Star Traders: Frontiers News

Welcome to the New Year, captains. The year of Star Traders (again)!

Pull up a chair in the spice tent and let's sit down over another update for your favorite space captain simulator. We hope you had a good holiday break and found some fun new games during the Steam Winter sale. As for Star Traders: Frontiers, updates are resuming for 2025! With Update #364, we've added a new contact type, 5 new relic armor and weapons, adjusted the rules for cloaking and Xeno Artifacts (you can't hide from the xeno!), improved the maintenance cost of mid-level Interdictors and reduced drop rate for the Uncover Contact Network card in Explorer.

Thanks to every captain playing and leaving feedback and reviews!

[h2]Actually It's the Year of Cyber Knights![/h2]
So many of our updates for Star Traders are based on feedback from you all. But there are limits to what we can do in a game 6 years after its release. Our new tactical heist RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, is evolving fast in Early Access and will be releasing later in 2025. It still has plenty of room for content ideas and shifts in gameplay based on what you, our very best players, are finding fun.

Join us to make this game another one you’ll be enjoying for years to come.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/

[h2]Admirable Retired Consul[/h2]

This update adds a new type of Contact that can appear in your faction zones. The Retired Consul is an influential new Contact type that prefers high Government and Economy zones and offers Missions, Sells Rumors and provides high quality Recruits.

[h2]Added 5 New Relic Armors and Weapons[/h2]
Based on player feedback and insatiable demand for moar gear, we've expanded the armor and weapon catalog to include some fan-requested variations. There are 3 new Armor with very high Hardness values, and two new blades that counter them with high Penetration. Good luck finding them, Relic Hunters!

[h2]Cloaking and Artifacts[/h2]

We're keeping a very close eye on the new cloaking rules and the awesome impacts they are having on the ship meta. A lot of new ship designs have spawned out of these new components. However, we have found that they are too powerful for certain types of smuggler builds and playstyles. Be ware - ship encounter rate reduction no longer have any impact on the penalty for carrying Xeno Artifacts in your ship's cargo hold. The clarion call of these cursed things cannot be disguised and the Xeno ships will not be fooled by cloaking. The effects of cloaking still apply to all regular ships, to regular chances to meet xeno in the void, but simply do not protect you if your hull is full to bursting with Artifa cts. As another note, the cloaking reduction still does apply to the increase chance in meeting Military and Bounty Hunter ships that you can gain for carrying Xeno Artifacts.

[h2]Small Craft Maintenance[/h2]
Some maintenance costs for Small Craft (the actual fights, and some launch bays) have been adjusted to be more linear in growth. This should make some high end small craft setups more expensive while making introductory small craft slightly more efficient to own early in the game.

[h2]Contact Network Drop[/h2]

The Contact Network card you could draw in Explorer is very powerful for that operation, and we've reduced its rates of appearance to ensure it stays rare enough to play.

[h2]v3.4.23 - #364 - 1/9/2025[/h2]
- New Contact Type: "Retired Consul" (Influential, Court Missions, Sells Rumors)
- New Gear: 3 new high-Hardness Armors and 2 new high-Penetration Weapons
- New Salvage Relic Weapon: Slazah Warblade (Main Blade)
- New Rare Relic Weapon: Ki-Karat Siazah (2nd Hand Blade)
- New Rare Relic Armors: Cryoseal Mesh + Warden Stalker
- New Salvage Relic Armor: Voidshard Carapace
- Cloaking no longer reduces encounter penalty from Xeno Artifact transport
- Balanced maintenance costs for Interdictor (Class 4-8) Small Craft
- Reduced drop rate of "Uncover Contact Network" (+5 Explorer Card)
- Improved processing efficiency in political simulator, better performance
- Fixed Reported Bugs

Original Event post can be found below:

Happy Feburary, Captains! I'm here to wrap up our New Year, New Meme Community Event. It's been a fun month, particularly over on our Discord, seeing what memes you all come up with.

I wanted to share a few highlights:

First a throwback to another game from gonzako. They captioned this with "when you destroy a xeno ship..."



Then from Meldvin about their experience salvaging in STF:



And last, but not least, from our resident Steel Song fan, Zer0winds, this meme about wishful thinking:



Thanks to all of your who posted memes this month. We are going to host a CKF community challenge this month, but will be back with more STF challenges soon!

_______________



Hello, Captains. It’s time for another STF Community Event. We are forgoing a traditional challenge and are doing something completely different this time: creating new STF memes for 2025. It's a New Year, New Meme if you will. ːsteamhappyː



STF has a long history of many excellent memes, both from us at the studio and from the community, and what could be better than making new ones to add to the vault?!? We want to fly into 2025 with a new outlook on life memes.



Unlike our challenges, there really aren't any "requirements" for this one. We just want to see some new bespoke memes that we can all enjoy over the next years of traversing the galaxy. Anything goes - still images, gifs, comic panels, etc.



