Star Traders: Frontiers
Cheat Codes:
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Submitted by: David K.
Crew Management:
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Written by DaDiarra
This guide will help new players understand the ins-and-outs of Crew Management,
what is killing your crew and causing them to leave, and how to fix it.
-=Intro=-
One of the key dynamics of Star Traders Frontiers is managing your crew. A Captain's
crew are both an incredible blessings and an incredible curse if you can't keep them
happy. It is possible though, to get to a place where you really don't need to spend
a lot of time worrying about them, except in combat and occasional emergencies.
Generally, at the beginning of a game you are going to need to invest more time and
effort in keeping them safe and happy, but as the game progresses you will spend less
and less time worrying about them.
Avoiding Physical and Morale Damage to Your Crew
In crew management, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Understanding
what's making your crew unhappy and avoiding it is crucial to early survival.
-=Ship Operation=-
The biggest source of damage to your crew will come from the regular events you will
encounter when flying through space. Yes, in this game, just flying from one planet
to another is dangerous. There are meteors, waves of radiation, equipment failures,
personality clashes and more that tax your crew's physical and emotional health.
These dangerous events are displayed in the scrolling box on the bottomish right
when flying through space. It is very important to pay attention to this box and
get to a point where you are passing 95%-100% of those test. The two ways of passing
these tests are increasing you crew's skill pools or getting Talents that will
Auto-Save some of those tests. Early, you'll probably need a combination of the two.
Watch that box carefully and you'll know what skills and saves you most need to
invest in.
To get some idea of what those tests are doing:
* Combat and Intimidate tests tend to damage crew morale
* Ship Ops, Repair, Navigation and Pilot tests tend to damage the ship
* Doctor, Tactics and Ship Ops can damage crew HP
Lastly, if you see a sudden spike in unpassed tests and really crippling effects,
it's possible that you may be traveling in a quadrant that has a Radiation Storm.
If you've discovered the rumor it will be displayed in the Event Log. If you see
this, or suspect it, get the heck out of that quadrant. Radiation Storms cannot be
handled without large numbers of crew with Radiation Storm mitigation Talents.
Even then, it's best to avoid spending much time one.
-=Ship Combat=-
It's pretty obvious that combat will damage your crew, what is not so obvious is that
it will also damage your morale. Lets be honest, nobody likes to be terribly maimed,
burned or see their crew-mate get plastered to a bulkhead. Even taking a few torpedos
as you flee from a pirate can have a significant effect on crew health and morale.
So the best thing, obviously, is to avoid combat as much as possible, especially
early on. Even a Captain who is focused on combat shouldn't be fighting every ship
they come across while flying to the fights they really want to pick. It may be hard
at first, but you need to learn to SURRENDER. Yes, you may have $4,000 worth of goods
in your hold, but it's going to cost much more than that to fix your ship and crew
and train up some level 1 crew to replace those level 8 crew you lost.
-=Lesser Sources=-
Ship operations and ship combat are generally the biggest culprits when it comes to
HP and Morale loss. They should be the Captain's primary concern early on. There are
other sources though, which need keeping an eye on. The first is probably keeping
your crew paid. The morale penalty for not paying your crew is not actually that
severe, in the short term, but it gets worse if you put it off. If you pay crew every
time you land it is unlikely that you will suffer significant morale loss from this
quarter. The only time not to pay is really only if you don't have any cash or
absolutely have to patch up your ship first.
Morale can also be lost be lost through all of the Operations: Spying, Blockading,
Patrolling, Exploring and trying to access a Black Market. The Black Market can be
the worst as even attempting it will cause any crew with the Rigidly Lawful Trait
to lose Morale. The good thing about Black Markets though, is that when you come
out, you'll already be planet side. No crew will abandon until you land at another
planet, and unless your crew has already snarfed up all the spice, you can normally
patch things up before leaving.
Some crew will have Traits that will cause them to lose Morale for other reasons.
