Greetings! I’m excited to share some more details on the Wild Space Conflict project that will go live along with the 2-week temporary universe on April 30. A working version of this project is available on the Test server for those who are curious to get an early look–just be advised that we’re still putting the finishing touches on a few minor components. Fair warning: this is a long post that dives into some really detailed design and stats. For a lighter overview of the project, you can check out this post from February.

Controlling Territory

Back in February, I shared the following details about controlling Wild Space territory in the new system.

• Instead of merely controlling a galaxy for ten minutes, you must deploy a new type of base and complete a resource-intensive construction project in order to establish ownership. This process may take a couple hours.

• Once ownership is established, a steady stream of resources will be consumed to maintain it.

Figure 1: The equipment you’ll use to own galaxies.

I’d like to follow up on this with some details so you know what to expect well in advance of Universe Reset.

• You need a Command and Control Station Kit. It’s a tech 16 base that cannot be attached to planets and moons. You’ll be able to purchase this base kit in Building Academy.

• Your team can deploy just one single Command and Control Station in each galaxy. Once it’s deployed, you can start the Nullification Generator construction project. This takes two hours at standard build speed and carries a periodic cost of 10,000 Steel Girders and 10,000 Sentient Chatbots. For reference, this resource cost roughly equates to seven ideal tech 9 Extraction Expert bases for Metals, and half that for Silicon. Of course, it’s also possible to build the Nullification Generator over a longer period of time if your resources are spread thin at the start of the universe. Just make sure to actively monitor your space and rebuff any hostile players who try to steal your territory!

• The Nullification Generator is the device that actually establishes and maintains your team’s ownership of the galaxy. It is a base-bound factory that consumes 100 Fusion Cells every ten minutes. This cost roughly equates to one ideal tech 9 Extraction Expert base for Nuclear Waste. Every time the Nullification Generator consumes a batch of Fusion Cells, it establishes or re-establishes your team’s ownership of the galaxy. If the Nullification Generator fails to re-establish ownership for any reason (e.g. if the Command and Control Station is destroyed or abandoned), there is a grace period of up to 24 hours before ownership is lost (the grace period is shorter for galaxies that have been owned for less than a day). During the grace period, the owning team’s chat channel receives warning messages. To resolve the problem, simply feed the Nullification Generator enough Fusion Cells to catch up with the deficit (it will consume however much it’s owed).

Contesting Territory

Once a galaxy is owned, no one is allowed to take any PvP actions there. This includes hostile actions by the team that owns the galaxy! It’s no longer possible to manually toggle ownership status, so there is no practical way for the owning team to temporarily cede ownership status in order to PvP. From now on, ownership essentially means that the territory has been successfully claimed and fighting can move on to another theater.

This change means that fighting in Wild Space is much more straightforward with very few hidden or counterintuitive mechanics to get in the way of gameplay. If you want to contest another team’s ownership attempt, you need to stop them from building and activating a Nullification Generator before you. Here are some strategies you can try:

1. Interrupt enemy shipments of Steel Girders and Sentient Chatbots to their Command and Control Station.

2. Find and destroy the enemy’s extraction bases that are sourcing these Industrial Commodities.

3. Destroy the enemy’s Command and Control Station outright (but these are pretty tanky!)

Don’t forget that you’ll also need to complete a Nullification Generator on your own Command and Control Station while you’re busy slowing down your enemy’s attempts to do the same! As soon as any Nullification Generator activates, all unaffiliated bases and permanent drones are immediately destroyed and any such bases that were attached to planets or moons become unattached as well. This puts an end to the contest and awards the galaxy to the winning side.

Figure 2: Three enemy bases enter destroyed state as a different team establishes ownership. Note: the bases also detach from the planet but our tester needed an updated client to show this.

The only non-intuitive rule in the system is that unattached bases are not allowed until the galaxy is owned (with the exception of the Command and Control Station, of course). Allowing unattached bases in territory contest instantly necessitates a huge number of hidden rules and mechanics, as anyone with experience in BvB knows all too well. It’s best if we avoid the problem entirely by ruling out their use in PvP.

