Star Traders: Frontiers

[Edward64]

This has not been on my radar, just found out by chance. I may give it a shot, it does sound like my type of game.

Good reviews on Steam. Has anyone played it?

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...layed-in-ages/

The name undersells it. It implies a trading game, but the titular Star Trader just refers to any independent spaceship operator in this universe. Trade is one of many career options, and each can be dabbled in as you see fit. Even this is handled in a different way to comparable games. It’s somewhere between a strategy game and a party-based RPG, but without the tedious babysitting and micromanagement of either.
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Ships too can be customised enormously. Components are split based by size, not function, so ships aren’t confined to particular roles. Not doing much with your cargo space? Rip out two of those medium-sized cargo spaces and replace them with a targeting module and a brig. Now you can take on prisoner exchange or bounty hunting jobs. Maybe replace that small missile launcher you never use with a navigation doodad to improve fuel efficiency. It’s all yours.
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Aside from your own story, there are plot missions that are optional, yet if ignored might proceed without you. After many, many piratical hours I was pleasantly surprised to get wind of a galaxy-changing event instigated by a character I’d briefly worked with five years earlier. Oh, did I mention that NPCs all have personality traits, rivalries, and friendships that affect the types of mission they offer? I still feel like I’ve barely explained the game to you.
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It really comes to something intangible. Star Traders feels like having space adventures. As a pirate I was the scourge of Steel Song sectors, extorting and ransoming freely with a nigh indomitable ship, the Night Minx, and a crew of elite specialists. The Minx was a mid-range hull but I’d adapted it specifically for my needs – minimal cargo but an array of missiles and beams specially selected to cripple systems. Passenger modules replaced with boarding-boosters and fuel tanks for those long journeys home (locals closed their ports? Screw ’em! Blockade the planet and siphon fuel off your victims). My bunks were packed to the rafters with gunners who rapidly reduced anything to a misfiring, leaking ball of fire and dead or terrified mooks, and a variety of experts adept at cannibalising defeated foes for repair parts. I was an absolutely terrifying bitch queen and I loved it, but a practical, piratical one. A sanctioned privateer in some cases, thanks to my astronomical reputation back at home.
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Happily though, it’s still in Early Access, and updates are regular and well communicated. I’m very excited to see what else will be added but as things stand, Star Traders: Frontiers is already the best time I’ve had in space for a very long time.

[Bee]

Just bought it. Looks like the kind of game I like as well. Thanks for posting about it!

B

[Edward64]

Let us know how you like it.

[bulletsponge]

space pirates? sold!

[MizzouRah]

I purchased it awhile back and haven't really dug into it yet since it's EA, but I plan to fire it up again soon.

[Edward64]

FWIW, here's what they are saying about it on reddit.

Star Traders: Frontiers - a hidden sandbox, turn based RPG gem I've found recently. : Games

I'll start by saying that you should definitely try this game, Star Traders Frontiers is a sandbox, turn based RPG, somewhat similar to Sid Meier's Pirates in some way, featuring a completely open gameplay in a procedurally generated galaxy.

The game is still in early access but the developers are putting out updates faster than I've ever seen in an early access game, and I haven't really encountered any game breaking bugs, my experience was quite smooth and bug-free in general. The developers also seem quite easy to interact, truly interacting with the community. It's quite rare really! (And trust me, I have played a lot of early access games!)

You play as a fresh "Star Trader", a captain of a ship, you start with creating a character by either choosing one of the default templates or create your own, selecting your starting profession(Merchant, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy, Bounty Hunter, and more!), select your skills and attributes, as well as your starting ship and contacts you know at the start. Then you create your map, select your faction and choose the difficulty setting...Oh the difficulty! There's quite a few difficulty settings with custom difficulty setting comming very soon!(At the time of writing this) The game can be quite brutal, especially on Hard and above as that's when permadeath becomes a thing. After you select all that, your adventure begins!

The gameplay features various possibilities, you can fly from world to world, trading goods as a merchant, you could explore wilderness, you can spy, blockade or patrol around a planet, (Which is done via a simple rng-ish, card minigame) or you could focus on the game's story although that will still be expanded as the development progresses.

The contacts that inhabit the world will give you various missions which reward money and reputation(Which is required for trade permits, ranks etc), plus can influence a conflict between the factions.

Believe it or not, I'm playing Fallout New Vegas right now. I finished FO4 but never played the FO3 NV and am at level 15 (so quite a ways to go). I may have to pause NV and check this out. Bee, let us know what you think.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm gonna have a tough time not thinking of this with every mention of the game

Spoiler tagged for oversized pic

Spoiler

[Umbrella]

Usually I buy games based on recommendations, but this one I just bought on a whim yesterday, so I was surprised to see this post.

I haven't played it a ton yet. It looks interesting, but there really isn't a tutorial, so the first space battle I had, I got my head handed to me since I didn't know what I was doing. Luckily, they include a link to a wiki page that has some help. But I still don't understand a lot of it.

