This weekend, we’re doing a bonus XP event focuses on the new Perilous Perilous area! AI there will be dropping global +5% xp boosts like crazy! We’ll also have some powerup spawners like the last event going at the same time. Like last time though each account can only have 1 boost active at a time, so the more people in perilous perilous the higher the boost will be. Unlike our last event though, these aren’t tied to limited time spawners. So the XP limit will be based only by how many people participate! If everyone on at the time of the post were to go scoop an XP buff, we’d have +500% xp! We’re also introducing a limited time item that will be a rarer drop that will give a level to any character that uses it (up to level 9000). Like the global xp boosts, it’ll be dropping from AI in Perilous Perilous as well as dungeons there.

We hope everyone enjoys the event!

This weekend we are adding Global XP Boosts into Perilous Space. Each one will trigger a +5% XP for everyone in the game for 30 minutes. There are 40 randomized spawners, and the effects stack, so if people manage to collect all 40 at once, there will be a bonus of 200%. The only caveat, is that each account can only have one boost active at once, so you will need 40 different people in order to stack 40 boosts simultaneously.

There’s a bug in the text, where when you trigger it, it says the total boost is currently 0%, but when you log in, there is a message stating the correct amount, and when you get XP, it tells you correctly how much additional bonus XP you get.

I’ll start you guys off with a special boost that adds 25% for one hour.

The universe is becoming unstable. It is expected to collapse into a big crunch January 31. All deployed bases and drones will be lost, but out of the crunchy ashes, a new big bang will erupt and a new universe will be born. All ships will somehow survive and be able to quickly colonize this new universe for the glory of … whoever happens to colonize it the greatest.

Expect to see some “Perilouser Perilous Space” amongst other additions.

Some of us admins are tired of you guys killing everything so easily, so we’ve gotten together and built up a galaxy of bases in Porellis in Perilous Space. This galaxy has been set to allow placement of user bases. We challenge you to take us down!

There is no gear on any of these bases that normal players don’t have. And I only have, like, 30 Station Mastery skill, I swear. And just one pet helping to guard the galaxy.

5 Tarnished Imperial Chests will be awarded to anyone listed as the killer of any of these bases in their black box reports.

It’s finally here!

All things are a go in the universe for Christmas. Lapland has appeared, Astro-Santa is giving gifts in Earthforce Space and Sol has been donned it’s santa hat, unfortunately it brings with it that reject of a Grinch roaming Perilous Space in a pair once again.

A slight change of plan

Due to requiring a patch to add this years christmas letters from the competition and there’s no one to do it right now, I’ve pushed ahead with the main event, using last years letter’s. These will be replaced soon, and the missions will change when they do. To remind you, last year’s winners were:

• epicninja
• Tom Daedalus
• reaper pride
• Platinum
• AfriendlyCanadian

Once this year’s winners have been picked, things will be sorted for their letters to go live and I’ll update this post with the winners

That’s it, so from everyone at Star Sonata, Merry Christmas! Have fun!

King Midas is pissed off that you players keep farming him for Imperial Chests, so he has recruited a giant mob of various Big Greens and Green Battleships to warp into Perilous Space and exact revenge!

As part of our month-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of Star Sonata, tonight, the invasions of the Midas Goons is beginning. Approximately every half hour, somewhere in Perilous Space, up to 25 ships will spawn. If you can manage to fight them off, they will each have a small chance to drop an Imperial Chest, Dementium Fragment, or Bindomite.

But if you think that you’re so leet that fighting off hordes of Green Battleships is easy, well, this *is* Perilous Space, and you might have to PvP other players for the drops.

Just for fun, here is the XML code we used to add this event. You may notice that this is limited to 4000 spawns. Once this spawner has produced 4000 children, it deletes itself and the event will be over. This should take somewhere between 3-5 days, depending on how vigilant people are at killing Goons.