AI Empires will continue to exist in the new system, but the method for contesting their territory is slightly different. Since you can’t deploy bases directly in their galaxies anymore, we’ve introduced the following behaviors:

• A galaxy owned by an AI Empire will automatically lose ownership if a different team owns an adjacent galaxy.

• Deploying a base in the presence of an AI Empire will turn the AI hostile toward you.

Simply put, if you want to take territory away from an AI Empire, you must first own a neighboring galaxy (disabling the AI Empire’s ownership next door), then take over the freshly unowned galaxy by whatever means you choose. Remember that you won’t be able to use unattached bases for this task, though.

Figure 3: A player team establishes ownership in Tuscany Verge, causing the neighboring AI Empire galaxy Tyro to lose ownership.

Changes to Base Combat

Aside from the restriction on the use of unattached bases, we’ve made some other changes that will greatly affect the mechanics of base combat.

Bases no longer use healing weapons and any base augmenters the used to grant healing-related stats have been repurposed (check out Spirit of the Rhino!).

Figure 4: Spirit of the Rhino has been repurposed.

We realized that the main purpose of base healing has always been to keep your galaxy safe–particularly from enemy players–while you’re away. With the new ownership mechanic, this insurance is no longer necessary. To keep your galaxy safe from players, you only need to be on high alert during the few hours it takes to establish ownership. Granted, base healing was also helpful to protect against termites; more on this below.

Bases have a lot less range than before. When I announced this back in February, some people assumed we were reducing the base weapon range cap from 10k down to 3k. This is not correct. Instead, we’ve compressed the range stat spread on base weapons, reduced the magnitude of the Range augmod on base augmenters, removed the range bonus from Station Mastery, and reduced the strength of the Volatile Projectile Overcharger. Putting everything together, your pulse gun bases will probably hit between 1,500 and 3,000 range, while some specialized long-range magcannon bases can probably reach around 6,000 range. As with the removal of base healing, we make this change with the idea that you no longer need 10,000-range bases to keep your galaxy safe from players since ownership will do that job for you. And yes, this change impacts termite defense too. So let’s talk about termites.

Termites are being made to spawn a lot more frequently and pose a bigger threat than before. Also, it’s no longer possible to enable a protected galaxy state and thereby keep the termites out. Coupling this with the removal of base healing and the reduction in practical base weapon range, how exactly are you expected to keep your bases safe from termites? Here are some key points to know:

• In our testing, three tech 20 non-Station-Mastery bases were narrowly defeated by the strongest possible swarm of termites. We used competitive setups for the bases but I’m sure our expert community theorycrafters can do better than we did.

• In lowish danger factors, the termites have their damage reduced by half. With resources being more equitably distributed across danger factor (more on this below), this is a pretty valuable consideration.

• One new termite infestation spawns every hour, meaning that the average galaxy can expect to experience around six infestations over the course of four months. Some will get unlucky, though!

• Termite nests mature over a period of 24 hours and can be destroyed by handful of properly equipped bases (and maybe also by a player squad).

Figure 5: A maximum-strength wave of Termites assaults three tech 20 Adamantium industry bases.

One thing I’m confident about is that it will no longer be safe to use low tech industry bases on outlying planets and moons. Even if chaperoned by a “fully operational” Station Mastery base, low tech bases will probably die before the termites get cleaned up. This means that to fully exploit the resources of a galaxy, you will most likely need to use more industry base slots than you’re used to. Here is what we’re doing to make that more palatable. Just as powerful, high tech extractors make high tech bases viable for extracting tier-0 commodities, we’re introducing new content that will make high tech bases advantageous in other aspects of industry as well:

1. Every tier 1-3 commodity extractor is getting a new higher-tech upgraded version that grants a substantial extraction power boost. The tech and power of each new version depends on the tier of the commodity. Tier-1 commodities get a tech 9 extractor with 50% more power; for tier 2 it’s a tech 12 extractor with 100% more power; and for tier 3 it’s a tech 16 extractor with 150% more power. You can pick up the new extractors in exchange for a regular one plus some credits.