Generally these are not major sources of loss and can be managed by trips to the
Spice Hall. It might be worth considering whether it's not just easier to dismiss
such crew and find someone better suited to your Captain's preferred activities.
Recovering from Physical and Morale Damage
Keep an Eye on the Status Bar
So, while you're doing your best to mitigate crew HP and Morale damage, you're also
going to have to know how to patch things up when they go south. The best way to
know exactly where things stand with your ship and crew is to keep an eye on the
status bar. In terms of crew, the 3rd and 4th boxes from the left are the most
important. The heart icon tells you how many crew you have below 60 health. That's
considered dangerously low, because one more bad event could knock them out.
The 4th box, with the exclamation mark tells you how many crew have dangerously
low Morale, below 50. These crew might abandon ship when landing or worse,
Mutiny! Ideally, you want to keep every box in this bar empty, except for the
leftmost and maybe the second from right.
-=Spice Halls=-
If the crew has several low Morale members, then the best idea is to get them to a
Spice Hall. For severely demoralized crew, go to an Independent world or a world
with very low Zone ratings, as the crew does not want to be left behind in the
backwaters of the galaxy. Next, head to a world that is not of your Faction that
has a good Spice Hall, as the crew does not want to be left among a different
Faction either. Paying the crew in the Spice Hall will also increase their Morale.
If you are struggling with Morale it is often worth it to go to a planet with a
high Spice Hall rating (8, 9, 10). These ratings determine how much morale they
can give your crew, so if you're only visiting 4, 5, 6 planets you're probably
running chronically low on morale.
-=Doctors=-
Like paying your crew, healing wounded crew every time you land in a zone is
probably the best idea. Leaving crew unhealed makes it that much easier for them
to die in the next Deep Space Event. If you're not landing naturally at planets
with Doctors, you should go out of your way to find one. You can see if a zone
has a doctor from the bandaid icon next to the system on the Quadrant map.
-=Extreme Measures=-
Sometimes you know that you have a lot of unhappy crew on your ship and that
there will be a wave of abandonments as soon as you touch down. If you want to
avoid that, there are a few ways to recover morale before landing, though they
are not without their dangers. They all revolve around using specific talents
that can increase morale.
-=Get in a "Fight"=-
Furious Prodding (Pirate 1), Incite Victory (MO 11), Overriding Disicipline
(MO 8), Rallying Cry (QM 5), Solace in Battle (Doctor 11) and Steady Hands
(Commander 1) are all ship combat talents that improve morale to a greater or
lesser extent. So if you happened to get into combat, say with a friendly ship
who didn't shoot at you, you could use these talents in "combat" to fix some
morale.
-=Get in a real fight=-
Loyalty Rousing (Commander 1) increases morale if you win a ship battle. So if
you found a weak enough ship to fight, you might attack it, use the above
talents in battle and Loyalty Rousing at the end.
-=Let a Mutiny happen=-
Military Discipline (MO 8), Lethal Example (Pirate 8), Quell Mutiny (Commander 5)
and Voice of Reason (Doctor 8) end mutinies and restore some morale to crew.
If you've got a very unhappy crew, but you've got some of these talents, you
are probably better off flying around until you get a mutiny and then using
one of them to end it.
Map Seed Guide for New Players:
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Written by Tomcat
This is a map seed with a short guide on what to do get you on track.
Descriptions on why this is an easy map seed is included. Can play any
difficulty and help you get those unlocks easier.
-=The map seed=-
st-v02-12-2-191527120
Copy the above and then go into game under making a new map and press the
paste button.
What Faction Am I Playing and Why?
You will play as Moklunme.
This faction starts at a really low danger rating.
I think it was 4 the last time I saw.
Your rival faction is De Valtos. Both controlled sectors are low danger
rating and is just 1 jump away in either direction.
Accessing the Arbiter later on is also only jump away.
You can entirely ignore the top portion of the map until you've grinded
enough in your little corner on the south.