<WILDAI>
  <WILDSPAWN name="SuperGreenSpawner">
    <QUANT>1</QUANT>
    <WILDSTART>3.8</WILDSTART>
    <WILDEND>99.0</WILDEND>
    <LAYER>4</LAYER>
    <USETEAM>Midas Goons</USETEAM>
    <SPAWNOBJ typename="SpawnNasty">
      <SPAWNER>
        <SPAWNBASE>
          <NAME>SuperGreenSpawner</NAME>
          <INTERVAL>1800</INTERVAL>
          <NUM>25</NUM>
          <LIMITSPAWNS>4000</LIMITSPAWNS>
          <LEVEL>-1</LEVEL>
          <MINATTACKLEVEL>0</MINATTACKLEVEL>
          <ATTACKFRACMINAI>0.5</ATTACKFRACMINAI>
          <ATTACKFRACMAXAI>0.0</ATTACKFRACMAXAI>
          <ATTACKFRACMINPLAYER>0.0</ATTACKFRACMINPLAYER>
          <ATTACKFRACMAXPLAYER>999.0</ATTACKFRACMAXPLAYER>
          <SCAREDYCAT>0.0</SCAREDYCAT>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.01">Imperial Chest</DROPITEM>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.02">Dementium Fragments</DROPITEM>
          <DROPITEM chance="0.05">Bindomite</DROPITEM>
          <SPAWNATONCE>true</SPAWNATONCE>
          <RANDOMIZED>1</RANDOMIZED>
          <NAMELIST>BigGreens100.txt</NAMELIST>
          <NAMEPREFIXLIST>UberPrefixes.txt</NAMEPREFIXLIST>
          <NAMESUFFIXLIST>UberSuffixes.txt</NAMESUFFIXLIST> <!-- extra suffixes for identification -->
          <BOUNDTOLAYER>true</BOUNDTOLAYER>
          <HATEMODIFIER>3.0</HATEMODIFIER> <!-- hate on the haters -->
        </SPAWNBASE>
        <PERIPATETIC>25</PERIPATETIC> <!-- jump reasonably often -->
        <SWARM>1</SWARM> <!-- birds of a feather ... -->
        <ALLOWJUMP>1</ALLOWJUMP>
        <GROUPATTACK>1</GROUPATTACK>
        <GROUPATTACKDIST>3000</GROUPATTACKDIST>
        <RALLYFACTOR>10000</RALLYFACTOR> <!-- fight everyone -->
        <CANUPGRADE>0</CANUPGRADE>
        <DONTDOCK>1</DONTDOCK>
        <ADDITIONALBRAVERY>200</ADDITIONALBRAVERY>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Green Meanie</SHIPCONFIG>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Titan Green</SHIPCONFIG>
        <SHIPCONFIG weight="1.0">Green Battleship</SHIPCONFIG>
        <!-- pooling all the skills all versions of the Greens get for a particularly nasty combo, +50%-->
        <XTRASKILL lvl="30">SKILL_COMBAT_FOCUS</XTRASKILL>
        <XTRASKILL lvl="15">SKILL_SNIPER_EFFICIENCY</XTRASKILL>
        <XTRASKILL lvl="15">SKILL_FLEET_FOCUS</XTRASKILL>
      </SPAWNER>
    </SPAWNOBJ>
  </WILDSPAWN>
</WILDAI>

So this blog post has some awesome new; firstly about Christmas!!

Christmas is here

But as always, the rite of passage to Astro-Santa’s goodies is sending him your letters!

That’s right! It’s time for our annual Astro-Santa Christmas letter competition. Send Astro-Santa (or maybe the Astro-Elves) a heartfelt (or hateful) letter, for what things Astro-Santa should get people, or just to raise (or ruin) their Christmas spirits.

You have until Friday 19th of December, 00:00 server time to get your entries in.

Five winners will be chosen later that day and prizes will be handed out during the event.

Prizes:

• A unique item (permanent holoprojector or soundprojector).
• Their letter added to the game.
• 5 Kotonjatas
• 5 Candy Mints
• 5 Triple-Chocolate Candy Cane Kisses
• 5 White Chocolate Candy Pretzels
• 5 Gigantic Stockings
• 5 Good Deed Tokens
• A collection of holoprojectors and soundprojectors

Dates:

• Entry deadline: 19th December (midnight server time).
• Winner’s announcement: 19th December (or later that weekend).
• Event start: At Winner announcement time

Rules & Judging:

• Entries should be posted to the forum thread titled ‘Astro-Santa Letter Competition Entries’ (link is at the bottom) before the end date.
• The submissions will be judged on creativeness and relevance to the holiday and of course, bonus points for Star Sonata themes.
• Your letter must be original work belonging to you; if found otherwise you may be disqualified.

Competition Entry topic

And secondly, December!

We’re 10!

That’s right; Star Sonata is 10 years old! For those of you who’ve been with us since the start, you may know that this actually occurred a few months ago around the same time we were being plagued by memory corruption issues.

It was decided that we’d delay the celebration until December, to wrap it up with Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

From now through till the 5th of January; we’ll have various bonuses for you in game and as time progresses, some special party items.

The bonuses will start small and stack up over the month, some bonuses will be temporary, check here for current details

The bonuses:

• +25% mod chances
• Green Goons
• +50% artifact mod chance
• +100% experience
• +100% worker speed
• A respawn of Astro-Santa

Once again, my apologies for forgetting to do it sooner. Novembers Monthly event will run until Tuesday, 5PM server time. The bonus is +150% experience and the wild outposts, that is, the Green Meanie and Iceprick bases, as well as the ruin outposts; giving access to specialist station gear in Sol.

Halloween is here!

The festivities started last night, with all the usual tricks and treats we have.

Unfortunately I have to apologize for the lack of daily missions; recent events have proved difficult in getting time to do them.
However, don’t forget about our competition, with only four days left! Now is the perfect time to buy your pumpkin for the pumpking carving competition!

Due to the rollback on Tuesday; this years halloween event will be extended by a day. The end date is Tuesday 11th November, 17:00 server time.

Enjoy!

Hey guys! We’re aware that the recent patch broke bases, and we’re working to get an administrator to resolve the issue as soon as possible. We’re going to prevent losses at best we can, but the final decision to what is being done, will be taken by an administrator Most likely it will be a server shutdown followed by a rollback to prevent losses. Further updates will either follow in the chats or on the forum, or through other announcements

UPDATE:
Jey has brought the server down and rolled the save back to 02:00AM (server time, 6:00 UK (UK clocks changed, US is next week)).
The extra time in the rollback is due to the TSL; the save got corrupted and we decided to rollback further to avoid item duplication/deletion issues.

The part of the patch which was causing the problem has been removed, so all should be good now.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience. Halloween will be extended by a day to make up for lost time.