2. Higher-tech Colonial Administrator bases can now grant extra benefits to suitability in the following way. We are introducing new base-specific items that increase suitability and max suitability when equipped, as long as the base owner has the Colonial Administrator skill. For example, a tech 20 Colonial Administrator base can build and equip an item that grants +10% suitability and raises the maximum suitability of the colony to 140%. Be warned: the first iteration of this new item type will decay upon universe reset! If it’s well received, we may release reusable alternatives down the road.

These buffs to industry bases certainly improve the value proposition of using higher tech bases (possibly with augmenters) for your outlying industry. We want you to experiment and decide for yourself how to build optimally in the new system. One thing to remember: it is fully possible that some planets are just not worth industrializing. For example, a low-gravity planet with no moons that orbits 15,000 away from your main operations would be difficult to defend due to the lack of base slots. Depending on its industrial value, you will have to decide whether it’s worth spending the resources to exploit that planet and keep your operations safe. This is intentional design. We want the game to pose complex problems and we don’t want the designers to solve them all in advance.

Another point about base combat: base weapons have been made a lot more interesting. Beams have been redesigned for medium-damage AoE with the same range stat spread as pulse guns. Magcannons keep their long range profile but have received a variety of impactful  on-hit effects. I’m really looking forward to seeing what cool new strategies emerge from the greatly increased base weapon diversity.

Lastly, we’re making some changes to the “IC” base content that’s currently obtained through Industrial Commodities.

1. During the 2-week temporary universe, “IC” base kits and augmenters will be available for purchase at the cost of 1 credit. Remember that these items will decay at the end of the temporary universe.

2. After the temporary universe, “IC” base kits will no longer be obtainable, while “IC” base augmenters will have a new cost and acquisition method: the Z-tier versions will be available for direct purchase in exchange for 4 theme-and-tech appropriate augmenters and a credit cost comparable to the price of a normal Z base augmenter. Be mindful that these augmenters will still decay on reset for the time being.

3. “IC” base gear (e.g. Annihilator Shield Z) will continue to exist but with an added “can’t-jump” tag to prevent players from moving it between galaxies. The associated research projects will also have to be conducted anew in every galaxy where “IC” base gear is desired.

4. “IC” permanent drones will continue to exist in their current form.

Resource and Territory Abundance

In February, I explained the basics of mid-universe galaxy reveals. To recap:

1. Every 9 days and 17 hours, a fresh batch of galaxies will appear in Wild Space, connected in some way to the existing map.

2. These galaxies will have higher average resource abundance to make up for lost time.

3. Since ownership is a time- and resource-intensive process, it no longer requires a connection to your team’s HQ. Anyone with spare base slots will be able to compete for the newly revealed galaxies no matter where they appear on the map.

Figure 6: Time lapse of galaxy reveals.

For convenience, Jeff has coded it so that whenever a new galaxy appears, it automatically appears on the map for anyone who’s online at the time.

I also want to tell you about some changes we’ve made to the code that distributes resources across the universe. In the current system, we have a drastic resource imbalance between the lowest and highest danger factors. I’ve worked closely with our code dev Bobbo to design a completely new process for distributing resources. The new process uses principles from probability to apply various distribution rules, ensuring that the correct amount of each resource is apportioned and that the resource value of galaxies in the highest danger factor should only be 2-3x that of galaxies in the lowest danger factor. There is still a fair bit of variance in the process, but the upshot is that it won’t feel as bad if you get stuck with suboptimal territory for a universe. Keep in mind that termites in the lower danger factors have their damage reduced by half, meaning that you might be able to find some real sweet spots to maximize your income per defense budget.

Lyceum Bulletin:

The Blue Pirates have stumbled upon a temporal wormhole and unloaded munitions into it. Lyceum scientists have inspected the wormhole and discovered that it is destabilizing rapidly and will rupture into a temporary unstable universe on April 30th.

