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!
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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%

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!