Why Else Is Moklumne So Good?
As of this writing, I'm convinced they are the easiest faction to play the
starting portion of the game as a mission runner.
-=Targeting Matrix (Moklumne's version)=-
First off, you have access to Moklumne's Targeting Matrix which can pretty
much negate the need for gunners due to the accuracy bonus. Sure Cadar's does
more damage but this requires less obstacles to get the hits happening.
Of course, you probably want to start off as a boarding ship when you are
combat ready but those components are there when you are ready to transition.
Azure Defender (Pre built faction boarding ship with Defense matrix added)
Second thing about Moklumne is that their faction specific ship, the Azure
Defender, is priced under 1 mil. It is already kitted out with Javat Defense
Matrix and has boarding prow on it.
You can literally just fly it immediately. It's unlike other ships where you
have bad components to replace before their defense dice can be a match.
I've just made a run on impossible on this map with the Longbolt. The only
thing I've replaced are the weapons to make room for passenger rooms. Not even
the weapons locker was changed. The Azure Defender is cheap enough where you
can just chance it by just relying on military officers recruited from the FDF.
How did my run go? Well my sword captain ended up with range damage traits
and some other wild shenanigans. But it's doing just fine.
You should get a Sword Battlecruiser once the money is coming in from the Duel
of Assassins prisoner missions that Faen will give after Valencia leaves.
Then you are pretty much smooth sailing from here. Especially with Moklumne's
awesome Targeting Matrix providing your with Offensive accuracy bonuses and
Defensive electronics dice.
How to Take Ships Intact Using One Weapon (Works on Impossible):
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Written by Leximancer
A simple guide on how to win ship combat using weapons without destroying the
enemy ship. This is useful for a variety of reasons in game.
For my purposes, I was working on the Small Ship to Prize Ship community challenge
and wanted to list out my strategy so that I wouldn’t forget things in the middle
of the run.
-=Weapon Choice=-
Two real choices here. Missiles or Plasma Cannons. We want to do primarily radiation
damage to the enemy because that will damage the crew & components without blowing
up the ship. The wiki has some info on this (and most of the material in this guide)
so I won’t be going into gritty detail of combat mechanics here.
You only need to fire ONCE each turn to apply a talent effect. More shots will do
more damage (and potentially apply additional crippling effects) but you can only
use one talent per turn, and more damage from more shots each turn will increase
the risk of a hull breach making this strategy less likely to keep the ship intact.
Missiles hit with radiation damage by default, and 2/3 of their crippling effects
help our strategy. They’re effective at range 3-5, with crippling effects: Electrical
Fire which causes +20 crew & component dmg/turn, and Secondary Explosions which
cause -20% armor (not so good for us,) -10 Escape, and -20 Radiation Resist (fantastic
for us.) The 3rd effect, Crew Stunned, is also fine causing -20 boarding, -20%
accuracy, -20% defense, and -10 range change.
Plasma Cannons also do radiation damage, and their crippling effects are helpful
too, though they are effective at range 2-4, and can’t be used at range 5. This means
that you have at least one movement turn where they can’t fire in every combat.
I am going to write this guide for missiles only, because if you’re getting into
Plasma Cannon range reliably boarding is a better strategy, and configuring the
ship to operate at range 4-5 is easier than configuring it to get to range 3 or
closer and stay there. However, Plasma Cannons work just fine with this strategy
as well.
As for size, it doesn’t really matter. Small weapons will take longer because of
the way that radiation damage multipliers work, but they’re also safer because of
the way that hull damage multipliers work. I have done this strategy with both
medium and large slot missiles and never had a ship explode on me in over 600
combats. It CAN happen. There is no 100% certainty in this game. The way that dice
work, you can sometimes roll significantly higher or lower than you usually do,
especially with larger dice pools. For most purposes, the risk of a 1 in a million
ship exploding won’t matter too much; you can loot the other 999,999.
