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!

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/

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

- 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[discord.gg], 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[discord.gg]. 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!

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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!

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/

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!

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.

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

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!

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!

- 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!

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/

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.

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.

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.


- 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

Star Traders! First let's send out a welcome to all the new captains who have joined during this 50% off sale and second let's celebrate with an awesome update. Here we are, hitting Update #360 on your favorite space trading and political simulation game, Star Traders: Frontiers. This update focuses on some big changes to the Cloaking system which allows you to reduce ship encounters, upgrades and adds new ship components related to cloaking and a new variation of the Goltha tech that can be unlocked through the Goltha Development story vignette. We've also tweaked some ship builds and prices from the startport and tweaked the chance of Mutiny when Morale is low.

We always love seeing how many of you have pieced together the lore of Star Traders from the stories within, and enjoy the flavor of this universe your Captain is a part of. In our next game, we’re telling a very different sci-fi story but with the same depth we bring to all our worlds. Check out the dark-future feel of our upcoming cyberpunk heist RPG where we've just released the new Gunslinger class and snag it on 34% off or wishlist it today!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1021210/Cyber_Knights_Flashpoint/

Update #360 update centers around changing the limits in place in the ship cloaking system available to any captain today. The goal of these changes is to expand the options for your captain's ship builds and to make to make Cloaking more competitive with Skip Off the Void and high Escape bonus builds. To achieve this end, we've raised the limit on Cloaking up to 60% (which is a direct percentage of reduction on all ship encounters), from a 25% limit previously.

To provide more build options on how to get your cloaking so high, we have reworked all of the Sig Dampeners and Signal Veil components to provide more Cloaking. Also, we have added 4 new Signal Void Field components that take a medium slot to give additional options to pile on the cloaking abilities. If you have completed the Goltha Development story vignette[startraders.fandom.com], then a new Redlance Goltha Veil is available in Rychart starports across the galaxy. While the Goltha tech isn't all about Cloaking, it is a side benefit so this was a good time to introduce an additional option.

Ships with maximum Cloaking feel very different to operate now and we're excited to hear your feedback about these changes and make further adjustments over the coming weeks. Our goal is to position cloaking components such that they're viable for both early and late game builds.

Our last release added a new (ancient) ship design to Star Traders: Frontiers - the Degla Heavylift. our captains have had a chance to look it over and we've received some helpful messages and feedback on our Discord[discord.gg]. Update #360 update pushes the best of those ideas into the game and revises the weapon and component loadout of the ship with a focus on making it a highly survival large cargo carrier.

In not-as-exciting-but-still-great news we did some optimization on the political simulator (Conflicts, Rumors, Contact actions, Contact Link Events, etc) and speeding it up means we can run it slightly more often without negatively impacting ship travel on the map. This will provide even more procedurally generated drama for players to exploit for profit.

We recently completed an analysis of Mutiny events in Star Traders games and noticed that a surprising percentage of mutiny events occur when the player is very close to the planet for a resupply. We have adjusted the chance of mutiny down by 10% in the crew simulator -- meaning they will tolerate low morale slightly longer before declaring an actual mutiny. Hopefully this patch lets you land in time to avoid any unpleasantness with your crew. Good luck!

- Improved effects of Cloaking, increased maximum Cloaking effect to 60% (from 25%)
- Increased amount of Cloaking provided by Sig Dampeners and Signal Veil
- New Component: Signal Void Field, Levels 1-4 now available
- New Vignette Component, Redlance Goltha Veil
- Replaced Degla Heavylift weapon loadout based on feedback
- Increased ship sale price for Wolfpack Interceptor + Voracious Class
- New optimization of political simulator allows it to run 25% more often
- Chance of Mutiny during Low Morale events reduced by 10%

(original challenge description below)

It has been a fun month of exploring a very large map in our Community Challenge. We've enjoyed seeing all the different ways folks have approach the big map, the challenges it posed (some of those starts were brutal at the far end of the galaxy with only one jump available to you!), and how you overcame those challenges.