This unstable universe will collapse on May 14th giving way to a stable one. Scans indicate that there are many changes to these universes that can be examined in a coming message.

However, preliminary scans indicate that the temporary universe goes through daily changes to its structure that increase varying fields of exploration, combat, and production.

Radiation is flooding into our universe from the rift and will cause alterations to the foundations of our universe as the end of our current universe approaches. Earthforce has stated that the radiation will halt all purchasing and extraction of material on April 23rd, followed by a reduction of all weekly lockouts on April 28th!

After extensive examination of the radiation leaking from the explosion site, top scientists predict the collapse of the universe to be on April 30, 2022. Citizens are asked to ensure all personal assets and fleets are properly stored.

Schedule

• April 23rd: All AI base consumption and player extractors stop functioning
• April 28th: All weekly lockouts now reset with the daily timer
• April 30th: Temporary Universe Reset, Daily Events begin, Weekly Lockouts restarted
• May 14th: Universe Reset, Daily Events end

Event Schedule

• Saturday (30th April and 7th May): 500% Augmenter Drop Rate Increase
• Sunday (1st and 8th May): 500% increase to Bindomite Drop Rate
• Monday (2nd and 9th May): 300% Increase to Mod Chances on Dropped Gear
• Tuesday (3rd and 10th May): 500% Increase to Prospecting Extraction
• Wednesday (4th and 11th May): 2000% increase to comet drops
• Thursday (5th and 12th May): 1600% Increase to prospecting node respawns
• Friday (6th and 13th May): 500% Increase to XP

Along with a daily event, there will be two week long events occurring throughout the temporary universe as well.

• April 30th – May 7th: AI will drop Halloween drops
• May 7th – May 14th: AI will drop Christmas drops

The AI that spawn normally during these events will not spawn. Normal AI will drop the event items.

Dev Notes

• Bases, permanent drones, and the credits on active bots will be lost.
  • Player ships will not be affected.
• If you’re docked during the reset, you will spawn into the new universe using your docked active ship.
  • Careful not to spawn into the new universe in an immobile ship!
• Wild Space will be scrambled and receive a new map shape.
• All other layers will have the systems scrambled but contain the same shape.
• After a universe reset, all of your docked ships will be in a state of limbo allowing you to dock them all at any non-player station. For the first 72 hours of the new universe, you can use the /limbo chat command only once to bring all of your docked ships back into limbo to dock them elsewhere.
  • For those familiar with the limbo command, going forward the timer has been extended from 24 hours to 72.

Second Ship Skin Contest

The contest will be held on our Discord in the #skin_competition channel, and will be available for anyone who wants to participate. The contest will be held in 3 rounds and will end with 2 winners. The winners of the contest will be given a free copy of the ship skin after it is implemented into the game.

You do not need to make the skin for the competition, only have an idea you think you’d enjoy!

If you have a fully developed skin that you are interested in getting into the game, feel free to message Kilando#9002 on Discord to submit it! You don’t have to go through the skin contest for a chance.

The first round of the contest will be open submissions for skin ideas from the following list of ships. Each player may have two submissions.

Rules for Submission

• Each player may have two submissions
• Submissions must follow all in-game rules
• Skins can’t change models

This Skin contest will feature the following ships:

• Empyreal Equinox
• Empyreal Perihelion
• Empyreal Aphelion
• Empyreal Estelle
• Empyreal Aelia
• Empyreal Saros
• Empyreal Ascension
• Empyreal Apex
• Empyreal Zenith
• Empyreal Eclipse
• Empyreal Noctis
• Empyreal Analemma
• Divine Behemoth

The second round of the contest will be an open vote on all of the eligible submitted ideas. Voting will happen on Discord and be handled with reactions on the submissions!

The third and final round will take the top 5 ideas from the previous round and run another open vote to decide the final 2 winners!

