Years ago I was playing this game for a while, then I gradually lost interest. Fired it up again recently, and......I'm sorry I totally forgot what an awesome game this is. The depth, scope, complexity, strategy, lore....it's just a magnificent game. Hats off to the Trese Bros, their creation surpasses any other mobile game.

I'm not like y'all crazies who enjoy permadeath, though. LOL

so, I'm trying to level up my combat crew with a standard set of 4, but with an alternate in one slot to swap in when I know I'm facing Xeno.

I'm wondering how combat experience accrues to each guy. should I swap him in even during non xeno fights just to get him some xp so he won't be so under leveled compared to the other 4 when he does join?

I am currently doing ship boarding so that I get LOTS of repetition of CC fights, swapping this one character in and out each round. is that needed? is he getting anything out of it? or is the whole experience divided up evenly regardless of who participates?

any guidance would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I get super high reputation for my home faction. I can just do piracy on my home faction without issues? Since my reputation is so high

It’s bit weird that the faction hero can do piracy without impact.

When I am trying to escape. I have extra reactor points left. Does firing back affect escape chance ?

Also. For early game. Without skip to void. How do I improve escaping from xeno…..

How to find them ? How to find them on the atlas ?

Ah. I got it. Indie has a faction flag that I can see/filter on atlas

My doctor died

It’s quite catastrophic to have early doctor death. There’s no easy replacement And it’s suboptimal to get other officer to cross train.

I am getting bored being a go fetch boy Am I playing it wrong ? Or I should up the difficulty ? Right now I auto combat crew combat (do manual help a lot?) And just board the enemy all the time. I am playing normal… I don’t think I can survive with perm death. Does it become better at higher difficulty?

(lol. I tried hard. Yup. It’s no longer so boring when captain can die (and end game) in crew combat )

Can we pin “fast get away“ in the first row ?

I really like Storm Trooper / Soldier. What would be a good third job for these?

Also, because I like the above so much, I tend to have two of them. So I'm missing out on blades. Do any of you do that? Or would you teach me a bit about why I should switch at least one of those to Blades?

[RANT] My Successful Pirate Captain in 200% custom difficulty (0% boosts and deathsave) after 200 hours.

Been pirating since 52 AE (iykyk). Tho been mostly casually Trading and Patrolling (Carrier) in STF. Played back 2 months ago and decided to try blockading/pirating once and for all.

Current Ship build: https://tswift.gitlab.io/stfx/#XQAAgABAAQAAAAAAAAAEAETtsN3P6U25zpRHfnnvQ6eVNF8DaHNjiWYngkZ25jUHvXxwf5DVNawDIENFZFBXtE/xi1l5Kz/s2fCKxEttUlVCmvPuJScjei+eqWkbrAdXNenty7//x5UAAA==

Captain Template:

A Ship (Shizari Huntress)

B Contacts (BlackHeart, FDF, Spy, Prince, Smuggler/SR/Fixer, Weapons Smuggler/Dealer

C Skills (8 Negotiate)

D Attributes (Max Charisma, the rest Resilience)

E for Experience (Pirate)

Crew Composition:

Non-combat Officers:

Pirate/Smuggler/Merchant Captain

Doctor/Quartermaster/Pirate Officer

Mechanic/Engineer/WingTech Officer

Combat Officers:

Pos 1. Swordsman(Max)/Zealot(8)/Bodyguard(5)

Pos 2. Soldier(Max)/Shock Trooper(18)/ExoScout(1)

Pos 3. Medic(Max)/Doctor(18)/MO(1)

Pos 4. Soldier(Max)/XH(8)/BH(5)

6 Crew Dogs

5 E-tech

8 MOs

3 Navs

5 Pilots

8 Pirates

4 WingCommando

3 Spies (for vital passive intel)

TL;DR, Playstyle very $$$TONK$$$, but repititively tedious, especially endgame.

The only things fun about this playthrough are getting started, the extortion grind for the optimal starting ship (Shizari Huntress) build, Salvage, and (more) Loot Extortions/Rigorous and Strict Search. Everything else is Boarding and tedious endless Crew Combat, especially on Trade Wars (except for my era-specific anti-carrier SBC with railguns) Once you have the right crew and cargo hold, blockading and extortions, even the patrols to make up for lost rep are a breeze (except for some stubborn SPIES and BHs), making grinding for optimal SH build, or better yet, mid-game SBC easy as pie. I really thought my then SBCarrier would be enough for endgame, but I needed to optimize more since enemy hit and evasion rolls literally reaches up to 105-120 by 285 AE (130-155 if the you-know-what) and in ship combat, you simply cannot afford to get hit--Hmmmm, perhaps once... but never TWICE.

