Star Traders: Frontiers Update #160: Ship Operations

[fallen]

Welcome to Thursday! We've dropped another big one! Update #160 includes two new character outfits, 4 new Contact character faces, one new ship component, a wealth of improvements to existing smaller ship designs, tweaked boarding Talents and a host of storyline tweaks and fixes driven by the community. If you're enjoying the pace of updates, please take a moment to leave a review and tell a friend.

Let's get right into the details!

New Flight Suit or Mechanic Outfit

With Update #160, we've added another outfit option for your crew, designed specifically for your ship operational crew and your wing specialist pilots. This new green flightsuit design is great for those pilots cramming into bombers and interdictors and fits well for Mechanics, Elo-Techs and more. We've got a lot more additional outfits to add as we keep moving through the roadmap, but its great to see another option targeted at the non-fighting majority on board your ship.

New Faces Among the Gravs

With Update #160, we've also finalized 4 new Contact character faces that will go into rotation for new games and new Contacts in existing games. As always, they're channeling the outlandish and unique style of the faction gravs.

Small Ship Improvements

Based on some great community feedback (thanks resistor) we've made a set of improvements to some of the small ship designs, including the Dart Liner, Volk Frigate and Allistar Liner. In general, we've replaced some non-essential components with those that help increase the Skill Pools for the ship, adding Nav Assist Modules or Sig Dampeners as possible. We've also varied the weapons build out on the Dart Liner to mount a second Light Railgun on the ship.

Outside of small ships, we've improved the balance of the Dragoon Cruiser to ensure it is competitive within its class. Coming out of the starport, it now boasts heavier Armor and Shield along with slightly increased base Fuel to match its built-in Warhammer class Void Engine.

Barracks Options

Update #160 adds a new interesting option -- a 6 bunk small component "Compact Barracks". For creative ship designers, it could help decompose the needed bunks in a ship into different component slots, such as avoiding a large slot 42 bunk barracks and instead taking a medium 36 and a small slot 6. We'll leave the rest of the design crafting in your capable hands, but enjoy this one!

We also fixed a misleading message in the Starport if you tried to replace a barracks and had too many crew. It was suggesting you dismiss *way* too many people ha!

Story Bug Round Up

We've hammered through a batch of story bugs reported by the community. The Arbiter Estelle storyline will no longer end prematurely at 2 supporters. You can now turn in both De Rivesh legacy pieces even if you get them separately. Prince Damien Lumotte is specific about amount of Rep lost and gained. Some short story arcs will also cause less of a delay in other stories popping up which will help when players are seeking out specific, larger storylines like Call of the Strong, etc.

v2.5.51 - 6/20/2019

- Added new matching character outfits -- green pilot, wing pilot or mechanic jump suit
- Added art for 4 new Contact character faces
- Added new ship component "Compact Barracks" a small component that holds 6 crew
- Improved Dart Liner Ship, replacing one of the Armored Bulkheads 1 with Sig Dampener (more Nav and Elo pool), replaced 2nd Torp with a Railgun
- Improved Volk Frigate, replacing Reactor Spike Module with Nav Assist Module 1 (more Nav pool)
- Improved Allistar Liner, replacing Reactor Spike Module with Nav Assist Module 1 (more Nav pool), swapped Mass Dampener 1 for Mass Modulator 1 (more Pilot)
- Improved Dargoon Cruiser within its Mass class, gaining +1 base Armor, +1 base Shield and +10 base Fuel to match its start Warhammer Class Void Engine
- Improved failure message when attempting to remove a Barracks that will remove too many beds to house your full crew
- Fixed issue where Combat Medic's "Bio-Bomb" boarding Talent was damaging a component
- Cleaned up some issues in text of improved boarding Talents "Thrown Wrench" and "Disarming Sabotage"
- Fixed issue where Arbiter's storyline and "Coalition Founder" unlock fired too early (finishing 2 instead of 3 storylines)
- Fixed bugs with the "De Rivesh Legacy" storyline -- dialog inconsistencies as well as inability to turn in the second half of the findings for reward
- Fixed issues with famous Officer Elsa Nariman's homeworld being incorrect
- Improved storyline with Prince Damien Lumotte, dialog is now specific about all Rep gains and losses for your actions
- Improved the pacing between some of the storyline events to move on more quickly from smaller events to larger ones
- Fixed issues with text formatting in Dry Dock screen

[OrcaFlutter]

Thank you for the mini-barracks! Will use in my next build

[resistor]

Question about the small barracks: does it increase the chance of crew taking damage? I remember back in alpha someone suggested adding a small barracks and Cory replied that crew take extra damage when a barracks is targetted, so having multiple barracks components would be extra risky. Is this still true?

[fallen]

If a barracks is hit in ship combat, one additional crew will take damage and the morale damage for the hit is increased.