Star Traders: Frontiers Update #102: Highliner

[fallen]

Update #102 releases a slew of new components to increase ship design flexibility, a new Javat-only ship, a small set of fixes to the new starport filters, and a lovely package of bug fixes and quality of life improvements. Here at Trese Brothers HQ, we are hard at work on the first major dev roadmap item, hammering away on all the exciting Orbital Rumors and Salvage opportunities. It will feel good to burn down the first item from the new roadmap!

Tiberian Highliner

Javat's first faction-specific ship takes to the stars! The Tiberian Highliner is a heavily shielded transport ship with a large crew and long travel range. Fitted with passenger cabins and prison cells, the Tiberian functions as a long distance cruiser for Clan Javat.

As with all Faction-specific ships, the Tiberian Highliner requires at least Military Rank 4 to purchase.

Cargo and Fuel

With Update #102, we've added 2 new small size options to increase your cargo or fuel capacity. In conjunction with an increase of cargo capacity for both Storage Hold and Storage Cache, those captains looking for extra flexibility in ways to use small slot cargo or squeeze a little more cargo or fuel capacity into their ship have an expanded set of options.

We've also added Reinforced Barracks 4 option, which brings both Shield and Armor to the table and rebalanced the Jump Cost penalties for all Reinforced Barracks.

Starport Filter/Sort

Following the last major update to the starport, we've improved a few of the default filtering and sorting rules. Those components that are faction-specific to your local faction now appear without any need to change the filtering. We've also modified the faction sort routine to place faction-specific items first and not last.

Little Things

We continue to focus on the big items, but make time each week to work on the little items as well. To make map seed sharing easier and faster, we've added a copy seed button to each captain's description when you're picking a captain to load. We've done some work to improve and focus the descriptions of each starting profession and improved screen elements and how they are scaled on larger screens.

Finally, we're always looking to add any illogical Trait combinations to the exclusion tables. Thanks to the players who sent in a few of these -- they have been cut out for future possible mutations.

v2.3.57 - 9/12/2018

- New 7000 Mass Clan Javat Ship: Tiberia Highliner
- Added new 'Reinforced Barracks 4' medium size component
- Added new 'Cargo-Fuel Pod' small size component
- Added new 'Reinforced Fuel Pod' small size component
- Added button to copy map seed when looking at list of saved games
- By default local Faction-specific components appear in upgrade list without setting any filters
- Flipped Faction sort for component upgrades -- Faction-specific come first
- Fixed story bugs related to Zette's boss fight and Faen court
- Improved exclusion rules withing Crew Trait mutation to avoid additional odd combos
- Improved profession descriptions in new game
- Improved game scaling for large screens
- Reduced price of 'Cargo Hold 5' by 20%
- Increased cargo storage of medium size 'Storage Hold' component by 25%
- Increased cargo storage of small size 'Storage Cache' component by 50%
- Balanced Jump Cost penalties for Reinforced Barracks