Star Traders: Frontiers Update #124: The Captain Alone

[fallen]

Update #124 begins a new and exciting arc of Traits for Captains by introducing Captain-only Traits for our first 4 Professions -- Merchant, Smuggler, Pirate and Spy. We've also added new environmet art, simplified display of Deflection % and made a number of community requrested improvements to the UI.

Happy New Year to everyone -- here it comes!

Captain-only Traits

These new Traits are only available to newly created Captains in the first four professions -- Merchant, Smuggler, Pirate and Spy. They can never appear through Trait mutation, so they are bonuses only available to Captains. In addition, we've added the ability for Traits to grant permanent buffs during Ship Combat to help these Captain types that focus on a certain style.

New Pirate captains will gain the Uncompromising Trait, which adds to Attributes as well as doubling all rewards for Tribute in ship encounters and all extortion card during Blockade. Smuggler captains gain Exploiter Trait which adds a flat +10% profit to every sale in the Black Market as well as Flighty Trait which bumps Escape, Defense and Shield in ship combat to help protect the ship from damage and make escaping the law easier.

Spy captains gain Infiltrator which increases the profit of all Intel sales by +15% and Slippery which bumps Escape, Shield and Critical Hit chance in ship combat as the Spy may either flee or strike a deadly blow at any moment. Finally, Merchants gain Exacting Trait which grants a flat +10% bonus to all trades in the Exchange as well as Lawful Trait which reduces the hostility of all law-abiding ships by 1 point (Military Officers, Merchants, Explorers and Zealots) making it easier to sale the stars legally and peacefully.

This is the first set of Captain-only Traits and we're rolling them out as the first testing grounds. We'll be working our way down the profession list now without much delay.

New Environments

The galaxy is sprawling place and we've added two new landing zone art boards to help increase the variety of the sights to see. A new molten world outpost and desert world outpost have joined the set.

Crew Armor Deflection

This one is a display change only -- the rules have not changed. In the past, the percentage chance that armor would prevent a Piercing hit was (50+Deflection) - Piercing. This created a situation where the extra 50% was sort of hidden and you could not directly compare Deflection and Piercing values without doing extra math. In order to simplify the ability to visually compare values, all Armors have increased their Deflection % by 50% and we have changed the rules to simply be that the chance to avoid a Piercing hit is: (Deflection - Piercing)%. If this is above 100%, no piercing hit will ever happen and if it is below 0%, it is always piercing.

So, there is no rule change here, only a change in how the rules are displayed.

v2.4.51 - 12/30/2018

- Added 8 new unique Captain-only Traits by Profession for all new starting Merchant, Pirate, Smuggler or Spy Captains
- Captain-only Traits have the special option to add constant ship buffs for ship combat
- Pirate gains Uncompromising (doubles tribute and blockade bribes) and Marauder (ship combat bonuses to close and kill) Traits
- Smuggler gains Exploiter (adds +10% profit to black market) and Flighty (ship combat bonuses to flee and reduce damage) Traits
- Merchant gains Exacting (adds +10% profit to exchange trades) and Lawful (reduces hostility when encountering mil officers, merchants, zealots and explorers) Traits
- Spy gains Infiltrator (adds +15% profit to intel sales) and Slippery (ship combat bonuses to flee or strike critical hit) Traits
- Added 2 new environmental art boards, desert world and molten world outposts
- Fixed display of crew combat armor Deflection % to be clearer to the eye
- Adjusted Deflection % for Weapon Locker A1 and A2 armors
- Improved icongraphy for Captain's Log entries
- Corrected label on "Set Waypoint" button in Galactic Map (was "Navigate")

[resistor]

Here are my thoughts on the new captain-only traits:

Pirate

• Uncompromising looks like it has great utility for pirate players
• Marauder is good for boarding builds, which I don't think fits particularly well with the Pirate job. In my opinion it would be more appropriate to give +10% crit bonus instead of +10 boarding because the Pirate job has talents that increase crit, but no boarding talents.
  

Spy

• Inflitrator has a Charisma bonus, but I believe it would be better for it to give a Wisdom bonus instead, because Spying uses the captain's Wisdom as a factor in the card game.
  
• Slippery gives ship combat bonuses that make sense for a Spy, but its description is odd. It reads "Either about to disappear or backstab, gains..."; the word "backstab" implies either betrayal or literally stabbing someone in the back, neither of which makes any sense in the context of a ship battle.
  

Smuggler

• Exploiter is a great trait idea, encouraging Smuggler players to use the black market.
  
• Flighty gives useful bonuses for getting out of ship fights, but it makes me envious seeing Smuggler get +10% to defense considering how nice of an edge 10% defense would be in my current Commander playthrough.
  

Merchant

• Exacting is very good for merchant players. Before this, it's often bothered me that Merchant captain's couldn't actually trade more effectively until they get Righteous Profits, so I'm glad to see this trait.
  
• Lawful for the most part makes sense, but why are Explorers considered as 'law abiding' when probably half of them use black markets? And why aren't Bounty Hunters considered law-abiding?
  

[fallen]

resistor - thanks for the feedback!

All the Professions will be getting new Traits and Jobs like Commander are sure to see new bonuses.

[drspendlove]

Yeah that smuggler +Defense bonus just made it my new favorite combat build. I would've traded that bonus defense for even more escape were I designing it. But I'm not going to complain. I love Smugglers.

[fallen]

Will look into swapping some Spy points to Wisdom -- sounds better.

Boarding is extremely popular among Pirates, that is why the boarding bonus was granted instead of something like Critical.

The 10% bonus on Black Market profit compounds on top of the +25% profit that is already there, so we did not feel the need to make it +15% (versus Merchant).

Bounty Hunters sound like a good swap for the description of "Lawful"

[resistor]

Dec 30, 2018 23:26:41 GMT -5 fallen said:

...Boarding is extremely popular among Pirates, that is why the boarding bonus was granted instead of something like Critical...

That's probably because boarding is the best way to win without destroying the hull, but fair point. It may be worth taking another look a this when the HORNET update is released, as there will probably be more good options for capturing ships intact then.