Some ideas for what we’d love to see (this list is a meme all on its own):

• Memes
  
• Meme Gifs
  
• More Memes
• EVEN MORE MEMES

As usual, we have created a post here on Steam where you can post your memes and you can also check out the #new_year_new_meme channel on our Discord. As always, at the end of the event, we will share some of your memes in our wrap up post!

Have fun, Captains and may the memes be with you!

Happy holidays and winter sale to you, Star Traders! It is cold out there, so step into the spice hall and warm yourself by the fire of another update and the burning hot discount of 60% off on your favorite star captain RPG simulator. With Update #363, we've added a new type of combat-focused Prow, the Dagger Prow, added a new ultra-heavy Relic Armor, increased Relic drop rates in Salvage, released new high-level components to the AI ship builder, and fixed some minor text displays for maximum Cloaking bonus.

Thanks to all of our captains playing, posting and reviewing as always!

[h2]Cyber Knights is 34% off and getting big updates too![/h2]
If you haven’t checked it out in a bit, our new game Cyber Knights: Flashpoint coming into its final stretch of Early Access. During November, we added the Gunslinger class (more boom-boom!) and we're hitting our goal of releasing a new mission map every week for 9 weeks running. Now, the latest update to start the Winter Sale added Contact Power Play storylines that can change what your contacts are able to offer/sell in big ways, continuing to push on the dynamically evolving underworld of New Boston.

All support for Cyber Knights ultimately results in a brighter future for Star Traders, so hope you’ll check it out and spread the word!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/

[h2]New Dagger Prow 1-3 Components[/h2]
The Dagger Prows are built for fast boarding ships with a captain who has one hand on the escape lever and the other on the board-them-to-death button. The Dagger Prows add to the ship pools you need at either end of the Range spectrum - both Escape dice and Boarding dice. In addition, they help provide defense against craft if you are trying to close to boarding range. Made for pirates and small, fast combat ships these Dagger Prows fit better into an Electronics-heavy build and come with significant armor to help soak damage if you do decide to close or can't immediately escape.

[h2]New Ultra Heavy Armor + Relic Drop Rates[/h2]

Only a few other heavy armors can rival the new Stalker Heavy Ops Relic for its sheer ability to soak up punishing damage and only the Exemplar Command can match its 196 Hardness rating. It pays a heavy price in Dodge and Initiative penalty for the extreme nature of its defensive stats, but it is a contender for a main armor for any character who wants to tank on sheer damage soak.

We've improved the relic drop rates for two types of Salvage Rumor - the Abandoned Military Base and Derelict Space Hive, giving each a more focused set of drops and better chances to drop a high-level relic.

[h2]Enemy Ship Builder Improvements[/h2]

As new components continue to filter into the game with updates, we give each of them some time to be tested out by players and the enemy ship captains in our dev builds before releasing them for public circulation. With Update #363, we are now allowing enemy ship builder to create ships using the powerful defensive components Hull Plating 6, Armored Bulkheads 6, and Reinforced Structures 6, all of which will make an enemy ship harder to take down.

[h2]Cloaking Bonus Fixes[/h2]
With this update, we've fixed several places throughout the system where the Cloaking Bonus for ships was not displayed at its full value and accidentally still capped at 25% in the text. This fix now straightens it out on every screen where it is listed.

[h2]v3.4.21 - #363 - Dagger Prow Strikes - 12/28/2024[/h2]
- New Component Type: Dagger Prow (variant of Battle Prow)
- Dagger Prow Components 1-3 now available for installation (player only)
- New Salvage Loot: "Stalker Heavy Ops" Ultra Heavy Armor
- Increased Relic drop rate for "Abandoned Military Orbital"
- Improved Relic drop tables for "Derelict Space Hive"
- AI now uses Hull Plating 6, Armored Bulkheads 6 and Reinforced Structures 6
- Some fixes to how Cloaking bonuses are displayed
- Trying to fix the reported bugs & typos

Star Traders! We are back once again with yet another fantastic update for everyone's favorite space trading game that is called Star Traders. With Update #362, we've added some new art, finished up the arc of work on Cloaking components and chased down bugs and QoL issues reported by the community.

Thanks to every captain for playing and sharing the game with a review!

[h2]Want to help shape our next game?[/h2]
So many of our updates for Star Traders are based on feedback from you all. But there are limits to what we can do in a game 6 years after its release. Our new tactical heist RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, is evolving fast in Early Access, with plenty of room for content ideas and shifts in gameplay based on what early players are finding fun.

Join us to make this game another one you’ll be enjoying for years to come.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/


[h2]New Contact Art[/h2]
We're always loving the chance to roll out some new artwork, so we dug deep in the archives and found these 4 Contacts who have been waiting to roll their dice and see if they can climb to the top of the grav heap. Welcome 4 new contact faces!