Schedule of the Contest

Start of the Contest: March 21st at 7pm PDT
End of Round 1: March 28th
End of Round 2: April 4th
End of Round 3: April 11th

Rewards will be distributed by May 31st.

Greetings! I’m reaching out to update you all on the release schedule for the next universe cycle and the upcoming changes to PvP in Wild Space. My aim here is to provide high-level information on the planned changes and communicate when you may expect more detailed information and a concrete universe reset announcement. If you’re just here for the basic information, here it is:

1. The next universe reset will occur in April at the earliest.

2. Once decided, the reset date will be announced with four weeks’ notice.

3. Upon universe reset, there will be a two-week temporary universe so that players can get accustomed to the new ownership mechanics in Wild Space.

4. After the two-week temporary universe, another reset will occur and we will have a full 4-month universe.

If you have any questions or clarifications, you can feel free to send me a DM on Discord at enk#3571.

Controlling and Contesting Territory

While contesting territory is an iconic part of Star Sonata, too often it takes place in a cynical manner where the actual value of the territory is irrelevant and the true aim of the conflict is to inconvenience one’s opponent. To make matters worse, the rules and restrictions surrounding galaxy assault are impossibly complicated to the point that even the devs are not always certain of every detail of the system. It is clear that we need to drastically simplify the process of contesting territory, and do so in a way that prioritizes genuine conflict over resources.

One of the greatest obstacles to this vision is the current ownership system. Simply put, it’s too quick and easy. In a short ten minutes, you are capable of greatly reducing your opponent’s ability to assault your territory, and any assault they would make would be subject to the arcane rules of BvB. We are going to have to make some big changes to galaxy ownership if we are going to realize our vision for Wild Space conflict.

We have prepared two major changes to the process of claiming and contesting territory in Wild Space:

1. Establishing ownership will take longer than before, and carry an initial and periodic resource cost. Instead of merely controlling a galaxy for ten minutes, you must deploy a new type of base and complete a resource-intensive construction project in order to establish ownership. This process may take a couple hours. Once ownership is established, a steady stream of resources will be consumed to maintain it.

2. There is no PvP possible whatsoever in owned galaxies.

Note that these changes work together to focus all territory conflict on the first few hours after an initial claim, as this is the time when it’s most typical to see genuine conflict over resources. The rules of engagement are also drastically simplified since all fighting takes place in an unowned galaxy state.

Changes to Base Combat

Focusing all territory conflict into the unowned galaxy state means that we need to make some changes to how base combat works. Otherwise, it would be too easy for people to deploy effectively unlimited numbers of bases (especially unattached bases) and cause the same kind of lag and frustration that led us to take this project on in the first place. We have prepared a couple changes to base combat that will address this concern:

1. Unattached bases can’t be deployed in unowned galaxies.

2. Base weapon ranges are greatly reduced (maxing out around 3k overall).

3. Bases no longer use healing weapons.

The reason base weapon ranges are so long is to allow bases to effectively defend against players while the base owners are offline. This is no longer necessary since ownership confers absolute defense against PvP. In the new system, base combat (against other players) only takes place in a window of a few hours, during which time the base owners are online and actively working to establish ownership. Therefore, it’s no longer necessary for bases to be able to “take care of themselves” to the same extent as they do on Liberty. A similar explanation holds for the removal of base healing: this is something that helps bases stay alive while their owners are offline, but that won’t be a concern anymore in the new system.

These changes mean that contesting territory is all about surgical PvB against your opponent’s isolated industry bases, all the while fending off PvP from that opponent and potential PvB incursions against your own growing territory. The best thing about this is that the time scale of each fight is on the order of an hour or two, not a 12-hour BvB slog or a universe-long war of attrition. I’ll never forget the time my EU friends made me get up at 2 AM Eastern to organize a BvB and then teased me six hours later for wanting to take a break for breakfast.