-=Other Ship Components=-
In order to take a ship intact we have to make sure that we have time to implement
our strategy by taking no (or very little) damage, and that the enemy can’t get
away. Again, I’m not going to go into gritty mechanical details here, but these
are what work.
Use high defense components to avoid taking hits:
* Defense Pattern Matrixes (level 3 or 4)
This is the only critical component aside from your weapon. Other components can
be selected as needed to reach the recommended dice pools in the next section.
Get as many as you can fit. I recommend 6, but no less than 5. Note that level 4 can
only be obtained from Javat starports. With 5 of these you will still often need
talents active to avoid damage, and even at 6 you may need talents to avoid damage
sometimes. I personally aim to fit 7, because I prefer defensive talents to only be
backups. Remember: any time you take a hit, crew can die… dead crew immediately
reduces your dice pools, available talents, and overall effectiveness. It’s also
expensive and timely to repair. While there are strategies that can help with the
repair problem, it’s still better to just not get hit.
-=Dice Pool Targets=-
If you don’t know, ship combat dice pools are determined by a combination of your
ship components and your crew. Dice pools are important for basically everything
in this game and I’m not going to go into their mechanics in detail. For this guide
I’ll be talking about dice pools that are important for ship combat ONLY. For
completing missions, or surviving in space outside of ship combat, you will need
to develop dice pools beyond what I list here, but that is outside the scope of
this guide.
A little about how dice work and caps:
Most ship combat dice pools are capped by the total value of your ship components.
Sometimes multiple values will be used for a roll, and one of those values will be
more likely to succeed than another. Importantly, uncapped dice are *not* limited
by the value of your ship components. This means that the total value of your
crew’s stats for that pool will contribute to their relevant rolls, and you don’t
need ship components to increase their effectiveness as your crew’s stats improve.
You can see your ship dice pools by pressing hotkey ‘S’ on the main screen. Most
of them will look like this: Pilot [27/24]. The number on the LEFT (in this case
27) is how much your crew is contributing. The number on the RIGHT (in this case
24) is the value that is capped by your ship components. After this is a bar in
black/blue/yellow, and a %. That’s just showing you the ratio of the numbers before.
The important thing here is that you can’t get any further benefit from a stat
once your crew is contributing 200% or more of the ship components. So at that
point you either need to upgrade components or consider replacing crew to raise a
different stat.
Ship size affects dice pool rolls so a small ship will have different targets than
a large ship. I’m going to list very rough targets for a medium ship (M6000) on
impossible difficulty. You may find that you need more or less depending on ship
size and difficulty. Note that it is possible to fail any roll, but it becomes a
lot less likely as you roll more dice.
To figure out how much you actually need, you need to know this: if you’re rolling
about 25% more dice than your opponent, you are extremely likely to succeed. You
can see your rolls vs opponent rolls during combat by checking the log, which is
the best way to know whether you are close to your target.
-=Rough targets on impossible with a medium M6000 / mid-game ship:=-
* Command dice pool from crew as high as possible. Aim for around 100. Command dice
are *uncapped* by ship components. They help with defense. They also help with
escaping if needed, and with boarding if you’re doing that.
* Tactics dice pool from crew as high as possible. Aim for around 70. Tactics dice
are *uncapped.* They help with accuracy when attacking and changing range.
They also help with boarding if you’re doing that.
* Electronics components to around 70, and crew to 200% of that. They help with
defense and changing range. They also help with escaping if needed.
* Pilot components to around 70, and crew to 200% of that. They help with defense,
short range accuracy and changing range. They also help with boarding if you’re
doing that.
* Navigation components to around 50, and crew to 200% of that. They help with
long range accuracy and changing range. They also help with escaping if needed,
and boarding in certain edge cases.
-=Talents=-
Talents are going to enable a lot of what we’re trying to do. Here I will give a
brief description of some notable talents for this strategy categorized by how
they help. Later, I will talk about when and how to use them. You won’t need to
have all of these, but you are going to want some from each category. Especially
good talents for their category are marked with (!!) to help identify them. You
won’t need to worry about carriers in the early game, but it’s not a bad idea to
plan ahead, and I’ve marked talents that are useful for enemy carriers as well.