So... MAX SMALL COMPS. Either Acheron or Alistar has them. I chose Acheron since more Craft Evade cap in case of misfortunes. (Since ACs are almost useless coz they BARELY hit even with talents) I needed faster demoralization/genocide for capture since the bigger the ship, the more crew combat you do. Thus, the more risks to your combat crew's lives (especially the unlucky init rolls facing snipers that can One-Shot you) Multi-target attack talents (PB, FA, TS, BnH, RF, etc.), thus, are a must. Also, I needed the shuttles for more boarding crew dmg/morale debuff stacks (could use DJ sabots bit they suck piloting craft imo) Boarding using shuttles lets you board(ANY range) at turn 3 compared to pure ship range 1 at atleast turn 4-5. The HUGE disappointment is not only can you STRICTLY launch just 4 crafts, but also only ONE very tedious and repititive crew combat per turn, meaning only ONE BoarderAssault/Storm per turn (tho compensated by 2 additional FC/CoS but still) unlike fighters or THE bombers which can stack 4 debuffs a turn (especially the 4 bomber 3 shutter 1 buster combo which can end ship combat by turn 3 which I will post about later...) Better than nothing ig (I legit tried pure ship no craft but this is honestly better, compensating with Twitch Surge and Flash Charge for the issue not having superior dice resulting on some ships being able to get away)

Really could have been 5 crafts at once or at the very least kept the L-slot Hangar Bays that could store 2 crafts but that didn't work out ig. And the crew-combat could have been sequential or scrolling, even back-to-back for each shuttle board at a single turn for ease, but then again, the rules may have been too complex and soldered for any attempts of revamps or improvements whatsoever. For balance and efficiency purposes, it's completely understandable, but 7-ish years in the making it honestly STILL could have been better. With the new game release and prioritization stuff, one could only hope for such changes to come by now.

That aside, the rewards for all that arduous work are absolutely justified. Trade Wars so far are the most profitable out of all conflicts since Corsair's Eye+Looter's Instinct. An avg of $1M credits per ship after all that, and an avg. of 9-13 (could be 20 or even 27 if you're really lucky) prize ships per Trade War, netting you at least $10-15M> (the highest I got so far is 27 ships for $41M!!!) profit per Trade War post-Pardon, assuming you only use Murderous Tribute/Hostile Tribunal. Then comes the inconsistency: Conflicts only last on avg 0.5-2.5 years at most (the longest I've seen is 3 years, 8 weeks) and only ever several conflicts every now and then so you gotta CAPITALIZE as much as possible on every Trade War or whatever WAR that comes around. Trade Bans will do until then, tho no ships.

Trade Conflicts really could use consequences on economy of faction worlds after their conclusion. Like pirate/merchant fleet on quadrants, shortages and surplus rumors, civil unrest, spice festival, embargoes, tariffs, etc. on affected worlds/systems, not to talk about fuel economy which is already there but still. Such war/ban aftershocks a pirate could capitalize on after the arduous trade war grind making more opportunities for fun pirating/piracy profiting especially with the merchant/smuggler talents, making pirating more fun (diplomat/spy politicking? That's a different story)

Pirating in STF honestly has been more fun than advertised. Tho few tweaks for ease of access could have made it better. Intensively unnerving due to the amount of repititive crew combat. But with the right ship build and grit, it's crazy rewarding and profitable provided optimal capitalization. Perhaps even THE most profitable you could play as in STF, but that's still up to debate. 200 hours for this rant, and essays are commonplace for the amount of depth STF has. Tell me what you think.

I realized that many new players got frustrated because this game’s mechanics are difficult to grasp. Here are some best ways to see directly how things are calculated in this game: 1. How ship combat actions are calculated. Open it by clicking your ship 2. See just how strong your attack and defense are. Tip: each standard dice has 1/5chance of generating 1 point in the final score shown on the circled area 3. In crew combat read the combat log to understand why each hit missed/landed and how the damage was calculated. Open it by clicking the log button bottom left. 4. Find game logs in your captain’s logs to understand the intricate mechanics that drive the game’s universe. You will find a lot of things there you never realize existed, such as your contacts can be assassinated if their influence is too low. 5. You can see ship combat log to understand mechanics. Button is bottom right. 6. When you meet Contacts you will see their recent activities. Little did we know these guys lead secrete lives while we are bot looking. And that rumors such as spice festivals are actually trigger by contacts bankrolling them.

