Er, I saw two reviews. Um, maybe just half a paragraph mentions in possibly some buried "best mobile games" topic but at least they were from two different users... or possibly one user rating it positively in the same thread in separate posts. But I did see two so I had to use the plural instead of "a glowing review."
Update #146: Famous Hunters
Star Traders: Frontiers - Trese Brothers
Update #146 starts to walk the path of the v2.5.x family of the development roadmap -- it will be story heavy, bringing all sorts of new tales, vignettes and Eras to the frontier. With Update #146, we've added new character faces, a new type of vignette focusing on an enemy Contact and their bounty hunters, improved the standard behavior of enemy Contacts who send bounty hunters, rebalanced Talents and Contact rules, made some quality of life changes to all card game operations and fixed some bugs to boot.
If you're enjoying the updates, please leave a review and tell a friend!
New Faces On Board
With Update #146, we've added two new female faces to your crew roster. You can see them above in our animation environment, getting ready to be loaded into the game.
Bounty Hunter Vignettes
The new Aurelius Hunter vignette launches with #146 and lays out a model for future Bounty Hunter stories to overlay on top of the existing Contact and Hunter simulation.
First, we've improved the visibility of the spice hall news entries when a Contact does send a Bounty Hunter after you. These are now visible galaxy-wide, regardless of the quadrant you and the Contact are in.
Second, it is possible that a Contact who hates you will hire out your Death Warrant to a famed Bounty Hunter! Beware of the heir to the Aurelius bloodline of Hunters, she may come knocking holding a death warrant with your name on it.
While only Aureilus Hunter has been added at this time, this new type of story vignette opens up a bright (and dangerous) future for Contacts to be able to send other famed hunters after you to gain their revenge.
Balance
With Update #146, we've modified both the Bio-Poison and Smoke Bomb grenades to allow use from slot 2, making them better in line with other grenades a more versatile for their high Initiative cost.
We've improved the missions to faction Prime worlds when they are assigned by another High Prince. We've also improved the logging about Contacts who are angered by your hostile missions, in addition to those directly affected.
Quality of Frontier Life
We've made a few nice changes in Update #146. First up, a strict sorting is now applied to the Talent list in all card game ops, including Explorer, Salvage, etc. This means that Talent list will never suddenly re-order when you finish using one of the stacks.
Second, Hyperwarp Jumps now include a short blurb about the readiness of your Navigation and Hyperwarp Jump efficiency Talents. You can see -- right before making the jump -- if you're covered.
We've fixed a few issues with the new Talent Summary screen, fixed a bug that prevented Captain from training as a Wing Tech, and fixed a loophole that allowed you to escape hostile story military captains using the Stiff Salute Talent -- that was never intended!
Thanks to everyone for leaving a review.
v2.5.19 - 5/2/2019
- Added 2 new character faces
- Added new Bounty Hunter story vignette - heir to the Aurelius bloodline comes hunting with a Death Warrant
- New unique Bounty Hunter storylines can start when Contacts with negative Rep send bounty hunters (instead of standard BH)
- Improved visibility of Contacts sending standard BHs after your Captain, now always visible in any Spice Hall News, regardless of quadrant
- Rebalanced Combat Medic "Bio-Poison Grenade" and Assassin "Smoke Bomb" to be used at slot 1 or 2
- Improved Mission type of diplomatic envoy to faction Prime world when given from a High Prince or Princess
- Improved display of Contacts angered by your actions during missions
- Improved faction of recruits for any United Coalition Contacts -- recruits are now of the local faction
- Prevented any re-ordering of Talents between runs of card games (Explorer, Black Market, Orbital Ops)
- Hyperwarp Jump now includes notice of readiness of Navigation Skill Save Talent as well as HW efficiency Talents
- Fixed issue where "Stiff Salute" could be used to dodge story Bounty Hunters
- Fixed issue where "Flash Charge" Talent was counted as "Skip Off the Void" in Talent Summary
- Fixed issue that prevented Captain from training in the Wing Tech Job
Update #148: Xeno Ruins
Star Traders: Frontiers - Trese Brothers
With Update #148, we've rolled out another new way for storylines to filter into the sandbox of Star Traders: Frontiers. Now with storylines capable of coming out of specialized and unique card draws, we've cracked open a whole new frontier. In addition, we've made a major shake up to the Gunner Job by introducing Tactics as a secondary Skill, improved the power of bombers weaponry and added new ship components. Along with the new ship components, we've rolled out the first Era-locked ship component. Another new frontier ready to be explored, ship components are ready to be unlocked by story events and Eras.
This is another big one with a lot of exciting twists so check out the full release notes below. If you're enjoying the pace of updates, new content and new stories (3 stories, 3 updates back to back!) please leave a review and tell a friend.
Xeno Runs Card Story
One of the biggest exciting changes in Update #148 is the ability for story cards to appear in the card mini-games. The first example of this is in Explorer where a "Artifact Find" Rumor at the quadrant level can cause a chance for a story card, "Xeno Ruins" to appear within the hand. If you draw the card, it will open up a new storyline, new story rewards and the chance to meet a mysterious character. The storyline comes with potentially 2 unique gear rewards, both at level 6 and the high risk challenges to earn it.
Now that the system is in place for story cards to appear in certain circumstances, we're eagerly eyeing Spy, Patrol, Blockade and even Black Market for the next round of story arcs.
Gunner and Combat Meta Shifts
With Update #148, we've made a significant change to the Gunner Job. Long relegated to Gunnery and Ship Ops, Gunners now bring Tactics to the table as their secondary Skill and push Ship Ops down to tertiary.
