Star Traders: Frontiers #141: Launch All Zigs!

[fallen]

It feels very good to have come leaping over the INTERDICTOR milestone and finally be back to regular order -- constant, relentless improvement, new features and content. We dropped 2 hotfixes yesterday to address important issues with carriers and craft but now we're back to updates. Update #141 releases a wave of new awesome art for the craft you can get and starts showing off Faction-specific styles. It also adds a new Mass 3400 ship that isn't a carrier, rebalances and increases the counts of slots on the Basalt, Fallen and Harbinger Carriers. Finally, alongside the new art and content, we've got a raft of small balance changes to Talent cooldowns, Initiative costs, handling of missions in friendly territory, and more.

If you're just seeing this update, you should first check out Update #140 for the news of the major milestone INTERDICTION that introduces and details craft -- interdictors, bombers and shuttles!
steamcommunity.com/games/335620/announcements/detail/3464866264432530978
On to the details!

New Craft Art and Fixes

With Update #141, we've introduced a wide variety of different craft visuals for shuttles, interdictors and carriers. On the component side, we've fixed the missing +Armor bonus of Reinforced Hangars.

We've also fixed all the reported crashes that came in, so please keep reporting and posting any bugs you find. We've added a protection against launching too many craft at a time on your side (4 max), fixed crashes when attempting to assign pilots and crashes that could sometimes happen when a craft was destroyed in ship battle. Also, we addressed the issue where sometimes "No Pilot" was being incorrectly shown in the Crafts tab of Ship Combat.

Also, a laundry list of Wing Tech, Leader and Bomber Talents all had cooldowns that needed tweaking or fixing. The Wing Commando "Knifework" Talent has been increased to 12 Initiative.

Wolf Vector

The Wolf Vector launches as an all new Mass 3400 option for those who demand extreme range from their spaceship. Optimized for fuel storage and speed, the Wolf Vector is perfect for a faction's high-value couriers and passengers ships. Sometimes outfitted as a secure luxury cruising yacht this craft is popular among Star Traders who appreciate a fast engine and only refueling rarely.

This ship is a variation of a design found in a player's saved game, submitted to our team. Cory played the game, fell in love with the design and modified it to create the Wolf Vector.

v2.5.5 - 4/16/2019

- Added variation of craft art for interdictors, bombers and shuttles
- Increased large, medium and small slot counts for Mace, Basalt and Harbinger Carrier ships (newly purchased)
- Added missing bonus to armor for Reinforced Hangar Bay
- Improved handling of mission failure in friendly territory
- Fixed Talent cooldowns on Wing Bomber's "Synchronized Strikes", Wing Leader's "Ransom Escort", Wing Tech's "Rapid Refurb", "Sharp Wing" and "Emergency Grounding"
- Increased Initiative cost of Knifework to 12
- Fixed logging with craft combat and wing pilot Trait bonuses
- Fixed crash when attempting to assign a craft no pilot
- Fixed crash when attempting to launch 5 craft in the same turn
- Fixed infrequent crash when craft was destroyed
- Fixed bug where "No Pilot" warning was incorrectly being shown for some craft in ship combat