Star Traders: Frontiers Update #257: The Infamous Hunt

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Update #257 rolls out with a set of revamps to how Legendary Bounty Hunter stories are pulled into the game, adds new Contact simulation actions and fixes some outstanding issues with Conflict selection when generating Intel that were blocking the upcoming Conflict Missions. We've also continued to work on the platform updates and revisions for Mac and Linux that kicked off in Update #256.

If you like the pace of new updates, please consider leaving a review and telling a friend!

Speaking of new, new new -- if word hasn't trickled down from the tippity top of the New Boston spires, leaked below the streets and drip-drip-dripped into your safehouse, we're here to tell you about our upcoming turn-based cyberpunk heist RPG. Cyber Knights: Flashpoint will be coming to Steam in 2021 and mixes stealth, hacking and tactical combat with deep RPG elements and a unique heist system for missions. The wishlist button is calling your name, Knight.
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Legendary Bounty Hunters

The four legendary bounty hunters -- Troy 'The Blade' Circin, April 'The Werewolf' Flowder, Draiv Solregard and Urraca Aurelius -- have long haunted the nightmares of captains and at times, come for them from the dark of the void, carrying a death warrant and a blade. Sometimes a assault rifle. Sometimes a torp. Whatever. If one of your enemies pays them well enough, they will come for your life. But, we often receive the feedback that a veteran player believes they have created the conditions that should cause one of the infamous hunters to appear but they do not. With this update, we've completely rewritten how the Bounty Hunters are deployed by Contacts to make it far less questionable whether or not they are going to appear. They are proc'd much more readily now, more like the vignettes.

If you make a powerful enemy, they will not hesitate to pay these hunters to do what they do best.

Spicy Contacts

We've improved the matrix of actions that a Contact Trait can cause for a Contact again with this release, working to link more Rumors to more Traits. As an example, this release we've added the link that those Contacts who are Spice Addicted are more likely to take action that will start Spice Festivals on their zones. As more and more Rumors and Traits get added, we're always working to improve this motivation matrix.

Conflict Selection in Orbital Ops and Talents

As we march toward Conflict Missions, we're continuing to grind down on any little rough edges, balance imperfections and bugs around Conflicts. With this update, we've fixed an issue related to how Conflicts were selected for those that would be targeted by Orbital Ops and any Talent that generated Conflict-related intel. The selection rules specifically used to select the oldest standing Conflict. This meant when playing an Orbital Ops like Spying you could only affect one Conflict and only gain Intel related to one Conflict. For Intel gathering Missions, this is a major problem and it would have been even worse for Conflict Missions. We've resolved this in many places -- from Orbital Ops to Unauthorized Access boarding Talent -- so that the targeted Conflict is taken from a list of possible Conflicts with a slight weighting applied by age.

Flight Plan Maxing

For a long time now, if you trained enough flight plan Talents and used the right screen resolution, you could end up with them going off the top of the screen. This was kicked up a notch by adding Saboteur and players combining Saboteur and Wing Commando. We're now resolved this with a refresh to the interface that shows the Talent Icons in a neat little grid (less mouse movement, yah!) with hovers for their full details.

v3.1.41 - Update #257: The Infamous Hunt

- Rebalanced rules for Legendary Bounty Hunters -- they will appear far more readily now
- Contacts with Traits like Spice Addict (and others) are more likely to start Spice Festival Rumors on their own zone
- Improved balance of Contact-created Rumors to run longer and be more useful to captains
- Rebalanced Orbital Conflict selection and Intel Talents that target a Conflict to stop using "oldest" Conflict only
- Fixed issue with too many Flight Plans going off screen
- Fixed issue with selling generic Intel to Contact raising wrong Conflict Score