atlas: Rep Aware Icons, Hovers
- Improved Ship Combat balance to avoid "rolling hits" hitting Engine multiple times in one turn
- Rebalanced Defensive Upgrades: Reinforced Structures, Deflector Array, Armored Bulkheads
- Eliminated Xeno encounters during first approx 500 turns in Orbit, Landing and Travel
- Fixed crew combat freeze when trying to use buff on enemy
- Fixed issue with target position dots for friendly Talents like E-Suture
- Clarified effect of Bandit Trait
- Added 25 new mouse hovers for traits, skills, zones, buttons
- Weak Contact Links (< 10 Power) now have 50% chance to decay
- Fixed issues with Arbiter storyline not appearing