Mid-Universe Reveals

Changing the ownership mechanics as detailed above has some serious knock-on effects to other aspects of Wild Space. By ruling out any PvP in owned galaxies, we could be making Wild Space too safe and boring. Not only that, but someone who had an unlucky reset or joined mid-universe would not have any way of taking territory away from those who got there first. It turns out that these two concerns share a common solution: mid-universe galaxy reveals.

1. Every 9 days and 17 hours*, a fresh batch of galaxies will appear in Wild Space, connected in some way to the existing map.

2. These galaxies will have higher average resource abundance to make up for lost time.

3. Since ownership is a time- and resource-intensive process, it no longer requires a connection to your team’s HQ. Anyone with spare base slots will be able to compete for the newly revealed galaxies no matter where they appear on the map.

*Bonus points if you can figure out the logic behind this timing!

Release Schedule

We will continue the precedent of giving four weeks’ notice of universe resets. This means that April is the earliest that the current universe can end. You can expect detailed information on the Wild Space Conflict project to be released along with the universe reset notice. In order to give players time to familiarize themselves with the new ownership mechanics, the next universe reset will enter a 2-week temporary universe after which we’ll reset into a full 4-month universe.

I’m sure that many of you have questions and concerns about the information I’ve shared here. That is completely natural and expected since I’ve glossed over the details and left out a lot of nitty-gritty considerations and adjustments we’ve got planned. Rest assured: you’ll get your hands on all that information when we make the 4-week universe reset notice. However, if you are fired up about this and can’t wait until then, you are more than welcome to reach out to me via Discord DM and share your comments, questions, and concerns.

This morning a bunch of duplicate credit card charges accidentally went out to our credit card processor.  We have refunded all of the duplicate charges.

Our two old servers were supposed to have been taken offline and wiped.  One of them was, but the old web and database server was mysteriously brought back online by our hosting provider this morning unwiped after being offline for many days, and it ran our recurring billing process as soon as it came up based on its stale data.  Jey has connected to it and completely wiped it.

Our apologies for any problems or inconvenience that this may have caused.

Hello Sonatians! There have been whispers amongst the player base that Fighters and Deathblossoms would see some sort of adjustment sooner or later. I am here to confirm that we are definitely making some targeted changes to both of them, and we plan to patch them in soon. We’re doing this because, in our conversations with you during the Healing Revamp, we committed to taking decisive action to fix pain points and problems sooner rather than later. We’ve also found that the way that Fighters and the Deathblossom works causes the game to become almost unplayable in crowded situations.

With that being said, let’s dive into some of the problems we’re going to address.

Note: Things may be subject to change before release.

Problems

Deathblossom

When enough SOBs (Space Objects) are present on the field, the user’s game experience deteriorates rapidly. Not only do excessive SOBs cause significant graphical lag, they also lead to severe network latency between players and the server. The more Deathblossoms looking for targets to fire at, the bigger the lag and latency for all players involved.

We decided to target two separate things in order to fix this problem:

• Bots firing Deathblossoms.
  • Bots will no longer use a Deathblossom.
• Deathblossoms firing at fighters.
  • Deathblossoms will no longer fire at fighters.

When a Deathblossom is fired, it creates lots of space objects that need to be tracked. When those projectiles fly towards fighters, and the fighters evade them, those projectiles still exist and will keep trying to track towards the fighters. This causes a significant amount of latency and graphical lag.

Also, when a critical mass of fighters are on the battlefield it becomes almost impossible to actually use a Deathblossom or splash weapons to kill them fast enough due to the cap on the number of targets splash is allowed to hit (20 at present).

This creates a weird situation where Deathblossoms almost completely counter fighters, until you bring enough fighters to a battlefield and suddenly the Deathblossom is nearly useless against them. UPDATE: Several players pointed out that splash, on live, does not have a limit. This limit was considered in the past, but was not implemented in favor of another change. Unfortunately, I had bad information. However, this does not change the point of the project.

