Star Traders: Frontiers -- Update #28: Third Torp Trick

[fallen]

We're firing off Update #28 tonight with another round of improvements to the starport, new stash visibility and fixes for Talents and a story arc.

Even though we are a small team of two, we are dedicated to a relentless pace of updates during our Early Access period. To achieve that, we focus on rapid iterative development -- meaning we do short-cycle updates and improvements, rarely focusing perfect completion of any given feature or content area but instead making significant forward progress with a willingness to come back and continue to improve. This gives our tiny team the freedom to move fast, constantly improve and get daily feedback from our players that matters. And since we're on a short-cycle, that feedback can find its way into the game quickly as well.

We are now in the process of closing in on finishing the v2.1.x family. With a few more upgrades to the New Ship screen, we'll finish the Starport overhaul. The final Faen family storylines are being translated from design into story events, and we're buttoning up the rest of the items on the list. It is exciting to look forward to v2.2.x!

A special thanks to all of our Captains leaving a review and sharing the game!

Lucky Third Torp

So it has taken 3 rounds with the Starport upgrade screens to get to where we really want to be. Naval cadets across the galaxy have some sayings -- "the third torp vents the hull" or as the Cadar say: "third torp always does the trick". For us, this was the case and we've put out another round of improvements to the starport upgrade screen that should help everyone move quickly through the filters. We've especially improved the size and prominence of warnings about upgrades, like those stating that a given barracks exceeds your ship's max crew.

Stashes Light Up

Previously, a stash icon was always shown over any wilderness zone. With Update #28, we've converted those stash icons to function like all of the other zone services icons -- only lighting up and showing when there is something there. This means that stashes can be seen visibly on the map only where they are and also appear lit up in the system atlas.



We've also double down on our fix to the Vytautas storyline and closed the last outstanding issue. We fixed a bug preventing Intel from Lucrative Wholesale from actually appearing and tweaked the rating displays for Exploration score on zones.

v2.0.71 - 1/25/2018

- Stash icons now only appear over planets where stashes are active in quadrant map / system atlas
- Improved display of warnings during starport component upgrade (barracks exceed max crew, etc)
- Added "Exact" filter to starport upgrade to allow quick compare of components of same type
- Upgrade Ship Weapon sorting improved
- Fixed issue where starport Upgrade Talents were not firing when upgrading ships in dry dock
- Further improved starport upgrade screens, filters and component compare display
- Fixed duplicate Zenrin prisoner story missions
- Fixed issues with Lucrative Wholesale Talent
- Fixed description of Exploration rating