I am one of the backers and have been part of the Alpha. I will be featuring a Let's Play series for this game at launch. It is a very fun game with lots of promise and will continue to get better with each update!
Alpha Phase 3 + Digital Artbook
Mighty Captains, Esteemed Backers, Loyal Crew …
So ... Phase 3 launched a while ago! The Alpha Team got P3 on June 20th and their Captains have been sailing across the new galaxies for over a month now. We’re hammering through the last major features required by the game and turning more and more of our attention to polish, gold plating, UX and closing gaps in play, balance and content.
Phase 3
The good news is this that while update is a bit late, Phase 3 has already been out there for a while! The new Phase was officially kicked off with the ability to buy new ships, dry dock ships, and upgrade ships in dry dock. This was a game changer, releasing Captains from a life sentence in the ship they first selected. We followed up by including the game’s soundtrack and the first set of SFX to liven up the experience.
This week, we’ll be release an update with a host of exciting new features. We’re adding Talent retraining to reduce Captain’s stress about making bad choices on learning Talents. We’ve also taken a card from the Cyber Knights playbook and started a major conversion of contact’s services into “ladders” -- progressions of increasing investment to increasing reward. These changes really blow the ceiling off what contacts can do for you if you are willing to work hard for them. Especially for Smugglers, the new Black Market ladder makes a huge difference in the profit margins you can reap as you get better and better access to the market’s mini-game. Across the board, recruiting crew from Contacts will be far more appealing and has the opportunity to provide higher level crew.
The other major area of progress that even the Alpha captains have not yet seen is the game’s rapidly growing story. Star Traders 2 has introduced a wealth of personal contacts you can meet, and through them you invited to join into the stories of the galaxy, both large and small. The choices you make, or don’t make, will ripple out through the galaxy and have impact on other story arcs. We’ve blurred the diagram belto avoid any potential spoilers, but below is one of the story diagrams representing a major arc. The red boxes are potential entry points.
Polishing the “First 20”
As we roll into next week’s update, we’re turning a corner and heading into the final stretch. We’re now dedicating hours every week to extra polish and love for the game’s first 20 minutes. These critical improvements will be important for all players but are notably required before we share the game with our marketing and launch team. Putting the game in this team’s hands is a big milestone on the road to launching, and we’re prepping for it now and hope to have the game to them in the first days of August.
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Phase 3, Release Prep, Rewards!
Many welcomes, Captains,
The Star Traders 2 alpha is drawing towards its conclusion and we are preparing the launchpad for its upcoming release. We are busy hammering through the (seemingly endless) polish list, preparing marketing materials and marching towards a goal of having the game ready for preliminary screenshots and trailers soon.
Phase 3 Update
While Phase 3 is not yet fully complete, it is progressing as planned. We are closing in on the final features for release to alpha testing (particularly around the ship designer and motivation engines). The recent balance and quality of life patches have been well received -- as we had hoped, they were inspired or directly suggested by the alpha team. Retraining Talents and Officer Job reset have been particularly successful and we’re working hard to improve the game with every round of alpha player feedback. One of the most important roles our alpha team plays is pointing out the rough spots that we, as developers who look at it daily, just don’t see cleary. For those insights, we thank you.
It seems crazy that we’ve been in alpha testing for seven entire months, but it just shows how much time it takes to get a game as complex as Star Traders 2 ready for prime time. Last week we've spent almost exclusively perfecting the balance, Talents, and more of the visuals in the crew and boarding combat. This week, we are digging in and increasing the network of connections for Rumors, Conflicts, Ranks, and Edicts throughout the entire game. Big days!
Next Step: Steam Early Access
As we knew it would be, the Alpha has been invaluable. It has given us a direct line into the challenges, wishes, and play styles of many Captains. Their insights have helped us zero in on the player experiences we want to further build the game around.
This is always how our small studio has always worked. From the original Star Traders to our latest title, Templar Battleforce, we are constantly working with and listening to our player community to drive updates, improvements, new content and better balance. If you’re on our forums or Steam discussion boards, you can see us there every single day, responded to basically every post. To fully realize Star Traders 2, we’ve decided to continue that tradition and launch the game into Steam early access.
When will the game go into Early Access?
We have a date set in early October to release Star Traders to Steam early access. Following our studio’s process, the game was always planned to launch to Steam first, and then after we would complete the mobile port and UX modifications to better support smaller screens. If you would like to change your reward to receive a Steam key instead of a copy of the game on another platform, please just reach out to us. For those players on mobile, you’ll get the game as soon as the mobile port can be completed and launched. Realistically considering the holidays, that will be sometime in 2018.
Why Early Access?
We plan to use early access as a platform to continue the two-way communication and feedback loop with a larger player community. The alpha has allowed us to work with hundreds of Captains playing the game, and early access will give us access to thousands of new data points to test the limits of the game’s balance, and we will use this input to further fine tune the political, character, and combat simulators. We know can be reservations about early access games, but we’re focused on releasing a well-built, solid and polished game experience right out of the gate.
