Greetings Commanders! We hope that everyone is enjoying the new year. We bring you a smaller patch today that adds two new features.

New Events

We continue to expand the number of random events in the game. This should continue to make each playthrough even more unique and immerse you in the life of being a fleet commander on the Frontier. This has been a popular addition to the game, and we hope to continue to bring you more events. This patch adds another 5 random events to the pool.


Quality of Life Improvement

Today we have also added a pop-up box to inform you whenever new ships are available to be purchased. We know that it could be tedious checking the market after each story mission to see if there were new ships to buy.


And... that's it! We hope everyone continues to enjoy their adventures on the Frontier.

Thank you for playing our games!

Greetings Commanders!

We have recently made a number of balance tweaks and quality of life updates to Steel Shadows. We wanted to be sure that we updated this game as well so that both are an equally polished experience. Read on for all of the tweaks in this patch.

Optional Mission Display
A user suggestion was that we hide all optional missions when there are none available, as they clutter up the interface. After talking about it, we saw no advantage to displaying all of the Optional Missions when a player has no Optional Deployments remaining. So, we have tweaked the display to hide optional missions when you can't take them.


Shadows
We have improved shadows from the main light sources on all levels. These will be disabled on the lowest two quality settings.


Balance Changes

• Slightly reduced the difficulty of all late game Bounty Missions in the Alliance Campaign. This should improve the flow of the later missions.
  
• Increased the drop rate of capital and escort crew members from all missions that drop a random crew member. You will now promote less fighter pilots.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the mission description for Federation Story Mission 14
  
• Removed several rogue Alliance Warships that had gone wandering

And that is it for the tweaks and bug fixes made today based on the work on Steel Shadows.

If you haven't yet, check out the stand alone expansion here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/734730/


Thank you for playing our games!

It has been a long road, and now Steel Shadows is available! Dive back into the world of Ancient Frontier playing as an all new faction through a new campaign.

Let us know what you think! Be sure to drop us an email, comment in the forums or leave us a review. We really appreciate your feedback.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/734730/

Thank you for playing our games.

Great news! A free demo of Steel Shadows is now live. Go ahead and check out the game and let us know what you think in the forums.


Thank you for playing our games.

Greetings Commanders!

We hope that everyone is able to enjoy the holiday season. We have been hard at work on the next game in this series, Steel Shadows, which releases in just three short weeks. However, some of the work we have done on that game is now going to be available in Ancient Frontier.

External Save Files:

For a small number of our customers they were concerned with the save location of the game using the Unity default. To address this we have written an entirely new back end save system for Steel Shadows that will save to an easily accessible external folder.

With today's patch, Ancient Frontier will now also use a hybrid of the original save system and the new system from Steel Shadows. That means that if you start a new game you can now find your save files. Going forward save files are located at:

C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Fair Weather Studios\Ancient Frontier\

Your old save files will continue to work! From within the game there should not appear to be any difference between the new and the old system. This will only impact people that want to find their save files manually on their hard drive.

New Events!

This patch brings three new events for you to experience on your travels through the Frontier. We could say more, but that would spoil the surprises.

Graphic Enhancements

We made several enhancements to the level artwork in this patch. This mostly had to do with skybox tearing or bugs in the background textures. In addition some of the lighting has been tweaked.

Bug Fixes

• We believe we have fixed the bug where not all of the events would show up for players depending on when the game was created.
  
• Fixed several bugs related to equipment on AI ships.
  
• Fixed a minor display bug on the deployment and fleet management screens that was introduced with the support of 4k televisions.

And that is all for now. We continue to work hard on both this game and Steel Shadows, and we hope you enjoy the results.

Thank you for playing our games!

Thank you for playing our game!

Wow, it is hard for us to believe that it has already been a year since Ancient Frontier finally launched.

Thank you to each and every one of you. We are incredibly grateful to our fans and players who continue to play this game. Looking back the last year has been a whirlwind with two additional DLCs launched and 14 patches. All of this work was driven by you, our player, through your suggestions and feedback. The game has now been played for several hundred thousand hours across all of our users and we could not have done it without you. We are a small studio of just two people, and it is sometimes crazy to think what this game has already accomplished.

Looking ahead we have even more planned. The first follow-up game, Steel Shadows, is on track to launch later this year. We have also already begun work on the next patch which will add more events and more lore to the base game. We hope to be able to continue to bring you more quality content in this game and others going forward.

One year. Thank YOU!!!

Greetings Commanders!

Today we reveal the new Outrigger ship the Manticore class heavy cruiser. This appears along with several new missions where you fight the Outriggers in the Alliance campaign. Finally, we have addressed a few minor bugs.

The Manticore

This massive heavy cruiser is constructed at a secret location known only to the Outrigger engineers. Packed with stolen modern weaponry the Manticore is one of the most modern ships on the Frontier.

The primary weapons of the Manticore are twin Coil Cannons. Coil technology was originally developed for the Federation by the Outriggers, and they kept the blueprints of the technology. Coil Cannons are long range, accurate weapons that add extra shield damage. As primary weapons the main guns allow the cruiser to deal heavy damage even through shields.

