Star Traders: Frontiers Update #33: Skipping off the Void

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Another big update is welcoming Star Traders: Frontiers to the weekend. We're still grinding out enhancements on the v2.1.x family of the roadmap and adding polish to areas that have needed it. We owe a huge thanks to all of our captains who are leaving reviews to power more updates, sharing the game with friends and posting feedback to the boards, our forums or joining us in Discord.

Load the Cargo, ye Crew Dogs!

Update #33 introduces a fully functional cargo hover to the newly enabled cargo button. Hover over the cargo counts to see a full list of your current cargo, counts, Faction ownership and indicators of permit and legality. We've also wired up the hotkey 'H' to open the cargo hold and close it as well. Update #31 brought the cargo within a single click and now Update #33 reduces it to a hover.

Ship Combat Upgrades

The ship combat event log now includes entries for all Crippling Effects. In the screenshot above, you can see exactly which weapon attack caused which Crippling Effect. Our ship hit with a Hellfire Torpedo which caused Electrical Fires but the enemy struck back with their Firestorm Torepdo which caused Aftershocks debuff in return.

We're pressing forward with upgrades in both crew and ship combat to increase the enemy's strategic intelligence as well as crew and ship building capabilities. The enemy Captain is now better at organizing the crew that they are sending into boarding attack or defense combats. Getting the right fighters in the right slots helps the crew combat AI execute in a more deadly fashion, so be ware.

We've enacted some re-balancing on long ranged weapons -- Torps and Missiles -- to make them more sensitive to being fired outside of their optimal ranges. In addition, Torps trade some Standard Damage for higher Crippling Chance.

Why Not - A few More?

We've reinstated the rule that a mission that will require a Passenger or a Prisoner requires your ship to have a prison cell or a passenger cabin. Too many captains were accepting these missions without realizing the requirement. You won't be blocked by conflicting "potential passengers" but you need at least one of the mission components installed to get started.

If you're getting Critical Hits in Crew Combat -- expect a damage spike! Raising your Tactics Skill for extra Crit Chance % and watch the damage fly.

Thanks to everyone for the great feedback! Check the full list below for all the items and be sure to leave a review!

v2.1.7 - 2/9/2018

- Added hover to Cargo button in the bottom left - hover to see the contents of your hold
- Improved Critical Damage for crew combat critical hits
- In Ship Combat, Crippling Hits are now shown in the turn events, linking each weapon attack to each crippling effect
- Rebalanced Crippling Chance / Standard Damage / Critical Chance of Torpedoes and Missiles
- Torpedoes and Missiles are less accurate when fired outside of their optimal range
- Better honored understaffed rules during ship combat - keep your crew staffed!
- Improved AI's ability to organize combat team during boarding
- Accepting a prisoner or passenger mission requires at least a prison cell or passenger cabin on ship
- Rumor icon now updates on Orbit screen if the rumor state advances on orbit/landed screen
- Improved Reputation loss / gain logging in Ship Victory
- Artifacts gathered during Exploring are properly set as Xeno Faction
- Fixed issues with scrolling through Talents and Weapons in Combat going partial rows
- Black Market opens with sell and properly shows your cargo
- Fixed story issues with looping reward for capture of Jarrek Moon
- Fixed map seed issues