What will be the state of the game at Early Access launch?
Star Traders will be majority feature complete when we launch to early access. As a sandbox game, there is already an immense depth of exciting and fun ways for your Captain and crew to find their way in the big world. We are not plan to add many major new features after early access launch. The early access period instead will allow us to perfect balance the game’s ship and crew combat, improve the map generation, and further study and improve the economic and political simulation and the role that contact’s play within the larger galaxy. As we progress through the early access phase, different sections of the game’s story will also become available for play. That said, plans often change
Approximately how long will the game be in Early Access?
Oh how many times we’ve regretted an ETA. We don’t know at this time, promising dates would be irresponsible. We expect it to be a number of months which can be counted on two hands (that is, 10 or less).
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
The game will offered at standard price during the Early Access period and we don’t anticipate its price to change after it transitions to full launch.
Launch Prep, Wallpaper Reward!
Many welcomes, Captains,
The final weeks are moving fast here at Trese Brothers HQ. The alpha team is putting the game through its final paces and the first story arcs were released for testing earlier this week. Our launch and marketing team has the game as well, and we’re firing on all cylinders to bring you Star Traders: Frontiers in mid October. Yes, you heard that correctlyWe finally landed on a name, surprise! Don’t worry, it is still the same awesome game. As we have been gazing out into the bright future of the Star Traders universe, we’ve decided we don’t want to start the counting game: ST 2 ... 3, 4, 10!!
For the next few weeks, it's going to be non-stop fast and furious like the pace of this crew combat! Be sure to stock your weapon lockers, Captains, because you don’t want to get caught without your boots on!
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Weaving Sandbox and Narrative
29 October - Trese Brothers
Greetings from the void, Captains!
As we ramp up for the launch of Star Traders: Frontiers, we are hard at work on meshing and improving the game’s narrative core and underlying sandbox. This is an area where we’ve received a lot of questions and we are excited to share our approach to weaving together a dynamic sandbox environment with multiple, progressing storylines.
Let’s try to get down to brass tacks and avoid the marketing jibber jabber.
A Mighty Sandbox
Star Traders: Frontiers is first and foremost an open world sandbox game full of dynamic actors and forces. In this sandbox, you have extensive freedom to run your ship and crew any way you want -- to be a spy, smuggler, pirate, loyal military officer, faction zealot or infamous criminal. You can explore, profit, terrorize, or be the champion of any faction you choose to craft your own destiny. As you navigate the world, your actions tie into a set of layered simulations -- political, economic, rumored events and personal goals. The major factions within the world vie on political and economic level and your allies and enemies are actors within those same simulations. These individual allies and enemies will work toward the larger faction goals but also strive to achieve their own personal goals.
A vignette storyline, crafted by a KickStarter backer - blurred to avoid spoilers
These actors need your help, just as you need the crucial services they offer, so you’ll find your Captain drawn into the larger dynamic context over and over again through these contacts. Each layer of the simulation will affect the others as it plays out -- economic pressures can cause conflicts, and conflicts can kill or empower contacts, and contacts can cause conflicts, economic shortages or pay fleets of privateers to harass their enemies. We’ve worked hard to ensure that the sandbox alone is a lively, ever-changing and fun galaxy in which to explore, plunder and battle.
A larger storyline wrapped around the start of an era - blurred to avoid spoilers
Narrative Eras
Our second goal was to infuse Frontiers with storylines that share the rich lore of the universe and to highlight how the Star Trader’s world, society, laws and technology are all going through times of radical change. These storylines will also include the Templar Knights, Zendu Arbiters and familiar faces from other games, like Templar Battleforce. The storylines will range from self-contained vignettes about human struggles to larger arcs involving quadrant-wide conflicts, shifts and catastrophes.
When we launch Frontiers into early access, we will have a small slice of the total story design ready and available in the game -- basically the first “era” of the storyline which will set up the other major arcs. Much more will be incoming as we build out toward the game’s full launch. Completing Early Access means finalizing the game’s storylines, vignettes (mid-length arcs with multiple choices and outcomes) and eras (major happenings with lots of angles and ways to get involved.) We will have the first 2 of 10 eras available when the game launches, and the first 5 vignettes in the game. Relying on the game’s underlying sandbox, all storylines are added using proc gen and are optional. They will resolve with or without your input once they start in the game based on the current state of the simulations.
One defining aspect is that even if you are following the storylines, you have to play the sandbox. You have to find ways to make money, survive, travel, and keep your head above water politically. You will need more allies than you gain through the storylines and as you play, the line between storyline and sandbox will continue to blur as the storyline contacts play in the simulation and have long-term goals as well.
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Thanks to everyone sharing questions, comments and their excitement about Frontiers upcoming launch! We're going to be very active and very busy during the EA phase, just as we have been through our multi-month alpha. We can't wait to open the galaxy up to all of you!
Probably yes.