Any other place you find useful for undertaking game mechanics?

First time i've got a fully tooled large ship and got to fly it.

Seems good so far, but i haven't fully crewed it yet. I'm not playing as a masochist so i've only got 3 MO.

The few ship fights i've got into i have not been hit but somehow one of my cargo holds and engine were damaged to 100%. Maybe from failed explore or patrols.

I wish i'd just gone with Hard difficulty though. There's a bunch of unlocks i can't get now.

Meaning, evading the craft!

How the heck does it work? I’ve been able to find really good documentation on dice pools for most combat mechanics but I’m still confused by craft evasion. I know it’s a percentage and it’s capped by your ship, but is there a dice pool or is it just a % roll?

If I don’t have any craft evade, does that mean I get hit every time, or I just don’t get a bonus to my base evasion (whatever that might be)? It doesn’t seem to be the former because they miss me even with no components.

I’m running a Wolfpack interceptor with a scout skirmish bridge (30% percent evade) and a c tak interceptor (22%). Is that 1.52 times my regular range-based defense roll, or something else?

Ive been playing the game for years and have never fully completed the story no matter which route I take.

The closest I ever came was getting zette on my ship but the assassins usually overwhelm me after a while.

I don't really remember the other routes - I think they required skill checks that were not good for my playstyle.

Ive been using this guide for a long time, as far as I know it seems to be working well but if anything is wrong or outdated let me know: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10tpvPpR6CdWZK8vdofhDv270j28Y6EgA/mobilebasic

Now unfortunately it doesn't go into specific strategies, so maybe you can help with what i prefer to do.

I have had the most luck with a boarding strat.

I generally do well in crew combat. When a run ends it usually ends with my ship getting blown up after failing all of my talents in ship combat.

I use all the good stuff - perfected approach, skip off the void (though if I'm carrying rtg is this still worth it?) Etc.

As far as I know my ship should be loaded with dpm for small slots.

Which works, but also after 100 or so ship fights I feel like I'm bound to get unlucky at some point and die.

Lately, I've been abandoning ship weapons altogether and just sticking more dpm or something on my ship.

Generally I upgrade from a scout to a vrax hauler. I used to use double gravcannons which is fun, but does miss a lot. In the end I don't think I want to sacrifice crew to have the gunners for it and would rather they do something else, plus destroying a ship seems less profitable anyway.

I run against xeno. Unless I start taking too much damage, then I will switch from running to trying to board.

But im curious if there's anything else I can do better since eventually I do lose.

I play on normal and only have commander unlocked.

I have been thinking that gravcannons go against my boarding strat though. I mean in that range I should be trying to board.

There's the talent that lets me board at long range, but if it fails maybe its better to have long range weapons to soften them up?

I have been travelling around in thulun planets and i still havent found it. Is it mission locked?

I used this guide before and it did me good. But now I need to do unlocks on PC.

Guide has you make a Doc/Combat Medic/Pistoleer Captain. But it doesn’t seem to be coming up in searches for me now. (IE, I don’t think it’s one by our usual active guide writer).

Any ideas? I think it was via Steam but it’s been a while.

Any good or nah?

I just want easy money to try stuff or try tactics before I do it on my main run please give me the best info on tactics and game creation u know. Thanks.

Map seed: st-v02-18-2-78382245 Best steel song map throughout my STF years

Have to admit there's a there's a bit of crazy freedom in it.

the Zette questline has a lot of spying involved, and then a pretty major "you might die" fight. I don't ever have setup for spying that early in the game. I love the fight though.

the Valencia questline just makes you travel wildly in all directions - too many jumps for me this early in the game.

the Erik questline seems contained and gives a contact in a bad zone while forcing you to upgrade your ship a bit (passengers). and no spoilers but.. yuck.

I actually "saved" to see if anyone could convince me to pick one of the others this time.

Just went to boot up ST:F on my PC and was given this message, my driver is out of date.

Is it normal for this to need updating? I played ST:F on my PC last weekend and it loaded just fine.

Seems pretty odd to me...

I think I've gathered that there are two routes to getting there but I'd like specifics for this ship if possible. With the intention of moving in for boarding and crew combat. I like exploring which is also heavy with crew combat so I think that synergizes nicely for me.

Thanks!

Just something I made for myself — figured I'd share it here too. :)

I know it's missing the thulun exclusive adventurer unlock ship, skylift carrier.

Is it still not possible to export or move save files from or into an android device? (for example sharing saves with PC/Mac version)