Trese Brothers Games (Star Traders: Frontiers and more)

I installed it on iPad. I’m not sure I have the brain power to wrap my head around something like this while sick but would like to try, any suggestions for getting going and how to not get overwhelmed?

I’d suggest just thinking of it is as a roguelike in the sense of don’t worry about failing and having to start over. There are many different ways to play, find one you enjoy. Piracy? Trader? Fighter? You get the idea. Learn by your failures, but relax and have fun in the sandbox.

I think the hardest thing is to know where to even start. I did the transport and official meeting, and that’s it thus far.

Let @tomchick help!

Thank you :)

I think Star Traders is possibly the best supported / developed / improved game ever post-release, and also the game that has survived longest on my own “must play this again” list with a corresponding install.

Yet I have tried, and failed, a few times now, to get back into the game. I am faced with two challenges. One is that I have forgotten most things I knew from playing the game quite a lot soon after release. Two is that a heckofalot has changed and been added since!

Fun game, wish it had better graphics and less crew

Why do you say less crew? Too complicated? Or too much management?

D’oh, wrong thread.

There a mod for that!

-Tom

Biggest challenge is just leveling the crew, cause its a quite intricate…

I chose the automatic point assignment thingie when I started, was that a mistake for learning the game?

You probably know this, but you can automate crew leveling so you never even have to look at it.

Nope, not at all. As with many games like this, a lot of it comes down to difficulty level. If you’re not pushing against one of the harder difficulty levels or trying one of the more challenging set-ups, you can breeze through Star Traders without sweating the finer details like crew skills.

-Tom

Do I need to keep a lot of outside notes or anything, or is it all well managed internally? (Sorry for the dumb questions). Watching your play through right now and still trying to catch on. The game is a bit heady right now but I hope to grasp enough to pass some time with it in a fun way.

You will not need to keep outside notes. Everything is tracked ingame!

-Tom

Awesome thanks :)

Lost about six hours to this today. Okay, now we need to go over here to collect this person. okay, better land here for some fuel and R&R. Can I sell any of my crap here? No, don’t have the permits/it’s too restrictive. Grumble mutter grumble. Okay, next quadrant. Better pause for fuel. Oh, some people levelled. Okay, time to spy on this planet for the mission. Go right back? Nah, what’s closest? Etc.

I’m a little overwhelmed. A little confused when I need to land on planets for missions or which ones when there’s more than one, and what all I should be doing, does it get a little better the more you move around? Also it says I should hire another crew member but I’m not sure what to hire. I choose just the basic start scenario.

Once you’re at the system for the mission, look in the lower left hand corner of the screen. If there’s a mission button there, you’re expected to do something in orbit. If not, the landing zone with the mission will have an orange mission target icon under it, and you will then find the mission button in the same part of the screen when you land. (Sometimes you might have a mission with steps in orbit and a mission at one of the landing zones, but it’s uncommon.)

You don’t necessarily need to have a full crew - experience is distributed across the whole crew for most stuff so a smaller crew levels up faster. But look at the ship screen, at the blue bars in the lower right hand corner. If there’s something you’re under 100% on, you want to hire crew that does that skill. If you’re over 100% on all of them, you could try hiring someone who helps with the one you’re weakest on, or someone that helps with the type of activity you want to do (trading - merchant or smuggler, spying - spy, exploration - explorer, crew combat - soldier, pistoleer, shock trooper, etc). If you don’t know what that is yet, probably just don’t stress it.

PS: I literally just started playing today, so the stuff about hiring is super surface level. More experienced folks probably have more specific advice.

Thank you for this! That helps a lot.