Immediately, this may mean that some ships and crews may need to consider how to make up for the lost Ship Ops Skill, but as Jobs like Electronics, Mechanic, Wing Tech, and Quartermaster all provide it this is the less impactful part of the change. In order to balance this best for starting ships, the first 2 ranks of E-Tech Job has reduced a point of Electronics (4 instead of 5 now) for Ship Ops (2 instead of 1 now).
More importantly, Gunners now bring both additional bonuses in Standard Dice to both ship combat accuracy and ship combat range change. Gunners now join Jobs like Military Officer, Hyerpwarp Navigator, Pilot, Commander and others who can all help build up this critical Skill pool. In total, for the ship meta this change empowers attackers and puts more pressure on full defensive builds.
Destructive Bombers
Across the board, bomber craft have gained additional minimum Standard Damage for their bombs as well as a 5-10% increase in Crippling Effect chance. This was a request made by the AI in training
Time for more boom!
Frontier Liner
This starting ship received a small change around its weapons build out and saw a weapon dropped for a Fuel Tank. It now boasts some amazing off-the-starport-deck fuel range to better match its description.
Plague Ward and Other Components
The first ship component to be directly linked to an Era, the Plague Ward is a specialized advanced medical ward with bonus shielding and the ability to keep a quarantined prisoner. Now that we have finished the work to enhance the ship component system and the AI ship builder to respect story-triggered ship components, we're going to be rolling out a lot more of these. Future components will be linked to eras, storylines and even provided as rewards to storylines.
We've added 2 new faction specific Mass Reducer 4 options with this release -- a Pilot focused one from Alta Mesa and an Electronics focused on from Thulun. If you have the bank roll, these will be interesting options in the later game.
In addition, we've made some price changes to the high end Sensor Arrays.
Finally, the Accuracy % bonuses for Targeting Matrix have been raised slightly to help meet with Gunners increase in Tactics.
v2.5.23 - 5/10/2019
- Added new Exploration story vignette - Xeno Ruins story card can appear in Exploration when a quadrant-wide "Artifact Find" Rumor is on
- Risky opportunity to rake in big profits and make new allies
- Includes two new pieces of unique story reward gear
- New unique card-game storylines can now be started from any card game under special circumstances -- more coming!
- Rebuilt Gunner Job Skill progression to add Tactics as secondary Skill and bump Ship Ops to tertiary -- more valuable in combat but need other Ship Ops sources
- Tweaked Electronics Tech rank 1 and 2 to have 4 Electronics and 2 Ship Ops helping low level crew staff ships better
- Clarified Gunner's Talent "Disarming Sabotage" to clearly stated "disables highest level enemy weapon"
- Increased base Damage and Crippling Chance % of all Bomber attacks
- Added new "Plague Ward" ship component which becomes available during the Plague Era -- high medical, bonus shielding and holds 1 prisoner
- Enhanced story and era system will now be releasing new technology, ship components and craft based on story events regularly
- Added new Thulun and Alta Mesa variations on Mass Reducer 4 -- slightly more mass reduction, bonus Electronics/Pilot
- Increased Accuracy % bonus for Targeting Matrix 2, 3 and 4
- Increased price of high end Sensor Arrays
- Modified "Frontier Liner" starting ship to have more balanced weapon set and additional Fuel Tank
- Craft type filtering in starport (bomber, shuttle interdictor) now works as 'OR'
- Added final captain's log entry with reason for captain's death
- Fixed price of Advanced Medical Clinic
Update #170: Void Thunder
Star Traders: Frontiers - Trese Brothers
Update #170 rolls out with a big focus on captain's quality of life in ship status and while planning how to upgrade your ship. These changes are a continuation of work we began last week and improvements that have been requested by different players. We're happy to deliver more ship component icons as well as visually marking the level of all tiered ship components directly on the icon!
A huge thanks to everyone posting feedback, suggestions and reviews!
Component Level Visible
Whenever you're looking at a ship component that has a level as part of its description, you'll now see that level in roman numerals over the icon, easy to read and see at a glance. This is a huge help in being able to visual share a ship design. It is also even more important when browsing component lists within the starport.
Along with this, we've done some name standardization to be sure that any component which is part of a tiered setup (1 to 4, etc) has the level in its name (Pilot Assist Module 1).
More Component Icons
We've also added a new set of component icons for the different modules of your ship -- differentiating Armor-focused components, Shield-focused components, those types of seals and plating for orbital ops and ship combat, as well as spike modules. We've also added icons for the exo-crawler exploration components and differentiated Warhammer and Behemoth Void Engines.
v2.5.75 - 7/27/2019
- Improved ship component display for shopping, sharing and planning
- Added new component icons for Armor components, Shield components, exo-crawler, Behemoth and Warhammer void engines
- Added new component icons for operations seals and protectors, spike modules
- Added level tag to all icons for all ship components in sequences (Fuel Tank 1 to 4, etc)
- Improved consistency of naming of ship components, especially those in a sequence (Pilot Assist Module 1)
- Fixed reported issues with Mission jumps
- Clarified rules for Rank / Permit / Edict loss in the Contact details panel
You'll never know if you don't play it.
Look it's a good game in its own right, but it's not Space Rangers.
It's a very good game, as of ~113 updates ago. But I don't think it's SR. There's a spreadsheet simulator here, a darkest dungeon (crew combat) component, a ship-customization porn thing going, and a galciv vibe but worlds don't generally (ever?) evolve past their initial state. Oh and some CCG mechanics, minus the collectible part. It's its own thing, and it's quite good if you're willing to learn the mechanics. Play it.
It is a common problem with some good games, also reviews are mostly positive rather than overwhelmingly positive, also some reviews say it gets repetitive and grindy pretty fast. I'll try it sometime but I will probably play a few other games first.