Some talents that do similar things are not listed here. They have been left off
*for good reasons.* In most cases, the ignored talents do something that we don’t
want (like increasing damage to enemy hulls) so we don’t want to use them if
we’re trying to take a ship intact. In some cases, they were left off because
their effect is particularly weak relative to other options, or hurt our own ship
which we don’t want, though it can be an option with more advanced strategies.
Some talents are listed multiple times. That’s because they have an effect that
fits into more than one category and is worth mentioning in that category.
-=For Defense=-
* Commander 1’s Steady Hands
* Gun Boss 1’s Point Defense (vs carriers)
* Gun Boss 11’s Flak Attack (vs carriers)
* Gunner 1’s Bombardment
* Gunner 1’s Elusive Barrage
* Pilot 1’s Evasive Maneuvers (!!)
* Pirate 5’s Barrel Roll (!!)
* E-tech 8’s Vigilant Scanners (!!)
-=To improve radiation damage, crew damage, and component (NOT hull) damage=-
* Crew Dog 8’s Engine Lockdown (+rad, !!)
* Crew Dog 11’s Veteran Clarity (+crit)
* Gundeck Boss 11’s Flak Attack (-shield)
* Gunner 1’s Raking Fire (-shield)
* Pilot 1’s Guided Fire (+crit)
-=To reduce our own hull damage, preserving the enemy ship=-
* Commander 15’s Warning Shots (!!)
* Pirate 5’s Barrel Roll (!!)
-=To hit enemies with high defenses=-
* E-tech 8’s Vigilant Scanners (!!)
* Pilot 1’s Guided Fire
* Pirate 5’s Acrobatic Dive (!!)
-=To prevent enemies from running away (mostly an issue turn 1-2)
and keep them in weapon’s range:=-
* Commander 15’s Warning Shots
* Gunner 1’s Elusive Barrage
* Gunner 8’s Scattershot (!!)
* Navigator 5’s Perfected Approach (!!)
* Pilot 1’s Sharp Steering
* Pilot 8’s Devastating Shot
* Pilot 11’s Forward Thrusters
* Pirate 1’s Acrobatic Dive
* Pirate 11’s Disabling Approach (!!)
-=Special Mentions=-
* Pilot 5’s Twitch Surge (!!)Navigator 15’s Flash Charge (!!)
Twitch Surge is especially useful turn 1 vs Merchants and Smugglers, as it can
prevent them from escaping (which they will always try to do turn 1.) This is
the reason I usually keep a couple pilots around.
Flash Charge does *work.* It puts you in range to use Barrel Roll immediately on
turn 1, which can eliminate the need to run Pilots at all. It guarantees the
enemy can’t escape turn 1, which buys you time to stack crippling effects. It
takes you out of range of certain enemys’ optimal range, which can massively
reduce their accuracy. It can put you in range 3 on turn 1, and reliably turn 2
with Twitch Surge, which means that some enemies with lower engine Agility and/or
lower Navigation dice will have a much harder time range changing against you.
Both of those also help with boarding, though that strategy isn’t covered in depth
here. It has a long cool-down, but with experience you’ll know when is a good time
to use it.
-=Crew Selection=-
This is mostly contrived by looking at the talents we want and the dice pools
we’re aiming for. This is much like the ship dice pool targets: a very rough idea
of a composition that will get you there. Many variations will work. Mostly pay
attention to your dice pools to figure out your crew, and remember that you
still have to survive in space travel, missions, and crew combat to finish the
game!
