Trese Brothers' latest, Star Traders: Frontiers, sets a course for mobile

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#1

Originally published at: https://statelyplay.com/2019/01/24/trese-brothers-latest-star-traders-frontiers-sets-a-course-for-mobile/

iOS, Android, PC/Mac/Linux

We’ve loved the Trese Brothers around here since before there was an around here. Way back when, at another site that you might have heard of, they were recipients of several year-end accolades for their previous title, Templar Battleforce. Their latest, Star Traders: Frontiers, has been out for PC/Mac/Linux since last August, but, today, we learned it’s making the move to our touchscreens. Soon.

Star Traders: Frontiers is an RPG that puts you in the shoes of a wannabe Jean-Luc Picard. Or, maybe, a Mal Reynolds? Or Boba Fett? Basically, you’re a starship commander and can carve out whatever path you want.

You’ll get to upgrade your ship, hire crew, explore procedurally-generated galaxies, meet aliens, make peace, or make war. The options are seemingly endless and, starting next week, you can experience it all on your phone or tablet.

Explore a rich, open universe: Discover endless procedurally-generated galactic maps, meet unique characters, and take on enemies to conquer the galaxy!

Become an intergalactic captain: Take on the role of a spy, smuggler, explorer, pirate, merchant, bounty hunter, and more (26 jobs total)!

Customize your own spaceship: Choose from more than 350 upgrades and 45 ship hulls to build your very own vessel to venture across the vast reaches of space.

Assemble and tailor a loyal crew: Assign talents and equip specialized gear for every spaceship crew member.

Experience an ever-changing narrative: Decide to make friends or foes with other factions and influence political, economic, and personal vendettas.

Mold the crew by your choices: As you make decisions and set the tone for your ship, your crew will grow and change to match. Destroy enemy ships with all hands on deck and your crew will become more bloodthirsty and savage. Explore distant worlds and loot dangerous wastelands and your crew will become intrepid and clever … or scarred and half-mad.

Varied Difficulty Options! play with save slots to try out different builds or storylines or turn on character permadeath and enjoy classic roguelike experience

Achievement Unlocks: accomplish story and challenge goals to unlock additional optional (but not better) content like new starting ships and new starting contacts

We can expect Star Traders: Frontiers for iOS and Android on January 30th and it will run a mere $7. If you can’t wait, check it out on Steam at the link below.

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#2

Holy crap! I downloaded it on Steam the last time you talked about it, and actually played for a bit, but got myself stuck to the point where I’d have to start over and never really did.

I may just have to rectify that.

#3

Siri, cancel all my appointments for the rest of the week.

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#4

A word to the wise - I ended up restarting about half a dozen times so maybe don’t get too attached to your starting character. You’re not spoon fed a tutorial here so it’s easy to make some pretty crippling mistakes. I specialised a character in a different aspect of the game, trade, ground combat, space combat etc until I’d learnt that system. Then I restarted with a more rounded character.

Your mileage may vary, but that’s what worked for me.

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#5

If any of the other Trese Brother games are a valid comparison of to be expected content then a week won’t do all that much…try clearing your schedule until the next visit of Halley’s Comet…

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#6

I’m going to rock around the clock like Bill Halley and the Comets.

#7

It this game similar to Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander? I only had because I just started Halcyon 6. I’m loading up on some games for a trip but if they are similar I’ll privably hold off on Star Traders a little while just for diversity of games.

#8

It’s a RPG not 4x like Halcyon 6

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#9

Sorry if I missed the info, but does this game have cloud support?

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#10

Not sure about save games, but it doesn’t sync between devices if that’s what you mean?

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#11

There’s no official cloud support for storing save files to transfer between devices or between platforms, unfortunately.

Unofficial support can be found, at least on PC, in the fact that the save files are in an easy to access location so you can copy them to something like Dropbox, and then insert them into an install on another device and keep playing from there.

I’m not sure if the Android/iOS devices are as easy to pull the save data off though, so you’d have to look it up.

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#12

Like many here I’m a fan of the Trese Brothers (backed this Kickstarter in 2014 when it was Star Traders 2 RPG), and my understanding is that they put in the effort with their projects to make their save file compatible across platforms.

Having said that, a post by them on Steam last December points to this wiki page for manually accessing the save files, https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Save_Game_Locations, which shows for iOS: “Completely inaccessible, like a lot of app data on iOS.”