We wanted to highlight a few of the Captains who tackled the challenge.

Migal, over on our Discord, built out quite the smuggling ring, including crowning a smuggler and making big bank through that relationship!

Once again, Matt, gave us detailed write ups and screenshots of their adventures, completing a nearly completely pacifist run!

We often talk about the Community Challenges as a way to spice up play for our veterans, but they are, of course, open to anyone. So we were very excited to see new players tackling the Big Map challenge.

Not Athryan joined in with a Path of the Sword captain, giving that challenge ago as a newer player to the game!

Thank you to all of you who participated in the challenge! We will be back in the New Year with a different style of community event for STF. No Spoilers, but we are very excited about it!

------

Hello, Captains. It’s time for another STF challenge. This is the Really BIG map challenge! Back in August, we asked how will you play on the smallest of maps with the least sectors? This time around we are offering up a 70 quadrant, standard density map for you to tackle. Some of the quadrants require many, many jumps to reach.

Just like the August challenge, this challenge only has one "rule:" that you play on the specific map seed for this challenge. Otherwise, you can play whatever professions, ships, rules, and styles you would like. Our Discord community suggested that this challenge could be good giving some of the newer fast ships a go!

The map seed for this challenge is: st-v02-70-6-94116976

Some ideas for what we’d love to see:

• Screenshots of your ship, your crew
  
• Descriptions of your strategies approaching a huge map with significant distance between some quadrants and how they are different from your 'normal' strategies
  
• Tell us about the challenges your faced
  
• Any other creative ways you want to share to tell us about your adventures: memes, interpretive dance, gifs, etc

No matter what you choose to share, please include one screenshot of your journey!

We’ve opened up a discussion here on Steam in the General Discussion forum for aIl of your posts. If you post on the discord,[discord.gg] post in the #big_map_challenge channel found in the STF category.

Good luck and have fun, Captains!

Star Traders! What you say? Another update? No, impossible. Not from these lazy bones. We'll its true - your favorite 2D space trading RPG has done it again - Update #359 has arrived with new fun things for Captains of any vintage, old and new, to explore. Update #359 includes a new Mass 9000 ship, a new Armored Cargo Hold 3, boosts to some Explorer cards appearance rates, and a sweeping set of fixes on components from community reports.

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 roaring along in the second half of its Early Access but we are using the same formula to listen, discuss and improve the game straight from community feedback. There is still plenty of room for content ideas and shifts in gameplay based on what early players are finding fun. For example, we're actively soliciting Talent ideas for the new Gunslinger class that is coming and some of the best are going straight into the game.

We hope you'll 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/

With Update #359, we have word of a brand new super-massive hull that is being constructed in De Valtos starports across the galaxy. The Degla Megalift is the ship for all your cargo hauling needs. Equipped with a massive fuel tank and an even larger cargo hold the Degla Heavylift is a big brother of the Degla Megalift. Boasting 12 small, 11 medium and 7 large slots, the Degla is a new super-massive class ship to configure, trick out and see how it compares to your other super-massive hulls. We can't wait to see how you kit out your Heavylift.

Both Degla architecture ships have a long and storied history, first appearing in Star Traders classic in 2014. Now both the Megalift and Heavylift have recurred in Star Traders: Frontiers in the years 2018 and 2024.

The new Armored Cargo Hoid 3 fills a gap in the progression and helps build out your heavily defended cargo transports.
Based on our stats, the Zendu Relic cards were not appearing often enough so we have further increased the weighting chance that they will appear in a hand of Explorer cards. Good luck, relic hunters - the way is dangerous and road is long, but if you survive the rewards are sweet.

We've also increased the drop rate for Contact Network (which uncovered a Contact and all of their positive and negatively linked Contacts).

We've made some component and ship fixes based on your excellent feedback. We've improved Battle Prow 8 to add +3 Ship Weapon Initiative to help you get the first shots. We 've also adjusted the Armored Bulkheads 6 stats to ensure that they fit within the progression. We've corrected the loadouts on the Allistar Huntress (which had too many starting officer cabins). And we've also resolved a number of odd bugs with Large Hangers, including one that granted over 240 Medical Rating for some of these components (!??!).