Baseline:
* 2-3+ Commanders (can be replaced by Military Officers)
* 3+ Crew Dogs
* 1 Gundeck Boss
* 2-3 Gunners
* 2-3 Navigators
* 1-3 Pilots (can be replaced by Pirates)
* 4+ Pirates
* 4+ E-techs (can be replaced by Spies)
The + areas are where you’ll want to add crew to fill out your dice pools. The
low numbers are soft “minimums” that will help you have the talents and dice pools
you need to get through cleanly. The numbers with maximum values are meant to
indicate that you usually won’t gain huge benefits from adding more of that type.
Military Officers are listed because they’re usually much easier to recruit than
Commanders, for this strat I like Commanders a lot more if I can find them. Spies
will be preferred over E-techs for those who are using boarding strategies. I
usually keep a couple pilots on staff just for Evasive Maneuvers, since Barrel
Roll can’t be used on turn 1 without Flash Charge which might be on cool-down,
plus enemies can retreat and it’s nice to have an option at the ‘most common’
combat range.
-=Putting It All Together: Actual Combat=-
You fire one missile every turn. As mentioned previously this will let you apply
a ship talent plus crippling weapon effects. Fire even if you’re not using a talent,
because multiple instances of those crippling effects stack with themselves.
Your ship combats combats will usually start with a defensive talent. If you aren’t
familiar enough with the enemy type you’re facing to know that they can’t hit you in
a reasonable universe, then the safe bet is to throw down a Pilot’s Evasive Maneuvers
turn 1.
So, turn one: fire your weapon, throw down Evasive Maneuvers, move closer. If you’re
against a smuggler or a merchant, they will try to retreat turn 1 and won’t shoot,
so in that case you can use a different talent to get closer (Pilot’s Twitch Surge
guarantees they can’t escape that turn.)
From here, you want to start disabling the enemy ship. You want to stay at range 4
as much as possible, so move as needed to do that. You will automatically roll against
the enemy to STAY at range 4 if you’re already there, so no need to move in that case.
You fire your weapon every turn. So that covers weapons and movement.
For talents, I can’t really make a flow chart here so here’s basic conditional advice,
mostly in order of importance:
* If the enemy hit you last turn, give yourself a defensive boost. If not, go to next.
* If the enemy nearly succeeded at retreating (check log or use personal experience)
and your weapons hit them, use a talent that reduces their escape and/or range change.
If not, go to next.
* If you miss your first shot, give yourself an accuracy boost. If not, go to next.
* If the enemy hull took a lot of damage from your first shot, use a damage that
reduces your hull damage.
If not, go to next.
* If you’re worried that their attack rolls seem to be getting results that are
pretty close to your defense rolls (in the log,) you can use a defensive boost.
If not, go to next.
* Everything is going well. If you want, increase your radiation damage by using
something like Crew Dog’s Engine Lockdown. Otherwise, you can just repeat what
you’re doing until the enemy surrenders or everyone on board dies leaving you
free to loot the poor bloody husk of a ship.
-=Outro=-
There are pros and cons to doing ship combat this way. This isn’t the only way to win
ship combat on any difficulty, it’s not the fastest way to win ship combat in general.
However, it *is* in my experience the fastest way to take a ship intact, and that is
the niche this guide is trying to fill.
The biggest benefit to doing combat this way is that you can guarantee intact ships
and from a component and crew standpoint, it is relatively simple to set up. Only
needing one weapon frees up slots for other things. Most of the crew that you’ll be
using is crew you already want anyway.
The biggest drawback to doing combat this way is similar to boarding: it’s slower
than just blowing them up. One advantage of this way over boarding is that, in my
experience and opinion, it is *much faster* than boarding, even though it can be
slower than just blowing them up with a couple grav cannons. Another drawback is
that boarding grants your combat crew experience which might matter if you’re trying
to level your combat crew on harder difficulties (since every ship combat will
result on an average of around 6 crew combats if you’re boarding.)
When I started doing this strategy there wasn’t a lot of info on how to make it
work in a way that was easily readable without going through hours of wiki data
and finding scattered pieces of information on the discord and forums. Most “keep
the ship intact” discussions revolve around boarding strategies.
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