In a reply to a thread a couple of days ago, they did post that “We are working toward a hopeful future with cross platform cloud saves …”, so adding the functionality to the mobile apps for export and import looks to still be a work in progress, but on their wishlist.

While I continue to be disappointed in Apple and their lack of support for game developers, I’m expecting that we’ll hopefully see something like what Darkest Dungeon has done on the iPad, tap the Dropbox box icon and get a popup window for save files:

DD_dropbox
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#13

I’ve always felt that I would have played more Guild of Dungeoneering if I could have sync’ed between the iPad, where I could actually read the text, and my iPhone for when I was out and about. :slightly_frowning_face:

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#14

Which works until Dropbox changes their API and the devs don’t feel like updating their code, which has happened to two apps that I used to use pretty regularly.

#15

Ah, good point! I blame Apple for not supporting the devs in sync’ing between iOS devices, but to sync between desktop and iOS another cloud option would seem to be required? I guess Gems of War does it with their own cloud solution infrastructure, and a Gems of War account?

I’m not sure that Red Hook Studios (the Darkest Dungeon devs), and the Trese Brothers, are in a good position to provide their own cloud and associated account administrative support, but you make a good case for not being tied to a third party API. It would be nice if iOS provided a convenient and accessible save file location.

One of the reasons I felt comfortable supporting the Trese Brothers Kickstarter is their record of support, I expect they’ll support whatever solution they decide on, as long as it’s still feasible for them.

#16

It is true that the Trese Bros are pretty legendarily supportive of their games.

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#17

Wait, you mean that my Civ 6 data is completely inaccessible? Or the spot I load my mods? Or maybe the save data from Monster Hunter Stories and MHFU?

Like a lot of things when it comes to Apple, some developers just don’t want to put the effort in or have the time and either they, or customers, immedately assume that it’s unfriendly to developers. The file system per app is actually accessiable. Yes, it does require iTunes to get to it, or maybe it could be made accessible through Files, which would make it easy to see and move around in the Files app.

Dropbox’s API is another story entirely - they keep making breaking changes which is aggravating to more than just developers.

#18

That’s interesting. I know in the past for previous games, such as when replacing/upgrading devices, that the Trese Brothers had in depth instructions on how to access Android data, using a recommended app, so I was a little surprised that the wiki article says Android has to be rooted to access the Star Traders: Frontiers data.

I have no personal knowledge outside of the wiki entry linked to by the Trese Brothers, but my historical understanding, such as the devs’ problems with sync’ing data between iPhone and iPad for Guild of Dungeoneering, has been that Apple doesn’t make it easy.

I don’t know who wrote the wiki entry for iOS saying that the data is completely inaccessible, but I’d be interested in further information, it wouldn’t be the first time a wiki article was incorrect. However, given that the Trese Brothers linked to it I would have expected it to be accurate.

ETA: Checking the entry for iOS, the wiki history shows it (and the Android entry) was added on 4 Feb 2019, by “Thebv0”. The Trese Brothers linked to the page on 4 July 2018, so they may be completely unaware of the iOS wiki entry.

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#19

The Trese Brothers games are usually better on Android overall, with iOS bringing up the rear, so I’m unsurprised to see that on their wiki. I’m happy the games are on iOS, and happy to pay for them, but I don’t believe that iOS is first class in their dev cycles.

In general, syncing between iPhone and iPad is using a cloud service for the sync. That can bring up a lot of other issues (how do you determine which file is the right one to load, local vs cloud? Is it able to be done manually? How do you check for the cloud file? If automatic backup, how often? What does the data usage look like? Etc etc etc) so it’s not completely easy. It is doable however.

#20

I went to see what it was that the Guild of Dungeoneering folks said, since that is one that is stuck in my mind that I was very disappointed that iOS device sync’ing was never implemented. And, thought I’d check my understanding while TouchArcade does still exist. :neutral_face:

“We are looking into it alright, but I’m not sure yet if/when we’ll get it done. Will let you folks know if it’s coming”

“Yeah, wish it was simpler. iOS is miles easier than android on this, at least.”

“I’m afraid not. I’m hoping to look into it again as we continue work on our leaderboards and other online stuff for our challenge mode ‘Trophy Trial’.”

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