We’ve decided to remove this from the equation. These changes will result in Fighters being much more durable against players and AI that use Deathblossoms. They will also result in Gunner bots doing less total damage than they used to. We’re aware that this will result in lower damage output from high-end bots, but we believe that Gunner is overtuned in DPS in the first place. Any niche situations where the drop in Gunner bot DPS unreasonably affects squad play will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Fighters

When enough fighters are present on the field, the user’s game experience deteriorates rapidly. There are too many objects with their own particle effects from weapons and engines in play, and when a critical mass of fighters are on the battlefield it becomes almost impossible to actually figure out which ones you should prioritize shooting down. This means that area-of-effect weaponry are the best way to deal with them, but even this is unreliable because of Evasion and the random nature of target selection.

However, the biggest reason to adjust fighters is the sheer number of fighters players have fielded at once. The presence of this many fighters in play at once creates an enormous amount of client and network lag, and has made it clear that Star Sonata is not able to handle massive swarms of player assets. All of these factors combine to create a situation that warrants a change to fighters.

We decided to target a few things in order to address these issues:

• All fighters will require 1 slot to launch.
• Bots will be disallowed from launching fighters.
• Fighter bays will have a maximum of 2 slots (+2 on Fleet Commanders).
  • The total damage that Fighters do is increased to compensate for the reduction in the total number of fighters launched.
  • Fighter shield bank will be increased, and they’ll be made a little bit bigger visually.
  • Stat bonuses on Capital class Fighter Bays are doubled.
• Evasion will be removed from fighters.
  • Fighters will have a 90% chance of avoiding non-targeted damage. This includes area-of-effect, splash, non-targeted collisions, and so on.
• Fighters with aura generators will no longer have them, and fighters that take very high amounts of energy for extra damage will no longer do so.
  • Death of First Born, Jovian, and Panther Kitten fighters are examples of fighters that have been changed.
• Radiation Expert will no longer apply to Fighters.
  • Flight Controller will give 20% damage per level to Fighters (from 15%, on live).
  • Advanced Flight Controller will give Fighters +15% Damage.
• Pulse Guns on fighters now act like Magcannons, and do not inherit the velocity of the fighter.

The most controversial change is the removal of fighters from combat bots. It’s important that we do this because Bots represent an automatic way of engaging targets, and they can be used to immediately launch dozens or even hundreds of fighters in seconds. As long as Bots are allowed to launch fighters, we will continue to see players trying to figure out how to reach critical mass with regards to the number of fighters on the field at once.

To address this, we are going to make fighters more powerful on the main ship.

In addition, there have been long standing requests from the players themselves for changes to be made to fighters.

• Players have routinely asked for fighters with projectiles to be changed so that they continue to fire at targets when in range, so we’re doing that.
• Players have also asked for AoE and Collision code mitigation, and although we’re not giving them resistances or immunity to it they will be highly resilient against it.
  • They also will no longer be targeted by Deathblossoms!
• Players have also asked for fighters other than Radiation to be useful, and we’ve done this as well by removing the Radiation Expert Bonus from fighters but buffing all fighters Damage values through Flight Controller and Advanced Flight Controller.
  • This will result in a reduction to Radiation damage bonuses on Fighters, but an increase to non Radiation damage bonuses.
  • UPDATE 2: We have also changed Radiation Expert so that Radiation Damage is increased by 15% per level, while Damage is is increased by 25% per level. (NOTE: This means Radiation weapons will have ~154% bonus damage.) This will allow Fleet Commanders to consider a wider array of damage types when outfitting their combat bots.
• Players have also routinely asked for something to be done about holiday fighters, specifically Death of First Borns, being powerful and impactful relative to other fighters. By normalizing them, we’re making them no longer feel mandatory.

“What does this mean for me?”

