Star Traders: Frontiers Update #86: Penultimate + Save Slots

[fallen]

Update #86 has brought us to the the final moments of this game’s Early Access phase. It has been a busy 8 months and we owe a huge thanks to the thousands of Captains who have helped us improve the game. But -- we're not done yet!

While the game is coming out of Early Access on Wednesday this week, it does not mean that the content and feature expansions are ending. We don’t plan to slow down or change direction. Exiting Early Access is a milestone on our larger roadmap indicating the game’s readiness, stability and completeness against the goals we laid out for EA. Once we transition out of EA, we will be publishing the Dev Roadmap, looking out into the next year.

Save Slots

Update #86 deploys a major feature that we have been discussing and designing since of the start of Early Access. It took a few months but Save Slots are finally wrapped up, and we finished final testing this weekend. Now any game that does not feature Captain permadeath offers four save slots to store snapshots of your captain’s career. These slots can be restored and played at any time and they store the entire game state. For example, you can start a template you love, do the first few Arbiter missions and then save your progress to one of your save slots. Then you can always come back there quickly from within that game. Or, as I tried in testing today, you could branch your save into 4 directions -- following Erik Faen, Zette Faen, Valencia and the Arbiter’s storylines, each with their own save slot.

The new save slot system will help those players who are looking for ways to explore, try new things, backtrack on mistakes and explore the game in a non-permadeath setting.



To create save slot, open the game menu from within your save and choose Save Slots. Then pick slot you would to use to store your current game state. To restore a save slot, choose Load Captain from the main menu and then use the Save Slots button on the right hand side to expand the list of slots. Pick any to restore. Please take your time, because all save and restore actions are final and cannot be undone.

Talent Wrap Up

As now is the time to finish things, so we have finished the final Talents for the starting set of jobs that are not implemented. Pilot has picked up a new rank 11 Talent -- Wild Flying -- for when you are feeling like a leaf on the wind. Buffing defense and armor, Wild Flying also reduces Accuracy slightly does a small amount of Morale damage to your crew as the ship careens through the void.

For the Crew Dog, Engine Lockdown is the new rank 8 Talent which adds a unique ability. When Engine Lockdown is active, your ship’s void engine is completely protected from damage. This lockdown effect does cost -2 RP, but it can be an important move to make at the clutch moment of battle when engine protection is critical. As an added bonus, locking down the engine frees up power to be rerouted to weaponry with a nice Radiation Damage bonus.


We’ve also added 11 new Talent icons and will be finishing the remaining 15 very soon.

Polish

We’ve also polished all of the new game screens, improved interfaces, spacing and positioning across the board. Typos and small bugs have died in droves. The forges are burning hot at Trese Brothers HQ!

If you love these updates, please leave a review for the game or tell a friend!

Or, join us on the Trese Brothers Discord server where both brothers are available, welcoming Captains and players of our games to come and chat. We’re on there daily -- come share your stories, feedback and join our crew!

v2.3.23 - 7/28/2018

- Save and Restore from 4 save slots per Captain in difficulties without captain permadeath
- Added new rank 11 Talent for Pilots - "Wild Flying" defensive buff
- Added new rank 8 Talent for Crew Dogs - "Engine Lockdown" buff momentarily protects engines from damage
- Rebuilt New Game Skills page with more information and sliders
- Added Reset button to New Game Skills and New Game Attributes for quick changes
- Fixed all variety of refresh bugs in orbit screen (new contact, etc)
- Fixed issue with Trade Law not updating for Rumors in Orbit screen and invisible Quad Rumor bug
- Fixed issues with some ship Talent results such as healing or morale restore not appearing on screen

[daveal]

Wednesday! Wow! Does that mean fighter craft are coming after release?

[fallen]

Jul 28, 2018 22:52:16 GMT -5 daveal said:

Wednesday! Wow! Does that mean fighter craft are coming after release?

Yes, fighter craft will be one of the first major post release expansions.

[fallen]

Quick hotfix pushed to fix a delete-all-captains bug. Don't do it lol

[Zer0Winds]

You know... I have to say I'm surprised. I didn't expect saves, but it should definitely attract more players (and attract back some of those who demanded it, from the reviews I've seen).

No matter, I'm still going to wait until the fighters before I return to the game. Can't wait.

[John Robinson]

Long journey, out of EA Wow!

Thanks for Opening the Gates.

[Aesop]

I think this is a great compromise. I'm not a fan of save slots for STF, but a lot of people are. To allow it for the easier difficulties, but not the harder ones should keep the majority opf players on either side happy.

[fallen]

Jul 29, 2018 7:52:02 GMT -5 Aesop said:

I think this is a great compromise. I'm not a fan of save slots for STF, but a lot of people are. To allow it for the easier difficulties, but not the harder ones should keep the majority opf players on either side happy.

Thank you!

John Robinson - thanks for playing, supporting us and for sharing so much valuable analysis for other captains!

[John Robinson]

Jul 29, 2018 9:22:33 GMT -5 fallen said:

John Robinson - thanks for playing, supporting us and for sharing so much valuable analysis for other captains!

This is a labor of love right from the start. The future content will be amazing!

When thinking about you two guys its always about, "How can I help my heroes". Just happy to on the same bus.

[Brutus Aurelius]

While I personally dislike the save slots for STF, I imagine it will help new Captains and new players learn and adjust.

Can't wait to see the Early Access tag removed!

[John Robinson]

Big plus having Saved Game slots. I spend allot of time designing teams, sometimes more than playing STF.

One saved game can inform another saved game of design flaws.  Before it's too late for my

favorite team in progress to make changes.

[Zer0Winds]

Jul 29, 2018 17:36:47 GMT -5 Brutus Aurelius said:

While I personally dislike the save slots for STF, I imagine it will help new Captains and new players learn and adjust.

Can't wait to see the Early Access tag removed!

I mean, if you play with Perma death on, you'll probably forget it exists, to be honest.

[Cory Trese]

Hopefully we were able to thread the needle between the people who dislike save slots/love permadeath and the people who hate permadeath / want saves. Our goal is to maintain the fun parts of the game for everyone who is playing while finding ways to make the game more accessible.

[athios]

Wow, I have to admit that I never expected save slots to be a game feature, especially this late in development. BIG Kudos to Cory and Andrew for making this possible.

I thoroughly enjoy messing around with stupid ideas and impractical builds, but I have to say the initial "startup phase" of a new captain is a bit of a damper on the process and limits how much (or how far) I'm willing to experiment with. While I normally play on Hard, with this new feature, I might end doing a customized Brutal with no permadeath. This way I can take careful steps to get a captain properly established, make a save slot, then branch off to different options like running a peaceful skeleton crew Juror vs. getting a multi-gravcannon goliath of a ship to see how many Steel Song ships I can destroy before getting caught.

Imagine the possibilities...

[Cory Trese]

Our hope was that people would find it makes experimentation and trying out different builds more accessible.

Thanks for the feedback athios