Located in the center of the chassis is a massive Drive Harpoon. The harpoon is a perfect weapon that compliments the scavenging ways of the Outriggers. It drains the energy from the main engines of its target, reducing its movement to a crawl. This allows the Manticore to stun its prey before moving in for the kill and eventual juicy salvage.

These weapons are backed up by an imposing set of quad Shredder Cannons. This is stolen technology from the Pirate clans, and serves the Manticore well. It provides very high damage at short range for engagements that close in.

All of this weaponry makes the Manticore very capable in duels with other capital ships. What really sets the ship apart, however, is its anti-fighter abilities.

First, it houses a pair of hanger bays. These typically house two Gunship heavy fighter squadrons. However there are rumors that there are Manticore captains that prefer to use lighter Explorer squadrons to better scout out targets to ambush.

Second, it uses a massive battery of eight pulse laser turrets. Pulse laser technology is closely guarded by the Federation and the High Temple on Mars, and how the Outriggers were able to steal this coveted piece of technology is unknown. The turrets allow the Manticore to deal with enemy fighters even if it loses its own squadrons.

All of this makes the Manticore an ideal flagship for an Outrigger fleet. While rare, the few that do exist are very deadly.

New Missions

There are a total of 4 new missions available in the Alliance campaign. All of the missions are optional Bounty missions, but they give the Alliance player more options for the enemies they face.

There is one new mission in Tarsis, two missions in Hadron, and one new mission in Cygnus. Hopefully these missions add a few more choices and a little more variety to this mid game stretch of the campaign.

In addition Outrigger forces (and related rewards) have been increased in missions for both campaigns in Tarsis, Arx, Hadron and Cygnus. The Outriggers are out in force. Beware of the Manticore!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug (again!) where the tutorial would crash upon beating the second mission.
  
• Fixed a bug where collecting items was not registering in a Federation story mission in the Externus sector.

Known Issues

We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon (tm).


We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!

Greetings Commanders!

Today we have a group of balance changes and bug fixes that we wanted to get out right away.

We are working on another content update that will feature additional Outrigger ships and missions. There was not time to fully test the missions for this patch, however, so they will be launched in a future update. Rumors say that a new Outrigger heavy cruiser has been sighted in deep space. You have been warned.

Graphic Enhancements

With this patch we have made several changes to the display of the UI in all of the ship management screens. The UI will appear larger on most resolutions, and should lead to a better experience when playing at a variety of 2k and 4k resolutions.

In addition we made changes that should allow the game to play on most TV monitors the same way it plays on computer monitors.

Balance Changes

• Reduced the difficulty of most pirate missions in the Alliance campaign.
  
• Changed how resource collection is tracked so that only the specific resource needed for the mission counts for completion. In the past it was possible for a player to get in a no-win scenario if the AI picked up too many resources. However, a long time ago we made a change where resources picked up by the AI ships counted toward quest completion. With that change, we can again revert resource collection objectives to only count specific resources.
  
• Changed the AI to care more about its own life when attacking. There should be less suicide runs now.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where if you saved the game on the Market, and then tried to start a new game the game could crash.
  
• Fixed a bug where clicking on hexes 5 or 6 spaces away from your ship would not register unless you moved the camera.
  
• Improved a bug where the AI could attack you from very far away. This should happen much more rarely than it already did.
  
• Fixed the "skip turn" bug that could sometimes appear. Note: This is the fourth time we have attempted to address this bug. This time around we made some very drastic changes behind the scenes to stop it from happening. As there is no dependable way to reproduce the bug, we are sort of shooting in the dark, but we are feeling good about this attempt. If you continue to see this bug please let us know.

Known Issues
We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon (tm).

As mentioned at the start, we wanted to rush out the bug fix portion of this patch to make for a better experience for all players. The "second half" of this patch will now be released in patch 1.14, and will include more content featuring the Outriggers in both campaigns.

We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!

Greetings Commanders!

This is a small follow up patch to the release of the new DLC, and only makes three changes:

• First, we have added a step to starting a new game where you now choose your save style (Ironman vs Standard). This way you don't have to worry about the defaults. You are able to choose a different save style for each individual campaign if you choose.
  
  
• Second, we changed the "choose difficulty" icons to more clearly represent the choices.
  
  
• Third, we fixed a bug that could impact ability accuracy.

Known Issues
We are aware and have confirmed that not all of the 58 events are showing up for all players. We are still looking into what is causing this and hope to have a fix soon.

In addition, we continue to look at the difficulty situation at all levels. We are testing some new balance tweaks for Veteran and Beginner difficulty. In addition, in regards to the pirate difficulty in the Alliance campaign, we are looking at making some slight changes, and potentially adding a few new missions where you fight the Outriggers in Hadron.

We don't have a timeline on the next patch, but our hope is to address some of these concerns by the end of the month.


We hope you enjoy these updates, and thank you for playing our game!