Star Traders: Frontiers -- Update #25: Roaring Engines

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With the starport starting to look in better shape, we are moving on to new areas of expansion. With a kick and a sputter, new lines of Ship Engines have come roaring to life with today's major update. It's the beginning of a major drive of balancing, improving and adding new ship components to the game which we will continue throughout the Early Access period.

Engine Families

Update #25 re-categorizes all existing engines and adds 10 new engines in order to build out 4 distinct engine families at every major mass target currently available -- 2400, 3400, 5000, 6000, 7000 and 8000. Across the board the engine types are more varied, more exciting and more focused on a certain type of Captain, strategy or play.

These families are Balanced, Chaser, Traveler and Longhaul. Every new ship hull starts with a Balanced Engine class which has an average agility, speed, safety rating and fuel costs.

Chaser Engines are have higher Agility than Speed and are designed for closer-ranged combat. Chaser Engines allow your ship to change range for a cost of 3 RP instead of 4 but generally have a higher Fuel Cost per combat.

Traveler Engines are faster, built for Speed over Agility and are best at long ranged combat. These engines have higher Speed score, lower Fuel Cost per combat. Such engines are best at escaping from battle and getting you places quickly.

Longhaul Engines are built for efficiency, having the lowest Fuel Cost per AU as well as very low Fuel Cost per combat. However, for their exceptional fuel use stats, they have trade some of their agility and speed.

Looking for a Dry Dock?

If you happen to have multiple ships in dry dock, check the Dry Dock menu from your main status where you can now see all your ships in storage and plot waypoints to them quickly and easily. No more losing your $700,000 Broadsword because you forgot where you parked it!

Calagan Faen Returns

Last update we fixed a host of remaining story bugs and shared that we had two major outstanding issues -- Calagan Faen's odd disappearance and some issues with the Arbiter accepting mission success. With this update, we've resolved Calagan's issues. While we cannot fix the issue for games that have already passed through the series of story events, this issue is now resolve for all future Captains. With the Arbiter issue up next to fix, we're looking now toward the addition of new story content very soon!



We've also added new components to help boarding Captain's ensure success as well as rebalancing a number of component and ship hull costs.

Thanks to all of our Captains leaving reviews! We've just cruised over 300 and are excited to head for the next big milestone

v2.0.65 - 1/18/2018

- Added 10 new Ship Engines (Traveler, Longhaul, Chaser)
- Renamed, Rebalanced, Recategorized existing Ship Engines
- Introduced "3 RP to Move" for Chaser-design Ship Engines
- Fixes bug that allowed stacking encounters in Patrol/Spy/Blockade
- Added Dry Dock ship listing to main status - locate your ships across galaxy
- Fixed issues with Faen storyline where Calagan disappears for future captains
- Improved "Boarding Assault System" (BaS) Ship Components
- Added 3 more BaS Components, levels 2 - 4
- Rebalanced Mass Modulator Ship Pools
- Fixed Battle Prow and Hull Plating Ship Component Types
- Renamed 'Biowaste' to 'Biomass' as this is more accurate
- Added lore and text for Sarkspar and Ursalite materials
- Fixed map generator: Farfallen Rim (Galaria, Traneldor) bugs resolved
- Rebalanced Strikecruiser HP/Shield/Fueld and repriced several ships