Star Traders: Frontiers Update #136: Balancing the Scales
Feb 21, 2019 1:54:20 GMT -5
strega and exxodus like this
Post by fallen on Feb 21, 2019 1:54:20 GMT -5
Update #136 continues the hunt to perfect the game's balance, expand the possible builds with ship components and prepare for the coming release of fighters/carriers. We've rebalanced some of the existing medical components as well as added anew exciting hybrid component that can house an officer, the Medical Clinic. Two balance changes have been made to ship combat Talents, we've expanded the abilities of the Salvage Bay component type and made some changes to ship status to better display bonuses.
If you're enjoying the updates, the balance tweaks and these nice quality of life changes, please tell a friend and leave a review!
Medical Clinic and Bays
Two new large slot medical components -- the Medical Clinic and Advanced Medical Clinic offer the unique bonus of being able to house an officer. While clearly it is expected that you're doctor will leave in those quarters, if there is no ship's doctor than probably your Soldier, Xeno Hunter or Spy will set up shop in their (i.e. its a standard officer's cabin). However, its the first large slot beyond a bridge that offers this capability while also provide some powerful Medical Rating and some good Skill Pool bonuses.
We've also rebalanced Medical Bays, Medical Chambers and Combat Hospital Ship to increase the variety among the set with better Skill Pool, Armor, and Shielding options.
Salvage Bays
The Salvage Bay components can really rake in some cash and they have new opportunities to do so now. Previously only effective when doing orbital salvage, Salvage Bays now add their bonus to salvaging destroyed ships as well, just like Vulture Trait. To balance out this change, however, the % bonus to profits have been reduced across the board by 30%. Still, they are far more versatile, useful in more situations and stack great with ship salvage Talents or xeno hunting!
Talent Balance
To push the Gunner's rank 1 Talent "Targeting Lock" into a better unique positions, we've changed its -10% Armor to -10% Defense. If you're locking on with your targeting systems to ensure they can't escape, it always helps to get in a hit too! We've also slightly reduced the debuff from Bombardment, taking its drop on negative enemy Accuracy from 20% to 15%.
New Fields in Ship Status
Your ship status screen now includes details on buff and component bonuses including Range Change, Critical %, Void Res and Damage, Shield, Armor, Defense, Accuracy and more. This includes the bonuses you may gain from installed components as well as the bonuses you can garner from buffing (or being debuffed!) in ship combat.
To help further clarify some of the rules of the game, we've started adding a second section to some of the game's hovers. In the above example, you can see the first changes to Shield and Armor display which note that while your ship hull and components can take the bonus to 60% the maximum for buffs is 75%. We're working our way through different tooltips in the game to ensure all the rules are expressed in them especially these clauses with extra detail.
v2.4.85 - 2/20/2019
- Rebalanced Medical Bays, Medical Chambers and Combat Hospital Ship Components
- New Medical Clinic Ship Components (Medical Rating + Officer Cabin)
- Improved Gunner's Talent "Targeting Lock" now causes -10% Defense instead of -10% Armor
- Reduced "Bombardment" debuff to enemy Accuracy to 15% from 20%
- Added buff and debuff fields like +Accuracy %, +Dmg, Critical % to ship status
- Improved hover support to express special game rules
- Improved 'Salvage Bay' Component Text and Balance (Orbital and Salvage)
- Fixed issue with "Soul Piercer" Xeno Hunter Talent not adding Attribute bonus
- Improved Story Officer Nikolai Ramius' character Traits
- Fixed text overlaps and formatting issues
