Star Trader: Frontiers Update #167: Explore the Frontier!
Jul 21, 2019 13:40:56 GMT -5
strega, grävling, and 2 more like this
Post by fallen on Jul 21, 2019 13:40:56 GMT -5
Update #167 is rolling out during the Steam Space Exploration Sale where you can save 33% on Star Traders: Frontiers. The frontier awaits, so get in here or help a friend find their way to the bridge!
With this update, we've made some major rebalances to the pricing system of missions to ensure that single-stop and short jump missions to increase their minimum prices, added a pile of new helpful icons for different ship components, rebalanced some of the ships affected by the Mass reduction of cabins and barracks, added 2 new Contact Traits that allow specialist recruits and made some improvements to Black Market Traits that will help smuggling access to more common.
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New Mission Pricing
An important balancing upgrading has come to Mission pricing to help ensure that shorter missions, very far away missions and missions that only involve one step are all fairly balanced in price, as well as valuable throughout the life cycle of a long captain's career. In general, this is going to appear as a bump to many mission prices and a focus on making individual steps worth their jumps.
New Ship Component Icons
We're returning to ship component icons this week to inject a new level of variety and clarity to their visual style. We've added new icons that separate Officer Cabins from Barracks, as well as a new icon to separate Combat Hyperwarp Drives from traveler and base drives. Also, all Mass reduction components now have their own icon. Finally, we've split the boosters into 4 categories -- those that lead with high Pilot, those that lead with high Navigation, those that are aggression focused and then all others (often Electronics-high).
This is a great new start that makes looking at a ship build far more interesting and communicative as well as helping to make the shopping experience more visual and easier to sort through.
However, we are just getting started. Future updates will feature the component's level as part of its icon, so seeking out level 4 pilot modules will be something you can start to do without reading any text and only looking at icons. With this, we are also planning on buffing the Starport component filters to be more clear, breaking them out into much more functional silos, where "Ship" filter today groups together a very wide range of types, we will see that split out into 3 or 4 new filters to make shopping faster and easier.
New Contact Traits
Two new Traits have arrived for Contacts -- a "Decorated Vet" who was a hero in some Solar War sometime in the past as well as an "Unscrupulous" Contact who doesn't really care how it gets done, just wants the rewards.
Decorated Vets put more weight on Faction Rep, pay better for Missions, but most importantly, offer Military Officers recruits!
Unscrupulous Contacts raise the price of all of their services, may enable the Black Market and most importantly, offer Smuggler recruits!
Improved Black Market Access
With this update, we've added clarification to the Trait text for all Contact Black Market Traits. A single Black Market Trait is not enough to always enable to the Black Market, which we've now made clear in the Trait description. It is only when a Black Market Trait is combined with certain types of Contacts (a Greedy Merchant or an Unscrupulous Spice Trader) that the Black Market becomes available via a Trait.
We have also improved the rules so that *any* Contact who has 2 Black Market Traits -- the Unscrupulous Greedy Prince -- will open Black Market access, making it a little easier to find Black Markets across the galaxy even with Contacts where you might not normally suspect it.
Ship and Component Balance
After the Mass reduction to all barracks and cabins last update, we are coming through with a large sweep to effect some additional ship balance and remove any Mass reduction components deemed no longer needed on ships. With this update, we've made changes to the Vulture Liner, Fallen Carrier, Dragoon Cruiser, Lightbow Raptor, Longbow Cruiser.
We've also caught up to the faction-only Mass reduction components and improved them to match the core set. The Hawk Mass Reducer 4 (Alta Mesa only) and Lion Mass Reducer 4 (Thulun only) are both far more interesting and attractive now within their class.
We fixed a bug with the Shielded Officer Suites where their Mass was too high for the group.
v2.5.69 - 7/20/2019
- Improved base price and duration calculations for all Missions to avoid some missions coming out with far too low pay
- Added new component icons for Officer Cabins, Combat Hyperwarp Drives, Mass reduction comps, Pilot boosters, Nav boosters, aggressive boosters
- Ship balance improvements for: Vulture Liner, Fallen Carrier, Dragoon Cruiser, Lightbow Raptor, Longbow Cruiser
- Improved balance of Hawk Mass Reducer 4 (Alta Mesa only) and Lion Mass Reducer 4 (Thulun only)
- Added new Contact Trait "Decorated Vet" increases weight of Faction rep, +10% mission pay, recruits Military Officers
- Added new Contact Trait "Unscrupulous" increases cost of services, recruits Smugglers and may enable Black Market
- Clarified rules for Black Market Traits -- these Traits combine with certain Contact Types and Traits to possibly open Black Market (but not always)
- Removed limitation on Black Market access -- any Contact with combo of Unscrupulous, Greedy, Corrupt, Underworld can grant access
- Fixed incorrect Mass on Shielded Officer Suites medium component
- Fixed incorrect Void Engine name in main ship status screen