One of the things I'm trying to figure out is reputation. You get reputation (good or bad) with all of the factions in the game. The faction you belong to starts with positive reputation, but I can't figure out how to get reputation with other clans. Almost all the encounters I have involve their ships, and if I avoid battle, my reputation goes down, but if I fight them, it also goes down. Then, because my reputation is negative, whenever I meet them, they don't like me, and from there it snowballs.

That all being said, it certainly looks hopeful. I like that you can choose your style to be anything from a peaceful trader to a full on space pirate. The storyline is somewhat meh to me, but it is still in early access, so I think there is still room for improvement there.

[Warhammer]

It is the next version of Star Traders RPG Elite which was a very good sandbox type game. I played the heck out of it on my iPad. Actually seeing this made me re-download it.

[Bee]

I'm having a good time with the game so far. I'm only 5 hours in but I'm pretty happy with the purchase. There's tons of information and options. You could easily spend hours just messing around with reviewing the crew since you start with 30 folks and they each have their own skills, talents, background, etc. The options on refitting the ship is also pretty extensive I haven't gotten into that very deep yet, but there seems to be a lot to take in and digest. There are two types of combat (ship and crew combat). Ship combat is based on using crew talents mixed with action points to move closer or further from the enemy and to use weapons (ideally at optimal range). The crew combat is basically a simplified version of Darkest Dungeon.

As Umbrella mentioned, the reputation thing is a little odd. It can be difficult developing positive reputation with more than one faction. I suspect that you probably need to do missions for various factions if you want to keep a balanced approach. Reputation is also used as almost a currency to purchase things like permits to trade restricted goods or military promotions, etc.

Overall though I am enjoying the game quite a bit. There is a lot of information and options in the game that could be overwhelming for some players and that information is not communicated very well through the UI. I'm going to check out the wiki and see if that helps explain things a little more and I think I will probably start a new game as my current character is pretty much hated by everyone outside of my own faction.

[whomario]

Thanks for the recommendation, going to the top of the list of things to get/play after i get done working throught my old list of things to play that keep gathering virtual dust in my library (writing an 80 page thesis kinda put everything else on the backburner ...)

seriously, this sound intriguing

[Warhammer]

I cannot speak to frontiers, but their previous game, it was virtually impossible without paying extreme attention to quests to keep every faction happy. You could fight aliens in the other game which would help, but they were late game and extremely hard to fight.

Also, pay attention to rumors as they give leads about what you can find in sectors. Their games do a very good job of this.

[BishopMVP]

Picked this one up last night. Definitely a mistake not waiting until tonight as I had to work at 8am! I'm certainly in over my head in parts and I don't know how deep the storylines go, but very polished and fleshed out for EA & had zero bugs in 5 hours or so of gameplay.

Re: factions maybe you want to play as a super trader and just have everyone kind of like you, but I think having some factions dislike you is an inevitable and good part of the gameplay. I was following the Steel Song starting storyline, it immediately put me at odds with another faction, but I haven't had a problem keeping most others fairly neutral with either bribes or retreats from combat instead of engaging. Even the faction who hates me and closed its spaceports to me isn't that big a problem once I realized there are still Steel Song (and 3rd party) planets in the sector(s) they control.

There are a bunch of other things I'm learning as I go. For instance, on crew combat, it seems whether someone is "a fighter" is much less important than their initiative rating, so I wish I could just sort by that (and for future officers I'll be pushing ones with high initiative into fighting roles ... I also saw mention of promoting regular crew to officers, though I haven't done that yet.) In Ship Combat I kept blowing up ships and rarely capturing them even as a Pirate, and I guess the way to capture more cargo/fuel is by repeated boarding actions (I couldn't figure out why the ship wasn't surrendered after 1 successful action, but I guess you usually need to do it multiple times to get their crew's Pilot/Ship Ops points below 5.)

Fwiw, I'm also playing on Normal difficulty, which has been relatively wasy, but probably good as I still learn game mechanics. I also tend to ignore that event log, so I didn't even notice initially the one time a couple crew members deserted after a hard run - maybe there is a way like in Crusader Kings/EU to pick & choose what events show up in the log or give a couple pop-up notifications. With all the various crew bonuses it can certainly catch you off guard if a couple people in the same job desert before you notice.

[Warhammer]

If it is like the previous game, you need to board multiple times to get their crew low enough to allow you to capture the ship. Make sure you have enough cargo space to store the goods, I have frequently made the mistake of capturing a ship only to not have enough cargo room to take any of it.

The difficulty of the previous game ramped up based upon the years passed in game. Different difficulties put the other ships behind you by 15/35%, you could maintain your advantage by completing missions, etc., but you did eventually get passed up.

The rumors in the spice halls were important, if you got a treasure fleet sighted at X, there were a bunch of merchants there for the next period of time. If you found there was a plague, that would cause prices to fall in that sector for some time.