- New Ship: "Degla Heavylift" (9000M Heavy Transport)
- New Component: Armored Cargo Hold 3
- Further increased drop rate for "Zendu Relic" Explorer card
- Increased drop rate for Uncover Contact Network (1 Contact + All Links)
- Battle Prow 8 now adds +3 Ship Weapon Initiative
- Further fixes for logging issues with ship component damage
- Fixes for "Alistar Huntress" component loadouts
- Fixes for Large Hanger and high Medical Ratings
- Fixes for Large Hanger ship combat buffs
- Fixes for Armored Bulkheads 6

Star Traders, captains and travelers of the void - we are back again with another Star Traders: Frontiers update. This one took a while to finish -- more complicated than it sounds fixing some of the weirder bugs that were reported this week. Ahhh, STF, the gift (that you paid for) that keeps on giving (us more and more bugs.)

We're excited to keep this update train rolling and wanted to extend a hearty Thank you! to everyone who has posted a review or "badged up" to the Supporter Badge. You help us keep developing this lovely void simulation RPG ;)

Update #358 sees a new ultra carrier hull being constructed at Moklumnue starports around the quadrants, the Alistar Huntress. The Huntress joins the rare 9000 Mass category, bringing the number of these ships to 5. We are planning to release two more soon -- a 9000M heavy hauler transport, and a 9000M high durability battlecruiser to provide a foil for one of the all-time most popular ships, the Sword Battlecruiser.

The Alistar Huntress stands out within the super heavy category with the best in class Armor, middle of the road base Shields, Hull Points second only to the Cautela Titan, matched for best in class Base Fuel, 7 officers, 42 crew, 6 max craft and a component allocation of 16 small, 9 medium and 7 large.

Update #358 also includes significant component expansions for ship components that can round out a defensive ship build, adding more options for Radiation and Void resistance as well as Armor and Shielding. These categories haven't seen expansions in some time, so these are considered prototypes and will likely see some balancing buffs or nerfs in the coming patches. For now, and until we complete the balance passes, the Enemy Ship Architect is prohibited from using these new components in hostile ship builds until they are verified.

We have added a new card to the Explorer game, and fixed some existing ones. The new card is a +5 draw that, if picked, provides a Reputation-positive introduction to a Contact -- and all of that Contact's Links. This card has proven to be pretty powerful, as it can establish an entire mission and RTG network in a single pull.

In addition, we fixed some bugs with how Experience was allocated on the Zendu Revelations card and increased the drop rates on the Zendu Relic cards, which were not appearing in hands at the rate we intended due to some unexpected math oddities.

In ship combat, you all reported some issues where the wrong component could be listed in the log -- this applied to both damage and repair talents and some small craft combat log messages. The error was strictly in the display code, but still glad to see it fixed. It explains occasional reports that a component was listed as damaged during battle but then later would be found undamaged.

We also gave the enemy shpip builder 2 new ships. Big ones. With lots of guns. Enjoy!

While rare the Bounty Hunter enemies may now come after you in the Alistar Huntress and the Military Office enemies may be at the helm of a Shizari Huntress.

- New Ship: "Alistar Huntress" (9000M Heavy Carrier)
- New Component: Hull Plating 6 (Void + Rad)
- New Component: Armored Bulkheads 6 (Armor + Void)
- New Component: Reinforced Structures 6 (Shield + Rad)
- Increased drop rate for "Zendu Relic" Explorer card
- New Explorer Card: Uncover Contact Network (1 Contact + All Links)
- Fixes for Ship Combat Buffs that Repair Components, Improved Logging
- Fixed some issues with Ship Component sort in Starport
- Fixed some logging issues for Victory Talents that damage Ship Components
- Warning: Bounty Hunter AI can (rare) proc "Alistar Huntress"
- Warning: Military AI can (rare) proc "Shizari Huntress"
- Fixed Reported Bugs