Summary

• Fighters will no longer be launched from bots, at all.
• Fighters launched from your main ship will be stronger and tougher to kill, won’t be shot at by Deathblossoms, they will no longer have Evasion when targeted but will evade the vast majority of non-targeted damage.
• Higher tech fighters will be visually bigger.
• Fighters with projectiles will shoot them more consistently.
• There will be much fewer fighters launched at once.
• Gunner bots will no longer use Deathblossoms.
• Gunners will not quickly kill groups of fighters.
• The DPS you do with fighters should be equivalent to what you are able to do on live. This will be higher in some cases, and lower in other cases.
  • If you are a low level player just starting out as an FC and only have a few fighters, you will probably do more damage.
  • If you are a mid level player who has a bunch of bots that launch fighters only, you will probably do less damage.
  • If you are a high level player who has good fighters on yourself and your bots, you will probably do more damage.
  • If you are an end game player with powerful bots, and powerful fighters, you will do more damage in most situations.
    • The one area you will certainly be less powerful is with Radiation fighters.
• UPDATE 2: Radiation Expert now grants 15% Radiation Damage per level, while Damage is increased by 25% per level.

UPDATE: To further clarify, if a player used Death of First Born, Cerberus, or any fighter that used a very large amount of energy to do more damage (High Energy), your personally launched fighters under this change will not do the same amount of damage as your bots and your own fighters combined. This is because High Energy fighters do not exist in the new system, and the damage bonus they received for using large amounts of energy will not be carried over.

While we are doing our best to vet this project from many angles and solicit feedback from the players, it’s always possible that we may overlook something important. If this happens, we will quickly move to address the issue.

What do the items look like now?

Will you be adding more fighters?

Yes, we will be adding more fighters in future updates. We have about ~40 fighters that have been created and will eventually be added to the game.

Can I test these changes to see how they affect me?

These changes are now available on Test.

(You can select “Test Server” from the drop down menu within your client’s login screen.)

~

All of these changes should be coming in with an upcoming patch, keep your eyes peeled!

Star Sonata servers will be unavailable at midnight on December 12th, at 00:00 server time for server maintenance and a patch. Patch notes will be available as the server is taken offline.

Timezones for shutdown

EST: 12 Midnight
CST:  11 PM
MST: 10 PM
PST: 9 PM
GMT: 5 AM

Christmas is here and Astro-Santa is out to deliver presents to all the good peasants and workers in the universe again! However, Earthforce and the other Terran factions report that Astro-Grinch has been sighted roaming Perilous Space again! Many speculate he is looking to stop Astro-Santa from delivering his presents!

Lyceum Scientists report that the wormhole to Lapland will stabilize in Sol on December 10th, 2021 for the beginning of the Christmas event! The event will continue until January 3rd, 2022.
For the duration of the universe, Lapland will remain in Sol for any turn-in’s you may have forgotten to do.

On November 18th, 2021 we announced that galaxy assault (BvB Slots) were temporarily disabled.

After examining the problems and discussing temporary fixes for large scale galaxy assaults, we have decided that the two week timeframe is insufficient for a good solution to be implemented. Therefore, for the duration of this universe galaxy assault is going to remain disabled, with changes being implemented on next universe reset.

This is to prevent more server-wide lag, unenjoyable gameplay, and provide a cleaner timeframe for the issues to be addressed. Over the duration of this existing universe, the development team is heavily focusing on improving the Wild Space experience, as well as addressing long-standing issues that have revolved around the galaxy assault scene.

The aspects of wild space that will be focused on are:

• Galaxy Assault
  Greatly reducing the complexity of the rules and limitations around galaxy assault while retaining deep theorycrafting potential. Also substantially reducing the engagement duration and minimum resource expenditure necessary to engage in galaxy assault.

• Player-Versus-Base Assault
  Envisioning new roles for players in galaxy assault including essential roles in backline/logistics and sabotage.

• Galaxy Control
  Lower the emphasis demanding that players are immediately present during resets, and how quickly the layer is claimed. As well as adjusting resource distribution to remove the Feast or Famine effect that is currently prevalent in Wild Space

We understand that keeping BvB disabled for the rest of the current universe will interfere with some players’ plans. If you deployed bases with the intention to support or defend against an impending galaxy assault, you may be entitled to a refund of base kits and augmenters. Message enk#3571 on Discord for a review of your case.