The old one also had a conflict table, if there was a conflict between two entities, there was another tag that denoted the type of conflict. If you provided goods of a type, you got 2x the reputation with one faction and lost reputation with the rival faction. For example a spy war, you received bonus rep if you traded the records commodity with one of the associated factions. You could generate records by spying on a planet while in orbit. Electronics would help your spying efforts. Depending upon your ship, you might be intercepted and inspected for contraband, a good stealthy ship would be intercepted less. Spy contracts would be given out by those factions that were at war,and the Rychart Syndicate tended to give them out a bit regardless of their status.

[Alarat]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

I cannot speak to frontiers, but their previous game, it was virtually impossible without paying extreme attention to quests to keep every faction happy. You could fight aliens in the other game which would help or see https://suppsforlife.to, but they were late game and extremely hard to fight.

yep, that's true. in fact, to be honest, i liked the fact that it iwas virtually impossible without paying extreme attention due to the fact that lately it seems that everything's too easy. this made it a bit *special*. just my opinion tho.

[Coffee Warlord]

I'm digging the hell out of this game. Put a few hours into it last night, getting a feel for things.

[Umbrella]

The more I dig into this, the better it seems. I've been playing as a merchant, and have discovered that you can still trade during a trade ban as long as it isn't one of the factions involved, and your reputation doesn't take a hit. Also, doing patrols on their planets is a good way to increase reputation with other factions.

Finally, bribes. These are a lifesaver. Continue to bribe an enemy ship until they let you leave with no reputation hit. It doesn't work with pirates though. If you don't want to fight, you can surrender. They will steal all your cargo, but as long as you don't have any, the only penalty is a morale hit to your crew. Same with military ships. If you aren't carrying any contraband or fugitives, you can surrender to them without any major issues.

[Coffee Warlord]

Surrender to pirates and uppity military officers? NEVER!

[Edward64]

Good to see there is good feedback so far.

Hoping this will be a gem to satisfy my Pirates & Space Ranger cravings.

[Coffee Warlord]

Of course, this game IS making me autistic as far as restarting and carefully crafting my crew, talents, and officer job selections.

[Warhammer]

Bah, now I've picked it up and spent most of my free time playing today....

[Edward64]

Bought it and played it a couple hours to understand the basic mechanics.

I'll spend more time on it but tbh, not feeling the love just yet.

[Ramzavail]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Bought it and played it a couple hours to understand the basic mechanics.

I'll spend more time on it but tbh, not feeling the love just yet.

can you elaborate? I'm on the fence about the game and I'm curious about why you ain't feelin the love

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

Of course, this game IS making me autistic as far as restarting and carefully crafting my crew, talents, and officer job selections.

Heh, yeah pretty much. For playing the way I do (as a Pirate who likes to board and capture ships) I think it's key to make every officer one of the fighting options as one of their 3 jobs since they have such higher initiative, then adding a few extra swordsmen or soldiers who you can rotate each fighting round when they absorb some damage. The Level 5/8 talents are nice, and I'm wondering if there are higher levels or if there is a way to put Doctor's or Combat Medics in the mix enough to make near unstoppable groups even with perma-death on. (I also recommend upgrading that weapons locker quickly - once you can start one shot killing crew members who show up wounded to fights you can really clean up the later boarding rounds after the fighters/officers on their side are killed.)

I've also spread out my other officer talents among the things like Diplomats, Merchants, etc, that really get some useful talents when they level up, and leave all the flying/operating stuff to regular crew. Getting a captain or couple officers with the Commander trait (I think) so they can talk a couple people back into staying on is really helpful too, and can help prevent a big gap from showing up out of nowhere.

Speaking of that, I do wish they had a system like EU/CK where you could have certain notifications - like members of the crew leaving when you enter port - as pop up notifications instead of just showing up in that log.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Ramzavail

can you elaborate? I'm on the fence about the game and I'm curious about why you ain't feelin the love

Keep in mind I've just played a couple hours (playing FO3 right now) and a couple of my top 10 games are Space Rangers and Pirates.

It feels very "mechanical" to me. There's not a sense of "sailing" or "traveling" through space. Its done automatically for you when you press "navigate" button and you see your ship go from one system to another.

Haven't quite figured out combat yet with the card system. I was able to beat one ship pretty easily and I couldn't get away from a stronger opponent.

Haven't gotten into upgrading ships or trading yet.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Keep in mind I've just played a couple hours (playing FO3 right now) and a couple of my top 10 games are Space Rangers and Pirates.

It feels very "mechanical" to me. There's not a sense of "sailing" or "traveling" through space. Its done automatically for you when you press "navigate" button and you see your ship go from one system to another.

Haven't quite figured out combat yet with the card system. I was able to beat one ship pretty easily and I couldn't get away from a stronger opponent.

Haven't gotten into upgrading ships or trading yet.

For ranges 4-5 navigation skill is very important to escape or avoid damage. For ranges 1-3 the pilot skill comes to the fore. Electronics helps at all ranges as well.

If you want to look for fights, the best thing to do is blockade or patrol above a planet.

[Edward64]

Okay, I've played this some more and its starting to grow on be and definitely see potential.

I will say there is too much clicking going on for the "dialog", I think this can easily be fixed but I don't see too many complaints about this in the forum.