Star Traders: Frontiers Update #223: Precision Matrices

[fallen]

Update #223 starts to work on filling out the component count and stat bonuses for some of the under-developed categories for ship components, as well as fixing all of the reported issues with the new category system within shopping for ship components.

Thanks to everyone posting feedback and reviews!

Shop by Category Fixes

In case you ran into any of these issues, here is the full list of what was fixed in Update #223 for ship component shopping:

[*] Some components, such as small Fuel Tanks and Pulse Boosters, appeared twice on the category list
[*] Some components, such as large Gravcannons and large Barracks, did not appear on the list at all. Across the set of 58 categories and 3 sizes, there were 15 misses in total. All are now resolved.
[*] Some ship weapons were showing the wrong icon for their type of special damage -- showing Ship Ops icon and stating "Causes Radiation". Sounds like an airlock issue to me.

We've also made a few more tweaks to improve the consistency of sorting throughout the set.

Water-Fuel Reclamation 3

One of our follow-on tasks to this major shopping upgrade will be to ensure there are enough good options behind every category. In some cases, this means adding more components and in other cases it will mean rebalancing the bonuses. For Water-Fuel Reclamation systems, we've now added a grade 3 component which increases the Fuel storage, further reduces Jump Cost and provides even nicer Electronics bonus.

Reactors Spike Modules

With Update #223, we've delivered on the promised addition value for Reactor Spike Modules -- that is the bonuses to both Range Change and Escape. While these are small, they can add up with other components or with stacked RSMs quickly.

Defensive Tweaks

We've made two small adjustments to fine-tune the balance of defensive ship modules with this update. The highest level Pulse Boosters came out of the gate a little strong with +4% Defense and +40 Res to its targeted special damage type. To keep things competitive with other defensive options and as there will be higher levels of the Pulse Booster released under a faction flag in the future, we've trimmed this down to +3% Defense.

Finally, the Defense Pattern Matrix has long held on to a +1 Initiative bonus at DPM 4. While this is a minor bonus, when stacked this grants the DPM very powerful sway of Initiative in who fires first in ship combat. This uncharacteristic bonus on a defensive module has finally been removed.

v3.0.91 - 8/17/2020

- Added missing +Range Change and +Escape bonuses to Reactor Spike Modules
- Added new Javat-only component Water-Fuel Reclamation 3, minor price bump to WFR 2
- Removed +Initiative bonus from Defense Pattern Matrix 4
- Reduced max Defense % on Pulse Boosters level 3 to 3%
- Fixed issues with certain categories (barracks, gravcannons) not showing in certain component sizes (large)
- Fixed duplicate Pulse Booster and Fuel Tank categories in small slot
- Fixed issues with wrong damage icon showing for some weapon types causing Radiation or Void
- Further fine-tuned sorting of components with shopping lists