After launching in September 2017, Ancient Frontier from Fair Weather Games has a good following, a 'Mostly Positive' rating on Steam, and a new DLC on the way. It's a turn-based hex-based strategy-RPG, it's quite fun, and it's got a new update out. Which we'll chronicle here.
Space strategy RPG Ancient Frontier is ready to launch with new trailer
Check out our list of the Best Strategy Games on PC!
Fair Weather are only a two-man development house, both of whom have been in the industry for 17 years, so it's quite impressive what they've achieved. Ancient Frontier itself features two fully-voiced story campaigns based around thinking tactically, in a lovely mix of RPG and strategy gameplay, as you face raiders, opposing armies, and alien invaders. It's a semi-sequel to Fair Weather Studios' earlier title Bladestar, although that was a space shooter rather than a tactical RPG, so it's a story continuation instead of a gameplay one.
Ships are upgradeable RPG-style, although once a ship is destroyed its gone forever. Yep, it's XCOM-style with heartbreaking unit permadeath. New technologies can be researched, there are over 35 types of ship to command, and resources need to be scavenged.
On to the Patch Notes!
Patch 1.0.8. November 20 2017
Resource Collection
- "We received a lot of feedback that the Harvesters were providing too large of a bonus that slowed down the game for many players as the Harvesters plodded around the map. Worse (in our view) players were taking missions with NPC Harvesters at a significantly higher rate than all the other bounty missions. To address this we made several changes.
First off we increased the rewards for ALL bounty missions in the game. These resource rewards take no time to collect and are the fastest way for players to earn resources. Secondly, we reduced the multiplier on all Harvesters from x4 down to x2. On average this change leads to slightly more resources over a campaign than the old system, although it was possible to get more resources under the old system than the new one if you played slowly. Finally we increased the movement speed of both the Queen's Bounty and the Rhondo, so that they can traverse the map more quickly.
Combined with some of the balance tweaks (below) to lower difficulty, this should speed up the pace of the game from the middle through to the end game. Let us know what you think."
Quality of Life Enhancements
- We think we have added a cursor lock that will work on most dual monitor setups.
- Changed enemy ship death drop chance so that enemy ships that pick up resources should now always drop resources. Now you can recoup some losses to those space thieves.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the game could crash during combat that involved carriers and their fighters.
- Fixed a bug where fighters could deploy on top of each other leading to strange interactions when skills were used.
Balance Tweaks
- Increased the move range on the Queen's Bounty and the Rhondo.
- Increased the resource rewards on all bounty missions.
- Decreased the difficulty of all later bounty missions.
- Decreased the difficulty of Beginner and Veteran difficulties slightly.
- Locked all ammo items to Slot 3.
- Decreased the multiplier for all Harvesters from x4 to x2.