[h2]Further Work on Cloaking[/h2]
This week we found and fixed several bugs we created last week with our changes to the cloaking system. We've updated all of the effected code, and now cloaking bonuses and rolls are correctly applied across the entire spectrum of ship encounters. Xenos, Jyeeta, Bounty Hunters, mysterious Voidships, etc -- they're all now correctly effected by cloaking.

We have also increased by maximum Cloaking to 65% -- stacking those components is hard and we want to give a strong, but balanced, result. This is only a 5% total change and based on our current evaluation, we don't expect it to rise gain.


[h2]Mutiny Weight Reduction[/h2]
With further analysis, we've followed up our previous reduction in Mutiny weights by reducing it again by 3%. This is the wrap up for a fix we started a few weeks ago and helps manage the Mutiny rates. We all know it is "fun" to have a Mutiny, but it is not fun to have 4 while you are turning to get to a nearby port :D


[h2]Initiative rebalance[/h2]
We have recently introduced some new components that add Ship Combat Initiative, which is responsible for determining which attacks and weapons go first. Some bugs crept in related to player builds with very high (more than +10) Initiative. If you were seeing the opposite effect for very high Initiative builds - that you're suddenly going last!?!? - we have a fix for you!


[h2]Contact Network's Bonus[/h2]
Fixed an issue where Contact Network card was only introducing the main Contact with a Reputation Bonus, instead of giving a Rep bonus to the entire network. This is a boon to the card as you will now learn about multiple Contacts and have a head start with some of them.

While testing this out, we also found a very rare case in which the Contact's links were all remote and would not be introduced correctly. That is now fixed too!

[h2]v3.4.19 - #362: Cloaking Arc Wrap [/h2]
- Added 4 new Contact faces
- New Component: Cloaked Launch Bay
- Increased maximum Cloaking effect to 65%
- Fixed Cloaking interactions with Era-specific encounter tables
- Reduced chance of Mutiny during Low Morale events by additional 3%
- Fixed bugs caused by large Ship Combat Initiative Scores
- Buffed and fixed "Uncover Contact Network" (+5 Explorer Card)

Star Traders! Many welcomes to our esteemed Captains, old and new. Whether you are an experienced Star Trader or new to plying the Void we at Trese Brothers appreciate you playing our game. This week's update is a mix of good and bad news. First, the good news: we've added new exciting components for Cloaking builds and ... we've finished testing the latest Terrox Xeno ship. Let's dig in as we keep balancing out the new cloaking rules, improved rules for transporting xeno artifacts and more.

If you're enjoying the continued stream of updates, improvements and more please take a moment to leave a review!

[h2]Want to help shape our next game?[/h2]
So many of our updates for Star Traders are based on feedback from you all. But there are limits to what we can do in a game 6 years after its release. Our new tactical heist RPG, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, is evolving fast in Early Access, with plenty of room for content ideas and shifts in gameplay based on what early players are finding fun.

Join us to make this game another one you’ll be enjoying for years to come.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/

[h2]New Cargo Holds and More Cloaking Options[/h2]

We have added new large slot Cargo Holds that are competitive with standard cargo holds and provide cloaking and Escape bonuses for ship encounters and combat. These new holds are very useful for Merchants attempting to avoid interdiction, or Smugglers looking to avoid everyone and help provide new paths for your ship to achieve high cloaking without sacrificing all your smaller slots.

Based on player feedback we've also buffed a few more components by adding Cloaking capabilities. This update rebalanced two Goltha Scanners which are unlocked by the Goltha Tech storyline.


Finally, we've improved the display of Cloaking in the ship status screen so that your rates of cloaking / ship encounter evasion are easier to spot and know.

[h2]Dangerous Cargo[/h2]
Our analysis of the results of recent Cloaking upgrades and player feedback pointed us towards a necessary shift some of othe other encounter rate rules. This week we're releasing a balancing update that further increases the Xeno encounter rate boost when your ship's cargo hold caontains Xeno Artifacts.

Shipper beware - it is as if these artifacts have a way of drawing the xeno from the void. Carrying large numbers of Xeno artifacts is now more dangerous than ever before.


[h2]Terrox Deathspear[/h2]
And back to the bad news: we've finished testing on the newest Terrox Xeno ship, the Terrox Deathspear. This ship was previously very rare but is now ready to go and has been bumped up in the mix to be more common. It is still at around 50% of the occurrence rate of the other standard Terrox ships, so it is still a bit more rare but no longer vanishingly so.


[h2]v3.4.17 - #361: Full Circle - 11/20/2024[/h2]
- Warning: Xeno Encounter Rate Boost from Xeno Artifacts Increased!
- New Components: Cloaked Cargo Holds, Comp Level 4 to 8 added
- Refactors and adds Cloaking to Quad-Goltha Scanner, Redlight Goltha Scanner
- Fixes Ship Counters / Cloaking Displays in Ship Status
- Balance adjustments for newest Xeno ship, increased encounter rate