Star Traders: Frontiers Update #159: Extended Wear-and-Tear

[fallen]

Update #159 comes straight from the community -- requests for quality of life improvements, suggestions for missing Talents, improved balance, improvements to the mission generation system -- and more, all directly dialed in by our players. So, this one goes out to you, captains! Thanks for posting, writing, joining our Discord and leaving reviews!

+2 New Talents

We've added a new blade attack Talent for Zealots at rank 1 -- "Incensed Strikes." This new ability pushes Zealot's possibilities, making it more valuable as a combat class and enables crew Zealots to have more fighting options, especially early on. Incensed Strikes costs 1.5X your weapon's Initiative, but it has a rare debuff to enemy Initiative as well as clearing their buffs!

We've also added a new Doctor rank 5 Talent "Healer's Intuition." With the constant care of the crew's health, it is only natural that a Doctor comes to know his or her crew very well. This insight can reveal a Trait when the crew is paid and has a moment to truly relax.

Based on player feedback, we've also improved the handling of Talents when paying crew to ensure that Talents with a % chance to activate don't block other Talents from firing. And finally, in this area we've fixed a bug with the Diplomat Talent "Hand that Feeds" which was prevent the Talent from activating correctly.

Mission Focus

We've adjusted the system that helps a Contact pick the mission they request to increase the focus of Contact's on their core areas. Those Contacts giving Merchant missions are going to be more likely to dish out cargo missions, stash missions and the like while Prison Wardens are far more likely to send you on capture bounties and prisoner transports. This extra level of focus will increase your captain's ability to cleave to a type of career by cleaving to a type of Contact.

Beyond the mission-giver type, we've also strengthened the effect of Conflicts upon mission selection. Those Contacts who respond to certain types of Conflicts are going to be even *more* likely to give missions focused on the core Conflict. For example, those Contacts giving Spy missions are going to go all in on spying during an Info War while Duel of Assassins is going to turn up more Edict and death warrant missions than before.

Boarding Victory Talents

Two Talents have come up in player feedback often -- the Mechanic's "Thrown Wrench" and Gunner's "Disarming Sabotage" where neither provided enough specifics in their description or in the details after they were used to let captains make an informed decision about their value. In both cases, we have adjusted their rules to be more powerful as these are rarer Talents -- in both cases you need to be either boarding at range 1 or have a unique Job combination on an Officer to make these available at longer range. In addition to buffing their power level, we've made their exact rules clear in their description as well as improving their in-game feedback upon use so that it is clear exactly what components or weapons were damaged and for how much.

Explorer Ratings

The on-map tooltip over wild zones now displays Richness, Danger and Explore ratings giving those adventurous and brave explorers faster access to critical data as they browse a quadrant, looking for the best targets to set down and go hunting.

Good luck and avoid those xeno cards! Unless ... you're looking for them!

Experience Spread

For a time, in ship combat victory there has been an unfair disparity between the XP granted to those taking a more peaceful route Ransoming a ship and those taking a destructive route to destroy and then salvage a ship. In order to help balance this out, we've added a minor XP bonus to the Ransom action as well as making it clear with all 3 action types -- Ransom, Destroy, Salvage -- exactly how much XP is gained for taking the action.

v2.5.49 - 6/16/2019

- Added new rank 1 Zealot Talent "Incensed Strikes" as additional blade attack option
- Added new rank 5 Doctor Talent "Healer's Intuition" which can reveal a crew members Trait on payday
- Improved rules for Talents running while paying crew -- Talents with a % to fire that do not no longer block other Talents from running
- Fixed issue with Diplomat "Hand that Feeds" Talent that was not activating while paying crew
- Added Richness, Explore and Danger rating to map hover for wild zones
- Improved rules for Mechanic's boarding Talent "Thrown Wrench" and added result that explains exact ship and crew damage dealt
- Improved rules for Gunner's boarding Talent "Disarming Sabotage" and improved result to include full detail of what weapons are damaged
- Now gain minor Experience bonus when you Ransom a ship, exact Experience gain for destroying a ship is now displayed
- Adjusted weights for all Contact mission giver types to be more focused on their core area (Merchants > Cargo missions, Wardens > Capture bounties)
- Adjusted weights of mission givers during Conflicts to be more focused on the core Conflict (Info War > Spy missions, Duel of Assassins > Edict missions)
- Improved details of Intel sale to be clear when maximum Personal or Faction Rep has been achieved
- Slightly increased the maximum caps for Personal Rep when selling Intel
- Clarified text for all Flight Plan Talents as 4 turns such as "(launch, close, bomb, land)"
- Fixed bug with Wing Commando's "Grandiose Arrival" Talent always granting a $0 bonus
- Fixed bug allowing too much gain of Personal Rep through sale of Intel
- Fixed bug with Talent "Redemption Purge" that was allowing it to repair 5 components instead of 2-4
- Fixed text description of "Exposed Shot" to indicate you are causing a self-debuff that can be purged
- Fixed bug that could place High Prince Contacts "on vacation" on indie worlds
- Improved some screens when using UI scaling to increase visual size of elements
- Clarified rules for Exo-Scout "Keen Senses" Talent -- only rerolls risk cards