Star Traders: Frontiers Update #153: Lux Across the Void
May 25, 2019 22:34:06 GMT -5
strega and drspendlove like this
Post by fallen on May 25, 2019 22:34:06 GMT -5
With Update #152, we've rolled out a new way to specialize as a mission-running captain with the full Luxury Passenger experience, added another blast of storyteller tales to the spice hall and further improved the standard AI and xeno AI in preparation for the upcoming release of carriers and craft. We've also include another big round of balance improvements for craft, this time focusing on the Pilot and Electronics Skill Pools of craft, as well as Interdictors attack flight plans. Of course, there is always more -- so check the full release notes for every detail.
If you're enjoying the pace of updates and new content, please leave a review and tell a friend!
May Community Challenge Wrapping Up!
The on-going May 2019 community challenge "Small Ship to Prize Ship" will be wrapping up in the next week. If you haven't had a chance to see if you can run a Juror or other tiny ship all the way up to taking a 8000 or 9000 Mass ship over with a Prize Ship Talent, get in on this one now! Post your glorious victories. The June challenge will be posted soon!
Full Lux Experience
Your passengers can now travel in luxury across the galaxy. The two luxury offerings -- the medium slot Luxury Cabin (1 spot) and the large slot Luxury Suite (3 spots) -- offer this splendor and comfort to your passengers. Whenever a passenger comes aboard during a mission, they fill up your luxury space first and promptly add +15% profit to every step for the rest of the mission. Based on the length of the mission (Diplomat Tours!) this can be a significant improvement in profits, especially as it stacks with Talents. If your luxury space is fully, the passenger may grumble a bit but they will take a standard cabin and grant no pay bonus.
To be a luxury passenger liner takes additional dedication of larger ship slots, this isn't as simple as just upgrading your existing passenger cabins. But, for those mission runners criss-crossing the galaxy with passengers, pilgrims and spies this can be a huge profit booster.
Further AI Prep
Teaching the AI to build a good ship, a good crew, to pick the right Talents, to allocate the right component upgrades -- this has been an on-going process throughout all of 2019. And then for the last two months, we've been mixing the craft requirements into the same soup. This update addresses some issues we've been seeing with the AI in general as well as with those AI trying to build effective carriers. The AI is now better at planning out its final Ship Skill Pools (Pilot, Electronics, etc) to ensure it is well staffed but not over staffed and that it can make space for additional specialist crew. This has a critical impact on its future ability to correct snag wing specialist pilots and will have an impact in the more short term by allowing the AI to better pick other specialists like Mechanics, Pirates and others to join the crew.
The on-going rounds of AI upgrades may seem cyclical, but we're making improvements, watching the metrics, measuring, replanning and then making another round. We've also spent a lot of time tuning exactly *how* smart the AI ship builder should be given the game date and the game difficulty settings.
And, *shudder* once again, the xeno ship builder got a boost in smarts. Same components, new strains of logic.
Across the Spice Plate
Another big round of stories of legendary captains has been injected into the spice hall Storyteller Trait tonight. This covers the last of the stories from the KickStarter "Join the Lore" reward, except two more that will manifest as famous Bounty Hunters -- coming soon!
Interdictor and Skill Pool Buffs
Much like a capital ship, if a wing specialist pilot has the Skill to match their craft, they gain a bonus. If they exceed the Skill Pool of their craft, they are losing out on some potential bonus. Every point of Pilot Skill matched between craft and wing pilot grants a +2% chance to evade. With this update, we've increased the Pilot maximum for all Interdictors, increasing the option for higher level pilots or dual Job pilots to shine. We've done the same to Bomber's Electronics, as each matched point there adds +2% chance to hit the enemy capital ship.
In the end analysis, it has come out that Interdictor attack plans were weak. To help balance this out, we've improved the power of the debuffs they deliver. They already had high Crippling Effect chance which means you could possibly land 2 debuffs in a single go. Finally, we modified Interdictor rocket weapons to cause Void Damage now, taking some of the Standard Damage and shifting it over for each weapon.
Fuel Components
We've balanced the price and install time of large slot and small slot Fuel Bays as well as increasing the fuel bonus on all types of Hangars and Launch Bays.
Conscription Woes
We've improved the rules for Trait mutation during conscripting enemy crew from a defeated ship. The variety of possible negative Traits that can spawn is more larger and far more exciting, now giving enough variance to have really bad, just bad and even lucky conscription events.
In this, we've also clarified the rules of Malcontent, making it clear that the crew will rise up against the captain in any Mutiny regardless of their own personal Morale.
v2.5.33 - 5/25/2019
- Luxury Cabins / Luxury Suites now increase entire mission payment by 15% if a luxury bunk is open when passenger comes aboard
- Enemy AI improves planning of Ship Skill Pool %s as difficulty increases and game progresses
- Enemy Xeno ship builder AI makes better choices to focus builds (same components, smarter choices)
- Added 8 new tales of legendary captains to spice hall Storyteller Trait (thanks KickStarter backers!)
- Improved negative Trait mutation options when conscripting enemy crew, added more variety and fun Traits
- Clarified rules for Trait "Malcontent" -- always joins Mutiny regardless of personal Morale
- Improved power of Interdictor debuffs to make their lower damage attack runs more viable, also very high Crippling Effect changes
- Shifted Interdictor rocket's damage from standard damage to void damage, up to 40 to 80 points
- Increased the Pilot Skill Pool for all Interdictors -- higher Pilot on wing specialist crew member results in better dodge %
- Increased the Electronics Skill Pool for all Bombers -- higher Electronics on wing specialist crew member results in better hit chance %
- Increased fuel bonuses for Launch Bays and Hangars
- Rebalanced prices for small slot and large slot Fuel Tanks, improved Alta Mesa Reinforced Fuel Pod (+2 Fuel, +1 Armor)
- Improved team composition for Troy "The Blade" Circin -- more likely to be a good setup
- Added new names to the name generator (thanks @for_Science!)
- Fixed location bug with Plague Era mission "Research Protection"
